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On Sunday, a Kentucky man was arrested after he blasted a small drone out of the sky over his yard. William Merideth says he was protecting his property rights and his privacy. The owner of the $1,800 drone insists he wasn't trying to invade anyone's privacy. He says he was trying to get pictures of a friend's house, and that he kept the drone at a respectful height of 200 feet. Local authorities say Merideth violated laws against shooting guns in the town of Hillview. Merideth may also have run afoul of Federal Aviation Administration regulations, which make it a crime to shoot down aircraft regardless of whether they are manned or unmanned.
While Merideth's vigilante tactics might not be legal, his actions reflected common concerns that drones can threaten privacy. There are currently few federal regulations governing snooping by drones, and it's unclear how a patchwork of state laws will apply to unmanned aerial vehicles. A firearm is probably the wrong way to protect our privacy against invasion by drones, but it remains to be seen whether the law will give property owners better options.
The drone shootdown sparked a dramatic confrontation
Merideth and the drone's owner disagree about what the drone was doing before it was shot down.
Meredith claims, "I came out and it was down by the neighbor’s house, about 10 feet off the ground, looking under their canopy that they’ve got under their back yard."
But the owner, David Boggs, disputes that. He produced data showing that the drone never went below 193 feet.
"If you cross my sidewalk, there's gonna be another shooting"
"We didn't hover, we didn't go down, we didn't do any of that," Boggs told local television station WDRB. His data does show the drone had been over Meredith's land for about 30 seconds before it was hit.
Merideth says that after he shot down the drone, Boggs arrived at his house with three friends.
"They asked me, 'Are you the S-O-B that shot my drone?' and I said, 'Yes I am,'" Merideth said. "I had my 40 mm Glock on me and they started toward me and I told them, 'If you cross my sidewalk, there's gonna be another shooting.'"
Soon the police arrived and helped to defuse the situation. Merideth was arrested, and the drone was returned to its owner.
Shooting down a drone is probably illegal
Merideth has been charged with first-degree criminal mischief and first-degree wanton endangerment, according to the local television station that broke the story. Hillview police Detective Charles McWhirter told WDRB that it was against the law to fire a gun in the city.
An FAA spokesperson added that shooting down drones is dangerous. "An unmanned aircraft hit by gunfire could crash, causing damage to persons or property on the ground, or it could collide with other objects in the air," the FAA's Les Dorr told WDRB.
It's not clear if snooping on your neighbor with a drone is legal
One of Merideth's neighbors said that "a drone hovering with a camera is creepy and weird." Many Americans agree. But right now, it's not clear if hovering over someone's home with a drone violates any laws.
There are a number of federal regulations governing the private use of drones, but these rules are focused on safety, not privacy. FAA regulations limit small amateur drones like the one in the Kentucky case to flying below 400 feet. They can't be heavier than 55 pounds, nor can they be used for commercial purposes. But there are no federal laws against drones being creepy.
"A drone hovering with a camera is creepy and weird"
So if you want to stop someone from snooping on you with a drone, you'll want to turn to state law. The Brookings Institution's Wells C. Bennett has a good rundown of how state privacy laws might apply to privately operated drones like the one in the Kentucky case. When Bennett surveyed the law last year, only 13 states had specialized drone privacy laws that might apply in a case like this. In the rest of the country, an aggrieved neighbor would have to rely on more general state laws:
An unannounced Quadcopter hover, inside a neighbor’s back yard barbecue and at hair-parting altitude, could theoretically put a drone operator on the hook for trespassing. This depends on how a state trespassing statute has been written and how far a court is willing to go in interpreting it. Also in play are the classic state-law "privacy" offenses. The prohibitions against invading privacy, intruding upon seclusion, publishing private facts, and stalking all might be implicated when a drone, heavily sensored up, hears or sees somebody who doesn’t wish to be heard or seen.
In most states, there haven't been enough privacy disputes to test the boundaries of the law, so we don't really know how far drone owners can go before their snooping is against the law.
Drone privacy regulations could run afoul of the First Amendment
While many Americans find drone surveillance creepy, drones also have beneficial — and possibly even constitutionally protected —uses. For example, I interviewed legal scholar Margot Kaminski a couple of years ago about this, and she pointed out that drones can be valuable for news organizations.
"If you have a news organization hovering over a protest and videoing cops beating protesters, that's really valuable for the First Amendment," she told me in 2013. Courts have already ruled that the First Amendment protects the right of private citizens to video-record the actions of public officials. The same reasoning seems to apply to recordings taken by a drone.
VIDEO: How will drones change the skies? |
The College Football Playoff has determined the assignments for the officials that will determine the national championship. The names of those officials won't be revealed until game day, but now we know which conferences are responsible for providing the refs for the Peach Bowl, Fiesta Bowl and CFP title game.
Game Matchup Officals (conference) Peach Bowl No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 4 Washington Big Ten Fiesta Bowl No. 2 Clemson vs. No. 3 Ohio State Pac-12 CFP title game Alabama/Washington vs. Clemson/Ohio State Big 12
The Big 12 getting the title game is not a surprise, as it was the conference that got left out of the playoff. Every year, the one league (or one of the leagues) missing the playoff will be assigned to the title game.
While every fan seems to have a bias against a certain set of conference-based officials, the most notorious ref-related controversy from the 2016 regular season season was the end of Oklahoma State-Central Michigan. The MAC officials (not in the playoff) for that game were suspended after it was determined they had erred in giving the Chippewas an untimed down that led to the winning score. The blunder helped CMU become bowl eligible, but it did not ultimately prevent Oklahoma State from playoff consideration following Oklahoma's undefeated run through Big 12 conference play.
However, the Big 12 did later admit that it could have buzzed in from its replay center to potentially prevent the untimed down. Luckily, I think the national championship game will have everyone's eyes, making it unlikely for any mistake to go unrecognized. |
Turn to page 11 of the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s report into the implosion of the charity Kid’s Company and you’ll find the following interesting passage: “Mr Letwin acknowledged that the charity historically relied upon Government for cash flow, but pointed out that this didn’t necessarily indicate financial mismanagement on the part of trustees. Instead, he observed that this 'may be a sign of quite cunning financial management, just a particular kind, which I don’t happen to think is the right way to do business’ ”.
"For a major charity to rely on government for its cash flow is neither cunning, nor the wrong way to do business. It’s merely standard operating procedure within the British charity sector"
“Mr Letwin” is Oliver Letwin, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and one of David Cameron’s senior advisors. So there you have it. A charity going broke on an annual basis – then demanding the taxpayer fills in the shortfall – isn’t mismanagement. It’s actually very clever management.
Peruse the rest of the report and it reads less like a parliamentary inquiry and more like a pulp psychological thriller. A chief executive who “ appeared to captivate some of the most senior political figures in the land ”. Allegations of “violence, drug taking and sexual abuse”. Stories of “holidays to Ibiza, a spa, and a first-class flight to New York”. Cover-ups, conspiracies and the mysterious loss of 87 filing cabinets of evidence.
But strip away the more lurid aspects of this sorry saga, and you are left with this. Kids Company wasn’t actually a charity. Nor was it a quango. Nor was it a department of government. It existed in a surreal twilight world, sustained by funding provided by the taxpayer, without proper oversight on behalf of the taxpayer, and – because that funding was provided at the whim of a small circle of senior ministers – without the knowledge or approval of the taxpayer.
When people hear the word “charity”, their thoughts turn to jam-making, and people dressed in silly costumes, carrying collection tins. Few thoughts turn to the National Audit Office (NAO) report Public Funding Of Large Charities – 2007.
Photo: Geoff Pugh / The Telegraph
They should. The NAO’s investigation – commissioned when the Big Society was merely a twinkle in David Cameron’s eye – examined the funding arrangements of large charities in the light of “the aspiration for third sector organisations to deliver more public services”.
It revealed that some of these “charities” had hundreds of different public funding streams. One, Leonard Cheshire, had over 4,000. The report uncovered a huge disparity between publicly funded income, and charitable donations. Of the £218 million income identified for Action For Children, £196.7 came from public money. Of the £164 million income for the “charity” Mencap, £155 million came from public funding .
Oliver Letwin was wrong. For a major charity to rely on government for its cash flow is neither cunning, nor the wrong way to do business. It’s merely standard operating procedure within the British charity sector.
Yesterday I checked the most recent set of accounts for the charities featured in the NAO study. According to Leonard Cheshire, total income for 2013/2014 was £162.2 million. Only £17.8 million of that was voluntary donations. Mencap’s 2014 annual report reveals income of £201.2 million.
Of that, £13.2 million was raised through fundraising – “a tremendous achievement”, according to the charity. The annual accounts for NCH for 2014/2015 identify income of over £179 million; £18 million came from donations, gifts and legacies.
How is it that organisations that secure only 10 per cent of their income through charitable giving are able to represent themselves as “charities”? Very easily, it seems. Analysis published in 2015 by the Centre for Policy studies found at least 24 per cent of total funding of Britain’s largest charities comes from public finances. Because of lack of transparency, the figure may be as high as 49 per cent.
Obviously Action for Children, Leonard Cheshire and Mencap don’t have anything like the same governance issues as Kids Company. And all do excellent work for their clients. But it’s increasingly clear many “charities” aren’t really charities at all. They’re public sector service providers, with a cosmetic fundraising arm.
Does this matter, if good work is being done? Yes, it does. The NAO identified a number of potential risks from this funding model, including the complexity of managing myriad income streams, and the potential impact of overreliance on public funding on a charity’s constituted objectives.
But there’s also the danger of abusing the goodwill of the public. If you donate to a British charity you are effectively donating three times. First via your original gift. Second through the funding you and every taxpayer provides in terms of grants, subsidy or statutory-service payments. And thirdly through your funding of tax breaks – including corporation tax, business rates and stamp duty.
Maybe you feel that generous. Maybe you don’t. But as the Kids Company fiasco proved, you don’t really have a choice. In 2016 charity begins, and ends, in Downing Street. |
Only integrated, data-driven approaches and enforced accountability can address the many challenges that female academics face. That was one of the take-home messages of a Wednesday phone briefing from the grassroots Research Partnership on Women in Biomedical Careers, which grew out of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers.
Identifying ways to address inequalities like those presented at the briefing, including evidence of a persistent gender-based wage gap and bias in NIH R01 grant proposal evaluation, is crucial for supporting female academics’ career aspirations. But, emphasized speaker and NIH Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity Hannah Valantine, targeting individual disparities is not enough to drive the cultural changes needed to make academia truly inclusive. “That can only be done by an integrated approach,” she said.
One strategy, Valantine suggested, is to assemble interdisciplinary teams, including representatives from the social sciences and business, at “hubs of innovation for workforce diversity.” These groups could design interventions to be quickly executed and continuously evaluated and revised, “in the iterative way we see in the business world,” she said. Evaluation is particularly important because some interventions don’t work as expected, as Molly Carnes, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, noted. For example, she explained, there is evidence that simply acknowledging that bias is ubiquitous doesn’t make people less likely to make biased decisions; in fact, it actually reinforces the behavior. On the other hand, emphasizing that everyone is working hard to overcome their bias can lead to more equitable outcomes, she said.
In addition, Valantine argued that the “vision for the future” should include an expectation of “accountability and leadership” from both university administrators and funding agencies. The leaders at these institutions must drive the cultural changes that are needed to support and promote women in the academic biomedical workforce, she said. |
The structure, composition and evolutionary history of comets are starting to come into focus, thanks to observations beamed home by the first probe ever to land on one of these icy objects.
On Nov. 12, 2014, the European Space Agency's Philae lander detached from its Rosetta mother ship, which had arrived in orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko three months earlier, and spiraled down toward the icy wanderer's surface.
The historic touchdown didn't go exactly as planned, however. Philae's anchoring harpoons failed to fire, and the 220-lb. (100 kilograms) lander bounced off 67P's surface, clipped a crater rim and then bounced a second time before finally coming to rest nearly two hours after first making contact with the comet's surface. [See comet photos from Rosetta and Philae]
But Philae shook off the shake-up and proceeded to gather data with its suite of 10 science instruments over the next two-plus days, until its primary battery died and the lander went into hibernation. (The plan called for Philae to touch down in a spot where solar energy could keep its secondary, rechargeable battery going, but the final resting place was apparently quite shaded.)
These initial observations — the highlights of which are reported in a raft of seven papers published online today (July 30) in the journal Science — reveal that Comet 67P is a porous body with a fairly homogeneous interior, researchers said. It also has a diverse surface that harbors many different carbon-containing organic molecules, the scientists said.
"What really blows my mind is to have this combination of complementary results, allowing us at the same time to 'feel' the surface of the comet, very locally, as if we were there, while also getting the bigger picture through the sounding of the cometary interior structure," Nicolas Altobelli, acting Rosetta project scientist, told Space.com via email.
"The implications of these measurements, and in particular the fairly homogeneous, very porous structure of the interior, will help constrain the formation models of planetesimals in the solar nebula, by a better understanding of the accretion processes," Altobelli added, referring to how planetary building blocks came together in the solar system's early days.
A diverse surface
While Philae's double-bounce touchdown doubtless frayed some nerves among the lander team, it actually has provided some scientific benefits. For example, researchers were able to characterize 67P's surface at both the initial and final touchdown sites (which have been dubbed Agilkia and Abydos, respectively).
And those two sites are quite different, it turns out. Agilkia's surface is relatively soft, covered with a layer of granular material about 0.82 feet (0.25 meters) deep, while Abydos is much harder.
"Before the landing of Philae, we believed cometary surfaces might be very soft (loose regolith under low gravity). Some colleagues even feared the lander may sink deeply into the surface at touchdown," Philae project manager Stephan Ulamec, of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), told Space.com via email. "Although we were aware of our limited knowledge, the fact that some of the material is so hard, and that the surface is so heterogen[eous], was indeed a bit surprising." [Philae's Historic Comet Landing: Complete Coverage]
Images captured by Philae's Comet Infrared and Visible Analyser camera, or CIVA, highlight the diversity and complexity of 67P's surface, showing fractured, boulder-studded terrain with a variety of grain sizes and reflectivities.
The soft "dirt" on Comet 67P's surface is up to 6.5 feet (2 m) deep in some places and nonexistent in others, photos taken by Philae's ROLIS (Rosetta Lander Imaging System) camera during the probe's descent suggest. ROLIS' pictures also reveal a boulder about 16.5 feet (5 m) wide, which is partly surrounded by a depression resembling a "wind tail," an erosional feature seen on Earth and Mars.
Mission scientists found a total of 17 wind-tail-like structures on the 2.5-mile-wide (4 kilometers) comet, with lengths ranging from 16.5 feet to 100 feet (5 to 30 m). These features appear to be caused by particles hitting 67P and abrading its surface, researchers said.
Additional measurements from Philae's Multi Purpose Sensors for Surface and Subsurface Science instrument, or MUPUS, revealed that daytime temperatures on the comet's surface in November 2014 ranged from minus 226 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 298 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 143 to minus 183 degrees Celsius).
Those temperatures are certainly higher now, however, because 67P is much closer to the sun. When Philae made the measurements, the comet was about 3 astronomical units (AU) from Earth's star. (One AU is the distance from Earth to the sun, about 93 million miles, or 150 million km).
The comet, which circles the sun every 6.4 years, will reach its closest solar approach, of about 1.24 AU, on Aug. 13.
Lots of organics
Two different Philae instruments, known as Ptolemy and COSAC (Cometary Sampling and Composition), hunted for organic compounds— the building blocks of life as we know it — on and around Comet 67P.
Both instruments detected lots of interesting molecules. COSAC, for example, found 16 different organics, including four (methyl isocyanate, acetone, propionaldehyde, and acetamide) that had never been spotted on or around a comet before.
"If such cometary material falls onto a planet in the right environment, emerging life could make use of it," COSAC principal investigator Fred Goesmann, of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, told Space.com via email.
Ptolemy's observations also revealed a rich mix of organics, along with lots of water and carbon dioxide.
"I think an understanding of the organic compounds that are present in this particular comet will have tremendous ramifications for origin-of-life studies," Ptolemy principal investigator Ian Wright, of the Open University in the United Kingdom, told Space.com. [7 Theories on the Origin of Life]
The newly reported Ptolemy data were gathered during a calibration run, Wright said, adding that more results from the instrument will be published soon.
Interior structure, too
Philae's observations aren't just skin-deep. Using its Comet Nucleus Sounding Experiment by Radiowave Transmission (CONSERT) instrument, the lander also sounded out the comet's interior. This instrument picks up long-wavelength signals beamed through 67P by the orbiting Rosetta mothership.
CONSERT data suggest that the "head" of the rubber-duck-shaped cometis internally homogeneous on the scale of a few tens of meters, and extremely porous, with open space making up 75 to 85 percent of its volume, researchers said.
The instrument's observations also allowed the lander team to narrow down Philae's final resting place to a stretch of Comet 67P measuring about 69 feet wide by 112 feet long (21 by 34 m). (The team has not been able to determine the lander's current location in photos captured by Rosetta.)
Overall, team members said, Philae's measurements and photos are reshaping researchers' understanding of comets and helping pave the way for future missions to these icy leftovers from the solar system's early days.
"Philae provided us unique information on a comet's surface properties (and interior) that could not be obtained from orbiter measurements alone," Ulamec said. "We learned so much about comets that now future missions can be adapted in a much better way to this challenging environment."
More to come?
The newly released studies are not necessarily the last word from Philae, as the lander woke from hibernation in mid-June.
Communication between Philae and its handlers here on Earth remains extremely spotty — the last contact occurred on July 9 — but the mission team holds out hope that it can get the lander up and running again soon.
"We keep listening and sending commands to Philae, every time we have an opportunity for communication," Altobelli said.
Still, he said, the mission team is also quite busy with the Rosetta orbiter, which is now studying how 67P changes as it approaches the sun, one of the major goals of the overall Rosetta mission.
If Philae does spring back into action around closest solar approach — also known as perihelion — the lander's double-bounce touchdown will likely be viewed as a blessing in disguise.
If Philae had stuck its landing, "it would probably have lasted until about March, at which point the spacecraft would've gotten too hot and basically died," Wright said. "So the fact that we're going all the way up to perihelion is something that we could never have planned to do. But it does remain to be seen whether we can get this [communication] link back."
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Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook orGoogle+. Originally published on Space.com.
Copyright 2015 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
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May 21, 2015, 5:19 PM GMT / Updated May 22, 2015, 11:32 AM GMT
The president of the Boy Scouts of America on Thursday urged the organization to drop its ban on gay adults, saying the outdated policy would eventually crumble under the weight of social, political and legal forces.
Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense, said in a speech to the Scouts’ national meeting that he wasn’t specifically asking the national board to immediately overturn the ban. But Gates recommended the Scouts get ahead of it so the organization doesn’t get thrown into disarray by a court ruling.
“We can act on our own or we can be forced to act,” Gates said, according to a copy of his remarks. “But either way, I suspect we don't have a lot of time.”
Gates, an Eagle Scout who became the organization’s president a year ago, said when he took office that he supported inclusion of gay adults but didn’t want to re-open the issue. A year earlier, the Scouts had voted to allow gay youth — but not adults.
Now, Gates is pressing the issue anew.
"The status quo in our movement's membership standards cannot be sustained," he said Thursday.
In his remarks, Gates cited a variety of factors behind his proposal — growing challenges to the ban from within the organization, including open defiance by local chapters in places including New York and Denver; a wave of state laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation; and judicial decisions in favor of gay rights.
Revoking the charters of local councils that challenge the ban would be detrimental to the boys whose lives stand to benefit from the Scouts, Gates said.
With Gates’ urging, the Scouts’ executive committee, its national executive board and its lawyers will start working on a strategy to rescind the ban.
“We must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be,” Gates said. “The status quo in our movement's membership standards cannot be sustained.”
IN-DEPTH
— Jon Schuppe and Pete Williams |
ATTENTION! The content of this article is more than three months old and may not be relevant to the current version of the game
This weekend is the anniversary of the Victory in Europe Day in WW2 and to celebrate we’ll give everybody a voucher for 200 gold for free!
Voucher-code:
VEDAY2016
This voucher gives your account 200 Gold and can be redeemed from now until Tuesday the 10th of May 2016 at 02:00 US EDT / 08:00 CEST.
Voucher redemption instructions
Go to http://game.heroesandgenerals.com/ or launch the Steam client. Log in Click the Menu button (looks like a cogwheel) in the top right corner Click on the “ Redeem Voucher ” button Paste or type in the voucher code “ VEDAY2016 ” and click “OK”
VE-Day, it’s all over!
The 8th of May 1945 is celebrated to mark the formal acceptance by the Allied forces of WWII of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces, thus declaring the end of WWII in Europe.
After Hitler’s suicide during the Battle of Berlin , his successor Reichspräsident Karl Dönitz authorized Germany’s surrender. The Act of Military Surrender was signed on the 7th May 1945 in Reims and on the 8th May in Berlin.
This day was celebrated around the world and people were dancing in the street. In London, New York and Chicago crowds were gathering in all public places. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, King George IV and Queen Elizabeth I were addressing the people from the balcony in Buckingham Palace, while Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were allowed to mingle with the crowd.
President Harry Harry Truman, who celebrated the best Birthday of his life on that day, dedicated the celebrations to his predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt. |
Emiri Katou and Kaori Fukuhara, the voice actresses best known for playing the Hiiragi twins in Lucky Star, will headline Ad Lib Anime Kenkyūsho (Ad Lib Anime Laboratory), an experimental anime series which will premiere on the satellite channel BS Fuji on October 15.
Katou (as "Chief Researcher No. 001"), Fukuhara ("Chief Researcher No. 002"), and a guest star "researcher" will ad lib each weekly episode's script entirely from scratch. Animators will then take the ad-libbed dialogue and create footage based on them — instead of the castmembers voice-acting to existing scripts and footage, as most anime are made. In the first episode, Takahiro Sakurai is the guest voice actor; the guest "researcher" will change in every episode.
In addition to starring in the anime, Katou and Fukuhara also sing the opening theme song. Aki Hata wrote the lyrics, and monaca produced the music.
Source: MoCa |
Romney: Stop Aiding Anti-LGBT Discrimination
by: Concerned Citizens
recipient: Mitt Romney
Only two weeks after Romney said that he opposed discrimination against LGBT Americans, his tax returns reveal a different story. The Republican presidential hopeful donated at least $35,000 to the Massachusetts Family Institute and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberties, as well as $4 million to the Mormon Church--all three organizations are notorious for their anti-LGBT discrimination.
The Massachusetts Family Institute is a vocal opponent of marriage equality, believes sexual orientation can be "cured," and has worked against gay-straight alliances and other programs designed to make schools safer for LGBT students.
The Becket Fund is also vehemently opposed to marriage equality and has compared pro-equality activists to Al-Qaeda terrorists.
Act now to tell Romney that if he really opposes discrimination against LGBT Americans, he'll put his money where his mouth is by donating at least as much money to organizations that work against LGBT discrimination.
read petition letter ▾ We the undersigned ask you to make good on your statement that you oppose discrimination against LGBT Americans by discontinuing your donations to organizations notorious for their anti-LGBT discrimination. Your tax returns reveal significant donations to the Massachusetts Family Institute, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberties, and the Mormon Church, all of which have endorsed discrimination against LGBT Americans. If you truly oppose such discrimination, we urge you to make reparations by donating at least as much money to organizations that work against LGBT discrimination. |
Pete Townshend arrives in his Richmond office clutching a portion of chips. As befits a former figurehead of the British mod movement, he looks dapper, that late lunch notwithstanding: suit, pocket handkerchief, suede loafers. He also looks knackered, having been on a promotional blitzkrieg for his new autobiography, Who I Am, which he has found somewhat gruelling. He's barely done any interviews in the last 20 years, after decades as the Who's de facto spokesman. "No one else really spoke but me," he explains. "I just talked for 28 years."
Who I Am is occasionally a rather harrowing read, particularly when it comes to his chaotic childhood. Townshend's parents had an unstable marriage, and he was farmed out to his maternal grandmother, who seems to have been mentally ill. Moreover, one of her lovers sexually abused him. Nor does it stint on Townshend's own failings: his alcoholism and cocaine addiction; his infidelities; the collapse of his first marriage. One radio interviewer suggested the Who's guitarist and chief songwriter had performed "a hatchet job on himself".
"When I first started writing it in the mid-90s," says Townshend, "the publishers said they wanted a book about sex and drugs and rock'n'roll, and I said I'm not going to write that book. I think I have now. I've written about as much sex and drugs and rock'n'roll as I'm entitled to, and a lot of people have said to me it's quite sad, really – it's almost like the bits of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll that you pulled off, you felt ashamed about." He chuckles.
Of course, there's more to the book than that. The day before we meet, I'm sent an email via Townshend's publicist that suggests he is weary of discussing the concluding chapters, which deal with his 2003 arrest on child pornography charges and his subsequent decision to accept a caution rather than fight the charges in court. "This is not a subject I can talk about without being triggered," he says. "I get angry. This is too important to chat about on a TV show for a few minutes. Please, if you are really interested to hear my side, read the book. That's where the facts are … Or if you can't afford my book, just take a position based on your heart. I have to accept that."
The book certainly covers Townshend's side of the story in meticulous detail: how the Who had set up a charity in the 70s called Double O, dealing with victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse; how he subsequently became obsessed with the idea that child abuse and pornography involved "a financial chain that ran unimpeded from the Russian mob to our high-street banks"; how he used his credit card on a site he was certain had been set up by the police as a sting (he didn't think it was a genuine child porn site); how he did this to prove that banks were happy to accept the business of websites offering child porn; how he immediately cancelled the payment; how the police who confiscated his computers found nothing on them; how, given half an hour to make a decision whether to accept a caution, he agreed because he didn't feel emotionally capable of going to court.
Today, he seems if not exactly happy, then at least willing to discuss it. The only time he stonewalls is when I mention the allegations against Jimmy Savile: "I don't want to comment on him because I know too much. I know him from the past, and I don't want to comment on him because he's dead." He says the Who's singer Roger Daltrey – who stuck by him throughout, as did his partner Rachel Fuller and his three children – told him not to write the book, worried it would bring it all up again. So why did he? "I had to nail it down – and say, 'Come on, please look at this more closely. Look at the train of events.' If what you're going to say is, 'You accepted a caution and went on the sex offenders list, therefore you must have done it' – I know what I did. I used a credit card. It's whether or not I used a credit card for the reason that most men who logged on to a fucking child-porn site would've used a credit card for. My reasons were very, very different."
In the aftermath, he became used to public opprobrium. "Everywhere I went to eat out, sometimes people would put down their plates and walk out of the restaurant. It was tough, and I do feel I'm on the other side of it now. I can get a bit self-righteous now: 'There you are, you owe me an apology.' But that's not appropriate." He recently received a letter from "the guy who ran the case, saying 'none of us ever believed that you were guilty of anything'. He's offered that I can use the letter, but I don't think I will. My sense is that you can read the book, you'll be able to make a decision. And if you don't read the book, you can do what normal assholes do, which is to look at my big nose and think, 'He looks like a paedo.'"
He seems gloomy while he says all this, but then Townshend always looked a bit like that, as evidenced by just about any photo of the Who in their mid-60s mod pomp, when Townshend had just singlehandedly invented the notion of art-rock, applying to pop what he'd learnt about Peter Blake and auto-destructive art pioneer Gustav Metzger at Ealing art college in London. The band were in the midst of a remarkable run of singles: the ferocity of their sound rubbed up against lyrics that shoved pop into areas so new that not even the man who wrote them seems entirely aware of what he was doing. "I remember two boys, on different occasions, came up to me and said about I'm a Boy, 'That song really helped me to get to grips with…' And I would say, 'What do you mean?' And they mentioned a word I'd never heard before: 'I'm a transgender individual.' And we're talking about 1966. I had no idea what they were talking about."
A couple of years before, they'd been playing covers in pubs. Now they were at the vanguard of what may have been rock's greatest period of innovation and excitement – and yet, in every photo, Townshend had the baleful expression of a cat that has fallen into a bath. As Who I Am makes clear, there may have been a good reason for this: he doesn't seem to have enjoyed the 60s very much.
There he was, hanging out with Jimi Hendrix and Mick Jagger, taking Eric Clapton to see Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd (alas on a night their errant frontman decided to play the same note over and over again for hours), and delivering a career-defining performance at Woodstock in 1969 despite being spiked with LSD. Yet Townshend appears to have spent the entire decade crippled by self-doubt, mired in business problems, increasingly bored with the Who's destructive stage act, and attempting to deal with living in close proximity to the band's drummer Keith Moon, who seems to have alternately amused Townshend and driven him up the wall. He concludes his retelling of the Who's infamous appearance on America's Smothers Brothers TV show (during which Moon "let off an over-sized theatrical charge of gunpowder" that permanently damaged the guitarist's hearing and set his hair on fire) with the plaintive observation: "Keith could be such a twat sometimes."
It's all the more surprising when you see the 1960s iconography dotted around his office: a gleaming Vespa; a Rickenbacker guitar (smashed); another Rickenbacker guitar (intact); an ancient keyboard; a painting of the late Small Faces guitarist and sometime Townshend collaborator Ronnie Lane; a mirror decorated with targets, union flags and photos of mods. His secretary serves me tea in a mug that looks like something you might pick up in a tourist shop, featuring a cartoon of a scooter and some 1960s buzzwords: Twiggy, Carnaby Street.
Although he admits it wasn't all gloom, Townshend insists he was unhappy a lot (he wonders if he might be a manic depressive). Part of the issue was sheer over-work. "I would be in my home studio with my guitar and my tape machine, possibly with a baby crying in the distance, possibly with my beautiful wife lying in bed wondering where I was, thinking, 'We've got an album to make in three weeks – and between now and then, I've got to write the songs and we've got eight gigs.'" Then there was the way the band members' personalities chafed against each other in what Townshend describes as "an unruly gang". Quite aside from Moon, there was Daltrey: "I wouldn't say Roger has ever been fun to be around. I don't mean that disparagingly – I just don't think he's a fun guy. He's very serious, very committed, very strong. I needed that."
Bassist John Entwistle, meanwhile, seems to have been both deeply odd and completely unknowable. At his funeral in 2002, Townshend was startled to discover the man he'd been in a band with for 40 years was a lifelong freemason. "Perhaps that's why we did so well," laughs Townshend. "He was a very strange fellow. I loved John, obviously, loved him for his eccentricities. He had an extraordinary way of eating. Wouldn't touch anything on his plate until it was all cut up. Then he would eat it not quickly, but methodically, precisely. I think he was a little bit Asperger's."
There was something else: the sense that Townshend didn't feel he belonged in the Who at all. "To be completely honest, I think if I hadn't been bullied into the band, I would have been happier as an art student. I would have been happier in a Brian Eno world. That was the stuff I was trained to do – to think differently, to think outside the box, about installations, the coming of computers, the way that computers would change the language, blah blah fucking blah. I've been talking about it all my life as a rock star and people have been going, 'For fuck's sake – shut up and play your guitar.'"
At the height of their 60s fame, he wrote a manifesto, now lost, suggesting the Who should split up. "What I wrote was: 'The Who must destroy themselves.' I tried to find it years later, because I wanted to fucking wave it at [Sex Pistols manager] Malcolm McLaren. I think it was my thesis. I thought, 'I'll go and do the band and then I'll come back to art school and be an artist.' I remember being in Sweden, in the back of this little car, smoking a bit of grass. We didn't even have our own instruments with us. I just thought, 'This is fucking ridiculous, but I'll be back at Ealing soon.'"
The problem was, he smiles, he was good at it. "I was quite brilliant on stage, and I found it incredibly easy. I could see Keith Moon found it incredibly easy as well. And I couldn't work out why I wasn't fulfilled by it. So there were periods when I was sarcastic. I look back and think, 'Didn't I realise what I had?' I had this fantastic band and I don't think I realised what I had in the guys until we made Quadrophenia in 1973. I thought, 'I'm going to write this thing and it's going to be really challenging and there's no fucking hope they're ever going to do it properly.' And they did – they did it brilliantly and quickly."
By then, they'd made 1969's Tommy and 1971's Who's Next, the albums widely considered their masterpieces; but Townshend was haunted by the deaths of friends such as Hendrix and Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, and concerned that artists had become remote from their fans. At one juncture, he took to wearing a boilersuit on stage in an expression of working-class solidarity: "We're people like you – we don't dress up like Christmas trees." He sighs. "But I was the only one in the band that did it. One day, I decided to wear a gold lamé boilersuit with a crown. I came off stage and said to Mick Jagger, 'How do I look?' He said, 'If you want to know the truth, Pete, you look like a bit of a cunt.'"
At another point, he seems to have invented the notion of open journalism 30 years before it was to become so prevalent: he wrote a column in the music press, which he hoped would lead to an exchange of ideas between himself and his fans that he could use to spur his songwriting. "But the editor wouldn't print their comments," he says. "We did get letters back from people. They were mainly, 'What the fuck are you talking about?'"
Townshend seems more comfortable with his role today as an elder statesman of rock. He and Daltrey are about to embark on a tour of north America, performing Quadrophenia in its entirety. They last made a new album in 2006; he isn't sure they'll ever make another. "I've felt too old to be doing it since I lost my hair and people started to say, 'Roger Daltrey looks in good shape, but that guy Townshend looks like a bank manager', or more recently 'a vicar', or more recently still 'a paedophile vicar'. And there has been a sense, too, that I can do what I do simply because I'm healthy and I've survived. I can jump about and ape the old stuff. But for me, the job was to write the songs, to do the creative work – and I still feel if there's a brand there … "
His voice tails off. "If it's possible to make a record that echoes what we've done in the past, even if it's 'Let's do something audacious and mad that won't work', then that's OK, too. I would never have wanted Philip Roth or John Updike or Gore Vidal to suddenly go, 'Oh, I'm too old now to write books about masturbation.'" He frowns, as if considering the idea. "Funnily enough, with Roth and Updike, they wrote more books about masturbation as they got older." |
1. That the whole band lives in the AirStream trailer and is in a polyamorous relationship together. (This was actually written in a Dutch paper. Phil and Beth co-habitate in an old house near the cabin they are building. The other band members live separately.)
2. That we moved to the woods to write our latest album. (Been writing albums in various cabins in the countryside or woods since 2004. Been living on our land and building a cabin in the NC woods since January 2007.)
3. That we are vegetarian. (Recently ate a roadkill squirrel we found up the street from our house.)
4. That our foray into more soundscapey, experimental sounds is a recent development. (Bowerbirds’ first album, with its stripped-down sound, was actually a reaction against the very expansive sonic palette of Phil and Mark’s previous experimental post-rock band, Ticonderoga. Bowerbirds started as a way to bring it all in and make a spare-sounding album, focused on the songwriting and lyrics, but after two records, we were just tired of limiting ourselves.)
5. We are cousins with Andrew Bird. (We are completely unrelated to him and are not cousins.) |
There's nothing quite like a solar eclipse to capture the imagination and inspire a nation. Citizens in United States are still extremely excited and everybody here is talking about it, many of them with very sore eyes.
Today's Highlights
Trump Tames the Stocks
Oil Gains Erased
Crypto Slide
Please note: All data, figures & graphs are valid as of August 22nd. All trading carries risk. Only risk capital you can afford to lose.
Market Overview
The markets have been delightedly uneventful so far this week. President Trump seems to have a much better handle on things and the stocks and are responding by not falling.
The ousting of Steve Bannon was a good start. Then yesterday, Trump gave a televised speech with an important update on the startegy regarding Afghanistan. The speech was well put together and the Presdent seemed more Presidential than he has in a while.
Demonstrating that he's got a firm grip on the drivers wheel is enough to keep things from crashing for now. However, the markets have already priced in a lot of good news that hasn't quite been delivered just yet. So, if there's no major push towards tax or healthcare reforms any time soon, the markets may find themselves under pressure yet again.
DJ30 Chart
Oil Coaster
has been on a bit of a wild ride lately. The market range is low enough to not put any real pressure on other markets but large enough for day traders to get plenty of action.
We should know the backstory by now. The world is still recovering from a massive oversupply. Even though there have been efforts to tame production in the East, Western energy companies have been pumping their hearts out.
The moves we've been seeing lately are more speculative than fundamental though. The major battleground has been between $43, which is seen as a bargain for those who feel the price will recover, and $50 which is seen as way too high given the fact that we're still in oversupply.
Last Friday we saw a surge (circled), which has been corrected yesterday. Now it seems the price has recovered about half of that.
Oil Chart
A trader with a good intuition for what direction an asset is moving can make some really great trades here.
Crypto Slide
When it rains it pours and there's a monsoon in the crypto space at the moment. Virtually all the gains from the past week have already been reversed. This is a gentle reminder that these markets are extremely risky.
and are both down more than 6% so far today and even is in the red. Of course, every dark stormy night has it's moments of lightening that make the night shine.
Two such bolts have managed to bring outstanding gains to savvy alternative investors. One such flash of light is Monero. Rumor has it that XMR will soon be trading on one of the largest exchanges in the world, the Korean based Bithumb exchange.
Be that as it may, the gains are nothing less than phenomenal. The price of has nearly doubled in the past 24 hours and volumes have skyrocketed.
Monero Weekly
.. pushing it's market capitalization above $1 Billion for the first time ever.
The other sudden yet fleeting bright light is . The gains in XRP are nothing new but quite welcome given the performance of the rest of the industry. It's a real shame that the move has been mostly reversed in the past few hours. You can only really escape your destiny for so long.
Here we can see the price of ripple over the last few days on top of a graph of bitcoin (blue line).
XRP Chart
That said, the crypto markets have shown us before that some of the biggest opportunities have revealed themselves during times that all hope seemed lost. So certainly there'll be many people out there seeing these lower prices as a discount.
@MatiGreenspan
eToro, Senior Market Analyst
Disclosure: This content is for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or an investment recommendation. Past performance is not an indication of future results. All trading carries risk. Only risk capital you're prepared to lose. |
Fears of a China slowdown ripped through global markets and sent U.S. stocks to their lowest level of the year on Thursday.
All the major indexes were in the red. The Dow fell 358 points to close below 17,000, for the first time since last October. The index fell 2.06% -- the the worst loss since February 2014.
The S&P 500 fell 2%, turning negative for the year. The Nasdaq dropped 2.8%.
It's a major warning sign given that global stock markets, such as the U.K.'s benchmark index, have already entered a correction -- a 10% drop from its peak in just four months.
The Dow was down over 7% from its recent high in May.
A few factors fueled the sell off Thursday.
1. Global slowdown fears
China's economic slowdown and currency devaluation have investors worried that things could get worse as the year goes on.
Developing countries like Brazil and Russia are struggling to revive their economies as their currencies depreciate dramatically against the dollar.
Brazil's currency value has declined over 20% and Russia's over 40%, hurting imports and everyday citizens.
It's a also a huge worry for America's biggest companies. About 44% of the revenues from S&P 500 companies come from outside the United States, according to Scott Wren, senior global equity strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
"We've had some downgrades in global growth recently," says Wren.
Related: Media stocks in fresh decline led by Disney
2. Uncertainty around the Fed's timing.
America's central bank hasn't been particularly clear on its plans to raise its key interest rate. Many investors and economists had bet on a Federal Reserve rate hike in September.
But in the Fed's minutes published Wednesday, the Fed's committee members sent the market mixed messages.
On one hand, some committee members say the economy is almost ready for a rate hike. On the other, committee members cited increased concerns about the global economic outlook.
"It's difficult to interpret what they're going to do," says Craig Hodges, chief investment officer at Hodges Capital in Dallas. "A lot of people are really looking forward to getting this Fed [rate hike] behind us."
Some on Wall Street dub the Fed the "World's Central Bank," and the Fed is acutely aware that its actions reverberate across global markets.
Wren and others now think the Fed might delay its long-anticipated rate hike until its December meeting.
3. Oil and commodities continue to slide.
Oil fell to a new, six-and-a-half year low Thursday morning before bouncing back up a little in the afternoon.
Not only is there an excess of oil globally, but China's slowdown is driving a collapse in commodity prices. It has hurt many countries whose economies are based on oil, metals and agriculture.
The commodity bust is bad news for the economic outlook for several countries and the American companies that do business there.
"There's things out there to worry about," says Hodges.
4. Media stocks exacerbate sell off
Media stocks were hit hard, which exacerbated the broader market selloff. Netflix (NFLX), Discovery (DISCK), Disney (DIS) and Viacom (VIA) were some of the worst performing stocks on Thursday. Time Warner (TWX), CNN's parent company, was also down.
It's been a rough August for media stocks. Their quarterly results weren't that great and the stocks got pummeled. |
HDSLR cameras shoot 16:9, which is fine, but sometimes you want a more cinematic look. The two perhaps most common ratios are 1.85:1 (Academy Flat) and 2.35:1 (Cinemascope). Read more about cinema aspect ratios here.
I edit in Premiere CS5, and there are two ways I can export my videos with wider aspect ratio. I can export with letterboxing (black stripes masking the upper and lower parts of the image), or I can crop the the video when I export with Media Encoder.
Let me show you how.
First, you need to see exactly what parts you’re cropping out. You do this by applying a mask with the appropriate aspect ratio to a video layer above your footage. You can do this in Premiere’s Title tool or in Photoshop. My video is full HD, that is 1920×1080 pixels – so I made a Photoshop document with those dimensions. Then I draw two black rectangles and place them at the upper and lower edges of the image. If I want to go Cinemascope I crop 132 pixels – so I make the rectangles 1920×132 pixels. (Note: this isn’t excactly 2.35, but close enough, and actually avoids some exporting problems.)
Then I export this image as a PNG-file with transparent background, so only the black rectangles, the letterbox, is visible. You can download and use mine, if you like. Just click the image on the right to get the full size, and right-click to save.
Now you’re ready to import the mask into Premiere, and place it on top of all the other video layers.
Here’s an example of mine, with the original footage seen in the source monitor (left) and the cropped image in the program monitor (right). Notice the matte being on the topmost layer in the timeline, and of course stretched to cover the entire length of the footage.
Once you’ve done this you have some headroom to move your footage vertically. Make sure you don’t cut any heads or lose any valuable information.
Once you’ve positioned all your footage correctly and applied any effects and transitions, you’re ready to export. Go to File>Export>Media to open the Media Encoder.
In your source monitor you have your cropping options above the image. Specify 132 px for top and bottom. Then choose your export settings, for example QuickTime H.264, and under Video>Basic Settings make sure you specify a width of 1920 and a height of 816. Make sure your frame rate and Field Type (Progressive) is correct, and your Aspect should be square pixels. To save some work next time, save your settings as a preset. Here are my settings:
Now you can go ahead and export, and end up with a nice widescreen video without letterboxing. Videos of this type are great to upload to Vimeo, but YouTube always adds letterboxing anyway, I think.
Here’s Philip Bloom explaining how to do all this in Final Cut Pro: |
"You'd know you were talking to someone who had never met the real Terry Pratchett when they started telling you what a sweet man he was," Gaiman said. "He was a thousand glorious things. He was so much more interesting than 'a sweet man'."
Paying tribute to his late friend's drive and anger, Gaiman added: "He once said to me that anger, for him, was an engine. It was something that drove him."
"[He had] this amazing, seething anger. You could see that there were people who had pissed him off when he was 11, that he hadn't yet forgiven. And not only had he not forgiven them – he'd stored it up. He knew exactly why he hated them, exactly why they were wrong ... and he'd put it in a Discworld book."
• The 10 best tributes to Terry Pratchett
• Terry Pratchett: 50 best quotes
Speaking about the years Pratchett spent working for Alzheimer's charities, and raising awareness of the disease, Gaiman said: "What was lovely with Terry was that he would take that rage and he would do something with it ... He thought that people were good. He thought people were worth saving, worth investigating, worth understanding. He thought that people should not be lied to and tricked. He thought that people were worth it, and I think that was the driving force behind Terry's rage, and his books, and the work he did for Alzheimer's."
Pratchett and Gaiman first became friends in 1985, and co-wrote the 1990 book Good Omens, which takes a tongue in-cheek look at the the coming of the Antichrist, and tells the story of an angel and a demon who team up to prevent the impending apocalypse, after realising that they don't actually want the world to end.
Speaking about the process of writing the book, Gaiman recalled: "He [Pratchett] would do this thing that was really gloriously irritating, and educational at the same time. He would phone me up and say 'If you change this, it'll be 17 per cent funnier'. And then he'd change it, and it would be."
• Online exclusive: a new short story by Neil Gaiman
• Neil Gaiman: 'The book I wish I'd never written' |
Boy, it's a good thing that Google and Facebook have enlisted "fact checkers" like the Associated Press, Snopes, and Politifact to vet questionable stories appearing in their news feeds. After all, those sites are experts at identifying so-called "fake news" ...
Oh, wait a minute. Politifact's PunditFact affiliate just wasted its time fact-checking and evaluating a story published by a widely known, self-acknowledged satire site.
Totally lacking both a satire detector and a sense of humor, Punditfact's Amy Sherman gave a made-up story about Bowe Bergdahl leaving a courtroom and disappearing a "Pants on Fire" evaluation.
The site which posted the entry is Duffel Blog, which has been publishing satirical stories online for more than 5-1/2 years. A simple web search on Duffel Blog returns the following at the very top of the results page:
As might be expected, the site itself hams it up, calling itself "The American Military's Most Trusted News Source" at the top left corner of its home page.
Sherman's primary complaint at Punditfact Thursday afternoon was that the site doesn't make its satirical nature sufficiently obvious. Give, me, a, break (H/T Twitchy):
... The Duffel Blog says that Bergdahl now has walked out of a military courtroom during a pre-trial hearing, prompting a statewide manhunt. "Sources inside the courtroom say that Bergdahl took only a half-full Camelbak and a long hunting knife with him as he calmly made his way to the exit during his own lawyer’s remarks to the judge regarding a possible plea deal," states the article. He left behind a note, the blog says: "Life is way too short to care for the damnation of others. I am ashamed to even be an American (deserter)." Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat fake news. This story is fake.
The story is satire. It is not "fake news."
Yes, it's meant to fool readers at first, but anyone who reads through the entire item will know that it's intended to be satire, and not "fake news," which by its very nature is designed to genuinely deceive or mislead readers.
Reading between the lines of the following paragraphs, the guess here is that Amy Sherman was originally tricked into believing that the story submitted by Duffel Blog was presented as serious news:
The Duffel Blog calls itself "the American military’s Most Trusted news source" but readers will have to find the disclaimer to learn this is fake news. "We are in no way, shape, or form, a real news outlet," states the disclaimer. "Everything on this website is satirical and the content of this site is a parody of a news organization. No composition should be regarded as truthful, and no reference of an individual, company, or military unit seeks to inflict malice or emotional harm. All characters, groups, and military units appearing in these works are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual military units and companies is purely coincidental." We contacted a person affiliated with the website and he told us, "Our ‘about’ page is pretty straightforward."
No kidding.
Translation of Duffel Blog's response: "We shouldn't have to hit you over the head with a flippin' 2x4 for you to be able to recognize satire."
Additionally, "How can you not recognize that these and other articles are also obviously satirical?":
86% of active-duty Marines watching porn right now, study finds
New Madden NFL 19 game allows players to realistically kneel during the National Anthem
Bowe Bergdahl to open Escape Room franchise outside Fort Bragg
<<< Please support MRC's NewsBusters team with a tax-deductible contribution today. >>>
More seriously, it would appear that, in the name of purity, Facebook intends to remove obviously satirical news items from its news feed. Or perhaps the folks at Politifact and its affiliates are too dense to tell Team Zuckerberg, "Guys, this is satire. It's cool. Let it go." It would appear that we're not allowed to have any fun without being accused of spreading "fake-news" if we share Duffel Blog's entries on Facebook.
Perhaps the good news here is that if Politifact and other fact checkers are wasting time evaluating obviously satirical posts as "fake news," they're spending less time dishonestly evaluating genuine news.
We have rated this "fact-check" by Politifact as Fully Fake. For similar analyses, please visit our Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers site.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com. |
A cam is ausually done with a digital video camera. A mini tripod is sometimes used, but a lot of the time this wont be possible, so the camera make shake. Also seating placement isn’t always idle, and it might be filmed from an angle. If cropped properly, this is hard to tell unless there’s text on the screen, but a lot of times these are left with triangular borders on the top and bottom of the screen. Sound is taken from theof the camera, and especially in comedies, laughter can often be heard during the film. Due to these factors picture and sound quality are usually quite poor, but sometimes, and the theater will be fairly empty and a fairly clear signal will be heard.A telesync is the same spec as a CAM except it uses(most likely an audio jack in the chair for hard of hearing people). A direct audio source does not ensure a good quality audio source, as a lot of background noise can interfere. A lot of the times a telesync is filmed in an empty cinema or from the projection booth with a professional camera, giving a better picture quality. Quality ranges drastically, check the sample before downloading the full release.A telecine machine copies the film digitally from the. Sound and picture should be very good, but due to the equipment involved and cost telecines are fairly uncommon. Generally the film will be in correct aspect ratio, althoughtelecines have existed. A great example is thedone a few years ago. TC should not be confused with TimeCode , which is a visible counter on screen throughout the film., sent to rental stores, and various other places for promotional use. A screener is supplied on a VHS tape, and is usually in a 4:3 (full screen) a/r, although letterboxed screeners are sometimes found. The main draw back is a “ticker“ (a message that scrolls past at the bottom of the screen, with the copyright and anti-copy telephone number). Also, if the tape contains any serial numbers, or any other markings that could lead to the source of the tape, these will have to be blocked, usually with a black mark over the section. This is sometimes only for a few seconds, but unfortunately on some copies this will last for the entire film, and some can be quite big. Depending on the equipment used, screener quality can range from excellent if done from a MASTER copy, to very poor if done on an old VHS recorder thru poor capture equipment on a copied tape. Most screeners are transferred to VCD, but a few attempts athave occurred, some looking better than others.Same premise as a screener, but transferred off a DVD. Usually letterbox , but without the extras that a DVD retail would contain. The ticker is not usually in the black bars, and will disrupt the viewing. If the ripper has any skill, a DVDscr should be very good. Usually transferred toA copy of the final released DVD. If possible this is released PRE retail again, should bequality. DVDrips are released in SVCD and DivX/XviD. Often after one group of pirates releases a high-quality DVD-Rip, the “race” to release that film will stop. The release is an AVI file and uses thecodec (earlier DivX) for video, and mp3 or AC3 for audio. Because of their high quality, DVD-Rips generally replace any earlier copies that may already have been circulating.used to be indicated asTransferred off a retail VHS, mainly skating/sports videos and XXX releases.HDTV or PDTV or DTH (Direct To Home) rips often come from. HDTV sources are re-encoded to multiple resolutions such as),), and) at various file sizes for pirated releases. They can be progressive scan captured or not (480i digital transmission). With an HDTV source, the quality can sometimes even surpass DVD. Movies in this format are starting to grow in popularity.TV episode that is either from(capped using digital cable/satellite boxes are preferable) orsending the program around to networks a few days earlier (do not contain “dogs” but sometimes have flickers etc) Some programs such as WWF Raw Is War contain extra parts, and the “dark matches” and camera/commentary tests are included on the rips.is capped from a digital TV PCI card, generally giving the best results, and groups tend to release in SVCD for these. VCD/SVCD/DivX/XviD rips are all supported by the TV scene.is a copy of the film that has. It can be missing scenes, music, and quality can range from excellent to very poor. Some(Men In Black is missing all the aliens, and has actors in their places) and others can contain extra scenes (Jay and Silent Bob) . WPs can be nice additions to the collection once a good quality final has been obtained.is a film that has been taken from itssource, and re-encoded into a small DivX file. Most commonly found on file sharers, these are usually labeled something like) etc. Common groups are SMR and TND. Thesedownloading, unless you’re that unsure about a film u only want a 200mb copy of it. Generally avoid.The R5 is a retail DVD from. Region 5 consists of(except, and),andcountries. R5 releases differ from normal releases in that they are a direct Telecine transfer of the film without any of the image processing.This is a movie or TV show downloaded via an(web download), such as. The quality is quite good since they are not re-encoded. The video () and audio () streams are usually extracted from the iTunes file and then remuxed into a MKV container without sacrificingwith these releases is that they mostly haveon screen, just like BD/DVDRips.This is a file ripped from a, such asor. The quality is comparable to, butto save on streaming bandwidth. The file will be extracted from theand losslessly remuxed from a MP4 or FLV container to MKV.A lot of films come from Asian Silvers/PDVD (see below) and these are tagged by the people responsible. Usually with a letter/initials or a little logo, generally in one of the corners. Most famous are the “Z” “A” and “Globe” watermarks.These are films put out by eastern bootleggers, and these are usually bought by some groups to put out as their own. Silvers are very cheap and easily available in a lot of countries, and its easy to put out a release, which is why there are so many in the scene at the moment, mainly from smaller groups who don’t last more than a few releases. PDVDs are the same thing pressed onto a DVD. They have removable subtitles, and the quality is usually better than the silvers. These are ripped like a normal DVD, but usually released as VCD.Blue-Ray BRRIP’s and BDRIP’s have been around for quite some time. These two are remarkable in the sense that they’re compatible with standalone home DVD players (with DivX/XviD support), XBOX 360, PS3, and other external peripherals.These BRRip XviD and BDRip XviD files allow anyone to burn HD-quality Blu-Ray ripped movies on regular DVD media, and playback on most conventional DVD players – without the headaches of re-encoding or DVD authoring. There’s just one catch – you’ll likely need an HDTV to take full advantage of the superior video quality.An XviD encode from a Blu-Ray release (i.e. afile). A BD/BRRip in DVD-Rip size often looks better than a same-size DVD rip because encoders have better source material.An XviD encodefrom a source. A common misconception among downloaders is that BDRip and BRRip are the same thing. They differ in that a BDRip comes directly from the Blu-ray source, while a BRRip is encoded from a pre-release, usually from a 1080p BDRip from another group. BDRips are available in DVD-Rip sized releases (commonly 700 MB and 1.4 GB) encoded in Xvid or x264, as well as larger DVD5 or DVD9 (often 4.5 GB or larger, depending on length and quality) sized releases encoded in x264.While bothandare superior to DVDRips, they are normally released in 720p resolution, since standalone DivX (*.avi) players do not support anything higher than this anyways. They should not be confused with genuine Blu-Ray rips in 1080p, which are usually done in native Blu-Ray files, or as H.264 *.mkv files.Source :gave a good pictorial example to understand these definition easily: |
Unmanned aerial vehicles may soon become a common fixture in American skies.
As part of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, signed into law by President Barack Obama in February, the Federal Aviation Administration is required to write new rules for expanding the use of U.S. airspace by domestic drones. Up until this point, drones were primarily operated by the military and homeland security forces. Hobbyists who were interested in building unmanned planes were carefully regulated. By next week, the administration will have to propose new practices to stimulate licensing for some government drones.
John Villasenor, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of Electrical Engineering at UCLA, said the reduced regulations will help open the door for hobbyists to participate in drone technology advancement.
"The hobbyist community with respect to drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, is extremely important. There is a significant, innovative, very active hobbyist community," Villasenor said. "This is a fundamental change to aviation."
Supporters of the measures think new fleets of drones will soon be able to assist in crime prevention, surveillance and other non-military purposes. Drones are already used to patrol the U.S.-Mexican border. But critics of the new measures fear drone imaging technology will erode personal privacy.
Villasenor is optimistic drones will be applied to valuable non-military activities in the future.
"There are many police departments in this country that are simply too small to have the budget to afford their own manned helicopter. Those departments will soon be able to buy and use much less expensive UAVs. You can imagine those things can acquire genuinely life saving imagery if they're put up in the air above a hostage situation, and for search and rescue," Villasenor said. "These things will save lives."
Villasenor checked his optimism with concerns about the implications increased drone use could have on privacy.
"The current legal framework for what you can and cannot observe from the air is, in my view, not sufficiently protective, once we have a world where UAVs are plentiful and cheap," Villasenor said.
The relevant Supreme Court precedent regarding airspace surveillance was the 1986 case California v. Ciraolo. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of state police who used a small airplane to locate marijuana plants being grown in a backyard. The Court concluded that the state did not violate the Fourth Amendment because the police were in a "public navigable airspace in a physically non-intrusive manner."
A collective of civil liberties groups including the ACLU have petitioned the Federal Aviation Administration to consider the prospective privacy breaches created by drones. The authors of the petition named cameras, heat sensors and automated license plate readers among other technologies drones could use to collect information from the sky.
Charles Easterling, founder of Crescent Unmanned Systems LLC, which manufacturers UAVs for public and commercial use, unsurprisingly doesn't think drones pose a significant privacy threat.
"It's important to understand where the technology is right now. There are a lot of limitations to this technology as it exists. We're right at the precipice, at the beginning of this technology," Easterling said. "I like to say we're in the Wright brothers stage."
Easterling thinks developing drone technology will serve U.S. interests at home and abroad.
"I would like to think that one day we'll be one of the world's leaders in UAV technology," Easterling said. "There's a lot of interest domestically and internationally. We're hoping that we can create technology that will help the world." |
Giant Ethereum Resource List
These links have helped me set-up Ethereum, create DApps, and understand the platform.
Proof-of-Stake and DEVCon resources are on the nested under this page in the menu on the left.
Please send me any additions or corrections.
Ethereum Frontier Guide GitBook
Gav's TurboEthereum Guide GitBook
Solidity Documentation
Ethereum Builders Guide (unsure when it was last updated)
Ethereum Repos
ΞTHΞЯSPHΞЯΞ Repos
Ethereum Blog
Ethereum Forum
Ethereum Reddit
Ethereum Gitter Channels for Questions and Help
Ethereum StackExchange
DApps
State of DApps List
LottoPollo
Etherquake - Quake III on Ethereum (lol)
Ethereum Blockchain Explorers
Ether.Camp
EtherScan
EtherChain
Ethereum Network Stats Page
Ethereum IDEs and Development/TestingFrameworks
Mix DApp IDE
Truffle Development Framework
Embark Development Framework
Populus Development Framework
Dapple Development Framework
BlockApps Strato
DEVCon1 Panel Video: Ethereum Dapp Development Frameworks Session (Truffle, Embark, Dapple, Populus, BlockApps)
Solidity In-Browser Realtime Compiler/IDE
Ether.Fund Calculator (note, uses crowdsale pricing so USD is not accurate)
Ethereum 1.0 Gas Prices Google Doc
EtherScripter (out-of-date)
Resilience Raw Transaction Broadcaster
DApp Developer Posts/Sites
X Things I Wish I Knew Before Building My First Ethereum Dapp
Datatypes in event parameters (forum post)
Solidity Feature Updates Thread
Tasha at π Tech Lab's Ethereum Page
Ade Duke's Page on Creating a Private Ethereum Blockchain
Ethereum Alarm Clock Blog
Coding DApps Resources/Examples
Fivedogit's Ethereum 101 Google Doc
Hooked Web3 Provider Github
EthereumJS Accounts Github
Keythereum Javascript Key Generator GitHub
ethereumjs-tx Github
eth-devchain GitHub - Quick & Dirty Private Chain
Proof-of-Authority Ethereum Blockchain in C++ Client
Using Ethereum as an Event Store Gist
Grove - Pipermerriams' fast, efficient, queryable storage for Ethereum contracts
Ethereum Alarm Clock by Pipermerriam
Ethereum Date/Time Tools by Pipermerriam
ethereum-blockhashes Github - Contract to record hashes of recent and historic blocks
Notareth Notary App GitHub
Coinlock GitHub
Fivedogit Solidity Baby Steps GitHub
Using Dapple Guide
Decentralized cron service in Ethereum
Roboth.web3 Job Market GitHub
Resilience Raw Transaction Broadcaster GitHub
Related Posts and White Papers
"Programmable Blockchains in Context: Ethereum's Future" - Vinay Gupta
Just Enough Bitcoin for Ethereum
Smart Contracts as new laws? Better handle with care
Demystifying Incentives in the Consensus Computer White Paper
Ethereum Lightning Network and Beyond
Integration of ipfs and Ethereum
The Chain Blog - Explaining Ethereum
Contracts as Code: Q&A with Ethereum on the Future of Contracting
Other
Most of the diagrams Vitalik Buterin has ever created
Towards a New Frontier of the Smart Contracts: Hawk and Enigma |
“Left-wing Scotland” is a myth that is fed by the myth of a left-wing SNP | Getty You think Scotland’s left-wing? Think again! The SNP is anti-establishment and entirely pragmatic, not a bunch of “reds.”
LONDON — Labour lost votes by the thousands to UKIP in the north, to the Tories in the south and to the Scottish National Party in Scotland. This hemorrhaging of support in three different directions makes it particularly difficult to diagnose what exactly afflicts the party. The big question is: which of these disparate groups of voters should Labour expend the most effort to win back?
Those on the right of the party want to focus on winning over middle England in the manner of their three-time election winning hero Tony Blair. Blair’s success was built on attracting the people Ed Miliband evidently failed to: the English lower middle classes who worry about the National Health Service but also aspire to a nice car and a house in the suburbs. Or ‘Middle England’, as they’re sometimes called.
This approach is heresy for left-wing Labour activists, who want Labour to ‘go back to its working class roots’ (you will hear this a lot). Their preferred explanation for Thursday’s heavy defeat was that ‘Red Ed’ simply wasn’t red enough. They focus on Scotland, where Labour was wiped out (just one Scottish Labour MP remains) because the party in England was too tepid and right-wing. Labour was Tony Blair rather than Tony Benn, and in trying assiduously to court the middle classes in England it drove working class Scots into the hands of the SNP. The surest route back to power will, therefore, come via a shift to the left.
While the left wish to focus on voters in Scotland and the right on England, what everybody is agreed on is that Scotland is left-wing. Scots are apparently greener, more pro-immigration and fundamentally reject a ‘neo-liberal Westminster elite’ who want to impose ‘failed austerity’ (Nicola Sturgeon’s words) on unfortunate Scotland. Scotland wants socialism with a sprinkling of civic nationalism.
Yet there is little evidence that the Scots are ready to play their allotted role in the class struggle. At least not according to the available evidence, which shows that Scotland isn’t all that left-wing.
Despite Nicola Sturgeon’s anti-austerity bombast, on tax and spending there is little difference in attitudes in England and Scotland when it comes to cuts.According to the very recent British Social Attitudes Survey, a third (36.4 percent) of voters in England and Wales want tax and spending to rise, compared with 43.8 per cent of Scots — a 7 percent difference, but not a yawning chasm.
Even UKIP policies to cut overseas aid, reduce immigration and barrel down on benefits claimants are backed by a majority of Scots, according to a massive survey commissioned last year by Dundee University. Half of respondents to the same survey wanted to see inheritance tax abolished and believed local families should get first dibs on social housing.
Were Scotland to be the nest of progressive politics it is made out to be, you would expect Labour to have done better there when it has tacked to the left. The party’s lowest share of the vote, however, came in 1983 (35.1 per cent), when its manifesto was written by none other than the late Tony Benn, left-wing bete-noire of the Daily Mail. Conversely, the party’s most impressive results in recent years came in 1997 (45.6 per cent) and 2001 (43.3 per cent), under the leadership of revisionist sell-out Tony Blair.
“Left-wing Scotland” is a myth that is fed by the myth of a left-wing SNP. The SNP’s progressive platform is for many Labour activists the inspiration for throwing off the shackles of Blairism south of the border. The scrapping of up-front tuition fees for (largely middle class) university students and the abolition of NHS prescription charges have all helped to reinforce the message that, given the chance, the SNP would build a Scandinavian-style social democracy stretching from Hadrian’s Wall to John o’ Groats.
The facts suggest otherwise: For all the rhetoric, the substance of SNP policy betrays a level of pragmatism that would warm the heart of any Blairite. Scotland under the SNP has slashed away at corporation tax and mooted a Tory-style welfare cap. The SNP have also done little to reduce inequality, and the leadership’s economic sympathies lie firmly with Ireland and the ultra-low tax regime lionised by British Chancellor George Osborne as a “shining example of the art of the possible in economic policy-making”.
Thus the growing appeal of the SNP probably has less to do with the supposed ‘Tory-lite’ policies of Scottish Labour and more to do with widespread detestation of the British political establishment, which invariably includes the Labour Party. The SNP are the UKIP of the Scottish centre-left: they’re shiny, still relatively untainted by power, and represent the perfect vehicle for flipping the bird at the posh boys down in Westminster.
What’s clear is that the SNP have not created New Socialist Man, and the Labour Party should be extremely wary about tacking left purely on the basis of the supposed tartan socialism of its northern comrades.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. |
We're all familiar with the 3 basic categories of authentication.
Knowledge factors (passwords, PINs) Possession factors (a software/hardware token - Yubikey/Google Authenticator/SecureID) Inherence factors (fingerprint, heartbeat, iris/retina scanning)
While the vast majority of sites use knowledge factors, a growing number are turning to multi-factor solutions in an effort to bolster security; to the detriment of the user experience.
Cue continuous authentication / behavioral biometrics... the process of identifying a user based on the subtle nuances in their voice, typing patterns, facial features and location.
How does it work?
As opposed to traditional authentication which is only interested in what you type, behavioral biometric systems collect & profile how you type too. By actively monitoring how you type, the system is able to build a profile on you.
In order to achieve this, the system monitors how long each key is depressed (dwell time), how long between each key press (gap time), how long to type a known string and hundreds of other metrics.
Source: behaviosec.com
With enough supporting data, it's entirely possible to identify you based purely on how you type.
Think about that for a moment.
How accurate is it?
Back in 2011, professor Christophe Rosenberger at ENSICAEN announced it was possible to determine the user's gender after just a few keystrokes.
Over the last 4 years, many companies have researched & invested heavily in leveraging this technology.
Meet BehavioSec, a swedish company which shot to fame after recent publications on BBC News, the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Wired, Forbes to name a few.
After a brief training period, their technology is able to identify a user with astonishing accuracy.
Here's the demo login page.
Looks remarkably similar to every other login page, doesn't it?
After entering your username & password, you're asked to simulate a bank transfer. After just 44 characters, look at the result.
A session score of 99% with a confidence rating of 80%! Remember, we've typed 44 characters so far.
Balancing security with privacy
In terms of security, this is a huge leap forwards... but does it tip the security/privacy scale too far?
You can forget Tor, a VPN and your favorite proxy site... if you have javascript enabled and you've been profiled, there's a very good chance they'll identify you.
The problem is... do you know when you're being profiled?
It's been rumored that UK banks are actively trialing this technology in an effort to detect & minimize the risk of fraud. How many other sites use it? Would they tell you if they were?
Shared secrets
Although we all love to hate passwords, they're shared secrets which can be changed with just a few clicks.
If your biometric behavioral profile is shared/stolen, the consequences are far-reaching and considerably more difficult to mitigate. You can't change the way you type and even if you did, they'll simply profile you again until the confidence level reaches acceptable limits.
How do I protect my privacy?
On Wednesday, 22nd July 2015, Per Thorsheim (Founder of PasswordsCon, CISA, CISM, CISSP ISSAP) Skype'd me with an interesting challenge.
Defeat the underlying technology and protect the user's privacy.
Challenge accepted.
Over the next few days, I researched the underlying technology and explored ways to nullify such profiling. You can read Per's analysis of this technology here.
Although many implementations claim to use hundreds of metrics, it became clear that only a few were weighted heavily enough to really matter.
Dwell time - How long each key is depressed. Gap time - How long between each key press.
If we can skew these statistics enough, it'd be almost impossible to profile and/or identify a user.
Meet KeyboardPrivacy, a proof-of-concept Google Chrome extension which interferes with the periodicity of everything you enter into a website.
Once installed, you can continue to use the web exactly as you do now. When you enter anything on your keyboard, KeyboardPrivacy will artificially alter the rate at which your entry reaches the document object model (DOM).
As you can see, we have a 50 millisecond dwell & gap time (the default configuration) here. It's enabled everywhere by default, but you can disable it on a per-site basis if you wish.
Let's see what happens when we try to login now.
That's better!
Our session score has plummeted to just 0.07%! Crucially, they're 78% confident in the assumption that the person in front of the keyboard is not me, despite having my username & password.
What about MousePrivacy?
Most (if not all) behavioral profiling systems check your mouse movements too. However in my experience, mouse movements do not provide sufficient metadata to accurately identify a user.
As such, the plugin makes no attempt to mask/obfuscate your mouse movements.
Doesn't that reduce security?
Absolutely, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
As I mentioned earlier, it's more important to strike a good balance between security & privacy; it's rarely possible to increase one without measurably degrading the other (password managers being an exception). If you're happy to leak this information to every site, or if you're forced to do so by a financial institution, you can disable the plugin on a per-site basis.
Even if your behavioral profile is leaked to a 3rd-party, it's of no use unless you happen to disable it on their site too.
The single biggest problem with passwords is not length or strength, but re-use. Your behavioral biometrics (knowingly or not) are essentially secrets which you unwittingly share with every site.
Granularity is key
Although the technology is often described as "continuous authentication", it rarely is. With 400+ unique metrics for every field, the amount of metadata would be astronomical.
However, that's not to say it's not possible.
If you're a large corporation or a certain 3-letter government agency, behavioral biometric data is priceless. If the site happens to profile every single word (ignoring the fact they'll be swamped with data), imagine this scenario...
The user types and the site profiles the word "behavioral". OK, no big deal... but look deeper.
What happens when the user types "behave" or "oral"? We already have partial data for those terms, even though they haven't type the word exactly. Although the system works on loose tolerances, it's granular and smart enough to make an educated guess.
Delivering the proof of concept...
Since laying down the gauntlet, I've been in daily contact with Per Thorsheim to test each version of KeyboardPrivacy.
The current version appears to be working quite nicely; even protecting a profile created through Tor.
Defeating the technology, not the implementation
As you've seen, Per and I have conducted our tests against BehavioSec... but defeating individual implementations is not the goal here.
Let's try KeyTrac; a similar product intended to add biometric profiling to current knowledge-based authentication.
First, we'll try with the plugin disabled (note the red dot on the plugin icon)
82% is a reasonable score to allow a session to continue. Let's enable the plugin and try again...
Ah, the sweet smell of success.
Summary
This was an interesting challenge and ultimately, it wasn't as difficult as I expected. If you strip away the fundamentals required to make a chrome extension, the code is just 13 lines long and has proven to be quite robust so far.
The Chrome extension is now available here. Sit tight for a Firefox version too. |
The mid-week grosses are strong with this one. Star Wars: The Force Awakens has zoomed past the $400M mark internationally after adding an estimated $38.4M on Wednesday. That’s a slight 7% drop from the $41.3M that was loaded into the Millennium Falcon’s cargo hold on Tuesday and blasts the overseas cume to $402.4M. The global box office is now $765.9M — ahead of a weekend that certainly has $1B in its sights.
The UK has kept the turnstiles all a-twirl with $76.5M to date and is the leader amongst offshore plays. Marking yet another entry in the record books, SWTFA crossed £50M ($74.3M) with light speed in less than one week. That’s faster than any film in history. It has already bested the British pound box office lifetimes of Avengers Age Of Ultron, Frozen, The Dark Knight, Fifty Shades Of Grey, four of the eight Harry Potter films and each of the Hunger Games and Twilight franchise entries. For the year, it’s got only Jurassic World and Spectre ahead of it on the 2015 chart.
Star Wars added Greece and India today and of course still has China coming up on January 9. Today being Christmas Eve, a number of offshore markets will see somewhat muted activity which will no doubt pick right back up again throughout the weekend.
New releases in the markets this weekend include The Peanuts Movie which expands to about 40 more; Point Break which breaks into a handful of new plays including Russia; Daddy’s Home in the UK; and Ip Man 3 in Hong Kong. The martial arts action/drama stars Donnie Yen who will be seen next December in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. |
Most Americans aren't going to miss Congress while it's on summer break.
A majority 51 percent of Americans disapprove of their own congressional representative, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday. That's the first time in the quarter-century history of the poll that the disapproval rating has risen above 50 percent, outstripping even the 47 percent who disapproved during last year's government shutdown.
Terrible ratings for Congress, which has an average approval rating of under 12 percent, are nothing new (a recent survey asking Americans how they'd fix Congress prompted such helpful suggestions as "lock them in a room together until they get along" and "well placed dynamite").
In the past, though, Americans have tended to feel more warmly toward their own district's representative than toward the legislative branch as a whole. Lately, however, that number too has taken a dive in national polling.
That still doesn't mean that most incumbents' jobs are at risk. In the June before Republicans took back the House in 2010, 40 percent of Americans told Gallup their representative didn't deserve to be re-elected, yet 85 percent of members seeking re-election held onto their seats anyhow. |
Image caption The 3D printer that will be used to print miniature organs for the 'body on a chip' system
Miniature human organs developed with a modified 3D printer are being used to test new vaccines in a lab in the US.
The "body on a chip" project replicates human cells to print structures which mimic the functions of the heart, liver, lung and blood vessels.
The organs are then placed on a microchip and connected with a blood substitute, allowing scientists to closely monitor specific treatments.
The US Department of Defense has backed the new technology with $24m (£15m).
Bioprinting, a form of 3D printing which, in effect, creates human tissue, is not new. Nor is the idea of culturing 3D human tissue on a microchip.
It works better than testing on animals Dr Anthony Atala, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
But the tests being carried out at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina are the first to combine several organs on the same device, which then model the human response to chemical toxins or biologic agents.
Printing organs
The modified 3D printers, developed at Wake Forest, print human cells in hydrogel-based scaffolds.
The lab-engineered organs are then placed on a 2in (5cm) chip and linked together with a circulating blood substitute, similar to the type used in trauma surgery.
The blood substitute keeps the cells alive and can be used to introduce chemical or biologic agents, as well as potential therapies, into the system.
Sensors which measure real-time temperature, oxygen levels, pH and other factors feed back information on how the organs react and - crucially - how they interact with each other.
Dr Anthony Atala, institute director at Wake Forest and lead investigator on the project, said the technology would be used both to "predict the effects of chemical and biologic agents and to test the effectiveness of potential treatments".
Image caption Miniature tissue samples can be exposed to toxins as well as potential treatments
"You are actually testing human tissue," he explained.
"It works better than testing on animals."
Anti-terrorism
A group of experts from around the US is involved in putting together the technology, which will carry out toxicity testing and identification.
The funding for the project was awarded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a division of the US government which combats nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
The tests being carried out at Wake Forest "would significantly decrease the time and cost needed to develop medical countermeasures" for bioterrorism attacks, said Dr Clint Florence, acting branch chief of vaccines within the Translational Medical Division at DTRA.
Wake Forest said it was able to test for antidotes to sarin gas, recently used against civilians in Syria.
Printed house
Dr Atala, whose field is regenerative medicine, said the bioprinting technology was first used at Wake Forest for building tissues and organs for replacement in patients.
His team had managed to replicate flat organs, such as skin, tubular organs such as blood vessels, and even hollow non-tubular organs like the bladder and the stomach, which have more complex structures and functions.
But building solid organs like the heart and the liver is the hardest challenge yet.
Image caption A combination microscope and incubator is used to image tissue over time
It takes about 30 minutes just to print a miniature kidney or heart, which is the size of a small biscuit.
"There are so many cells per centimetre that making a big organ is quite complex," Dr Atala told the BBC.
But the bioprinting of full size solid organs might not be far away.
"We are working on creating solid organ implants," said Dr Atala. |
By Kathy Patalsky Published 10/16/2014
Creamy and warmly spiced, this cauliflower soup has a spicy sweet flavor that soothes and comforts. Ingredients 12 ounces vegetable broth
10 cups cauliflower (one medium head)
1 clove garlic
2 tsp curry powder (or to taste)
2 Tbsp coconut milk
1 cup white beans, cooked (boxed beans used) - drain and rinse well
2 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
2-3 Tbsp maple syrup, grade B (or use agave)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 - 3/4 tsp salt
optional: a few saffron strands
to serve: a few pinches of smoked paprika, a few pinches of pumpkin seeds Instructions Chop your cauliflower into large florets and remove and green leaves or thick stem. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and submerge cauliflower. Cook until tender but not mushy, about 6-8 minutes. Drain cauliflower and place half of it in a high speed blender. Also add to the blender, the cooked beans (drain and rinse first), coconut milk, ginger, curry, vinegar, veggie broth, maple syrup, garlic and cinnamon. Blend until very smooth. If you can fit all the soup in your one blender, simply add the remaining cauliflower (that you set aside) and blend it in too. But if your blender is getting a bit too full, pour out half the blended mixture, into a soup pot, and then add the remaining cauliflower and blend. Once all the ingredients are blended together, pour all the soup into a soup pot and warm over medium heat. At this point you can salt to taste and add additional spices as desired. You can also stir in the optional saffron strands. Simmer the soup one low-medium until ready to serve, at least ten minutes to fully warm it through and allow the flavors to mingle and heat. Serve with a few pinches of smoked paprika on top, a sprinkle of pumpkin seeds and optional additional sweetener if you like an additional bold sweet accent to all those spicy savory flavors. Yield: 4 servings Prep Time: 00 hrs. 15 mins. Cook time: 00 hrs. 10 mins. Total time: 25 mins. Tags: soup , curry , cauliflower , fall , comfort food
This Curried Coconut Cauliflower Soup is a delicious and easy-to-make soup that is warming and soothing for fall. Pour a large bowl, serve it with some crusty bread or maybe homemade vegan jalapeño cheddar biscuits or cornbread, and sink into bliss. Creamy blended cauliflower provides the rich base and a slight hint of coconut milk makes things extra creamy.Warming spices like curry powder, cinnamon and smoked paprika accent. You can even add in some optional saffron if you'd like. This soup also has some white beans blended in to add protein, iron and fiber.collapse into soup-bliss and feel like this.. |
Hey, I've got a neat idea...why don't we take a break from futilely attempting to understand the existing tax law and devote some time to futilely attempting to understand proposed tax law that will, in all likelihood, never become a reality? Sound good?
Great.
Last week, Republican Senators Marco Rubio (Fla) and Mike Lee (Utah) released a fairly detailed plan to overhaul the existing Code. The creatively-coined "Rubio-Lee" plan has garnered a lot of attention, and considering Republicans currently control both the House and Senate, it should certainly be taken seriously. Let's take a look at the plan's most interesting talking points:
Individual Tax Rates on Ordinary Income
Current Law
Under current law, there are a whopping seven rates on ordinary income -- 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33% 35% and 39.6%. It is a cruelly inefficient structure, and quite honestly, a laughable one when considering the fact that for single taxpayers, the 35% bracket is all of $1,800 wide.
Rubio-Lee
The Rubio-Lee plan would follow in the footsteps of earlier plans posited by Bowles-Simpson and Mitt Romney by consolidated the seven brackets into only two: all income below $75,000 (if single, $150,000 if married filing jointly) would be taxed at 15%, while every dollar in excess of those thresholds would be taxed at 35%.
Commentary
A revised 15%/35% structure would likely leave everyone unhappy: Those who are currently taxed at the top rate of 39.6% (taxable income in excess of $413,200 if single, 464,850 if married jointly) will not be thrilled at their rate dropping a mere 4.6%, particularly when previous plans by Bowles-Simpson and Romney had proposed a top rate ranging from 25-28%.
On the other end of the spectrum, you'll have a large range of taxpayers whose marginal rate will increase as a result of the proposed change. Under current law, the 35% tax bracket doesn't kick in until income exceeds $411,500; under the Rubio-Lee proposal, it would take effect at only $75,000 for single taxpayers and $150,000 for married filing jointly. This means that middle-class taxpayers currently paying tax at a top rate of 25%, 28% or 33% will see their marginal rate rise. Of course, other changes to the proposal may well mitigate this rate increase; but people are rarely interested in the details of tax reform. In all likelihood, the headline-maker of this Republican plan will be the decrease in the top rate for the richest 1% and the increase to the middle class, and that may make the plan a tough sell.
Individual Tax Rates on Interest, Capital Gains, and Dividend Income
Current Law
Under current law, interest income is taxed at ordinary income tax rates as laid out above. Long-term capital gains and qualified dividends, however, are subject to preferential rates, though one shouldn't confuse "preferential" with "simpler."
There are five possible rates on LTCGs and dividends -- 0%, 15%, 18.8%, 20%, and 23.8%. Determining the appropriate rate requires navigating a complex set of rules and thresholds.
Rubio-Lee
The Rubio-Lee plan would take the bold step of exempting all interest, dividends, and capital gains from income tax, regardless of level of income.
Commentary
The "regardless of level of income" portion of this tax reform is largely a meaningless gesture, because of all the interest, capital gains, and dividend income earned by American taxpayers, 85% of that income is earned by the richest 2% (those with taxable income in excess of $400,000). This means that under the Rubio-Lee plan, the rich undoubtedly get richer.
Whether that's a good or bad thing, however, likely depends on your political leanings and your viewpoint on economics.
President Obama and leading Democrats have spent the past six years declaring that the wealthy need to pay their "fair share." The President has taken steps in that direction by increasing the top rate on ordinary income from 35% to 39.6% and on long-term capital gains and dividends from 15% to 23.8%. But the President is clearly not satisfied with those changes; in his FY 2016 budget, he proposed a further increase in the top rate on capital gains and dividends to 28%, while also seeking to institute a minimum tax of 30% on all taxpayers with income in excess of $1,000,000 (the so-called "Buffett Rule,") which would ensure that wealthy taxpayers can't benefit too much from preferential rates by generating millions of dollars of income but paying tax at an effective rate in the teens.
And oh, do they benefit. Over the next four years, the top rate of 23.8% on capital gains and dividends is expected to save taxpayers $540 billion dollars, and as mentioned, 85% of that benefit will inure to the wealthiest 2%. The savings generated by adopting a 0% rate stand to be astronomical, and beg the question: how do Rubio and Lee intend to pay for this plan?
The answer, at least at this point, is that they don't, at least in the traditional manner that tax proposals are scored. Rubio and Lee don't pretend that any increased tax revenue created by their plan would offset the decreases, which is why, according to a preliminary look by the Tax Policy Center, the proposed changes would add trillions to the deficit over the next decade. So how can the plan work?
It can only work if you put faith in the concept of "dynamic scoring," which aside from being one of my preferred alternate titles for a tax-themed porno (first choice: "Hot Assets"), is also many Republicans desired method for measuring the cost of tax reform. In short, dynamic scoring requires that you evaluate a plan not just in terms of static increases and decreases to tax revenue resulting from proposed changes, but by also considering the impact the changes will have on the behavior of taxpayers.
Think of it this way...President Obama has long publicized his belief that the rich getting richer is a bad thing for America. But what if it's not? What if by cutting taxes on the wealthy you spur them to expand their businesses, hire more employees, and raise salaries, providing a boost to the economy and the working class?
Of course, eliminating the tax on capital gains and dividends also has a tremendous impact on the current state of corporate taxation. Let's take a look...
Corporate and Flow-Through Taxation
Current Law
C corporations are famously subject to "double taxation." Income earned by a C corporation is first taxed at the corporate level, and then a second time when either 1) distributed to the shareholders as a dividend, or 2) the shareholders sell the stock of the corporation, resulting in capital gain. The entity-level tax tops out at 35%, a rate that is currently the highest in the industrialized world. Tack on the top rate of 23.8% on dividends and capital gains, and an individual who operates a business as a C corporation will pay over 50% in taxes before the income gets from the C corporation to the shareholder's pocket.
S corporations and partnerships, however, are subject to only a single level of taxation. This is because they are "flow-through entities," meaning that unlike C corporations, income earned by an S corporation or partnership is generally not taxed at the entity level. Instead, the income "flows through" to the individual owners, who pay the tax on their share of the entity's income on their individual tax return. As discussed above, the top rate on ordinary income is currently 39.6%; as a result, the income of S corporations and partnerships is sometimes taxed at a higher rate than a C corporation (before considering the second level of tax upon distribution/sale of stock).
Rubio-Lee
The Rubio-Lee plan would reduce the corporate rate to a flat 25%, a move that has been embraced by both parties in hopes of making the U.S. more competitive in the global marketplace. Perhaps more importantly, however, because the plan would eliminate any tax on capital gains and dividends, the "double taxation" that has been the hallmark of the C corporation structure since 1986 would be no more; instead, corporate income would be taxed only once, when earned.
Rubio and Lee would then marry the taxation of S corporation and partnership income to that of C corporations, at least in part. These business types would continue to pay no tax at the entity level; however, to avoid situations where shareholders or partners are paying tax on their share of the income at the proposed top individual rate of 35% (putting them at a disadvantage to their C corporation counterparts, who would pay only 25%), Rubio and Lee would tax the flow-through income on the shareholder or partner's return at a top rate of 25%.
Commentary
The Rubio-Lee plan would largely homogenize the treatment of C corporations, S corporations, and partnerships, and that's a good thing. One of the many faults of our current system is that similarly situated businesses are often taxed in a drastically different manner depending on their choice of entity. In a perfect tax world, business owners would choose their desired entity structure based on their business goals rather than tax goals. The proposals set forth by Rubio and Lee would be a giant step in that direction.
Other Business Tax Changes: Inventory, Depreciation, and Interest Expense
Current Law
Under current law, businesses are not permitted to take a current deduction for purchases that will benefit the business in some future period. For example, the cost of inventory -- whether purchased for resale or produced -- must be capitalized and cannot be deducted until sold. In addition, if a business purchases assets -- i.e., machinery, equipment, furniture and fixtures or buildings --to be used in its business, the cost of the assets must be capitalized and depreciated over the period of time the business stands to benefit from the use of the asset.
Interest expense on business debt is fully deductible, subject to fairly narrow limitations.
Rubio-Lee
The Rubio-Lee plan would take a flamethrower to Section 263(a) of the Code. It would permit an immediate deduction for the full cost of inventory, whether purchased or produced, as well as any business assets.
It would also shift the current debt preference to equity by disallowing any deduction for business interest.
Commentary:
Goodbye, Section 471. It's been real, Section 263A. See you in hell, repair regulations.
If these changes were to come to fruition, thousands of pages of the current statute would instantly become obsolete. Aside from the aforementioned provisions governing the general rules, there would no longer be any need for the various exceptions to capitalization found in Sections 179, 179D and 168(k), among others.
More importantly, business owners would be encouraged to expand their operations, secure in the knowledge that they would receive an immediate return on their investment in the form of a full tax deduction. Even better, there would be no more need for a good portion of the "extender provisions" that fill each year-end with uncertainty. This all sounds great, right?
Right. But, good God the cost. After eliminating the tax on dividends and capital gains and dropping the top rates on C corporation, S corporation and partnership income, Rubio and Lee want to provide an immediate deduction for every item of inventory and asset purchased? Sure, the disallowance of business interest will provide a partial offset, as will their stated, yet vague, intention to eliminate "industry-specific preferences and deductions," but to what extent can these small increases possibly offset the huge loss in tax revenue? And, of course, we'll have to see what the powerful banks have to say about removing the tax incentive of borrowing.
International Tax Reform
Current Law
Currently, the income of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations is taxed under what is commonly referred to as a “deferral” system. This means that the income earned by the foreign subsidiary is generally not subject to U.S. tax until it is repatriated to the U.S. in the form of a dividend.
When the income does come back to the U.S., however, it is subject to a corporate tax rate of 35%, which is currently the highest of any developed nation.
As you might guess, this deferral system provides tremendous incentive for U.S. companies to move foreign operations offshore – where they often pay a tax rate well below 35% -- and then leave it there, beyond the reach of the 35% U.S. tax rate. This deprives the U.S. government of much-needed cash and U.S. taxpayers of much-needed jobs. At present, it is anticipated that as much as $2 trillion of profits are currently housed offshore in foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations, with Microsoft reported to have nearly $93 billion stashed overseas.
To illustrate, let’s take a simple fact pattern:
X Co. is a U.S. corporation. X Co. owns 100% of Foreign Co., a foreign corporation that generates no revenue from U.S. sources. Foreign Co. has, however, generated $100 million in taxable income in Ireland, where it has paid tax at a 12.5% tax rate.
Under the current system, there is generally no U.S. tax imposed upon the earnings of Foreign Co. until the earnings are repatriated to the U.S through a distribution to X Co. At that point, X Co. will pay U.S. tax on the dividend received from Foreign Co. at a rate as high as 35% -- or $35 million in tax -- subject to any treaty between X Co. and Ireland.
Upon receiving the dividend, X Co. is permitted to utilize a foreign tax credit to reduce the U.S. tax applied to the dividend, preventing the same income from being taxed twice: once when earned by Foreign Co. and a second time when distributed to X Co. Because Foreign Co. paid tax at 12.5% in Ireland – or $12.5 million – when the $100 million is repatriated to the U.S., X Co. will only pay corporate level tax of $22.5 million ($35 million of U.S. tax less a credit for the $12.5 million of corporate tax paid in Ireland).
Rubio-Lee
The Rubio-Lee proposal would move to a full territorial systems; leaving income earned by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporation to be taxed only by the jurisdiction in which it is earned, with no second U.S. tax imposed when the foreign income is repatriated to the U.S. Of course, we can't let the $2 trillion of income currently housed overseas to escape taxation entirely, so Rubio-and Lee propose a one-time tax of 6% on the $2 trillion of foreign earnings, to be paid over a 10-year period.
Commentary
There is no tax issue on which Democrats and Republicans hold more diametrically opposed positions that the proper international taxation regime. The Rubio-Lee plan represents a move to a "territorial system;" the one favored by most of America's trading partners. Democrats, however, embrace a "worldwide system," where U.S. corporations would be required to pay an immediate minimum tax on income earned anywhere in the world, whether by a U.S. corporation or its foreign subsidiary. Such a system has been dismissed as outdated, and accused of putting U.S. corporations at a competitive disadvantage in the international marketplace. Rubio-Lee clearly share that sentiment, and their proposal to move to a territorial system is sure to excite many multinational U.S. businesses.
Estate Tax Provisions
Current Law
At the end of 2012, the estate tax exemption – set at $5.12 million in 2012 – was slated to revert to $1,000,000 in 2013 in the absence of Congressional action, while the estate tax rate would jump from 35% to 55%. While President Obama went into the negotiations hoping to split the difference with an exemption of $3.5 million and a 45% tax rate, he ultimately conceded a $5.25 million exemption amount and 40% tax rate for 2013 and beyond. He made those amounts permanent, with the exemption indexed for inflation. As a result, the exemption is $5.43 million in 2015.
Rubio-Lee
The Rubio-Lee plan would abolish the estate tax entirely.
Commentary
Considering President Obama recently proposed eliminating the tax-free basis step-up currently enjoyed at death, thereby subjecting a decedent's appreciated property to two levels of tax -- the idea of completely doing away with the estate tax must sound extremely enticing to the nation's wealthy. Of course, the issue once again will be, how do you pay for it?
Other Individual Changes
Current Law
Approximately 30% of individual taxpayers "itemize" their deductions because the total of those deductions -- things like mortgage interest, state and local income taxes, charitable contributions, and real estate taxes -- exceeds the "standard deduction" available to every taxpayer of $6,300 (if single, $12,600 if married filing jointly).
In addition, among the many needless complexities in the tax law is the requirement for individual taxpayers to compute their tax liability under a separate, parallel system to determine their "alternative minimum tax (AMT)." If the AMT exceeds the taxpayer's regular tax liability, the taxpayer must pay the AMT.
Lastly, there are currently several incentives in the law for raising children, including the child tax credit and the dependent care credit. The current child tax credit tops out at $1,000, and is subject to phase out at moderate income levels.
Rubio-Lee
Under the Rubio-Lee plan, the "either-or" of the current itemized deduction - standard deduction decision would disappear. Taxpayers would receive a credit -- rather than a deduction -- of $2,000 (if single, $4,000 if married filing jointly). In addition to the credit, taxpayers would be entitled to a modified mortgage interest deduction and a charitable contribution deduction. All other itemized deductions will be eliminated.
The plan also enhances the child tax credit to a maximum of $2,500 per child with no phase out.
Commentary:
A $4,000 tax credit equates to $26,666 of deductions for someone in the 15% tax bracket. This should compensate those taxpayers who earn less than $75,000 (if single, $150,000 if married filing jointly) for the loss of the standard deduction, itemized deductions, and personal exemptions, as well as the loss of the 10% tax bracket that currently applies to the first dollars of income. Those taxpayers in the 35% bracket may feel a bit shortchanged by being required to take a credit in lieu of what may have been substantial itemized deductions, but any complaints should be largely muted by the continued ability to benefit from the mortgage interest deduction -- albeit in modified and presumably limited for -- and charitable contribution deductions.
And of course, replacing itemized deductions with a credit (plus mortgage interest and charitable contributions) will provide sorely-needed simplicity.
The enhanced child tax credit may prove to be a challenging point for Rubio and Lee to defend to their party-mates, as conservative Republicans have already derided the change as a needless handout.
Summary
By greatly reducing the tax on business income and eliminating the tax on savings (capital gains, dividends, and interest), the Rubio-Lee plan appears to be a subtle move towards a consumption tax, which is favored by many economists. The real question with the plan, I would think, is whether scored statically or dynamically, what will be the impact on tax revenue? And will the revenue generated be enough to balance the budget over the next decade, lest the U.S. become the largest province in the Chinese empire?
As stated in the introduction, when Senators with the pedigree of Rubio and Lee put forth a plan, it warrants serious consideration, particularly when the authors' party controls both the House and Senate. If you are asking for my opinion -- and if you are, I strongly encourage you to reconsider your tax resource hierarchy -- I would suggest that in a time when the divide between the nation's richest 1% and the rest of the population -- whether real or imagined -- has never been wider, a plan that lowers rates on the rich, eliminates the tax on capital gains and dividends, which overwhelmingly benefit the rich, and raises tax rates on the middle-class, may prove tough to sell to a distrusting public.
Follow along on twitter @nittigrittytax |
WASHINGTON, DC, February 3, 2015 (ENS) – Anthony Foxx, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Monday issued a report titled “Beyond Traffic: Trends and Choices 2045” that he hopes will open a national conversation leading to better transportation and stronger infrastructure across the United States.
In his “Letter to the Reader” that opens the 275 page report, Foxx writes, “‘Beyond Traffic’ is intended to open a national dialogue about what our country really needs and why we need it. It is a draft survey of major forces impacting transportation and a discussion of potential solutions that can be adopted to address those forces. We hope it prompts a long overdue national conversation. We also hope it generates a lot of thoughtful feedback to inform the final version.”
The federal government cannot solve all transportation problems alone, Foxx explains, state and local governments and the private sector must be involved. He intends to release a final report incorporating a wide-ranging discussion and the resulting solutions later this year.
It is no accident that Foxx released “Beyond Traffic” on the same day that President Barack Obama released his Fiscal Year 2016 budget year, allotting $94.7 billion for the Department of Transportation.
Foxx said Monday, “The President’s Budget provides a total of $94.7 billion in 2016 for the Department of Transportation to make the critical investments we need in infrastructure to promote long-term economic growth, enhance safety and efficiency, and support jobs for the 21st century.”
Director of the National Economic Council Jeff Zients told reporters in a news conference Monday, “We have an over-$1-trillion deficit in infrastructure. All of us feel it every day. Workers trying to get to work stuck in traffic. Businesses trying to get products overseas in an efficient manner to export and support good-paying jobs. Infrastructure is critical to all of this, and we’re not where we need to be.”
Zients, who also serves as assistant to the President for economic policy, told reporters, “The President goes very big on infrastructure in the budget to repair roads, bridges, freight, and our rail systems. It’s a long-term plan, so it’s six years – up from four years last year. We’ve been solving infrastructure in few-month patches. That is no way to plan infrastructure projects. So this is a six-year proposal.”
“It’s $480 billion, which allows us to fund at about 40 percent above the current level of spend. And there are many high-return investments for that $480 billion,” said Zients. “Importantly, it’s fully paid for through business tax reform – specifically the one-time money that’s overseas, bringing that money back and raising taxes on that money to pay for the plan.”
The Obama Administration believes that because infrastructure is traditionally a bipartisan issue, the Republican-controlled Congress will get behind this portion of the budget.
“Beyond Traffic” provides momentum and facts on which Congressional approval for infrastructure spending can be based.
The report took a year to write. U.S. DOT assembled a team of internal and external experts to examine the nation’s transportation system. The team shared its findings and solicited feedback in six public webinar sessions that drew 1,300 participants, including engineers, researchers, transportation planners, pilots, truck drivers, transit operators, safety advocates and disability rights advocates.
The United States faces many transportation problems, Foxx explains.
Public revenues to support transportation are not keeping up with the rising costs of maintenance and capacity expansion. Sixty-five percent of U.S. roads are rated in less than good condition; a quarter of the nation’s bridges need significant repair; 45 percent of Americans lack access to transit.
The federal gas tax is no longer enough to address U.S. transportation needs. “Overall financing uncertainty, shortfalls in the Highway Trust Fund, and the absence of reliable federal funding for rail, marine highways, and ports have created a need for new financing mechanisms,” the report states.
The report projects a future in which the gas tax will fall farther and farther behind needs. “As gasoline-powered vehicles become even more fuel-efficient, electric and alternative-fuel vehicles become more popular, and the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure continues to rise, the purchasing power of the gas tax will keep declining. We may need to revisit the fundamental assumptions that underpin how our surface transportation infrastructure is funded. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that we will face a $167 billion budget shortfall over the next decade if we choose to maintain current spending levels without addressing revenues. This is unsustainable.”
“Beyond Traffic” takes into account the effects of climate change over the next 30 years, including “global mean sea level rise, temperature increases, and more frequent and intense storm events, all of which will impact highways, bridges, public transportation, coastal ports and waterways.”
The U.S. transportation picture will be very different in 30 years, the report warns.
In 2045, the U.S. population will have grown by 70 million, and “emerging megaregions” could absorb 75 percent of the population. Population growth will be greatest in the South and West, and rural populations are expected to continue declining.
“It is possible that Americans, particularly millennials, will continue reducing trips by car in favor of more trips by transit and intercity passenger rail,” the report states. “In 2045 there will be nearly twice as many older Americans, so more people will need quality transit connections to medical and other services.”
By 2045, freight volume is projected to increase 45 percent. Online shopping is driving up demand for small package home delivery, which could soon substitute for many household shopping trips.
“Strong domestic energy production may enable the U.S. to become a natural gas net exporter by 2020, but pipeline capacity may hamper growth and lead to greater movement of oil by rail,” the report projects.
Not only is U.S. infrastructure showing its age, the country has outgrown it, the report states.
“If you drive a car, you now spend, on average, the equivalent of five vacation days every year sitting in traffic. If you drive a truck, highway congestion has made you an expert at navigating bumpy side roads – and you are not alone. Every year, trucks are losing $27 billion on wasted time and fuel,” the report states.
If the U.S. fails to change, the report warns, “in 2045, the transportation system that powered our rise as a nation will instead slow us down. Transit systems will be so backed up that riders will wonder not just when they will get to work, but if they will get there at all.”
“Beyond Traffic” is not an action plan and is not intended to be, Secretary Foxx explains. “It is a survey of where we are and where current trends may take us if left unaddressed.”
“This is not a picture of our inevitable future. It is the objective truth – and one we hope inspires Americans to, in a way, launch a comeback,” Foxx says.
The Transportation Department invites everyone to read the report and share their feedback at www.dot.gov/beyondtraffic
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2015. All rights reserved. |
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Soon guests will be able to become honorary members of the Lion Guard in a brand new Animal Kingdom experience called The Lion Guard Adventure.
This interactive experience, beginning February 7th, will allow young guests to explore the park in search of five main characters from “The Lion Guard” – Kion, Bunga, Fuli, Beshte, and Ono, who are represented as colorful statues that are perfect for photo-ops. The self-guided experience begins at select merchandise locations and culminates at Rafiki’s Planet Watch. Like the movie, the experience encourages interest in protecting animals and caring for nature. Once they complete the adventure, each child can take a special pledge to become an honorary member of “The Lion Guard” and receive a special button.
The experience will be offered in Disney’s Animal Kingdom through late March, as one of many activities celebrating the debut of “The Lion Guard” series on Disney Channel and Disney Junior. |
As predicted by many people at the time, the invasion of Iraq was a humanitarian, legal, political and strategic disaster. It left a trail of death and destruction and millions of refugees. It undermined the role of international law and strengthened terrorism. Australia's role in the war raised serious questions of government honesty and accountability. If we do not learn lessons from this episode, we are at risk of engaging in equally ill-founded wars in the future.
And now, 10 years later, we need to ask ourselves how the Australian government was able to ignore the public expression of outrage about its intentions. The key lesson we must learn is to ensure that Australian governments can never again commit our forces on the decision of a leader in the face of opposition from millions of Australian citizens, without even our Parliament being consulted. Democracy shouldn't work like that.
The 10th anniversary of the largest outpouring of anti-war protest this country has ever seen is a fitting occasion for an inquiry into the Iraq war.
The former secretary of the Department of Defence, Paul Barratt, along with former PM Malcolm Fraser, former chief of the Australian Defence Force General Peter Gration and many other distinguished Australians have recently formed a Campaign for an Iraq War Inquiry to facilitate a national conversation about the big questions of how and why the Howard government committed Australian military personnel to invade Iraq in 2003. Their efforts are supported by Senior Australian of the Year, Professor Ian Maddocks.
Britain and the Netherlands have both conducted such inquiries, revealing much that was hidden in those countries' Iraq war decision-making. Of course, the government and opposition will resist, counting on the resignation many felt for the past decade to shield them from public pressure. But the demand for an inquiry into what happened 10 years ago can sow the seeds for a democratic capacity to ensure it never happens again. |
HOMS, SYRIA—As Syrian military aircraft rained chlorine gas on his community Tuesday, local man Amir Najjar, 36, reportedly assured himself that military and humanitarian aid from foreign governments must certainly be racing toward the country at this very moment to protect him and other helpless civilians. “The United States and many other nations publicly stated that the use of chemical weapons was a line that President [Bashar] al-Assad could not cross and would draw a swift and overwhelming response, so I have 100 percent confidence they are on their way to save us right now,” the man reportedly thought to himself as the deadly and internationally banned toxin began to destroy his lung tissue and compromise his respiratory abilities. “Even if I do not survive, at least I can die knowing that someone is currently stepping in to prevent any more grotesque and inhumane loss of innocent life. After all, the international community fully recognizes that anything less than decisive action would be completely immoral and unconscionable.” The collapsing man then reportedly took solace as he witnessed an entire brigade of armed UN peacekeepers flood into his city with vital relief supplies in a hallucination caused by the systematic shutdown of his brain functions.
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All eight crossbenchers voted with Labor and the Greens to establish two Senate inquiries. Both will scrutinise the actions of the Attorney-General. The new program will move decisions on $104 million worth of arts funding to Senator Brandis' ministry. Credit:Andrew Meares The legal and constitutional affairs references committee will now review the handling of the letter sent by Martin Place siege gunman Man Haron Monis to the Attorney-General and, separately, Senator Brandis' decision to divert $105 million from the Australia Council to a new program that has been branded by Labor as his own "arts slush fund", the National Program for Excellence in the Arts. The vote to establish both inquiries, held on Tuesday, was the first time all eight crossbenchers have voted with Labor and the Greens to refer the government to an inquiry chaired by the opposition. Senator Brandis is currently acting as leader of the government in the Senate in the absence of Eric Abetz who is on leave for family reasons.
Crossbenchers who spoke to Fairfax Media said they are always minded to back the creation of reviews or inquiries but Senator Brandis' personal style may have been a factor in the overwhelming nature of Tuesday's votes against the government. NSW senator David Leyonhjelm said Senator Abetz had struck a personal rapport with certain members of the crossbench, which had at times benefited the government in close votes. "Every so often we would give Eric the benefit of the doubt because he's a good bloke but George hasn't bothered with us," he said. "George hasn't won any hearts it has to be said. He's not the most warm and cuddly bloke in the Senate." Senator Leyonhjelm has begun caucusing with South Australian senator Bob Day and Western Australian Dio Wang and said the group was minded to back virtually all reviews, although he described the Palmer United inquiry into the Queensland government as "a crock" and did not vote for its creation.
Senator Day, who has a track record of voting with the Coalition, said for him it was not personal with Senator Brandis. "We all tend to support the production of inquiries and documents and things," he said. Labor was quick to connect the unified vote to Senator Brandis personally. "The two referrals are an astonishing indictment on the acting leader of the government in the Senate, Attorney-General George Brandis," said Sam Dastyari, who has worked closely with the crossbenchers on a number of issues, including the Future of Financial Advice matter. "Despite addressing two very different issues, the unanimous vote clearly shows the disdain crossbench senators have for the arrogance and conceit of Senator Brandis. It takes a lot to unite our friends on the crossbench around an issue, and Senator Brandis has done it for all the wrong reason.
"The Abbot government should be very, very worried about its prospects of passing any budget legislation through the Senate, when their Senate leader is held is such low regard." A spokesman for Senator Brandis said crossbenchers' votes was a matter for them. The Monis inquiry will review the handling of a letter sent by Monis in which he inquired about the legality of contacting the leader of Islamic State. The letter was received by the Attorney-General two months before Monis took hostages inside the Lindt café. Specifically, the inquiry will look at why the letter was not handed over to the joint Commonwealth and NSW investigation into the handling of the siege and the way the matter was investigated by the Attorney-General's Department. |
“We’ve broken the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan, and begun the transition to an Afghan lead,” President Obama said during his weekly address on Sept. 1. “Next month,” the president continued, “the last of the troops I ordered as part of the surge against the Taliban will come home, and by 2014, the transition to Afghan lead will be complete.”
This is not the first time the president has talked about Afghanistan in this manner. And Obama administration officials have repeatedly made the same argument: the Taliban’s “momentum” was broken by a surge of forces into Afghanistan beginning in 2010. Consequently, the president and his advisers contend, it is safe to bring American forces home in large numbers.
It is undeniable that the Afghan surge made significant progress in the southern part of the country. Prior to the surge, the Taliban and its allies made startling gains, showing an ability to control territory in Helmand and Kandahar that they had previously lost. The surge reversed those gains. But the insurgency is not confined to those southern provinces. The insurgency operates throughout the country, and is especially strong in the east. While one can reasonably argue that the surge was successful in the south, a similar counterinsurgency plan was not carried out in full elsewhere.
As a result, the Taliban’s “momentum” has not been truly broken.
To gauge the overall impact of the surge and the war effort in general, The Long War Journal consulted several sources: monthly data compiled by NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), annual reports produced by the United Nations, annual data compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), and data on the number of Coalition fatalities each year.
These data measure, in various ways, the ability of the Taliban-led insurgency to carry out violence throughout all of Afghanistan. These sources are not all consistent with one another in the specifics, as they each have their own criteria for measuring violence. Importantly, these sources do not measure the insurgents’ ability to hold territory, which is difficult to quantify but is nonetheless important. For instance, the Taliban was much stronger overall prior to late 2001, when the group controlled Afghanistan and did not have to function as an insurgency. Therefore, the various statistics used to measure the insurgency’s efficacy offer only a part of the overall picture.
Other items that are not measured in this analysis, as reliable data are not available, are the cohesiveness of the Taliban’s command structure and its ability to regenerate leaders and fighters. Despite years of repeated night raids and other operations against the Taliban’s senior, mid, and lower-level leadership cadre, the group does seem to possess a remarkable capacity to regenerate its command structure in Afghanistan and continue to mount attacks. In addition, the top leadership cadre of the Quetta Shura and the leaders of the four regional military commands, most of whom are based in Pakistan, remain virtually untouched in these raids. And while there have been reports of tensions between the Afghan-based Taliban leaders and the Pakistan-based leadership cadre over losses, the Taliban has been able to replace the leaders who have been killed or captured.
Additionally, the fate of thousands of Taliban fighters who are captured, and even some of the commanders, is unclear. The Coalition typically transfers prisoners to Afghan custody, and many are subsequently released after months in custody.
Overall, one thing is clear: the Taliban-led insurgency remains capable of maintaining an extraordinary level of violence throughout Afghanistan, far worse than prior to the surge. This demonstrates that the jihadist hydra is anything but a spent force and could easily recapture more territory as Coalition forces withdraw from the country.
Below is a summary of The Long War Journal’s findings, followed by a detailed analysis of each of the data sources consulted.
Summary of findings
The overall level of violence in Afghanistan remains much worse than it was prior to the surge. This is true even if we measure violence using the same statistics cited by the Defense Department and ISAF as signs of progress.
In recent months, the Taliban-led insurgency has demonstrated the capacity to reverse the positive trends the Defense Department and ISAF have cited as evidence of progress. The DoD and ISAF have cited a decrease in the number of monthly “enemy-initiated attacks,” as compared to the same month in the previous year, as evidence that the violence is trending downward. However, the insurgency reversed this trend in three months this year, from April to June, executing more attacks than the same months in 2011. Moreover, the year-over-year comparison used by military officials is misleading, as the overall number of attacks still remains much greater than prior to the surge.
The number of IED attacks grew substantially in 2011, and there are more IED attacks in Afghanistan today than before the surge. ISAF says that IEDs are the “principal means” the insurgents use “to execute their campaign” and cause more total civilian casualties than any other type of attack. Yet, ISAF’s own data shows that the number of IED attacks increased substantially throughout much of the surge, and remains greater than prior to the surge.
The UN found that there was a “record loss of lives” in 2011 as compared to previous years. More civilians were killed and wounded in 2011, when the surge forces began coming home, than in prior years.
According to the UN, the insurgency is responsible for the overwhelming majority (more than 75%) of civilian casualties. Even as the Coalition and Afghan forces have successfully decreased the number of civilian casualties attributable to their actions, the insurgency has become more lethal.
According to the UN, the number of casualties caused by suicide bombings increased dramatically in 2011, by 80% when compared to 2010. This increase occurred despite the fact that the number of suicide attacks did not increase. Suicide bombings continue to have a disproportionate impact, causing significantly more casualties in some months than all other types of attacks, which are much more numerous, combined.
Despite gains in the south, the overall level of violence is worse than in the years prior to the surge because of what the UN calls a “geographic shift” in the conflict. The southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, where surge forces were primarily deployed, have seen a decrease in violence, but still remain the most violent areas overall. The decrease in violence in the south has been offset, to a large extent, by an increase in violence in the eastern provinces and elsewhere.
A full surge of forces was never carried out in the eastern provinces, meaning that the insurgency’s “momentum” there was not truly confronted. The east is home to what former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has rightly called a “syndicate” of jihadist groups that includes the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and other affiliated organizations. Al Qaeda remains particularly strong in eastern Afghanistan, despite President Obama’s pledge to make sure that al Qaeda will not use the country as a safe haven once again. The surge also did not, of course, address the insurgency’s headquarters across the border in Pakistan. Each of the main insurgency groups is led from Pakistan.
According to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), more people were killed in terrorist attacks inside Afghanistan in 2011 than in each of the previous years. While the total number of terrorist attacks decreased from 2010 to 2011, the number of terrorist attacks remained much greater than in 2009, the year prior to the surge, as well as previous years.
More than two-thirds (66.9%) of Coalition fatalities have occurred since Jan. 2009, which was President Obama’s first month in office. This increase in the number of fatalities is due, in part, to the increase in Coalition forces in the country and the resulting uptick in fighting. However, the Taliban-led insurgency has proven that is still capable of inflicting substantial losses on the Coalition. There is no indication that the insurgency’s capacity for killing has been substantially reduced by the surge.
Finally, the surge in Afghanistan did not achieve the same reduction in violence as was experienced in Iraq following the surge there. This is not an apples-to-apples comparison as the overall level of violence in Iraq was much greater pre-surge than in Afghanistan. Still, by any reasonable measure, the level of violence in Iraq decreased substantially as a result of a surge in American-led forces and the Iraqi “awakening.” The same is not true for Afghanistan, where the overall level of violence has gotten much worse.
A detailed summary of the data sources analyzed by The Long War Journal is provided below.
ISAF reporting on enemy-initiated attacks
A key metric used by ISAF and the Defense Department to measure the Taliban’s momentum is the number of enemy-initiated attacks (EIAs). ISAF defines EIAs as “enemy action (enemy-initiated direct fire, indirect fire, surface-to-air fire) and explosive hazard events, to include executed attacks only (improvised explosive device (IED) explosions/mine strikes).” The last part of this definition means that IEDs that are not detonated are excluded from ISAF’s count of EIAs.
ISAF includes a bar chart of EIAs in its monthly reporting on the violence in Afghanistan. Although the underlying data used to make the graphs is classified, it is possible, based on ISAF’s reporting, to estimate the number of EIAs each month. An example chosen from ISAF’s most recent monthly report in August is shown here.
Click image to view the graph of enemy-initiated attacks, by month, from January 2008 to July 2012. Image from ISAF’s Month Trends report for August 2012.
Using these data, the Obama administration has claimed that the Taliban’s momentum has been broken because the number of EIAs in 2011 was less than in 2010.
In April of this year, the Defense Department released a report titled, “United States Plan for Sustaining the Afghanistan National Security Forces.” The report highlighted “important security gains” and said there had been a “reversal of violence trends in much of the country” in 2011.
“The year 2011 saw the first year-over-year decline in nationwide enemy-initiated attacks in five years,” the report reads. “These trends have continued in 2012.”
The month before that report was released, in March 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta pointed to this same type of year-over-year comparison during a town hall meeting at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand. “Thanks to your efforts, our strategy is working,” Panetta said. “And I believe last year was a very important turning point here in Afghanistan. In 2011 violence levels were down throughout the country.” Panetta continued: “In 2012 attacks are down 24 percent compared to this time last year.”
A closer look at the EIA data reveals several problems, however, with these comparisons.
Overall level of violence worse than prior to surge
First, year-over-year comparisons say nothing about the overall level of violence in Afghanistan, which has increased dramatically since 2008. While it is true that 2011 was less violent than 2010 in terms of the total number of EIAs, 2011 was still far more violent than 2009 or 2008.
Look again at the chart reproduced above from ISAF’s most recent presentation.
In 2008, the number of EIAs exceeded or approximated 1,000 in just four months, and in no month did that figure reach 1,500. In 2009, the number of EIAs exceeded 1,000 in eight months out of the year, exceeded 1,500 in five months, and topped 2,500 in one month (August 2009).
By 2010, when the surge plan was first implemented, the number of EIAs exceeded 1,000 in every month. Indeed, according to the EIA data, Afghanistan experienced an unprecedented level of violence in 2010. In 10 of 12 months, the number of EIAs exceeded 1,500. (Recall that in 2008 the number of EIAs did not reach 1,500 in any single month.) And the number of EIAs was greater than 2,500 in six months out of the year. (Recall, too, that the number of EIAs exceeded 2,500 in only one month in 2009.)
Thus, comparing 2011 and 2012 to 2010 is somewhat misleading, as the number of EIAs that year was extraordinarily high. Even so, 2011 and 2012 are far closer to 2010 in terms of the total level of violence than 2009 or 2008 — that is, before the surge in Afghanistan had even begun.
When compared to monthly totals from 2009, the total number of EIAs in 2011 and 2012 has been far greater each and every month. While the total number of EIAs exceeded 2,500 in only one month in 2009, it topped this same mark on five occasions in 2011, and has already done so in three months in 2012.
Based on the EIA data, the simple fact of the matter is that the overall level of violence in Afghanistan is far worse today than it was prior to the surge.
Taliban-led insurgency reversed trends in recent months
Click image to view the graph of the change in enemy initiated attacks, by month, from January 2008 to July 2012. Image from ISAF’s Month Trends report for August 2012.
Second, there are ominous indications that the Taliban and its allies remain capable of reversing the trend highlighted by the Obama administration’s year-over-year comparisons. A second chart from ISAF’s most recent analysis in August is included here.
The data show that the number of EIAs actually increased in April, May, and June of 2012 when compared to the same months in 2011. This reversal came after 11 consecutive months in which the number of EIAs decreased as compared to the previous year. The number of EIAs then declined slightly in July 2012, as compared to July 2011, once again.
More IED attacks than prior to surge
Third, there is a curious oddity in the EIA data. While the total number of EIAs in 2011 dropped as compared to the peak year of 2010, the same is not true for the number of executed IED attacks. The graph showing executed IED attacks from ISAF’s most recent report is included here.
Click image to view the graph of IED attacks executed by the Taliban and allied groups, by month, from January 2008 to July 2012. Image from ISAF’s Month Trends report for August 2012.
ISAF’s bar graph for IED attacks shows that while the number of executed IED attacks has decreased thus far in 2012, when compared to 2011, the same was not true when the figures for 2011 were compared to 2010. A previous ISAF presentation noted that IED attacks actually increased by 6 percent from 2010 to 2011. In fact, a year-over-year comparison of monthly data shows that in eight months during 2011 the number of executed IED attacks exceeded the same month in 2010.
This is particularly troubling because ISAF has found that “[m]ore than 60% of civilian casualties by insurgents result from IED explosions.” And IEDs are the insurgents’ “principal means to execute their campaign.” While officials could point to a positive trend in the total number of EIAs in 2011 (which, again, does not reflect changes in the overall level of violence as compared to previous years), they could not point to the same trend for executed IED attacks.
ISAF points out that the total number of executed IED attacks has decreased by 13% from January to July of 2012 when compared to the same period in 2011. But this is hardly a significant decrease as insurgents executed more IED attacks in 2011 than in previous years. The number of IED attacks in 2012 is still far greater than in 2009, the year before the surge began.
UN reporting on civilian casualties
Counting the raw number of EIAs and IED attacks each month does not tell us anything about the efficacy of those attacks. Suicide bombings, in particular, have always had a disproportionate impact in the post-9/11 war zones. Many EIAs result in a low number of casualties, whereas one suicide bomber can kill and wound hundreds.
For instance, ISAF reported that 274 of the 458 “insurgent-caused civilian casualties” (killed and wounded) in December 2011 resulted from just two suicide bombings — one in Kabul and the other in Mazar-e-Sharif. There were more than 1,500 EIAs that same month. This means that two suicide bomb attacks caused more civilian casualties than the other 1,500+ EIAs combined, many of which surely targeted, sometimes indiscriminately, civilians.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) produces an annual report on Afghanistan (“Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict”) each year. The report for 2011 included some disturbing findings.
“The civilian death toll from suicide attacks in Afghanistan rose dramatically in 2011,” the report reads. “In total, 431 civilians were killed in suicide attacks, an increase of 80 percent over 2010.” The lethality of the insurgents’ suicide attacks increased even though the total number of such strikes did not.
This is one trend that the Defense Department did not note in its April 2012 report (“United States Plan for Sustaining the Afghanistan National Security Forces”), which trumpeted a “reversal of violence trends in much of the country.” That 142-page report mentions suicide attacks only once in passing.
Contrary to the Defense Department’s claims about improving security, the UN found that “the armed conflict incurred a greater human cost in 2011 than in previous years.” In fact, the number of civilian deaths rose for the fourth straight year.
The UN found that there were a total 3,021 civilian deaths in 2011, an increase of 8 percent over 2010 and 25 percent over 2009 (the year before the surge). The UN attributed 77 percent, or 2,332, of these “conflict-related civilian deaths in 2011” to Anti-Government Elements (AGEs). That is, the Taliban and its allies caused more than 3 out of every 4 civilian deaths in Afghanistan in 2011.
Click image to view the bar chart of civilian casualties in Afghanistan caused by anti-government elements. The chart is created from UN data.
The UN’s data on civilian casualties (wounded and fatalities) caused by the Taliban-led insurgency from 2009 to 2011 are set forth in a chart here. The data show that the insurgents’ capacity for killing civilians has increased since 2009. The death toll of civilians killed by insurgents rose by 50% during this time.
What is particularly striking about the UN’s findings is that Pro-Government Elements (PGEs), including Coalition forces, actually reduced the number of civilian casualties due to PGE operations in 2011. This was during the surge, when these same PGEs were taking the fight to the enemy in areas that had previously been Taliban strongholds. Yet the Taliban and allied groups became more lethal, not less, during this period.
Comparing the violence in Afghanistan to that in Iraq is not an apples-to-apples calculation. The overall level of violence in Iraq post-2003 has been much greater than in Afghanistan. But significantly, the 2007 surge in Iraq dramatically curtailed the ability of insurgents to kill civilians. Data compiled by Iraq Body Count show that while there were more than 25,000 civilian deaths in Iraq in 2007, the civilian death toll fell to a little more than 9,500 in 2008. In the following year, 2009, civilian deaths were less than 5,000, and the number has continued to fall since. (Civilian deaths may increase in 2012, however, as al Qaeda in Iraq has expanded the scope of its terrorist activities once again.)
The surge in Afghanistan did not produce comparable results.
Again, the overall level of violence in the two countries makes this an imperfect comparison. Still, the number of civilian casualties in Iraq decreased significantly after a surge of American forces there, while the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan has increased significantly.
The UN found a “record loss of lives” in 2011 in Afghanistan, and its report contains a number of observations that help explain why this is the case, despite claims that the Taliban’s momentum has been broken.
First, as the UN report notes, there has been a “geographic shift” in the conflict to areas “outside those southern provinces where fighting has historically been concentrated and worsened in several provinces in the southeastern and eastern regions.”
The Afghan surge made significant progress in Kandahar and Helmand, which are traditionally Taliban strongholds. These two provinces still had the “highest number of civilian deaths” in 2011, but civilian casualties declined there by almost 40 percent. This is undoubtedly due to the surge of Coalition forces in the south.
However, a full surge in the east, which the military recommended, never took place, as President Obama quickly drew down American forces. Far fewer resources were devoted to the southeastern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan. Consequently, the UN has documented a spike in civilian casualties of 34 percent in those provinces, which include: Khost, Paktika, Ghazni, Kunar, and Nangarhar.
While one can reasonably argue that the Taliban’s momentum was disrupted in the southern part of the country, the same cannot be said for other areas. Judging by the number of civilian casualties alone (and this tells only part of the story), the loss of life outside of the southern provinces more than offset the improving security conditions in Kandahar and Helmand.
The UN’s report contains several other observations that are noteworthy. Like ISAF, the UN found that the number of IED attacks increased in 2011 as compared to 2010. The UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) “recorded an average of 23 IEDs detonated or discovered every day in 2011, twice the daily average in 2010.” The UN’s count of IEDs includes those that are discovered before they are detonated, whereas ISAF’s count includes only “executed” IED attacks.
The UNDSS also found that the total number of “security incidents” increased dramatically between 2009 and 2011, finding that there were 11,524 in 2009, 19,403 in 2010, and 22,903 in 2011. Therefore, the number of security incidents nearly doubled between 2009 (the year before the surge) and 2011 (when the withdrawal of surge forces began).
Needless to say, these data do not support the idea that the Taliban’s momentum has been broken.
NCTC reporting on terrorist attacks
Yet another source for metrics on the Afghan War is provided by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in its annual report on terrorism. The NCTC’s count of terrorist attacks, and resulting casualties, differs substantially from ISAF’s methodology for counting EIAs. The NCTC’s count of terrorist-caused deaths is generally consistent with the UN’s data, but does differ in its specifics. For example, the total number of deaths counted by the NCTC is more or less than the UN’s count in any given year. A full explanation of the differences between the NCTC’s data and other sources is beyond the scope of this article.
Click image to view the bar chart of terrorist attacks and related deaths. The chart is created from NCTC data.
However, the NCTC’s data confirm that more people were killed due to violence in 2011 in Afghanistan than in previous years. The number of terrorist-caused deaths in 2011 increased by nearly 5 percent when compared to 2010, and by almost 21 percent when compared to 2009. And while the total number of terrorist attacks decreased in 2011 as compared to 2010, there were still far more terrorist attacks in 2011 than in 2009 or earlier years. A chart of the NCTC’s data is presented here.
This trend is, again, dissimilar to the experience in Iraq. While the overall level of terrorist-caused violence in Iraq has been far greater than in Afghanistan, the number of terrorist attacks and terrorist-caused deaths decreased dramatically after the surge there. For example, according to the NCTC, the number of terrorist-related deaths in Iraq exceeded 13,600 in 2007, but fell to just over 5,000 in 2008, and to less than 4,000 in subsequent years.
The surge in Afghanistan did not produce the same type of results.
Reporting on Coalition casualties
Finally, a look at the casualties suffered by the Coalition does not show that the Taliban’s momentum has been irreversibly broken. According to icasualties.org, Coalition forces suffered a record number of casualties in 2010 (711), the first year in which surge forces were deployed to Afghanistan. And while that figure decreased in 2011 (566), the number of casualties was still greater than the figure for 2009 (521). The figure for 2012 may be even lower than in 2011. This trend can be explained, in part, by the heavy fighting incurred once the surge was under way, with the Taliban and its allies having more Coalition forces to target, and then the subsequent withdrawal of forces creating fewer targets for the insurgents. However, the Coalition began sustaining much heavier losses in 2009, prior to the surge, than in 2007 or 2008, when fatalities were much lower. Overall, 2,122 of the Coalition’s 3,171 fatalities (more than two-thirds) have occurred since January 2009.
The Taliban-led insurgency still remains capable of killing more Coalition members than were killed in the year prior to President Obama’s first in office. Consider that whereas in all of 2008 there were 295 Coalition fatalities, there have already been 324 fatalities in the first eight months of 2012.
An additional cause of Coalition fatalities has emerged in Afghanistan: green-on-blue attacks. Some of these fatalities are due to the Taliban’s infiltration of security forces, while others are caused by disgruntled Afghans.
Turning again to our imperfect comparison to the experience in Iraq, we find that the number of Coalition fatalities there dropped precipitously from 2007 (961) to 2008 (322), and the numbers fell even more after that. While this was partly due to the withdrawal of American forces, the Iraqi surge evidently made it far more difficult for insurgents to kill Coalition forces in Iraq.
It remains to be seen if the situation in Afghanistan similarly improves, but Coalition casualties there remain closer to their historic highs than lows.
Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal. Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.
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Obviously we’re disappointed and frustrated by the editorial direction (and timing) Golf Digest has chosen with the announcement of its most recent magazine cover.
If a magazine called Golf Digest is interested in showcasing females in the game, yet consistently steers away from the true superstars who’ve made history over the last few years, something is clearly wrong.
Inbee Park wins 3-straight major championships in 2013. Stacy Lewis, in 2012, becomes the first American to win Rolex Player of the Year since 1994. Lexi Thompson and Lydia Ko set historical benchmarks while blossoming as the Tour’s youngest ever champions. And evidently, not one has been “cover worthy” for Golf Digest. “Growing the game” means a need for more role models and in these exciting times for women’s golf, the LPGA is overflowing with them.
At this point, I’m done talking about it and I hope the attention of the media and fans will shift in the proper direction. The true stars representing women’s golf have a grand stage this weekend at the Kraft Nabisco Championship. I’m confident that the year’s first major championship will result in another compelling champion and the traditional Sunday leap into Poppie’s Pond will grab the media spotlight it so deserves. |
Gareth Cattermole / Getty Images for Netflix
Netflix, the streaming video and DVD service, saw its stock price soar over 22% Thursday after reporting earnings results that beat Wall Street expectations. The company said it added 610,000 new customers last quarter, in a sharp rebound from a debacle last summer when 800,000 quit the service following an unexpected price hike.
It’s a welcome reversal for CEO Reed Hastings, who endured consumer vitriol following an aborted proposal to split the company’s DVD business from its streaming business.
Although the company felt the lingering effects from the earlier wave of customer defections — with net income of $40.7 million compared to $47.1 million one year ago — that wasn’t as bad as Wall Street had expected, which helped to propel the stock upward. Following the results, several analysts, including Citi’s Mark Mahaney, raised their projections for the stock. Mahaney increased his price target to $130, saying that the company’s “streaming story is still early days.”
(MORE: Should Americans Care About Apple’s iPhone Factory Conditions?)
Others were more cautious. JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth said the company’s fourth-quarter performance “suggest the company has likely turned the corner in terms of subscriber growth and profitability trajectory.” Nevertheless, he maintained a “neutral” rating on the stock, while edging his price target up slightly to $95 per share.
Netflix shares rose over 22% to close at $116.01. Still, thats a far cry from the heights the company achieved last year — nearly $300 in July — before the price hike helped torpedo the stock.
In a letter to shareholders, Hastings sounded a bullish note about the company’s prospects. “The global opportunity for streaming TV shows and movies becomes more compelling every year with the rise of smart TVs and faster broadband,” he wrote. “Every quarter we are improving our content selection, we are improving our user experience, we are learning more about social, and we are increasing our brand awareness in the 47 countries where we offer our Internet TV network.”
(LIST: The 10 Best (and Most Unusual) Employee Perks)
Netflix, which now boasts 21.7 million online subscribers, was an early pioneer of streaming video to living room televisions, but the company is girding for new competitors like Amazon — as well as existing video giants like Comcast, Verizon and HBO — to make a play for that market. |
BY EVE KUCHARSKI
Faith and sexuality are rarely mentioned together. In fact, it is not uncommon that the two topics are viewed as entirely separate. Pair those topics with a discussion of race and for many they become inaccessible. Some of those barriers were broken on April 13 at The Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center in East Lansing during an undergraduate panel.“It’s always a good opportunity to be able to come and share that story and first of all demystify what it is to be queer, what it is to be a person of color and move beyond that as well to what are the implications for people,” said Nicole Bravo, a second-year graduate student and assistant for the Michigan State University LGBT Resource Center. Bravo has attended the panel several times.Bravo, who was one of four panelists at the “Intersections between Faith, Race, Gender and Sexuality” event, spoke about her experiences with, divergence from and her process of recovery after being part of the Catholic faith.“Growing up I went to Catechism and Sunday school and was involved in youth group. I was a ‘but Catholic.’ I believe this ‘but’ I don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with …,” said Bravo. “The breaking point was when I dated my first trans partner. That was the point that I could no longer reconcile the two.”Bravo’s insight and experiences were accompanied by that of Leon Hister, Heba Afaneh and William Alexander III – each MSU students who shared traditionally conflicting stories about sexuality, faith and race.But those were just some of the topics covered April 13 at MSU’s “Race in 21st Century America: The 10th National Conference.” Post each presenter’s introduction, the floor became an open forum for audience members to pose questions on anything from an explanation of pansexuality, to broader queries about the intersectionality of those identities.Panelist Hister, a senior and dual major in philosophy and social relations spoke about his own experience as a member of the queer community as well as his own understanding of his biracial identity and the process of gaining confidence within it.“I think that really truly we don’t do this often enough, we second-guess what we know,” Hister said.Taylor Schaar, a student affairs employee in a program outside of MSU attended the event to aid her in her work and found the presentation insightful.“I think that there are a lot of structures in predominantly white institutions that reinforce oppression, even if students who have marginalized identities are given access to education,” Schaar said. “I think that that is something that people aren’t really willing to examine because it’s uncomfortable.”That push out of the comfortable set the tone of the panel, but the tension was outweighed by the positive emotion that filled the room post panel. First year masters graduate student and panelist Alexander summed up the goal of the presentation.“When a student is from a privileged identity (learning about these identities), they’re going to be upset, but at the end of the day you have to be unapologetic about that,” Alexander said. “But also open to working with those students to help them learn and grow as well.”For more information about the MSU LGBT Resource Center, visit the website , check it out on Facebook or follow the organization on Twitter |
As we have been covering, the small resort town of Whitefish, Montana is under seige by Alt Right trolls after several of their residents decided they no longer wanted to deal with Richard Spencer and his family making money in their town. The organization Love Lives Here, an affiliate of the Montana Human Rights Network, has been doing broad-based community organizing in the town. This includes supporting the Jewish residents who have been specifically targeted for threats from the Daily Stormer and their friends by creating a system where by all residents of the town put “Menorah cards” in their window to show solidarity. They have recently organized a large rally for diversity, showing that residents will be supporting each other and that the racialist narrative of the Alt Right has no draw in the town.
Love Lives Here will not be organizing the counter-demonstration to the Nazis who are planning on “marching against Jews” on January 15th, their strategy is to build the community base of support yet not to actually engage with the Nazis. On the other side, Montana Antifa, based in the nearby Missoula, are planning on organizing the counter demonstration to show that Montanans are not going to sit back and let their towns be terrorized by armed skinheads.
Right now Montana Antifa are organizing a fundraiser to pay for the basic costs of having the counter-protest, including bussing in folks from surrounding towns that want to raise their voice against the hate.
Donate to the Montana Antifa Fundraiser Here to Stand Against the Nazis Coming to Whitefish, Montana
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An Orthodox Jewish basketball player came to Brooklyn. You'd think this would occasion a parade, thousands of people in the seats, perhaps an impromptu hora.
But a relatively sparse crowd showed up for Tulane's Dec. 28 matchup against St. John's at Barclays Center. Those who waited in line at David K's, the glatt Kosher proprietor, were mostly unaware of Aaron Liberman, Tulane's center with the winding path to the Green Wave, though the UnderArmour yarmulke gave him away on his first journey through the layup line.
For those aware of just how celebrated Jewish athletes are among the Jewish people, even those with tenuous connections to the religion, here was a chance to root for the real thing: a legitimate Division I center trying to get better on the court, a true student excelling at an elite school and a young man, 21 years old, trying to balance both with his faith.
For Liberman, religion comes first, both chronologically and in his priorities. Orthodox Judaism is a constant pull on an adherent's time, thoughts and energy, whether in pursuit of Kosher food, or the numerous times within the day for prayer, either individually or ideally, in a minyan (a worship ritual). A portion of each day is dedicated to study.
That has been Liberman's life. Basketball was more of an arranged marriage that took. As his redshirt sophomore season comes to an end—Tulane opens its first game in the AAC tournament on Thursday, but at 15-15, it isn't likely to reach a postseason tournament—the 6'10" Liberman is working to keep both in perfect balance.
He grew up in southern California, the son of Lenard, owner of a number of television and radio stations, and Sarah. His dad had played high school basketball, and his mom was an Israeli sprinter.
But for Aaron, basketballe was an afterthought until well into high school. He didn't play for his varsity team as a freshman, and it wasn't because the school was a basketball power—he attended Valley Torah, an 86-student Jewish high school without its own gym.
But former Clippers center Josh Moore took one look at the lanky Liberman in the gym, and explained that basketball could be a pathway to a better, even free education.
Three years later, Liberman drew interest from Division I schools across the country, thanks to averages of 18 points, 11 rebounds and nine blocks as part of Valley Torah's conference-winning season—oh, and a 3.4 GPA, too.
“My goals have sort of changed over the years,” Liberman says. “I first started playing basketball to get into a really high academic school.”
To find the right fit, Liberman needed a sufficiently challenging academic atmosphere. He also wanted to challenge himself on the basketball court, especially after he grew beyond the Division III programs he'd believed would be his ceiling early in his high school career. And he needed a Jewish community, not just for Shabbat dinner on a Friday night, but to continue immersing himself in the study of Orthodox Judaism.
“It's a triple major, basically,” Liberman said, with a laugh.
So Liberman chose Northwestern at first, and the fit looked ideal. He planned to double major in Political Science and Economics, but if he changed his mind (as he has), the school had plenty of elite alternatives. Coach Bill Carmody, previously the head coach at Princeton, was on board with letting Liberman travel ahead of and behind the team when games fell on Shabbat, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Liberman met Rabbi Josh Livingstone, and connected with a large Orthodox Jewish community in Chicago. After a year in Israel, Liberman redshirted his freshman year in 2012-13, but prepared himself and was ready to give basketball his best shot.
And then Carmody got fired, replaced by Chris Collins. Liberman played nine minutes all season. If he wanted to give Division I basketball a real shot, he'd need to go elsewhere.
There was plenty of interest. College teams always need size. Qualifying academically was not a problem. But there were other challenges for Liberman.
“Columbia would have been great,” Liberman said. “But the Ivy League, they play Friday night and Saturday. So the travel would have been a problem. I know Penn was really interested in getting me when I was transferring from Northwestern, but I just told them, straight up, I can't travel Friday night. I can't do that. And they said, 'Thank you for being honest.'”
Enter Ed Conroy, Tulane coach's coach and a native of Davenport, Iowa. There is a Chabad—a Jewish community center—of the Quad Cities, but Conroy hadn't been there.
“I would say, very limited,” Conroy said when I asked what his knowledge or experience with Judaism had been prior to Liberman. “But I knew it was limited. So not only am I going to have to rely on him to communicate with me, I'm going to have to ask a lot of questions.”
“But the university was great. They said, 'If you can handle it from a team standpoint, we're more than happy to make whatever accommodations we need to make, travel or anything else.'"
But even knowing what questions to ask posed a challenge for Conroy. The only known orthodox Jewish player in Division I history is Tamir Goodman, who played at Towson State early this century.
“You know, there aren't a lot of coaches around the country I can call call up and ask how they've done this,” Conroy said, chuckling. “But whether it's eating, or learning the calendar, I would say it's all been interesting. I admire Aaron. I admire him for his discipline and his dedication to it. And I'm a big believer that if you show that discipline and dedication in one area, then you can show it in other areas as well. And it's been great for our guys to see someone who's so committed to his faith.”
[daily_cut.college basketball]Liberman made the switch. The road trips include a search for Kosher food. Back when he was at Northwestern, Liberman was pleasantly surprised to find several Kosher spots when he traveled to play at the University of Minnesota. But plenty of other road trips require him to pack his own food.
He arrived in New Orleans last summer, and basketball-wise, he says it's been wonderful, even though he's played only 44 minutes in 12 games and scored just 10 points all season. Still, he's fully committed to getting better, and stronger. He's at 210 pounds now, and to do battle with the players at his height he says he'd like to get to 230, 235.
“Aaron is a capable basketball player,” Conroy said. “He has a knack for blocking shots, he has great touch around the basket, but he can also make shots from the perimeter. And with Aaron, he's been great about it, but I hope Aaron realizes that he's early in the process. But I could see him making major contributions for us as he goes through his career.”
Liberman is majoring in Marketing, getting himself ready for a possible career in his father's business, though he isn't ready to commit to a future profession yet. Nor is he quite ready to give up on the dream of putting on the uniform of Maccabi Tel Aviv, a pro team in Israel, and he notes that his religion means he wouldn't cost Maccabi a precious international slot.
Aaron Liberman may not see the court much, but his yarmulke makes him unmistakable. Stephen Lew/Icon Sportswire
Liberman is far from the only Jewish student at Tulane. In fact, according to Reform Judaism magazine, the school has the ninth-most Jews of any private university in the country. Even then, however, Liberman is unique.
“I think I'm the only, I could be wrong, but the only one I've encountered, the only Orthodox Jew at Tulane,” he says. "It's kind of more difficult."
This isn't some kind of Jewish snobbery on Liberman's part. A critical part of his religion is continuing to learn and study, not by himself, but in colloquies. The studying goes on, with Rabbi Livingstone, for example, via Skype. But it's yet another challenge when Judaism is just one of several significant pulls at Liberman's time.
“This is the first time in my 21 years that I've ever lived in a place where I haven't had a Jewish community to be a part of and to support me,” Liberman said. “The crux of the orthodox community's strength and the ability for all to persevere through anything lies within the community itself and the support and belonging involved in that. If Tulane was located in a place where there was a strong Jewish community there would be nothing that could stand in my way psychologically or physically that could prevent me from achieving the highest levels of success athletically.”
Still, Liberman has the support of Conroy, and a family that flew a contingent clear across the country to be in Brooklyn on the off chance he might play. And with just over three minutes left in the game, Conroy called Liberman over, put his hand on Liberman's arm and gave him some instructions.
“Coach Conroy just told me that I played really well in the past three practices and he said that he should have played me more and he should have played me earlier,” Liberman said. “To be completely honest though I feel that he made the right decision playing me the amount that he did, I haven't played even close to my potential recently in practice even if he thinks that what I exhibited in practice was very good.”
Liberman played three minutes, picking up a blocked shot, but the Green Wave lost to St. John's by 25. After the game, Liberman's extended family surrounded Aaron. An iPhone was handed over, a group photo taken. Then they left, in search of one of the many Brooklyn Kosher eateries, along with some family time—something else that has ben in short supply while Liberman balances his three majors. |
Adversaries of Betsy DeVos are mounting a furious last-minute bid to sink her nomination for Education secretary, with tactics that include a “tie-breaker telethon” in Alaska, a flood of emails to U.S. senators and celebrity appeals to millions of Twitter followers.
Teachers unions, civil rights advocates and a ragtag assemblage of other opponents are bombarding congressional offices with tens of thousands of phone calls and more than 1 million emails — a massive but almost certainly doomed effort to vanquish one of President Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks.
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Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, said on Twitter that the last three days had “been the busiest in Capitol switchboard history” by “almost double.” He urged opponents of DeVos to “keep it up.”
The campaign kicked into high gear this week after two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, announced their opposition, leaving the charter schools advocate hanging by a 50-50 thread. Just one more “no” vote and DeVos is done — a prospect that seems tantalizingly close for Democrats but that GOP leaders say they’re confident won’t happen.
Author Stephen King, a Maine resident, tweeted to his 2.8 million followers: “Thanks to Susan Collins for saying ‘No’ on Betsy DeVos. Notice that it's possible to be a good Republican and still say no to Donald Trump.”
A final vote is expected Tuesday, and as it stands, Vice President Mike Pence is expected to be summoned to the Capitol to push DeVos over the top. DeVos cleared a key procedural hurdle Friday morning.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Friday he was “100 percent confident” DeVos would be confirmed. “I hope that that vote, you know, gets 60, 70 votes,” Spicer said. “She is an unbelievable, remarkable woman who has fought very hard to improve our nation's education system and to make sure that schools are serving children.”
But critics are going into overdrive, determined to try to turn one more Republican before Tuesday’s vote.
George Takei, the activist and former “Star Trek” star, urged his 2.1 million followers to double down on their efforts. “With two GOP Senators defecting, Betsy DeVos could be denied,” he tweeted. “We need one more with courage.”
Nebraska Republican Deb Fischer, whose mother was a public school teacher, is among those who have been caught in the crossfire. Fischer became a target after DeVos’ opponents assumed she was undecided. But Fischer, a DeVos supporter, said she was merely sticking to her longtime practice of keeping silent until she voted.
She now plans to change that policy.
“There was such a to-do over this that, yes, I had to put out my statement before I voted,” Fischer said in an interview, saying that phone lines to her office were entirely tied up.
Nevada Republican, Sen. Dean Heller, who also came out in support of DeVos, said on Twitter that his staff was struggling to keep up with all the calls.
“We are experiencing heavy call volumes in all our offices,” he tweeted later. “Staff is answering as many as possible. Please continue calling to get through.”
Sen. Bob Corker, who supports DeVos and had lunch with her last week, said the number of calls his office is getting on all of Trump’s nominees, including DeVos, is “very, very large.”
“People are very sincerely concerned,” the Tennessee Republican said.
Teachers unions, who have long warred with DeVos over her support of charter school expansion and using taxpayer money for vouchers, among other things, are continuing to mobilize hundreds of thousands of their members across the country to call lawmakers.
The country’s largest union, the National Education Association, says it has organized more than 80,000 phone calls and more than 1.1 million emails in the past four weeks.
But the opposition to DeVos mushroomed into something bigger after clips from her bumpy confirmation hearing exploded across social media, reinforcing questions about her qualifications for the job and turning the nominee into a punchline on late night television.
“Betsy DeVos teaches us that if you're born rich, never go to public schools, and hate public schools, someday you can run public schools,” tweeted comedian Mike Birbiglia.
Union organizers say that although they are still campaigning against DeVos, a good deal of the backlash comes from the general public. And they anticipate those efforts would increase over the weekend as activists share lawmakers’ phone numbers on Facebook and Twitter.
“This has become such a high-profile fight for our education system that there will no doubt be an enormous amount of activism over the weekend,” said Mary Kusler, senior director of the Center for Advocacy at the NEA.
Parent groups have become soldiers in the cause, incensed that DeVos has never been a teacher or school administrator and fearful she will put their children's education at risk.
Deena Mitchell, a parent activist in Anchorage, said she is disturbed by Devos' "absolute lack of experience for this job."
“I think anyone who makes a comment that public education is a ‘dead end’ doesn’t fundamentally believe that public education is the bedrock of our democracy,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell and her group, Great Alaska Schools, cheered Murkowski's decision to oppose DeVos. This weekend, they’re organizing “a tie-breaker telethon,” collecting comments to deliver to their other senator, Dan Sullivan, who has said he’ll vote to confirm her.
The push against DeVos has also sparked some unlikely alliances.
Billionaire philanthropist and education reformer Eli Broad, a Democrat who has donated to both parties and pushed for charter school expansion, penned a letter this week urging the Senate to reject DeVos.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who is usually on the opposite side from Broad, shares his position on DeVos. Education secretary nominees are usually given great deference by both parties, she said. But “DeVos breaks the mold.” |
The highs and lows of being a teenage parent without a good plan or financial stability were spelled out eloquently in a four-and-a-half minute video by Millennials of Singapore:
A young lady, Mieko, talked about what she experienced after finding out she was suddenly pregnant when she was just 18 years old.
She related how she and her boyfriend were initially overjoyed at discovering her pregnancy, only to be forced back to reality when the doctor asked her, “Are you going to opt for an abortion?”
The reality of being a young parent hit even harder after her mother gave her an ultimatum: Get an abortion or move out of the house.
Mieko was not working and still studying part-time at that time.
At her mother’s insistence, she opted for an abortion — only to back away at the last minute. She changed her mind after seeing the ultrasound scan of the foetus.
Towards the end of the video, she credited her pregnancy for ending her chain smoking, hard drinking teenager ways and not regretting not having an abortion.
Responses to the video have been encouraging, with many saying it was a courageous thing for her to do to carry on with the pregnancy:
Since you’re here, how about another article?
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Isis militants are allegedly being smuggled into Europe among groups of refugees, a member of the jihadist group who claimed to be in charge of the operation said.
He said that the fighters were being smuggled in ships from Turkey with thousands of refugees bound for Europe, and were determined to commit terror attacks against the West in retaliation for Western airstrikes on Isis positions in Syria and Iraq.
"If someone attacks me then for sure I will attack them back," said the militant, who spoke to BuzFeedNews on condition of anonymity.
More than 1.5 million Syrians have entered Turkey since the start of the Syrian civil war, where Isis is locked in a brutal battle with the forces of the Syrian government and other rebel groups.
Thousands embark on ships for Italy, and then on to other EU countries to claim asylum.
Two people smugglers confirmed that they helped get fighters into Europe, with one claiming that he had organised for 10 to travel on one ship alone.
"I'm sending some fighters who want to go and visit their families. Others just go to Europe to be ready," one said.
He said that while most fighters were Syrian or from the Middle East, some claimed to be from Europe or even the US.
Nearly 150,000 Syrians have been granted asylum in the EU since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, according to EU figures. The number of illegal immigrants is believed to be far higher, with 110,000 illegal immigrants believed to have entered the EU last year alone, a third of them Syrian.
In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, European security agencies have stepped up their efforts against Isis militants who may attempting to travel to the EU.
Last October, a US intelligence source told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag that communications between Isis commanders had been intercepted in which they discussed sending militants to Europe disguised as refugees - a means of bypassing tighter restrictions that come with travelling by aircraft.
Turkey claims it has taken action to stem the flow of militants across its borders, but that the solution to the problem ultimately lies in ending the Syrian civil war. |
Aircraft Types
- Added support for the Inspire 1 Pro (X5 camera), Phantom 3 - Standard, Phantom 3 - 4K, and Matrice 100
- Removed support for the Phantom 2 Vision and Vision+ (required with DJI SDK 3.0)
Flight Director
- Added Waypoint Mission Start (similar to Mission Mark but instructs Autopilot where to start the Mission instead of Waypoint 1)
- Corrected an issue where the altimeter reference would be lost on takeoff
- Corrected an issue where the aircraft would yaw back to North with Direction Focus Strategy when not moving
- Corrected an issue where the aircraft target location would jump ahead after pausing and resuming during Waypoint Missions
- Corrected an issue where Waypoint Altitudes would not be properly bounded when opening a flight plan after changing the Min Altitude setting
- Corrected an issue where disengaging Autopilot would cancel RTH
- Corrected an issue where the Stop Mission button in Waypoint Mode would not illuminate on Mission Completion
- Corrected an issue where Autopilot would engage to RC Override when quickly tapping Engage from the take-off countdown
- Corrected an issue where the aircraft would briefly move horizontally just after engaging - this would only happen after a previous engagement where the flight mode switch was toggled to P before disengaging
Flight Recorder
- Added several new fields to the telemetry logs, including battery serial number (better integration with Healthy Drones)
- Added auto-upload support for DroneLogbook
Flight Dashboard
- Added camera settings (aircraft must be connected)
- Added IMU Preheating warning message
- Added one-finger touch focus support for the X5
- Updated Touch Focus Strategy to require two fingers because one finger is reserved for focus on the X5
Settings
- Added Disengage on Return-to-Home Flight Director Setting (default is enabled)
- Added Dynamic Focus Enabled if Available Camera Parameter Setting (only supported on the X5 when Focus Strategy is Subject, default is enabled)
- Renamed Disengage on RC Control Mode to Disengage on RC Flight Mode
- Updated the default value for the Responsiveness Movement Parameter to 5 seconds
- Removed Default Aircraft Type setting (General)
Map
- Added a device heading Map indicator
- Added Waypoint 1 Distance to Waypoint Map tooltips
- Added Operator Distance (when available) to Waypoint Map tooltips
- Added distance measurements to Focus Subject Map tooltip
- Added Airspace object projections and movement vectors
- Updated Airspace device map markers to show the first letter of the callsign, and a direction vector
- Renamed the Map Layers menu to the Map Options menu (Map Layers are now under Map Options)
- Added undo/redo buttons to the Map Options menu (when available)
- Updated the Free Map Tracking option to orient the map view to north when tapped a second time
- Corrected an issue where some Waypoint Map markers would not reposition after adding a Waypoint
- Corrected an issue where dragging a new second Waypoint would cause the location of the first Waypoint to move
- Corrected an issue where the Path Inspector would not intersect the closest path point on straight paths
- Corrected an issue where the Path Inspector would not honor the Heading if Gimbal Yaw Enabled Setting while disconnected from an aircraft
- Corrected an issue where geo-coordinates would not display on tooltips after changing the setting
Miscellaneous
- Added Network Airspace (supports unlimited devices and distance)
- Updated Flight Plans to track changes from the original Flight Plan after importing
- Added help center integration, including support ticket management (More > Support)
- Updated splash screen logo
- Corrected an issue where altitudes were reported in miles
- Corrected an issue where some flight plans would be imported in the wrong location from KML files
- Corrected an issue where the app would terminate on iPad when tapping the Flight Dashboard button with the Flight Plan menu open |
As everyone from racing drivers to rocket scientists can tell you, going fast presents all kinds of problems. For aeronautical engineers, one of the most pressing issues to conquer is dealing with the heat generated when a body slams into air at quadruple-digit mile-per-hour velocities. The canopy of the fabled SR-71 Blackbird, for example, reached temperatures of 600º Fahrenheit while traveling at Mach 3.
Building planes that travel even faster—more specifically, into the Mach 5-plus realm that defines hypersonic travel—requires increasingly heat-resistant materials. But a new NASA study, conducted along with Binghamton University, has pulled back the curtain on a substance that could help planes cut through the sky faster than ever before.
The study, published online in September, found that a high-tech material called boron nitride nanotubes is so heat-resistant, it could be used to help build planes capable of traveling at speeds in excess of 4,000 miles per hour. Until now, aircraft designed to travel at high speeds have usually used carbon nanotube-based skins to handle the heat created by high-velocity air slamming into them. Those nanotubes, however, can't hold a candle to the newer boron nitride version.
"While carbon nanotubes can stay stable at temperatures up to 400 degrees Celsius, our study found that BNNTs [boron nitride nanotubes] can withstand up to 900 degrees Celsius,” Binghamton University professor Changhong Ke said, according to Bing U News. To put that in terms more familiar to Americans, the carbon 'tubes can handle heat of 752º Fahrenheit; the boron nitride version, however, can deal with temperatures in excess of 1,652º—hotter than the melting point of aluminum or magnesium. Plus, the BNNTs are both structurally strong and very lightweight—two crucial qualities for a hypersonic airplane.
But as usually happens with science fiction-esque super-materials...there's a catch. While Ke believes the price may come down as production ramps up—in this day and age, boron nitride nanotubes are really, really expensive to make.
“Right now, BNNTs cost about $1,000 per gram," Ke said—or in other words, nearly $500,000 per pound. Multiply that by the many, many pounds of material needed to form a hypersonic aircraft's skin, and you're looking at a cost that could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars per plane. Which means the first customers to use this wonder substance as an aeronautical epidermis will need awfully deep pockets.
Know who has both all-but-bottomless budgets and a need for super-fast aircraft, though? The military. So don't be surprised if the first use of this material on a plane comes in the form of something along the lines of, say, Lockheed Martin's so-called SR-72.
Pictured: NASA X-43B Concept |
The Government has decided not to change the $25 fee that music and movies firms must pay internet providers to issue infringement notices to their customers under the three-strikes "Skynet" copyright regime, after a review.
The decision is expected to disappoint movie industry body NZfact, which had argued the fees needed to be axed or reduced to a "matter of cents" to entice its members to issue warnings and crack down on piracy.
The Justice Ministry this week confirmed that the Recording Industry Association, which represents major record labels, had asked the Copyright Tribunal to punish three internet users who had been issued their third and final "enforcement notices" for allegedly pirating music.
Commerce Minister Craig Foss advised Cabinet that the $25 fee remained appropriate given there had been a significant reduction in the volume of illegal file-sharing during the first six months the regime had been in force.
That suggested the fees had "not initially prevented the regime from having the desired outcome", he said.
Internet providers had not been able to recover all their costs in issuing more than 2700 infringement notices to customers, he said, so lowering them would be unfair.However, Foss proposed officials would continue to monitor how the regime was working "with a view to recommending whether future reviews of the fee are necessary". |
On 15 February, the town of Chelyabinsk in the Russian Ural Mountains had an unexpected visitor. A meteor streaked high above the city, briefly blinded commuters and then shattered thousands of windows with a series of ear-splitting explosions. The event was recorded on mobile phones and car-dashboard cameras across the region, and YouTube soon filled with Hollywood-style disaster videos of the fireball, replete with some very colourful Russian commentary.
Local residents were not the only ones to record the blast. More than a dozen monitoring stations around the globe captured the ultra-low-frequency infrasound signal of the meteorite as it broke up in the atmosphere. The stations are part of a much larger network of sensors that has been built to detect illicit nuclear testing: the system, it is hoped, will eventually underpin the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), a pact to halt work on nuclear weapons worldwide. Using data from this monitoring system, scientists in Canada and the United States were quickly able to establish that the rock that broke up over Russia was the largest to strike Earth in more than a century. They found that it exploded with the strength of a good-sized thermonuclear warhead, although, luckily, at an altitude high enough for the atmosphere to absorb most of the shock wave.
To understand the value of this monitoring network, imagine that the celestial visitor had arrived 30 years earlier — no time at all in the life of the Solar System. If there had been a sudden explosion over Chelyabinsk towards the end of the cold war, without an Internet or free press to circulate images, a very different picture could have emerged. The city is fewer than 100 kilometres from some of Russia’s largest nuclear-weapon production and storage facilities: a surprise airburst would almost certainly have put the country’s nuclear arsenal on hair-trigger alert. Shortly after the strike last week, right-wing law-maker Vladimir Zhirinovsky asserted: “Those aren’t meteors falling, it’s the Americans testing new weapons.” His comments were greeted with bemusement by the Russian press; in another time, they might have triggered nuclear war.
Just a few days before the spectacular events over Russia, the CTBT network picked up a less visible but politically more significant incident. On 12 February, North Korea conducted its third nuclear-weapon test deep underground. On this occasion, the CTBT network’s seismic sensors detected the blast, and located it to within a few kilometres of North Korea’s previous nuclear tests. Independent analysis of the network’s data showed the yield of the weapon to be several kilotonnes, much smaller than the explosion of the Russian meteor.
Unlike with the Russian event, there were few other ways to verify the North Korean explosion. The North Korean Central News Agency put out a statement announcing the test, but is not particularly reliable. US, Japanese and South Korean sensors all picked up the shock from the blast, but because they belong to sovereign nations, there was no guarantee that the data would be shared in a timely fashion — or believed by adversaries.
“A ban on nuclear testing could be enforced, if a further eight nations are willing to ratify it.”
The raison d’être of the CTBT network is to catch tests such as the one conducted by North Korea. Its ability to do so shows that an international ban on nuclear testing could be enforced, if a further eight nations, including China, the United States, India and Pakistan, were willing to ratify it. The CTBT has been open for ratification since 1996, but unfortunately, in recent years, little progress has been made towards its entry into force.
The meteor strike also shows that the constructed network has great value in its own right. It has done much non-nuclear-test work since it became active: tracking earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear accidents.
Building and running this global sensor network isn’t cheap. The CTBT organization in Vienna estimates that around US$100 million a year goes on its 321 monitoring stations and 16 laboratories worldwide, along with a data centre and other support for the treaty. Those funds are contributed by the treaty organization’s 183 member states, which are guaranteed timely access to the data collected by the network.
Many hundreds of scientists have begun using the CTBT data in the past few years, and many hundreds more are likely to sign up. As the events of the past week show, even without a test-ban treaty, the network makes the world a safer and more interesting place to live. |
Although mutations in a gene dubbed “the guardian of the genome” are widely recognized as being associated with more aggressive forms of cancer, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found evidence suggesting that the deleterious health effects of the mutated gene may in large part be due to other genetic abnormalities, at least in squamous cell head and neck cancers.
The study, published online August 3 in the journal Nature Genetics, shows that high mortality rates among head and neck cancer patients tend to occur only when mutations in the tumor suppressor gene coincide with missing segments of genetic material on the cancer genome’s third chromosome.
The link between the two had not been observed before because the mutations co-occur in about 70 percent of head and neck tumors and because full genetic fingerprints of large numbers of cancer tumors have become available only recently.
“These two genetic malfunctions are not two separate stab wounds to the body,” said co-senior author Trey Ideker, PhD, chief of the Division of Genetics. “One exposes the Achilles tendon and the other is a direct blow to it.”
To patients with these cancers, the study’s results mean that there may be therapeutic value in testing tumors for the two genetic identifiers, known as a TP53 mutation (short for tumor protein 53) and a 3p deletion (short for deletions of genetic information on the short arm “p” of the third chromosome).
TP53 plays a key role in regulating cell growth, detecting and fixing DNA, and directing cell apoptosis (death) if the DNA damage is irreparable. Because of this, the TP53 protein is sometimes called the “guardian of the genome.”
The study’s findings suggest that if both markers are present, treatment should be intensified. If only one mutation is present, treatment might be de-intensified because the TP53 mutation alone is less deadly than previously thought. The latter would have immediate benefits in reducing deaths caused by complications related to medical care.
“We are in the early stages of being able to personalize head and neck cancer treatments based on the tumor’s actual biology, the same as what’s done with breast cancers,” said co-senior author Quyen Nguyen, MD, PhD, associate professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. “In the past, treatments have been based largely on the size and location of the tumor. Now, we know that some large tumors may respond to less aggressive treatment while some small tumors may need intensified treatment. This will have a huge impact for patients.”
The study analyzed the complete genomic signatures of 250 cases of squamous cell head and neck cancer extracted from The Cancer Genome Atlas, a repository of sequenced cancer genomes for more than 20 different types of human cancers maintained by the National Institutes of Cancer. All of the tumors were from patients younger than 85 years of age.
Of these, 179 had both mutations; 50 had one of the two mutations; and 22 had neither mutation. Comparisons with patient outcome data showed that half of patients with both mutations would likely die of cancer within 2 years, while 66 percent of patients with one or neither mutation would be expected to live five years or more. These survival statistics were independent of the patients’ clinical cancer stage.
Besides causing cervical cancer, the human papilloma virus (HPV) is implicated in the growing epidemic of head and neck cancers in otherwise healthy adults. It is believed that the virus can co-opt the activity of TP53, affecting cells in much the same way as a TP53 mutation but without causing a mutation. For this reason, the analysis examined HPV-positive and HPV-negative tumors separately.
One of the study’s more compelling discoveries is that among HPV-positive tumors, the most aggressive cancer cases were also highly linked to the presence of 3p deletions.
“Our findings raise fundamental questions about the role of TP53 in cancer and suggest that some of the deleterious health effects of TP53 mutations might actually be due to something else going on in the third chromosome,” said lead author Andrew Gross, a graduate student in the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Program.
Co-authors include Ryan K. Orosco, John P. Shen, Hannah Carter, Matan Hofree, Michel Choueiri, Charles S. Coffey, Scott M. Lippman and Ezra E. Cohen, UC San Diego; Ann Marie Egloff and Jennifer R. Grandis, University of Pittsburg; and Neil Hayes, University of North Carolina.
Funding for the study was provided, in part, by the National Institutes of Health (grants P50 GM085764, P41 GM103504 and U24 CA184427), Burroughs Welcome Fund and The American Cancer Society. |
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 6) — Followers of a social media platform exploiting women through sexually explicit photos may be as many as half a million, thus the urgent need to pass a law punishing online violence aganst women and children, a lawmaker said Thursday.
Senator Risa Hontiveros seeks to address the issue by calling for the passage of the Anti-Gender-Based Electronic Violence law, which penalizes violators up to 10 years in prison.
The law "will impose stiff penalties against people who exchange lewd and illicit photos of women and children on social media."
Hontiveros, who chairs the Senate Women, Family, and Gender Relations Committee, expressed alarm at the rise of so-called "Pastor Hokage" groups on Facebook and social media which objectify women through obscene images.
Netizens were outraged earlier this week over Esquire magazine's story titled "The Dark Side of Filipino Facebook," followed by "#HelltoHokage: An Updated List of pastor Sites to Report," which exposed the secret groups.
Many of the sites have since been taken down as netizens flagged them for violating Facebook's guidelines on content and posts.
The Anti-Gender-Based Electronic Violence Bill, or Senate Bill No. 1251, was filed by Hontiveros on November 22, 2016, but is still pending at the committee level.
It aims to hold those responsible for misogynistic and homophobic attacks on social media accountable through imprisonment between five to 10 years, and fines of ₱100,000 to ₱500,000.
"Harassing or threatening the victim through text messaging, posts in social media sites, or other cyber, electronic, or multimedia means" is punishable if it results in mental, emotional, or psychological distress, the bill says.
For the "Pastor Hokage" groups, "the maximum penalty should be applied given that these acts are repeated, involve multiple women at any given time, and may even be profited from."
"The online groups on Facebook have names such as the 'Pastor Hokage Bible Study,' with members who are mostly male. They use terms like 'Amen' to express their approval for obscene photos and sexist posts of women and children that are posted," Hontiveros said.
READ: How Facebook decides what violent and explicit content is allowed
She said her office is coordinating with Facebook, pro-women netizens, and the National Bureau of Investigation to conduct an investigation on the accounts behind the groups.
"These people have no right to enjoy our internet freedom only to abuse our women and children. We will not allow them to shame our young women, suppress their right to express themselves through social media and contribute to a culture of misogyny and hate. We will unmask all these misogynists, prosecute them to the full extent of the law and hold them accountable," Hontiveros said.
The term "Hokage," which is now equated to perverted men who hit on women, originated from a hit anime show, originally referring to the highest ninja in a specific town. Lewd and sneaky acts to make sexual advances on women are then called "ninja moves," hence, giving a sense of entitlement to the so-called "Hokages."
The senator also called for an end to the culture of misogyny and commodification of women in the country.
"Together with our campaign to make our streets and homes safe spaces for our women and children, we will do the same in the realm of social media," Hontiveros said. |
The Bowling Green Falcons have added future football games against Illinois and South Dakota, FBSchedules.com has learned.
Bowling Green will travel to face the Illinois Fighting Illini at Memorial Stadium in Champaign on Sept. 19, 2020. The Falcons will receive a $1 million guarantee for the game, per a copy of the contract obtained via an open records request to BGSU.
Illinois is the first scheduled non-conference opponent for Bowling Green for the 2020 season. The Falcons and Fighting Illini have never met on the gridiron.
Bowling Green has also added a home game in 2017 against the South Dakota Coyotes of the FCS. The Falcons will host USD at Doyt Perry Stadium to open the season on Sept. 2.
According to a copy of the contract, Bowling Green will pay South Dakota a $375,000 guarantee for the game.
Bowling Green now has three non-conference games scheduled for the 2017 season. The Falcons are also slated to travel to Michigan State on Sept. 9 and Middle Tennessee on Sept. 23.
Football Schedules |
Cougar originates from Germany and originally specialized in advanced computer peripherals. During the past few months we have looked at several of their high end peripherals and mice. The company however produces more than just keyboards and mice, having diversified towards PC power supply units and cases. Cougar however is not particularly well-known for their cases, even though they have nearly a dozen designs available. One of their most recent releases is the their first Mini-ITX case, the QBX, which was unveiled at Computex and even won a design & innovation show award in the process. This is the case that we will be reviewing today.
Cougar's marketing is making some very bold claims regarding the performance and capabilities of the QBX. "Powerful Graphics". "Massive Storage". "The Best Cooling of Its Class". And then we notice a $53 price tag, which makes everything sounding a little bit too good to be true. So today we are putting the QBX to the test to see for ourselves where the new case excels and where it falls short.
11.2 oz Coke can for size comparison
Cougar QBX Motherboard Size Mini-ITX Drive Bays External One slim ODD (slot-loading only) Internal 1 × 3.5"
4 × 2.5" Cooling Front 80 mm (optional) Rear 92 mm (included) Top 2 x 120 mm (optional) Sides 120 mm (optional) Bottom 2 x 120 mm (optional) Radiator Support Front - Rear - Top - Sides Up to 240 mm (only one 120 mm fan) Bottom - I/O Port 2× USB 3.0, 0× USB 2.0, 1× Headphone, 1× Mic Power Supply Size ATX Clearances HSF 105 mm PSU 140 mm GPU 350 mm Dimensions 291 mm × 178 mm × 384 mm
11.46 in × 7.01 in × 15.12 in Prominent Features · Expandible: Powerful Graphics
· Expandible : Massive Storage + ODD
· The Best Cooling of Its Class Price $53 incl. shipping
Packaging & Bundle
Cougar supplies the QBX in a relatively small (but tall) box that hints the proportions of the case. The artwork of the box follows the orange/black color theme of the company and is mostly based on pictures of the case itself. The main features of the case are clearly printed on the sides of the box. Inside the box, the lightweight case is well protected with Styrofoam and wrapped inside a nylon bag.
The bundle supplied with the QBX is very basic, which was not unexpected considering the retail price of the case. Inside the small cardboard box we found only a very basic leaflet with installation schematics, black screws and mounting hardware, two small cable ties and one nylon filter for a 80 mm fan. |
Not surprisingly, a bus can hold a much larger battery than just about any regular car. The Catalyst E2 Max carries 660kWh, or nearly nine times the capacity of a 75kWh Tesla Model S. Also, Proterra was driving in optimal conditions, with no passengers, no stops and a gentle test track. It'd be another story with a fully-laden bus wending its way through a city.
Even so, that kind of range is very promising. In many cases, it could likely handle a long bus route for several hours -- it might only need to recharge at the end of a driver's shift. While it could take an hour or more to top up even with Proterra's fast charging system, bus drivers are no strangers to changing vehicles. The first E2 series buses are due to reach Los Angeles streets later in 2017, so it might not be long before you can witness this longevity first-hand. |
Zero for Conduct
On the surface, it sounds great for carriers to exempt popular apps from data charges. But it’s anti-competitive, patronizing, and counter-productive.
Susan Crawford Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 7, 2015 Unlisted
Compromise is great, but no democratic country should sacrifice the ideal of the global, interoperable Internet — and the speech and innovation it facilitates — in the name of pragmatism. I’m talking about the issue of “zero rating”: the practice being followed by mobile carriers around the world to provide Web access “for free” to their users to certain chosen services. Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Wikipedia become “the Internet” for the users of mobile data supported by “zero rating” plans, because accessing these services doesn’t cause users to hit the data caps applied by the carriers, and in many cases the plans don’t require the user to sign up for mobile data at all.
The pragmatists, and the mobile carriers, say that limited access to an online world made up of Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia is better than no access at all for people on the other side of the digital divide. Indeed, net neutrality activists are painted by the carriers’ lobbyists (and other mouthpieces) as anti-access: if you assume that only limited zero-rated access is possible in a developing country for people who can’t afford even a low-priced data plan, then wouldn’t you want that in preference to no access at all? These same voices claim that users of these limited services are being primed to sign up (eventually) for full Internet access.
Some countries have bravely disagreed. Chile has banned zero rating. Norway, which has had net neutrality guidelines in place since 2009, also bans the practice, saying that users have to have the right to decide what their Internet access is to be used for. Zero-rating also isn’t happening in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, or Japan.
But all other OECD countries have some flavor of zero rating in place. Here in the US, AT&T’s “sponsored data” program is an example of zero-rating sneaking into our nation, as is Sprint’s offer of inexpensive data plans that give access only to Facebook or Twitter.
Here’s the truth: Zero-rating is pernicious; it’s dangerous; it’s malignant. Regulators around the world are watching how the US deals with zero-rating, and we should outlaw it. Immediately. Unless it’s stopped, it’s not going to go away.
The aim of net neutrality is to preserve the Internet as the crucial open sidewalk for communication that it has become. The reason that the Chinese, Russian and Cuban governments fear an open Internet more than anything else is that it allows users to gather and speak to one another. But users of a walled-garden “zero-rated” Internet can’t even click links that go outside the garden. And they certainly won’t be launching their own apps. Linking and building are the fundamental attributes of the Internet — innovation and speech without permission — that must not be compromised away.
I’m not saying that all forms of discrimination by mobile carriers are illegitimate. Users today can buy subscriptions for different download throughput over a unit of time — 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps connections, for example — and the availability of these different products is not, in and of itself, a violation of net neutrality, because all data is being treated alike. Volume limits, or usage-based-billing, present a much harder question. They can clearly be abusive in a marketplace in which users have no or little choice of carriers and there is no relationship between the cost of providing that capacity and the volume limits being imposed.
Zero-rating, by contrast, is absolutely inappropriate. It makes certain kinds of traffic exempt from any data cap at all, or creates a synthetic “online” experience for users that isn’t the Internet. Traffic that is “approved” is allowed; other traffic won’t flow to users. That’s discrimination on the basis of the nature of the traffic itself, being carried out by the service provider — not by the user.
The pragmatists, and the carriers, say that it is worth allowing poorer populations around the world (now barred by the high cost of Internet access) to see part of the Internet. But the cost of such services is the future of the Internet. Those users may never move to “real” Internet access, satisfied with their “free” access to a walled garden of chosen services. And carriers will have no particular incentive to provide them with that open Internet access. Instead, vertical discrimination will become the norm: the Internet as cable TV.
In fact, zero rating certain services are anti-competitive in a way that even cable operators might envy. Can you imagine trying to launch a competitor to Facebook in a country where most of your potential customers will have to pay data charges for your service—while the incumbent Facebook is exempt?
Let’s close the digital divide. That’s possible, everywhere. The better approach for closing it is the adoption of policies that drive towards openness and competition — steps like requiring carriers to offer dark fiber services (unused capacity that retail providers can use to send information) that can be used by competitors as essential infrastructure. Policies requiring the sharing of basic infrastructure, in general, make sense in the world of high-fixed-cost communications lines. (Think basic street grid shared by many forms of transportation.) And digital literacy for non-adopters plus heightened awareness of how the Internet is relevant to their lives are clearly needed as well.
But zero rating is not just a competition issue. It’s also a human rights issue. Saying that walled gardens are “good enough” for poorer people is clearly destructive. As Josh Levy, the advocacy director of Access, puts it, “When the first billion people came online, and got access to the Internet, it wasn’t through zero-rated services. They got access to the full Internet. So I don’t see why we can’t continue to strategize about ways to get the second billion people online to using the full Internet.”
All compromise is based on give and take. But when it comes to fundamentals — including the earth-shaking idea of the Internet, which has made possible for the first time an open, global, interoperable platform for communications — there can be no compromise. Because then we would be surrendering, not compromising.
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The casting calls going out for Warner Bros. next Superman movie are quite brilliantly vague. I’ve learned today that they’re looking for a new female lead, but the information they’re giving is incredibly light.
I can tell you that she’ll be somewhere between twenty five and thirty three – or at least leave the impression of a woman in that age range, whatever that might be.
I can tell you that she needs to be physically strong. They’re specific about that.
And I can tell you that the discussion in some agencies who have been submitting actors for this role is that they’re sending up candidates for the role of Wonder Woman. They don’t know that it’s her, it’s just become their expectation, or at least a rumour that’s coloured their conception.
Warner Bros., as you might expect, are refusing to confirm this, even to the agents they’re negotiating with.
But it seems that they’ve also failed to deny it.
That’s very interesting. And I can’t imagine many other female roles would be such a closely guarded secret.
Though I guess it’s possible that this mystery role is the new villain. There’s certainly been no other casting breakdown that would relate to a baddie. Not yet. And they’re going to need one… aren’t they? Or will the title Batman vs. Superman stick, and actually be rather accurate?
I was wondering if the plan might be to introduce Wonder Woman in a smaller way in this next picture before leading into Justice League, not unlike the introduction of Black Widow in Iron Man 2 or Nick Fury popping up at the end of pick-a-Marvel-movie-any-Marvel-movie.
Knowing that this role has been pitched to agencies as a lead, however…
I’ll be keeping my pointy rubber ear to the ground.
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(CNN) -- Despite being allowed to tell her husband he won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, the wife of Liu Xiaobo was detained in her apartment in Beijing, China, according to a human rights group and her attorney.
Liu Xia has not been charged with a crime, but "appears to be under a de facto house arrest," said Beth Schwanke, legislative counsel for the U.S.-based group Freedom Now.
She was taken to see Liu Xiaobo in a prison several hundred miles northeast of Beijing, Schwanke said, and tell him of the honor.
Upon hearing he had received the peace prize, Schwanke said, Liu Xiaobo began to cry, and said, "This is for the martyrs of Tiananmen Square."
But upon return to Beijing, Liu Xia was not allowed to leave her apartment, Schwanke said. No one is allowed in, and her telephone is believed to be "destroyed," Schwanke said. Liu Xia has been able to post to some Twitter accounts, said Schwanke, who called the action "absolutely outrageous."
"Brothers, I have come back," said a Twitter post purportedly from Liu Xia. "I have been under house arrest since the 8th and don't know when I'll get to see everyone again. They broke my mobile phone so I can no longer make or receive calls."
"I saw Xiaobo, who learned about his winning the prize in prison on the evening of the 9th," she wrote. "We'll talk about the future later."
Since her husband was named as a 2010 Nobel laureate, Liu Xia has gained 1,000 new Twitter followers.
"Xia can't use her mobile phone anymore," tweeted Chinese dissident Wang Jinbo. "I got in touch through some other means. She can't leave home -- they've tightened the security outside." He said Liu Xia can tweet -- "a little freedom."
"Liu Xia is under enormous pressure," said Dr. Yang Jianli, a member of Liu Xiaobo's defense team and a human rights specialist with Freedom Now. "We hope that world leaders will immediately condemn this shameful act by the Chinese government and urge Liu Xia's immediate and unconditional release."
See more of CNN's special coverage of China
Beijing did not comment immediately on the report of Liu Xia's detention, and the official news agency Xinhua was silent on the subject.
On Friday, Liu Xia said she was packing to visit her husband under the surveillance of police officers, who promised to take her to visit Liu Xiaobo Saturday. She said she could not wait to see him to tell him he is this year's peace laureate.
Liu Xiaobo won the prize Friday, but news of the win has been blacked out in China, with no mention of it on Chinese media.
The same censorship applies to Chinese blogs, and authorities have blocked the Nobel Peace Prize section of the official Nobel website.
At least two international television networks -- CNN and BBC -- were blacked out as the Nobel committee announced the winner on Friday, and CNN's reports on Liu remained blacked out for most of the day.
Liu was sentenced in 2009 to 11 years in prison for inciting subversion of state power.
He is the co-author of Charter 08, a call for political reform and human rights, and was an adviser to the student protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
His wife called the Nobel Prize "an affirmation of what he has fought for."
Schwanke said Liu Xiaobo is doing well in prison -- much better physically than when he was held in solitary confinement. Mentally, he remains very strong, she said, adding that this prison sentence is his fourth and "he knows this is necessary to secure democracy and human rights in China."
Freedom Now attorneys, as Liu's international counsel, will leverage international political and legal support while his attorneys in China will continue to work on his behalf in Beijing, she said.
Liu Xiaobo's longtime friend Pu Zhiqiang said the prize may not help Liu right now, but it will have effects for the future.
"In the long run, it will leave a legacy that is sure to help bring democratic reform and freedom to China, that will far outlast Liu's life," Pu told CNN outside the gates of Liu's apartment complex.
The Chinese government was angry at the win, calling it "blasphemy against the peace prize" that could harm relations between China and Norway, where the Norwegian Nobel Committee is located.
"Liu Xiaobo is a convicted criminal sentenced to jail by Chinese justice. His acts are in complete contradiction to the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said.
Human rights groups like Amnesty International, world leaders such as U.S. President Barack Obama, and governments around the world all praised the awarding of the prize to Liu, with many calling on the Chinese government to free him.
CNN's Brian Walker and Steven Jiang contributed to this report. |
This statement is regarding the rejection of SegWit2x first and outright with other past and future situations taken into consideration
It is not possible to speak for every person in a community written only by the most vocal in a group, although, as do many other groups we exist to try and support and educate the local population. A prominent issue is the consistent misinformation and coercing of new people to use alternative consensus implementations which are simply incompatible with the current Bitcoin network.
Replay protection is an absolute requirement for any hard fork to be considered not a hostile attack on the network as any actor can cause confusion to these newcomers we are trying to support. No protection against this is unethical and against the entire ethos of these systems.
Wipeout protection is an absolute requirement for any hard fork. The same rules apply for newcomers on the alternative chain. People who buy into this system should have safe guards that the main chain will not reverse history.
If a hard fork is ever required, it will happen over an extended period of time. The time frame set for recent hard forks are unfeasible for any sort of network wide agreement. This is why many in the community consider them a new type of “pump and dump”. Declaring a new chain from the current UTXO set is an acceptable way to bootstrap a community as long as there is no deliberate misdirection of information and attempts to poach users under false pretenses.
To be clear, some or all of the above statements have concluded that each of the recent attempts to hard fork the Bitcoin network have failed in one regard or another (Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, and segwit2x).
For now and for the time to come we consider the Bitcoin Core client to be the reference client for how consensus works on the network.
Bitcoin Manchester |
Ashley Young is a concern for Roy Hodgson © PA Photos Enlarge
Ashley Young appears to be winning his fight to be fit for England's Euro 2012 quarter-final against Italy on Sunday.
Young, 26, was a fitness concern for coach Roy Hodgson after suffering a shin injury during the 1-0 victory against Ukraine on Tuesday.
The winder was hurt in a collision with Andriy Shevchenko, who came on as a substitute for the co-hosts in Donetsk and was booked for his challenge.
The Manchester United player was still suffering the effects of the injury on Wednesday, walking with a limp, but was reported as saying he was optimistic that he would be ready to face the Italians in Kiev.
Hodgson is now expected to have all 23 members of his squad available for selection as he prepares to take on Cesare Prandelli's side.
An FA spokesman said: "All 22 players [Jermain Defoe has yet to rejoin the squad after attending the funeral of his father] either trained or did recovery work."
Young played in all three games as England finished top of Group D thanks to victories against Sweden and Ukraine and a draw against France.
Meanwhile, Hodgson revealed that his squad had been stepping up penalty practice as they prepared for the possibility of a quarter-final shootout.
He said the vexed history of England and penalties - which includes two semi-final defeats in shootouts against Germany - meant "the past is going to weigh heavily".
"We have used the time after training sessions to regularly practice, and we'll obviously take it even more seriously now," Hodgson said. "You hope that, one day, it will make a big difference.
"But you can practice penalty shoot-outs until the cows come home - it's really your composure, your confidence, your ability to really block everything out and forget the occasion that means you score or don't.
"When you are working with the England national team, the past is always going to weigh heavily because everything we do today is being compared with something that went before."
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Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Toronto Maple Leafs prospect Andreas Johnson is off to a stellar start to his age-21 campaign with the SHL’s Frolunda Indians. The 20-year-old forward, who will turn 21 next months, is second on the team in points with 14, and is second to ex-Marlie Spencer Abbott in shots on goal with 42. Both of those marks rank him in the top-10 among SHL skaters. Not bad for a recent seventh-round draft pick.
Johnson is already on the radar for hardcore Maple Leafs fans, he was our seventh ranked prospect this past summer, but his game appears to have taken yet another leap forward this season. Should that change our assessment of him? How excited should Maple Leafs fans be about this guy?
The answer, quite frankly, is pretty damn excited. Johnson, as a former seventh-round draft choice, is basically found money. He’s got the speed and the offensive skills to be a pretty interesting NHL-level player in the not-too-distant future.
The point per game pace that Johnson is currently on, at his age, puts him in pretty solid company in terms of historical comparables. If we plug Johnson’s age and current production rates into the PCS model, we get some pretty astounding numbers. Essentially 40 percent of the players who were a similar build to Johnson and scored at a similar rate at the same age in the SHL managed to appear in over 200 NHL games. For their careers, these players averaged 55 points per season. Not too shabby.
The list of comparables includes a smattering of former late-round draft steals, most notably Henrik Zetterberg, Daniel Alfredsson and Patric Hornqvist. It also includes players like Andreas Dackell, Kristian Huselius, Samme Pahlsson and Patrick Thoresen.
Johnson’s early season success with Frolunda has him keeping some elite company in terms of his production rates, though we should note that the PCS tool may overrate the young, skilled forward. PCS rates offensive production as extremely important, which is well founded because it’s more predictive of future NHL success than anything else we’ve found, but as any NHL fan knows: counting stats need to be looked at in context.
As good as Johnson has been, we should note that he doesn’t lead his team in scoring (Henrik’s brother Joel Lundqvist does) and he doesn’t lead his team in shots on goal (Abbott does). He’s also playing second-line minutes overall, but power-play goals account for more than half of his goal totals so far. Finally, Johnson is playing on an offensive juggernaut in Frolunda. The Indians have, so far, played 14 games this season and they’ve won 13 of those contests. They’ve outscored the rest of the league by 15 goals! They have defensemen who are averaging a point per game.
PCS is a helpful tool and an interesting way of looking at prospects, but it doesn’t account for strength of team at this point. As impressive as Johnson has been this season, we may want to put away our Zetterberg, Alfredsson and Hornqvist comparisons and save them for another day.
The Maple Leafs signed Johnson to a three-year entry level contract this past June, and the first year of his contract won’t slide while he plies his trade for Frolunda. He’s expected to come over the pond to play for the Maple Leafs (or the Marlies) in 2016-17, according to James Mirtle of the Globe & Mail. |
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption WhatsApp is used by millions of Brazilians who spend almost double the time on social media as Americans
Mobile phone companies in Brazil have been ordered by a court to impose a block of the popular WhatsApp smartphone application for two days.
A court in Sao Paulo state made the order because it said WhatsApp had repeatedly failed to co-operate in a criminal investigation.
It is not clear if mobile companies will fully comply with the order.
Facebook owns the app. Its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said he was "stunned" by the "extreme" ruling.
WhatsApp is reported to be the most used application in Brazil, with about 93 million users.
The TechCrunch website says it is used by 93% of the country's internet population and is especially popular among young people and the poor who take advantage of its free text message and internet telephone service.
It says Brazilians spend almost twice as much time on social media as Americans.
Brazilians have taken to Twitter to express their anger at the suspension but also to joke about how dependent they have become on WhatsApp.
Image copyright Twitter Image caption Brazilians have been joking on Twitter about what their lives are like without WhatsApp
WhatsApp chief executive Jan Koum said he was "disappointed in the short-sighted decision to cut off access to WhatsApp, a communication tool that so many Brazilians have come to depend on, and sad to see Brazil isolate itself from the rest of the world".
Mr Zuckerberg was also highly critical of the ruling.
"This is a sad day for Brazil. Brazilians have always been among the most passionate in sharing their voice online," he wrote.
"I am stunned that our efforts to protect people's data would result in such an extreme decision by a single judge to punish every person in Brazil who uses WhatsApp."
Impact of the WhatsApp ban - Paula K, a Brazilian living in London
The blocking of WhatsApp in Brazil is extremely disappointing.
In a country where mobile providers charge a fortune for a monthly plan - not to mention the high cost of making international calls - the use of WhatsApp for both texts and internet calls allows expats like me to keep a direct line with family, friends or even colleagues back home.
It's worth remembering that Brazil already has a high cost of living - services and products often cost the same price as they do in the UK - but people often only a about a third of the wage they would here.
One of my friends who works for one of the major mobile providers in Brazil said it was advising people to download alternative apps such as Viber and/or create a group on Messenger to keep the communication flowing over the next 48 hours.
Local media said the order to suspend the services was related to a drug trafficking trial in Sao Paulo State.
The court tried to get access to a suspect's WhatsApp messages but the firm refused to share them, Folha newspaper reported.
The court says WhatsApp failed to comply with judicial orders in July and in August.
Judge Sandra Regina Nostre Marques finally ordered the 48-hour shut-down on Wednesday, after finding out that WhatsApp had persisted in ignoring its rulings.
She said the suspension order was being made under terms of the country's internet legislation.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption WhatsApp is also widely used by Brazilian business people
The move against WhatsApp comes as Brazilian phone companies have urged the government to restrict the use of free voice-over-internet services offered through WhatsApp.
The phone companies argue that the rise of WhatsApp has damaged their businesses.
Meanwhile other messaging services say they are benefiting from the temporary absence of WhatsApp.
One such company, Telegram, said on Twitter that more than 1.5 million Brazilian users had joined up since the court order was handed down. |
Odisha cabinet minister Jogendra Behera faced criticism from different quarters after his personal security officer (PSO) was seen tying his sandal straps during Independence Day celebration in Keonjhar on Monday.
Behera was the chief guest in the Independence Day celebration at the district headquarter town of Keonjhar and hoisted the tricolour. After unfurling the national flag his PSO was seen tying his sandal straps.
After the local news channels aired the video, the state Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises minister said, "I am a VIP. I have hoisted the flag, he (PSO) has not done it." The incident and subsequent statement of the minister faced criticism from many quarters including the civil society members.
"A government employee tying shoelaces of the minister shows existence of British rulers' mindset in Odisha," said Prahallad Singh, an advocate.
There was no comment by the government on the incident. |
A late Neri Cardozo winner sealed the title for Monterrey in a game that appeared headed for extra time.
Monterrey clinched its second straight CONCACAF Champions League title after losing 2-1 to Santos Laguna in the second leg of the final, but advancing via a 3-2 aggregate score.Monterrey will represent CONCACAF at the FIFA Club World Cup in December."Every one of these guys put in their little bit of effort," Victor Manuel Vucetich said. "This title has a special flavor to it."Santos came out of the gate firing, knowing it needed to overturn a 2-0 deficit from the first leg. The home side created a number of chances, but was denied several times by Monterrey goalkeeper Jonathan Orozco, who looked to be in fine form."Santos is a very deserving rival that put us in a bind and played their best soccer," Orozco said. "We were able to find ourselves with that goal that gave us the title. We came here with that intent, to go out and win. Santos pushed us back, they're a great rival, but we were able to do our thing."Just seconds before halftime, Santos found the opener thanks to a fantastic strike from Daniel Ludueña, who turned and fired past Orozco from the top of the box after some great build up.Santos leveled the tie on aggregate five minutes after the restart after Darwin Quintero beat two men down the right flank and crossed the ball for Oribe Peralta, whose sidefooted volley beat Orozco after a scramble in the box.Monterrey found a dramatic winner in the 81st minute when Neri Cardozo played a quick one-two with Walter Ayovi, collected on his chest and fired a deflected shot past Oswaldo Sanchez, who had no chance after a slight deflection off his own defender."We deserved it," Angel Reyna said. "It got tough, but thank God we were able to pull through it. I'm enjoying this moment."The goal gave Monterrey a 3-2 aggregate lead, but because it was an away goal, it virtually ended the tie, as Santos was left needing to score twice in the last 10 minutes."I hope that the fans go to the airport to greet the team," Humberto Suazo said. |
There was a time when the Fuerza Aérea Argentina (Argentine Air Force) was considered to be one of the best Air Forces in Latin America, if not the world. Created into its own independent entity out of the Argentine Army in 1945, the Argentine Air Force began a massive modernization program which saw them becoming the first country in South America to operate jet aircraft.This occurred when they took delivery of British made Gloster Meteors in 1947. As well as operating a formidable bomber force that was made up of Avro Lincolns and Lancasters, all of which were also acquired from Britain.In later years, Argentina went as far as attempting to develop their own indigenous jet aircraft with the aid of former Luftwaffe personnel and other German engineers. A program which resulted in the creation of the FMA IAe 33Pulqui II, making Argentina the first country in Latin America to develop its own jet aircraft and 6th in the world to do so. Even though the Pulqui never entered service (the Government had decided to purchase F-86 Sabers from the U.S. Instead.) , it still showed just what the Argentine Air Force was truly capable of and as the years passed, they continued to build up its fleet by adding newer and more advanced aircraft to its already impressive line up.But that all changed in the 1980’s, the Falklands War in 1982. Where in an attempt to shift attention away from their troubled economy, the Military Junta which ruled the Latin American country at the time, invaded the British Territories of East and West Falklands.Thinking that the British government (who had supplied Argentina with a number of military equipment in the years before the invasion) would be unable, if not unwilling, to commit military forces to retake the islands.The resulting conflict saw the Argentine Air Force sustain heavy losses, losing dozens of fighters, helicopters, cargo aircraft, and even two Canberra Bombers, the majority of which were shot down by Royal Navy and Royal Air Force Harrier jets.Many had believed to be no match for Argentina’s fleet of supersonic Mirage jet fighters.By contrast, the Argentine Air Force could only boast of one air to air kill when 2 IA-58 counter-insurgency aircraft shot down a scout helicopter during the battle of Goose Green. Even though both the air force and navy had gained some successes during the conflict, it still was not enough to secure a victory for Argentina as the British were able to retake the islands just after two months since the war began. It also did not help that a number of aircraft and equipment had been captured and shipped back to Britain after the Argentine surrender.The years following the war saw the Argentine military as a whole and especially the Argentine Air Force , took a sharp decline as the country’s economy worsened and traditional arms suppliers placed arms embargos on their former client.This saw the Latin American nation unable to procure new assets. After some of these embargoes were lifted in the 1990s and Argentina was able to acquire upgraded A-4s from the United States, the military still continued their steady decline throughout the decade and into the 2000s.Today, the Argentine Air Force is nothing more than a shadow of its former self. 2015 saw the Argentine Air Force retiring their remaining Mirage and Dagger Fighters, as their airframes had reached a point where they were no longer safe to fly.Leaving only their remaining fleet of A-4AR “Fighthawks” and IA-63 advanced jet trainers to fill the gap left by these aircraft. Both of which are unsuited for air to air combat and are largely outmatched by aircraft used by their neighbors Chile and Brazil. Even more so, a shortage of spare parts could also see their A-4 fleet being grounded in the near future.Recent attempts to acquire new aircraft such as the Chinese JF-17, the Swedish Saab Gripen (which is made with British components) and even secondhand Kifr jets from Israel have all failed due to either technological, political, or economic restrictions suffered by the Argentine government.Problems in the air force also extend to their fleet of C-130 transport aircraft, as their airframes are starting to show their age. These aircraft provide a vital component of the air force, as they are used to not only supply Argentina’s arctic bases, but also assist in supplying their peace keeping contingents in Haiti and Cyprus. Though these aircraft have undergone major upgrades, and Argentina has shown interest in acquiring new aircraft to replace the C-130s, it is unknown whether if they would be able to keep their current fleet flying for long, or even if they will have a transport wing as the economic situation in the country worsens.It is believed that in the years to come, the Argentine Air Force will cease to exist as a major military component of the Argentine Armed Forces and with an economy in shambles and embargoes still in place due to the Falklands war, it is still unknown whether if the Argentine Air Force will ever fully recover. It is possible that what was once Latin America’s most formidable air forces, maybe flying into the sunset for the last time. |
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Take This Fuzzy Nothern Spirit in the Face !
We always talk about Swedish bands in the scene, but not so much about their neighbors, The Finnish. Void Cruiser is one of those northern animals, and surprisingly, I find this band quite similar in terms of sound compared to their Swedish counterparts, think a good mix between Truckfighters, Lowrider & Dozer, attractive isn’t it ? 🙂
Overstaying My Welcome by Void Cruiser
How is the sound ?
Void Cruiser definitely have that Northern Touch. I’m not talking about that Retro Rock sound also famous in this part of the world, nop, here it’s more that heavier sound, characterized by a very singular energy only people of the North know how to do so well 😉
So yeah Void Cruiser didn’t skimp on the fuzz, the catchy riffs ala Truckfighters or Greenleaf, the heaviness of a good ol’ Lowrider or Dozer, and adding on top of that their own unique touch making them an interesting band to get your attention on.
Like I said, the Temperature Level is quite high on this record, indeed most of the songs have a fabulous heavy groove. Don’t be surprised then if you happen to see all your workmates starring at you bizarrely, you just fell into Void Cruiser world and had a great unconscious headbanging session 😉
Why is this album worth listening ?
Dat Fuzzy Northern Touch !
Catchy, Heavy and somewhat Original, I’m sure you’ll like it fuzzers !
In what situation you should listen to this album ?
I think Void Cruiser is meant to be seen live, at least I hope these guys are even better in a live setting than in studio ! |
In statistics, you rarely care about the outliers. If the data set is big enough, these are naturally occurring, but generally we want information about trending in the population as a whole. Outliers are something to be discarded.
In sports, outliers are everything.
In summer 2015, I was lucky enough to head up recruitment for Brentford football club in West London. We had to rebuild everything that McParland and Warburton took with them, and we had to do it from scratch, which meant scouting, market knowledge, player fit, etc. It was a monumental task, but we ended up with a really good recruitment team of Ricardo Larrandart, Nikos Overheul, Mark Andrews, and Robert Rowan, and a couple of part-time scouts including tactical superstar Rene Maric.
From the point we knew Warbs was leaving until the close of the summer transfer window was one of the craziest and most exciting times of my life. We were both researching and applying statistical football theory to the transfer market on the fly.
How well would players from various leagues translate to the English Championship?
What was the lowest price we could pay for players and still get them?
Could we rebuild an ageing squad into something that could potentially challenge for a promotion place again while playing an attractive, positive style?
This is one of the stories from that summer…
We knew we definitely weren’t getting Alex Pritchard back on loan. After finishing in the Championship Team of the Season in 14-15, Spurs wanted to keep him in training camp and then likely loan him out another rung up the ladder. There was the briefest chance we could get Dele Alli, but that quickly dissipated as he wowed Poch in training. This left a big hole for us in the 8/10 position.
Our first choice was to get Arsenal’s Jon Toral back on loan. Toral was tremendous in limited minutes for Brentford in the playoff season, and his profile was unlike anyone else we could get in our price range. I sat next to him and talked him through what I saw from the numbers and what his age corollaries were in the data set. He seemed smart and interested.
Unfortunately, somehow Marinus dragged his feet on whether Toral was the right fit. He was slow to make up his mind or get in touch with the player. Jon apparently was guaranteed starter minutes at Birmingham, and POOF! What seemed like a great fit flew right out the window, leaving us without a first-choice AMC. Owner Matthew Benham had negotiated to bring in Andy Gogia from Bundesliga 3’s Hallescher on a free in the spring. He could fill the role, but a bit like Alan Judge, we thought he would be better as a creative passer and dribbler out wide. (We also had Judge as a potential 8 because his defensive numbers were so good, but that never quite worked out.)
We could not get Pascal Gross or Ziyech, and no one else was super exciting.
Faced with a ticking clock and a very low budget that we would prefer to spend elsewhere, I put this Austrian guy no one had ever heard of back into the scouting queue.
The data suggested he was a solid attacking midfielder who could dribble and had the great ability to create shots for teammates. He also had reasonable tackling stats for a guy who primarily attacked, and scouting agreed that he was decent at pressing.
Now this was clearly a risk. At no time did we ever think, “Yes, this guy will be great in the Championship.” Instead we thought, “For the right price and in the right role, he certainly shows enough potential to be a solid performer in England.”
Everything in transfers comes down to money. Are you paying the right price for the talent and the risk involved? In Brentford’s budget, half a million pounds is a big deal, and a difference of £500K in valuation will kill a deal. In a Premier League budget, half a million pounds is chump change, and you’d be an idiot for missing out on a player for that small an amount.
The numbers lined up and scouting was positive, so we needed to get in touch with his club and his agent to find out if we could afford him. That’s where the Chris Palmer story came from. [Scroll to the bottom here.]
An eventual deal was sealed for low six-figures, and we had ourselves a low-cost wildcard of a 10 with potential upside. Even if Kersch was a bust, he was still probably cheaper than anyone we could have signed from League One, and for a club like Brentford, that mattered.
The Real World
Kerschbaumer showed up at training camp in amazing shape, and tested for the highest vO2 max in the group. Dude could run for days. It was all very exciting back then.
Unfortunately, things in football go weird sometimes. Brentford went through three head coaches that season and by the end of it no one really knew he was supposed to play 10 except the recruitment guys. He basically never played at AMC until the dead end of the season in 15-16.
Brentford had a horrible winter run, and things looked very grim. The club announced the closing of the academy and also the Football Analytics Team – my group – was made redundant as part of cost-cutting efforts. We had already finished most of the recruitment workload for the 16-17 season, and the perception was that the squad we had recruited was struggling mightily.
Now the truth was that we intentionally built a youngish squad with the blessing of the owner because that is what we could afford, and also so that they could potentially grow and improve together. As long as your recruitment is good, this is a good plan.
Then a funny thing happened. Brentford had an amazing run-in. From April 2nd at Nottingham Forest until the close of the season, they only lost one match, against eventual promoted side Hull. They also won six and drew two, most of which was without player of the season Alan Judge, who broke his leg in a nasty tackle at Ipswich. Scott Hogan finally came back from two different ACL injuries to be the hottest scorer in the league. Yoann Barbet started regularly with Harlee Dean in central defense, displaying an impressive passing range from his left boot, and a team that could not win a match from Christmas through February suddenly could not lose.
Brentford finished 9th. Without the poor start from the Dijkhuizen era, they might have been right back in the playoff mix. Additionally, they did it with a massive surplus of transfer fees. Worst case scenario, performance suffered a little but the club was now making big money in the transfer market.
Lost in this was Kerschbaumer’s performance. He subbed on when Judge broke his leg at Ipswich and set up Sam Saunders for the first Brentford goal. He also created an early goal for Hogan against Fulham, and two more in the final match of the season at Huddersfield.
Then the summer came and seemingly Brentford once again forgot about Kerschbaumer. This wasn’t unfair – Brentford had a lot of competition for the midfielder roles, and Romaine Sawyers, Ryan Woods, Nico Yennaris, and Josh McEachran shared the bulk of the minutes. Injuries bit throughout the season though, and Kerschbaumer finally started to see more playing time, once again in the spring. Since March 18th, Brentford have lost once, drawn twice, and won five times. And once again, KK is out there racking up assists.
Why the long story about a bit player in a small Championship team?
The answer is because Konstantin Kerschbaumer is a major outlier. Combine his minutes across two seasons and you get the following:
2320 minutes, 1 goal, 12 assists.
That’s an assist rate of about .47 per 90, which is in the top 3% of footballers. Kersch also doesn’t take set pieces, meaning nearly all of his assists come from open play. To give you an idea of how unusual this is, in the last four seasons in the Championship nine players have posted 12 assists or more, all with more minutes and nearly all of them taking set pieces.
Assists are really valuable – I view them basically the same as goals. Fans still have a very different perspective if a player scores half a goal a game than if he creates half an assist a game, there’s a decent case to say they shouldn’t. The bulk of Kerschbaumer’s minutes also came during that first year, many of which were not in his natural position. That’s a tough situation to succeed in, but his numbers in this one particularly valuable area continue to be crazy.
Is Kerschbaumer a success? I have no idea. It would be hard for Brentford to lose money on his transfer should he leave the club, so if that’s how you grade success, I guess it’s a check mark. He’s also produced exactly what I thought he could when we recruited him. But… there are questions about whether he does enough on the pitch when he plays, and I can certainly see why those exist. I think he’s still learning, and I hope he ends up with starter minutes next season, preferably in a system that plays him in his natural AMC spot. Like most data scientists, I want more data and preferably a lot of it.
Part of me roots for the players we recruited like they are my children. I want them to succeed no matter what. There’s also a part of me that is scientifically evaluating their successes and failures to see what worked, and what I need to do better the next time I have a chance to dabble in the transfer market.
Anyway, the combination of Kersch’s crazy assist rate in the run-in and Fabregas’s continued creative skills for Chelsea made me think back to four years ago, when I first started writing about player stats. So much has changed in my approach, but remarkably, so much is still similar. I think a lot of the early ideas I latched on to as mattering ended up being very valuable. That said, I have made plenty of mistakes along the way, both inside and outside of football.
Making mistakes – and learning from them – is most of the fun.
Ted Knutson
@mixedknuts
[email protected]
*Thanks again to Matthew Benham for the chance to do all of this while learning on the fly. Looking at the quality in the squad right now, I think we did pretty well.
Related
Article by Ted Knutson |
J.M. HIRSCH
AP Food Editor
Until recently, I was convinced the triumvirate of perfect pizza toppings was tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil. Simple. Classic. Delicious.
Then I encountered a maple-bacon-butter pizza and discovered new depths of pizza perfection and appreciation. But first, a disclaimer seems warranted. If this pizza was on a menu, it most certainly would not have one of those happy little heart icons next to it. Digest at your own risk.
I was attending an outdoor festival being catered by a pizza food truck, Mountain Fire Pizza based in Gorham, N.H. Their menu listed the maple-bacon pizza, and it held no appeal to me. My bacon-loving 8-year-old, however, had other ideas. So we ordered one.
12 Gallery: Recipes: Food fit for Fall
The sauce-free pizza arrived sprinkled with bacon and dripping with butter. It was, simply put, breathtakingly delicious. And I knew I had to recreate it.
Predictably, the Internet abounds with recipes for pizza made with maple-cured bacon. But the pizza I'd had went well beyond that. There clearly was maple syrup or sugar involved, as well as an ample helping of butter to keep things interesting. So I started playing.
In the end, the pizza I created was refreshingly simple. A basic crust topped first with mozzarella, then cooked bacon, them more mozzarella, and finally dollops of maple compound butter (made by blending softened butter with granulated maple sugar). It's as good — and unhealthy — as it sounds.
___
MAPLE-BACON-BUTTER PIZZA
Start to finish: 30 minutes
Servings: 4
3 tablespoons butter, softened
3 tablespoons granulated maple sugar
20-ounce ball prepared pizza dough, room temperature
1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
12 ounces bacon, cooked and crumbled
8-ounce ball fresh mozzarella, sliced
Heat the oven to 500 F. Lightly coat a baking sheet with cooking spray.
In a small bowl, mix together the butter and maple sugar until well blended. Set aside.
On a lightly floured surface, carefully roll out the pizza dough to about a 14-inch circle. You may need to use your hands to stretch the dough if rolling alone doesn't work. Transfer the dough to the prepared baking sheet.
Sprinkle the grated mozzarella cheese evenly over the dough. Top the mozzarella with the bacon, distributing it evenly over the pizza. Arrange the slices of fresh mozzarella over the bacon. Using 2 spoons, scoop and dollop the maple sugar butter evenly over the pizza. The dollops do not need to be spread; they will melt in the oven.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the crust is puffed and browned and the cheese at the center of the pizza is lightly browned. Let the pizza rest for 5 minutes before slicing.
Nutrition information per serving: 1,000 calories; 600 calories from fat (60 percent of total calories); 67 g fat (27 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 130 mg cholesterol; 68 g carbohydrate; 2 g fiber; 10 g sugar; 37 g protein; 1,440 mg sodium. |
“If sugar replaces metal as a contrast agent in the body, it can also have a positive psychological effect and make patients calmer,” says Linda Knutsson, senior lecturer at Lund University in Sweden.
A tumour’s properties can be examined by injecting a small amount of sugar into it, and then measuring how much sugar the tumour consumes. The more sugar the tumour consumes, the more malignant it is.
Linda Knutsson is working with a team from Johns Hopkins University in the USA, which has developed a new imaging technique for magnetic resonance tomography. The collaboration has resulted in the new imaging technique being combined with the testing of natural sugar as a replacement for metal in contrast agents.
There is no similar clinical research in this area. It is the first time a non-synthetic contrast agent has been used in human magnetic resonance tomography examinations, and the results are promising. The uptake of sugar is higher in the tumour than in healthy tissue according to the results of tests carried out by Linda Knutsson and the Johns Hopkins team in the USA. The tests were carried out on three persons with a brain tumour and four healthy persons and published in the research journal Tomography in December last year. A more detailed study on a large group of patients is to commence soon in Lund.
“Metal-based contrast agents cost more than sugar-based agents. Accordingly, this could lead to a reduction in medical care costs,” says Linda Knutsson.
A disadvantage is that sugar-based contrast agents cannot be used in examinations of diabetes patients.
Researcher and Senior Lecturer Linda Knutsson
Download article: Dynamic Glucose-Enhanced (DGE) MRI: Translation to Human Scanning and First Results in Glioma Patients. By Xiang Xu, Nirbhay N. Yadav, Linda Knutsson, Jun Hua, Rita Kalyani, Erica Hall, John Laterra, Jaishri Blakeley, Roy Strowd, Martin Pomper, Peter Barker, Kannie W. Y. Chan, Guanshu Liu, Michael T. McMahon, Robert D. Stevens, and Peter C.M. van Zijl (2015). Tomography
For more information, Contact
Linda Knutsson, senior lecturer
Lund University, Department of Medical Radiation Physics
Tel: +46 (0) 46 17 85 47, or +46 (0) 76 785 44 24
Email: linda [dot] knutsson [at] med [dot] lu [dot] se
Peter C.M. van Zijl, Professor
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Departments of Radiology, Oncology and Biophysics & Biophysical Chemistry
Email: pvanzijl [at] mri [dot] jhu [dot] edu |
Jon Stewart is back, and he wasted no time going after President Donald Trump.
Appearing on the “Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday night, the former “Daily Show” host made some unusual wardrobe choices in honor of the new president.
“The president sets men’s fashion,” Stewart said. “I saw the inauguration, super-long tie, dead animal on head.”
So wearing a dead animal on his head -- and a super-long tie -- Stewart proceeded to read what he claimed were some upcoming executive orders. One of them was to make bullshit the official language of the United States.
“I, Donald J. Trump, have instructed my staff to speak only in bullshit,” Stewart read. “And by the way, none of that ‘Sure, I’ll speak bullshit at work but at home I’m going to use facts and real information.’ No! Bullshit all the time. Immersion: It’s the only way to be fluent.”
Stewart also found what just may be the one saving grace of the Trump presidency. |
The Iranian-Saudi Proxy Wars Come to Mali
BAMAKO, Mali — In a country where two-thirds of the adults are illiterate, it is a privileged few who have the chance to study at the Mustafa International School.
Located in the western suburbs of Bamako, a few blocks from the U.S. Embassy, the college-level seminary has just 180 students — 150 men and 30 women. They engage in an intensive curriculum that encompasses theology, history, philosophy, Arabic, Farsi, and world religions. They work in the school’s computer suite, equipped with 12 desktop computers, and get three meals a day at the seminary’s expense. And they do it all under the watchful eyes of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, former supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose likeness gazes down on them from his portrait, which hangs above the bookshelves of the school’s library.
These young students are part of Mali’s tiny Shiite community: a group of about 10,000 families nationally, in a country where the Sunni majority makes up an estimated 95 percent of the population of 15 million.
They’re also the stuff of Saudi nightmares.
Historically, West Africa has had a tolerant approach to religious differences, shunning — at least until recently — the sort of Sunni-Shiite sectarian rivalries that have plagued the Middle East in favor of a patchwork of beliefs that incorporate Sufism, Maliki Islam, and traditional animist practices. But Mali — home to seminaries with ties to Iran, like the Mustafa International School, and where diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks this summer reveal that Saudi Arabia is scrambling to fund its own competing schools, mosques, and cultural projects — provides a case study in how the enmity between Sunni Islam and Shiite Islam may be being spread, via Iranian and Saudi proxies, to places thousands of miles from the Middle East.
Unlike most of Mali’s private schools and universities, which charge hefty fees, the Mustafa International School selects students from outside the capital and gives them free room and board. Few of the students hail from Mali’s elite families; rather, they are selected via tests administered to Shiite youth across the country. The highest achievers are offered the chance to continue their study in Iran.
The school is able to afford such generous support for its students because it is backed by an Iranian university in Qom, a city considered holy by Shiite Muslims and famed for its Islamic learning. The state-run University of Qom provides funding and sets the school’s curriculum, which covers various schools of Islamic thought, as well as Shiite jurisprudence.
“The teaching is very good,” said Adam N’Diaye, a 22-year-old student at the facility who recently converted from Sunnism. He aims to become a teacher when he graduates. A quick survey of his classmates revealed that most of his colleagues are aiming to become imams and missionaries.
It’s unclear how many schools and seminaries in Mali have ties to the Islamic Republic or just how close these ties are. There’s also no direct evidence to indicate that schools like the Mustafa International School are necessarily part of a larger effort by the Iranian government to make Shiite converts. Officials at the Iranian Cultural Center in Bamako declined to give any details about the number of educational institutions to which they have ties; the Saudi-based paper Al Yaum has previously reported that the cultural center runs 10 schools in Mali. Other sources place the number around 13.
Iran and Mali have a warm, if limited, relationship. When Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visited Bamako and Timbuktu in 2010, he spoke in glowing terms about solidarity between the two countries and signed a raft of agreements on development aid and Iranian investment in agriculture and extractive industries. The Mustafa International School’s director, Mohamed Diabaté, who studied in Iran and maintains links with clerics there, makes appearances on Malian television to talk about his understanding of Islam. (He argues that the Tidjaniya school of Sufism common across West Africa has roots in Shiite, rather than Sunni, teaching.)
The presence of Shiism here isn’t something Saudi Arabia is taking lightly. Among the nearly 60,000 diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks on June 19 are a slew of documents detailing the kingdom’s fear of a “rising tide of Shiism” resulting from proselytization on the part of Saudi Arabia’s rival in the Middle East, Iran. Cables detailing specific Iranian charities, schools, and media outlets from Kazakhstan to Spain — as well as vague fears of “Shiite activities” elsewhere — show that Saudi diplomats see Shiism not only to be a vile heresy, but a movement inseparably tied to Iranian political clout. And even the smallest Shiite community is considered a threat.
“Despite the Iranian Embassy’s efforts [in Mali], there hasn’t been a lot of uptake, but it is possible that their thinking could spread in the future in a broader way and their Shiite activities could gain a base,” reads a cable from the Saudi Embassy in Bamako to the Foreign Ministry in Riyadh in early 2009. It recommends funding rival projects — mosques, schools, cultural programs, proselytization, and summer courses — to “strengthen the growing position of the [Saudi] kingdom” in Mali and promote Saudi Arabia’s image as “the protector of the noble Islamic faith.” It adds that this should be done “in a way that promotes peaceful coexistence between different ideologies and counters the Shiite spread.”
Mali offers a potentially rich source of converts to Shiism. “People in Mali love the family of the Prophet,” Diabaté said. The Tidjaniya Sufi order, which has a long history throughout West Africa, honors members of the Prophet Mohammed’s family as pure, devout individuals. It’s a small leap from that to the belief, fundamental to Shiism, that members of the Prophet’s family should have taken over leadership of the Islamic community upon his death. It’s a link that has not gone unnoticed in Riyadh.
“Iran is exploiting the Sufis’ love for the family of the Prophet in order to show Iran as a great Islamic nation that is an enemy of the infidels and supports all the Muslims,” reads the cable. “Many Malians don’t realize the truth of Shiite thinking: fanatical, racist, and the enemy of other Islamic doctrines.”
But though the cables ring of paranoia, the notion that Mali’s tiny Shiite community has outsized political significance and links to Tehran seems to have found traction among some Sunni locals.
“There are not even 1 percent of the population who are Shiite in Mali. But there is a political presence, run by the Iranians,” said Mahmoud Dicko, the president of the High Islamic Council of Mali and one of the country’s most powerful clerics.
Dicko was among 30 senior Malian clerics who signed a 2008 open letter in support of influential Egyptian Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s outspoken stance against Shiite evangelism. The letter warned of “the dangers of the rising tide of Shiism,” which aims to “turn Sunni societies Shiite, undermine their states, and impose Persian hegemony over them.”
Mali has raw memories of religious conflict. In 2012, an alliance of Tuareg separatists and Islamists linked to al Qaeda invaded the country’s northern half and imposed sharia law before being ousted by French forces. But a low-level insurgency has been rumbling on ever since. Militants have targeted the Malian army, U.N. peacekeepers, and foreign aid workers with drive-by shootings and roadside bombs. The extremist group Ansar Dine claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a popular restaurant in Bamako in March and the killing of three soldiers in a village near the border with Mauritania in June.
Despite this, for most Malians the phenomenon of religious extremism is a foreign imposition. The fighters involved in the events of 2012 were from outside Mali, and the violence was an exception in a long history of religious tolerance here. Across West Africa, Sunni Islam, Sufism, and traditional animist practices have rubbed shoulders in relative peace for centuries.
One of Mali’s most prominent Baptists, Pastor Mohammed Yattara, is open about his apostasy, something that would be unthinkable across the Middle East and North Africa. Yattara converted from Islam to Christianity when he was 16. When he told his family he had become a Christian, his father disowned him and threw him out of the house. Yet the two stayed in touch until his father’s death, and Yattara’s act of leaving his faith has had few consequences for his personal security.
Among the Muslim majority, Sufi traditions and animist rituals remain important elements of religious practice. In poorer communities, few imams speak Arabic or are educated in the finer points of Islamic philosophy. Some fear that by funding schools, mosques, and much-needed infrastructure, foreign powers are creating divisions that once did not exist in this country, on the periphery of the Arab world.
Many in Dicko’s camp see institutions such as the Mustafa International School and the Iranian Cultural Center as a vehicle for Iranian political influence — an accusation Diabaté refuted, despite pictures of Khomeini in the school office, in the library, and on the back of his car.
“We will not accept the politicization of Islam,” he said. But he admitted that Shiites in Mali look to Iran for support in the face of Salafism. “Every state that represents a sect needs to protect its flock.”
Diabaté, sitting in a small office adjacent to the prayer hall and wearing the long brown robe and white turban of a Shiite scholar, explained how he “used to hate Shiites.” But in the late 1980s, he became part of a group of young scholars who participated in debates with Hassan Hambraze, then Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Bamako and son of a prominent Iranian cleric. In 1988, Hambraze was also responsible for sending a group of Malian students to the first Shiite school in West Africa. Diabaté converted and went on to study in Iran. On his return he became a prominent leader within Mali’s nascent Shiite community.
Today, he speaks of the country’s more hard-line Sunni leaders in conspiratorial terms: “The Salafi thinking is well known. They want to get into power and are planning for that. They plan to take control of the Islamic community.” After a pause, he added: “But we are not staying still. Everyone has their methods.”
Those methods seem clear: to proselytize and offer converts access to a good education and opportunities to travel and work in Iran. The Saudi strategy in Mali is more opaque (widespread rumors among Malians include tales of enormous checks coming from the Gulf to fund prominent Salafists). The diplomatic cables have thrown some light on Saudi activities in the country, which include funding for schools and preacher-training courses run by the Islamic University in Madinah and Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.
Mali’s minister for religious affairs, Thierno Diallo, says he recognizes that Malian governments have long turned a blind eye to foreign-backed religious projects. Despite the country’s deeply religious population, Mali’s secular constitution means that the state has kept mosques at arm’s length. And while the government is aware of large sums of money entering Mali from unknown sources, it has few resources to reliably track them.
“It’s not documented,” he said, “and there’s no transparency. That’s a serious problem.”
Neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia has explicitly promoted violence in Mali. Diabaté, along with his Sunni counterparts, makes it clear that “Shiites, like everyone else, know that extremist groups in the north show no mercy.” Yet the creation of previously nonexistent sectarian identities for political ends leads to divisions that become associated with political agendas.
Imam Baba Diallo, another member of the High Islamic Council of Mali, said he wants to organize interfaith dialogue between the different sects but has yet to find funding. He looks grave as he talks about the potential consequences of inaction.
“If we fail [to heal the divide], the next war will be between Sunni and Shiite,” he said.
(This reporting was supported by funding from the International Reporting Project.)
Photo credit: JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images |
× Missouri unemployment rate drops slightly
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) _ A new report shows Missouri’s unemployment rate dipped slightly last month while the state lost 3,100 nonfarm jobs.
The state Department of Economic Development said Tuesday the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped to 6.3 percent in August from 6.5 percent in July. The August rate was also down from 6.6 percent in the same month last year.
Missouri’s seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment last month dropped to about 2.78 million, about a 3,100-job decrease from July. Losses hit the durable goods manufacturing, health care and social assistance industries.
The seasonally adjusted civilian labor force of more than 3 million also grew by about 1,000 in August. People with jobs and others who are unemployed and looking for work are included in those numbers. |
Image copyright PA Image caption Tony Hall said he would leave it to Chris Evans and the Top Gear team to decide what worked best for the show
The BBC's director general has said he hopes Top Gear's "edge" and "sense of danger" will continue when the show returns with Chris Evans hosting.
Tony Hall said he was "thrilled" Evans was replacing Jeremy Clarkson, who was sacked after punching a producer.
He also said he hoped the new Top Gear would appeal to existing fans and bring in people who were "put off by part of how the programme was in the past".
"I'd like to see some women in the presenting team," he added.
Top Gear's close-to-the-knuckle humour and high-octane stunts are all part of the attraction to the show's 6.5 million viewers.
But it has a long history of controversy under its previous stewardship, including accusations of racism and inappropriate comments.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption BBC chief Tony Hall says Top Gear should maintain "a sense of danger" under new presenter Chris Evans
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Lord Hall said he believed Evans would be able to reinvent the show as he knew "what makes a good programme".
"I hope that edge will be there and that sense of danger will be there. I need to leave it to Chris and the team to make up their mind about what they think is going to work best," he said.
"You've go to trust the talent and give them confidence to do the things they want to do."
Lord Hall also denied knowledge of claims Clarkson was offered his job back as the host of Top Gear, after the presenter told The Sun an unnamed BBC executive had "asked if I'd come back" last week.
"I have no idea what that's all about," the director general said.
"I made it absolutely clear when I said 'we're going to part company' that was it."
Clarkson's final episode of Top Gear will be broadcast on 28 June at 20:00 BST on BBC Two. |
My editor asked me to try all the sex stuff from Fifty Shades of Grey in one weekend. This is my story. Dun dun.
Saturday, 10 a.m.:
The Deflower
I wake up and I'm ready to do the sex because this is often how my boyfriend and I usually start out our Saturday mornings. Let's get naughty, Mr. Grey.
What you're supposed to do: Put your knees in the air like Anastasia did when she lost her virginity. Have him thrust into you very slowly about four times. Then, have him shift onto his elbows while he rests his weight on you and continues to thrust quickly.
What we do: We get down to the deed and it's…well, it's normal missionary sex? It's Saturday morning and we're doing it. So that's pretty cool and not that unusual. Sex is cool. I dig it. So far, so good. Fifty Shades/almost the entire world knows what they're talking about!
Saturday, noon:
The Anastasia Demand
Now, we're not normally twice-in-a-day people but every now and then, usually on vacation, we rise (or he rises? Credit where credit is due!) to the occasion.
What you're supposed to do: From behind, have him thrust deeply into you at an extremely slow pace. After several thrusts, he should pull back and wait until you demand he continue. Thrusting should then recommence.
What we do: This is just doggy-style sex. And it's literally doggy-style because I am barking orders at him. This is not something we generally do or even like, so the slow thrusts were punctuated by giggles. Which is definitely sexy, but maybe not BDSM sexy. It's more like goofy sexy. As in the dog, Goofy. The Disney character.
Saturday, 3 p.m.:
The Grey Tease
Three times in a day?! This is so sexy! And tiring! But mainly sexy!
What you're supposed to do: Sip wine from his mouth, then have him pour some wine in your belly button and try not to spill it. Have him tie your wrists together and lie on your bed with your hands above your head. Have him kiss you from head to toe, then go to your clitoris and perform slow, teasing cunnilingus. After that, he should thrust into you hard and fast.
What we do: Our version of this starts with me drinking wine from his lips like a little baby bird receiving sustenance from its mom. After that humiliating bit of business, he pours wine in my belly button, which is dumb because I hate (and I mean HATE, all caps) to waste wine. Then he fingers me while I try not to spill the wine out of my belly button. It's ridiculous. Do you know how little wine fits in a belly button? It's like one-third of a thimble of wine. It's so ridiculous that I comment on this out loud, and it kind of annoys my boyfriend because I'm already forcing him to do this. I think he extra-relishes that he gets to tie me up next, because he laughs like a madman while he does it. He then goes down on me as instructed and it is divine. I love oral sex so much; if you look up happiness in the dictionary, it is just my boyfriend going down on me as Joshua Jackson feeds me chocolate bonbons and I give the camera a thumbs-up.
After that, he finishes off with some missionary style sex and I'm like, yawn, whatever, I gots mine. So, you know, your usual Saturday at 3 p.m. thing.
Saturday, 5 p.m.:
The Frisky Flip
Four times in one day? What is this? The Olympics? All I want to do is eat cake and watch Gilmore Girls, but I somehow feel too dirty for either of these things.
What you're supposed to do: After foreplay, have him flip you over and put your butt in the air with your knees on the bed. Have him spank you, then thrust deeply into you.
What we do: We agree to take a doughnut break after this one, so I'm newly invigorated. Let us do this. I'll admit it: When my boyfriend says, "Have you been a naughty girl because you want to eat all the doughnuts?" and then spanks me, I am totally into it. As he transitions into taking me from behind, I imagine he has a giant cruller for a face, and I like it. I make a note to discuss this in therapy.
Saturday, 11 p.m.:
Mr. Grey Nipple Rub
We're not going as fast on this Fifty Shades of Weekend Boning list as I'd like but we couldn't bring ourselves to have any further sex for a few hours. We are only human!
What you're supposed to do: For this foreplay move, you should be braless with your arms around his neck. Play with his hair while he does the same to your nipples and kisses your neck.
What we do: This is just me standing in front of the boyfriend as he squeezes my boobs from behind and says "honk." I'm starting to think he's not taking this that seriously.
Saturday, midnight:
The Erotic Crop
I have to be honest: I am exhausted. I am so tired. So very tired.
What you're supposed to do: Have him tie you up, blindfold you, and drag a riding crop from your stomach to your clitoris, stimulating you there until you finish.
What we do: I feel like we were going along with some pretty normal activities and then BAM! Have him masturbate you with a whip. Full disclosure: I don't have a crop or a whip or anything fun because I am boring AF. However, I do have a feather duster and, after washing it and drying it with a blowdryer while catching up on the Kardashians, we used that. My boyfriend proceeds to tickle me all over with the feather duster because he's a sadistic SOB and also appears to be more into this than I thought. Finally, he attempts to use it to get me to come and, while I must admit, I do get a little turned on, it fails to get me all the way there. I can't imagine a hard piece of leather would do a much better job but I am intrigued and add it to my Sexual To-Do list—I keep it in Google Docs; when I die, please burn my computer and also the entire Cloud—before falling fast asleep.
DAY ONE ORGASM ROUNDUP
My orgasms achieved: 4
My boyfriend's orgasms achieved: 3
Sunday, 9 a.m.:
The Bed Post Bend
Picture this: Our alarm goes off and my boyfriend sits straight up in bed and goes, "I'm up, I'm up, what do we have to do now???"
What you're supposed to do: While tied to the bedposts and lying on your stomach, lift your butt up and have him enter you from behind. Grip the bedpost tightly and push back against him.
What we do: Forget all that nonsense I spouted about it being a new day and a new dawn; I am tired as hell. I am thankful that, yet again, my boyfriend has to do all the work. I lie on my stomach and he does his thing as I try to stay awake and say things like, "Ooh, baby, this is so good," and he says stuff like, "Please don't patronize me." It's very sexy.
Sunday, 10 a.m.:
The Grey Quick Thrust
Oh, great! Just what you want after 24-plus hours of solid boning: a quickie!
What you're supposed to do: In a rush? Have him hold your hands above your head and pin your arms down with his elbows. His legs should pin yours down too as he enters you. Proceed to thrust quickly together.
What we do: We just have sex as fast as possible so we can watch Non-Stop. It's new on HBOGo and we both love Liam Neeson. I'm like, "Baby! Think about Liam Neeson! Saving hella people! In the air! It's Taken BUT IN THE AIR," and he's all, "Uuhhhhghhhh, I'm cominggggg." And that is exactly how it all went down, hand-to-god.
Sunday, 11 a.m.:
The Ben Wa Experience
Because we slacked yesterday, we have to pick up the pace Sunday. Do you know what it's like to get up at 11 a.m. on a Sunday to stick Ben Wa balls inside yourself? I do.
What you're supposed to do: Bend over and grab your ankles, then have your man insert Ben Wa balls into your vagina. Walk around (or get water, like Anastasia did) with the balls inside of you. Then lie across his lap with your butt facing up. He should rub your butt, moving from your cheeks down to your clitoris. The balls inside you, along with his touch, will create an intense sensation.
What we do: Please just trust me when I give you this advice: Don't try to stick them all in at once, and go slowly. Also, buy the smallest size and always have your insurance number ready. Not that I had to do that. But it was touch and go for a few minutes. It feels like you have tiny balls in your vagina, which you do, so you're just doing one long kegel to keep them in there. If that sounds like a sexy thing to you, then get your ass some Ben Wa balls immediately.
Sunday, noon:
The Desk Domination
I just popped some balls out my vagina so whatever, just bend me over and let's do this.
What you're supposed to do: Like Anastasia, take control of your man and tell him you want to have him on the desk. Lie on your back, and let him enter you, thrusting quickly.
What we do: We clear off the kitchen table that his mom bought us (sorry, Judy! Please forgive us.) as I lie back and he goes to town. We give up after a few thrusts as we both have nothing left except a desire to sleep, perchance to dream.
Sunday, 4 p.m.:
The Two Touch
Oh, Anastasia. Sometimes you are very bad at sex talk.
What you're supposed to do: Get naked in front of your man and have him guide your hands down the sides of your body as he slides his leg between yours. He should rub his hands over your clitoris one finger at a time. Then, take over and start to rub yourself in front of him. Have him take back over from behind, as he kisses your neck and enters you.
What we do: I call this "the sexy TSA screening." He slides his hands up and down my body and I'm like, "Oh, Mr. Officer, let's see what I have hidden inside my clitoris!" This is actually pretty sexy and fun and a nice change of pace. After all sorts of feeling up and mutual stimulation, he enters me from behind and we have sex until we both come because we are CHAMPS.
Sunday, 6 p.m.:
The Wet Ride
You know what sounds lovely? A relaxing bubble bath with scented candles and Enya. But some dreams come with too high a price.
What you're supposed to do: While in the bathtub, straddle your man. You should ride him, letting him watch you go up and down. Then have him take over as he lifts you, thrusting faster.
What we do: So, two things: (1) Water does not lube make. Water actually dries everything out. So there's that. This feels like a sex tip written by someone who has never had sex. (2) I think you need a pretty big bathtub for this shiz to work properly, because my standard-sized model made it look like two (sexy) beluga whales (sexily) doing it in a (sexy) teacup. I'm just saying, you need to scale up if you're moving around.
But Mr. Grey wants sex in a bathtub and so that's what Mr. Grey will get. My boyfriend (my Mr. Grey, without the abs, the creepy room, or the terrible, passive-aggressive personality) lay down on the bottom of the tub, and I slip and slid on top of him, trying to keep his penis inside of me as the water washed away all natural lubrication. Let me put it this way: I was not grinding on the wood, grind-grinding on that wood. Because our bathtub is not built for this and we have been sexing for two days straight, my boyfriend is unable to lift me as we're screwing and even if he could, at this point, he's a shell of the man he once was. His hips are thrusting but there's no light behind his eyes. We give up two minutes in and high-five, pleased to have made it that far.
Sunday, 8 p.m.:
The Tongue on Top
I honestly don't know if we're gonna make it. That's all I can think about right now. I say the Serenity Prayer and laugh until I cry.
What you're supposed to do: Lie down as your man performs oral on you. When you feel close to climaxing, have him stop. When penetration begins, wrap yourself around him as he thrusts steadily.
What we do: I lie down and my man performs oral sex on me. This is not his best showing, which is not surprising because both of our bodies are made of actual Jell-O at this point. No matter, I am fast asleep. I awake only when he asks if we can have sex and I'm like, "Sure why not? We've come this far." He half-heartedly thrusts until climax and then we both sleep for two hours. I will say, had we both not been so beaten down by Fifty Shades of Get Me Outta Here, this is something we would have enjoyed. No shame on this tip, total shame on me and this ridiculous project. I regret everything.
Sunday, 10 p.m.:
Fifty Shades of Flogging
We wake up in a stupor, freaking out that it is midnight, but no! Phew! We are down to the WIRE, but we're gonna make it! We're gonna make it! Praise the lord and pass the ammunition, GOOD GOD, WE'RE GONNA MAKE IT!
What you're supposed to do: Have your man tie you up and blindfold you. Put on headphones. Have him cuff your arms and legs to the bed. Start playing music as he lightly slaps your breasts with a flogger. Then have him kiss down your body, and then start performing oral sex. When you're about to climax, have him remove your ankle restraints as he lifts you up so your back is arched and only your shoulders are on the bed. He should then thrust into you very slowly, gradually increasing his pace.
What we do: My boyfriend ties me to the arms of the bed like he means it. (I did put him through this so if he just left me for dead, it would be fully understandable.) We do the oral sex into the slight variation on missionary sex and then I realize that we've done the same thing, like, 50 times in the past two days. For all its bluster, Fifty Shades is just a bunch of oral into missionary. And I like it. I mean, it's, like, the easiest lady sex ever. It's all work for him—my boyfriend is just a dead-eyed thrusting robot at this point—and all enjoyment for the lady. Maybe this is one of the reasons it resonates for so many women? It's all about us getting ours, and maybe that's something we don't get enough of in our day-to-day. Or maybe we just like reading about two weirdo hotties going at it. I can't say. What I can say is that on my next vacation, I look forward to just reading erotica on the beach, no sex required. And isn't that the goal of Fifty Shades? Or no?
DAY TWO ORGASM ROUNDUP
My orgasms achieved: 4
My boyfriend's orgasms achieved: 2
You should also check out:
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Chicago activist and videographer Gregory Koger was found guilty on August 26th on three counts of trespassing, resisting arrest and battery on a police officer, despite being dragged, beaten and maced by police . Koger was recording with his iPhone a statement by New York-based activist and radio host Sunsara Taylor who was making an informal announcement at the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago just prior to a lecture event from which she had been suddenly disinvited Koger was convicted without bond and was sent immediately to Cook County Jail. Koger's case has been aggressively pursued by the Cook County State's Attorney and has also been a cause célèbre of Chicago and national activists rallying to his cause , with ramifications related to police surveillance and media making. Koger's sentencing is scheduled for September 8th, and Koger could face up to three years in jail. Koger's attorney has promised an appeal. |
QUEBEC — A crucifix that is prominently displayed in the room where members of the Quebec national assembly hold their regular sittings is staying put.
The Liberal government has reaffirmed its unshakable attachment to the religious symbol which was placed there in the 1930s by then-premier Maurice Duplessis.
It is located on the wall directly behind the Speaker’s chair in what’s known as the legislature’s Blue Room.
The decision to keep the cross comes just days after the Liberal government adopted controversial legislation on religious neutrality.
Quebec solidaire, a small opposition party, tabled a motion last week that would have left it up to the office that manages the legislature to decide the fate of the religious object.
But the Liberal caucus decided after meeting Tuesday to reject the motion and the idea of taking down the crucifix.
Caucus chair Filomena Rotiroti says there was a consensus among Liberal members, with many saying the cross is an intrinsic part of Quebec’s history.
Francois Legault, the leader of the Coalition for Quebec’s Future, agreed the crucifix should stay.
“We have a Christian heritage in Quebec and we cannot decide tomorrow that we can change our past,” he told reporters.
“I don’t seen any problem keeping it.” |
Donald Trump’s denial of collusion with Russia suffered yet another blow on Friday when it emerged that his son failed to disclose the presence of a former Soviet military officer at the now notorious meeting.
Who is Rinat Akhmetshin? The mystery man at Trump Jr's Russia meeting Read more
Rinat Akhmetshin – who claims he served in a counter-intelligence unit but never formally trained as a spy – told the Associated Press that he attended the meeting with Donald Trump Jr, which was billed as part of a Russian government effort to boost Trump’s election campaign.
The latest revelation came as news reports suggested there were at least eight attendees at the meeting, which occurred at Trump’s eponymous New York tower shortly after he effectively clinched the Republican presidential nomination. The presence of additional participants contradicted Trump Jr’s assertion this week to the Fox News host Sean Hannity that all of the information about the meeting had been publicly disclosed.
Late Friday, the identity of a seventh person in the room was revealed to be Anatoli Samochornov, a Russian-born American translator who was working with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer initially at the center of the meeting. Veselnitskaya had previously informed the New York Times she was accompanied by a translator but would not provide his name. Ken Vogel, a reporter at the New York Times, revealed Samochornov’s identity during an appearance on MSNBC.
But it was the presence of Akhmetshin, now a pro-Moscow lobbyist, that raised new questions about the controversial meeting and its purpose. Akhmetshin dismissed reports that he has ties to Russian intelligence agencies as a “smear campaign”, but was described by the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee as an expert in “subversive political influence operations often involving disinformation and propaganda” this year.
In an interview with the AP, Akhmetshin said he had accompanied Veselnitskaya to Trump Tower in New York, where they met an interpreter who also participated in the meeting in June 2016. He told the news agency he had learned about the meeting only that day, when Veselnitskaya asked him to attend, and turned up in jeans and a T-shirt.
The AP reported: “During the meeting, Akhmetshin said Veselnitskaya brought with her a plastic folder with printed-out documents that detailed what she believed was the flow of illicit funds to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Veselnitskaya presented the contents of the documents to the Trump associates and suggested that making the information public could help the Trump campaign, he said.
‘This could be a good issue to expose how the DNC is accepting bad money,’ Akhmetshin recalled her saying.”
According to Akhmetshin, Trump Jr asked Veselnitskaya if she had all the necessary evidence to supporting her claims. But when Veselnitskaya replied that the Trump campaign would need do further research, Trump Jr lost interest.
“They couldn’t wait for the meeting to end,” Akhmetshin told the AP, adding that he did not know if Veselnitskaya’s documents were provided by the Russian government.
The meeting was also attended by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Paul Manafort, then chairman of the Trump campaign. Akhmetshin said he recognised Manafort because they worked in “adjacent political circles” but never together.
He told the AP that the meeting was “not substantive” and he “actually expected more serious” discussion. “I never thought this would be such a big deal, to be honest.”
The meeting had been brokered by Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist whose clients include the Russian singer Emin Agalarov, an acquaintance of the Trump family.
Profile Donald Trump Jr Show Hide Born 31 December 1977 in Manhattan 31 December 1977 in Manhattan Career After brief stint bartending in Aspen, he moved back to New York to join the Trump Organization, supervising Trump Park Avenue and other projects. He took an interest in other family enterprises in later years, appearing as a guest adviser on his father’s reality television show The Apprentice and as a judge of various Miss USA pageants. After brief stint bartending in Aspen, he moved back to New York to join the Trump Organization, supervising Trump Park Avenue and other projects. He took an interest in other family enterprises in later years, appearing as a guest adviser on his father’s reality television show The Apprentice and as a judge of various Miss USA pageants. High point Just before the news of his meeting with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, he was riding high as executive director of The Trump Organization and one of the president’s closest confidants. Just before the news of his meeting with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, he was riding high as executive director of The Trump Organization and one of the president’s closest confidants. Low point On Tuesday 11 July 2017, he produced the most damning evidence yet in the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling in the US election, catapulting himself on to the international stage with emails showing he knowingly met with a Russian lawyer claiming to have “dirt” on his father’s rival. On Tuesday 11 July 2017, he produced the most damning evidence yet in the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling in the US election, catapulting himself on to the international stage with emails showing he knowingly met with a Russian lawyer claiming to have “dirt” on his father’s rival. He says “I think I probably got a lot of my father’s natural security, or ego, or whatever … I can be my own person and not have to live under his shadow. I definitely look up to him in many ways – I’d like to be more like him when it comes to business – but I think I’m such a different person, it’s hard to even compare us. His work persona is kind of what he is. I have a work face, and then there’s my private life,” – Trump Jr to New York magazine, 2004. “I think I probably got a lot of my father’s natural security, or ego, or whatever … I can be my own person and not have to live under his shadow. I definitely look up to him in many ways – I’d like to be more like him when it comes to business – but I think I’m such a different person, it’s hard to even compare us. His work persona is kind of what he is. I have a work face, and then there’s my private life,” – Trump Jr to New York magazine, 2004. They say “It’s a do-anything-you-can-to-win world that he’s part of, and his eagerness to meet with this lawyer, who was very explicitly described as having information that came from Russian government sources – there’s no mystery there. There’s no veil. There’s not even one veil. Her name wasn’t mentioned but everything else was very explicit and he leaps at it. That’s all part of this all-that-matters-is-winning, there’s winning and there’s losing, that’s it. That’s the value system and in that way, he very much echoes his father.” – Gwenda Blair, Trump biographer, to the Guardian, 12 July 2017. “It’s a do-anything-you-can-to-win world that he’s part of, and his eagerness to meet with this lawyer, who was very explicitly described as having information that came from Russian government sources – there’s no mystery there. There’s no veil. There’s not even one veil. Her name wasn’t mentioned but everything else was very explicit and he leaps at it. That’s all part of this all-that-matters-is-winning, there’s winning and there’s losing, that’s it. That’s the value system and in that way, he very much echoes his father.” – Gwenda Blair, Trump biographer, to the Guardian, 12 July 2017.
Asked about Akhmetshin’s presence, Trump Jr’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, told NBC News: “The person was described as a friend of Emin’s and maybe as a friend of Natalia’s ... He is a US citizen. He told me specifically he was not working for the Russian government, and in fact laughed when I asked him that question.”
Futerfas added: “I have absolutely no concerns about what was said in that meeting.”
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian president Vladimir Putin, told reporters on Friday: “We don’t know anything about this person.”
Trump Jr and Veselnitskaya have claimed that the 20-minute meeting was dominated by the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 US law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. In retaliation, Putin halted American adoptions of Russian children.
Q&A What is the Magnitsky Act? Show Hide Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer who investigated a massive $230m tax fraud in 2007.
After he revealed the scam, Magnitsky was arrested by the same officials whom he had accused of covering up the racket and was imprisoned. He died in jail after being denied medical treatment. Russia accused him of committing the fraud himself and even put him on trial posthumously.
After a long campaign by his associates, the Magnitsky Act was passed by Congress in 2012, banning entry to the US and freezing assets of officials believed to have been involved in Magnitsky's persecution and death. Russia responded by banning a list of US citizens it deemed hostile to Russia, and blocking the adoption of Russian children by US citizens – a controversial move that led critics to suggest the Kremlin was punishing Russia’s most vulnerable children.
In March, Akhmetshin was named by Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, as lobbying against the Magnitsky Act along with the firm Fusion GPS, “which was also involved in the creation of the unsubstantiated dossier alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians”.
Play Video 1:06 President Trump defends his son during presser - video
Grassley wrote in a letter to the justice department: “It is particularly disturbing that Mr Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS were working together on this pro-Russia lobbying effort in 2016 in light of Mr Akhmetshin’s history and reputation. Mr Akhmetshin is a Russian immigrant to the US who has admitted having been a ‘Soviet counterintelligence officer’.
“In fact, it has been reported that he worked for the GRU [military intelligence] and allegedly specializes in ‘active measures campaigns’, ie, subversive political influence operations often involving disinformation and propaganda. According to press accounts, Mr Akhmetshin ‘is known in foreign policy circles as a key pro-Russian operator’, and Radio Free Europe described him as a ‘Russian “gun-for-hire” [who] lurks in the shadows of Washington’s lobbying world’.
Grassley complained that both Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS had failed to register as foreign agents.
Akhmetshin “was even accused in a lawsuit of organizing a scheme to hack the computers of one his client’s adversaries”, Grassley wrote.
According to court documents filed with the New York supreme court in November 2015, which were first reported by the Daily Beast, a Russian mining company alleged that Akhmetshin hacked into its computer systems and stole private documents as part of an effort to target them in a smear campaign. The allegations were eventually withdrawn.
Donald Trump Jr: from childhood struggles to global notoriety Read more
Samochornov, the translator, portrayed himself as largely a bystander to the meeting. Although the interpreter would not confirm his attendance, citing nondisclosure agreements, he told the website HuffPost: “I’m a professional freelance interpreter and I can’t talk about any of my clients.”
“This is my livelihood and I hope you can be sympathetic to the predicament I find myself in,” Samochornov added.
Samochornov has served as a translator for US government agencies, including the state department. His views on social media painted a picture of a progressive, who has been supportive of single-payer healthcare and stricter gun laws. Samochornov has indicated an apparent distaste for Republicans, posting video clips critical of conservatives.
Friday’s revelations deepen the crisis at the White House after a tumultuous week. Emails released by Trump Jr show that he was told by Goldstone that the meeting was part of a Russian government attempt to interfere in the election, and that Trump Jr responded gleefully instead of alerting authorities.
Goldstone had told Trump Jr that the lawyer had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr, whose version of events has shifted multiple times, says this failed to materialise and he wrapped up the conversation quickly. Trump Jr failed to mention Akhmetshin’s presence in a series of statements and an interview this week in which he insisted he was being fully transparent.
Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the report about an alleged former Russian counter-intelligence officer being present, “if accurate, adds another deeply disturbing fact about this secret meeting”.
He added: “Donald Trump Jr’s denial of any such meetings, his misleading initial representation that it dealt only with adoptions – a statement evidently approved by the White House – and his later admission that the whole purpose of taking the meeting was to receive the support of the Russian government in the form of damaging information about Hillary Clinton paint a portrait of consistent dissembling and deceit when it comes to the campaign’s meetings with Russian officials and intermediaries.”
Joel Benenson, a former senior adviser to the Clinton campaign, told the MSNBC channel: “We are, in real time, living through a case study of crisis mismanagement. The fact that every day we are learning something that is appalling is shameful. From the time this started unfolding, even before he spoke out, he was changing his story.” |
A Queen’s University business school graduate, who served as president of the Queen’s Social Investment Initiative Club, quietly pleaded guilty Wednesday to defrauding the organization while he was a student here.
Bafode Fadiga, 23, was given an absolute discharge — which means he has no record of criminal conviction — in a deal previously worked out between his Toronto lawyer, Rob MacDonald, and the local Crown attorney’s office. But it was only put into effect by Justice J. Peter Wright after Fadiga put together $18,253.89 in restitution for the student club and agreed to make a $1,000 donation to Kingston’s court diversion program before heading back to Toronto.
Fadiga pleaded guilty in Kingston’s Ontario Court of Justice to a single count of fraud under $5,000. MacDonald told the judge his client could have faced multiple counts, but it was part of the resolution agreement to limit it to one.
He also disclosed that it was important Fadiga receive an absolute rather than a conditional discharge because his business career requires the ability to travel. U.S. border services, the defence lawyer told Justice Wright, don’t necessarily view a conditional discharge as a clean record.
Assistant Crown attorney Elisabeth Foxton told the judge that Fadiga was president of the Queen’s Social Investment Initiative Club between April 2013 and May 2014.
The club invests with entrepreneurs in low-income markets, who don’t have access to affordable seed money but whose ideas have the potential to create employment in their communities. Foxton told the judge involvement by Queen’s School of Business students is “an aid to learning.”
It was discovered, however, that there were a number of expenditures during Fadiga’s term as president that were not above board.
Foxton cited $5,391.67 for food and alcohol paid out of club funds and 15 money transfers that went directly to Fadigo.
She told Justice Wright that $600 directed to a “David McIntyre” actually paid Fadiga’s rent for May 2013, and 11 transfers totalling $11,250.87 were directed to accounts held by Fadiga in different names.
He had access to several accounts, she said, as well as the club’s group account, from which he made numerous e-transfers.
The total loss during his year as president, in transfers, fees and purchases, Foxton told the judge, was $18,253.89.
Defence lawyer MacDonald suggested that one of the transfers, cited — $1,011.35 to MADE Clothing of Toronto — actually did benefit the group and suggested that club rules gave the president discretion to spend club money on hospitality. But “certainly not to line his own pockets,” he conceded.
He told the judge “Mr. Fadiga had to work so hard to get into Queen’s Business School” and “this whole affair has put such a black mark on his record.” A criminal record, he said, would have “killed his career.”
According to MacDonald, his client was unemployed for a significant amount of time. But he said “this is an individual who does not have a criminal record and has done everything he could to earn back every dollar.”
Justice Wright accepted the deal the lawyers put forward as a joint submission. But addressing Fadiga directly, he said: “I have to ask, what were you thinking.”
Fadiga took a moment to answer and then replied: “I was thinking I’d be able to get the money back to the club without getting into trouble.”
Justice Wright gave him six months to pay up — although MacDonald said he already has the restitution money, in full, in his law practice trust account.
Then the judge told Fadiga that, given his ethics, he might want to reconsider career paths and suggested banking may not be his best option.
[email protected] |
Ivanka Trump, daughter of President-elect Donald Trump, walks through the lobby of Trump Tower in New York with her husband, Jared Kushner, on Nov. 18. (Mike Segar/Reuters)
Future first lady Melania Trump will remain in Manhattan when her husband takes office, but incoming first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, are reportedly planning to make the move to Washington.
They are house-hunting in D.C., CNN reports, a move that underscores Kushner’s importance in the Trump White House, where he is expected to take a senior leadership role.
Ivanka Trump is no stranger to Washington: She studied at Georgetown for two years and has spent plenty of time here since, heading up her father’s redevelopment of the Old Post Office building into a luxury hotel complex. She says she loves visiting Dumbarton Oaks, and she’s been spotted at the Palm with D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, with whom she’s become friendly.
The couple has three children, the oldest of whom is 5 — meaning the couple’s relocation plans might include some school visits.
And the relocation of the glamorous young couple raises questions about what role Ivanka Trump will play. Donald Trump had indicated that he planned to place his significant business dealings in the hands of his adult children, including Ivanka, one of his closest confidantes.
The Post could not confirm the CNN report, and a Trump Organization spokeswoman said only that the company would be “providing updates on the corporate structure and other details next week.”
“Ivanka has no intention of taking a formal role in the administration,” the spokeswoman said, though “she plans to be an advocate for issues she cares deeply about. The team is working hard on the final stages of vetting the structure that will be put in place in leading the Trump Organization to avoid even the appearance of any conflict of interest.”
In addition to her role at the Trump organization, the elder Trump daughter runs her own fashion line. And with Melania Trump still in residence at Trump Tower, would that mean that Ivanka would act as de facto FLOTUS, much the way presidential daughters have stepped in throughout history when their fathers were widowers or their mothers indisposed?
Other topics that will no doubt be bandied around the city’s holiday-party circuit: Which neighborhood will the couple choose? And which Washington hotspots (other than those in the Trump hotel, of course) will they haunt?
This post has been updated. |
In 1999, armed with a brand new copy of Metrowerks Codewarrior and a PowerMac running Mac OS 8.5.1, I wrote a basic implementation of Minesweeper to test out the Powerplant application development environment. It’s the oldest project of mine that I’ve kept, so I wanted to see if I could get it running again for the first time in 17 years.
There’s no Swift or Objective-C code in this article but there are disk-eating koalas, deliberately misspelled cities, Zernike polynomials, Cocoa software (but not the Cocoa you’re thinking of), resource forks, master pointer blocks and in the end, I finally earn the admiration of my family.
The 1990s
The Internet came to Australia in the late 1980s and reached my home town in 1989 when AARNET connected the University of Melbourne with the Australian National University.
Not that I noticed at the time. I was out of the country for a few years working as a famous movie star (or something else; I don’t know it was a long time ago). However, I did first read about the Internet in 1989 in Clifford Stoll’s book “The Cuckoo’s Egg”. Around 3 years later I was finally shown by a friend’s older brother how I too could gain illicit access to Internet computers: you just walked into one of the libraries on university campus and sat down at any computer; no login required.
There are dozens of different cover designs for this book. Mine looked like this.
The library computers all had Fetch (a disk-eating koala and FTP client that delivered low quality shareware mirrored from the University of Michigan in “.sit.hqx” format), NewsWatcher (a Usenet client for flame wars and 23 uuencoded parts out of 45), MacGopher (a rodent in the family Geomyidae that delivered menus containing menus containing menus containing – actually, I never made it that far) and an oddball new program called Mosaic (a program written at the Andreessen Center for Supercomputing Champagne that specialized in drawing 75% gray backgrounds behind “under construction” logos).
Fetch, NewsWatcher, MacGopher and Mosaic
Thusly blessed by early access to the World Wide Web, I had no choice but to start a career as a part time web developer while still in high school; first plain HTML, then Perl, then PHP/FI (two steps forward, one step back). I never really enjoyed web development but it helped pay my way through university with a little left over to buy a PowerMac 5500/250. Apple of the 1990s being what it was, there were countless different computers that shared the name “PowerMac 5500” but the version I bought was charcoal black and had a built-in TV tuner, making it even cooler than the Quadra 840av that I had lusted after a couple years earlier (although it shared a similarly ridiculous GeoPort modem).
PowerMac 5500/250 “Director edition” with TV Tuner
Doomed development environments
Initially, I was still programming the PowerMac 5500 using the old copy of Think C 5 that I’d been using since 1991.
This was the Think C icon (in System 6, all icons were black-and-white). Only now do I realize it’s a starfield because earlier versions were named Lightspeed C; it made absolutely no sense at the time.
Think C was where I learned C and C++ (or whatever passed for C++ in 1991) but I don’t know where any of that code went. Away? Eaten by a grue? It’s gone.
By 1998, Think C 5 was woefully outdated (Symantec and Norton Utilities had merged and been ruined by going full anti-virus) and I needed something else. Apple’s development offering at the time was MPW, the “Macintosh Programmer’s Workshop”. According to some, it was the “primary environment for developing serious Mac programs” but I never really used it. It wasn’t free at the time and it was barely more than a glorified “make” script and command prompt. After using Think C for many years, the idea of programming without a proper IDE seemed like a serious regression (a principle I still maintain).
I briefly dual booted BeOS on my PowerMac and used it as a C++ development environment. It came with the simple but effective “BeIDE” C++ development environment. I had not developed for either NeXTStep or Win32 at the time but in retrospect, the BeOS APIs were like a weird mashing together of NeXTStep and MFC with a few Classic Mac OS and Unix ideas. You had the main application APIs named “Application Kit” – like NeXTStep’s AppKit but with “B” prefixes instead of “NS” prefixes. The core event loop resembled Win32-like window message handling. Under it all, your application was built from a number of “.rsrc” resources – like those in Mac OS – that were linked into the executable. And the whole thing ran in a vaguely POSIX environment with access to a bash shell.
BeIDE, taken from Programming the Be Operating System
At the time, BeOS was amazing – a cold boot to desktop in 15 seconds in 1998 was unbelievable – but Apple had passed over BeOS for something called NeXT (the right decision, in retrospect, although I disagreed at the time) and the rats were already leaving the ship. An operating system can’t survive without users.
I don’t know where my BeOS code went but I assume that like all BeOS code, it didn’t survive the transition to Mac OS X.
While using BeOS, I noted the release of Metrowerks CodeWarrior 1.5 for that platform which claimed to be a more “powerful” IDE than the default BeIDE. I never tried it on BeOS but Metrowerks released an update for the Mac, “CodeWarrior Pro 2”, so I gave that a go. Codewarrior had features I’d never seen before: a graphical class browser, an up-to-date C++ compiler, excellent layout editor “Constructor”, an IDE integrated resource manager “PPEdit” with a wide set of resource editing tools, and a user interface with a sense of style and use of colors other than gray (although, obviously, still plenty of gray).
CodeWarrior’s project window, taken from CodeWarrior Pro Introduction
For at least 3 years between 1998 and 2001, I loved CodeWarrior. I still fondly remember the box with yellow and black construction theming, the “Blood, sweat, code” tagline and the huge leap forward it represented in development tools for the Mac. Motorola (who acquired Metrowerks) completely fumbled the Mac OS X transition (also the PowerPC G4, the Iridium network, the ROKR phone and everything else since the 1980s) and Mac programmers largely moved to Apple’s Project Builder. I still miss CodeWarrior’s IDE; there were aspects of its user-interface in 1998 than were better than any major IDE before or since.
The CodeWarrior CDs came in these custom plastic and cardboard cases.
Application frameworks
It’s a bit strange to think about a time when the libraries bundled with the operating system didn’t really include a standard application framework and apps needed to include their own. To be clear, I’m talking about libraries like AppKit/UIKit that perform basic application lifecycle stages, coordinate document creation and persistence, handle the main event loop, handle event dispatch and offer a library of reusable views and controls. In the 1990’s and earlier, these things were not a part of the operating system. Every application had to handle it all for themselves – or bundle a framework that could do it.
The first such framework on Mac platforms was MacApp – an Object Pascal framework originally developed under Larry Tesler. Of course, Larry Tesler has a long history in software, including a long stint at Xerox Parc with Alan Kay. He also worked on Stagecast Creator – the kid friendly application development environment that was originally called “Cocoa” when it was at Apple until Larry left Apple and took the development environment with him (minus the name) and Apple reused the name “Cocoa” for some other project.
Stagecast Creator, the development environment formerly known as Cocoa
My first efforts at programming for the Mac in C involved typing out an application framework named “Skeleton” from a book that I’ve long forgotten (numerous frameworks at the time used the same “Skeleton” name so it’s hard to work out, now, which book I actually read). The whole process was complicated by the fact that I had never seen C before so when I encountered compiler issues, I tended to add & and * sigils to parameters, or just arbitrarily cast my pointers, until the compiler shut up and I was left to wonder what caused the erratic and crash-prone result. This was before memory protection, so when I say “crash”, I mean I needed to reboot the whole computer – it was a painful learning process. C’s use of an asterisk in the declaration (e.g. SomeType *somePointer; ) to define a pointer but asterisks elsewhere (e.g. *somePointer ) to dereference that pointer remains one of the most newcomer hostile syntax decisions I’ve ever encountered in a language (I should have gone with Object Pascal – its pointer syntax even looks like a smiley ^_^ ).
Skeleton was enough for me to write my first few applications. One that sticks in my memory was a version of Minesweeper. It was 5000 lines, all in a single “main.c” file and contained no resources or assets since I didn’t really understand those things (I drew the artwork pixel by pixel in C). The code is long gone but I assume it was flawless.
I had clearly learned everything there was to know about C so I moved onto C++. The Think C environment I was using included the Think Class Libraries (TCL). I spent more time learning C++ than learning about TCL itself. While I remember reading the TCL manuals, the chapters that remain in my mind were those that talked about “Object Oriented Programming” as though it solved all problems but then immediately segued into the infamous “diamond inheritance” problem and discussions about cars that are also planes (some things never change).
I can’t find an image of the actual Think C manuals. They used the same red-white-and-black styling as the disks but there were multiple tomes, each of which was heavy enough to crush an elephant. These things were delivered in boxes that doubled as miniature bookshelves but were still dwarfed by Apple’s [at least] 6 volume Inside Macintosh series.
Armed with C++ and TCL, I half-finished numerous other programs through the 1990s, each more flawless than the last. But as 7 years of System 7 drew to a close in 1998, it was time to start fresh. This time with PowerPlant, the application framework bundled with CodeWarrior.
I haven’t kept all my CodeWarrior/PowerPlant projects but I have kept some. Maybe one day I’ll try to get my engineering final year project working again; the enticingly named “On Image Analysis Using Zernike Moments”. It was the best rotionally invariant orthogonal polynomial image recognition Mac app that year but the time might not be right to bring it back, just yet.
Now’s not the time for a Zernike moment.
Instead, I want to look at the first program I wrote with PowerPlant: a “re-imagining” of my earlier flawless masterpiece; a Minesweeper implementation. Here’s hoping that in the 7 years since my earlier Minesweeper implementation, I’d learned basic pointer syntax.
PowerPlant
I need to get PowerPlant building before I can try to build a PowerPlant-based app.
Fortunately, PowerPlant ended up open source. Freescale (the Motorola spinoff that took CodeWarrior with it) open sourced PowerPlant under a BSD-style license in 2006. The PowerPlant Frameworks project is largely abandoned but it exists and worked through the first few Mac OS X versions. But not through all Mac OS X versions. PowerPlant requires the Mac OS X 10.6 SDK or earlier to build – it won’t build against the 10.7 SDK and certainly won’t against the 10.12 SDK.
The last versions of Xcode to include the 10.6 SDK were the Xcode 4.3 series for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. You can’t run any of these on Sierra but you can open the bundle and copy the “Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk” folder and place it at the same location in your Xcode 8’s bundle.
That’s not enough to get the 10.6 SDK to work. You also need to edit the MinimumSDKVersion in the “Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Info.plist” file in your Xcode bundle.
Okay, Xcode is set up. Now to create a project file. I have no idea which files PowerPlant needs and which are optional extras so I threw everything into a single Xcode target, set the build to a 32-bit Intel build, 10.6 SDK, added “$(SDKROOT)/Developer/Headers/FlatCarbon” to the header search paths, set “Always search user paths”, “Compile sources as C++”, arbitrarily chose one of the prefix headers, set the C++ dialect to C++98 and the standard library to libstdc++ and hit build to see what would happen.
Oh hi there, OpenTransport! I remember you! How are things going? Oh, how sad; you stopped existing after Mac OS X 10.3? Fine, everything networking gets removed from the build.
Apparently, I’m trying to build against an old library from the 1990s I don’t have named “MoreFiles”. Even though versions of it still appear to exist on GitHub, it’s optional so I’ll disable it.
The debugging functions are causing problems so they go too.
Dozens of switch statements appear to have variables defined within case labels which is bothering clang. I’ll need to wrap them all in their own scopes.
Gestalt is driving me crazy by telling me that it doesn’t return the correct OS version past Mac OS 10.9 so I strip it out and hard-code its result. That’ll fool it.
A dozen little changes later and everything appears to work.
A Carbon version of Mines
The Mines application itself is around 1800 lines of code split across just 4 classes. It’s at the “small”, if not “tiny” end of the program size scale.
However, unlike PowerPlant – which had been updated for Mac OS X – I had not tried to run or compile the Mines application since Mac OS 8.5.1 back in 1999. I’ve never ported any apps from classic Mac OS to Mac OS X so I don’t know how smooth it will be.
It turns out that the only more-than-one-line code change I needed to make was to replace ::StandardGetFile (the standard open file dialog from classic Mac OS). This function is not a part of Carbon and needs to be replaced by ::NavGetFile . I dutifully made a 15 line change here only to subsequently realize that this code isn’t used at all (the application doesn’t save files so opening files does nothing).
There are a few other minor compatibility changes I made. ::GetDateTime to CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent , .rgnBBox to ::GetRegionBounds but on the whole everything appears to compile without serious drama.
Resource forks
Of course, upon running, the program immediately aborted trying to find the required resources.
Classic Mac OS resources weren’t anything particularly strange: they were really just a way of serializing a number of binary blobs into a single file. Each resource was uniquely identified by a type code and an index.
ResEdit: probably the most widely used development tool of the classic Mac OS era.
None of this represents a problem. What does represent a problem is that these resources were stored in a separate resource “fork” of the file. In some ways, that made sense; these blobs were often metadata for the data stored in the data fork. While it’s a nice idea to have rich, structured metadata, storing metadata outside the data fork is problematic in a world where files are moved between operating systems and file systems that interoperate only via a single data fork; metadata either gets lost or it ends up as a series of annoying hidden files.
In short, rich metadata should be purgeable (like Spotlight metadata – it will be regenerated contextually or from the main data the next time Spotlight sees the file). Non-purgeable metadata should be in the main data fork.
Accordingly, resource forks have always been “deprecated” in Mac OS X. It can read them but only with some effort. Rather than needing that effort, it’s far better to move the old resource forks from “Mines.rsrc” (standard resources) and “Mines.ppob” (PowerPlant-specific resources) into the data fork of a single file. If this new data fork resource file is named “Mines.rsrc” (same basename as the executable) and placed in the application bundle’s “Resources” folder, its data fork will be automatically read when we call ::GetResource .
The shortest way to do this is to run “derez” on the two resource forks (e.g. derez Mines.rsrc > Mines.r and derez Mines.ppob > Mines2.r ), concatenate the two files and use “rez” to build them back into a single data fork ( rez Mines.r -useDF -o Mines.rsrc ). A small note on concatenation: the files may be produced with classic Mac CR line endings. If the file also contains UNIX LF line endings then “rez” will silently ignore everything after that point (I spent 20 minutes wondering why none of the resources from the .ppob file were being found after a UNIX LF crept into a class Mac CR line endings file).
It’s alive!
Let’s be realistic, it’s just a Minesweeper implemention.
With the resources fixed, the application runs.
Click on “New Game”, left-click on tiles to reveal, shift-click to mark possible mines (I had a single-button mouse at the time) and continue clearing until every non-mine is revealed. Use the “Game Options” in the “Game” menu to change the number of mines, the size of the field, whether there’s a time-limit and whether the game is “auto started”.
There remain plenty of quirks that I’ll leave “as-is”. The “About Mines” item in the “Mines” menu works but all other items in this menu do nothing (including the two “Quit Mines” entries, probably created by PowerPlant itself). To quit the app, use the “Quit” at the bottom of the “File” menu.
A quick code analysis
It’s not the worst code you’re likely to see. It’s tidy and coherent, even if it demonstrates apparent ignorance of any larger scale design patterns.
The most obvious problem is that each square in the minefield is represented as a simple short – with the adjacent mines count, cleared status and flagged status packed into the short using bitmasks. On a technical level, this works fine except that packing and unpacking data from the short is work left to the CMinesWindow , requiring methodical and menial work at every location where the minefield is accessed.
Clearly, it would be better if Tile were a C++ class with methods that return isFlag or numAdjacentMines and the packing or unpacking of data were abstracted away as internal technical details (perhaps as proper bitfields). This would make CMinesWindow code easier to read and would likely have significant lines-of-code savings.
// Add one to the proximity count of each surrounding square if ( ( randNum % mFieldWidth ) != 0 ) { if ( ( randNum / mFieldWidth ) != 0 ) if ( ( mMineField [ randNum - mFieldWidth - 1 ] & 0x00FF ) < kEightMines ) mMineField [ randNum - mFieldWidth - 1 ] ++ ; if ( ( mMineField [ randNum - 1 ] & 0x00FF ) < kEightMines ) mMineField [ randNum - 1 ] ++ ; if ( ( randNum / mFieldWidth ) != mFieldHeight - 1 ) if ( ( mMineField [ randNum + mFieldWidth - 1 ] & 0x00FF ) < kEightMines ) mMineField [ randNum + mFieldWidth - 1 ] ++ ; }
All of this code should really be abstracted away behind dedicated Tile and MineField interfaces.
That leads into idea that the mine field itself should be a single MineField data type that knows how to determine adjacent Tile s, knows its own bounds, knows how to populate itself and knows how to propagate revealed zero tiles.
Then we need to consider the fact that all the state of the game (time remaining, mines remaining and the mine field) should be part of a Game data type that knows how to start the game based on a set of initial difficulty settings and can serialize the user instruction stream (reveal this tile, protect that tile).
The Game should be easy to serialize (save and restore) and pause – neither of which are possible in the existing game.
Finally, this all leads into the question of whether there is any Model-View-Controller separation in this code. There are not clearly separate “Model”, “View” and “Controller” classes but it is still possible to identify the data members and methods which correspond to each – even though they are all part of the CMinesWindow interface. All of the instance variables that CMinesWindow itself defines are really model data. Everything view-related is purely in the inherited CWindow and the CMinesView . The controller code occurs in the CWindow , LPeriodical and LListener method overrides which propagate changes from the view and outside environment to the model.
//############################# // The constructor //############################# CMinesWindow :: CMinesWindow ( LStream * inStream ) : LWindow ( inStream ) { // Initialise some variables mFieldHeight = 12 ; mFieldWidth = 20 ; mNumCoveredSquares = mFieldHeight * mFieldWidth ; mNumMines = 20 ; mGameLength = 200 ; mInGame = false ; mAutoStart = false ; mUntimed = false ; // Place a decorative minefield in the window to start with mMineField = ( short * ) :: NewPtr ( sizeof ( short ) * 20 * 12 ); ThrowIfMemFail_ ( mMineField ); //Clear the minefield short i = 0 ; while ( i < mFieldWidth * mFieldHeight ) { mMineField [ i ] = kZeroMines ; i ++ ; } }
It’s not exactly the code you’d expect to find in a window constructor. Ignoring the super-constructor, this method is purely concerned with the model.
Given all of these perfectly valid criticisms, it’s surprising how tidy and organized the code all is. I guess abstractions really just don’t matter much when the code is this small.
Handles
In general, looking at Mac OS 8 era code isn’t as strange as I expected. Maybe it’s because I’m still accustomed to reading C++ and C in my daily life but this isn’t so different from some of the code I still actively maintain today. C functions taking multiple carefully allocated and configured struct parameters and returning error codes was ugly then but it’s still ugly now. You can find plenty of modern CoreFoundation functions that work the same way.
What really jumps out at me as “code from another world” are handles.
For those of you that don’t remember: memory layout in pre-OS X era Mac OS was “fixed”. Your application was given a specific memory size at launch and the stack was at the top, the heap was at the bottom and the two raced towards each other – frequently colliding in out-of-memory or stack overflow situations. You could “Get Info” on the application and give it more memory on next launch but once launched, the application couldn’t easily get more memory.
“Figure 1: The stack” from Macintosh Memory Management, Inside Macintosh, Volume I
One of the biggest problem in this arrangement was memory fragmentation – allocating and deallocating heap memory in a pattern that leaves unusable “holes” in the heap. Memory fragmentation still exists (it is partially mediated by memory paging and better allocators) but we can usually ignore it because 30% excess memory usage isn’t a big issue when you have 16 GB of RAM. In an era when the computer might have less than 1MB of RAM, memory fragmentation was a serious problem.
To address this, Mac OS used “handles”. These were different to Windows handles (which are memory resources owned by the operating system on your behalf). Instead, Mac OS handles were pointers to pointers. Dereference a handle once and you’d get the “master pointer” which lived in a special “master pointer block” (ideally at the bottom of the heap). Dereference the “master pointer” and you’d finally get your actual block. The advantage with this approach is that while the “master pointer block” was a fixed location, the actual block was “relocatable” – it could be moved by the memory manager to resolve heap fragmentation.
“Figure 5: A handle to a relocatable block” from Macintosh Memory Management, Inside Macintosh, Volume I
Each time you wanted to access the handle’s data, you had to dereference both levels so you could find the (possibly) moved location. If you needed to use functions that could move memory, you needed to be careful to call HLock to hold the handle in place otherwise every pointer to the handle’s contents would be invalid. Needless to say: this caused memory corruption on a regular basis when failing to consider heap compaction around your pointers. Good times.
“Figure 3: Heap compaction” from Macintosh Memory Management, Inside Macintosh, Volume I
You also needed to guess how many handles would be needed by the program and allocate the correct number of master pointers blocks at program startup. Master pointer blocks could be added at any time but since a master pointer block was a “fixed” location allocation, it would fragment memory if it appeared in the middle of the heap.
Of course, none of this has ever applied to Mac OS X. All the HLock , MoveHHi , MoreMasterPointers and other related Handle functions have always been no-ops on Mac OS X and Handle s are now non-relocatable (like normal pointer allocations), relying on paging and better heap allocators to mediate fragmentation.
The entire concept of relocatable memory blocks and trying to plan for peak memory usage before the program is started seems so surreal now.
Independent review
So I got Mines running and it’s sitting on my computer screen. Mission accomplished, I go to cook dinner.
When I return, one of my children is sitting at the computer playing the game. Apparently my wife had given instructions on how to play and my child continued playing another half dozen games after my wife had left to help me with the dinner.
I’m not sure any of my children have ever so much as looked at one of the computer programs I’d written before, much less played with it for 20 minutes.
What was the opinion?
“Good.”
I’ll take it.
Conclusion
Update for macOS 10.14: the code in this article no longer compiles due to i386 deprecation in macOS 10.14. See Article updates, 2018 edition for more information. You can download Mines from my github account. This code is under two different open source licenses due to the inclusion of PowerPlant. Remember that you still need to obtain a copy of the Mac OS X 10.6 SDK and modify the Mac OS X platform Info.plist file or you’ll get errors about a missing SDK when you try to build. Consult the Readme file for details.
I didn’t really expect to get Mines running but in the end it was surprisingly simple.
I mean, it took nearly 4 hours to get PowerPlant building. I’ve omitted some of the wrong turns involved for brevity. I also spent a couple hours trying to get the PowerPlant “Constructor” application to read my old “PPob” resources which I didn’t cover. This eventually worked (after replacing ::FSpOpenResFile with ::FSOpenResourceFile and forcing loading of the 'CTYP' resource files) but was riddled with issues parsing layout and colors so I wouldn’t want to actually maintain a user-interface this way.
Updating my own Mines application code for PowerPlant and Mac OS changes required less than 20 minutes (ignoring time wasted due to line encoding issues in the “.r” Rez file).
The game itself is simple and full of quirks, design issues and gameplay problems (try setting the board size to largest and the mines to “Some” and the game basically solves itself). Obviously, I didn’t do this for the quality of the game; I just wanted to see if I could. |
This is an interview I did with myself about my book – trying to explain what matters about it, as briefly as possible.
Q. Your title is provocative. Are you saying we should throw rocks at the Google Bus?
A. No – but the real protests by San Francisco residents struggling to afford to remain in their city do epitomize the way the tech economy has failed on its promise. Instead of making the world easier and more livable, it ended up doing the same old extraction. Google was the ultimate success story of the people’s revolution against corporate capitalism: two kids in a Stanford dorm room, writing an algorithm that took down Yahoo, and used the links between people to organize information from the bottom up. Now, it was using public bus stops for its private buses, transporting alien employees to the mothership in Mountainview.
The promise was a p2p economy, as distributed as the networks themselves. The reality has been a doubling down on the same old extractive, growth-based capitalism.
Q. What’s wrong with growth? Isn’t that what every company wants?
A. Growth is fine if it’s organic to your marketplace. But not if it’s simply a way of satisfying your debt structure. Twitter is considered a failure with $2 billion of revenue a year, because it can’t find more growth. Great, sustainable companies must pivot away from revenue in order grow. I was at an executive retreat of a Fortune 100 company where the CEO had his minions chanting “5.2!”, the percent growth target for the coming year. When I got up to do my keynote, I couldn’t help but ask if one of the world’s twenty biggest corporations must still grow in order to be okay, then isn’t there a problem, here? Eventually, you run up against the limits of physical reality.
That’s why GE sold off is washing machine business in the 90s. Jack Welch realized the company could only have a sustainable business by selling people washing machines, but that it could grow by lending people the money they needed to buy washing machines. So they sold off their productive assets and became a bank. Jeff Imelt, the current CEO, is working hard to reverse all that today and to become a value-creating enterprise.
Q. So companies shouldn’t financialize. Is that what you’re saying?
A. Yes. But most startups are really just that: ideas that can be sold at a higher price to a new round of investors. It’s “flip this startup.” Get to IPO or acquisition.
Young developers aren’t aware of the financial operating system on which their companies are running. They think that’s just “business,” when it’s a very particular model of VC: one that recognizes the importance capital but ignores the other two factors of production, land and labor.
And that makes them act in irrational and extractive ways. Amazon destroys the book market; Uber destroys the cab industry – not to create a marketplace but to establish a “platform monopoly” they can leverage into another vertical.
The real product of these companies is their stock. The original idea – the platform or app or device – is really just a marketing tool for the stock. So many great young developers have surrendered their ideas and their missions to their investors. The investors don’t want a sustainable company – or at least they don’t care about that. They just want to sell their stock and get the capital gains.
Q. Is this unique to Startups? Digital companies?
A. No – but digital companies, and the speed at which this is all taking place, has laid this bare. Made it apparent.
The Deloitte Shift Index of 2011 showed corporate profit over growth has been declining for 75 years. That means companies are great at taking all the chips off the table but terrible at deploying assets. It’s a form of corporate obesity. They bankrupt their marketplaces, and end up holding n the money. That’s not good for business. They have to become holding companies, themselves. That’s what Google did when it became Alphabet: they went from being a technology company to becoming a holding company that buys and sells technology companies.
When you look at Amazon, Uber, Facebook, and the other digital behemoths out there, you come to realize that these are not companies in the traditional sense of the word. Digital companies are essentially pieces of software that convert circulating currency into static capital – into share price.
Q. Okay, then. What should they do differently?
A. I’ve got six main suggestions.
• Take less money. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but if you want to have a company that answers to no one, and is allowed to make money for a whole long time by selling goods and services, then take less capital to begin with. Go for the lowest valuation possible, because then it will be easier to fulfill your investors expectations. If you get a high valuation – say 50 million dollars – and your investors are expecting a 100x return, that means your company has to become worth $5 billion for investors to be happy. If you don’t reach that size, they would rather the company die. A single or a double is not sufficient. It’s a home run or nothing.
• Make “them” rich. This means to make your customers, employees, and suppliers wealthy. Don’t take the traditional Walmart approach of squeezing everyone else until they’re bankrupt. When your customers have no money, they can’t spend it with you. When your cab drivers can’t pay their rent, they can’t drive for you. When your suppliers can’t make a profit selling to you – even if you are the monopoly player – they go out of business. Then you can’t make money off your marketplace, because it is gone. So instead, create platforms that let others profit by engaging with you. Whether that’s giving your uploaders a better share of the ad revenue from their videos, or giving your drivers a livable wage.
• Promote flow over growth. We have to get off growth and start looking at how to optimize for the velocity of currency. More transactions. Instead of taking ten dollars off the table, think of how to make the same dollar ten times. If you’re focused on revenue instead of growth, consider delivering dividends to your shareholders instead of capital gains. Also look at bounded investing, like the US Steelworkers did with their retirement accounts: they invested in construction projects that hired steelworkers. They invested, and made the same money back.
• Experiment with new models. Banks can offer half their business loans in cash contingent on a borrower’s ability to raise the other half with a crowdfunding app supplied by the bank. Then the bank is becoming something more than the monopoly lender; it’s also the facilitator of local economic development. Or Walmart could experiment by setting aside one aisle for locally produced goods.
• Platform cooperatives. Imagine if Uber’s drivers owned 50% of the company. Then they wouldn’t be doing the R&D for a robot driving company that they don’t own. They’d be investing their work for their own futures. Or consider giving employees real participation in your enterprise – not just silly options that only work if you’re a unicorn. Real, ongoing, ownership in the company that isn’t dependent on a freak sale.
• Finally, consider cutting the employees in on their increased productivity. If you can cut the work week down to four days, why reduce their salary as well? Why deliver all the gains to the shareholders, and put the employees at risk? Our relationship to work is backwards; we use “employment” as a way to justify letting people partake of what we already have in abundance. We are tearing down houses in California because we can’t find enough people with “jobs” to justify letting them live in them.
Q. Is there a role for government or policy?
A. Mainly, reverse tax punishment for dividends vs. capital gains. Charge low tax on dividends and revenue; charge high tax on capital gains. This will lead shareholders to stop pushing for growth and start looking for sustainable revenues.
Q. Finally, you see this as a pivotal historical moment? Explain.
A. Yes. As I see it, it’s a new renaissance – but much different from the last one. The original renaissance was great in many ways, but it quashed a thriving p2p marketplace, and replaced it with the chartered monopoly and central currency. It set in motion the monopolistic, growth-based, extractive, colonial corporate economy in which we live. Think Conquistadors, British East India Trading Company, and Walmart. These days, that has translated into Google/NSA, Amazon, and Uber.
But we may just be in a new renaissance. Think of the parallels:
Printing press / Internet
Circumnavigate globe / orbit the planet
Perspective painting / hologram, fractal
The list goes on.
A renaissance is an opportunity to retrieve – literally re-naissance or “re-birth” – the mechanisms and ideals suppressed in the last renaissance. In the case of the last Renaissance, the things that got rebirthed were the centrality and empire of ancient Greece and Rome. Meanwhile, it wiped out the commons, p2p trade, and distributed prosperity. The medieval marketplace and its local currencies were legally and forcibly shut down.
So in a digital renaissance, we see some of those mechanisms retrieved. We don’t go back to the Middle Ages, but we bring forward some of their long-repressed innovations, such as the commons, p2p trade, alternative currencies, and distributed prosperity.
After all, digital really means the digits – the fingers. It’s a restoration of our productive capability as well as our ability to transact directly. Networks make the old marketplace finally scalable. Land and labor are brought back into the equation, along with capital rather than just “externalized.”
We finally have the choice whether to use technology to optimize humanity for the marketplace or use to technology to optimize the market for humanity. |
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Dear 9Marks, Are believer/unbeliever marriages always sin (see Mailbag #7)? What about a believer/unbeliever couple who have children together? Remaining together and unmarried would be sinful. They aren’t already married, so 1 Corinthians 7:12-14 doesn’t seem to apply. And getting married seems to violate 2 Corinthians 6:14-15. Yet advising them to end the relationship seems intuitively wrong. What advice should be offered to the believer, and based on what biblical instruction or principle? —Paul, Prince Edward Island
Paul,
In situations like these, you have two moral principles pitted against one another, which means you will feel intuitively wrong, somehow, no matter which direction you go. Welcome to life in a fallen world! Do you choose the apparent wrong of breaking apart a family and denying children the chance to live with two parents, or do you choose the apparent wrong of marrying a believer and an unbeliever? These are the two options, as I see it. Continued co-habitation is not an option. Either they fully marry, or they separate.
And the moral stakes are high in both directions. I confess I wade into this question with some fear.
On the one hand, a fully biblical marriage takes several ingredients, and the couple you describe already have several of those ingredients: they have committed (in some undefined sense) to one another; they have structured their lives together; they have made themselves a family; they have become publicly known for being together and being a family; and they have become one flesh. What they have not done is formally affirmed this commitment with a “till death do us part” promise, which, to be sure, is an essential ingredient of a marriage. Yet godly men that I trust would say that they are already married, and that you need to acknowledge this by supplying that last ingredient lest you undermine what’s already there. You might call this the common-law-marriage argument. It recognizes that, between the man and the woman, something marriage-like is already there.
Furthermore, my Christian friends on this side would say, should you encourage the man and woman to separate, you would be leveraging the Bible and the name of Jesus to tear apart a family, even if not a fully legitimate family. What kind of testimony will that be to the parents and the children alike?
On the other hand, we don’t want to subtly legitimate and exonerate the co-habiting couple who says, “We know we love each other. Why do we need a marriage certificate!” The common-law-marriage argument can almost sound like we’re responding to the cohabiting couple, “Yeah, that’s right. You’re basically married.” But we know that’s not true. The co-habiting couple is co-habiting. They are not married. Something marriage-like is not there. Therefore, you are right to feel the weight of God’s commands for a Christian to marry “only in the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:39).
Furthermore, our emotions may root for the children, and marrying the believer and unbeliever seems better for the children. But I’m not convinced this is not short-term thinking. Marriages between believers and unbelievers have their share of significant hardships which the children will experience first-hand, and these hardships may well stretch on for a lifetime. God’s command for Christians to marry “only in the Lord” is not arbitrary.
So far, Paul, I have tried to lay out the two sides for you. What’s difficult is, you have a moral certainty pitted against a moral uncertainty. The command to marry only in the Lord is certain. Whether or not this couple is already sufficiently married is uncertain (at least in my mind). But if they are already married by some type of common-law reality, you would not want to tear apart what God has joined together.
Personally, I give greater weight to the moral certainty than to the moral uncertainty. Therefore, I don’t think I would marry them. But I do give some weight to the uncertainty. Therefore, I would not forbid them from marriage, at least with the threat of church discipline. You could say I would do nothing: neither marry nor forbid to marry. To the believing spouse, I would say, “I won’t personally marry you, lest I break God’s command. But I will not recommend church discipline if you do marry him/her, lest I destroy what God may have already established between the two of you.” In short, I would leave it to the individual’s conscience.
It’s rare, but the elders of my church have taken this kind of stance on some ethical dilemmas. Is it a pastoral cop out? Maybe. Or maybe it is recognizing the limitations of our wisdom, and trusting the Holy Spirit to do right in spite of our limitations.
I would, of course, instruct the believing partner that he/she will give an account to God on the Last Day, just as we as pastors will give an account for the instruction we give in such moments. And God will ask them (and us), Did you obey my commands? Further, I would tell the believing spouse that God’s commands are good and not burdensome, and that they can be trusted fully.
I have been praying non-stop while writing this answer, Paul. The matter is soul wrenching. I hope I have not given in to a wrongful fear, but answered with faith and love.
Blessings to you.
Dear 9Marks, I am a young pastor at a small church and I have been teaching my church about membership and discipline over the past year and a half. We recently have had a couple that is struggling because the husband is not showing love to his wife in any substantial way. In counseling with him he has admitted that he has tried here and there to be loving in his own way (doing things around their house/property) but he has not really tried to love her in any of the ways that she has shown him that she needs (along with leading them spiritually). The wife feels as though this has been the case for all 25 years of their marriage. He doesn’t seem to disagree. I have challenged him to take action to love her in an active way for about a month and a half and he continues to tell me that he has taken no action. I am curious if/when an unwillingness to show love to a wife is grounds for discipline. It seems to me that there are blatant sinful acts where, if there is no repentance, a discipline process is appropriate. But I struggle with feeling as though this is more of a judgment call. Thanks for any help. —Anonymous
Friend,
Maybe you have heard that life-saturating line in a prayer of confession from the Book of Common Prayer: “We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” Along these lines, Christians have long distinguished between sins of omission and sins of commission, or sins of failing to do something you should and sins of doing something you shouldn’t. Both categories are sins. Both offend against God’s holy laws. But generally, as pastors, we deal with the two categories differently.
For one, sins of omission are much harder to diagnose or assess or respond to. Also, sins of omission are often the result of fear and weakness rather than something malignant. And it is relatively easy for me to envision a believer struggling with fear or weakness all of his or her life, at least in comparison to a life-long struggle with something more malignant, aggressive, and active.
For reasons like these, I typically teach that churches should only pursue public church discipline or excommunication for sins of commission, not for sins of omission. There are exceptions of course, as with a man who does not provide for his children. But I think this is a decent rule of thumb.
Based on what you have described to me, yes, you should continue to instruct and correct this man privately, and “discipline” him in that sense. But I have a hard time envisioning going beyond private remonstrations to something more public.
In fact, I might even encourage husband and wife to consider all the evidences of grace in their marriage in how he has loved her. Has he remained physically faithful to her? That is a sign of God’s grace in the man’s love. Has he provided her with food, clothing, and marital rights (see Ex. 21:10)? That is a sign of God’s grace in the man’s love. Has he maintained the home in good repair? That’s God’s grace and the man’s love. Has he sought to fulfill her other needs? That’s God’s grace in the man’s love. Tell them both to write down such a list and make it as long as they can.
I am not telling her or him to be content with just these things. I am saying that, if every good gift comes from the Father above, we should acknowledge all of these gifts as coming from him, lest we rob God of praise he deserves. And that act of thanksgiving helps to transform the heart and to create the expectation of more gifts to come, together with prayerfulness and the desire to work to that end.
Then continue to walk with the brother. Encourage the good. Rebuke continued neglect. Give him practical ideas. Pray for him. And push him toward relationships with other godly brothers. Care for her, too. Work to make sure she has sisters around her who can support her amidst her husband’s neglect.
Paul’s counsel may provide the best conclusion: “And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all” (1 Thes. 5:14).
Dear 9Marks, I have recently had a lady in our church ask if it was appropriate if she would join the worship service as a dancer. She has done a Bible study and has come to the understanding that dancing, as a part of worship, is good and would like to introduce it to our congregation. Her questions to me are sensitive to the needs of others and doesn’t seek to make a spectacle of herself. She also doesn’t desire to be divisive, but would like to find out what our pastoral staff thinks, along with the elder board. How would you answer her? Thank you! —Jeff, Washington
Jeff,
I’m grateful for this woman’s humble and unity-seeking heart. I’m also grateful that she wants to use her dancing for the glory of God as an act of worship, as 1 Corinthians 10:31 teaches and King David demonstrated before the ark of the covenant. Encourage her for these things.
When it comes to what the church does when it gathers, however, I hold to a freedom from principle rather than a freedom to principle. Individuals sometimes insist that, in light of 1 Corinthians 10:31, they are free to worship God however they please in corporate worship.
My response is to speak on behalf of the congregation: I believe a congregation should remain able to gather with the church every week, since God commands them to, yet remain free from being required to worship in a way that they find troublesome or a stumbling block. Beware using the church’s corporate gathering as a venue for self-expression, which people today too often confuse with being “authentic” or “real.” (I’m not at all assuming this woman is doing that, but am writing for a broader audience on this point.)
I only want to bind the congregation’s conscience where Scripture binds it. To allow one person to dance in the corporate gathering, another to finger paint, another to mime, and another to play Beatles songs for the prelude, requires every person in attendance to worship God in those ways, at least as witnesses. Better, I think, to only require what Scripture requires of the saints when they gather: preaching Bible, reading Bible, singing Bible, celebrating the ordinances, gathering offerings, and doing anything else necessary to remaining a corporate body in good order (like giving announcements, etc.).
What about David dancing before the ark? David also brought sacrifices to the tabernacle, which we would never permit. In other words, I don’t think we can take Old Testament tablernacle worship as directly applicable to a New Testament church. We’re under a New Covenant. On the one hand, this New Covenant promises a comparatively high degree of personal freedom relative to the Old. But this means, on the other hand, imposing relatively few requirements on corporate life of the saints. The corporate life of the church, therefore, should remain relatively mere—again, for the sake of honoring individual freedom and the individual’s conscience in how each person would worship God!
All this is sometimes referred to as the regulative principle. You’ll find a slightly fuller discussion in my article, “Regulative Like Jazz.”
I pray this helps. |
Contributed by pitrh on 2015-09-27 from the better-mp-safe-than-sorry dept.
David Gwynne (dlg@) writes in with our next report from the l2k15 hackathon, detailing all the networking dragons he and the crew faced.
Like mpi@, I was half prepared to spend the week discussing grand plans and ideas instead of working on code. My plan for the other half was to work on the code involved in handling Ethernet packets safe to run outside the big kernel lock, right up until it runs the IP network stack. More specifically, this meant making the following bits MP safe: the if_get() API, the interface input handler list, the carp(4), vlan(4), and trunk(4) interface input handlers, and the generic Ethernet input protocol handler. I turned up to the hackathon with a prototype for the if_get() changes for us to chew on, and most of the vlan(4) and interface input handler list changes already written. Fortunately it turned out we spent more time on code than discussion, and things moved pretty quickly. if_get() is used to turn an interface index (which is an int that identifies an interface in the kernel, and what gets stored on a packet as part of the mbuf structure) into a pointer to an interface, but it didn't provide any guarantees that this reference would remain valid if it was held outside the big kernel lock. Another CPU could be detaching and therefore freeing the interface while the current CPU was still using it. The solution I proposed was to add reference counters to the interface structure, and have if_get() increment this refcount before returning the pointer to the caller. When it comes time to actually detach the interface the detach code will sleep until all the references were released by the other CPUs, then it would be safe to free and destroy the interface. So we had if_get(), which increments the refcount, but nothing that would decrement it. Adding refcounts to interfaces meant we had to introduce an if_put() function that would decrement the refcount. None of those if_put() calls existed, and understanding some parts of the stack to figure out how to retrofit refcounting is non-trivial, so I hadn't pushed this diff hard before the hackathon. However, we couldn't come up with any better ideas. So mpi@, claudio@, and I knuckled down and added if_put() into the tree, and I got to push my MP safe backend for if_get() in. mpi@ and claudio@ focused on the hairiest code using if_get(), and in several cases refactored code to make the interface lifetimes easier to reason about before adding the if_put() calls. With further help from jsg@ and some static analysis tools, by the end of the week we basically had this task closed off. In between if_get() changes I worked on getting my MP safe vlan(4) input handler changes in and hacking on carp(4) to do the same. The vlan(4) input handler needs to find which vlan interface in the system a packet on a physical interface is for. It does that by looking up the packets vlan tag in a hash and traversing a list at each bucket looking for the right interface. I made that MP safe by turning the lists into SRP lists, and serialising modifications to all the hash buckets with a lock. To tweak carp(4) I had to spend a day or two simply reading the code to understand the relationships between all the data structures and figure out what gets used in the input path. It turns out that all the carp interfaces on a parent interface are placed on a list, and each carp interface can have a list of virtual host ids to support some of the load balancing algorithms. I used mikeb@'s change to the interface input handlers to associate the list of carp interfaces with the physical interface, and then replaced both the carp interface list and vhost list with SRP lists. The interface input handler list was a vanilla conversion of a singly linked list to an SRP list, and went in pretty early. SRP lists allow lock free traversal, so for bpf, if input handlers, and both carp and vlan this means we will be able to move toward processing packets for the same interface on multiple CPUs at some point and actually scale. One day... Fixing the generic Ethernet input handler was easy. Since it parses the packet on the stack, it was mostly already safe. The exception was revarp packet processing. Previously revarps were processed directly from ether_input which goes and touches a lot of stuff in the ARP stack. Rather than make all of ARP MP safe, the packets are queued for processing in softnet under the big lock like the rest of the IP and ARP stack. The if_get()+if_put(), vlan, and ether input changes are in the tree, and I should be able to commit the carp changes soon. mikeb@ took on changing trunk(4)'s packet input processing to be MP safe and spent a good chunk of the hackathon working on it. His diffs should end up in the tree soon too. Once carp(4) and trunk(4) are committed we should be able to remove the big lock around ethernet packet input processing. Along the way I factored out some common code I'd been introducing in lots of places to deal with reference counting, and particularly around sleeping until a refcount had dropped to zero. This is now in the tree as the refcnt API, which is loosely inspired by the FreeBSD refcount API. Also during the hackathon there was some talk about making more drivers MP safe, mostly around how hard annoying it is that we need to interlock between packet processing and bringing an interface down. As a result of that discussion kettenis@ implemented intr_barrier(9) which is modelled on synchronize_irq in Linux. It basically lets you disable interrupts on the hardware, and then guarantees that the specified interrupt handler is no longer running on any other CPU by the time it returns. Using this I was able to make vmx(4) MP safe without mutexes. It was also fun to watch kettenis@ make progress on MP safety in the memory subsystems. l2k15 was more productive than I expected. It seems we have enough infrastructure in place now to make faster progress on an MP safe network stack, and it was good to go over how to use these pieces with the other developers at the table. There were some really good ideas thrown around too, particularly with mikeb@ and bluhm@ which I hope to try and hack up soon. I'm looking forward to what mpi@ has been cooking for the IP stack next. Thank you to mpi@ and claudio@ for dealing with the gross bits of the if_put() conversion, and thank you to Tonimir and the other organisers of this hackathon.
Thanks for the very detailed report, David. We look forward to some more SMP goodness! |
Jose Mourinho is a hard man to please.
Even in an end of season friendly.
In front of over 83,000 fans, Chelsea beat Sydney FC of the A-League 1-0 on Tuesday to finish their post-season tour Australia in style with Loic Remy grabbing the only goal of the game in sensational fashion.
[ VIDEO: Zelalem’s ridiculous rabona ]
The 2014-15 Premier League champions fielded a strong team which included the supposedly “unhappy” Diego Costa — Mourinho rubbished reports saying that Costa was unhappy and wants a return to Atletico Madrid — and a mixture of youngsters as the Blues now head off on a break before heading to the U.S. for preseason in July.
But before signing off from a highly successful 2014-15 campaign, Mourinho gave a warning shot to Chelsea’s young midfielder Ruben Loftus-Cheek, 19, which will likely ring loudly in his ears throughout the summer. The midfielder came on in the 41st minute but was then subbed out in the second half of the win over Sydney.
From Chelsea’s official website, here is the message Mourinho has for Loftus-Cheek.
“Ruben said he had a pain in his back but what I was feeling was that he only had the pain when Sydney had the ball. When Chelsea had the ball he was playing very well, but when Sydney had the ball I think he was more impressed by watching Matic and Mikel work, instead of him working. So, with Ruben, it’s one step back in terms of my relationship with him. If he doesn’t know what it is to play for me and Chelsea it’s one step back. “He has to learn that at 19 you have to run three times more than the others, you have to play to your limits and not play like a superstar with the ball at your feet because this is not Under-18s. “The Under-18 competition is too easy for him. He’s too good to play in the Under-18s but I don’t accept that when he’s playing in midfield with Mikel and Matic when we don’t have the ball he doesn’t press, doesn’t have intensity and he’s waiting for everybody else to recover the ball. I don’t accept that in the superstars so how can I accept that in a kid? He has to learn what it takes to play for us.”
Ouch.
Loftus-Cheek made his full Premier League debut in Chelsea’s 1-1 draw with Liverpool in May and has received glowing praise from Mourinho during his rise through the club’s academy and reserve teams. Mourinho has already confirmed that the gangly central midfielder will be a part of the Blues’ PL squad next season but his comments will serve as a warning to Loftus-Cheek that he shouldn’t get ahead of himself.
Mourinho’s comments can be taken with a pinch of a salt, seeing as he’s the master of mind games, but one thing is for sure, he wasn’t impressed with Loftus-Cheek’s display in Australia and the academy product certainly knows about. As does the rest of the world.
Follow @JPW_NBCSports |
The mystery of what is causing thousands to die each year from a fatal kidney disease may now be solved, with evidence pointing to the world’s most heavily used herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) as the primary culprit.
Sayer Ji
Activist Post
A new study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health proposes a link between the herbicide known as Roundup (aka glyphosate) and a series of mysterious epidemics of fatal chronic kidney disease of unknown origin (CKDu) affecting several poor farming regions around the world.
The extent of the health problem is so massive that the Center for Public Integrity found that CKDu has killed more people in El Salvador and Nicaragua than diabetes, AIDS and leukemia combined, over the past 5 years on record.
Titled, “Glyphosate, Hard Water and Nephrotoxic Metals: Are They the Culprits Behind the Epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology in Sri Lanka?” researchers hypothesized that while glyphosate is toxic, it alone is not capable of destroying kidney tissue on the scale recently observed in rice paddy regions of Northern Sri Lanka, or in El Salvador where it is the second leading cause of death among men. They propose glyphosate becomes extremely toxic to the kidney when it mixes with ‘hard’ water or heavy metals like arsenic and cadmium, either naturally present in the soil or added externally through fertilizer inputs. Hard water contains ‘metals,’ such as calcium, magnesium, strontium and iron, along with carbonate, bicarbonate, sulphate and chlorides.
The new hypothesis explains a number of observations connected with the disease, including why in afflicted regions like Sri Lanka there has been a strong association between the consumption of hard water and the occurrence of this special kidney disease, with 96% of CKDu patients having consumed hard or very hard water for at least five years.
The image below shows how closely water hardness and the prevalence of CKDu overlap:
The discovery of a ‘new disease’
According to the study, a “Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown etiology (CKDu)” was discovered among the rice paddy farms in Northern Central Province of Sri Lanka in the mid-1990s. The condition spread quickly to other farming areas, and now afflicts 15% of working age people in the northern part of the country, or a total population of 400,000 patients with an estimated death toll of around 20,000. Watch the videos “Mystery in the Fields” and “Cycle of Death” for 5-minute documentaries providing additional background information on afflicted areas around the world.
CKDu does not carry the same known risk factors as chronic kidney disease, which include diabetes, high blood pressure and glomerular nephritis, an inflammatory kidney condition. The Sri Lankan Ministry of Health introduced criteria for CKDu in 2009, including:
No past history of, or current treatment for diabetes mellitus or chronic and/or severe hypertension, snake bites, urological disease of known etiology or glomerulonephritis. Normal glycosylated hemoglobin levels (HbA1C ˂ 6.5%). Blood pressure ˂160/100 mmHg untreated or ˂140/90 mmHg on up to two antihypertensive agents.
Owing to the fact that geographical and socioeconomical factors play such a central role in determining risk, it has been assumed that environmental and occupational factors are the main causative agents and therefore that CKDu is a form of toxic nephropathy, i.e. chemically-induced damage. The authors point out that even the World Health Organization conducted studies to determine the origin of CKDu, and that the general consensus is the disease as multiple causes, including:
Exposure to arsenic
Exposure to cadmium
Exposure to pesticides
Consumption of hard water
Low water intake
Exposure to high temperatures (and resultant dehydration)
The authors, however, propose: “Whatever hypothesis that is propounded should be able to answer the questions as to why CKDu is confined to certain geographical areas of Sri Lanka and why there was no CKDu in Sri Lanka prior to the 1990s.”
Roundup Weedkiller (Glyphosate) The Likely Culprit
The study goes on to detail how since 1977 political changes in Sri Lanka lead to large–scale importation and application of agrochemicals, especially for rice paddy farming. They propose that 12-15 years of cumulative exposure to low concentration kidney-damaging compounds, along with their increasing bioaccumulation within the environment and human body, could explain the sudden appearance in the 1990s of clinically identifiable CKDu. They hypothesized the existence of a so-called Compound “X” as the incriminating agent, which they determined would have to have the following characteristics:
A compound made of recently (2–3 decades) introduced chemicals to the CKDu endemic area.
Ability to form stable complexes with hard water.
Ability to capture and retain arsenic and nephrotoxic metals and act as a “carrier” in delivering these toxins to the kidney.
Possible multiple routes of exposure: ingestion, dermal and respiratory absorption.
Not having a significant first pass effect when complexed with hard water.
Presenting difficulties in identification when using conventional analytical methods.
Following an extensive search they arrived at glyphosate, which is the most widely used herbicide in Sri Lanka, as the likely culprit. They describe how glyphosate’s half-life can increase from several weeks in normal water to many years in hard water, as it forms hard to biodegrade glyphosate-metal complexes (GMCs). GMC exposure can happen in two ways: consumption of contaminated hard water, or it can form within the human body following glyphosate’s entry into circulation. Farmers (and their families) are at constant risk of exposure through skin or inhalation, in addition to untreated drinking water.
The study describes in depth the way in which GMCs may evade the liver’s detoxification mechanisms and damage the kidneys. This is in addition to the over 20 distinct modes of toxicity we have indexed on the GreenMedInfo.com database on glyphosate harms.
Finally, the authors discuss evidence that glyphosate may be behind similar epidemics of chronic kidney disease of unknown cause in Central American countries of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, as well as India.
To read the entire open access study visit this link: www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/2/2125
This article first appeared at GreenMedInfo. Please visit to access their vast database of articles and the latest information in natural health. |
On a fine April morning I drove slowly in Marmaris, trailing a woman pulling a wheeled trolley. It was Thursday and I hoped her destination was the weekly market that had drawn me to this tidy resort city on the southwestern coast of Turkey. Soon enough she merged into a stream of pedestrians flowing toward a concrete structure covering an entire city block. At 10:30 a.m. the Marmaris Thursday market was in full swing, arcades packed with shoppers perusing tables heaped with produce, cheeses under glass and seafood glinting in the sunlight.
I was traveling the region having been inspired by a cookbook, “Aegean Flavours,” written by Didem Senol, a New York-trained Turkish chef whose penchant for cooking in season is on display at her Istanbul restaurant, Lokanta Maya, and her tiny cafe there, Gram. Many of the book’s recipes are informed by the time Ms. Senol spent heading the kitchen at her father’s hotel, the Dionysos, on the Bozburun peninsula near Marmaris, where she shopped the city’s market and others in the region.
“I learned that when a vendor knows you she’ll pull something special — a jam, a cheese — from beneath her stall,” she told me last winter in Istanbul. And so we planned a spring trip centered on those markets, which are especially abundant with foraged leafy vegetables this time of year, and the restaurants that best make use of them. |
Trend Micro Internet Security, owned by Trend Micro, founded in LA, California and based in Tokyo, Japan, has been found to have several security flaws in their software. Travis Ormandy, part of Google’s Project Zero – a force tasked with finding ‘zero-day’ flaws in world-wide software – tweeted:
Dear @trendmicro, wtf were you thinking? This bug is completely ridiculous. Will send full report in a minute. Sigh. pic.twitter.com/hEysaaht8f — Tavis Ormandy (@taviso) January 5, 2016
Just one of the flaws flagged up by Ormandy was that webpages could run commands on PCs that had the antivirus installed. The websites would be able to do various things such as installing malware onto the PC or un-installing Trend Micro’s antivirus.
If you have one of Trend Micro’s products, your computer may be exposed to having your passwords stolen and much more. Other alternative anti-virus softwares are Norton Antivirus, McAfee, Kapersky and Bitdefender. Of course there are many antivirus programmes out there and the choice is not limited. |
Jay-Z’s latest video called Run This Town (featuring Rihanna and Kanye West) contains occult symbolism relating to secret societies. It has been long rumored that Jay-Z is part of some sort of occult order (probably Freemasonry) due to the hints slipped in his songs and his imagery. Run This Town certainly adds fuel to the fire. We’ll look at the symbolism in this song and in his clothing line, Rocawear.
I’m pretty sure Jay-Z does it on purpose and that he appreciates the attention it gets him. He has been steadily displaying occult symbolism in his songs, videos and in the designs of his Rocawear clothing line. The Brooklyn rapper has lately been associating himself with Freemasonry, Illuminati and other orders. Is he now initiated in one of those Brotherhoods and eager to show it off? Why does he appear in other videos containing occult meanings (see Rihanna’s Umbrella or Beyonce’s Crazy in Love)?
The video to Run This Town was directed by Anthony Mandler, who also did Rihanna’s Disturbia video. The least we can say is that Mandler certainly knows how to insert dark symbolism into a video.
“Do What Thou Wilt”
Before we get into the video, a couple of things need to be explained in order to understand Jay-Z’s mindset and where he gets his ideas from. The symbols that will be discussed in this article can’t be coincidences or a collection of random items. Jay-Z draws his inspiration from specific sources and associates with like-minded people (director Anthony Mandler) to integrate those ideas. A telling example can be found in the second trailer video for “Run This Town”. We see Jay-Z explaining the concept of the video while wearing a black hoodie bearing the saying “Do What Thou Wilt”.
“Do What Thou Wilt” is the official dictum of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) and of its reformer, occultist Aleister Crowley. The O.T.O. is a hermetic order modeled after Freemasonry and German Illuminism and teaches its initiates the secrets of the Mysteries, Gnosticism, sex magick, Kaballah and other occult sciences. Contrarily to Freemasonry, the O.T.O. is however based on the “Law of Thelema” which main precept is “Do What Thou Wilt be the whole of the Law“. Although this saying was interpreted in different ways, most agree that it refers to the dismissal of conventional moral and ethical rules in order to find one’s “True Will”. In other words, the usual guidelines by which good and evil are determined to have to be blurred and forgotten to obtain the true path to illumination. Crowley explains this notion rather clearly here:
“There are no “standards of Right”. Ethics is balderdash. Each Star must go on its own orbit. To hell with “moral principle”; there is no such thing”
–Crowley, Aleister. The Old and New Commentaries to Liber AL, II,28.
Although not officially considered “satanic”, the O.T.O. does fully embrace the Luciferian doctrine (see Crowley’s poem “Hymn to Lucifer) and its high-level members are referred to as “Most Illuminated and Most Puissant Baphomet”. Baphomet is, of course, the horned androgynous idol of Western Occultism.
Is Jay-Z part of the O.T.O. or does he just like that shirt? Don’t know. We will, however, see that he is very educated in the field of occult symbolism and that he enjoys hinting people that he associates with the Brotherhood. Here’s the video.
“Run This Town” Analysis
So this is the video at face value: Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Kanye West are performing in front of an angry mob, which is apparently out to overthrow the current order of things and thus “Run This Town”. The aesthetics of the video are reminiscent of movements led by rebel factions in third world African or Latino countries. When one listens closely to the lyrics, however, something seems to be “off”. Jay-Z and Kanye are mainly rapping about how rich and famous they are and are describing bourgeoisie luxuries such as Maison Martin Margiela clothes, bottles of Riesling and Maybach cars. This isn’t exactly the type of speech Che Guevara would give. Despite the looks, the artists aren’t quite revolutionary, they can even be considered pro-establishment. Is this a political rebellion or could it be philosophical/spiritual? The visuals of the video hint a second, occult meaning to the song. At the beginning of the video, a man hands a lit torch to Rihanna who holds it up in the air. This symbolic gesture sums up perfectly the concept of the video.
Anybody vaguely familiar with occultism can easily associate the symbol of the lit torch held high to Lucifer a.k.a. the Light Bearer. Most occult orders secretly acknowledge Lucifer as being the savior of humanity, the fallen angel who liberated men from the oppression of the biblical God (Jehovah, Yahweh). These orders (the main one being Freemasonry) have been working for centuries towards the overthrow of the rule of organized religions to usher in a new age or a “New Order”. At the philosophical center of this order: the Luciferian Doctrine, where men are free to become gods by their own means. The Torch of Illumination is the ultimate symbol of this philosophy and can be found in many instances (see Statue of Liberty, a gift from French Freemasons). The goal of the Illuminist has been put in plain in simple words: they are dedicated to the “coming forth of the conquering light“. “Run This Town” visually represents this aim in a clear way for the initiates yet concealed for the profane. Consequently, the video contains a second level of interpretation: “Run This Town” is an announcement of the coming of a New World Order, lead by secret (Luciferian) societies. Rihanna’s ominous intro explains how it is going down.
Feeling it coming in the air, hear the screams from everywhere, I’m addicted to thrill, Its a dangerous love affair, Can’t be scared when it goes down, got a problem tell me now, Only thing that’s on my mind is who gon run this town tonight, who gon run this town tonite
Rihanna’s lyrics are announcing an imminent change that might terrify or enrage some people (“hear the screams from everywhere“). The torches hint to a new spiritual and philosophical era where Lucifer is king. She is “addicted to the thrill” of being on the dark side and she knows that dealing with it is a “dangerous love affair“. But regardless of all of this, it all comes down to control, hence “Only thing that’s on my mind is who gon run this town tonight“. Then Jay-Z comes along and announces the coming of “Roc Nation” (Roc being a diminutive of Rocafella, the name of his record label, which is based on the elite family Rockefeller).
We are, yeah, I said it, we are This is Roc Nation, pledge your allegiance Get y’all fatigues on, all black everything Black cards, black cars, all black everything And our girls are blackbirds, riding with they Dillingers I get more in-depth if you boys really real enough This is La Familia, I’ll explain later But for now, let me get back to this paper I’m a couple bands down and I’m tryna get back I gave Doug a grip, I lost a flip for five stacks Yeah, I’m talking five comma six zeroes dot zero ? Back to running circles ’round n----s, now we squared up
Jay-Z is asking you to “Pledge your allegiance” to the new ruler and to wear black everything to honor him. Jay’s lyrics contain hints to Freemasonry that are hidden in the double meaning of some lines. “I gave Doug a grip” means he gave Doug a stack of money but the double meaning of that line would refer to the Masons’ secret handshakes which are called “grips”. And who is Doug? Might be Doug Morris. The last line of his first verse is “Back to running circles’ round n----s, now we squared up“. Aside from its obvious meaning, it also refers to the important Masonic concept of “squaring the circle”, which is way too deep to explain here (“I get more in-depth if you boys really real enough“). In the second verse, Jay-Z says “It’s the return of thee god“, which refers to the Luciferian belief of men being gods. This term is often used in NY slang and originates from the fact that many rappers were Five-Percenters, a philosophy based on the belief that all men are gods. Further in the song, Jay-Z says: “I’m in Maison, ugh, Martin Margiela” which is an upper-end fashion store. English speaking people usually pronounce the French word “Maison” to sound like “mayzaun”. Jay-Z, however, says it to sound like “Mason” as in “Freemason”. There is an obvious double-meaning here meant to catch the ear of the listener. He basically says “I’m in Mason” to make people say “huh did he really say that?” as “I’m a Freemason” but he then continues by saying “ugh, Martin Margiela“. The little pause after he says those words accentuate the effect. Then Rihanna comes back with the chorus.
Life’s a game but it’s not fair I break the rules so I don’t care So I keep doing my own thing Walking tall against the rain Victory’s within the mile Almost there, don’t give up now Only thing that’s on my mind Is who gon’ run this town tonight
She says that the game of life is corrupted but she still succeeds because she “breaks the rules”. In other words, she ignores the boundaries between good and evil to achieve her goals. This might remind you of the saying “Do What Thou Wilt” of the Ordo Templi Orientis described above. Those lines refer to her as a person and also to the Order as a whole, who is prepared to commit the most horrible acts to reach its goals. “Victory’s within the mile” means that the realization of the New World Order is at its final stages and that the Illuminati-sponsored revolution is about to happen.
So “Run This Town” contains obvious hints leading towards Luciferian philosophy and occult orders. The fire of Lucifer’s torch esoterically represents divine knowledge and wisdom brought to men. Fire in this vi, however, wever a destructive force. What type of knowledge are we giving these rebellious people, who represent the masses of fans?
Jay-Z and Occult Symbolism
Jay-Z’s clothing line “Rocawear” has incorporated obvious occult symbols in its designs. Some are so blatantly Masonic that he probably couldn’t get away with it if he wasn’t effectively implicated with them. In interviews, Jay-Z has said to be actively involved in the choices of designs of his clothing line. Here are some examples:
The logo above is designed to look like the Eye of Horus below.
Prodigy’s Crusade
Rapper Prodigy from the mythical group Mobb Deep has occasionally denounced Jay-Z’s affiliation with the Illuminati in the last years. Here’s an URB article on the subject.
Like he does in his monthly blog on Vibe.com, the incarcerated Prodigy recently spewed more of his conspiracy theories via a handwritten letter to URB. This time, he reveals the moment his eyes were opened to the sham he calls “the government, religions, politics, the Federal Reserve, and I.R.S.” According to P, in 1996, after reading a book by Dr. Malichi Z. York titled Leviathan 666, he was moved so much, he cried, and that was his “moment of clarity.” “I was crying for all of humanity, but mostly for my black people ’cause I then realized it was all a sham,” Prodigy writes in his letter to URB. “The government, religions, politics, the Federal Reserve, the I.R.S., and everything that we believe and live by is a joke.” Even worse, the rapper says that many popular rappers are aware of these society secrets, but choose not to speak on it for fear of not being accepted by corporate America. One, in particular, is Jay-Z. Occult Secrets of Jay Z, Kanye & Nas “J.Z. knows the truth, but he chose sides with evil in order to be accepted in the corporate world. J.Z. conceals the truth from the black community and the world, and promotes the lifestyle of the beast instead,” he wrote. Prodigy says that Jay grew up grew up in Dr. York’s “Nuwabian” community in Brooklyn as a kid, and is “aware” of these evils — rogue government, elitists running the country, etc. Because of Jay’z refusal to speak on the topics Prodigy has been doing so since his incarceration, he will make it a point to wage war against him. “J.Z is a God damn lie. I have so much fire in my heart that I will relentlessly attack J.Z, Illuminati, and any-every other evil that exists until my lights are put out,” P writes. “This negativity I speak of is an actual living entity that uses us as food. We must sever ties with it in order to see things for what they really are. This negative energy is created and harnessed by the Illuminati secret government and they will make you spread this energy without you even knowing it. But people like J.Z. are very well aware. He was schooled by Dr. York,” he continued.
Real talk.
In Conclusion
So, the least we can say is that Jay-Z has “affinities” with occultism and secret societies. “Run This Town” only adds to the suspicions surrounding him due to the symbolism and philosophy displayed in the video. In light of those facts, some questions arise: has Jay-Z sided with the elite to succeed in the corporate world? Is he used to promote NWO agenda? Or is this an act to fuel rumors and to add a little “mystique” around his persona? Maybe it’s all of the above. Maybe he’s doing this to get people like me writing and to generate buzz around his latest album. If this article has promoted Jay-Z, so be it. At least people will know what the they’re saluting when they’re throwing up that Roc sign. |
The hackers allegedly set up 27 phishing sites to steal passwords
North Korea has been accused of hacking into the email accounts of dozens of South Korean government officials.
Prosecutors in South Korea say a "suspected North Korea-operated group" attempted to hack into the emails of 90 people.
These include officials at the foreign, defence and unification ministries, from January to June this year.
"The passwords of 56 accounts were stolen," a statement from the Supreme Prosecutors' Office said.
The hackers allegedly set up 27 phishing sites in January posing as popular portals like Google and South Korea's Naver.
They also posed as government and university websites to steal the passwords.
The prosecutors said the malicious codes used in the latest attack were the same as the ones used by North Korea in previous instances.
June: Launch Of North Korean Missile
An investigation is still ongoing to see if any confidential information may have been leaked.
The attack comes days after the North reportedly stole the data of 10 million customers at South Korean online shopping mall Interpark.
The National Police Agency said the North's main spy agency - the Reconnaissance General Bureau - had organised the hack.
Tensions on the Korean peninsula have intensified since the North carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, followed by a series of ballistic missile tests. |
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Justin Bieber was photographed leaving a Brazilian brothel last weekend. He was covered in bedsheets, which leads us to believe that buying sex still isn’t seen as a completely acceptable pass time (though our friends on team “sex work is work” are doing their very best to change that).
It’s not as though the Biebs has a shortage of options in the lady department. In fact, the very next evening, he left the club at 3am with a van load of 30 girls. Whatever. I know you don’t care what Justin Bieber does on weekends. My point is this: Why are we still pretending as though prostitution exists for lonely, socially awkward, undersexed men?
The media is in love with the “sex surrogate” story these days. Last year the idea of sex as a kind of therapeutic service for the disabled was mainstreamed when The Sessions, a film about a man who was paralyzed from the neck down and hired a sex surrogate in order to lose his virginity, came out.
We want to pity johns more than we want to shame them. The sad men and their sad penises. But I don’t think Justin Bieber’s penis is very sad… And I don’t think loneliness or disability is a reasonable defense for male power.
The notion that prostitutes exist as an “outlet” for men isn’t new. Over a century ago we believed prostitutes were necessary in order to prevent men from raping (non-prostituted women) and to preserve marriages. Prostitution was seen as a “social service.” Prostitutes were essentially there to take shit from men, so they wouldn’t take it out on the “good women.” You don’t want to be in the position of being an “outlet” for male aggression (something that was seen as natural and is still seen, by many, as innate). Naturalizing male sexuality as uncontrollable or violent isn’t going to help anyone and making a certain, marginalized, class of women responsible for protecting the other, more privileged women is abhorrent. The Romans viewed prostitutes as sexually insatiable deviants, a notion that conveniently erases any abuses those women suffered at the hands of the men who pay to do with them what they will. We cling to all these notions today, repackaging them over and over again in a continual effort to convince the world that this industry is both necessary and deserving of permanence.
The discourse surrounding prostitution has changed in that we’ve tried to sanitize the industry. “A job like any other” makes prostituted women into service providers, no different than a hair dresser or a physiotherapist. What stays the same is the notion that prostitution is necessary because of the poor, sex-deprived men who “need” women as “outlets.” Some women are lucky enough to have other choices besides dick-receptacle. The poor, the abused, the racialized — not so much.
Today, we like to imagine prostitution as a service for the lonesome. We are to pity these men — What, are they supposed to just masturbate? The horror! But examples like that of Mr. Bieber (and the countless other wealthy men and celebrities who pay for sex) show us that prostitution isn’t just about sex. There is no shortage of sex in Justin Bieber’s life — he has access to plenty of vagina, not to worry. Prostitution, it’s clear, is about power. Male power, specifically.
We can recycle as many of these centuries-old defenses as we like. Take your pick:
– Men are naturally violent and rapey and need to ejaculate into or onto women’s bodies in order to remain sane.
– Men are naturally promiscuous and need different vag to keep things spicy. Their wives, after all, have real feelings and personalities which can be annoying and tiresome.
– Prostitutes just loooove sex! You can bet all those johns are really generous in the sack. Really, really skilled in the art of pleasing a woman. They can’t tell the difference between real pleasure and acting, but hey, that’s why they pay. So they can imagine themselves to be the most virile of lovers. It’s no wonder they (supposedly) can’t get laid for free.
We have, after all, been defending men’s right to women’s bodies since the invention of patriarchy. Why stop now?
The Biebs isn’t lonely, desperate, disabled, or socially awkward. So how does one explain his visit to the brothel? I’m going to pass on what I learned about johns from survivor and author, Rachel Moran here: Men buy sex because they think they can treat prostitutes differently than they can treat their wives, girlfriends, and dates. They buy sex in order to project what Moran called “evil arousal” onto a human being, guilt and consequence-free. They buy sex to experience dominance and to make rape and abuse “consensual” (as we’ve convinced ourselves that payment = consent). Indeed, most johns derive sadistic pleasure from that power imbalance, Moran says.
Prostitution isn’t about sexuality. It’s about male power, plain and simple. And if you’re a feminist, a humanitarian, or a person who believes, in any way at all, in equality and human rights, it’s time to stop regurgitating defenses of the industry. They are old — so old — and they are incredibly destructive, deadly even.
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Meghan Murphy Founder & Editor Meghan Murphy is a freelance writer and journalist. She has been podcasting and writing about feminism since 2010 and has published work in numerous national and international publications, including New Statesman, Vice, Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, I-D, Truthdig, and more. Meghan completed a Masters degree in the department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University in 2012 and lives in Vancouver, B.C. with her dog. |
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Breckenridge Hills, MO — A Missouri man’s cell phone video captured the epitome of what’s become Police State USA.
Chris Hoglan was out for a walk last September when he was approached by Breckenridge Hills police officer Matthew Tyler.
In a statement given to the Free Thought Project, Hoglan explains how the encounter began:
I left for a walk at 12:17am on Sept. 4, 2014. I had been cleaning the basement and was wide awake and needed to go to sleep. I knew walking would help tire me out and it was good for my back. I was heading east on Baltimore from my house. I left with a pocket knife, my keys and my iPhone and nothing else. I walked approximately 1.3miles and was on the south side of the street near the intersection of Woodson. I saw Officer Tyler’s police car driving south on Woodson and made a right towards me on Baltimore. He slowed down and shouted out of the window next to me “What’s your name?!” with a forceful tone. I replied “I don’t need to answer that.” And continued walking east on Baltimore at an average pace. I turned to see Officer Tyler do an immediate U Turn. At this point I pulled out my iPhone and started recording.
Officer Tyler’s ego was apparently challenged by a man who knew his rights and refused to cower to his authority. This caused Tyler to come out with a vengeance.
“This cop just asked me what my name was, I told him I didn’t need to answer that. We will see how this goes,” says Hoglan as he gets ready to flex his rights and stand up to this bully.
“Stop now or you’ll go to jail,” demands Tyler.
When Hoglan asks the reason for the stop, Tyler replies by telling him that he stopped him because, “I need to know who you are.”
“I don’t need to answer that while I am walking down the street. Is there a reason I’m being stopped here?” says Hoglan referring to his right not to identify to police.
At this point, Officer Tyler was already well over the line in his demands and harassment, but he pushed on anyway.
Hoglan asks again, “Am I free to go? ”
“No. I need to see your ID,” replies Tyler.
“I don’t need to give you any information about me sir; I’m just walking down the street freely,” Hoglan explains.
At no point did Hoglan ever become confrontational with this egomaniac, but this did not stop Tyler from escalating the situation.
“I’m gonna give you two more seconds, then I’m gonna put the cuffs on ya. K, you can give me your name, or you’re gonna go to jail. The choice is yours,” says this tyrant as he continues to unlawfully demand to see Hoglan’s papers.
By this time another officer, officer Allemann, arrived on the scene and the two tyrants together proceeded to assault and kidnap Hoglan.
“The two Police officers who had full control over me forced me to the ground and they landed on top of me. My back instantly felt bad and I am currently going to physical therapy for it,” Hoglan tells the Free Thought Project.
Hoglan was then brought to Breckenridge Hills Police Department where the barrage would continue. While he was locked in a cage, Hoglan continued to assert his 5th Amendment right to remain silent.
The two officers had mistaken Hoglan for another man who was allegedly wanted for pulling a knife on someone. However, Hoglan did not match the description.
Instead of telling Hoglan that they were looking for a suspect, the officers used the threat of force to try to intimidate a man into surrendering his rights.
Hoglan explained what happened next:
Allemann walked by Officer Tyler and said under his breath quietly “I know you don’t want to hear this, but this probably isn’t your guy. I spoke with the brother and he said his brother was not balding and had returned and taken his car somewhere.” Officer Tyler said “Well I am going to charge him with interfering. If he doesn’t wasn’t to talk, I’ll just flop him down at St. Ann until he does.”
Hoglan was then transferred to St. Ann jail where Tyler would tell the officers to refuse him any access to a phone.
He was cited for the misdemeanor charge of “Interference with Police” and his bail was set at the ridiculously high price of $500, by Officer Tyler.
According to Hoglan, Tyler even went out of his way to write a message on a dry-erase board in the jail that said, “Do not lower bail.”
After being locked in a cell for hours without being able to contact anyone, an officer finally asked Hoglan if he’d like him to call a family member for him. Hoglan called his girlfriend and immediately posted bond.
Hoglan tells the Free Thought Project that his lawyer recommended requesting a jury trial for the citation.
When his attorney appeared in court on behalf Hoglan, the charges were dropped, and the bond refunded. Hoglan tells us that he filed a formal complaint with internal affairs, and they are currently waiting for the results of their “investigation” before deciding what action to take next.
In the Land of the Free, you can be kidnapped and thrown in a cage for refusing to show your papers to a belligerent bully in uniform, and this is called the “justice” system. |
A California pastor who made headlines for praising the June 12 massacre of 49 people at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub is facing a lawsuit in connection to an alleged assault outside his church in July, the Sacramento Bee reports.
Though Verity Baptist Church pastor Roger Jimenez was not directly involved in the July 6 incident that sparked the suit, claimant Spenser Fritz is seeking to hold him responsible for the actions of his parishioners. Fritz says that the pastor’s sermons inciting violence contributed to a parishioner shoving and threatening him.
“Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?” the pastor of Verity Baptist Church said in a sermon following the Orlando massacre. “Um no, I think that’s great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight.”
He continued: “I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a firing wall, put a firing squad in front of them, and blow their brains out.”
In the lawsuit, Fritz, who has protested outside the church since June 19, claims that the pastor’s anti-gay rhetoric led parishioner Johnny Cervantes III to push and intimidate him.
According to the Sacramento Bee, Fritz says he engaged with Cervantes’ family, encouraging the young man accompanying Cervantes and his wife to educate himself:
“Why are you teaching your children violence?” the suit said he asked. It states that Fritz then said to a “young parishioner” that “Sometimes when we’re older we learn our parents are wrong. I don’t deserve to die. If they allow you internet access you should do your own research.”
Fritz claims that the woman told him to stop talking to the young man, after which Cervantes allegedly became aggressive, telling Fritz, “Don’t (expletive) talk to my wife.” The protestor goes on to say that Cervantes responded by lunging toward him and pushing him.
He additionally alleges a group of other parishioners surrounded him and only let him pass after he threatened to call the police.
Neither the Sheriff nor the church have so far replied to the Sacrament Bee’s request for comment.
YouTube has since removed the pastor’s sermon video for violating its hate speech policy. And the church building’s landlord has said he won’t renew the group’s lease
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Americans Will Spend 8.9 Billion Hours, $409 Billion Complying with U.S. Tax Code in 2016
Washington, DC (June 15, 2016)—The length and detail of the U.S. tax code have increased substantially over the past century. Today, the U.S. tax code is twice as long as it was in 1985 and nearly six times longer than in 1955, totaling roughly 7.7 million words of tax regulations and almost 60,000 pages of tax-related case law. This increase in complexity translates into real costs for American businesses and households.
The IRS recently estimated that Americans will spend 8.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax-filing requirements in 2016. And according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, this translates to an annual tax compliance cost of $409 billion, or an equivalent of 4.3 million full-time jobs. These calculations have increased substantively since 2012, when the IRS estimated the total IRS paperwork burden to account for 6.1 billion hours.
“Time is the most valuable thing we have, and we should not be forced to waste it complying with IRS forms,” said Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge. “Congress needs to keep this in mind as they move forward with tax reform over the next year. In addition to fostering economic growth, we need reforms that ease the burden of time on taxpayers. I think that’s something we can all get behind.”
The Tax Foundation’s analysis provides a breakdown of the most costly IRS forms and provisions for businesses and individuals. For example, the time spent complying with business income taxes costs $147 billion annually, while preparing individual income taxes costs another $99 billion.
There are also cases where the cost of compliance for a specific tax is nearly equal to the amount of revenue that tax brings in. The estate and gift tax, for example, will collect approximately $20 billion in federal revenues this year, but has a compliance cost of $19.6 billion.
Full report: The Compliance Costs of IRS Regulations
Media Contact:
Richard Borean
Communications Director, Tax Foundation
202-464-5120
[email protected] |
News Room Media Releases
March 6, 2017
Winnipeg Police Service Media Release
For Immediate Release
Commercial Robbery Arrests - C17-0045934
Since November 2016, six individuals became involved in a crime spree having varied involvement, while acting out either individually or as a group.
The incidents are as follows:
* November 4th, 2016 - A male suspect pawned a stolen guitar at a business located in the 800 block of Main Street.
* March 5th, 2017, 5:40 a.m. - Four suspects robbed a convenience store located in the 100 block of McPhillips Street. One of the suspects was armed with a handgun and the business was robbed of cash, cigarettes and merchandise.
Patrol members, including Canine responded.
Due to collaborative efforts, three of the suspects were located inside a vehicle in the area of the 700 block of Victor Street. They were arrested and some of stolen property was recovered.
Members of the Major Crimes Unit continued to investigate.
At approximately 11:00 a.m., two additional suspects were located in the area of the 200 block of College Avenue while having contact with officers on an unrelated matter.
A 20 year old male, 30 year old male, and 31 year old male have been charged with numerous weapon related offences including, Armed Robbery using a Restricted Firearm or prohibited Firearm.
A 24 year old female was arrested on the strength of an outstanding warrant.
A 21 year old was issued a Provincial Offence Notice for Suspended Driving under the Highway Traffic Act.
A 17 year old male remains outstanding.
The investigation continues.
Indecent Act - C17-0046133
Public Advisory:
On March 4, 2017 at approximately 8:00 p.m., while in the area of Regent Avenue East and Day Street, a 20 year old female observed an unknown male exposing himself.
It was reported that the victim observed the male walk past her and approximately five minutes later, he approached her again while committing an indecent act.
The victim fled and notified police.
The suspect is described as a male in his late 20's, 5'7"- 5'9" tall, skinny build, wearing a blue windbreaker with a silver band on the front and back. He had his hood up with it tied tight around his face area. It appears he was making an effort to conceal his identity.
Members of the East District Crime Unit continue to investigate. Anyone with further information regarding the incident or suspect is asked to contact detectives at 204-986-2857 or Crime Stoppers at 204-786-TIPS (8477).
MISSING PERSON – ROMEO ROULETTE-SIMPSON C17-46593 - Located
The Winnipeg Police Service is requesting the public’s assistance in locating a missing 7 year old boy, Romeo ROULETTE-SIMPSON. ROULETTE-SIMPSON was last seen on Sunday, March 05, in the mid-afternoon in the William Whyte area (North End) of Winnipeg.
ROULETTE-SIMPSON is described as Aboriginal, 4'0, 65-70lbs, dark brown brush cut hair, black wire framed glasses, vertical scar between his eyes and another scar beside his left eyebrow. ROULETTE-SIMPSON was last seen wearing an orange or red hooded sweater with a logo on the front, dark blue jeans faded on the knees and light blue and grey Nike shoes with Velcro straps.
Police are concerned for ROULETTE-SIMPSON’s well-being and are asking anyone with information regarding his whereabouts is asked to contact the Winnipeg Police Service Missing Persons Unit at 986-6250.
Last Update: March 6, 2017 |
click to enlarge Image courtesy of Twitter
Zach Hudak insulting Day Bracey in a tweet.
click to enlarge Photo courtesy of Facebook
Zach Hudak
Day Bracey had had enough. Earlier this month, the well-known Pittsburgh comedian and co-host of the Drinking Partners craft-beer-focused podcast had been engaging in some social-media back-and-forth with another area comedian, Zach Hudak. Bracey took offense at some of Hudak’s posts, which often included racist and homophobic memes, and responded to some of the posts on Facebook.Then Hudak took the discourse to another level. He responded to Bracey days later with a video he made and posted to Twitter on Oct. 16, tagging Bracey, who is black. The video (shown above) features Hudak, who is white, in black face, imitating Bracey, using a minstrel-like voice, and saying, “Hello there, this bes Day Bracey, when I sees the racist, sexist, Eskimo-phobic, peckerwood motha fucka Zach Hudak, I am gonna be curb stompin’ his ass.”Initially, Bracey didn’t want to make a big deal about the video, but after discovering more about Hudak’s history targeting people with liberal viewpoints, he choose to speak more publicly about Hudak. He shared the video with his Twitter followers, and many of them reported Hudak’s account, LibtardToday , to Twitter in hopes that the account gets suspended. Bracey spoke withon Oct. 26 about why he wanted to take action against Hudak and his racist video.“At first, I wasn’t going to say anything. I figured it was just another troll looking for attention,” says Bracey. “But then in the last week, I have heard story after story, about how this guy is causing real issues, behind the scenes, with troll accounts. He has offended a lot of people.”reached out to Hudak on Facebook to request an interview, but Hudak didn’t respond. His Facebook page describes Hudak as “Exposing fake comedy. The cure to the disease that is social justice.” One of his profile pictures shows Hudak wearing a shirt that reads “socialism is for fags.” The page also includes many posts with pro-Donald Trump images.On the LibtardToday Twitter account, Hudak referenced the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists in a post with a picture of Bracey, inclusing the caption: “Why would a black man wear a loose rope around his neck, that's basically Klan training wheels. David Duke got 1 for his grandson's 5th Bday.”spoke to a promoter who books acts in Indiana County, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of online harassment from Hudak. The promoter said that Hudak has been mostly barred from comedy venues in Indiana County because he often made many offensive jokes about race and rape.“He is a trashy comedian and had too many rape jokes,” said the promoter. “We just have to be vigilant about keeping him out of Indiana County.”After Hudak was blackballed from Indiana County venues, the promoter said that Hudak’s Twitter account became more active and he began doxing, or identifying people without their consent, people who responded negatively to his social-media activity.At least two other Twitter accounts associated with Hudak have been suspended by Twitter, but as of press time, the LibtardToday account hasn't been suspended, nor has a @ComicZachHudak account, which also has racist posts.Ashley Corts, co-owner for Black Forge Coffee in Allentown, toldthat she received harassment from Hudak after the coffee shop’s punch-card story became national news. (Black Forge handed out reward cards with the faces of well-known conservative figures, like President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, that were punched out with a purchase.) About a week after the story broke in March, Hudak wrote a blog on his Wordpress page condemning Black Forge and saying the move was bad comedy and offensive.Corts said she believes Hudak was prank-calling the shop and was sending hate mail to the shop. Corts interacted with Hudak on social media and said that Hudak made offensive sexual references to her in the fallout of the punch-card story. Corts said that Hudak has also been harassing her business partner, Nick Miller, and his podcasting group, the Epicast Network, which hosts Bracey’s Drinking Partner’s podcast.Corts wants to expose Hudak in hopes that others will realize his offensive material has no place in Pittsburgh. “We are absolutely disgusted,” says Corts of Hudak’s video. “People in the comedy scene in Pittsburgh shouldn’t be acting this way and getting away with this for so long. I am glad people are ousting this guy.”Bracey understands that Hudak was trying to offend him with his video. Bracey notes that Hudak is also seen pretend-stomping on a Washington Redskins’ cap. Bracey is half Cherokee Indian and has been critical of the NFL mascot in the past.In the end, Bracey hopes exposing Hudak and his video will counter any narrative that the Pittsburgh region is beyond having race-relations problems.“It was pathetic, it was sad, I knew what he was trying to do. I knew he was trying to hurt my feelings,” says Bracey. “But he put Nutella on his face ... it was pathetic. I am more upset about all the other things he has done. And I don’t want to hear that everything is perfect in Pittsburgh. I literally just got blackfaced. This only continues to exist because we don’t confront it.”Zach Hudak, the comedian who posted a video of himself in blackface, spoke toin response to the story on Oct. 27. Hudak confirmed that he and the comedian he was targeting, Day Bracey, who is black, were arguing back and forth on social media. Hudak said it started with him arguing on social media with another person. Hudak claimed that when Bracey saw the argument, Bracey joined in. Hudak said that Bracey then “threatened him with assault” on Twitter, and this is why Hudak’s video had the bit about “curb stomping.”“Threatening to commit an aggravated assault is worse than putting on ebony makeup and doing a bad impersonation,” said Hudak.Of course, there are claims that Hudak has also violently threatened people. Pittsburgh comedian Tim Ross toldon Twitter that Hudak has “threatened to fight/choke me out multiple times.” Hudak denied these allegations. As for why some venues in Indiana County refuse to book him, Hudak said that many people in the area have been spreading rumors and lies about him.attempted to reach Hudak, before posting the story online this week, through a Facebook account sharing Hudak’s name and picture. Hudak said his account was suspended for some time because he called a friend of his a “fag” on Facebook.In the end, Hudak doesn’t regret posting the video of him in blackface imitating Bracey. “I have zero regrets. I feel that free speech is under attack. People need to grow thicker skin,” said Hudak. “I am a comedian. That is performance art, like it or not.”Hudak said that he wants to move on from this controversy. “I don’t want to see these people, and I just want to move on with my life and never have to deal with these people again,” he said. “I will ignore you, and you can ignore me.” |
Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images
Update 10:55 p.m. EST, Saturday, December 20, 2014
During the UFC's broadcast of Fight Night 58, the promotion confirmed that they have come to terms with Jackson. Expect Bellator to fire back in the near future.
Update 8:15 p.m. EST, Saturday, December 20, 2014
Jeff Sherwood of Sherdog.com is confirming the report of Steven Marrocco of MMAJunkie.com that the UFC and Jackson have come to an agreement:
I have confirmed from sources that @Rampage4real has signed by the UFC. — Sherdog (@TheSherdoggy) December 21, 2014
Bellator is yet to comment on the story.
-- End of Update --
Christmas may have come early for the UFC, as reports are surfacing that former light heavyweight champion Quinton "Rampage" Jackson is possibly poised to return to his former home. The news was first reported by MMAJunkie.com's Steven Marrocco on Twitter:
I'm hearing Rampage just signed a deal with UFC for announce Sat. I'm skeptical. He's under contract with Bellator. — Steven Marrocco (@MMAjunkieSteven) December 20, 2014
This move, if true, is a surprising turn for 'Page. Jackson had one of the ugliest, most bitter divorces in UFC history in 2013 when he left the promotion in a blaze of dirty laundry and allegations of the UFC shortchanging him on pay-per-view points. Shortly after losing to Glover Teixeira at UFC on Fox 6, he left the promotion and quickly signed a deal with Viacom, parent company of Spike TV, which included competing in Bellator MMA, making appearances on TNA Impact Wrestling and starring in a reality TV series.
While Jackson's fling with the company was initially a lovefest, things got progressively rocky through 2014. He discussed footing the bill for his much-discussed double knee surgery. He had a big fallout with TNA. And he expressed his unhappiness with Spike TV's takeover of Bellator headquarters.
However, things started to heat back up between Jackson and the UFC in November, when he expressed regrets about leaving the promotion. This led to some interesting sound bites from UFC President Dana White and Jackson's surprise addition to the EA Sports UFC video game.
While the once-icy relationship between the UFC and Jackson certainly seems to be thawing, it feels somewhat unlikely that Viacom will simply let one of its biggest stars walk away. Jackson has been a legitimate draw for Bellator, and his three-fight winning streak has given him renewed relevance in the light heavyweight division. Bellator's new head honcho, Scott Coker, stated that he expects Jackson to rejoin the company after sorting out some personal and professional matters.
The details of his contract are unknown, so it is anyone's guess what may come of this. Stick with Bleacher Report for more details as they become available. |
Nearly one year after Manchin-Toomey, the legislation to expand background checks for gun sales, failed to surmount a Senate filibuster, gun control groups announced a big step forward today. Its impact is nowhere near as big as Manchin-Toomey would have been, but it gives a pretty good indication of the strategy the gun control movement has adopted in the wake of that setback.
For months, gun control groups led by Moms Demand Action, a group that sprung up after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, have been agitating for tighter restrictions on the marketing of guns via social media. And today, they got their wish: Facebook announced new rules to clamp down on the use of Facebook and Instagram to market illegal firearms sales. The new rules bar any postings that advertise a willingness by the seller to evade laws by foregoing a background check in the 15 states that require checks for private sales, or by selling across state lines without going through a federally-licensed dealer, as is required of interstate sales. Facebook will also bar users under 18 from viewing any pages where guns are being marketed, and post notifications about applicable laws on the pages where guns are offered for sale. In a conference call announcing the agreement, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who helped lead the talks with Facebook, called the new rules a “really significant breakthrough deal” and “probably the strongest step taken ever to end [illegal guns sales] on social media sites.”
That’s not really saying much, given what an under-regulated free-for-all the online gun marketplace has become. There are an estimated six million gun sales made every year without the background checks required for sales by licensed gun dealers, and a rapidly increasing share of those are being made via online dealers, rather than at the gun shows that have traditionally been the focus of political efforts to expand background checks. (An undercover investigation by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg's group, found rampant willingness by online sellers to evade laws.) Even with the new rules, Facebook users will still be able to post notices about guns for sale on pages like “Guns for Sale,” which has more than 213,000 “likes” and includes, alongside dozens of pictures of guns for sale, charming images such as a poster of an AR-15 rifle with the words: “Ladies, if your guy doesn’t know how to shoot a gun…you have a girlfriend” and another showing a man jumping out of bed with a handgun over the caption: “Dads Demand Guns because its (sic) my ass that has to go see what that noise was at 2 a.m.” And even if sellers won’t be able to advertise their willingness to evade background checks in states that require them for private sales, the fact remains that 35 states do not require them, thanks to the failure of Manchin-Toomey, so the new Facebook rule only crimps so much. That’s not to mention that Facebook is hardly the only game in town for online gun sales. There are big clearinghouses like Armslist.com as well as countless smaller outlets with varying levels of vigilance when it comes to preventing illegal sales.
Still, the Facebook announcement shouldn’t be discounted. For one thing, any limits, however small, can have a real impact: among the recent sales traced to a Facebook posting was the sale of a gun by an Ohio man to a 15-year-old Kentucky boy who brought the gun to school. |
Today, I’m proud to announce the immediate availability of a new password hashing library for PHP: PasswordLib. The project is a spin-off of another that I started about a year ago, CryptLib. I was unable to find a clean solution to a few problems in CryptLib, so dev work stalled for a while. I realized recently that the password hashing functionality was complete, so if I stripped out the incomplete parts, it would still be a very useful library. And so PasswordLib was born.
What Is PasswordLib
Well, in short, PasswordLib is a 100% portable password hashing library. It uses the best available algorithms for hashing, salt generation and random number generation. Additionally, it was designed with interoperability in mind. It can create and validate password hashes from many popular open source projects (with more to come).## Why Do We Need A Library?
We need a password hashing library, because although it’s not too difficult to do it properly, people just don’t seem to understand how to do it. There are tons of articles out there that provide incorrect or downright dangerous code to hash passwords. By abstracting all of that away, a single library can provide a secure and consistent method for hashing passwords while being so easy to use that even the most junior developer can use it.## Why Not Just Use Crypt()?
Well, you can! In fact, this library uses crypt() internally. The problem with crypt though, is that its really a pain in the neck to work with. Its error states are non-obvious at best (“ \*0 “ and “ \*1 “, really?)… Salts are a pain to generate (22 characters of an awkward base64 encoded random string). And it’s non-obvious to use the same API to hash and validate hashes. So, this library abstracts all that difficulty away behind an easy to use interface.## Why Not Just Use PHPASS?
PHPASS is a really great library for generating password hashes. However, it’s a bit out-dated. Blowfish hashes are 100% portable for modern versions of PHP (5.3+), yet if you ask PHPASS for a portable hash, it won’t use Blowfish. Second, it uses an non-standard algorithm for hashing passwords in a portable manner. Additionally, it has been forked and modified several times by other projects (Such as Drupal) to improve the algorithm. So, rather than using a library which needs to be forked to improve, this library was designed to be extended without modification and to support as many possible hashing schemes as possible.## Ok, So How Do I Use It?
There are two basic ways to install PasswordLib for your use. If you use Composer, simply add "PasswordLib/PasswordLib": "\*" to the require section of your your composer.json file (Here’s The Packagist Entry). Then, as long as you use the Composer autoloader, it will magically load the PasswordLib libraries for you.
If you don’t use Composer, just download the latest PasswordLib PHAR archive. Then, all you need to do is require that phar file, and it will configure and bootstrap itself for you, no other autoloader required.
From there, the base API is really simple to use. Just create a new instance of [PasswordLib\PasswordLib()](https://github.com/ircmaxell/PHP-PasswordLib/blob/master/lib/PasswordLib/PasswordLib.php) , and use its methods. Here’s a quick example:
$lib = new PasswordLib \ PasswordLib ; $password = "foo" ; $hash = $lib - > createPasswordHash ( $password ) ; if ( $lib - > verifyPasswordHash ( $password , $hash ) ) { } else { }
It’s really that easy!
By default, it will create all passwords using the most secure password hashing algorithm available to PHP, Blowfish (Crypt $2a$). If you want to generate a different style hash (for compatibility with other systems), just pass in the crypt style prefix as the second argument to createPasswordHash … Some supported hash prefixes for creation:
**$apr1$** - Apache .htaccess password hashes
- Apache .htaccess password hashes **$2a$** - Blowfish (default)
- Blowfish (default) **$S$** - Drupal
- Drupal **$1$** - Crypt MD5 (iterated)
- Crypt MD5 (iterated) **$pbkdf$** - PBKDF2 hashes
- PBKDF2 hashes **$P$** - PHPASS
- PHPASS **$H$** - PHPBB
- PHPBB **$5$** - Crypt SHA256 (iterated)
- Crypt SHA256 (iterated) **$6$** - Crypt SHA512 (iterated)
You can create all of those types of hashes right through that same API. The library will abstract away salt creation, so you can just worry about the algorithm. For validating, it supports all of those hashes, plus:
Joomla style salted hashes
unsalted md5
unsalted sha1
unsalted sha256
unsalted sha512
The way the library is structured, you can add additional formats by simply dropping a new implementation in the implementation directory, or by registering the implementation with the Password Factory (although this requires a little bit more setup).
What About The License?
PasswordLib is released under the very liberal MIT license. However, if you need a different license, just contact me and we can work something out.
Check out the project on GitHub for more information! |
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerBrennan fires back at 'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview Harry Reid: 'I don't see anything' Trump is doing right MORE (D-N.Y.) said Monday that while the nation is still recovering from the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, Congress must pass legislation to prevent similar incidents.
"We cannot banish evil in the earth. Congress can't do that; the president can't do that. What Congress can do, what Congress must do, is pass laws to keep our citizens safe," Schumer said from the Senate floor.
Schumer didn't advocate for a specific gun control or background check bill but said necessary action "starts with laws that help prevent guns, especially the most dangerous guns, from falling into the wrong hands."
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At least 59 people were killed, and more than 520 injured, during a shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday night.
Schumer said the shooting has sparked "horror, sadness and rage" as well as a flurry of questions about the shooter, including his personal history and the weapons used.
"How did this monster acquire the arsenal he used to rain down death on a crowd of innocents? Were those guns purchased and compiled illegally?" Schumer asked. "Some [questions] will have answers, and we'll have to reckon with the fact that this man was able to assemble an arsenal of military-grade weapons."
Democrats are using the shooting to renew their push for broader background check and tougher gun control bills, which are unlikely to advance in the GOP-controlled Congress.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is asking Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.) to establish a select committee on gun violence.
Schumer added on Monday that the first step is to "bind up this new national wound" and then turn to determine how the shooting was able to be carried out.
"We will ferret out the facts based on the reality we will confront; we must confront deeply troubling issues that are raised by this atrocity," he said.
The alleged gunman, Stephen Paddock, opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, which is situated southwest of the concert site. But authorities have not yet announced a motive for the the 64-year-old, who police said was found dead in his hotel room. |
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- A little over a week after a car plunged through a window, a restaurant on Grand Rapids' burgeoning West Side has shuttered.
Black Heron Kitchen & Bar, at 428 Bridge St. NW, announced the closure in a note left on its door: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Black Heron will be CLOSED until further notice. Thank you for your loyal patronage!"
Seth and Laura Porter, who opened the restaurant in 2015, haven't yet acknowledged Black Heron's recent closure on the restaurant's Facebook page.
They didn't immediately respond to a call or Facebook message from MLive and The Grand Rapids Press.
But Porter dashed any hopes the restaurant might reopen in a comment left on a Facebook post in the DrinkGR group.
"Black Heron, unfortunately, has closed its doors forever," he wrote.
Porter was responding to a thread about what happened to the restaurant that appeared to have closed its doors sometime around June 13.
Some questioned if June 3 crash brought about the closure, or if the demise was the result of increased West Side competition. Plywood still covers the broken window.
The restaurant was "pretty busy" before three new restaurants - New Holland Brewing's Knickerbocker, Sovengard and Butcher's Union - opened in the last year.
"Was the accident a death knell? They seemed pretty empty compared to all the new places along Bridge Street the last few months," wrote one person on the thread.
Black Heron's menu was praised by some on the thread:
"Omg!! Where will I EVER get chicken and waffles like that again! I'll never find that again...I'm dying on the inside!," wrote one restaurant fan.
The Porters wanted to bring an "upscale" option to the West Side when they opened the restaurant two years ago. The restaurant's seasonal New American cuisine menu, developed by chef Dave vanderLaan, featured a variety of Michigan-sourced ingredients alongside a wide selection of Michigan microbrews, ciders and spirits.
Items such as perogi, handmade biala kielbasa and chorizo sausage were inspired by the West Side's Polish and Mexican communities, the owners said.
"We wanted to showcase the great things Michigan was doing, but we wanted to do it in our neighborhood," Seth Porter told MLive and The Grand Rapids Press in 2015.
The Porters spent a year remodeling the building, owned by businessman and former City Commissioner Walt Gutowski. The restaurant originally was constructed as a car dealership in 1930 and the building has housed automobile repair and several coffee shops over the years.
Gutowski didn't immediately respond to a call from MLive about the restaurant's closure.
The Porters designed the restaurant interior with neutral tones and minimal decor. The tables were constructed out of wood found above the drop ceiling during renovations. Floor-to-ceiling windows wrap around a 2,500-square-foot dining room and L-shaped bar with seating for 99 people.
It was the first business venture for the couple, who took jobs in the restaurant industry to learn the business prior to launch.
He worked in banking and she was employed in health care before opening the Black Heron, but food and drink long have been a shared passion. The two have traveled the state and co-written the Michigan Beer Blog since 2010.
They picked the moniker, Black Heron, because it pulled together thematic elements of the restaurant. The heron is a native bird and porter is a dark beer style popular in Michigan.
"I felt like this is really something would fit in well with where the neighborhood is going," Laura Porter told MLive. "It's something the neighborhood is missing."
Garret Ellison contributed to this report. |
The White House was forced to backtrack off an initial statement that President Donald Trump played just a “couple of holes” of golf on Sunday, following a report that he played a full round.
According to the golf website No Laying Up, one of Trump’s playing companions — four-time major champion Rory McIlroy — said that the President played a full round at his golf course in West Palm Beach, FL.
“He probably shot around 80,” McIlroy told the website. “He’s a decent player for a guy in his 70’s!”
The group also included former New York Yankees player Paul O’Neill, and Clear Sports CEO Garry Singer. The Clear Sports Twitter account released a photo of the foursome.
Big battle today at Trump International with Clear CEO Garry Singer @McIlroyRory @PaulONeillYES @realDonaldTrump Drain the putt… pic.twitter.com/AZJqEVtlBT — ClearSports (@ClearSportsLLC) February 19, 2017
Following the No Laying Up report, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the President “decided to play a little longer” than the few holes he originally intended.
WH y’day: Trump played “a couple” holes→ report he played 18 w/McIlroy→ WH today: he “intended to play a few holes & decided to play longer” pic.twitter.com/uGVOMPbiGm — Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 20, 2017
At issue here is the amount of time Trump was on the course. A “couple of holes,” as the White House initially said, likely would’ve taken less than an hour. Whereas a complete round probably would’ve gone in excess of four hours, at a minimum.
In his first 32 days as President, Trump has golfed six different times — including, according to The New York Times, a 27-hole outing with Japan Prime Minster Shinzo Abe last week at two different Trump courses.
Prior to running for President, Trump regularly criticized then-President Barack Obama for being on the golf course too often.
President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2014
We pay for Obama’s travel so he can fundraise millions so Democrats can run on lies. Then we pay for his golf. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2014
Can you believe that,with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf.Worse than Carter — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2014
[image via screengrab]
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Have a tip we should know? [email protected] |
Swift’s sold-out performance at MetLife Stadium in July. Photo: Larry Busacca/TAS
Taylor Swift worries a lot about security. It’s an understandable concern. This spring, a man was arrested in the wee hours of the morning near her estate in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Police reportedly spotted him walking out of the ocean; he told the arresting officers he had swum two miles to meet Taylor Swift. The singer has two other homes—a modest house, which she calls a “cottage,” in Beverly Hills, and her main residence, a penthouse apartment near downtown Nashville—and her team makes every effort to keep the addresses hush-hush. But fans have a way of sniffing these things out. On a Sunday morning in late September, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, who had flown to Nashville from Connecticut to see Swift’s concert at the Bridgestone Arena the night before, walked into the lobby of her building. This was celebrity stalking at its most benign: The mom and daughter had a gift for Swift, a big container of homemade chicken soup, which they left with her doorman.
Swift needed the soup. When I arrived at her apartment later that day—my visit was scheduled—she was audibly under the weather. She looked the picture of health: She greeted me in her big, open-plan kitchen, wearing a loose-fitting white-lace frock and friendly grin. But when she spoke, what came out was a croak, a husky voice pitched about two octaves lower than Bea Arthur’s. “I made these, and I’m super-proud of them,” she said, pushing a plate of cookies across the counter. “They’re pumpkin-chocolate-chip. I didn’t cough on them, just so you know. You’re safe.”
Swift had been sick all week, fighting the kind of head cold best treated by curling up in bed with a magnum of NyQuil. She didn’t have that luxury. She’d come home to Nashville to wrap up a seven-month-long North American tour in support of her fourth album, Red, which was released in October 2012. The concert the previous evening was the final one of the tour, and the toughest. “It was a struggle,” she said. “I found it a little bit easier to sing than to talk, which was, like, a miracle.”
In fact, Swift’s cold had provided one of the show’s Kodak moments. About halfway through, she settled in front of a microphone to perform her 2010 hit “Sparks Fly.” Suddenly, she thought better of it. “I’m sorry, guys, but I just really have to blow my nose,” she said. “I swear I’m gonna do this really fast, can you please scream to fill the awkward silence, please?” She scurried down a flight of steps offstage, where, presumably, a roadie was waiting with Kleenex.
For another star, the move would be inconceivable: a mystique-shattering breach of the fourth wall. Can you imagine imperial Beyoncé or imperious Lady Gaga telling a sold-out arena: Hang on a sec, I’ve gotta go snort into a napkin? But for Swift it was a coup de théâtre. The crowd—14,000 plus, mostly female—erupted in a deafening, inhuman roar. Twenty seconds later, Swift was back onstage, strumming her twelve-string acoustic guitar and singing “Sparks Fly.”
Swift’s Red tour is her biggest yet, and it has all the trappings of a stadium-pop blockbuster. There are Jumbotrons and LED lights, multilevel stages and hydraulics and confetti drops, a seven-piece band, four backup singers, fifteen dancers, nearly as many costume changes. Yet the heart of a Taylor Swift show is intimacy: moments like the tissue break, when the razzle-dazzle recedes, the band and dancers step into the shadows, and Swift bathes cavernous arenas in a homey campfire glow. Introducing “Mean,” a song about bullying, Swift stood at the lip of the stage, picking at a banjo. “I always wanted to know and I always used to daydream about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written … Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on. I didn’t always have 14,000 people wanting to hang out with me on a Saturday night.”
This is the signature Swift humble-brag, modesty that has at times seemed so false that it earned its own meme, the Taylor Swift Surprised Face—a reference to the What? Me?! gasps of astonishment she unleashed once too often when her name was called at awards ceremonies. Still, can you blame her for being shocked? The scale and scope of Swift’s success is startling. In an age of catastrophic music-industry contraction, Swift stands apart; sometimes she has seemed like a one-woman bulwark against the collapse of the traditional record business. In the seven years since the release of her self-titled debut, Swift has sold 26 million albums. Sales of Taylor Swift song downloads have topped 75 million; according to the Recording Industry Association of America, she is the No. 1 digital singles artist of all time. Since 2006, she has placed 43 songs in the Top 40 of Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart as the lead performer, more than any other artist in that period. She’s had 31 Top 40 country singles, including thirteen No. 1’s.
These numbers are especially improbable when you consider the music, and the musician, behind them. Swift is an oddball. There is no real historical precedent for her. Her path to stardom has defied the established patterns; she falls between genres, eras, demographics, paradigms, trends. She is a Pennsylvania Yankee turned teen-pop country singer, a Nashville star who crossed over to Top 40, a confessional singer-songwriter who masquerades as a global pop diva. Her music mashes up the quirkily homespun and the gleaming pop-industrial, Etsy and Amazon, in a way we’ve never quite heard before.
Swift herself is a figure of contradictions. She’s a rock critic’s darling who hasn’t the faintest whiff of countercultural cool about her. Raunchiness is the norm in today’s pop, but Swift is prim, rated G. She is a model of can-do 21st-century girl power whose vision of romance is positively medieval—fairy-princess, shining-knight, prancing-unicorn medieval. She can write the sickly sweetest love song you’ve ever heard and churn out the most bilious, vindictive, name-naming, slut-shaming breakup ballad; often, they’re the same song. Swift’s influence has reverberated through popular music, yet she remains sui generis, a genre of one. By rights, she should be a fringe figure, a cult artist. But as 2013 rounds the corner toward 2014, as Swift puts a bow on her fourth album and begins work on her fifth, there’s no mistaking it: Beyoncé, Rihanna, Gaga, Katy, Miley, Justin, Justin, Usher, Jay Z, Kanye—they’re all vying for second place. How, why, is Taylor Swift the world’s biggest pop star?
The best place to seek answers may be Nashville, the city that shapes Swift’s approach to art, business, and the intersection of the two. Her apartment, a three-bedroom corner duplex with soaring ceilings, sits more or less in the center of town, about two miles southwest of the Cumberland River, near the campus of Vanderbilt University. Swift did the interior design herself, a project she says took years to complete. It’s easy to see why. The apartment is a very pleasant, very visually busy place. There is a lot of décor for the eye to absorb.
There’s rustic hardwood furniture, Oriental rugs, a giant hearth where an electric fire flickers even when the temperature outside is in the high seventies. There are cabinets cluttered with books and tchotchkes; there’s a kitchen backsplash in the shape of a giant heart. In a corner near a window, there’s a topiary rabbit, as tall as an NBA shooting guard, wearing a marching-band hat. On the wall of her living room, I noticed a photograph in a gilded frame: the famous image of Kanye West, stage-crashing Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. Underneath the picture is a caption, handwritten by Swift: Life is full of little interruptions.
Swift’s ceilings are hung with all kinds of things: gathered silk, wooden birdcages, chandeliers, lanterns. Ornate railings line the apartment’s second-floor balconies; it looks like a stage set for a production of Romeo and Juliet—or for the scene in the final verse of Swift’s 2008 hit “Love Story.” In short, it’s exactly the kind of apartment you’d expect Taylor Swift to inhabit: whimsically girlie, dreamy, appointed in a style you might call Shabby-Chic Alice in Wonderland. Swift showed me one of the guest bedrooms, which holds an eye-popping cacophony of patterned wallpaper and fabrics. “I wanted, like, every color,” she said.
Swift is a homebody. Even when she’s touring, she tries to sleep in her own bed, picking the shortest distance to one of her three residences and flying home in her private jet after shows. “It’s not a bad gig,” she deadpanned. You might not know it from her public persona, but Swift is funny; she has a dry, ready wit. I told her about the strange man who was seated next to me at the concert the night before. He looked to be in his early forties and was wearing a Taylor Swift T-shirt covered with Taylor Swift pin-back buttons. He announced that he was alone and had driven to Nashville from Oklahoma for the show; he filmed the whole concert on his phone, mouthing every word to every song with unnerving intensity. “He’s probably in a file somewhere,” Swift said.
The most impressive features of Swift’s apartment are the twenty-foot-high windows, which wrap around a corner of the building, offering panoramic views of Nashville. If you look out those windows to the west, you can see the famous epicenter of the country-music industrial complex, the strip of song-publishing firms, recording studios, and record labels known as Music Row.
Swift first saw Music Row in 2001. At the time, the Swifts were living in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, near Reading, on an eleven-acre Christmas-tree farm that the family owned as a secondary business. (Her father, a successful stockbroker, worked for Merrill Lynch.) Taylor had discovered country music a few years earlier, when her parents bought her a LeAnn Rimes album. At age 11, Taylor persuaded her mother to take her to Nashville during spring break, so she could go door-to-door on Music Row, armed with a demo CD of karaoke performances.
Swift in a Los Angeles studio earlier this year. Photo: Courtesy of Taylor Swift
She came up empty on that first trip, but three years later the family relocated to Hendersonville, Tennessee, an affluent suburb about twenty miles northeast of Nashville, so Taylor could pursue her musical dream. For once, it is not glib to say that the rest is history. In 2004, when she was 14, Swift signed a songwriting contract with Sony/ATV Nashville; she may have been the youngest professional songwriter in Music Row history. A year later, she inked a deal with Big Machine, a fledgling label run by former DreamWorks Nashville Records executive Scott Borchetta, and released her first album, Taylor Swift, in October 2006.
Revisiting Swift’s debut, you’re reminded just how much of a country record it was. The lead single, “Tim McGraw,” tipped a Stetson to the country superstar; on the album cover, Swift looked like a mini-me version of McGraw’s wife, Faith Hill, whom she thanked in the liner notes “for being the most graceful woman in the world.” The songs were genre fare: lyrics about Chevy trucks and bedtime prayers and slammin’ screen doors, sung by Swift in a Dixie drawl, an accent she couldn’t possibly have picked up in the Keystone State.
There is a long tradition of country carpetbaggers: musicians from points north who squeeze into cowboy boots, start dropping their g’s, and make a beeline for Nashville to launch, or revitalize, their careers. The country star Alan Jackson lampooned the phenomenon in a 1994 hit, “Gone Country,” and the trend has been pronounced in recent years, with rockers like Sheryl Crow and Darius Rucker migrating to Nashville, one of the last places hospitable to guitar-based pop-rock in an era dominated by hip-hop.
You could make the case that Swift traveled that well-worn path herself. In fact, she did a bait-and-switch maneuver, planting roots in loamy country soil, then pivoting to pop. With each album, her drawled vowels have become more clipped; she’s pushed the fiddles and mandolins down in the mix, or jettisoned them altogether. The tale is told by two of her biggest hits, “You Belong With Me” (2008) and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” (2012). The former is a power-pop song with a country twang; banjos are prominent amid the surging guitars, and Swift still sounds like she’s a Southerner. (Listen to her sing the phrase “typical Tuesday night.”) “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” on the other hand, is a pure bubblegum-pop ditty, which Swift sings—and in funny asides, speaks—in a Valley Girl accent purged of all down-home traces. Good-bye, twang; hello, vocal fry.
Yet Swift’s ties to Nashville are still strong, crucial to her music and to what can only be called the Taylor Swift Brand. Radio is a major force in country, and Swift has remained a country-radio favorite the old-fashioned grassroots way: by schmoozing and glad-handing station executives, program directors, and disc jockeys.
“Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met,” Swift said. “They just say, ‘Look, we’ve known each other for years. You’ve stood by us, and we’ve stood by you. That’s how this works.’ ”
Swift has made splashier gestures toward the country Establishment. In October, the singer attended a gala ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Taylor Swift Education Center at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which she personally endowed with a $4 million donation. “I love being a part of the country-music community,” she told me.
Those feelings are, to say the least, reciprocated. Swift is Nashville’s sweetheart; it can’t stop lavishing her with accolades and honors. This fall, the Nashville Songwriters Association International named her Songwriter/Artist of the Year for a record sixth time. She has been nominated for 21 Country Music Association Awards, and she’s won nine. Midway through this year’s CMAs ceremony, a phalanx of eight of the biggest stars in country—McGraw and Hill, George Strait, Brad Paisley, Keith Urban, and the three gaudily moussed simps in the trio Rascal Flatts—appeared onstage to present Swift with the Pinnacle Award, a special prize that had only been given out once before, to Garth Brooks. Brooks won his when he was 43; Swift turns 24 next month.
The Swift-Nashville love affair works for both sides. She is country’s first truly global star, its ambassador not just to the nation’s mall-rat hordes but to Ireland and Brazil and Taiwan. She confers modernity, cosmopolitanism, youth on a genre that traditionally has stood for the opposite values. The country Establishment may not be crazy about pop music, but it loves having a pop star in its midst, and is willing to follow Swift anywhere she goes, sending songs like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” to No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs charts. Nashville barely even flinched when confronted with “I Knew You Were Trouble,” surely the only record with a dubstep bass-drop ever to get spins on country radio.
For Swift, Nashville offers plenty in return. The country audience is music’s most loyal and reliable; in a decade of record-industry decline, country sales figures have been notably more buoyant than other genres. Nashville turned out to be the perfect staging ground, the ideal base of operations, for Swift’s broader conquest of pop culture. If you ask Swift to reconcile her musical impulses, she gives an answer that has the virtue of being both true and politically savvy boilerplate. “I love country and I love pop,” she told me. “I love them both.”
But Swift’s relationship to country is not merely a matter of careerist calculation. Nashville is a song town, and Swift is first and foremost a songwriter, steeped in Music Row’s values of craftsmanship and storytelling. This was evident from the beginning, on Swift’s debut record, when listeners were amazed to hear a scrawny teenager—who in early publicity photos looked like she’d been awkwardly airdropped into a debutante’s ball gown—singing self-written songs that showed such sure-footed command of form. Her songs had catchy verses that erupted into catchier singalong choruses, and the kinds of clever lyrical twists and switchbacks for which country songwriters are renowned. Her first country No. 1, “Our Song,” which she wrote for a talent contest as a high-school freshman, bounded out of the speakers, grabbing your ears from the first bar. The lyric was a little Mobius strip: a teenage romance tale, which looped around, in a nifty final verse, to Swift, the songwriter: “I grabbed a pen / And an old napkin / And I wrote down our song.” With each album, she’s refined her craft. Consider a refrain from another big hit, “Mine” (2010): “You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter.” That’s awfully deft writing: a little miracle of narrative concision, vacuum-packing a novel’s worth of backstory into ten words and two bars of music.
Swift told me she could imagine a time when she’d stop performing and just be a writer. “When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be, like: ‘Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.’ It’s looking like a good pension plan.”
Perhaps. But Swift’s songwriting may be too quirky, too personal, to fit all comers. Swift’s parents named her after James Taylor, and she has a seventies-folkie’s soul; she is a confessor, a memoirist. On Red, Swift made the big leap into high-gloss pop, co-writing three songs with the wizardly Swedish hit-makers Max Martin and Johan “Shellback” Schuster, who are responsible for dozens of pop smashes over the last decade and a half. You could hear Martin and Shellback’s touch in the bright, punchy sound of those songs, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “I Knew You Were Trouble,” and “22.” Yet the songs are unmistakably Swiftian; unlike other Martin songs, you can’t imagine them being recorded, interchangeably, by Katy Perry, or Pink, or any of the other usual suspects. Listen to a key line in “22”: “We’re happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time / It’s miserable and magical.” It’s a classic Swift lyric: purple but precise, self-involved yet self-aware—all in all, about as spot-on a description of a young woman’s turbulent inner life as you’re likely to hear on hit radio.
“I think that allowing yourself to feel raw, real emotions in public is something I am never going to be afraid to do,” she said. “Hopefully that’s the case, if I can remain a real human. I’m fine with being honest with my fans about the fact that it’s okay that everything isn’t okay all the time. I love my life, I love my career, I love my friends—but things are not okay all the time. So I don’t sing about things being okay all the time.”
Swift’s fan mail. Photo: Kylee Francescon/Splash News
She never has. The second song Swift ever wrote, when she was 12, was a lament about junior-high-school ostracism called “The Outside.” (The song appeared on Taylor Swift.) Swift quit Hendersonville High for good when she was 16, but her songs have never quite left the schoolyard: She still obsesses over castes and cliques and social hierarchies. In “22,” Swift sings about fleeing a party packed with “cool kids”; in “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” she scoffs at the ex-boyfriend who plays “some indie record that’s much cooler than mine.” One explanation for Swift’s immense popularity may be her insistence on playing the unpopular girl—36.7 million Twitter followers be damned. Other divas project invulnerability, striding through videos like jackbooted superheroines. Swift offers a different image. To put it in the teen-movie terms of “You Belong With Me”: In life Swift is, unmistakably, a “cheer captain”—blonde, leggy, confident, talented, and, oh, yeah, world famous. But in her songs she’s staked out a different persona: She’s a bleacher warmer, a wallflower, an underdog.
Swift is best known, of course, for writing love songs, and lost love songs—and, especially, vengeful, scorched-Earth lost-love songs. The liner notes to her debut album included this dedication: “To all the boys who thought they would be cool and break my heart, guess what? Here are 14 songs written about you. HA.” Back then, the boys in question were Swift’s high-school classmates, but she’s since moved on to dating musicians and movie stars. These days, spotting-the-celeb in Taylor Swift’s lyrics is a favorite media parlor game.
Like many famous people, Swift complains about the prying of tabloid gossips. In fact, she does a lot to encourage the attention. Accepting the Best Female Video award for “I Knew You Were Trouble” at the VMAs this August, Swift said: “I also want to thank the person who inspired this song, who knows exactly who he is”—a statement that unleashed a torrent of tweets about One Direction singer Harry Styles, the song’s reputed target.
At such moments, you can’t help but conclude that you are watching a shrewd businesswoman at work: It doesn’t hurt Swift’s bottom line to keep gossip mills whirring. But Swift’s vengeful streak has also brought censure—lots of it. She’s been maligned as a serial kisser-and-teller, as an entitled rich kid, as a mean girl with a victim complex. Swift can be shrill. When singer Joe Jonas dumped her and began dating actress Camilla Belle, Swift’s (alleged) response was “Better Than Revenge” (2010), a song that spent as much time shaming the girl as the rake (“She’s an actress / She’s better known / For things that she does / On the mattress”). “Dear John,” allegedly about Swift’s reported fling with John Mayer, had a delectable melody, but Swift’s self-righteousness, her immature insistence on her own immaturity—“Don’t you think I was too young / To be messed with?”—curdled the drink.
Swift has heard the criticism, but she waves it off. “There’s a spin on every single celebrity out there,” she said. “I know that one of my spins is: ‘Oh, Taylor’s heartbroken. Oh, Taylor fell in love and the guy broke her heart. She’s sad all the time, and lonely.’
“I mean, they can say that all they want. Those are real feelings that every single person goes through. I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you. I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.”
“I’m a songwriter,” surely, is the apt response. The tradition of musical score-settling stretches all the way back to medieval troubadours and lyre-plucking ancients; it’s been a mainstay of American song at least since the first bluesman aimed an acidic twelve-bars at the woman who’d done him wrong. Bob Dylan is an incorrigible, at times malicious, kisser-and-teller; for decades, rock critics have been quoting with admiration Elvis Costello’s famous dictum: “The only motivation points for me writing all these songs are revenge and guilt.” Drake’s new album Nothing Was the Same is, as usual, a vérité catalogue of his “bitches” and booty calls, in which he goes so far as to name one of his civilian exes, “Courtney from Hooters on Peachtree”—a creepier move by far than Swift’s sly swipes at her famous former beaux. It’s hard not to detect a sexist double standard in the policing of Swift’s confessions, especially when you consider the routine misogyny in the songs of rockers, rappers, and woebegone beardy indie balladeers. Taylor Swift is a young woman who dates guys, falls in love, falls out of love, and writes some songs about it. Must we begrudge Swift her muse?
You could call Swift a generational bard: She merges the pleasures of old-fashioned songcraft with millennial social-media oversharing. There’s no doubting the artfulness of Swift’s best status updates. Red’s centerpiece is “All Too Well,” co-written with songwriter Liz Rose, a frequent collaborator. If the Internet is to be believed, “All Too Well” is about Jake Gyllenhaal, whose romance with Swift convulsed the tabloids in late 2010. It’s a ballad that rises, like a slow-cresting wave, over a bass line similar to the one in U2’s “With or Without You.” There are the usual recriminations, which arrive in tight, crackling couplets: “You call me up again just to break me like a promise / So casually cruel in the name of being honest.” But “All Too Well” is also a montage of fond memories, vividly drawn: The song catches a couple “singing in the car, getting lost upstate” and dancing around the kitchen “in the refrigerator light.” Here is Swift, watching her boyfriend react as she pages through childhood photographs at his mother’s house: “Photo album on the counter, your cheeks were turning red / You used to be a little kid with glasses in a twin-size bed.” It takes a special songwriter to craft a sneering kiss-off that’s also tender valediction.
“I heard from the guy that most of Red is about,” Swift said. “He was like, ‘I just listened to the album, and that was a really bittersweet experience for me. It was like going through a photo album.’ That was nice. Nicer than, like, the ranting, crazy e-mails I got from this one dude. It’s a lot more mature way of looking at a love that was wonderful until it was terrible, and both people got hurt from it—but one of those people happened to be a songwriter.”
She rolled her eyes. “So what are you going to do? Did you not Wikipedia me before you called me up?”
These days, Swift is thinking a lot about her next record. While on the Red tour, she’d been writing songs and stockpiling ideas: reams of lyrics, thousands of voice memos in her iPhone. Swift will end the year by performing in Australia and New Zealand and will play a few dates in London and Berlin in February. But she plans to spend much of 2014 writing and recording the new album, a prospect she finds exhilarating and terrifying.
“I worry about everything,” Swift said. She was sitting in her dining room, at the head of a large antique wooden table. “Some days I wake up in a mind-set of, like, ‘Okay, it’s been a good run.’ By afternoon, I could have a change of mood and feel like anything is possible and I can’t wait to make this kind of music I’ve never made before. And then by evening, I could be terrified of the whole thing again. And then at night, I’ll write a song before bed.”
Swift hopes to collaborate with new songwriters and producers. But she planned to begin, she said, by heading back into the studio with Max Martin and Shellback. “I want to go in with Max and Johan first, just to figure out what the bone structure of this record is going to be.
“I have a lot of things to draw from emotionally at the moment. But I have to draw from them with a different perspective than on Red. I can’t say the same things over and over, you know? I mean, I think it’s just all the more important that I don’t ever allow myself to coast.
“At the same time, there’s a mistake that I see artists make when they’re on their fourth or fifth record, and they think innovation is more important than solid songwriting. The most terrible letdown as a listener for me is when I’m listening to a song and I see what they were trying to do. Like, where there’s a dance break that doesn’t make any sense, there’s a rap that shouldn’t be there, there’s like a beat change that’s, like, the coolest, hippest thing this six months—but it has nothing to do with the feeling, it has nothing to do with the emotion, it has nothing to do with the lyric. I never want to put things in songs just because that might make them popular, like, on the more rhythmic stations or in dance clubs. I really don’t want a compilation of sounds. I just need them to be songs.”
As for the theme of those songs: That’s a foregone conclusion. “I only write songs about crazy love,” Swift said. “If I go on two dates with a guy and we don’t click, I’m not writing a song about that. It didn’t matter in the emotional grand scheme of things. There’s a lot that goes on in daily life that isn’t really worth turning into a verse and a chorus.”
Swift is definitely in the right line of work: Popular song is, to a large degree, the art of setting crazy love to a tune. But Swift’s romanticism has brought disdain from certain quarters. In a post on the website Jezebel titled “Taylor Swift Is a Feminist’s Nightmare,” Dodai Stewart scorned the singer as retrograde, a prude infatuated with white-knight romance. “For Taylor, 15 means falling for a boy and dreaming of marrying him. My 15 was more like: Flirt with this one, make out with that one, try a cigarette, get drunk, lie to your parents, read some Anaïs Nin … [Swift’s] image of being good and pure plays right into how much the patriarchy fetishizes virginity, loves purity, and celebrates women who know their place as delicate flowers.”
Swift is practically Victorian compared with stars like Beyoncé, Gaga, and Rihanna, to say nothing of another daughter of Nashville who’s been in the news lately, Miley Cyrus. Those women represent an aggressively sexualized feminist pop, harnessing big beats and skimpy outfits to work through questions of power and self-determination. Swift’s songs aren’t totally chaste: Sex is there in the rush and flush of the music, and it peeks through, discreetly, in the lyrics. But she is demure. Among other things, this is an excellent marketing strategy. Swift has moved from teen-pop stardom to adulthood, bringing her old fans along while staying wholesome enough for the next generation of tweens and their parents.
Still, is Taylor Swift really a “feminist’s nightmare”? You could argue the opposite. Her straight-laced fashion sense and dance moves—the fact that she’s never writhed across a concert stage wearing a negligee, or less—may make her more square than some other singers. But she’s also less beholden to that old feminist bugbear, the Male Gaze.
In fact, seeing Swift live is revelatory: It’s in a setting like Bridgestone that her uniqueness, the weirdness of her conventionality—and, yes, her feminism—snaps into focus. I’ve been going to arena shows for three decades; I’ve never experienced a louder, more rabid crowd than at Swift’s concert. Nor, for that matter, a more female crowd, music critics from New York and creepy dudes from Oklahoma to the contrary. Even at a Justin Bieber show—even at a women’s-studies seminar—you won’t find as pronounced a female-to-male ratio, nor such a wide age range: toddlers and teens and tweens and their moms, for sure, but also college co-eds, and grandmothers, and rowdy thirtysomething office workers, like the gals who sat in the row behind me, passing a flask of booze. To push through the turnstiles of a Taylor Swift concert is to enter, as the saying goes, a women’s space. Swift has the power to turn a hockey arena into a room of one’s own.
She puts on a good show. In the past, Swift’s singing has been shaky—who can forget the wounded-water-buffalo harmonies in her duet with Stevie Nicks at the 2010 Grammys—but these days her pitch is sure; she sings confidently, prettily, if not quite muscularly. The concert is elaborately choreographed, and she hits her marks like a pro. But the most fascinating bits come between songs, when Swift speaks to the crowd. Her banter consists almost entirely of talk about songwriting. It is a rather eccentric brand of stage patter: more hippie arts-camp counselor than rock star.
“I think for me, a question that I get asked sort of a lot is: How do you write a song? Like, where do you start? I just imagine that I am putting a message in a bottle and sending it out into the ocean.”
“I remember being really young, and the thing I would write songs about, mostly, was the fact that I really didn’t really fit in in school. Songwriting became a coping mechanism for me early on.”
“I think it was Joni Mitchell who said that, ‘Songs are what you think of on the drive home.’ You know, the Great Afterthought.”
At Bridgestone the loudest cheer of an earsplittingly loud night came when Swift was sitting at the piano, in the middle of a rambling introduction to “All Too Well.” “I’m sure,” she said, shooting a sidelong glance at the audience, “we have a lot of people here tonight who write songs.” Call Swift a stooge for the patriarchy if you like, but the message of her concerts is a different one: that great power is unleashed when a female takes a guitar and pen in hand and makes some art.
At her apartment, I ask Swift to explain her rapport with her fans.
“There’s more of a friendship element to it than anything else,” she said. “Maybe it’s a big-sister relationship. Or it’s a Hey, we’re the same age—and we were both 16 when my first album came out, and we’ve both grown up together.
“Audiences respond differently to different effects that artists have on them. I’ve noticed this, from bringing lots of special guests onstage. Crowds scream for lots of different reasons. There’s a certain cute-boy scream. And there’s, like, a certain ‘I identify with this lyric, this lyric is my life’ scream. I guess that’s the scream that I hear in my concerts.”
*This article originally appeared in the November 25, 2013 issue of New York Magazine. |
Tea Party Economist
Recently by Gary North: The U.S. Constitution: Tool of Centralization and Debt, 1788-Today
Here is a letter I got over the weekend.
From the Desk Of:Manager: Mr. Ben S. BernankeBank Federal Reserve BoardLiberty Street, New York, NY 10038, USA
This is to bring to your kind notice that your outstanding payment of $7,300,000.00 which has been with our central paying office from United Nations has been signed and Approved for payment after series of meeting with our board of directors,also bear in mind that We want to conclude all payment before the end quarter of 2012 runs out for you to receive your Fund.
Therefore, to enable us achieve our goal to release your Fund to you, you are advice to re-confirm to us the below information to enable conclude this transaction with you.
Your Full Name:Your Complete Address:Direct Tele: Number:Mobile Number:Occupation:Nationality
Finally, Response Should be Made Immediately before it will be too late for you.
Waiting for your immediate response.
Thanks for your Co-operation.
Manager: Mr. Ben S. BernankeBank Federal Reserve BoardLiberty Street, New York, NY 10038, USAChairman Federal Reserve Board New York,
CC: FBI
CC: United Nations |
AutoGuide.com
More and more cars are hitting the market with small turbocharged engines in an effort to boast high MPG numbers, but in the real world, they’re failing miserably.
While turbocharged cars fare very well on the EPA test cycle, it seems like most consumers aren’t seeing that same range once the car hits the road. Consumer Reports and Green Car Reports both came to the same conclusion: that the advertised numbers are unrealistic to achieve.
Looking at Fuelly.com, a site where drivers share their real-world fuel economy, it’s not uncommon to find the owners of turbocharged vehicles like the Ford F-150, VW Golf and Mercedes-Benz CLA 250 reporting MPG numbers about 2 MPG lower than the EPA’s ratings.
Are automakers lying about the MPGs cars can achieve? Not exactly, since cars are tested using the same method the EPA uses. It’s the test that’s a bit of a problem.
Why Turbos Have Such High Advertised MPGs
“The real problem comes from the fact that the proportion of light-load driving to high-load driving in U.S. EPA fuel economy test is a poor match for real-world driving,” explains Mazda engineer Dave Coleman.
See Also: Where do MPG Ratings Come From?
Cars are tested on a dynamometer on a program for highway driving and city driving. On the highway simulation, the vehicle travels 10.26 miles in just under 13 minutes, making an average speed of 48.28 miles per hour. For the city portion, the vehicle travels 11.04 miles in just over 31 minutes, making an average speed of 21.2 mph. There are three other tests that incorporate high-speed driving (a shorter test, where the car average 48.3 MPH, and achieves maximum speeds of about 80 mph), and another test that accounts for driving with air conditioning on and a cold start test.
“The EPA test is unrealistically slow and mild,” notes Coleman. The periods of acceleration is steady and slow, unlike how drivers act in the real world. “When [the engines] are on boost and making high output, most turbo engines are dramatically less efficient than when they are being driven gently.”
Coleman explains that because everyone (including the EPA) recognizes that the test doesn’t produce real-world numbers, the published figures are actually adjusted to better suit real-world driving. The EPA has a factor it applies to the raw data that is based on the average difference between real-world driving and simulated driving.
See Also: Fuel Efficient Driving Tips: How to Drive Green
“The problem, though, is that normal turbo engines aren’t average,” says Coleman. “In the mild driving of the test, they have above average efficiency, but in the harder driving of the real world, they have below average efficiency. So the correction factor doesn’t work accurately, and the test produces overly optimistic results.”
This explains the high advertised MPG numbers of turbocharged cars. Most turbocharged engines also feature lower compression ratios and high temperatures that also reduce efficiency, which accounts for the poor observed fuel economy in the real world.
How to get the Same Real World Numbers as the EPA
Some automakers have come up with clever solutions to help deal with this difference between the simulated fuel economy of the EPA test and the real world fuel economy observed by owners.
“Most car companies are just targeting good test results while we’re targeting good real-world results,” boasts Coleman. The 2016 Mazda CX-9 features an all new turbocharged engine that, according to the Japanese automaker, will help it achieve real-world fuel usage figures that are on par with the advertised numbers.
See Also: 2016 Mazda CX-9 Review
“On top of all the tricks already baked into our Skyactiv engines to prevent knock and allow higher compression, [Mazda] developed a unique 4-3-1 exhaust flow that lets us use the high-energy exhaust flow from the beginning of each exhaust stroke that pulls out the exhaust during the low-energy flow at the end of the exhaust stroke from the previous cylinder,” says Coleman. Simply put, this draws out hot air from the cylinder. As a result, the engine remains efficient and can run a high-compression ratio.
Heat is the big issue when it comes to efficiency. Looking at the way other turbos work, many limit the maximum temperature by burning more fuel. “Adding additional fuel without additional oxygen means you won’t get any more energy or heat,” says Coleman. “In fact, the additional fuel has nothing to react with, so it actually gets in the way of the combustion, slowing it down and absorbing some of the heat.” It’s also a waste of fuel, since it’s not helping propulsion of the vehicle.
See Also: Are Turbocharged Engines Reliable?
Fortunately, Mazda has another trick in the new CX-9 that helps improve cooling. “Instead of controlling combustion temperatures with excess fuel, we do it with a cooled Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) system,” says Coleman. “The exhaust gas has almost no oxygen left in it, so if we can introduce some of this back into the intake stream, we can get cooler combustion without using excess fuel.” It sounds like a recycling system, but the exhaust has to be cooled first.
“This only works if we aren’t putting exhaust heat back into the intake, though, so the exhaust gas is first run through a heat exchanger to cool it off on its way to the intake,” said Coleman. “In most conditions where we would normally have to run excess fuel enrichment to control combustion temperatures, we can run cooled EGR instead.”
Coleman finishes up by throwing a bit of shade at other automakers. “Ironically, cooled EGR is a well understood technique, but because it only helps with parts of the performance envelope that aren’t tested in the EPA test, almost nobody uses it.” Ouch.
Other Actually Fuel Efficient Turbocharged Cars
The new CX-9 isn’t the only turbocharged car that can achieve its advertised fuel usage numbers in the real world. Many drivers are reporting great fuel economy in the new Honda Civic. Rated to earn 35 MPG combined, the average real-world consumption reported by drivers on fueleconomy.gov is 37 MPG. Of course, it is a new car with a limited number of results on the site, but this modern turbocharged engine may bode well for the future of fuel efficient turbos.
See Also: 2016 Honda Civic vs Mazda3
One key takeaway is that the Civic pairs a CVT to its turbocharged engine in order to keep fuel consumption low. While Nissan does this in the Juke and Subaru does this with the Forester XT and WRX, those cars have an emphasis on performance instead of fuel economy.
Another interesting find is that owners of the new 2016 Range Rover Evoque are reporting higher than expected fuel consumption numbers on Fuelly. Although it’s a small sample size, this could be attributed to the car’s new nine-speed automatic transmission and other fuel-saving techniques like automatic engine start-stop.
It’s clear that automakers have been accounting for the EPA’s fuel economy test. It’s also clear that in regards to turbocharged vehicles, the EPA’s test results don’t translate into realistic fuel usage on the road. Automakers are starting to use new engineering techniques and technology to help bridge the gap, but it’s important for buyers to know that if they’re planning on buying a turbocharged car, the advertised numbers may be far from what they see in the real world. |
George Zimmerman during his trial in Sanford, Fla., on July 12. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP)
African Americans have a mostly shared and sharply negative reaction to the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the not-guilty verdict in the resulting trial, while whites are far more divided, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
At least eight in 10 African Americans say the shooting of the Florida teenager was unjustified, recoil at the verdict in the trial and want the shooter, George Zimmerman, tried in federal court for violating Martin's civil rights.
On the Martin shooting in particular, the racial gaps are extremely wide.
Among African Americans, 87 percent say the shooting was unjustified; among whites, just 33 percent say so. A slim majority of whites (51 percent) approve of the not-guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial, while African Americans overwhelmingly and strongly disapprove. Some 86 percent of blacks disagree with the verdict — almost all of them disapproving "strongly."
There is also a partisan tinge to the public views. Among whites, 70 percent of Republicans but only 30 percent of Democrats say they approve of the verdict.
Some of the reaction to the trial — among both blacks and whites — stems from wildly different views of the role of race in the criminal justice system more broadly. Fully 86 percent of African Americans say blacks and other minorities do not get equal treatment under the law; the number of whites saying so is less than half as large, 41 percent. A majority of whites, 54 percent, say there is equal treatment for minority groups.
About eight in 10 African Americans (81 percent) say the federal government should charge Zimmerman in federal court with civil rights violations. Just 27 percent of whites agree, while 59 percent say the government should not bring such charges.
Some 60 percent of Hispanics say blacks and other minorities do not receive equal treatment with whites in the criminal justice system, and by a two-to-one ratio, they disapprove of the verdict in the Zimmerman trial.
The Post-ABC poll was conducted July 18 to 21 among a random national sample of 1,002 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points; it is 4.5 points for the sample of white respondents and 11 points among African Americans and Hispanics.
Cohen is Director of Capital Insight, the independent polling group of Washington Post Media. Capital Insight pollsters Scott Clement and Kimberly N. Hines contributed to this report.
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Graphic: Trayvon Martin shooting and verdict: Huge racial gaps |
The combat racer. Today, and seemingly for the longest time, an archaic concept consigned to history. Where simulation and the sandbox dominate the motoring scene, where have those heavy weapon racers gone? Where are the guns? Where are the missiles? Where those glorious, refulgent explosions? In the mists of your memories, golden days spent at the pad of the arcing, mellifluous Wipeout, majestic sessions in battle through the frenetic, hardcore classic that is Rollcage. All that is left, fleeting vistas sweeping through your mindscape of a bygone age. The combat racer, in all its grizzled glory, gone. Achingly absent. Lost. Perhaps, forever? Not if we have anything to do with it.
Your browser does not support the HTML5 video, go get some Chrome. [download] Enter project Grip Harnessing the power of Unreal Engine 4, over the last few months we've managed to produce a working prototype of everything that made Rollcage the classic game that it is. The obscene weaponry, the devastating destruction, the hardcore handling, the insane speed coupled with those bombastic explosions. And yes, even driving on the ceilings. You name it. Grip, guns and gears, it's got it all. Mayhem! Thus far, the work of just two people. Myself, as you might imagine, and a certain Mr Chris Mallinson. In truth, Chris is the main driving force behind this venture, and myself, a very willing collaborator. An incredibly talented guy, I can think of no-one I could trust more, to work with in raising this game to our screens. Working our nuts off to bring this project to reality. A chance to relive again, those heady days of swords, shields and speed. But let's be clear, this is no clone, and due to IP restrictions, no sequel either. A spiritual successor if you will. Taking the best of what Rollcage was, and fusing it with the best of what is achievable with modern technology, Grip is to distil the very essence of the energy of Rollcage, and take it to the pinnacle of all that it can be. Brace yourself, player, you're going to have to bring everything you got to compete in this arena. Sh#t just got real. With Grip, we'll see how good you really are. But we've a long way to go before the battles can be reborn. After all, we are just two people, and we're going to need a fair few more. More people, and more money, lots of money. More than we could possibly find for ourselves, Grip is heading to KickStarter, this Summer. And if you want this project to succeed, if you want to be in the fight, we're going to need your help. You, me, and everybody here, will have to shout with all the air our lungs can muster. To be seen, to be heard, in the blizzard of activity that courses through the web each and every nanosecond of each and every day, it is only those that shout the loudest that are ever really heard. We need you. We need all of you. Tunnel section But wait, not just yet. What you see here is just the seed of what is to come. An early preview, a token, to the Rollcage Steam community who we know will do all they can to make this endeavour a success. And of course, it goes without saying, we're looking for your input as well as your voice. We want to please those that are closest to the game and have a real feel for what it could become, those that have the imagination and the ideas to help it reach its very fullest potential. It will be our very best work, to make what we hope, will be precious gaming memories to come. As soon as we've an official company web-site in just a week or two more, your chance to ally yourself with us begins. Get ready. [Posted 06/19/2015] Index Subscribe |
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