text
stringlengths 465
100k
|
|---|
Senator Ted Cruz, whom House Republicans have accused of meddling in House business, was positively delighted when he learned of the resignation from reporters while at the Values Voters Summit. Cruz is running for president.
“We’ve had Republican majorities in both houses of Congress for coming up on a year now, and what on Earth have they accomplished?” he said. “Immediately after the elections we came back and leadership joined with Harry Reid in passing a spending bill filled with corporate welfare. Then Republican leadership took the lead in funding ObamaCare. Then they took the lead in funding executive amnesty. Then they took the lead in funding Planned Parenthood. And then Republican leadership took the lead in confirming Loretta Lynch as attorney general.”
Senator Marco Rubio, another presidential hopeful, was less gleeful, but hardly broken up. “It’s not about him or anyone else, and I’m not here to bash anyone, but it is time to turn the page,” he said. As for what the conservative voters who attend the Values Voters Summit thought, see this video of Rubio breaking the news to them:
The crowd reacted with raucous applause and a standing ovation.
It’s not hard to see why the Democrats will miss Boehner. He’s a pragmatist. Despite their disagreements with him, they see him as someone who fundamentally wants to make Congress work, isn’t interested in pursuing strategies that can’t succeed, and doesn't want to shut down the government. But the hardcore conservatives see all that as a bug, not a feature. They’d rather shut down the government—over Planned Parenthood, the debt ceiling, whatever—than accept a compromise.
The question is what they’ll get from the next speaker. Already, some influential conservative observers are warning of danger ahead:
I think conservatives have no clue how bad the Boehner resignation is for them. — Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) September 25, 2015
Boehner isn’t a squish ideologically, but he’s able to count votes. The next speaker will face the same problems, but Boehner’s long tenure in the House made him an accomplished operator who knew the chamber’s ins and outs and had ties across the aisle. Whoever succeeds him is likely to have less experience in those ways. And he (or maybe she, but probably he) will have to deal with the same factions, and still have to either disappoint conservatives or else plunge the chamber into total chaos and likely shutdown. (There’s a reason Kevin McCarthy, the majority leader and early favorite to succeed Boehner, hasn't been agitating for his ouster.) Democratic leaders seem to see this already. Republican leaders may see it but recognize the political winds won’t reward for pointing it out. As for conservative activists and lawmakers, they may soon discover that Boehner wasn’t the problem, but that removing him only made it worse. |
Six-year-old Croatian kid Ivan Stoiljkovic astounds his family and the people in his village thanks to his magnetic body.
Stuck on you: Six-year-old ‘magnetic’ boy Ivan Stoiljkovic with metal items stuck to his torso (Picture: Rex)
When he takes off his shirt the youngster is able to stick metallic objects such as spoons, mobile phones and even frying pans to his body.
In total, his family says, he can carry up to 25kg of metal stuck to his torso.
And that isn’t the end to Ivan’s unusual talents.
According to his family Ivan has also used his ‘healing’ hands to alleviate his grandfather’s stomach pains and take away the pain of a neighbour who hurt his leg in a tractor accident.
Ivo, Ivan’s grandfather, said when his grandson laid his hands on his stomach they became extremely hot and the pain simply went away.
If that wasn’t enough, Ivan, it is also claimed, is much stronger than other children his age and is able to easily carry bags of cement as heavy as 50lbs. |
The authorities are searching for two suspects connected to a shooting downtown. An off-duty deputy and a civilian are recovering after they were both shot. NBC 7's Gaby Rodriguez reports. (Published Monday, Aug. 7, 2017)
An off-duty San Diego County sheriff’s deputy was shot in the shoulder and rushed to a nearby hospital Monday in downtown San Diego.
The deputy was identified as Jason Philpot, an 11-year veteran of the department, SDSO spokesperson Ryan Keim said. He currently serves in the Emergency Services Division, which includes the SWAT team, Search and Rescue and the Helicopter Squad.
Philpot was shot near Island and Sixth avenues at 1:17 a.m. Monday. It happened on the sidewalk in front of the Gaslamp BBQ. A cook at one restaurant, the Tivoli Bar and Grill, heard the shots fired and immediately shut down the place for the safety of their employees.
Officers responded to the scene and found an off-duty deputy who was on his back conscious and breathing, SDPD Lt. Ernesto Servin told NBC 7. The deputy was transported to UC San Diego Medical Center. He was treated and released from the hospital Monday afternoon.
Off-Duty Deputy Shot in Downtown San Diego
A man confronted a group of off-duty sheriff's deputies walking on Island Avenue just after 1 a.m. according to San Diego Police. NBC 7's Gaby Rodriguez reports. (Published Monday, Aug. 7, 2017)
A second person who was walking in the street was shot in the arm, according to police. Servin said the second victim was a bystander who happened to be struck.
He was taken first to Sharp Coronado Hospital, but then transferred to UC San Diego Medical Center, police said. Both victims were described as having non-life threatening injuries.
Philpot is expected to recover from his injuries, Keim said. Friends and family visited him in the hospital, along with Sheriff Bill Gore, shortly after the incident.
"The Sheriff is grateful to the San Diego Police Department and all of the medical personnel who are providing Jason with the best possible care," said Keim, in a statement. "The Sheriff's Department will provide any possible assistance to SDPD as they investigate this crime."
Authorities say the shooting appeared to happen as a group of off-duty law enforcement officers was walking east along Island Avenue.
“There was some sort of confrontation. Exactly what was said, I don’t know,” Servin said.
A man pulled a gun on the group, officials said. The off-duty deputy started wrestling the suspect for the gun when three shots were fired, officers said. Those three shots hit Philpot in the shoulder, police said.
The suspect in the shooting was last seen running towards K Street. Servin said surveillance video from nearby businesses suggests there may be a second suspect involved.
Investigators said they have 14 witnesses to the shooting and several recordings from security cameras mounted on surrounding buildings.
"We think there may have been two suspects based on the video," Servin said. "Right now we’re focusing on the individual with the gun."
Officers blocked traffic along Seventh from Island to Market and Sixth from Island to Market. Island was also closed from Sixth to Fifth. The roads have since reopened.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with Deputy Philpot and his family as they recover from this frightening event," said Keim.
The shooting location is approximately two blocks north of Petco Park and approximately two blocks west of Park at the Park. At the time, the streets were crowded because of a Metallica concert.
The corner was closed for several hours Monday morning as investigators gathered evidence.
The suspect who fired the shots was described as a man in his 30's, about 5 feet, 10 inches tall, weighing about 160 to 170 pounds with shoulder length dreadlocks.
Servin said two off-duty Escondido police officers were with the deputy at the time of the shooting. Those officers were uninjured.
No further information is available. |
Think it’s easy being John Cena? Try holding on to your spot as the top star of the world’s biggest sports-entertainment company while Wrestling Machines, Cerebral Assassins and a certain Beast Incarnate try to knock you off your perch.
Cena’s career has been filled with many challenges — he’ll face some more in the thriller, “The Wall,” in theaters now — but the 16-time World Champion has been nothing if not resilient in his time as "the man" in WWE. Even so, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been pushed to his limit (or, as may be the case with Brock Lesnar, far beyond it) by opponents that enjoyed nothing more than putting that "Never give up" catchphrase to the test.
10
AJ Styles
They don’t want none, unless “they” is John Cena, in which case they want some. From the second AJ Styles confronted The Cenation Leader on Raw to the deafening sounds of dueling “LET’S-GO-CENA/AJ-STYLES” chants, the then-15-time World Champion couldn’t get in the ring with him fast enough.
Their rivalry lasted less than a year, but the two turned in classic performance after classic performance in every possible permutation, from two singles bouts (at Money in the Bank and SummerSlam) to a Six-Man Tag (at Battleground) to a Triple Threat (at No Mercy), culminating in a final showdown at the Royal Rumble in which Cena defeated Styles to win his record-tying 16th World Championship. The best part? They might not even be done. The two started off the 2017 Elimination Chamber Match. Guess what the crowd was chanting. — ANTHONY BENIGNO
9
Kurt Angle
We all know the story. A ferocious Olympic Gold Medalist issues an open challenge. A young bodybuilder with a truly awful crew-cut accepts. He flaunts his “ruthless aggression,” slaps the veteran across the face and ignites one of the era’s defining rivalries.
No one knew who John Cena was when he and Kurt Angle first squared off, but it was Angle who made Cena into the man he is today. The relentless Wrestling Machine followed young Cena wherever he went, pushing the upstart to his limit in the ring while forcing him to build his “Never Give Up” reputation. And it was Angle and his patented Ankle Lock that led Cena to adopt the STF in late 2005.
Their final singles encounter was a merciless First Blood Match on Raw just after New Year’s in 2006 that left both men in a messy heap. A fitting end to a rivalry built on “ruthless aggression.” — ZACH LINDER
9
Triple H
The rivalry between John Cena and Triple H has never been too personal. It’s always been about business — and the WWE Championship.
Cena and The Game’s first high-profile encounter came at WrestleMania 22 with the WWE Title on the line. Cena retained, but it would be far from the last time the two Superstars waged war. In fact, they clashed one month later at Backlash, and again at WrestleMania XXIV in a Triple Threat Match with Randy Orton.
To this day, the animosity between John Cena and Triple H still exists, although The Game now prefers to take action from his executive position, leaving the dirty work to Cena rivals like Kane, Randy Orton and even the monstrous Brock Lesnar. — KEVIN POWERS
7
The WWE Universe
Man, do some of you guys really hate John Cena. Hate, hate, hate him. And therein lies the greatest irony of John Cena’s unprecedented career in WWE: A good chunk of the people he batters his body to entertain simply — vocally, passionately, unendingly — dislike him. The endless cavalcade of titles and victories, the Five Moves thing, the T-shirts; whatever it is, it simply drives a certain cross-section of the Universe into a shark-feeding frenzy with Mr. Fruity Pebbles as their intended chum.
The further irony within that irony, though, is that he genuinely doesn’t care — and not just in the dismissive, haters-gonna-hate way. Cena is just as vocal in his support of the boo birds as he is in the Cenation. He’s even known to pal around with some of his more visible detractors at ringside (hello, “We Hate Cena!” Guy). The 15-time World Champion has never once wavered in his stance of some-of-you-like-me-some-of-you-don’t, which isn’t just unprecedented for a WWE Superstar, it’s almost shocking in its sincerity. Cheer him, boo him, he loves you guys just the same. It’s fitting, in a way: John Cena never did meet a rival he didn’t respect. — ANTHONY BENIGNO
6
CM Punk
It takes a bold, bold man to call himself The Best in the World without any hint of showmanship to it. CM Punk was nothing if not bold. The self-appointed heir apparent to Cena as the face of professional wrestling, Punk’s agitation over being passed over festered into an earth-shattering “pipe bomb” that took Cena, the McMahons, and the institution of sports-entertainment itself to task. He then promptly won Cena’s WWE Title and gallivanted off into retirement, but you probably don’t need Wikipedia to know The Straight Edge Superstar couldn’t stay away for long. He eventually came back to further challenge Cena’s dominance and beat him more often than not. These two were having classic matches for years after that initial clash. Perhaps the greatest disappointment in Punk’s untimely departure is knowing they definitely had a few more in them. — ANTHONY BENIGNO
5
The Rock
John Cena and The Rock already had some beneath-the-surface beef when The Great One returned in 2011 to host WrestleMania XXVII. So it wasn’t all that unsurprising when Rocky called out the Cenation leader in his epic, 20-minute return speech, nor that the two eventually agreed to a showdown at WrestleMania XXVIII. What was surprising was how personal things got in the run-up. Rock, whose best mic moments stopped just short of verbal disembowelment, hit Cena with everything he had and Cena gave it right back.
Perhaps the tensest moment in this three-year rivalry (the book finally closed at WrestleMania 29, when Cena won the WWE Title from Rock) came in 2011 when Cena took The Brahma Bull to task over having gone to the ring with talking points scrawled on his meathook hands. In that moment, with The Great One momentarily rendered speechless (!), it looked like Dwayne was set to drop the pretense and kick the hell out of Cena then and there. It looked like Cena was ready for it, too. — ANTHONY BENIGNO
4
Batista
By 2010, Batista had grown tired of spending nearly a decade in John Cena's shadow and challenged the Cenation leader in the bitterest rivalry of that year. Following a grueling Elimination Chamber Match where Cena retained the WWE Championship, Mr. McMahon offered The Animal the chance to win the WWE Championship, which he did. The two collided again at WrestleMania XXVI with Cena winning, and again at Extreme Rules in a Last Man Standing Match where Cena used a roll of duct tape to tie Batista’s legs around the ring post to secure victory.
Relentless in his pursuit of dethroning John Cena, Batista battled his nemesis one last time at Over the Limit in an “I Quit” Match . Following a brutal contest, The Animal quit before Cena unceremoniously executed an Attitude Adjustment off of the roof of a car, sending Batista crashing through the stage below. — KEVIN POWERS
3
Brock Lesnar
Although John Cena and Brock Lesnar crossed paths as both were beginning their in-ring ascents, it wasn’t until The Beast Incarnate returned to conquer WWE in 2012 that the pair’s rivalry became the stuff of sports-entertainment legend. Still recovering from the diverticulitis that cut short his UFC career, Lesnar nevertheless brought Cena to the brink in an Extreme Rules Match in April 2012, forcing the incorruptible Superstar to take full advantage of the savage stipulation. Making use of the steel steps and a chain wrapped around his right fist, Cena ultimately felled the behemoth — but just barely.
Cena’s fortune would change drastically when he next clashed with the juggernaut at SummerSlam 2014, where Lesnar utterly incapacitated the Cenation leader with 16 German suplexes , giving Cena the most horrific beating of his 12-year career and capturing the WWE World Heavyweight Title with apparent ease. Superman, meet your Doomsday. — JAMES WORTMAN
2
Edge
No WWE Superstar has pushed John Cena to the edge (pun intended) quite like The Rated-R Superstar.
Cena and Edge’s rivalry began in historic fashion when The Ultimate Opportunist cashed in his Money in the Bank contract at New Year’s Revolution 2006, capturing his first World Title at the expense of the Cenation leader and kicking off a legendary rivalry. Their ensuing battles pushed the boundaries of civility, as demonstrated by their brawl that left Edge swimming in the Long Island Sound alongside Cena’s spinner WWE Championship. Not to mention the night The Rated-R Superstar entered Cena's childhood home and slapped his father flush across the face. Explosive encounters like that not only elevated both Superstars, but also temporarily transported the WWE Universe back to The Attitude Era. — SCOTT TAYLOR
1
Randy Orton
On paper, John Cena and Randy Orton are two Superstars that should have a lot in common. They each honed their craft together in WWE’s former developmental territory, Ohio Valley Wrestling, they each made their WWE debut in 2002 and they’ve both cemented themselves as the icons of their generation with nearly 30 World Championships between them. But while Cena embodies “Hustle, Loyalty, Respect,” the calculating Viper represents everything Cena isn’t. Naturally, the two haven’t meshed all that well over the years and have given the WWE Universe some of the most brutal and deeply personal clashes in recent history.
From their intense collision at SummerSlam 2007 to their wince-inducing “I Quit” Match at WWE Breaking Point 2009 to their history-making Tables, Ladders & Chairs Match to crown the first WWE World Heavyweight Champion at WWE TLC 2013, Cena and Orton have forged a rivalry that spans more than a decade … and it isn't over yet. — JAMES WORTMAN |
Please enable Javascript to watch this video
DES MOINES, Iowa -- The numbers are against them and so is the calendar. But more than 1,000 people spilled out of a packed public hearing room at the Iowa Statehouse to protest massive changes in the state's collective bargaining bill that would impact an estimated 184,000 public workers.
Some of the people 90 minutes before collective bargaining public hearing starts. pic.twitter.com/0sa9fkvMw7 — Dave Price (@idaveprice) February 13, 2017
Outside collective bargaining room at Statehouse for 6pm public hearing. pic.twitter.com/WKXbisu5I2 — Dave Price (@idaveprice) February 13, 2017
Critics dominated the two-hour public hearing. Several people did speak in support of the bill, which takes away most of the issues unions can negotiate on behalf of their workers, except for wages.
"Shame, shame, shame" union members yell at collective bargaining bill supporters from @AFPIowa pic.twitter.com/iKOg4GR8RX — Dave Price (@idaveprice) February 14, 2017
Overflow in rotunda watches collective bargaining bill public hearing on big screen. pic.twitter.com/JUEGvHVvgB — Dave Price (@idaveprice) February 14, 2017
Republicans have the majority in both the House and Senate, so as long as they stick together, they can pass the largest changes to the collective bargaining laws since they were approved in 1973. Leaders say voters gave them the majorities to shrink the cost and size of government, which they believe this bill will accomplish.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a short-lived Republican presidential candidate in 2015, Skyped into a Republican caucus meeting to encourage lawmakers to follow through on the changes. Walker led an effort to dramatically scale back collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin in 2011.
Happy to speak to my friends in the Iowa Legislature via Skype. They have a chance to pass big, bold reforms! — Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) February 13, 2017
Both chambers plan to debate the bill on Tuesday. Republicans chose to run the same bills through the subcommittee and committee process in both chambers simultaneously, which will allow the bill to go through the process more quickly than if one chamber acted at a time.
Democrats may try to slow down debate this week as much as they can in the hopes public outcry will convince Republicans to at least scale back the changes they are trying to make. |
I have several springs less than a block from my house that go back to the colonial days. A group of us spent several weekends digging out and restoring one of them. As time went on people stopped using it and caring for it. I am sure that is true with many old spring spots.
We first had to get all the growth away
Then we had to clean away all the dirt build up and replace stones and add new ones to make it a new ones to make the place more special.
and the end result was well woth it!! And a trail sight for the local park now.
The question for me was, if there is one there may be more.
A quest to find a spring that no one is knows about.....Which I have found.
As scaling the side of the mountain outside my door (with my metal detector looking for historical do-da's) I came across a spring. SHHHHHH I did not dig it out, but I do have a few things in the house to tap into if the time came.
Water Spring
Water Seep
What is a Seep?? A seep is the "mini me" of the spring. It is just a small rouge spring from a spring.
But how do I know it is a spring?
Here are a few things to help you spot one.( I have found several)
Best time to find a spring is in the dry part of the seasons. Making most of the ground dryer and allowing you to spot an overly moist area much more easily. Find a wooded area with some elevation...and go about mid way up. Now look around for a run off area (it may look like an old river bed/ ditch like areas). Note diagram below
One min. video on how to find a spring....it is this simple. As in this above video follow the dry steam indentation, notice that the area will have more mosses growing around it. It may even have river bed like rock but that is not always the case.
One thing is you may even have better luck spotting one in the winter with a good freeze because the water may be more obvious.
Once you have found what you believe to be the source start to dig a hole. You want to make sure the hole fills up with water. If it does you most likely hit a spring. And can start making it more functioning. Or you can let it be and just remember were it is if you ever need it. (which is what I am doing)
**Reminder just because it is spring water does not mean it is ok to drink. If you can not test it then treat, better safe than sorry.
This is not a how to video but it is pretty self explanatory on what needs to be done to make the box (ponding area) for the water and setting the pipe.
This is a playlist if you want to watch the whole thing.
.
The song for this post has to be Box of Rain - Grateful Dead |
Washington Post illustration; iStockphoto
Democrats and Republicans have never been further apart in their expectations for the economy than they are right now.
The Trump presidency appears to have sparked an unprecedented political polarization in consumer confidence, which is often viewed as a leading indicator for the economy’s performance. While Democrats and Republicans have similar beliefs about how the economy is performing at the moment, they are now hugely divided over how it will perform in the future, new research shows.
“When we ask them about the economy … most Democrats expect a recession over the next year, and most Republicans expect economic growth,” says Richard Curtin, who directs the University of Michigan’s well-known survey. “That has been the big news: about how Democrats and Republicans shifted almost totally and instantly with the election of Trump.”
Perhaps surprising: That is a recent phenomenon. The research shows that Republicans were a little more optimistic than Democrats during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, although Curtin says the difference was not statistically significant. The gap was slightly larger under Barack Obama, with Democrats being more optimistic than their Republican counterparts. (The University of Michigan has collected this data only periodically, so it excludes the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.)
But with the election of Donald Trump, the partisan gap in consumer confidence split wide open, as the chart below shows.
Perhaps because Trump’s electoral win was unexpected by some, the data also show a sharp swing in the opinions of Democrats and Republicans before and after the election. As the chart below shows, Democrats quickly went from having more positive expectations for the economy than Republicans did to having a much dimmer view.
On average, the levels of confidence that Americans as a whole express in the economy are relatively high. After the presidential election, Michigan's measure of consumer confidence jumped to levels not seen since 2004.
Economists attribute this in part to expectations that the Trump administration would introduce tax cuts, infrastructure spending and other measures to buoy the economy — but they say the biggest factor was probably the continued strength of the economy, which recently qualified as the third-longest expansion on record.
Consumers have had plenty of reason to be happy: Unemployment is low, gas prices have come down, and the stock market is up, helping to buoy confidence.
But those post-election highs have ebbed in recent months. As former FBI director James B. Comey testified before the Senate on June 8, the University of Michigan saw its June 7-11 reading of consumer confidence retreat to 94.5, the lowest level since the election.
Few of the respondents that the University of Michigan surveyed mentioned Comey, but Curtin says the respondents probably were influenced by political events. "What they took from that incident was that Republicans thought that the probability of passing economic policies that Trump favors was much lower, and Democrats increased their dislike for those same policies," Curtin said.
Six months on from Inauguration Day, the division hasn’t narrowed, Curtin says. But it remains to be seen whether the advent of the partisan gap in how Americans view the economy is a fundamental change, or whether the gap will shrink as time goes on.
Curtin says he believes the gap might have arisen because Americans are now looking more to the government to help fix economic problems, like rising inequality and lower economic growth. But more polarized media coverage of the economy might also help generate these divisions.
It’s also still unclear what the impact on the real economy will be. It seems logical that Democrats who expect the economy to falter will behave differently than Republicans who expect it to boom. But Curtin and other economists debate how much consumer confidence spills over into real economic behavior.
Curtin says the impact on the economy is muffled somewhat because independents still remain the largest political grouping in the United States. Meanwhile, the optimism of Republicans helps to cancel out the pessimism of Democrats overall, he said.
Jed Kolko, an economist at job site Indeed who closely follows regional economic trends, says that states that voted for Trump have been growing faster than states that voted for Clinton in the first four months of the Trump administration, but those red states were already seeing faster job growth in the last months of the Obama administration.
“In fact, job growth has been slower in the first few months under Trump than in the last few months under Obama, in both red and blue states. But we'll continue to watch whether greater confidence might lead to accelerated growth in red states in the future,” Kolko said.
The research is not without critics. Ken Goldstein, an economist with the Conference Board, said he respected Curtin deeply and “would not be quick to challenge his assertion. But I think for most consumers it’s about my job, my paycheck, my chance for a raise, my chance for a promotion.”
“What happens in the labor market is far more important than what happens in the political arena,” Goldstein said.
It's a common observation among economists, who often argue that basic economic factors have much more influence over consumer behavior than events in Washington.
In a news conference in June, Fed chair Janet Yellen remarked that while businesses and household sentiment remained strong, these groups appeared to have a wait-and-see attitude when it came to political promises.
“I would say that based on my observation of actual spending behavior and my discussions with our wide range of contacts that I haven't seen very much evidence that thus far expectations of policy changes have driven substantial changes in either consumer spending or investment spending,” she said.
Josh Feinman, chief economist at Deutsche Asset Management, agreed, adding that a lot of trends in the economy transcend the political process.
“Politicians almost invariably give themselves more credit” for the economy than they deserve, Feinman said. “And, frankly, the other side almost always assesses more blame to government and policymakers than is really the case.” |
We're not in the business of predicting Super Bowl winners, but we can guarantee there will be lots of stupid questions asked of the participants.
The annual Super Bowl tradition known as Media Day—rechristened "Super Bowl Opening Night" this year—has come to represent the NFL at its silliest. It’s the place where a Japanese reporter once asked of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, “Tell me, why do they call you Boomer?” (Well, they don’t actually. That would be Boomer Esiason, the Cincinnati quarterback.)
It’s where someone asked Tennessee Titans defensive tackle Joe Salave’a, “What’s your relationship with the football?” To which Salave’a said, “I’d say it’s strictly platonic.”
Media Day is where a St. Louis player found himself pondering the grammatical conundrum contained within the question, “Is Ram a noun or a verb?”
Where Rams’ quarterback Kurt Warner was asked, “Do you believe in voodoo and can I have a lock of your hair?”
Where Denver running back Detron Smith was asked, “What size panties do you think you’d wear?”
And it's where Downtown Julie Brown, formerly of MTV, asked Dallas running back Emmitt Smith, “What are you going to wear in the game Sunday?”
Asked how he got psyched to play in big games, Buffalo’s great running back Thurman Thomas sniffed, “I read the newspapers and look at all the stupid questions you all ask.”
Not Quite as Stupid
Getty Images
Getty Images
An urban legend grew that Washington quarterback Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to play in the Super Bowl, was asked, “How long have you been a black quarterback?”
That's not exactly what happened. ESPN.com cleared it up. The reporter knew Williams. He also knew Williams was tired of hearing about race. So the question was more along the lines of, “Doug, obviously you’ve been a black quarterback all along. When did it suddenly become important?”
Exactly as Stupid
I wasn't there for that tortured exchange. But I was in the group of reporters at Super Bowl XV when Oakland quarterback Jim Plunkett was asked a question that makes every Super Bowl list. And this one wasn't staged by a TV or radio personality. As sports writers we have to own this one.
Plunkett had just answered a question about his parents. He spoke in low, respectful tones about growing up in a special needs household, that his mother was blind and that his father, also blind, had passed away.
Five more topics came and went after Plunkett mentioned his parents. A reporter from the Philadelphia press corps, a guy I once worked with at another paper, jumped in. He was a columnist. He wasn't there to write about the blitz. Plunkett's family situation was far more intriguing to him.
He tried two or three times to ask a follow-up. But he kept losing the floor to reporters who timed their questions better or who were close enough to make eye contact with Plunkett, or who simply spoke up louder.
Finally, he forced his way back into the interview.
"Jimmy, Jimmy, I want to make sure I have this right. Was it dead mother, blind father or blind mother, dead father?"
It's going to be a long week.
This post originally appeared in 2010. Bud Shaw is a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who has also written for the Philadelphia Daily News, San Diego Union-Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The National. You can read his Plain Dealer columns at Cleveland.com. |
Put on your catcher's mask and get ready for the Buster Posey VR experience
Though we may all have the desire, the truth is that not all of us can play big-league baseball. I, for example, washed out of tee-ball around 7 years old. But luckily, people like me will have the chance to live that MLB life for a little while during the All-Star Game FanFest in Miami.
From July 7 - 11, fans can play the Esurance Behind The Plate With Buster Posey VR Experience … and as you may have guessed from the name, it means you get to catch a few pitches in Buster Posey's cleats.
Not his literal cleats, of course, but you do get to put on a catcher's mask. It contains the VR headset, and once you put it on, you're living Buster's life.
Well, except for the fact that Buster himself is coaching you from the Jumbotron:
"I wanted to make [the experience] as authentic as possible," said Posey. "It's stuff I would say if I was working with a college baseball player, or a kid, or anybody that you were trying to teach to catch."
When you play, you also put on a catcher's mitt that allows you to point at the type of pitch you want to catch. You can choose between a fastball, a curveball and a slider. The pitches themselves aren't specific to a particular player -- when I played, I wasn't catching Johnny Cueto or Madison Bumgarner. The pitches are virtual, and were developed based on MLB pitching data.
The average pitch speed is between 86 and 93mph, and if you catch one, you'll feel it hit the glove. I successfully caught the fastball, and then got extremely cocky. So, I tried to catch the slider next. Pitches simulate a break between 38-52 inches and I was … not ready. Let's just say that if I had been an actual Major League catcher, I would have ended up as a GIF on this very site.
Posey himself knows about pitches that can take you by surprise.
"For me, the most challenging type of pitcher is one who has a pitch where the pitch will do one thing one pitch and then something [else] another pitch," he said. "For example, when Lincecum was with us, he would sometimes throw a fastball that would cut, but then two pitches later, it would actually go the opposite way. Not knowing exactly which way the pitch is going to go has to be the most challenging."
I finally tried to catch the curveball, and it may or may not have made it into my glove (it 100% hit the backstop). Then I got my final score: 1/3. If I had been at FanFest, I would have been able to share it on social media … plus an actual video of me playing the game. Fans will be able to share a clip that cuts between in-game, first-person footage and real-life footage of the player wearing the headset.
Even though I wasn't about to win a Gold Glove, I loved my VR experience as a Major League catcher. But who would Buster Posey like to be for a day?
"I'd like to know what it would be like to be 6-foot-8 and 270 [lbs], like Aaron Judge," he said.
So would we all, Buster. So would we all.
Gemma Kaneko has been a writer for Cut4 since the end of her term as Witch President in 2014. She is the proudest Tigers fan in New York City. |
THE 2012 Olympics have been declared a resounding success as the first busload of undesirables was banished from East London.
Organisers said the event was at least four months ahead of schedule in making the east of the city as unaffordable as the west to people who are either unemployed or have a proper, actual job.
In preparation for the post-Olympic influx of six-figure bullshit consultants, Newham Council has now begun herding its substandard social housing tenants into sorting pens before despatching them to a corner of the UK more suited to their third-rate bone structure and beastly televisual inclinations.
Sebastian Coe, Lord of the Olympics, said: “The cleansing has begun, even before the first javelin has been javelled.
“I would like to award Newham Council a gold medal. They are the Fatima Whitbread of enforced gentrification.”
London mayor Boris Johnson added: “We can either have a city wiped clean of low-income troglodytes or we can spend millions encircling London’s hard-working neighbourhoods with 14ft high security fences.
“This will not destroy the social fabric of the east end it will just make it the sort of social fabric one could imagine sharing witty remarks with at a summer drinks party.”
Meanwhile, the first consignment of untermenschen stumbled from their bus, blinking and confused, to be faced with the harsh reality of Stoke-on-Trent.
Emma Bradford, a single mother of two, said: “Fuck.” |
Dublin bomber may have blown himself up 'because he forgot about clocks changing' BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A bomber in the Irish Republic allegedly blew himself up after he forgot about the clocks changing while he was planting a bomb. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/dublin-bomber-may-have-blown-himself-up-because-he-forgot-about-clocks-changing-30150589.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article30141407.ece/44398/AUTOCROP/h342/Car1.jpg
Email
A bomber in the Irish Republic allegedly blew himself up after he forgot about the clocks changing while he was planting a bomb.
Police are looking to speak with a man who is suspected of planting the bomb in Dublin on Sunday and was left severely injured when the device detonated prematurely.
The device had been attached to a Volvo SUV.
The man was seen fleeing the scene in Dublin with blood on his face before climbing into a taxi, the Mirror has reported.
According to the paper, a source said that one of the theories being considered by police was that he did not put his watch forward on Sunday and the timer went off too soon.
Garda police are now appealing for anyone who may have picked up the suspect to contact them.
Supt Dave Taylor said the consequences of the explosion could have been "very, very serious".
"It was a very extensive explosion and it was a very frightening experience for the people," he said.
"We are appealing for anyone who might have picked up a person in the New Street and Clanbrassil Street area shortly after 11pm who was quite obviously suffering to come forward.
"It is quite obvious that the car was the object of this attack.
“We are investigating all the circumstances surrounding that at the moment. It’s very early in the investigation to determine the reason behind it.”
Belfast Telegraph Digital |
A Texas man says he found fossils from “Noah’s flood," and the director of an anti-science museum that claims evolution is “an old-fashioned theory” is supporting him.
Wayne Propst was helping his aunt out, laying dirt near her home in the town of Tyler when he found snail fossils, he told local news station KYTX. He and his aunt believe the fossils happened during the fabled worldwide flood described in the biblical book of Genesis.
“From Noah’s flood to my front yard, how much better can it get?” Propst said.
KYTX Wayne Propst shows the fossils to KYTX.
He sent photos to Joe Taylor, director and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum in Crosbyton, Texas, for analysis. Taylor holds the positions that evolution is not real, that a worldwide flood occurred a few thousand years ago, and that Noah -- the man that the Bible describes as building an ark large enough to save two of every animal species from the floodwaters -- brought dinosaurs on his ark with him.
Taylor told KYTX that Propst’s fossils are indeed from the time of that purported flood.
However, James Sagebiel, the collections manager at the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections, told the Tyler Morning Telegraph that Propst’s fossils are actually millions of years old.
“The rocks there are about 35-40 million years old, and these little turret snails are commonly found in marine rocks of that age,” Sagebiel said. “ “It’s not unusual.”
Millions of years ago, the place where Tyler, Texas, now stands would have been coastline, he added. |
In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina came through and shifted the entire landscape, as well as the demographic of the beautiful city I call home, New Orleans, Louisiana. It forced many residents to be uprooted and temporarily displaced for indefinite amounts of time, and for many of us, permanently relocated to other cities. Any native will tell you, us New Orleanians live by two different time periods....before Katrina and after Katrina. It was the day that everything we knew, changed.
In the weeks and months to come, gentrification was slowly but surely sweeping through the city. Many parts of town were still inundated with abandoned buildings and blighted houses, while just a few minutes away, the city would be bustling with tourists as if nothing ever happened. There were juice bars and high rises, and over priced condominiums being built in communities where small family owned businesses once stood. Meanwhile, most of the progress of the predominantly middle-class, suburban black neighborhoods, was being side swept, overlooked and under policed, while they continued to push the panic of widespread uncontrollable violence. Yet New Orleans is a city that celebrates even in the midst of despair, and will always find the party after the pain.
About 3 years ago, Blake Owens, moved back home to New Orleans after residing in Houston, Texas post-Katrina. He moved into the French Quarter, less than a mile away from his job at the House of Blues and had been fighting a DUI charge so responsibly, he invested in a bike. Luckily, New Orleans is the kind of place where you can actually navigate around majority of the city without even having to hit the freeway. As soon as he started riding, he says, nostalgia hit him and he was immediately reminded of his childhood and how much fun it was. So like many others, he started riding around the city with friends for leisure.
Group biking is making a comeback in many closer knit cities such as New Orleans and Austin; and in a generation where transportation is constantly evolving, Blake and his friends, Nick Reed and DJ Poppa, decided to organize some people for a bike ride one night just to see what would happen. Little did they know, they were on the brink of a movement that would be named BikeRite.
The first ride was around the end of 2015, they started with 8 riders and by the summer of 2016 they had over 500. He says it was easier than he thought to get people involved because it was almost like our people forgot how much fun, and most importantly, peaceful it was to do something as simple as ride a bike and be a kid again, even if just for a few minutes. Thanks to word of mouth and social media, more people started coming out for the rides each week. They put bright colorful lights on the tires, (for safety, and for fun) while speakers play music throughout the ride. Blake, also a local recording artist, says he loves being at the forefront of this movement because he's able to connect biking to Hip Hop and Hip Hop to people, in a way many haven't seen before.
After managing numerous complaints about noise and crowd size, the BikeRite team worked hard to get the permits required to ride as an organization. After fighting to get local officials to see how positive this sort of social environment is for the people, culture, and the city of New Orleans, Blake Owens and Nick Reed launched BikeRite as an official touring company.
Together they organize private rides for celebrations, disaster relief rides, charity benefit rides and Santa rides during the holidays in which they deliver gifts to the homeless. BikeRite is also known for their special event rides, sporadically held all through festival season. According to them, BikeRite's mission is to "connect the locals, tourists, and bike lovers of all races and backgrounds together by doing something positive, fun, unique, and healthy."
Despite the reputation of inner city violence that precedes New Orleans, there hasn't been one serious incident reported since the induction of BikeRite in 2015. Considering the community of strangers that ride together each week at night, this is a beautiful thing to witness.
As BikeRite's Tuesday night rides grow in popularity, they hope for the movement to spread to other cities and also want to organize a national day dedicated to bike riding; in an effort to have everyone riding at the same time. For now, however, they are focused on their beloved streets of New Orleans. Coming up on April 23rd, 2017, they will be hosting New Orlean's the very first Bike Fest on Bayou Road in effort to bring more attention to minority-owned businesses in that area.
For more information on BikeRite or to organize a ride, visit their website. |
What gay-crusading corporations in North Carolina don't get
If you're tired, like me, of being bulldozed by political correctness, especially when it applies to gays and the transgendered, then you just have to cheer for North Carolina Governor, Pat McCrory, for standing up to the corporate extortion against his state for passing commonsense legislation to deal with the issue of who can use what bathrooms. Unlike Georgia's Governor Nathan Deal, who caved in to the out-of-state pressure and betrayed his constituents, McCrory showed some spine and nicely told all the corporate extortionists where they could stick their threats of jobs and tax losses. This is a phenomenon taking place all over that part of America where common sense still rules the thinking of those ordinary citizens fed up with the growing lunacy of political correctness. This is especially true in those situations where the lesbian/gay/whatever coterie seem hell-bent on forcing their behaviors on communities that have long held them unacceptable. The problem arises when gay activists are unwilling to settle for resigned, indifferent acceptance of their proclivities, instead becoming insistent on forced public acknowledgment and acceptance of such issues as gay marriage and restroom access. This they do by taking aim at businesses operated by those whose faith precludes their participating in nuptials that are an outright abomination according by their religious tenets or opening public restrooms used by their daughters to whatever confused gender-bending male arbitrarily decides he's female.
As for Christian businesses, walking through the door of the targeted baker, florist, or photographer, the gay activists know full well they are going to be refused. That is entirely the point, for the refusal of service for a gay social event sets into motion a process of legally lynching those business owners who fall victim to this form of social intimidation. The usual course is mass negative media exposure closely followed by civil legal action from gay activist organizations to compel the targeted business to surrender their religious beliefs and provide services. Their only other option is to close their doors. Here's my conundrum: if it is immoral, even criminal or civilly liable for these mom-and-pop Christian businesses to deny services based on their fundamental beliefs, why is it not also immoral or legally actionable for large corporations to refuse their services to the citizens of those states where those who govern choose to pass legislation to protect the religious freedoms of their citizenry? If I'm a huge professional football fan living in Atlanta and the NFL people remove my city from contention for a near-future Super Bowl because they feel my state is discriminating against the transgendered, am I not the victim of discriminatory business practices on the part of the NFL? What about those organizations and corporations that cancel annual conferences and business meetings because of the actions of my state legislature? Aren't these big corporations refusing to do business with my state simply because they consider our practices immoral, just as those bakeries, florists, and photographers see gays as immoral? Other than scale, I see little difference. Okay all you smart readers: Tell me where I'm wrong. |
Welcome to the latest installment of "Gio’s Random Thoughts". Every week, I will unleash some observations about what the Impact and the MLS. Some good, some bad, some ugly.
* Dear Donovan Ricketts, now you’re just a goalie that we used to know.... (I feel like I could remix the whole Gotye song in his honor...)
* Troy Perkins... all I can say is WOW. He’s a definite upgrade over Ricketts. Without Perkins, the boys don’t come home with the 3 points.
* As much as I would love to see Evan Bush play, this is Perkins’ job to lose and it shows that he doesn’t plan on losing it anytime soon.
* I think all the Donovan Ricketts fans went into hiding.
* I’m seeing so much love on social media towards Perkins. He was adored in Portland. I think we are very lucky to have him.
* Many fans in Portland want GM Gavin Wilkinson fired after that trade. Look up the hash tag #GWOUT for anger tweets.
* Sanna Nyassi is a super sub. I don’t think he should be a starter. He is a great game changer. Great role for him. Can go all out for 30-45 minutes.
* Nyassi’s goal should be the goal of the week. Period.
* What an ugly turf in New England. I play on nicer turf in my Soccer leagues. That was ‘horri-awful’ (Shaq’s word for a horrible and awful combo)
* Felipe learned from the Nelson Rivas incident. Instead of head butting his opponent, he just kicked him in the face and made it look like an accident.
* The Impact were lucky to get those three points. Revs got screwed by the non-PK call on his handball in the box.
* Dennis Iapichino should practice this week with both hands tied behind his back.
* When Zarek Valentin comes back from injury, I don’t see how Iapichino will see the field. Iapichino needs to speed up the learning curve. That’s a big salary for a guy so low on the depth chart.
* Dear Philadelphia, thanks for nothing. You had a 1-0 nothing lead and blew it against Chicago. Useless.
* Anyone else growing tired of Justin Mapp constantly needing to be subbed off? Used to last 60-65 minutes. Last game: 45 minutes. Hard to justify his roster spot.
* Dear Justin, please use that last thought as motivation. I will gladly eat my words afterwards.
* Don’t get me wrong, I am REALLY happy that Patrice Bernier got called up by the national team BUT with the game against the powerful Earthquakes next Saturday, I’d rather have him in Montreal, resting.
* With the amount of firepower that the Quakes have, I really hope Jesse Marsch plays Marco Di Vaio and Andrew Wenger together. Need to spark the offense and create more space.
* I am thinking of offering a reward to whoever shaves Saer Sene’s head. Fed up of the Mario Balotelli wannabe look. Be your own man.
* The Impact play against the best team in the MLS on Saturday, the San Jose Earthquakes. Hey, the Impact beat the best team in the East (Red Bulls) not too long ago; they can handle the Quakes too, no?
* Alessandro Nesta, meet Chris Wondolowski. Wondo has been better than Henry this year. Your mission: Destroy.
* The Quakes’ best player is Wondolowski. I’d love to have Sinisa Ubiparipovic in the lineup too just to mess with the commentators and make their life difficult. Where is former Expo Mark Grudzielanek when you need him? We can have the all alphabet team!
* The Quakes’ have 3 of their best players going to Mexico on Wednesday with the US Men’s National team. Let’s hope their plane gets delayed a few times.
* I hope that the Impact will have a moment of silence in honor of Kirk Urso. Yes, two weeks will have passed since he left us but it will be our first home game since. Moment of silence should be held in every MLS stadium.
Until next time, FORZA IMPACT!!
Gio
@GioSardo |
by Patrick Appel
Ezra examines them:
Elections really are zero-sum affairs. For one party to win, the other has to lose. … Immigration reform, however, sits at the center of an unusual convergence of forces that have made it positive-sum politics. Democrats believe in the policy, but they also believe that it’s good — even essential — politics to deliver on the number-one priority of the growing Hispanic electorate. Many Republicans also believe in the policy, and almost all Republicans believe that if their party is to prosper, they need to agree to immigration reform to show Hispanic voters that the GOP isn’t hostile to their interests.
Josh Marshall Brian Beutler argues that either Republicans or Democrats must be wrong:
A majority of new citizens will either be Democrats or Republicans. To the extent that the new GOP position on immigration reform changes existing voters’ minds about politics, only one of two parties will be on the winning side of that realignment. Some important Republican strategists and opinion makers recognize this, and worry the GOP has picked a loser.
Donald Trump, of all people, makes related points. How Brian Beutler sees the issue: |
This past week, an interesting guild situation arose in Black Desert. A Massively OP tipster was surprised by an unusual symbol above the entrance to a particular guild city and bedecking its guards: a guild flag with a down-arrow and a female stick figure. Presuming, reasonably, that the heraldry was sexist in nature (down with women), the tipster contacted Kakao. After some back and forth between the player and support staff, Kakao made its determination: that the guild heraldry wasn’t sexist, didn’t violate the terms of use for the game, and wouldn’t be forcibly removed.
We reached out to Kakao to understand the verdict. “First and foremost we do not condone any sexist/racist or any other player behavior that would discriminate against other groups, individuals or beliefs,” a representative for the company told us. That said, he explained to us that Kakao believed the guild in question had picked the heraldry as a “parody” of the heraldry of a powerful rival guild called Man Up.
“We feel that for the people on this server this context would be apparent, as players would be acutely aware of such a popular guild (in menus, emblems, in-game text popups and roaming the environment),” Kakao said, though it was clear that was not always the case, and none of that context, necessary for parody, was conveyed in the actual image — meaning it was still possible for players not intimately of the guild meta of the server to stumble into the heraldry while out on an innocent shopping trip and draw conclusions about the studio and the game’s players that weren’t intended. Sexism doesn’t require intent, after all. And Kakao agreed that it was a difficult decision.
Ready for the twist? Even though it hadn’t been asked or told to change the sigil, the guild apparently did so voluntarily on Friday anyway, making the specific complaint moot (although they changed it to a symbol of a dog with a line through it). But it nevertheless raises questions about just what harm, intentional or not, players can do with some of the more free-form tools available in MMORPG sandboxes and how MMO studios are asked to rule on their meaning, existence, and validity.
With thanks to our tipster and Kakao as well. Images used with permission. |
Welcome to our second (and far more official) April update!
We had a bit of fun on April 1st, as most of you know, but if you any of you missed out on it, you can head on over here for some tongue-in-cheek giggles.
In today’s update, though, we’re covering a number of topics revolving around our plans for the big V 0.1.0 (Alpha) launch. Firstly, we want to let all of our Beta Kickstarter Backers know that they will soon be receiving an instructional email that explains how to obtain your Steam version of the game.
Previously, we stated that we want to begin moving into the Alpha Stage and send the Pre-Alpha off to greener pastures in the near future. We have decided that the game will officially transition over to Alpha when the V 0.1.0 patch hits (which will be implemented over the next few months). We’re aiming to have core systems, such as Nugget AI and Planet Generation, polished and optimized. As you know, we have been spending a lot of time lately working on performance optimizations and building the most stable platform for future eras and features. We’re always experimenting with and developing more solutions as the game progresses.
Based on the feedback we’ve collected and the feedback you have submitted to our forums, we have decided to make Nuggets more autonomous. We want them to be more independent, more self-sufficient, and more alive. Don’t worry, they’re still slaves to your desires, but now you don’t have to spend so much time with them. It’s a very unhealthy and one-sided relationship, but they’ll probably never notice. Mortals are so ignorant and easily manipulated, aren’t they? That’s why we love them.
What’s changing, exactly?
Well, the switch to a more autonomous system means that you’ll be spending far less time controlling them via sliders and managing their jobs. They’ll also be more intelligent with how they select and prioritize actions. We’ll be talking a lot more about it in our next update.
For V 0.1.0, we’re planning to have multiple systems polished down to a (mostly) finished product. Although, we always maintain that things will keep changing until we cover our eyes and release the gold product into the world. And then, um, change things again in post-launch updates.
Right now, we’re still stuck in the Stone Age. That statement’s got a number of meanings. Basically, it’s taking us longer to build this first era mainly because we’re implementing most of the systems you’ll see throughout the game.
With the Stone Age, we pretty much introduce core gameplay mechanics, which, after mastering, will cause progress to move much faster and allow for additional areas to be added reasonably quickly. It’s better for us to get the design and implementation nailed down before adding too much. It’s a lot easier to rework a system that hasn’t been completely implemented throughout every era. For example, rewriting and reworking the research system after the assets for every era were added would have been absolutely soul-destroying.
Here is the full list of things
we plan to implement before V 0.1.0:
Nugget Courier job
Updated Research System
Improved Messaging System (Nuggets will have bubbles above their heads reflecting their needs and current status. This also applies to buildings. An icon will appear above buildings that are occupied by Nuggets , out of order, damaged, and so on.)
Updated Nugget ID card. This card will better reflect a Nugget’s current status and the conditions currently affecting them.
Residential building limitations. This system will assign families to their own building. This means no more awkward situations with 20 people living in one hut. There’s no telling what they got up to in there. Each Nugget will need to have their own house to survive (but direct families can live together).
Eateries. An Eatery can serve multiple Nuggets at a time. Nuggets eating in eateries will refill their hunger faster, and their starvation speed will be much slower after eating at eateries. Can you spot how many times the word ‘ eat ’ appeared there? Eateries require at least one Cook, with a max of two.
Cemeteries. As with any living creature in The Universim, Nuggets die. It’s a sad reality, but at least they’re easily replaceable. After they pass away, their bodies will begin spreading disease if not adequately dealt with. Cemeteries will help keep your Epicenter clean and healthy and allow sad family members to recover their Happiness level faster.
More god Power mechanics. Building construction prioritisation power, increased Nugget conception (better fertility) power, the god menu, and the god Points system.
Property renaming. You’ll be able to rename everything in the game. News messages will reflect changes accordingly.
Happiness. Happiness can increase or decrease a Nugget’s productivity. Sad/angry Nuggets can also set objects on fire or destroy things.
Nuggets will now be affected by temperature changes. Nuggets will slow down or die in extreme conditions.
Farm Improvements. We will introduce new crops and numerous balance changes alongside various UI improvements.
New foliage system. This includes the separation of food from regular trees and plants. Overall foliage improvements (not only visually but performance-wise as well).
Larger overall planet size.
Water consumption changes for buildings and Nuggets. Three new buildings are going to be introduced with this: the Pump, Well, and Reservoir. We’re adding a distribution system that will spawn lakes with fresh water across the planet. You’ll need to place pumps to extract and deliver water from them to your Epicenter.
This is a pretty ambitious list, and we’re going to do our best to deliver everything mentioned here. However, sometimes unexpected bugs or other factors can eat away at our development time, but it’s all for the greater good. We chose a slow and strong development process over a fast and broken one.
Since the last update, we’ve been dealing with a number of bugs and even had to partially rewrite our AI system. The hot fix threw us off track somewhat, which is why the upcoming update will not be as substantial as always, but we’ll be introducing some important foundations for future updates in the package.
Here is the list of things that we’re planning to work on after we move into Alpha. Remember, the list is subject to change based on feedback and the current state of the game.
Fire: a magical entity that has the tendency to make things hot. It will warm the surrounding area during cold winters and will consume wood points to remain active. It can also set objects ablaze, making it rather dangerous.
Expeditions and mystery objects. This system will allow you to prepare Nugget Expeditions and send them to discover new lands, resources, and mysterious happenings.
Witch Doctors. Eccentric, slightly mad, and wildly inconsistent. They will heal your injured/sick Nuggets. We hope...
Community Bath. Who would have thought that a gathering of naked Nuggets will increase the community’s happiness?
Fishing. You know the drill.
Schools. Smarter and more productive Nuggets will rule the world.
Hunting. It’s simple. Place a Hunter’s Hut, assign Nuggets, send them out into the wilderness, and watch them be brutally mauled by bears. Sadly, it doesn’t end with an Oscar nomination.
Road system. This is in preparation for the implementation of the Medieval and Modern ages.
As usual, thank you for your awesomeness!
All the best,
The Crytivo Crew |
Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
An emotional Republican Congressman sobbed his way through a speech begging God to forgive the “sins” of equal marriage.
Randy Weber is a member of the United States House of Representatives, and has represented Texas’ 14th congressional district since 2013.
He made an appearance last night at an ultra-conservative religious event, titled ‘Washington – A Man of Prayer’. A video appears below.
At the event, Weber led a prayer begging for God’s “forgiveness” for America’s sins, openly weeping as he addressed same-sex marriage.
He said: “Father, we have trampled on your holy institution of holy matrimony and tried to rewrite what it is and we’ve called it an alternate lifestyle.”
Welling up and beginning to cry, he said: “Father, oh Father, please forgive us!”
The lawmaker continued to sob as he begged for God’s forgiveness for abortion, saying “Father, we’re killing our descendants and we’re calling it a choice. Oh Lord, forgive us.”
He continued: “Lord, forgive our sins. Help us to get back on your path, to a true understanding of ‘blessed is the nation whose god is Lord’.
“Let that please be us. Don’t remove your hand of protection from us, Father, please.
“Forgive us our manifold sins, and bring us back to your mercy, father, I beg of you. I plead with you.”
Weber has a long anti-LGBT history.
He previously backed a bill called the ‘State Marriage Defense Act’, seeking to limit federal recognition of gay weddings after the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down.
Explaining the bill, he said: “Maybe [there will] be a groundswell where people can get behind this and say, ‘Look, we’re tired of activist judges just systematically destroying the foundation of the family by throwing out a lot of these laws that people have voted for.’
“You’ve got to be watching the absolute insanity out of some of these judges across the country… they have just thrown the entire country, in my opinion, into turmoil with a lot of these judges saying, ‘Well, it’s a right, the people of those states cannot choose what they want their state to look like’.”
A Democratic lawmaker recently got back at a homophobic troll in a unique way. |
KATHMANDU, Dec 30: Amid concerns of India over the proposed military drill, China on Thursday officially announced that it is holding joint military exercise with Nepal next year.
Speaking at a monthly news conference, Chinese Defense Ministry Spokesperson Yang Yujun said China and Nepal had been in "initial communication" on the proposed military exercise, and that the details would be released in due course of time.
Although Nepal has been holding joint military exercises with other countries including India and the United States, this is the first Nepali military would be holding such an exercise with China. India, which traditionally considers Nepal as its sphere of influence, has grown concerned with the announcement of military drill with its strategic rival in the region.
As per the initial plan, the joint drill on dealing with hostage scenario involving international terror groups is scheduled to be held in February next year. |
Footage analyzed by The Globe and Mail shows Saudi Arabia using armoured vehicles against minority Shia Muslim dissidents in the Mideast country's Eastern Province, raising serious questions about Riyadh's tendency to use these military goods against its own citizens.
Copies of the videos, which date from 2012 and 2015, were supplied by Saudi human-rights activists who want Canada to suspend shipments of combat vehicles to Riyadh in a $15-billion deal between Canada and the ruling House of Saud.
The Trudeau government in April approved export permits for the bulk of these vehicle shipments in what Ottawa calls the largest advanced manufacturing export contract in Canadian history. The vehicles, made in London, Ont., are expected to ship over four years, and will have machine guns and anti-tank cannons.
Story continues below advertisement
Saudi Arabia is an extremely closed society that U.S. rights and democracy watchdog Freedom House last year called "one of the most repressive media environments in the world." The Globe and Mail requested access to tour Saudi Arabia through the country's Canadian embassy in January, but received no reply.
The combat vehicles in the videos are not Canadian-made, but they demonstrate the regime's inclination to use such military assets against its own people in a region that is very difficult for Canada to monitor. It also casts doubt on the Liberal government's assurances that the massive arms sale to Saudi Arabia presents no risks for the country's civilians.
Ali Adubisi, director of the Berlin-based European-Saudi Organization for Human Rights, says Saudi authorities have deployed armoured vehicles against Shia civilians in Eastern Province more than 15 times since 2011.
He says this should be reason enough to strike Saudi Arabia from Canada's list of arms buyers.
"I think it's clear now that Saudi Arabia doesn't hesitate to use this weapon," he said. "It's totally clear [the Canadian deal] will help Saudi Arabia to [commit] more violence against civilians."
Saudi human rights activists have gathered videos and photos, many of which have circulated on social media within the Mideast and more broadly, showing what they say are Saudi armoured vehicles firing on protesters or residential buildings in Eastern Province, or the damage wrought by these machines on people, residential areas and property. These records include photos of civilians allegedly killed by Saudi authorities.
The Globe and Mail undertook analysis of videos of two of these incidents in co-operation with Middle Eastern human-rights researchers to determine that the footage was indeed shot in Saudi Arabia. Excerpts from the videos, which activists say document events in the al-Qatif region in February, 2012, and April, 2015, can be seen on The Globe and Mail's website.
Story continues below advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
In the first video, researchers identified a Saudi automatic banking machine and license plate, and were able to find the location on Google Maps' satellite photo, including a nearby mosque. One researcher, Cilina Nasser, spoke with local residents to verify the location. In the video, masked protesters are seen evading armoured vehicles that are entering a town square. There are sounds of gunfire and protesters are hit. Voices can also be heard referring to a gun.
In analyzing two videos of the event in April, 2015, another Saudi bank machine sign, as well as fresh photos from the purported location, where a building is now being rebuilt, helped corroborate that the incident took place in Saudi Arabia. In those videos, armoured vehicles are seen outside a building and firing can be heard.
The Saudi government regularly says raids and operations in Eastern Province are necessary to combat terrorism. In the April, 2015, incident, in which a Saudi police officer died and the targeted Shia appear to be firing back, Riyadh told the local media it was going after "terrorist elements" as well as their weapons and communications equipment. In January, 2016, the Saudis allowed a CNN TV crew to visit al-Awamiya in the al-Qatif region but only after warning the journalists it was unsafe to visit.
The Globe recently invited officials from Saudi Arabia's embassy in Canada to view the videos, either at the embassy or at Globe offices, and provide comment. The embassy's response was to issue a brief statement that said: "Saudi Arabia has entered into a contract for the purchase of light armoured vehicles from a manufacturer in Canada. We believe the deal is good for both Saudi Arabia and Canada, creating jobs and investment."
The Saudis' use of combat machines against its Shia population goes to the very heart of the controversy over whether the Trudeau government is breaking Canada's weapons export-control rules.
The export-control regime clearly stipulates that Ottawa must not issue export permits for weapons sales to countries with poor human-rights records "unless it can be demonstrated that there is no reasonable risk that the goods might be used against the civilian population."
Story continues below advertisement
Saudi Arabia is regularly ranked among the "worst of the worst" on human rights by Freedom House, and Amnesty International warned earlier this year of an erosion in rights there. A recent report from the Global Affairs department warned the Trudeau government of worrisome developments in human rights in Saudi Arabia before it approved export permits for the $15-billion arms deal in April. "During 2015, concerning human rights trends were reported," the report's summary says of Saudi Arabia, such as "a significant increase in the number of executions, restrictions on universal rights, such as freedom of expression, association and belief, lack of due process and fair trial rights."
Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion himself cited Freedom House's work on May 3, when he saluted World Press Freedom Day in a statement.
In April, Mr. Dion was asked during a meeting with The Globe and Mail's editorial board whether the Canadian government had seen videos of armoured vehicles being used against Saudi civilians before the Liberals decided to approve export permits.
He said Ottawa studied a wide array of information.
"They have looked at everything and they made their recommendations," Mr. Dion said of Global Affairs, which advised him he should sign the export permits. "If you come with evidence that they didn't see, they are professionals; they will look at that."
A huge coalition of human rights, development and arms control groups in late April urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to rescind what they called an "immoral and unethical" decision to approve export permits for the Saudi Arabian deal, warning there is a reasonable risk Riyadh will use the vehicles against its own citizens and in the Saudi military mission in neighbouring Yemen.
Story continues below advertisement
Mr. Adubisi is the latest opponent to add his voice to the debate, and he said he met with a Canadian government representative in March to make his case.
Only about 10 to 15 per cent of Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia's population is Shia, largely concentrated in the Eastern Province, which is also home to most of the Mideast country's oil production. Western human rights groups accuse Saudi Arabia of discriminating against the Shia minority.
Eastern Province is the birthplace of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a popular dissident cleric from the region who was killed by Saudi authorities in mass executions this past January. The Shia Muslim leader was an outspoken critic of the ruling House of Saud, had called for its removal and supported anti-government protests in the province.
Analysts and activists say the Shia protesters have grown more militant in recent years.
"The protest movement was largely peaceful since 2011. The security forces used harsh repression and some people started to shoot at the police, particularly in [al-Awamiya]," said Toby Matthiesen, a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford. "Now there are frequent skirmishes at checkpoints, or when security forces try to raid a village and arrest people suspected of having taken part in the uprising," he said, referring to local pushback against the Saudi government.
Mr. Adubisi said some Shia in Eastern Province began arming themselves with weapons such as guns after the Saudi government started killing protesters in the region in 2011 and 2012.
Story continues below advertisement
He said that while he thinks protesters should not take up arms, he does not believe these militants can be considered terrorists, adding that he agrees with the late Sheikh Nimr that words are stronger than bullets.
The 15 cases Mr. Adubisi cites do not include numerous incidents in which, he alleges, the armoured vehicles, stationed at checkpoints in al-Awamiya, drive through residential areas shooting at shop windows and cars in an apparently random fashion.
Although the $15-billion deal was signed by the former Harper government, the Trudeau Liberals have stood by the 14-year agreement. The approval given in April was for 70 per cent of the related exports. The Liberals have defended their actions by saying that cancelling the deal would not improve human rights in Saudi Arabia and would injure Canada's international reputation for respecting contracts.
Critics of the Saudi deal say it should not matter which country's armoured vehicles have been deployed against Shia Muslims in Eastern Province.
"Riyadh's proclivity to use force against civilians – armoured vehicles, to be precise – is now beyond dispute, if there was still any doubt," Cesar Jaramillo, executive director of Project Ploughshares, an anti-war group in Waterloo, Ont., that monitors the arms trade.
"It matters little whether the vehicles used in these particular instances were actually made in Canada, though they could have been. And the chances of such abuses will only increase as Canada proceeds to ship $15-billion worth of armoured vehicles."
Story continues below advertisement
Stephen Priestley, a researcher with the Canadian American Strategic Review, a think tank that tracks defence spending, said he believes the armoured vehicles featured in the videos supplied by Shia activists are Al-Mansour machines made by a company called Saudi Groups.
Mr. Jaramillo noted the threshold established by the human-rights safeguards of Canadian export controls is not evidence or certainty, but reasonable risk. "If Ottawa determines that Saudi Arabia's documented use of armoured vehicles against civilians does not constitute a reasonable risk of misuse of similar vehicles manufactured in Canada, it should at the very least drop the claim that Canada's export controls are among the strongest in the world."
Mr. Adubisi, a writer and activist, says he was held in jail without charge for more than 325 days in Saudi Arabia between 2011 and 2012 and tortured during five interrogation sessions before being released. He fled the country in 2013 and lives in Berlin with his wife and children.
He said the Saudi government has social license to go after Shia Muslim citizens in the name of fighting terrorism. Saudi Arabia's relations with Iran, where Shia Muslims predominate, are strained at best.
"Any attacks, any violence against the Shia minority, few people will care – because they are Shia."
The Sunni-dominated Saudi media is full of anti-Shia sentiment, and lumps together all Shia Muslims whether they are in Iran, Bahrain or elsewhere, Mr. Adubisi said. They say "those people are helping Iran, those people are part of Hezbollah, those people are helping [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad. They will put all the problems of the Middle East on the Shia in Saudi Arabia."
He said Canadians should try to imagine what it would be like if Canada's government were to blame Iranian-Canadians for problems with Iran.
"That is what is happening in Saudi Arabia," he said.
With a report from Patrick Dell in Toronto |
“If there’s a controversy regarding some local official in Arkansas, we can go back and we know what Mark Pryor (above) said about it,” said Joe Pounder of America Rising.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“Go back and look at that Michelle Obama speech,” says Tim Miller. It’s Jan. 9, and the 32-year-old Republican strategist is perched in front of his Macbook Air, explaining how the first lady just hurt the Democrats’ candidate for an open Senate seat in West Virginia.
“I’m pulling it up. Okay. Here’s a great Charleston Daily Mail headline: ‘Michelle Obama backs Natalie Tennant in Senate race.’ ”
Miller laughs, because of course that’s a horrible headline. Nothing about it draws the reader in, or tells them what gaffes or toxic admissions might have happened when Obama arrived. The paper buried the ledes. “She talks about health care,” says Miller. “She talks about gun control. She talks about immigration. I don’t know if she mentioned Keystone, but even the EPA regulations—that was something Michelle Obama mentioned. If you’re any of these Democrat candidates running in red states, any of the issues I just mentioned is kryptonite.”
It’s Miller’s job to obsess about those details. He runs America Rising PAC, the Republican-aligned opposition research factory launched 10 months ago by Mitt Romney’s defeated campaign manager Matt Rhoades. After the election, the Republican National Committee researched and released an autopsy of the loss. The party needed, according to the RNC, was a group that did “nothing but post inappropriate Democrat utterances and act as a clearinghouse for information on Democrats.” Miller left the RNC to join the clearinghouse; As of last week, between the PAC and the LLC run by fellow oppo vet Joe Pounder, America Rising employed 47 more people, full or part-time.
America Rising found office space in the right-to-work concrete paradise of northern Virginia, one metro stop outside of Washington, D.C. Visitors walk into a minimalist space, with no receptionist, past a coffee table that stacks old magazines with conservative cover stars. Every few feet there’s a portrait of a Republican icon like Teddy Roosevelt or a ha-ha-remember-that joke at a Democrats’ expense. The centerpiece is a blown-up photo of John Kerry taking a bodysuited windsurfing break during the 2004 campaign. They bought it on eBay.
That’s about it. The office is quiet, no TVs blaring cable news, most TVs relegated to a “war room” away from the researchers’ desks. Many of its employees spend their days “tracking” Democratic candidates, particular Senate candidates in key states. These trackers attempt to shoot video of every single public utterance the candidates’ make, in hopes of catching gaffes and flip-flops and collecting an archive that can be mined for hypocrisy and errors.
“Big oppo” is the Republican response to the Democrats’ highly successful American Bridge project, whose 2012 work Pounder and Miller praise effusively.
“In the down-ticket races, they don’t get enough credit for working with the outside groups,” says Miller. “Sierra Club, House Majority PAC – you can see the Bridge influence. And that allowed them to put a lot of pressure on the [communications] shops of our candidates. But that oppo they did on our Senate and House candidates jammed up our candidates’ shops. Every minute they’re spending going back to FEC reports to knock down a lead from a reporter, a lead they got from American Bridge, is a minute they’re not spending on something that advances their interests.”
One reason why America Rising and American Bridge do so much tracking is that it is easier now—quick uploads where there used to be lengthy ftp wait times.
“I did tracking for Romney in 2007, 2008,” recalls Pounder.
“Was it you guys that did Bomb, Bomb Iran?” asks Miller, referring to a video of Sen. John McCain responding to a question from a voter by rewriting the lyrics of a Beach Boys hit. “Or was that on the news?”
“That was tracker footage,” says Pounder.
Inside Miller’s office, where he and Pounder are talking through the plans for 2014—they expect a budget of $10 million to $15 million, according to the Huffington Post—there’s a bookshelf with a copy of What A Party!, the chest-thumping, golf-game-reminiscing memoir by now-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. It’s a memento of their first real loss. America Rising came up with one of the most theoretically damaging hits on McAuliffe, a promotional video for his troubled car company, GreenTech. The man who’d repeatedly talked about bringing a car company from China to America stood in Outer Mongolia, grinning about the 15 million square foot facility going up there. Neither Republican campaigns nor reporters had noticed it. America Rising found it buried on the GreenTech site. Other hits followed, all on this theme, but McAuliffe won anyway.
“McAuliffe was a better candidate, no doubt, than four years ago,” offers Miller. “He was on message. They knew their candidate’s weaknesses. He benefited by not being a new candidate—he goes off message and, oh, that’s just Terry, acting crazy! That’s just Terry, being folksy again. In 2013 a lot of the media felt that stuff had been asked and answered.”
“The campaign kept him from doing one-on-one interviews,” says Pounder.
“The one interview he did, the [Virginia political reporter] Ryan Nobles interview, we used in every ad! The ad that tested the best was from that interview.”
“Very few press gaggles after his events,” adds Pounder.
“But hiding a candidate is not a path to success in statewide races,” says Miller. “That’s not a path to success for [Kentucky Senate candidate] Alison Lundergan Grimes or [Georgia Senate candidate] Michelle Nunn. The hard questions are going to get asked and answered.”
America Rising is counting on candidates being questioned in states that have been voting Republican for president or where the local Democratic party has been losing elections: Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina.
“Think about where the battleground map is,” says Miller. “This or that remark might not be that damning in Massachusetts, but many of the competitive races are happening on turf that Romney won.”
Republicans need to win six Senate seats to take total control of Congress, and they realize they could have done this earlier if they hadn’t nominated losers in a few 2010 and 2012 races, or if millions of dollars hadn’t been blown on stupid ads. All their tracking can serve as a foundation for the 2014 contests.
“Something in a research file now that doesn’t seem relevant may be relevant six months from now,” says Pounder. “The benefit of working on this full time, through the cycle, is that you’ll stay aware of it.”
“I think there’s a misconception that this is happening in order to catch [Iowa Senate candidate] Bruce Braley saying he’s upset with the lack of towels in the House gym during the shutdown. That’s fun, that gets on Jimmy Kimmel, that’s not the point. Three months from now if there’s a controversy regarding some local official in Arkansas, we can go back and we know what Mark Pryor said about it. When the NSA thing popped last summer, probably nothing any of these candidates said about the NSA had ever raised a red flag. But now we’ve catalogued that information, so when the next NSA pops up, we know what they said.”
“If we were sitting here a year ago,” says Pounder, “nobody would have said ‘if you like your plan, you can keep your plan’ would be an issue. OK. Kay Hagan has said it numerous times. Mark Pryor has said it once or twice. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Then you go back to everything they’re starting to say since the debate started. They didn’t just say, ‘if you like your plan you can keep it.’ They said, if you like your doctor, you can keep him.’ They said, ‘I do like the public option.’ They said, ‘maybe Obamacare didn’t go far enough.’ They were intricate players in the debate, and most of that is on video.”
Why would support for a public option hurt a candidate? “It fits in because you ask: You thought Obamacare’s implementation was bad? They wanted to go even further.” America Rising is the freezer of the Republican party, storing messages and narratives are, that can be taken out at the right moment, microwaved, and served to voters. |
Comcast has been supported by many politicians in its bid to acquire Time Warner Cable, but the testimonials from elected officials aren't quite as organic as the cable company would have you believe.
A report today by The Verge, based on documents obtained through public records requests, shows that in August three politicians sent letters to the Federal Communications Commission that were ghostwritten by Comcast. We reported several months ago that letters from politicians closely mimicked Comcast talking points and re-used Comcast's own statements without attribution, and the documents revealed today show just how Comcast was able to get politicians on board.
"For instance, a letter sent to the FCC by a town councilman from the small community of Jupiter, Florida was in fact largely orchestrated by some of the biggest players in corporate telecom," The Verge wrote. "Not only do records show that a Comcast official sent the councilman the exact wording of the letter he would submit to the FCC, but also that finishing touches were put on the letter by a former FCC official named Rosemary Harold, who is now a partner at one of the nation’s foremost telecom law firms in Washington, DC. Comcast has enlisted Harold to help persuade her former agency to approve the proposed merger."
An e-mail chain shows how that letter from Jupiter Councilor Todd Wodraska came to be, with Comcast providing a draft of the letter and filing instructions.
"Comcast has been a major component in Jupiter’s business and technological development over the past several years," the letter to the FCC said. "I am writing today to voice my support for the Comcast and Time Warner Cable transaction because it has the potential to greatly benefit many communities like ours. I strive to preserve Jupiter’s unique coastal-style of living while providing top-notch innovation and commodities for our residents."
The Verge also detailed how a letter from Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown "was almost wholly written by a Comcast Government Affairs specialist." The other politician featured in the story was Mayor Jere Wood of Roswell, Georgia, whose letter to the FCC was written word for word by "a vice president of external affairs at Comcast."
Brown has received $9,500 from Comcast in donations, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
When contacted by Ars, Comcast VP of Government Communications Sena Fitzmaurice provided the same statement previously sent to The Verge: “We reached out to policy makers, community leaders, business groups, and others across the country to detail the public interest benefits of our transaction with Time Warner Cable. When such leaders indicate they’d like to support our transaction in public filings, we’ve provided them with information on the transaction. All filings are ultimately decided upon by the filers, not Comcast.”
Fitzmaurice also noted that merger opponents have submitted comments to the FCC using text written by advocacy groups. "How many of the anti-deal comments are completely written by the opponents? Thousands," she wrote in an e-mail.
Most people would hope politicians could write their own letters or at least submit letters written by their staffs rather than Comcast, though. Advocacy groups generally haven't made any secret of their signature gathering tactics, even issuing press releases boasting that as many as 400,000 people signed petitions urging regulators to reject the merger. |
Fox News Channel host Megyn Kelly responded to much of the criticism of the Mohammed Art Exhibit and Contest by saying, “If this is where American sentiment stands on this issue, then the jihadis are officially winning” on Wednesday.
Kelly said that the participants in and organizers of the event “were trying to make a point about intolerance by some in the Muslim world, and about principles on which the USA is supposed to stand firm. Namely, that no matter how abhorrent one might find another’s words, in this country, we defend their right to say them. Standing up for that principle is not an endorsement of the controversial speech. It is promoting a value at the very core of who we are. The group holding this contest was not on TV shouting its message. It was holding a private event behind closed doors to make a point about liberty.”
She continued, “Sure enough, the jihadis responded and were shot dead by a quick-reacting police officer on scene. Incredibly, what has happened in the days since is a rush to condemn the event organizers with nary a mention of the radical Islamists who sought to murder them over a cartoon… Over the last 72 hours, we have heard the event organizers condemned for being too provocative, too stupid, even for inviting their own attempted murder.”
Kelly concluded, “If this is where American sentiment stands on this issue, then the jihadis are officially winning. The terrorists’ point was to shut us up, not just the organizers of this event, but any American who deigns to disagree with their way of life or thinking. There may be a time and place to discuss whether this kind of discourse is helpful to our country, to our fight with the jihadis, and so on. But within hours of an attempted murder of the very folks under attack? The reaction is, ‘Well, you asked for it.’ Well, they did not ask for it. In this country, we have every right to say what we want to say about Mohammed, or anyone else for that matter. And the rest of society can condemn this group’s speech as a matter of decorum, but how about waiting a beat until the crime scene has been cleared? Lest we appear more concerned about offending Islam than we are about a fundamental pledge we’ve all taken, namely liberty for all.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter: @IanHanchett |
Written by Frazier Tharpe (@The_SummerMan)
Two issues back, Nancy (Gina Gershon) fleetingly mentioned her son's father and an impassioned Jamaican man took offense to the brand name Rasta Monsta. Both instances seemed insignificant, yet both circled back around in a big way in last night's episode, "I'm Sorry, Who's Yosi?", as How To Make It In America's Season Two quality spike continues.
"Everybody's in bed with everybody."
We never liked to be among the people who compared How To Make It In America to Entourage. They're two very different shows and calling them any more than companions is just lazy. But, if we're being honest, this new direction the Ben-Nancy plotline has taken is straight out of HBO's recently deceased bromance comedy. Which is probably why we loved it.
Six-figure deals and partnerships threatened by forbidden lust is the type of story Entourage was able to give just the right dramatic edge to while simultaneously making it hilarious. When the camera panned to Ben (Bryan Greenberg) and Nancy recklessly going at it below deck on the same yacht where her husband was having drinks upstairs, we smiled and grimaced at the same time. Because, unlike Vincent Chase, Ben and Cam (Victor Rasuk) have a lot to gain but even more to lose. This deal between Yosi (Nick Chinlund) and the Gadzooks girls (so glad they stuck around for one more scene) could be the big break CRISP has been waitng for; not to mention, Cam is completely innocent in all of this.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. So this whole time that Nancy has been cougar-scheming on Ben, she's been married. Damn, homie. (She briefly mentioned a husband in episode two but, perhaps purposefully, worded it as if they were divorced.) Being the side-man is not the type of sordidness that the usually straight-laced Ben is used to or willing to be a part of...at first. He can swear to Cam and pretend to agree to forget about their night over drinks with Nancy, but in practically no time they're back at it, Yosi be damned. This is the most entertaining CRISP conflict yet (Ben's repeated attempts to tell Cam were very funny); we can't wait to see how it all implodes.
POST CONTINUES BELOW
The Enlightenment Of Rachel Continues
So it appears that Rachel (Lake Bell) isn't looking to jump ship from Do to Neanderthal Tim (James Ransone). But she is partnerning with him in another way that's sure to upset Ben. The nighttime ride through Williamsburg had such a profound effect on her that she's unwisely pushing for a feature on Tim and the Neanderthal's home garden at Biscuit, going ahead with it even after her boss Robin rejects it. She even uses the company's expense account to pay for Tim's latest tattoo, and in this week's anti-normal-Rachel-moment gets a sexy pelvic one herself. It's safe to say that Rachel will be looking for a new job again in Season Three, but this time she's not going to get the chance to quit. We are headed for one hell of a firing scene.
In other news, Rachel and Domingo (Kid Cudi) finally have the awkward yet inevitable where-is-this-going talk. Rachel just wants to keep hanging out, but we know Do already sees their fling as something more. The writers have been trusting Cudi more and more each week with more than saying cool stuff while looking fresh, and he's been delivering. Welcome to heartbreak?
POST CONTINUES BELOW
Rasta Monsta Comes Under Fire
Watch out ladies and gentlemen, Rene (Luis Guzman) may actually be interacting with the rest of the main cast soon. Rasta Monsta is finally taking off, and it's now big enough to catch the attention of the local Jamaican community, and the dreads aren't amused.
The guy that Wilfredo attacked a few weeks back? Well, it turns out that he's some kind of local political bigwig (as shown by his pictures with Puff and Bloomberg and such) and he's trying to put the squeeze on Rene and the company as reparations for the racially exploitative drink. Rene isn't about to let anybody shake him down, but Evrington has an ace up his sleeve: Domingo's unauthorized Rasta Monsta weed spray. That kind of press won't keep the drink in suburban stores for long. Between his girl problems and now this, Domingo is about to have a bad week.
POST CONTINUES BELOW
Other Developments
-The FBI roll up on Kappo (Eddie Kaye Thomas) at his office. Pretty stupid of him to try to run. We figure next season he'll be trying to "make it in America" while poor right alongside Ben and Cam.
-There was a random Pharrell cameo that was kind of awkward, but, hey, he likes the brand's name, so that's something.
-The guest stars this season have been extremely well-written and impressionable. The middle school fashionista, the Gadzooks Kristens, and Rachel's boss have done a lot with such small doses.
-The Yosi-Gadzooks deal is good money and exposure, but LuLu rightly points out that if the boys aren't careful CRISP could be heading toward ubiquity and un-hip-ness of Zoo York proportions. Which is hilarious considering Zoo York's founder Eli Gessner is a consultant for the show. |
This news is too awesome not to share. In 2013, the beautifully diverse country of Costa Rica announced that it would become the first country in the world to shut down its zoos and free all captive animals. Home to 4% of all known species, the tropical nation is one of the most biodiverse locations on Earth – a major reason why tourism is its #1 industry.
Unfortunately, the country is now contractually obligated to keep the doors of its two zoos open for another ten years, after a court ruling last Friday (more info below). Still, the news of its intentions (documented in 2013) are inspiring enough to share, and activists are continuing to appeal in favor of the government’s desire to transform its zoos into cage-less bio parks.
The nation has plans to close its two government-run zoos as part of an emerging new environmental consciousness that question’s humanity’s dominion over all creatures. Like the landmark ruling in New York concerning chimpanzees, this controversial move has ignited both favor and fury.
Treehugger reports that the nation, which is also the first to completely ban hunting for sport, intends to close its only two zoos in the country, the Simon Bolivar Zoo, and the Santa Ana Conservation. By closing these two establishments, the nation seeks to convey to the world its respect towards wild birds, mammals, and reptiles.
Said the Environmental Minister René Castro, “We are getting rid of the cages and reinforcing the idea of interacting with biodiversity in botanical parks in a natural way.”
She continued:
“We don’t want animals in captivity or enclosed in any way unless it is to rescue or save them.”
According to sources, existing management contracts were to be terminated in 2014. Unfortunately, it was mandated last Friday that Costa Rican zoos must remain open for another ten years due to contractual obligations. When the day does come that the country is able to transform its zoos into cage-less bio parks, however, animals in captivity not able to be released into the wild will be cared for in rescue centers and wildlife sanctuaries throughout the country.
Comment your thoughts below and share this article.
This article (Costa Rica Plans To Shut Down Its Zoos And Free All Animals In Captivity) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com |
Apparently, Avalanche fans are going to need a little more proof that their team is as good as its record before they start showing up in larger numbers.
The smallest crowd in Avs history witnessed Colorado’s Western Conference-leading 11th win and 24th point Wednesday night, a 4-1 triumph over the Phoenix Coyotes. The announced attendance of 11,012 was more than 2,000 fewer than the previous low crowd, but that didn’t stop the Avs from staying perfect (5-0) on home ice.
“Our job is just to go out and play hockey and our job is to provide entertainment for our fans,” Avs coach Joe Sacco said. “I think that we’ve done a good job of that this year so far.”
Two goals by veteran right wing Milan Hejduk and three assists from linemate Paul Stastny supported goalie Peter Budaj in his first start of the season. He stopped 28-of-29 shots in his first game since April 11.
“It was a long time since the last time I was in net, so I was happy to play tonight, and the guys played good in front of me,” Budaj said. “I was seeing the puck well, and the guys cleared out the front of the net well. I wasn’t screened much, and that made a big difference.”
The Avs are still struggling offensively, but the top line, with Stastny and Hejduk, broke out of its mini-slump. The duo combined on the first goal of the game, just 57 seconds in, when Hejduk tipped in Kyle Quincey’s pass on the power play, with Stastny getting the second assist.
Colorado nursed that 1-0 lead until the 6:43 mark of the third period, when Marek Svatos — moved up to the top line with Hejduk and Stastny for the period — got his first point in 10 games. Svatos made a gorgeous little poke shot off a rebound in front, tucking the puck up high to the far post of Coyotes goalie Ilya Bryzgalov.
“Sometimes you’re not going to get the nicest goals,” Stastny said. “You need a bounce here or there to get everyone going. It was not too pretty offensively, but Budaj gave us a chance to win tonight.”
The Coyotes — the butt of many a joke the last 12 months given their precarious ownership situation and attendance problems — look like a much improved team and could have won the game with a little better marksmanship and smarts.
Veteran Ed Jovanovski scored Phoenix’s only goal but hurt his team’s cause with a foolish cross check against Stastny 54 seconds into a Coyotes power play, with the score 2-1 and 6:46 remaining in the game.
“When they took that penalty, it did alleviate some of the pressure,” Sacco said. “Overall, our penalty killing (second in the NHL entering the game) has been a lot better over the course of the last eight to 10 games.”
David Jones added an empty-netter for the Avs, and Hejduk added one more for good measure, drawing a hearty cheer from those still on hand.
“It was a tough game,” Hejduk said. “They played pretty well. We’re just so happy for Peter to get back in and get a win, after what he’s been through lately.”
Adrian Dater: 303-954-1360 or [email protected] |
It doesn’t get more global than WordPress. Over 60 million people use some form of the popular blogging service, either hosted on WordPress.com or professionally hosted elsewhere. That fact alone means that when the project steps out for or against something, it has an incredible audience who pays attention.
In a blog post today, the team behind the popular publishing platform is asking its users to stand up against SOPA and PIPA, because it potentially threatens their freedom to publish the things that matter most to them on the Internet.
Here’s what Jane Wells, UX lead at WordPress had to say on the matter:
Using WordPress to blog, to publish, to communicate things online that once upon a time would have been relegated to an unread private journal (or simply remained unspoken, uncreated, unshared) makes you a part of one of the biggest changes in modern history: the democratization of publishing and the independent web. Every time you click Publish, you are a part of that change, whether you are posting canny political insight or a cat that makes you LOL. How would you feel if the web stopped being so free and independent? I’m concerned freaked right the heck out about the bills that threaten to do this, and as a participant in one of the biggest changes in modern history, you should be, too.
Along with this request for political-themed help, which even Wells says is not the norm for WordPress, the team has posted a video that aims to educate people on what SOPA and PIPA means for them and for Internet professionals:
With the WordPress army officially making its position on these two acts known, you too can make a difference by contacting your local member of US congress. You can use this app that we wrote about to do so.
The WordPress platform is said to power 15% of the web, so it looks like these acts aren’t going to be put into action without a fight.
Read next: Ultrabooks prove that Windows OEMs have simply been lazy all these years |
Buy Photo FC Cincinnati fans pack the stadium for a match last year. The soccer team shop offers a variety of gear, including themed winter accessories. (Photo: The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar)Buy Photo
It's all about being ready for the call.
While Futbol Club Cincinnati has no immediate plans to "veer away" from Nippert Stadium as its home field, Major League Soccer's interest in franchises having their own stadium is driving the organization to identify sites where one could be built.
By month's end, the franchise is expected to provide a list of Greater Cincinnati sites to MLS where a new soccer stadium and related facilities could be built. Jeff Berding, team president and general manager, has declined to comment on the sites that will appear on the short list.
But one Cincinnati site – the former home of Milacron in Oakley – is likely to get a long look from team officials based on its potential to meet MLS requirements, according to an Enquirer analysis of property records.
In previous interviews with The Enquirer, Berding said the stadium site search will not detract from the franchise's investments in Nippert at the University of Cincinnati.
A more than $2 million project is underway at the stadium to reconfigure its lower bowl so the field can meet standards set by soccer's international governing body FIFA. FC Cincinnati is in the second year of a three-year deal to play its home matches at Nippert, a contract that could be extended until 2030. Berding told The Enquirer the Nippert site works because it supports fan engagement, features enough parking and its urban college campus location has the demographic of fan the league would want to attract.
Buy Photo Jeff Berding (Photo: Tony Tribble for The Enquirer)
“We have our eyes wide open here," Berding told The Enquirer in November. "We have said, 'OK, here's a map of Greater Cincinnati. Here's the river. Here's UC. New stadiums are approximately 20 acres. We live in a pretty dense urban environment, a historic urban environment. Where would 20 acres even exist?' "
Stadium site evaluations can take months, if not years, to complete. The FC Cincinnati group started its preliminary site evaluation process in November and it's not immediately clear whether it will publicly reveal sites that have made the final cut.
When the Cincinnati Reds were scouting for a new home, the team publicly revealed the two final sites under consideration as Broadway Commons, which is an area near Jack Casino Cincinnati and the "Wedge" of land along Cincinnati's riverfront next to the old Coliseum. Eventually, the stadium opened at its current location in 2003.
Large tracts of land for commercial development are hard to find in Cincinnati, but late last year, The Enquirer analyzed local property records and active real estate listings to develop a list of potential stadium sites. Here's what we found:
Former Milacron site (3000 Disney St.)
Pros: A 29-acre site (more than 16 acres available for sale now) along Interstate 71 in a growing neighborhood that has a significant commercial base.
Cons: The site's $10.6 million price tag for 16.3 acres of land may be pricey, especially if more land is needed as part of stadium development plans.
"Absolutely, it meets all the criteria," said Bill Poffenberger, manager and executive vice president of Jones Lang LaSalle's Cincinnati office. "It has wonderful frontage along I-71. It's centrally located in the city for easy access for the fans. It has the acreage. You could put practice and community fields all in one location."
Poffenberger said he has sent site information to team officials, but isn't sure where the group stands in its evaluation process.
The original Milacron site has been subdivided into what's now home to big box retailers at the Center of Cincinnati development and a mix of commercial and residential buildings part of Oakley Station. The site features more parking lots and less green space than what residents initially wanted in the redevelopment, but they say there's an opportunity to do more with the remaining land.
NEWSLETTERS Get the Bengals Beat newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-876-4500. Delivery: Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Bengals Beat Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
"We hope the site is developed by a good neighbor that engenders as much pride for the city of Cincinnati and the Oakley community as Milacron has for the past century," according to a statement provided by the Oakley Community Council. "We look forward to working with our new neighbor to make sure that happens."
Spinney Field (800 Evans Road)
Pros: The Lower Price Hill site has a sports heritage being the former practice field home of the Cincinnati Bengals. The site is close to Downtown and closer to the University of Cincinnati than some other properties the team will likely consider.
Cons: The site would likely need more land to help complete stadium development plans. It's also the home of the Cincinnati Police Academy and the city may not be interested in relocating it. Infrastructure improvements may also be needed to support higher levels of traffic to the site from Eighth Street.
Queensgate South
Pros: The 17-acre site northeast of Mehring Way and Freeman Avenue in Queensgate has a list price of $3.3 million.
Cons: The site had been envisioned for office, industrial or high-tech development. The site is likely too far from UC to interest the team. The area also is primarily geared toward light or heavy industrial uses and stadiums tend to work better in areas with more commercial development opportunities and easy for pedestrians to traverse.
Riverside Yard
Pros: With more than 46 acres of land being marketed for sale in Sedamsville, it's more than large enough to meet the needs of a new stadium.
Cons: It is among the largest industrial sites available in the city of Cincinnati, which means officials and regional economic development groups likely want to reserve the site for high-employment and high-wage industrial or office development opportunities. It's also in an industrial zone that doesn't allow for much adjacent tourism-related commercial development opportunities and isn't very pedestrian friendly.
3241 Spring Grove Ave.
Pros: The 17-acre site in Camp Washington is vacant and ready to accept new development.
Cons: The land is zoned for industrial development and a manufacturing plant or industrial development fits better with the site's profile than a soccer stadium. The site also has direct rail access, which will be more attractive to that type of tenant.
Reporter Sharon Coolidge contributed. |
Obama to be given the right to shut down the internet with 'kill switch'
Barack Obama will be given a 'kill switch' in times of national emergency
President Obama will be given the power to shut down the Internet with a 'kill switch' in a new law being proposed in the US.
He would be able to order popular search engines such a Google and Yahoo to suspend access to their websites in times of national emergency.
Other US based Internet service providers as well as broadband providers would also come under his control in times of a 'cybersecurity emergency.' Any company that failed to comply would be subject to huge fines.
Critics of the new law, which has been proposed by former presidential candidate Joe Liebermann, said it would be an abuse of power to let the White House control the internet.
TechAmerica, one of the largest U.S. technology lobby groups, said the new law had the 'potential for absolute power.'.
The proposed legislation, introduced into the US Senate by Lieberman who is chairman of the US Homeland Security committee, seeks to grant the President broad emergency powers over the internet in times of national emergency.
A sustained terror attack on multiple cities would be considered a national emergency as would a cyber attack by 'hackers' on the US financial system.
The director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair warned earlier this year that the US is 'severely threatened' by malicious cyber attacks.
The number of attacks on Government departments has increased by 400 per cent in the last three years.
Under the proposed bill, which has been dubbed an Internet 'kill switch', the US Government would effectively seize control of access to the internet.
Lieberman argued the bill was necessary to 'preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people'.
He said: 'For all of its 'user-friendly' allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets.
Traders work on the New York Stock Exchange floor. US senators fear a cyber-attack on the US could paralyse the nation
'Our economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies--cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals.'
His bill is formally titled the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA.
While the US Government would not be able to control the internet in other countries access to the most popular sites would be cut off.
Google,Yahoo and YouTube, the top three most visited sites, are all based in the US.
Google logs an estimated two billion hits a day from 300 million users.
Under the cyber law any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also 'relies on' the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. 'information infrastructure' would be subject to command by a new National Centre for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.
Google, the world's most popular search engine, refused to comment. A spokesman said the law was not yet Government policy. |
A Muslim family from Long Island slapped the owners of the Empire State Building Tuesday with a scathing $5 million lawsuit that claims they were booted from the building’s observation deck for praying.
Fahad and Amina Tirmizi of Farmingville said their civil rights were violated when they were “assaulted, battered and forcibly removed” from the famed observatory last July.
The suit, filed against Malkin Properties, security company Andrews International Inc. and others, claims that Fahad, 32, and his 30-year-old wife were unfairly targeted because they were Muslim and wearing traditional Muslim attire.
“We weren’t doing anything wrong,” Fahad said. “We just wanted to enjoy the view like everyone else.”
The couple and their two children were on the 86th-floor outside deck when they walked over to a quiet spot to recite evening prayers, the suit says.
Although Amina briefly prayed without incident, a security guard quickly confronted Fahad and “menacingly poked” him and loudly told him he was not allowed to pray on the deck.
Another guard joined the fray and told all the family members that they had to leave, and “forcibly escorted” them down to the lobby and out of the of the building, the suit says.
Fahad told The Post that he has prayed in public before and tries to be respectful.
“Earlier that same day at the Staten Island Ferry terminal, I needed to pray the afternoon prayer and wanted to make sure I’m not in the way,” he said.
“I confirmed with a police officer who was standing right there to make sure it was a good spot. The officer responded, ‘Go for it, it’s not illegal to pray.’ ”
The Tirmizis’ lawyer, Phil Hines, said the family outing became an experience of intolerance.
“To most, the Empire State Building is one of the great landmarks of this city, but for my client and his family, it is a building of ignorance and injustice,” Hines said.
“A family trip to enjoy the cityscape was cut short after security officials threw them out of the building for exercising their religious beliefs.”
Representatives for Malkin Properties did not immediately return messages. |
My last post talked about what’s wrong with type classes (in general, but also specifically in Haskell). This post generated some great feedback on Reddit, including some valid criticism that I didn’t explain why I hated on newtypes so much.
I took some of that feedback and incorporated it into a revised version of the post, but I have even more to say about “newtypes," so I decided to write another blog post.
What’s in a Newtype
Newtypes are a feature of Haskell that let you define a new type in terms of an existing type.
In the following example, I create a newtype for Email , which “holds” a String .
newtype Email = Email String
They are similar to type synonyms ( type Email = String ), except that type synonyms don’t create new types, they just allow you to refer to existing types by other names.
Every newtype can be easily translated into a data declaration. In fact, only the keyword changes:
data Email = Email String
There’s a slight semantic difference between the two, but for purposes of this blog post, any criticism I have against newtypes apply equally to similar constructs modeled with type or data .
The Promise of Newtypes
Newtypes are used to provide and select between alternate implementations of type classes for some base types. I think that’s a hack (albeit a necessary one), but I’ve already talked about this so I won’t belabor it here.
The other promise of newtypes is that we can use them to make our code more type safe. Instead of passing around String as an email, for example, we can create a super lightweight “wrapper” around String called Email , and make it an error to use a String wherever an Email is expected.
This practice isn’t restricted to Haskell. Even in Java, it’s considered good coding practice to wrap primitives with classes whose names denote the meaning of the wrapper (Email, SSN, Address, etc.).
There’s a part of this promise that’s certainly true. If I have to define a function accepting four parameters, and three of them are strings, but one of those strings denotes an email, then I have two choices:
Model the email parameter with a String . In this case, I may accidentally use the email where I intended to use the other two string parameters, or I may use one of the other two string parameters where I intended to use the email. Considering just these choices, there are five ways my program may go wrong if I use the wrong name in the wrong position. Model the email parameter with a newtype . In this case, I cannot use the email where I intended to use the other two string parameters, because the compiler may stop me. Similarly, I cannot use the other two string parameters where I intended to use the email, for the same reason. Looking at just these choices, there are 0 ways my program may go wrong.
Thus, newtypes, like all good FP practices, reduce the number of ways my program can go wrong.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, they don’t go nearly far enough.
False Security
For most intent and purposes, newtypes are isomorphic to the single value they hold.
In my preceding example, given a String , I can get an email ( Email "foo" ). Given an Email , I can also get a String , e.g. by pattern matching on the Email constructor.
Stated differently, and also approximately because I’m ignoring bottom: the String and Email types are isomorphic; they contain the same inhabitants, for any useful definition of “same”. The only substantive difference between the preceding String and Email is the name of the data constructor (call Email an AbergrackleFoozyWatzit , and what has changed?).
Hence, my previous criticism of newtypes as “programming by name”.
By themselves, newtypes don’t really reduce the number of ways my program can go wrong. They just make it a bit harder to go wrong. But any newtype is isomorphic to the value it holds, and it’s trivial to convert between the two.
In fact, if my code doesn’t need to convert between the two (either directly or indirectly), then it’s better off generic. That is, if I never need to convert an Email to a String , or a String to an Email , then I should really write the code generically to work with any value (even if that means making data structures or functions more polymorphic).
Parametricity provides a massive reduction in the number of ways my program can go wrong. Newtypes, on the other hand, just make it a bit harder to go wrong, by adding one layer of indirection.
In this example, as with many newtypes, I’ve created a bad isomorphism. The domain model of an email is not isomorphic to the data model of a string. But by using a newtype, I have implicitly declared that they are isomorphic.
Calling a string an email may make me feel better, because of the different name, but fundamentally, with a newtype, it’s still a string, and I’m only ever one more step away from going wrong.
In my experience, too many newtypes create an isomorphism between things that, properly modeled, are not isomorphic.
Fortunately, there’s a well-worn workaround that lets us get more mileage out of newtypes.
Smart Constructors
If I define Email in a module, I can make its data constructor private, and export a helper function to construct an Email . Such helper functions are called smart constructors.
They can be used to break the natural isomorphisms created by newtyping.
An example is shown below:
newtype Email = MkEmail String mkEmail :: String -> Maybe Email mkEmail s = ...
In this example, I create a smart constructor which does not promise that it can turn every string into an email. It promises only that it might be able to turn a string into an email, by returning a Maybe Email .
With the smart constructor approach, I’ve modeled the fact that while every email has a string representation, not every string has an email representation.
Going back to my earlier example of passing same-typed parameters to a function, if I use a smart constructor, then while I can still use an email anywhere a string is expected (by converting), I can’t use a string anywhere an email is expected. (Well, ignoring the fromJust abomination!)
Smart Constructors, Dumb Data
Smart constructors take us one step closer toward modeling data in a type safe fashion.
Unfortunately, I still don’t think it’s far enough.
With smart constructors, our data model is fundamentally underconstrained, so we patch that up by restricting who can create the data. That’s putting a band-aid on the real problem.
Why not just solve the root issue — viz., that our data model is underconstrained?
Dumb Constructors, Smart Data
The best solution to a great many newtype problems, I believe, is creating a data model where there is a true isomorphism between the entity modeled by our data and the values passed to the data constructor.
That is, creating a data model such that there exists no regions in our data’s state space which correspond to invalid states.
Email is a simple example, because there are well-defined models for what constitutes a data model, which can be translated into data declarations in straightforward, if tedious fashion.
(To some extent, it’s a failure of most languages I know that such specifications cannot be easily translated into code without tedious boilerplate!)
When our data declaration precisely fits our data model specification, there’s no need for smart constructors, and no need for newtypes. There’s far fewer ways that code can go wrong, and because our domain model is captured precisely by our data model, we can transform that data model in ways that make semantic sense (e.g. transforming just the name part of an email, since we’re now in the realm of structured data).
Summary
As I’ve explained in this blog post, I don’t really hate newtypes. I think they’re very useful, and I do use them, because they make it more difficult for my programs to go wrong.
Ultimately, however, I think a lot of problems solved with newtypes (modeling coordinates, positions, emails, etc.) are better solved by more precise data modeling. That is, by making our programs stop lying about isomorphisms.
Precision may be tedious due to limitations of the languages we work in, but honestly, what’s more tedious than debugging broken code? |
Jeff Rabkin, of Allentown-based Beachead Comics, will appear in Sunday night's episode of the hit AMC series, according to a news release. The episode will air at 11:30 p.m., following "Talking Dead."
Rabkin says he received an email in July from a casting agency, asking if he or any of his employees would be interested in appearing on the show. He says he filled out the application, then was contacted by a casting agency based out of New York and had to do a Skype interview. "Less than 24 hours later, I was contacted by the (segment) producer and he invited me to come out to Red Bank and film," Rabkin says.
The show, now in its second season, is a "Pawn Stars"-style reality series that centers on director Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash comic-book shop and the men who work in the store -- including longtime friend Walt Flanagan -- and the customers who bring in comics and other memorabilia/collectibles to sell. Smith's other childhood friend, Bryan Johnson, is also a cast member, but does not work at the store. (Flanagan and Johnson both have appeared in numerous Smith films, most notably as Fanboy and Steve-Dave in "Mallrats.")
Rabkin says he can't reveal what he brought to the shop. He says he was under the impression that the producers would play up the fact that he owns a comic book store, but they ultimately took a different angle and portrayed him "as a guy off the street." But he says he isn't soured by his trip to Jersey.
"It was a very interesting experience," Rabkin says. "It was the first time I've been to Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash and it wasn't entirely what I expected, but it was an enjoyable experience nonetheless."
He adds that he had Flanagan autograph a copy of the "Batman: Cacophony" trade paperback. The three-issue miniseries, which ran from 2008 to 2009, was drawn by Flanagan and written by Smith.
Beachead Comics is at 1601 Chew St.
For more information on "Comic Book Men," visit amctv.com/shows/comic-book-men. |
THE world's most popular free online game has been accused of luring children into gambling after a Sydney boy bet more than $2000.
The 15-year-old from Quakers Hill, in northwest Sydney, was playing RuneScape, a game with more than 200 million users, allegedly infiltrated by crime "clans".
His mother, who asked not to be named, was shocked to see a $1200 bill on her credit card. Her son also spent $700 gambling on RuneScape on his mobile phone.
Video Game Addiction Treatment Clinic psychologist Emil Hodzic has had four Sydney teenage patients who gambled real money in games.
"I am seeing a number of teenagers presenting with video game addiction with a co-morbidity of problem gambling behaviour," he said.
"The parents aren't aware their children are also gambling and some owe 'clan leaders' real money, which is part of the reason they're stealing from their parents."
RuneScape players complete medieval quests for points, to buy weapons and food in-game.
Gambling clans also invite players to use real money, Mr Hodzic said.
"These clans are equivalent to a casino. When game developers find out about it they shut them down, but another springs up," he said.
"Parents need to be aware that RuneScape is not as safe and soft as people imagine it to be."
The teenager, who is now undergoing treatment for his online addiction, was also lured into recruiting for the clan, which offered him a 30 per cent commission.
"My son was encouraging others to do it and the clan leader was getting 70 per cent commission," his mother said.
"I know he spends a lot of time on the computer, he was getting up in the middle of the night to play, but I didn't realise there was a dark side."
RuneScape's developer Jagex Games lifted its restrictions on real-money trading last year.
"Before free trade, I played RuneScape the way it was supposed to be played," one player confessed on the online forum sythe.org.
"But ever since the free-trade update I can't stop gambling," the gamer said.
The company warns of gambling scams on its RuneScape HQ forum, saying advertising RuneScape gambling games will not be allowed.
"Some players will attempt to build your trust in order to scam a larger portion of your wealth off you," it warns players. "Be careful." allowed an 'explosion' of gambling the site since the Jagex removed the trade limits last year"Kids are definitely being exposed to gambling without their parents' knowledge.
"Criminal gangs have been involved in other online gambling games so it should surprise no one that they may be targeting kids on RuneScape."
Earlier this year, the Australian Law Reform Commission handed down its review into the classification system.
"All online games remain exempt from classification for two years while the whilst the recommendations from the ALRC review are considered," a spokesperson for Justice Minister Jason Clare said. |
When you think of the greatest players in Canucks history, a few names pop to mind. There’s Pavel Bure, of course. The Sedins. Trevor Linden. Markus Naslund. Stan Smyl. Roberto Luongo. Uh, some other guys from that ‘94 team, for sure. Kirk McLean! Right, and there has to be someone from 1982, other than Smyl. Uh, Thomas Gradin!
From there, it starts to get fuzzy. This is not the Montreal Canadiens organization we’re talking about. This is the Vancouver Canucks, who’ve won somewhere around zero Stanley Cups in their 45-odd years on the planet.
THE 101 GREATEST CANUCKS: NO. 1-25
THE 101 GREATEST CANUCKS: NO. 26-50
THE 101 GREATEST CANUCKS: NO. 51-75
THE 101 GREATEST CANUCKS: NO. 76-100
OK, SO WHO IS THE 101ST PICK?
MAKING THE CASE FOR THE GREATEST CANUCK: ED WILLES ON HENRIK SEDIN VS. JASON BOTCHFORD ON PAVEL BURE
KING RICHARD NOW RULES THE ART WORLD
101ST CANUCK: THE TRAGIC STORY OF PETER ZEZEL
101ST CANUCK: BETTER TO HIT THE POST THAN MISS COMPLETELY, SAYS NATHAN LAFAYETTE
So if you asked experts, or fans, to name the 100 greatest Habs of all time, it could be done without an are-you-nuts look. But what if we asked people to do that for the Canucks?
That was at least part of the genesis of The 101 Greatest Canucks. So we asked 14 voters to offer their lists of 101 Canucks, and came up with the final rundown.
Those voters — ranging from Hall of Fame broadcaster Jim Robson to a pair of lifelong Canucks fans — had a tough job. They came up with obvious names. They came up with less-obvious names. They came up with questionable, perhaps even giggle-worthy names. But they took the gig seriously, and now, Province Sports has what we think is a definitive list of the 100 greatest Canucks.
Enjoy the 101 Greatest Canucks. And let us know what you think, on Twitter @provincesports and by email at [email protected].
One last thing: For those of you crossing your fingers that Artem Chubarov made the cut, sadly, he didn’t. He finished in 169th place — tied with Trail’s Garth Rizzuto, whose 37 games played with the Canucks in 1970-71 were notable only because he was the first B.C.-born-and-trained player on the Canucks.
MOBILE USERS: WATCH PAUL CHAPMAN AND JONATHAN MCDONALD SET IT ALL UP
MORE ON THE 101 GREATEST CANUCKS
A BY-THE-NUMBERS LOOK AT OUR SELECTIONS
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
FIERCE TIGER WILLIAMS WAS ‘AFRAID EVERY GAME’
ORLAND KURTENBACH THE ORIGINAL CAPTAIN CANUCK
BROKEN ANKLE KEPT KEVIN McCARTHY OUT OF PLAYOFF RUN, BUT DIDN’T LET THAT SPOIL HIS FUN
WHO VOTED — AND HOW THEY MADE THEIR PICKS
MATT COOKE POLARIZED COACHES AS MUCH AS THE FANS
JIM SANDLAK A POSTER BOY FOR FAILED FIRST-ROUNDERS
NOTHING CAME EASY IN SCHNEIDER’S SAGA
MARK MESSIER NO. 1 IN THE HEARTS OF RANGERS FANS BUT ONLY 93RD ON OUR LIST
WAYNE MAKI A FIGHTER TO THE END |
Score one for the little guys. In a precedent-setting decision handed down this morning, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a company’s patent rights are forfeited once they sell an item to a consumer under the “first sale” doctrine. This idea was central to Impression Products, Inc. v Lexmark Int’l, Inc. and is a major blow to companies that sell their printers for (relatively) low prices and then recoup any losses on the sale of expensive ink and toner cartridges.
Lexmark originally set its sights on Impression Products, which is a small company that specializes in remanufacturing print cartridges for resale at prices much lower than what a customer would pay for a “genuine” Lexmark product. These cartridges often have no noticeable difference in performance compared to genuine ink or toner cartridges — the only real difference is that customers can save a lot of money by going the remanufactured route. This secondary market for cartridges not only has implications for regular Joes looking to save a buck, but also businesses that are always looking to cut costs.
While other toner remanufacturing companies settled out of court under the threat of legal action from Lexmark, Impression Products decided to take a stand and ended up at the U.S. Supreme Court, where justices handed the small company a landslide victory. According to Bloomberg, the justices ruled in favor of Impression Products 8-0 or 7-1, depending on certain aspects of the case. Only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented partially, saying that patent rights should not be exhausted for products sold overseas.
"Extending the patent rights beyond the first sale would clog the channels of commerce, with little benefit from the extra control that the patentees retain," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts. In his opinion, Chief Justice Roberts contended that Lexmark’s heavy-handed approach to discouraging cartridge remanufacturers only emboldened them to find new and innovative ways to circumvent the company’s defenses.
“Many kept acquiring empty Return Program cartridges and developed methods to counteract the effect of the microchips. With that technological obstacle out of the way, there was little to prevent the remanufacturers from using the Return Program cartridges in their resale business,” said Chief Justice Roberts. “After all, Lexmark’s contractual single-use/no-resale agreements were with the initial customers, not with downstream purchasers like the remanufacturers.”
"Lexmark pushes its patent rights to the limit. It tried to restrict the use or resale of patented products after they have already been sold,” added Case Collard, a partner at international law firm Dorsey & Whitney that specialists in IP disputes. “Imagine if you could not resell the patented iPhone that you purchased because Apple continued to enforce its patent rights after it sold the product. This is what Lexmark tried to do with its printer cartridges.”
“The Supreme Court confirmed it applies to sales made in the US and abroad,” Collard added. “If a patent-holder like Lexmark wants to limit the rights of a purchaser, perhaps they can do so under contract law, but once they have made a sale, they can no longer bring an action under the patents statutes.”
We reached out to Lexmark for a statement on today’s ruling, but have not yet received a response. |
Star Jones Falls From Grace Again
set out to reinvent herself when The Star Jones Show hit the airwaves in September 2007. After a 5 month run, the network has pulled the plug on the lawyer. The former Brooklyn prosecutor was attempting to provide a link between law and entertainment on her live 3p.m. show.
According to a TruTV network spokesman, the lawyer will continue to lend her expertise as a legal expert on the weekday IN SESSION trial coverage.
Star Jones nearly 9 year run on The View started well but deteriorated in later years. She lost a tremendous amount of weight and made waves by being less than candid about the surgical procedure that facilitated her new svelte body. She angered many with her assertion that she had turned to diet and exercise - refusing to share the medical intervention piece. She also lost viewer support with her 'all about me' phase leading up to her marriage. She monopolized the panel conversation with every detail of her upcoming nuptials.
Jones was fired from her co-hosting gig on morning talk show The View in early 2006. She and Barbara Walters reached the point of no return when Jones blindsided Walters on the air, revealing that her contract was not being renewed for the new season. She was cut loose the same day and never again appeared on the show. |
The Centre’s demonetisation exercise has brought a rarely seen unity among opposition parties in Parliament, but they appear divided over the way they will protest against the measure on Monday.
The Left Front is intent on making its 12-hour West Bengal bandh to protest the scrapping of high-value banknotes a success, while the Trinamool Congress-led state government has vowed to foil it.
The state finance department has issued a circular stating that all employees would be required to attend office on Monday and Tuesday, and exceptions would be made only in case of bereavement, maternity leave, hospitalisation and other ‘genuine reasons’.
However, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said, “We oppose bandhs. We will take out a protest march (against demonetisation) on Monday.”
Read: No Bharat bandh, only protests over demonetisation, says Congress
Over 3,000 police personnel would be deployed in the metropolis on Monday to tackle any untoward incident, said Supratim Sarkar, Kolkata police additional commissioner of police (III).
Justifying the shutdown, Left Front chairman Biman Bose has said the strike call was necessary to register protest against demonetisation, which has caused sufferings to the people.
State Congress chief Adhir Chowdhury said his party would extend moral support to the strike called by the Left parties, with which it had allied during the last assembly elections.
In Kerala, ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) has called a dawn-to-dusk shutdown to denounce demonetisation, which has virtually crippled the thriving co-operative sector in the state.
Last week the state assembly had passed a resolution and decided to send an all-party delegation to Delhi. But the meet was called off after the delegation failed to get an appointment with the Prime Minister.
Though the opposition Congress-led UDF had supported the resolution, it is not supporting the shutdown. The BJP has termed the shutdown political drama.
A man releases a hot air balloon attached to a replica of the demonetised Rs 500 note, in Kolkata on Sunday. (PTI)
In Tripura, the opposition parties would oppose the strike called by the Left Front. The BJP campaigned throughout the state on Sunday and pitched the merits of demonetisation, while appealing to people to make the strike unsuccessful.
The JD(U) decided not to participate in the protests on Monday or the West Bengal CM’s proposed dharna in Patna on November 30 because its leader and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has welcomed the demonetisation decision.
“We have supported the Centre’s demonetisation move. How can we oppose or be the part of activity like bandh which is meant to protest the issue which our party has strongly supported,” said Bihar unit JD(U) president Bashishtha Narayan Singh.
Read: Demonetisation has given Rahul, Mamata sleepless nights: Amit Shah
In Tamil Nadu, protests will largely be conducted by the DMK, as well as the CPI, CPI (M) and the Congress. DMK leader M Karunanidhi issued a statement saying that the Dravidian major plans to protest “outside central government offices in all districts of Tamil Nadu”.
Incidentally, the ruling AIADMK — whose leader, chief minister Jayalalithaa, is yet to make a statement on the demonetisation scheme — has decided to join the nationwide protest.
While the CM is yet to comment personally, AIADMK Rajya Sabha member A Navaneethakrishnan said the party was opposing the implementation of demonetisation because “it is causing inconvenience to rural people”.
In Assam, Congress workers have scheduled a protest rally at Guwahati’s iconic Dighalipukhuri area at 11am. The protest call against demonetisation is not expected to have any impact in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, both ruled by BJP allies, and it makes no difference for Manipur, already experiencing an economic blockade for weeks.
Odisha’s ruling BJD will also not join the protests, with its leader and chief minister Naveen Patnaik having hailed the demonetisation decision. The Congress and five Left parties have lined up separate demonstrations across the state.
The opposition parties have been divided over the ways to protest demonetisation ever since Banerjee decided to march to the President’s House over the issue. While she was joined by the AAP, National Conference and the Shiv Sena, an NDA ally, other opposition parties stayed away.
The Shiv Sena has backed demonetisation, but is unhappy over the way it is causing problems to people.
(With inputs from Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram, Agartala, Patna, Chennai, Guwahati, Bhubaneswar )
First Published: Nov 28, 2016 00:21 IST |
Limbo 1 order fulfillment: ~99%
Limbo 2 order fulfillment: ~99%
Limbo 3 order fulfillment: ~91%
First major batch shipped Nov 19 (upgraded to Next Day Air).
All orders that took place on the 13th that were back-ordered will be upgraded to Next Day Air for free.
Play Store Customer Service do not have any relevant information about your order. Calling them is nothing short of a complete waste of time.
Orders have not been shipped on a first-come first-serve basis. There is no pattern to the shipments, it is seemingly random. We have indisputable evidence of this.
been shipped on a first-come first-serve basis. There is no pattern to the shipments, it is seemingly random. We have indisputable evidence of this. Addendum to above: It is believed that we are finally going in order. Some of the later orders were shipped first due to an incomplete manifest.
Many people have noticed the last updated date on the Play orders page has changed. No one is certain yet what this might mean.
Logistics have been outsourced to UPS.
Order mechanics "slid" during the initial rush of the first few minutes of the product going live. This caused several issues (including an incomplete manifest sent to UPS).
Tentative US order time: 09:00AM PST
No one knows what time the purchase will go live.
Best guesses are sometime in the morning of the 13th (office hours), or at 00:00 PST. I'm personally leaning toward the former. (NEW: see below)
There will be no pre-order on the Play Store.
Check here for specific country availability.
Check here for more information on shipping and handling for your country.
A Virtual Credit Card (VCC) cannot be used with your purchase in the device store. Also, at this time, the country of your credit card must match the the country to which you're shipping.
Taxable charges, if any, depend on what state you're ordering from.
We do not know what shipping options will be available. Right now, only 2-day shipping is confirmed. We are hopeful for an overnight option at launch.
Updated Dec 6 1:30AM EST(the majority of orders fall into this category)Current status of orders and shipments:1) Order placed. No e-mail of any kind (including order confirmation) received.2) Order placed. Order confirmation received. No other e-mail of any kind received.3) Order placed. Order confirmation received. Back-order e-mail received.If you want to see the "levels" post that everyone is talking about, you can find that here:---------------------Preserved for archival purposes-----------------------------I made a small G+ post here, in an attempt to get more information:Please +1 and reshare it if you have a moment.A petition (over 1000+ signatures at this point in time!)-- if you have a moment, please sign it:A letter template drafted up by member thekooliest:Changed "confirmed" to "tentative". 09:00AM PST is most likely, but you should be watching out regardless.These are some of my favorite threads here! We all heard that the Nexus 4 is now official but I'd wager that a lot of us are waiting for preorders to open up on the Play Store.Post the usual "I ordered!" "It shipped!" etc. here! I, personally, cannot wait for this guy. Just sold my S3 for it.I did call Google to ask if they were going to open pre-orders for the device. Doesn't look like it this time around, but I was told that you will be able to purchase on November 13th and that stock would start shipping "either on the 13th or the 17th," whatever that means.Android Police got a little clarification from Google-- the rep said pretty much exactly what we've been assuming for the past couple of weeks. They also agree with me that the button will be more likely to go live in the morning sometime, rather than at midnight. See source here: http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/11...no-pre-orders/ A German Google employee has revealed that the Nexus 4 should be selling at "around breakfast time" in Germany. He also mentioned that would be about 8-9AM. This would lead us to believe that the order form will go live at 0:00PST as originally anticipated. Germany is 9 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time-- aka, 2AM Central, 3AM EST.[/url] |
Founded in 1970 under the Nixon administration, the Environmental Protection Agency was created for the purpose of protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress.
Since its founding, the EPA has grown from 4,000 employees to more than 15,000 employees. Their annual budget in the 1970s was around $1 billion. As of 2016? More than $8 billion.
The mission of the EPA is simple: “protect human health and the environment.” Their website states that their purpose is to ensure that:
All Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environment where they live, learn and work
National efforts to reduce environmental risk are based on the best available scientific information
Federal laws protecting human health and the environment are enforced fairly and effectively
While the EPA is busy doing the exact opposite of their mission, they’re wasting your tax money.
Some of the biggest controversies surrounding the agency include regulation that ignores scientific data, fiscal irresponsibility, and even worse, the pollution of the environment they claim to protect.
The Washington Post reported that the EPA ignored scientific data when developing regulations on mercury emissions. In 2005, nine states sued the EPA after it was determined that the state’s regulation of mercury emissions did not follow the Clean Air Act.
The lawsuit alleged that the EPA’s rule exempting coal-fired power plants from “maximum available control technology” was illegal, and additionally charged that the EPA’s system of cap-and-trade to lower average mercury levels would allow power plants to forego reducing mercury emissions, which they objected would lead to dangerous local hotspots of mercury contamination even if average levels declined.
The EPA also has a penchant for the finer things in life.
According to a report from the Washington Times, the EPA has spent $92.4 million to purchase, rent, and install office furniture. Your tax dollars bought them fancy hickory chairs and coffee tables, along with a drawer to store pencils that cost $813.57. Government watchdog OpenTheBooks.com estimated that the shopping sprees averaged about $6,000 for every one of the agency’s 15,000 employees. (My home office furniture only cost me $250 from Target, but hey, who’s counting.)
Let’s not forget the one blunder the EPA would most like to put behind them — the Animas River disaster.
In 2015, a Missouri-based firm contracted by the EPA spilled 3 million gallons of toxic sludge from the Gold King Mine into the Animas River in Colorado. The pollutants flowed into New Mexico where it merged into the San Juan River, a critical source of water for Navajo communities. According to data from USAspending.gov, Environmental Restoration LLC has received $381 million in government contracts since October 2007, approximately $364 million from the EPA and $37 million from work performed in Colorado.
It’s been more than a year since that spill, and Navajo communities still have not received the proper aid to properly recover.
The amount of waste the EPA generates is beyond frustrating because (1) our hard-earned tax money is literally flushed into the Animas River; and (2) it’s very hard to hold a government agency that large responsible.
The solution lies in making our government earn our money. By implementing a voluntary tax system, we can send our money to the nonprofits and organizations that actually protect the environment instead of ruin it.
For example, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is the largest independent conservation organization dedicated to saving the Bay. They fight for effective, science-based solutions to the pollution degrading the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers and streams.
According to their 2016 annual report, underwater grasses expanded 21 percent, the blue crab population grew 35 percent, and the Bay’s oyster population rebounded due to the efforts of the organization and their volunteers who completed 25,000 hours of service.
Raise The River is an organization whose mission is to help reconnect the Colorado River to the Gulf of California and restore life to the Colorado River Delta. They partner with local communities to restore the river and its flow. To date, more than 180 acres have been restored in Colorado.
The mission of the nonprofit, American Rivers, is to protect and restore our nation’s rivers. They have worked with other nonprofits and government agencies to remove 200 river dams and restore floodplains and meadows.
If I had the option to give a portion of my tax dollars to any of the nonprofits above instead of the Environmental Protection Agency, I would do it every time because I’d know that my money was being used appropriately and effectively. Wouldn’t you? |
Anti-Piracy Group Demanding -- And Getting -- Domain Names From Torrent Sites
from the nice-little-site-you-have-there dept
Remember when Righthaven used to demand the URLs of sites it accused of infringement, based on nothing but wishful thinking? Apparently the UK "anti-piracy" group FACT has taken that to a new level, reaching out to numerous sites it believes are guilty of encouraging infringement, and asking them to hand over their sites... or face a lawsuit . This is only slightly nicer than having the government come in and seize the domains, but barely. Considering that FACT was the group that ran the privately funded lawsuit against SurfTheChannel's Anton Vickerman, it at least suggests that they might actually take various sites to court. And, in response, many sites are just handing over the domains. That's gotta be cheaper and easier than fighting, and that seems to be a lot of what FACT is banking on. Still, demanding a URL as a condition of not getting prosecuted really does seem like bullying activity that borders on extortion. You'd think that FACT would have better things to do these days than go after websites it doesn't like with expensive threats.
Filed Under: domain names, fact, threats, uk |
ISIS is said to be planning a new wave of attacks against Western targets in an attempt to boost morale following crushing defeats in Syria and Iraq.
An intelligence official has warned the terror group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is said to be alive and plotting his next evil move.
After US-backed offensives in Mosul and Raqqa have seen Islamic State fighters all but wiped out, the expert warned a new generation of terror groups could emerge from the ashes.
In the meantime, al-Baghdadi is thought to be pulling together ideas for 'sophisticated attacks' on countries such as Britain as an EU chief warned ISIS was moving funds out of the Middle East and pumping cash into European operations.
Scroll down for video
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - pictured here in 2014, the last time he was seen in public - is said to be alive and plotting his next evil move
Police officers walk in a line in Borough Market, London, where eight people were killed by ISIS militants in June
An Iraqi policeman stands guard outside a mosque during prayers marking the beginning of Eid al-Adha in Mosul, northern Iraq, as ISIS' stranglehold loosened on the city
With morale of ISIS militants at an all-time low, the attacks would give the evil group a boost, the head of Kurdish intelligence Lahur Talabany told the Telegraph.
He said: 'We are going to see a lot more attacks on the West that are designed to boost the morale of the fighters who have suffered heavy losses.
'They are trying to do attacks that will get them publicity.
'The more sophisticated attacks are being organised by the leadership around the al-Baghdadi camp.'
Mr Talabany believes the ISIS leader is hiding out in the desert somewhere near the border between Syria and Iraq.
At the group's height, there were said to be 500 British jihadis fighting with ISIS.
The majority have been killed, but there are fears some surviving terrorists could be picked to carry out the attacks in their home countries by al-Baghdadi.
France is still on high alert for terror after a string of Islamic-related incidents since the atrocities in Paris back in November 2015 as is Britain following the Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge attacks.
Wounded people are evacuated outside the scene of a hostage situation at the Bataclan theatre in Paris, France, November 14, 2015. 130 people were killed and hundreds injured in the terror attacks which targeted the Bataclan concert hall, the Stade de France national sports stadium, and several restaurants and bars in the French capital
People pay their respects on the end of London Bridge with flowers and post-it notes after the terror attack
Smoke rises after a tank shell hits a house in village of Al-Qasar during fighting between Iraqi soldiers and Islamic State fighters South-East of Mosul (file photo)
Civilians return to their village after it was liberated from Islamic State militants, south of Mosul, Iraq, last year
It comes as the EU's security chief Julian King warned of a 'real risk' of increased funding for attacks in Europe as ISIS loses ground in Iraq and Syria.
Islamic State has lost an estimated 90 percent of its territory in Iraq and 85 percent in Syria as a result of military campaigns, some of them backed by Western forces.
At one time, the group held around half of Syria, much of it uninhabited desert, but today it controls just 15 percent, according to Syria specialist Mr King.
British diplomat Julian King told the civil liberties committee in the European Parliament: 'As we squeeze Daesh on the ground in Iraq and Syria, they're moving quite large amounts of funding out.
'We need to continue our efforts to try and stop that but there will be some funding that gets out. And we have to be conscious of that.
'That there could be a risk of new sources of funding for terrorism and we have to prepare for that and see what we need to do to strengthen measures to combat it.'
Last month, a UN report said that IS was continuing to send remittances abroad - often small sums, making them difficult to detect - as part of a bid to step up its international efforts 'as demonstrated by the higher pace of attacks in Europe.'
The report said funding sources were still based on oil profits and the imposition of taxes on local populations in the areas under its control.
However, it said the financial situation of the IS 'core continues to deteriorate,' mainly due to military pressure on the group.
In the last two or three years, EU member states have been hit by an increasing number of attacks claimed by IS which have taken place in Spain, Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany. |
Healthy Living
A formal letter to the United States Department of Agriculture reports that scientists are being harassed and their research on bee-killing pesticides is being censored or suppressed by the Monsanto-infiltrated agency (the USDA). Surprised, anyone?
At least we are organizing formally against a scourge that has been painfully obvious for years now. A broad coalition of farmers, environmentalists, fisheries and food-safety organizations (over 25 citizens’ groups) urged an investigation into the USDA’s support of the chemical industry over the American public in a May 5 letter sent to Phyllis K. Fong, USDA Inspector General.
It states:
“The possibility that the USDA is prioritizing the interests of the chemical industry over those of the American public is unacceptable.”
Hear. Hear. (“Hear, all ye good people, hear what this brilliant and eloquent speaker has to say!” )
The group is concerned that a forthcoming report by the White House Task Force on Pollinator Health, which is co-chaired by the USDA, is compromised. The signatories of the letter to the USDA include the American Bird Conservancy, Avaaz, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Farmworkers Association of Florida, Food and Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, Green America, Organic Consumers Association and Sierra Club.
Could it be? Yes, it certainly could be – here’s why:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been essentially taken over by an outside organization – biotechnology giant and GMO crop-creator, Monsanto. RootsAction has launched a campaign demanding a Congressional investigation.
Want specific examples?
How Monsanto has Taken over the USDA
Monsanto’s growth hormones for cows was approved by Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lobbyist who turned into the USDA administrator and FDA deputy commissioner. This was after Margaret Miller, a former Monsanto employee, oversaw a report on the hormones safety and then took a job at the FDA where she approved her self-penned report.
Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist, wrote the USDA’s food standards that allow corporations to label irradiated and genetically engineered foods as “organic.”
Furthermore, President Obama signed, sealed, and delivered the Monsanto Protection Act to the American people which allows the horrid company rights above and beyond the federal government.
Still not convinced?
Tom Vilsack, the pro-biotech former governor of Iowa, is now head of the USDA. Michael Taylor, the former Monsanto Vice President, is now the FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods, and Roger Beachy, the former director of the Monsanto-funded Danforth Plant Science Center, is the director of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and that’s not even the end of it.
Until these obviously compromised institutions are cleaned out, these appeals are likely to get us no where.
The letter goes on to state:
“It is imperative that the American people can trust that their government and its employees are serving their constituents and not the profits of private companies . . . All of the research that the USDA conducts must maintain scientific integrity and transparency to ensure it is guiding sound policy decisions.”
We are well past any transparency. One Monsanto employee has even accidentally admitted that the company has an entire department meant to discredit any science that speaks against its suicide seeds and cancer-causing chemicals.
What the Letter Addresses, Specifically
In this case, authors of the letter are addressing neonicotinoids, specifically. This nicotine-like class of insecticides has been shown to damage the neurological systems of insects and has caused pollinator die-offs that can ultimately harm our food supply tremendously. Monarch butterflies and bees have been hit hardest in what is being called colony collapse disorder (CCD).
Bees are responsible for pollinating numerous crops around the world, impacting the US by at least $15 billion a year in food production. Without bees, much of our food would be lost.
In March, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), an environmental activist group supporting local, state, and federal researchers, filed a legal petition with the USDA seeking new rules meant to increase the job protection for government scientists and citing censorship and harassment.
At least 10 USDA scientists have been bullied for research into farm chemical safety that conflicts with the interests of the agribusiness sector, according to PEER executive director Jeff Ruch:
“They have very little in the way of legal rights and have career paths that are extremely vulnerable.”
The scientific work getting hit hardest puts Monsanto at the bulls’ eye – it scrutinizes the effects of neonicotinoids and glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s best-selling Roundup herbicide, which the World Health Organization recently concluded is ‘probably carcinogenic.’
A senior scientist at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service told Reuters:
“Your words are changed, your papers are censored or edited or you are not allowed to submit them at all.”
Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity echoed this sentiment:
“Censorship and harassment poison good science and good policy. There’s no question that neonicotinoids are killing bees, and it’s long past time for our government to take action. The European Union has already banned neonicotinoids. The reports that USDA is harassing and suppressing its scientists for doing their jobs instead of using their findings to protect our pollinators are extremely disturbing.”
Tiffany Finck-Haynes, food futures campaigner with Friends of the Earth stands for the American people:
“How can the American public expect USDA to develop a federal strategy that will protect bees instead of pesticide industry profits if it is harassing and suppressing its own scientists for conducting research that runs counter to industry claims? “If USDA wants to employ a kill-the-messenger approach, it will only delay critical action to address the bee crisis that threatens our nation’s food supply.”
Additional Sources:
Photo source: Wikipedia |
The Canadian House of Commons is currently considering a Conservative motion to extend Canada's combat role in Afghanistan. Here's a better one!
Whereas Canada has a proud, 50-year tradition as peacekeepers under the auspices of the United Nations, and as an “honest broker” on the world scene;
● whereas Canada mistakenly provided combat support for the illegal and unjust war and occupation of Afghanistan, in violation of international law and the UN charter, as the war was not in self-defence and did not have Security Council authorization;
● whereas Canada was guilty of timid acquiescence to America’s manipulation of NATO’s treaty and mandate, which organization does not have UN authority to wage war in Afghanistan in perpetuity;
● whereas Canada has been guilty of, complicit in or turned a blind eye to other, almost-certain war crimes, including the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs and other weapons of mass destruction, the unnecessary killing and maiming of tens of thousands of civilians, the kidnapping and torture of prisoners without 800 year-old habeus corpus rights, the destruction of non-military targets and war-profiteering;
● whereas the war has caused the unnecessary deaths of 79 Canadians and hundreds more to be maimed for life;
● whereas the war has cost Canada several billion dollars that could have been put to caring and peaceful uses, in Afghanistan and other destitute countries;
● whereas the war is unwinnable in five or fifty more years, as there is a never-ending supply of Taliban and Pashtun fighters, indigenous and foreign jihadists, guerillas and others who are willing to give up their lives to fight “Western” occupation until we leave;
● whereas the wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and terrorism generally have been disasters from the beginning, resulting in unconscionable attacks on our rights and freedoms and increasing, not decreasing, the threat of terrorist attacks, at home and abroad; and
● whereas the Americans and the British are our best friends and closest allies, and Canada can help bring them back into the multilateral fold;
Be it resolved that Canada take immediate steps to restore its international reputation as an independent voice for collective security and as peacekeepers, dedicated to the sovereignty of nations, the rule of law, democracy and human rights. These steps include that:
● Canada confirm it will meet its NATO commitments but otherwise announce a halt to all offensive activities in Afghanistan, and the complete withdrawal of all offensive fighters and equipment by February, 2009;
● Canada immediately engage its NATO allies to re-examine the alliance’s support for this war, as Afghanistan didn’t attack any member country, and poses no threat;
● Canada work with NATO, Muslim and other nations to present a credible peace and development plan to the UN, including:
the unilateral cessation of all offensive military activity by NATO and American forces,
replacement by a truly UN-authorized peacekeeping force, mainly comprising Muslim forces, supported by neighbouring nations and with Canadian assistance, if requested,
a truce, reasonable amnesty, national reconciliation and peace talks among all Afghan parties, leading to agreement on human rights, the distribution of spending and truly free and fair elections,
recognition that Western-style, secular democracy cannot be forced on any country, especially Muslim nations,
reparations where it can be proven that any NATO member violated international laws and conventions to which they are signatories, and
measures to ensure Afghanistan police and military forces have the mandate, numbers, training and equipment to capture any remaining members of al Qaeda and to protect against future terrorist activity;
● Canada be forceful in its diplomatic efforts to achieve meaningful peace, and be generous with its aid, such as amounts equal to what it has wasted on combat operations;
● Canada also review and cancel a litany of Canadian military arrangements with the Americans that amount to blatant and also secret support of their Iraq war, as Iraq didn’t attack us either;
● in the interests of accountability, the Chief of Defence Staff, General Hillier, be replaced, as he pushed for this unnecessary war, in his own haunting words, to “kill scumbags;”
● Canada immediately undertake a review of its security agencies and arrangements relating to American-imposed requirements that violate Canadians' rights and freedoms; and
● Canada ensure all soldiers and others who served in Afghanistan on its behalf, and their families, receive proper, lifelong care.
_______
Richard Sharp
About author Richard Sharp has been a privacy and human rights manager, consultant and advocate for three decades. |
Research reveals that using the phrase “I have Asian friends” makes a person’s comments appear less offensive and protects them from being called a racist.
A study published early this year in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science discovered that people viewed a white man who made disparaging remarks about minorities as less prejudiced if he mentioned having minority friends.
Australian researchers Michael Thai, Matthew J. Horney and Fiona Kate Barlow had 203 white American and 254 Asian-American participants judge a fake Facebook profile belonging to a white man named Jake Miller. Miller’s profile photo either showed him surrounded by many, a few or no Asian friends.
Half of the participants viewed a statement that disparaged Asian people posted on the Facebook page. The statements included “so sick of Asians right now,” “Asians are annoying,” “can’t stand Asians,” and “way too many Asians around.” Participants in the control group were given similar statements that replaced “Asians” with “squirrels.”
Not surprisingly, subjects rated Miller as more racist when he commented about Asians than when he did about squirrels. However, they rated Miller as less racist when his anti-Asian comments were accompanied with a Facebook profile surrounded by Asian friends. There was no significant difference between how white and Asian subjects rated Miller’s racism.
In a second follow-up study, researchers wanted to test whether having Miller verbally reference Asian friends had the same effect. The researchers surveyed a group of 85 white Americans and 76 Asian-Americans and had them view a similar fake Facebook profile of a white male.
This time the man preceded his comments with “one of my best friends is Asian, but,” “some of my best friends are Asian, but,” “most of my best friends are Asian, but” or no disclaimer. Similar to the first study, the man was considered less racist when he was affiliated with Asian people. However, white participants were a bit less likely than Asian participants to rate the man as racist when compared to the first study.
Thai and his colleagues wrote of the study:
“This article is the first to examine whether minority friendships actually protect majority group actors from observers’ attributions of prejudice. We demonstrated that they do, albeit not fully.”
For future research, the team hopes to examine other minority groups such as black Americans in similar contexts. |
First State Compassion Center has been awarded a contract to run the marijuana dispensary in Sussex County. (Photo: Getty Images)
The company that runs Delaware's only medical marijuana clinic has received state approval to build a dispensary in Sussex County.
First State Compassion Center, which has operated a facility near Wilmington since 2015, won the bidding process, Department of Health and Social Services officials said Monday. Under the state's 2011 medical marijuana legislation, at least one clinic is to be based in each county and get approval from the state.
A spokeswoman for First State said the company plans to open the Sussex County dispensary to patients in January. A location has not been disclosed.
The company is operated by Mark Lally, a former state trooper who served as U.S. Sen. Tom Carper's Sussex County director. It will continue to operate its growing and retail center in New Castle County, said Emily Knearl, a spokeswoman for the state Division of Public Health.
State health officials also have awarded a contract to New York-based Columbia Care, which operates in six states, for a dispensary in Kent County. That operation is expected to open by the middle of 2017.
The state received 11 bids for new dispensaries in Kent and Sussex counties during a process that began earlier this year. Applicants paid a $5,000 fee, and winners will have to pay a licensing fee of $40,000.
The Division of Public Health announced Monday that First State was rated highest by the state's Medical Marijuana Selection Committee, which oversees the program.
Zoe Patchell, co-chair of the Cannabis Bureau of Delaware, said that after the state medical marijuana bill passed, state officials were expected to have one dispensary in each county by 2013.
Patchell said the lack of centers throughout the state has been a hardship for many. While medical marijuana patients can designate a caregiver to pick up the drug, there is an additional fee, she said.
From Sussex County, "some were making weekly trips of 160 miles round trip," she said.
Todd Boone of Milton drove to the New Castle County clinic for pot to help alleviate pain that was the result of injuries from a motorcycle crash. He said he's disappointed that state officials didn't consider other vendors for the Sussex operation.
"I'm not happy about it at all," he said.
Boone brought a series of lawsuits designed to push the state to proceed with centers in each of the three counties. A Sussex County Superior Court judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit that alleged the state dragged its feet in awarding Kent and Sussex county contracts.
Boone said he also has filed complaints with the state about First State Compassionate Care, particularly over pricing of their medical marijuana products.
Pamela Johnston, with Electrum Partners LLC, serves as a spokeswoman for First State Compassionate Care. She said that "prices for medical cannabis are determined by supply and demand and take into consideration the careful and stringent processes and testing that are required to produce safe, consistent medicine for the patients of Delaware, that is compliant with state health regulations. … There is a greater demand for a limited supply of the most popular strains. Patients are never without medicine and we offer several programs for low income and needy patients, especially those who are terminally ill."
VIDEO: Medical marijuana patient suing for local access to dispensaries
STORY: 11 bids made for Kent, Sussex marijuana dispensaries
Johnson also said that First State was among four applicants the state considered in Sussex County and was ranked highest based on the state's review criteria.
"At least some progress has been made," said Edward Gill, a Georgetown attorney who represented Boone in the Superior Court case.
Boone said he is allergic to opiates, which are often prescribed for pain.
Under Delaware law, marijuana is limited to qualified patients and registered caregivers.
Twenty-five states have medical marijuana programs. Four states this fall also have ballot measures to allow the drug for medical use.
Delaware last year decriminalized marijuana. Those caught with small amounts of the drug get a civil fine instead of a criminal offense.
State Sen. Margaret Rose Henry, D-Wilmington East, said this month she intends to sponsor a bill to legalize pot. A University of Delaware poll released last week said 61 percent of 900 people surveyed support legalizing marijuana in the state.
Contact Molly Murray at (302) 463-3334 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @MollyMurraytnj.
Read or Share this story: http://delonline.us/2f9ENUq |
politics Steeper Hills, New Momentum
Mike Layton's grassroots cycling committee aims to put progress and a little civility back in Toronto's saddles.
Among the hallmarks of the Miller administration’s twilight years were the introduction of three bike lanes: two in Scarborough and one connecting the docklands with downtown via Jarvis. Jarvis, installed in 2010, would turn out to be a parting gift to progressives, a final endorsement of Toronto’s cycling community.
But earlier this summer, in a vote at City Hall, councillors decided that the Birchmount and Pharmacy bike lanes in Scarborough would be the first to go; that was soon followed by a vote to do the same with Jarvis. For that cycling community, confronted with the sudden chill on hard-won infrastructure, one might have called it a shot across the bow.
Behind closed doors, Rob Ford’s early days at City Hall had already undone much of the advocacy work not only of David Miller but of the preceding 20 years, including issue-based advisory committees. Though staffed entirely by volunteers, 21 of these committees, including the one dedicated to cycling, were put on notice in late April. Ford’s administration claimed the move was all about “respect for taxpayers” or “stopping the gravy train,” the usual platitudes, but these were groups without so much as a finger in the City’s coffers. As conduits of citizen engagement, the move was more likely a way to censor a populace with serious misgivings about whatever was coming next.
But Ford wasn’t the only one who took up a new office last October. A new generation of young, progressive councillors was elected, some of whom had early and decidedly contentious contact with Mr. Ford as community activists. For Mike Layton, elected to Ward 19, the loss of the cycling committee would pose a challenge he wound up meeting armed with a simple piece of parental advice.
“I was talking to my dad,” Layton told NOW last spring, “and he said, ‘Just establish a cycling committee in your own office.’ That’s what we did.”
The advice may have been simple, but following it was anything but. Despite that trademark flourish of optimism, the younger Layton will be the first to tell you that attempting to return Toronto to its 1990s heyday as Canada’s best city for cycling is an extraordinary challenge. Nonetheless, the long-time cycling activist and environmentalist feels up to it.
“My thinking is that you don’t dismantle a committee when you haven’t really overcome the issues yet,” Layton told Torontoist recently. “Even if you have a plan, that plan could change, or you could need advice on the implementation, which is sort of how this committee is set up now: at least the exchange of information about how one comes to a conclusion about providing advice is there.”
At this stage, more or less back at square one, the fledgling bike committee under Mike Layton is taking baby steps: feeling out a consensus among the city’s cycling community, bringing it together under one umbrella, and going from there. But the end goal, no matter how approached, remains the same: a Toronto that’s safer and more accessible to cyclists.
Layton outlined how the committee would work: not a party of individuals, necessarily, but a collective of collectives. “We wanted it to be an open process,” he said, “but we didn’t want to end up in a position where it’s just a catch-all for every individual who wanted to speak up about cycling.” A member of the Toronto Cyclists Union for two years, Layton enlisted their assistance and that of several other partners in identifying key groups that would represent diverse interests. The idea quickly followed to create a congress of these cycling organizations and advocacy groups, each with a civic platform to join the policy discussion. Otherwise, he said, “you have a problem with too many people showing up so you don’t have a manageable group, which then pushes people away, and you don’t have a critical mass of people.”
Once organizers had identified those groups, though, they noticed—perhaps predictably—that the interests represented were concentrated downtown.
Thinking of geography in bigger terms than that, Layton says, is critical. But with the Pharmacy and Birchmount bike lanes in Scarborough reversed, the plan to extend cycling infrastructure into the suburbs has met a wall, and the Ward 19 councillor knows it.
“We’re hearing a little bit of, ‘We want outside of downtown what you have downtown,’” Layton told us, “and so we should stop focusing so much on downtown and start making sure that the infrastructure outside of downtown is protected and continues to grow, which is difficult, particularly in the administration that is taking out bike lanes.” What was put in place barely a year ago wasn’t a one-off thing, he maintains. “Everyone focuses on, ‘Well, it’s only six kilometres of bike lanes in Scarborough.’ Yeah, but if you look at the map, that six was actually supposed to be forty. It was the first of a bunch of other pieces that went in, and by doing that, we’ve said, ‘those two roads are never going to get bike lanes.’”
The future of Toronto cycling, he suggests, depends heavily on connecting downtown with the rest of the city.
“Taking out the bike lanes that were laying those foundational pieces: it was tough,” Layton recalls. “We’re not going to see a ton of that other bike infrastructure get built in the next couple of years, where it was supposed to be a long-term roll-out of getting a certain number of kilometres of bike lanes every year. That just won’t happen.” |
Share
It’s disgusting, it’s duplicitous, and apparently, it’s being done in Uber cars across the United States. A number of reports have surfaced claiming that Uber drivers are planting fake vomit in their cars to collect cleaning fees from unsuspecting customers. The latest alleged victim of such a scandal is Manhattan-based art director Meredith Mandel, who says that her Uber driver placed yellow vomit around his car’s dashboard and floor mats and said that it was Mandel’s doing. This resulted in a $200 cleaning charge, one that Mandel denies she’s responsible for.
In an interview with Gothamist, Mandel laid out the entire story. In the wee hours of the morning of February 21, she, her boyfriend, and another friend left a restaurant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and hailed an Uber to return them to their respective Williamsburg residences. The unremarkable Uber ride ended just before 1:30 a.m., and Mandel went to bed thinking nothing more of what should have been a mundane car experience.
But when she checked her bill in the morning, she found that a $200 cleaning fee had been tacked on to her $19 fare, with no explanation as to why. When she reached out to customer service, she began piecing together the company’s justification, based largely upon the claim, “The driver let us know that there was a mess on the trip resulting in the need for a car cleaning.” One representative told her that her driver noted that she had been drunk, and another customer service email informed Mandel that “the cleaning fee goes 100 percent to your driver.”
This, Mandel said, really set the warning lights off in her head. “I was infuriated, because I realized that it actually is a scam,” she told the Gothamist. “At first I was trying to actually give them the benefit of a doubt, but I realized [it] because all of the money goes to the drivers.”
So she began to build her case against the allegations, coming to a number of conclusions. First of all, she notes, the photos of her so-called vomit show that some landed front seat of the car, which would’ve been impossible given that all three passengers were in the back. Secondly, she notes, the mess was only on parts of the car that could be easily washed. Third, “when she uploaded the photos to a metadata scraping website, no time or date was attached to the photos,” and when Gothamist did the same, they reached the same conclusion. Even the color of the vomit was problematic, Mandel says. “The vomit is super yellow, and we ate really dark food, like meat,” she recalled. “It just doesn’t line up.”
Mandel also notes that her dinner party simply wasn’t drunk when they got into their Uber. “Dinner literally lasted two and a half hours, and me and one other girl in the car had two really small glasses of wine,” she said. “My boyfriend had two beers. This is over two and a half hours, so we were basically sober by the end.”
And perhaps most concerning of all, there have been other reported cases of fake vomit scandals — twice in Tampa, Florida and once more in Los Angeles.
While Mandel’s $200 charge has since been retracted (with the evidence she provides, how could it not be?) she says that she’s sworn off the ride-hailing service. So check your Uber fares, friends. You never know what else you’re being billed for. |
Like most of you, I have never met Andrew B. Adler, owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times. Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that the man is spectacularly stupid. In his contorted apologies he has described himself, after all, as "an idiot."
The three or four infantile paragraphs of vile text that Adler published in his obscure Atlanta newspaper last week - in which he suggested that Israel consider assassinating U.S. President Barack Obama - almost slipped under the radar. It was eventually picked up yesterday by Gawker.com and is now going viral.
The op-ed in Atlanta Jewish Times.
"A fool may throw a stone into a well which even a hundred wise men cannot pull out," the saying goes. It will indeed take a long time and a great effort to undo the damage that Adler has wrought: In one fell swoop, he has defamed Israel by implying that it might, in anyone's wildest dreams, consider such a kooky conspiracy. He has stained American Jews by appearing to supposedly represent their twisted way of thinking. He has even undermined the institution of Jewish journalism by exposing the fact that it harbors such birdbrained bozos in its midst.
It is ironic that Adler's despicable diatribe comes against the backdrop of a fierce blogosphere debate that flared up yesterday about the term "Israel-firsters" and whether it is a legitimate critique or an anti-Semitic slur. Adler, for his part, has provided an example of a sub-specie of "Israel-firsters" that have not only lost track of where their loyalties lie, but have gone off the tracks altogether. He has pleased anti-Zionists and delighted anti-Semites by giving them the kind of "proof" they relish in using to accuse American supporters of Israel not of "double loyalty" but of one-sided treachery, plain and simple.
Under Israeli law, Adler could be prosecuted for inciting violence and could be sentenced to five years in jail. I do not purport to know much about the Georgian penal code. However, I note that it contains the offense of "criminal solicitation," which occurs when, "with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony, he solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct."
Adler's January 13 column might arguably fit the bill.
There is something eerily familiar about all this, of course, for anyone who was present 16 years ago at Tel Aviv's Kikar Malchei Yisrael, as it was then known, on the night that former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered. One can already envisage how Adler will be disowned; described as a "wild weed;" depicted as a lone wolf who does not represent anyone in his or anyone else's community; and used as a springboard for a righteously indignant, preemptive counteroffensive that will show how his solitary case is being exploited to score points against anyone who legitimately criticizes Obama.
Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email * Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait… Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. Close
And while we might all stipulate that there is no Jew anywhere in the world who is currently contemplating any act of violence against President Obama, I know, and most of you know, that Adler's crazy and criminal suggestions are not the ranting of some loony-tune individual. They were not taken out of thin air. Rather, they are the inevitable result of the inordinate volume of repugnant venom that some of Obama's political rivals, Jews and non-Jews alike, have been spewing for the last three years.
Anyone who has spent any time talking to some of the more vociferous detractors of Obama, Jewish or otherwise, has inevitably encountered those nasty nutters - and there are many - who still believe he is a Muslim, who are utterly convinced that he wants to destroy Israel, and who seriously debate whether he is more like Ahmadinejad than Arafat or - and I heard this one with my own ears - more like Hitler than Haman.
This deluge of deadly toxins need trigger just one homicidal chemical reaction in just one fanatic's brain for history to be changed forever.
The book of Deuteronomy commands the elders of the city nearest a field where a murdered corpse has been found to wash their hands over an axed heifer and swear, "Our hands have not spilled this blood and our eyes did not see." Rashi explains that even though it is clear that they had nothing to do with the murder, the responsibility of the leaders is such that they will be held liable even if they simply denied the victim food or escort.
One wonders how many of today's anti-Obama politicians and opinion-makers, the latter-day elders of yore, will be able to read Adler's crazed counsel to Benjamin Netanyahu and - may that day never come - take a good look in the mirror, wash their hands of the whole affair and declare with a clear conscience that their otherwise sharp and probing eyes didn't see a thing. |
Articles
13 December 2012 Category: Of Interest
SF News – A newly developed Harry Potter style camouflage fabric can make soldiers completely invisible in the battlefield, claims a Canadian based company.
The new fabric, does not use any batteries, lights, mirrors or cameras but the trick is with the fabric itself. It uses a light wave bending technique to move images behind it to front, making the object, any object under it, totally invisible.
The new fabric can even fool night-vision equipments, and unless you physically run into the object, otherwise, you will not see anything, says the developer.
Apparently the U.S. and Canadian military have already shown interest in the development of the product called the Quantum Stealth fabric.
The developing company, Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corporation, is not willing to do an actual demo saying the product is very secret. But it says those who need the material, have seen it and can verify that it works.
The material makes the object wearing it disappear in 360 degrees meaning any viewer looking from any angle will not be able to see the object. The company claims to have been able to make "an entire vehicle disappear."
This new cloak fabric is said to be very lightweight and inexpensive. |
Detroit Free Press Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks to a packed crowd of supporters at the Convocation Center at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti on Feb. 15. (Photo: Regina H. Boone, Detroit Free Press)
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will hold "A Future to Believe In" rally at Michigan State University’s Breslin Center on Wednesday.
The Vermont senator was invited to campus by Associated Students of MSU, the university’s student government.
The goal is “to give students a chance to directly engage with the candidate rather than just what they see on CNN or in the debates,” said ASMSU President Domonique Clemons.
Clemons said ASMSU reached out to several presidential candidates.
“A couple of them showed interest,” he said, but none besides Sanders’ campaign was able to commit.
Sanders has drawn strong support from college students, and Clemons said “We’re expecting to fill the lower bowl of the Breslin as well as some of the upper bowl.”
More than 9,000 mostly young people attended a Sanders rally at Eastern Michigan University on Feb. 15.
“The issue that we’re dealing with now: whether or not we’re going to have a government which represents all of the people of our country or whether we’re going to have a government owned and controlled by wealthy contributors,” Sanders said at that event. “We have a corrupt campaign finance system which is undermining American democracy. We have a system in which a small number of people are making huge campaign contributions.”
He also called for free college tuition, refinancing student debt at the lowest possible interest rate, removing marijuana from the schedule 1 list of illegal controlled substances and raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
Also on Feb. 15, Ohio governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich spoke at MSU, telling the crowd that he wouldn’t make college free if he was elected president, but would advise colleges to drop considerations not related to educating students.
Sanders is running against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
The Sanders rally at MSU will be free and open to the public, but the campaign is strongly encouraging those who want to attend to RSVP. For security reasons, attendees are being asked not to bring bags, and limit what they do bring "to small personal items like keys and cell phones," the campaign said in an email. Clemons said the Sanders campaign will be covering the costs.
Doors will open at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, less than a week before the March 8 Michigan primary.
MSU spokesman Jason Cody said the university is “simply the venue” for the event.
“One of our student groups reached out and brought in a candidate they wanted to bring in,” he said. “We encourage all of our students to be involved.”
Additional information on the event is available at https://go.berniesanders.com/page/event/detail/rally/4gqpm.
Read or Share this story: http://on.lsj.com/212AIhj |
On Saturday, Hillary Clinton conceded that race relations have not improved under America’s first black president.
Speaking at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco, Clinton said it is “tempting to dismiss a tragedy like” like the Charleston church massacre “as an isolated incident” and “to believe that in today’s America that bigotry is largely behind us, that institutionalized racism no longer exists.”
But Clinton said that “despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished.”
“I know that so many of us hoped that by electing our first black president we had turned the page on this chapter in our history,” Clinton said. “I know there are truths we don’t like to say out loud or discuss with our children, but we have to. That’s the only way we can possibly move forward together. Race remains a deep fault line in America. Millions of people of color still experience racism in their everyday lives.”
A recent CNN poll found that 39% of Americans, including 45% of whites and 25% of blacks, believe that race relations have gotten worse since Obama took office. Only 15% said have they have improved.
Clinton also said the country’s race problem “is not all kooks and klansmen–it’s also the the cruel joke that goes unchallenged; it’s the offhand comment about not wanting ‘those people’ in the neighborhood.”
She spoke about white privilege that well-to-do whites, many of whom are so-called “limousine liberals” who live in places like San Francisco, that often do not question it. Clinton said that for many “well-meaning, open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear” and “news reports about poverty and crime and discrimination evokes sympathy or empathy, but too rarely do they spur us to action or prompt us to question our own assumptions and privilege.”
“We can’t hide from any of these hard truths about race and justice in America,” she said. “We have to name them. And own them. And then change them.”
Clinton listed off numerous examples that she said symbolized institutional racism in America. She said blacks are more likely to be denied mortgages than whites while the median income of white families is $134,000 compared to $11,000 for blacks. She said that nearly half of all black families have lived in poor neighborhoods for at least two generations compared to 7% of white families and mentioned that blacks are more likely to be stopped and searched by the police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than white men. She said schools today are more segregated than they were 50 years ago and black children are 500% more likely to die from asthma than white kids.
Since announcing her candidacy, Clinton, realizing that a lack of enthusiasm for her candidacy among black voters may cost her the presidency, has been more outspoken on race and social justice issues. |
by Brett Stevens on October 14, 2016
The Left promised us that if it got its way, it would end the constant racial enmity of the other 95% of the world against the 5% of us whose ancestors formed first-world societies. Seventy years later, race riots are common as is ethnic violence and immigrant rapes, murders and violent protests.
As usual, the neurotics have swarmed to tell us that the problem is insoluble, so we had better just accept it. “You are talking about millions of people,” they say. “How will you convince people to leave? They will resist, it will be even worse! No, the only plan is the current plan, even if it is failing.”
This reminds me again that the neurotics love suicide cults and that Leftism is essentially a suicide cult. They love theories like global warming and nuclear war because it gives them an excuse for what has always been their goal: Do-Whatever-You-Want Day.
Although it seems like a collective, the Left is individualistic. Each individual in it wants the benefits of civilization without the burdens; they crave “anarchy with grocery stores.” Together these individuals use collective bargaining, which curiously resembles extortion, to achieve their goal.
For them, it does not matter that a certain idea — say, diversity — will end in the destruction of civilization. They are already thinking of how the seas will rise and swallow us and GMO foods will give us cancer and how everything is just already lost, so we might as well… Do-Whatever-You-Want.
But for those of us who neither wish to die nor leave our successive generations of descendants a terminal failure of a society, the question of solutions arises. We know that diversity does not work because it cannot work — no group gets the self-determination and values it desires — but how can we fix it?
Luckily a two-step process shows us the way:
End the welfare and benefits state. Europeans especially love their cradle-to-grave healthcare, welfare, education, food aid and so on. These things are destructive on their own, but doubly appealing to people from impoverished countries who hear about the “free money.” Remove them and the attraction vanishes. End affirmative action and anti-discrimination law. Without the legal requirement that non-natives be hired before natives, all the easy jobs go away. Without laws saying that people must rent and sell to the non-natives, all the housing goes away. Poverty returns just like in the motherland.
With this, we remove that which attracts them to us: the easier, more prosperous life without having to create it by themselves as would have to happen in their third-world nations. This makes life back in the motherland more competitive than life here, where they have no guaranteed jobs, housing and welfare.
Back when welfare was proposed, many criticized it along these lines: If you offer free things, you will support parasites as well as those in actual need. What you tolerate, you get more of. And so, you will get more parasites until you drown in them.
Look what has happened. We are drowning in people who come here to take the benefits, but hate us and constantly complain about racism.
Right now, Suzy Allahuackbar can come here and immediately apply for food benefits. She can also take advantage of charities. Then, she can get citizenship and full welfare. If she wants a job, she cannot be turned down in favor of a white person thanks to affirmative action, so she will get it. And then, it is very hard to fire her even if she is totally incompetent. If she is fired, she gets more welfare anyway. She cannot be turned down if she wants to rent or buy housing. If anyone says anything mean to her, she can sue and live really large.
This is not to say that immigrants are bad, only that immigration is. There are many good people among them; however, diversity does not work, and so they do not belong here. Their presence destroys our social order no matter how hard they try to fit in. The only sensible immigration policy is no immigration.
For that reason, sensible people have a “zero tolerance” policy for immigration. It is not that we hate other races, or dislike the individuals we encounter. It is simply that diversity of any form — even “good” groups — causes social breakdown and will destroy us. The only sane response is no diversity, not even one drop.
Civil rights law has shattered America. Instead of acknowledging that slavery was a mistake and sending everyone back to Africa, we decided to become a multicultural state, just as we had with the Indians. Both policies created nothing but misery, and now we have added third-world immigration to make everything more confused and hostile.
Many on the right oppose the policy advocated here of reparations with repatriation. This is how a gentleman ends a bad deal with good people: something went wrong, so we offer reasonable compensation, and end the collaboration. This sets up members of other groups with some seed capital to help out in their own countries.
Africans, who we purchased from African, Arab and Jewish slave merchants, would find themselves returning to a continent full of possibilities. Using their reparations seed capital, they could establish businesses and communities, and re-take the continent from the Arab, Indian and Chinese forces that are currently about to conquer it.
Other groups would go back to their homelands as well. Asians in America can do nothing for Asia but spy for it in our defense companies; back home, they can take American techniques and knowledge and apply it for the betterment of their people. The same is true of Hispanics, Arabs, Jews, Inuit, Indians and the [[[ Irish ]]]. Home is good.
No one sane endorses cruelty. This is why Europeans are reticent to embark on any policy that sounds like it might be retributive. What is being advocated here, however, is redistributive: thank immigrants for participating in our failed policy by giving them money to go home and cutting off their access to free things here.
We can then change our immigration laws to a saner policy, if we have any immigration at all. Our founding group comprises a third of our people and, given a healthier and less insane society, will quickly produce enough children to bring our population to a sane level (150-200 million).
In the meantime, we can stop pretending that there is no solution to this problem. The solution is obvious and always has been, but the neurotics oppose it as they do anything sane and sensible. As more people realize the necessity of removing the neurotics from power, we come closer to ending the toxic policy of diversity.
Tags: affirmative action, civil rights, diversity, immigration, internationalism, multiculturalism, race riots
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. |
Israel has given Russia an official reply to its offer to send peacekeepers to the Golan Heights, but does not want to make that reply public, an Israeli deputy foreign minister told RIA Novosti on Monday. Other Israeli officials have revealed contradictory feelings about the offer.
TEL AVIV, June 10 (RIA Novosti) – Israel has given Russia an official reply to its offer to send peacekeepers to the Golan Heights, but does not want to make that reply public, an Israeli deputy foreign minister told RIA Novosti on Monday. Other Israeli officials have revealed contradictory feelings about the offer.
“Israel’s position was expressed openly and unambiguously during a conversation between the two countries’ leaders. Sometimes there are things that are best left on that level,” Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin said, referring to a telephone conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin on Friday said Russia was ready to deploy troops to the Golan Heights, in eastern Israel, to replace nearly 400 Austrian peacekeepers being pulled out of a UN monitoring mission due to intense fighting in neighboring Syria.
Although Elkin was tight-lipped about Israel’s reply to Putin’s offer, other officials have revealed conflicting views about Russian troops in the area.
Israeli Deputy Interior Minister Faina Kirshenbaum, currently on a visit to Moscow, said Monday that she thought Israel would not oppose the deployment of Russian peacekeepers.
“If President Putin has decided to deploy his forces there, I don’t think Israel will oppose that. We always want somebody to be there to monitor the situation,” she told Ekho Moskvy radio. “We would like any forces that could assume responsibility. Those can be Russian, Austrian or Australian. That doesn’t make any difference to us at all.”
Israel has already encountered a situation where peacekeeping forces were deployed in the Golan Heights but did nothing, simply sitting in their bunkers, she said. “So we would like to have forces that would be actively involved, at the very least in ensuring peace and security between us.”
However, other Israeli officials were skeptical about the proposal.
Yuval Steinitz, Israeli minister of international, intelligence and strategic affairs, said Friday that Putin’s idea of sending Russian troops to the Golan Heights to replace the Austrian troops was “unrealistic.”
"Israel cannot trust international forces, and sometimes, as it happens, their presence during crises is more burdensome than useful," he said in comments carried by L’Agence France-Presse.
UN spokesman Martin Nesirky on Friday thanked Russia for its initiative, but said the peacekeeping agreements “do not allow for the participation of permanent members of the Security Council in UNDOF [UN Disengagement Observer Force].”
Some analysts believe that Israel is unlikely to accept the Russian offer due to Moscow’s close ties with Damascus.
Zeev Hanin, of Bar-Ilan University, told the BBC Russian service that Israel would like to avoid a repeat of the “two-day war” with Syria in June 1982, when Israeli fighter jets were, in effect, up against Russian antiaircraft systems. Israel would also like to avoid a situation like the one in South Ossetia, where Russian peacekeepers became involved in an armed conflict, he said. |
Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
It’s allegedly a deadly case of life imitating art.
An actor who starred in the TV series “Power Rangers Samurai” is accused of fatally stabbing his roommate with a sword, reports TMZ.
Ricardo Medina Jr. and 36-year-old roommate Joshua Sutter allegedly engaged in a confrontation Saturday afternoon.
Medina and his girlfriend retreated to his bedroom and closed the door, at which point Sutter forced his way into the room, law enforcement sources told The Wrap.
Medina then allegedly took a sword he kept behind his bedroom door and stabbed Sutter in the stomach.
The incident occurred in the Los Angeles-area mountains, 45 miles north of the Civic Center, reports The Wrap.
After the stabbing, Medina called 911 and waited for cops to arrive, according to TMZ.com. Sutter was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Medina has been arrested and booked on suspicion of murder, and is being held on $1 million bail.
The 37-year-old actor appeared as Decker on “Power Rangers Samurai” from 2011 to 2012.
According to his IMDB page, Medina also appeared in 2002’s “Power Rangers Wild Force.”
“Power Rangers Samurai” was criticized after it aired in the US for its over-the-top violence. |
The holidays are over. Through the fasting and food, the succession of pageant, discomfort, reconciliation and exultation, a single moment continues to stands out. Every year for more than 30 years I have found the Yom Kippur afternoon service Torah reading unnerving — and this year I did not.
Among the verses from Leviticus about incest, adultery and bestiality read at Mincha, there is a single verse that every year would still send a chill down my spine. “And with a male you shall not lie the lyings of a woman, it is an abomination.” Hearing it would bring back my own memories of pain, huddled in a corner of the shul sobbing with my talit over my head. On Yom Kippur especially, the verse would bring to mind the many vulnerable and frightened gay teenagers hearing it.
This year I felt a new sense of resilience and hope born of a broader cultural shift. A few months ago the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, marking the end of a cultural accusation and the beginning of a new conversation in America, and in my Orthodox community as well.
This year, the leading American Orthodox rabbinic organization, the Rabbinic Council of America (RCA), finally rejected reparative therapy. Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, urged the Orthodox world to tone down its strident rhetoric on homosexuality. A young Orthodox rabbi, Shmuly Yanklowitz, publicly identified himself as an LGBT ally, and Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of Los Angeles wrote that, given that homosexuality is likely a “feature of the human condition,” gay people “should not any longer have to pay the psychological, emotional and even physical price for our theological comfort.”
Get Jewish Week's Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up
These shifts have not occurred in a vacuum. Gay Jews have been capturing the attention of the Orthodox community by their courage. An openly gay student, Amram Altzman, successfully pressed Ramaz Yeshivah High School to support his bid for a club that serves as the school’s GSA (gay-straight alliance). Gidon Feen, a student at the Cooper Yeshiva of Memphis, publicly came out of the closet at his graduation after party.
In the past coming out meant leaving the Orthodox community, or at the very least, not making your circumstances a topic of conversation. Your family might have you home for holidays, but not with your partner; you might be welcome to your rabbi’s house for Shabbat meals, as long as you share nothing about your life. More and more, young people are asking family members for both honest communication and loving embrace. They are feeling that it is their right to stay within Orthodox communities and be open about who they are, and they are seeking rabbis and communities that will avail them of that right.
But what is especially different this year is that our allies are changing the face of the Orthodox world.
Gay people are roughly, by conservative estimates, 5 percent of any population. If every gay person has five relatives who might be ready to speak up for him or her, the force for change grows exponentially to 30 percent. Add five friends and the number grows to more than half. For this reason, allies of all sorts are important. Supportive straight friends are key to high school students, making coming out a much less harrowing ordeal. Gavriel Goldstein, a straight friend who helped Gidon through the coming out process, wrote about it in a touching piece that he posted on his blog
(http://thoughtsofajewishteenager.blogspot.com/2013/06/coming-out-causing-change.html). When siblings move through embarrassment and confusion to alliance, they can be a powerful source of support and encouragement. When parents get over their own fear and guilt and recognize their kids for who they are, they become compelling forces for pragmatic change.
Eshel, a national Orthodox LGBT support education organization that I helped to found, ran a conference for Orthodox parents of LGBT children in April this year. It was a moving and transformative event that gave them courage. One parent walked out of shul when his rabbi began a sharply worded sermon against the Boy Scouts of America for their “capitulation to rising gay tolerance.” To his surprise, his protest was taken up by five of his friends who joined him in this expression of frustration.
Another attending couple, Kenneth and Jeannie Prager, got permission from their Orthodox rabbi to lead an hour and a half discussion on their experience of being parents of a lesbian daughter. As a result an ad hoc group of members formed to move the shul towards a clearer policy of welcome.
While it is the rabbi’s job to determine halacha, the role of allies is to place before the rabbi the human elements that hang in the balance. A mother can explain that the rabbi’s rejection of her eldest son is destroying the religious life of her younger two sons, who no longer have faith in a tradition that is actively harming their big brother. What allies of all sorts can do is call us all to fully bear our responsibility for the well-being of the LGBT kids who have been erased, if not deeply wounded, in Orthodox institutions that can and should do better.
What made listening to the afternoon Torah reading this past Yom Kippur very different was a growing feeling that the work of the past decade has brought us to a tipping point, not with regard to halacha, per se, but with regard to the young people who are just beginning to navigate being gay in the Orthodox world, and who will no longer assume that these two identities are utterly incompatible.
In the words of Rabbi Kanefsky, “The reality of sexual orientation can and should bring us to a place in which we can accept our friends and children and siblings for who they are, grant them the dignity and respect that any person deserves, and love them as our own.” n
Rabbi Steven Greenberg is a co-director of Eshel, an organization working toward the integration of Orthodox LGBT Jews into their families and communities. Eshel is launching the Orthodox Allies Roundtable (OAR) to mobilize family members and friends to respectfully urge their religious leaders to be responsible to LGBT people (eshelonline.org). |
Have you heard tell of the Marmot Whisperer? That's him pictured above. Photos of the boy — who goes by Matteo Walch — have been doing laps around the internet the last few days — an eight year old child from Innsbruck sharing meals, touching noses, hanging out and having a good time. With marmots. In the mountains of Austria.
The media would have you believe that it's not your fault you can't pal around with marmots, and that this Matteo character can, because Matteo is touched. Magical, if you will. So, being the jealous fun-ruiner that I am, I decided to look into just how magical Matteo really is.
Advertisement
All images via Caters News
First of all, let's point out the painfully obvious: these photos are both sickeningly adorable and jealousy-inducing — enough to make you question the merits of your greatest lifetime achievements, really. Oh, you're a brain surgeon? Wow. Medical school must have been quite the challenge. Still, in all that time spent learning how to cut people's heads open, it's not like you ever learned how to commune with marmots, is it?
But here's the thing. Matteo has been portrayed as being blessed with that most-subtle of gifts: the gift of marmot-whispering. I'm here to tell you that portrayal is a fabrication, an invention meant to trick you into forwarding these nauseatingly darling photographs to everyone in your inbox, and that the reality of the situation is much less saccharine.
Advertisement
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. What are these marmots? And why is it such a big deal that they seem to have adopted this child?
The marmot is a large, omnivorous variety of ground squirrel belonging to the genus Marmota. In fact, the Alpine Marmot (Marmota marmota), the species that consorts with Matteo, is the largest of fifteen marmot species; it can reach up to 21 inches in length and tips the scales at as much as 18 pounds. Like I said: hefty. They can hold their own, but when they feel threatened, marmots will typically whistle loudly to alert others of their kind to danger. They clearly react very differently around Matteo.
Advertisement
Years ago, Matteo hit it off with a clan of Marmots while vacationing in the lively hills of Austria with his family, and he's been returning to visit them every year since*. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Matteo's mom intimated that the marmots look forward to her son's visits:
Their friendship has lasted for more than four years now. He loves those animals and they are not at all afraid of Matteo because he has a feeling towards them and they understand that. We go there every year now for two weeks — it's amazing to watch the connection between a boy and his animal friends.
Advertisement
Reading this for the first time sent me careening into a pit of existential crisis and despair. As we established above, few human accomplishments can hold a candle to the gifts of Matteo, the magical 8-year-old nature boy from Innsbruck. (And no, I am not the only person who feels this way. There is at least one other.)
It was around this time that I set about tearing Matteo's accomplishments down, and robbing the internet of its thunder in any way that I could. The easiest way to do this would obviously be to prove that these photos are fake — but they're not. So I did the next-best thing: I investigated the claim that marmots are shy creatures. Spoiler: they're not. And that might actually be a problem from a conservational standpoint.
In other words, the media has been lying to you about these marmot pictures. They do not show the remarkable friendship between a boy and timorous mammals of the hills. In reality, they reveal the extent to which humans have intruded on the marmot's natural environment, and why that may be a bad thing (regardless of how cute these photos are).
Advertisement
The "Shy Marmot" Myth
The Daily Mail, who first ran the photos as far as I can tell, would have us all believe that marmots are "notoriously shy around humans," but the Daily Mail isn't exactly a paragon of journalistic integrity.
According to The Big Lebowski, marmots are pretty ornery creatures — but still, it's hard to envision the Coen brothers bringing a rodent specialist on set just to provide input on the scientific accuracy of penis-seeking behavior in water-bound marmots. (Plus, that's actually a ferret. Christ, Lebowski.)
Advertisement
msnNOW actually doubles down on the bashful-marmot rhetoric by reporting that they are "normally exceedingly shy creatures"; but they just link back to The Daily Mail, so I remain skeptical. (Let's face it — playing up the illusion of the socially withdrawn marmot is what really sells stories on "marmot-whisperers" like Matteo.)
But the Daily Mail, the Coen Brothers, and pretty much every outlet running these absurdly cute snapshots of Matteo and his marmot pals are wrong about marmots and their "timidity".
Advertisement
The Perils of Habituation
As it turns out, scientists have conducted quite a bit of research on how shy marmots are (or aren't) in the presence of people, and while common sense suggests that marmots would be timid around us, that's not really the case.
"Most marmot species have been hunted, sometimes intensively, for millennia and thus would be expected to respond to humans as a threat," writes University of Montana biologist Suzanne C. Griffin in this study, which examines the effects of tourists on the behavior of marmots in Washington state's Olympic National Park. But study after study reveals that increased human disturbance (in the form of parks, trails, urbanization, and so on) tends to blunt the fear response of marmots to humans, and humans on foot, especially.
Advertisement
Ecologists and wildlife conservationists call this habituation. The marmots become so accustomed to seeing and interacting with humans that they cease to regard them as a threat. In a study published in this 1998 issue of Wildlife Biology, researchers Peter Neuhaus and Bruno Mainini conclude that alpine marmots (living in the very mountain ranges where Matteo works his so-called "magic") have become increasingly tolerant of close human contact in recent years, as wilderness areas are affected more and more by tourism.
Habituation is one of the marmot's only options when it comes to human disturbance, as relocating can be difficult for them. As Griffin points out:
[Marmots'] narrow habitat requirements and dependence on a complex burrow system prevent them from moving away from an area if conditions deteriorate. Similarly, they cannot temporally avoid tourists because they are diurnal and must forage extensively during the short alpine summer — when tourism is highest.
Advertisement
Forced to interact with humans, marmots like the ones seen here adjust to the presence of hikers by displaying a significant decrease in their response to human approach, to the point that kids like Matteo are permitted to get right up in their business. Whether you consider this a "successful accommodation of disturbance," or "a decrease in predator awareness" is a point of some contention among conservationists.
In brief: Matteo's relationship with these marmots may be adorable, it may even be kind of exceptional (there were no reports of marmots playing with children in any of the studies I just mentioned). But it's hardly outside the bounds of scientific explanation, and clearly illustrates that marmots — despite what you may have heard — are not always "exceedingly shy creatures." If anything, the fact that Matteo is able to physically interact with these marmots is an indictment of our society's continued encroachment of nature.
Advertisement
How's that for a fun-ruiner? You see now why I'm such a hit at parties. Now that I've rained on everyone's parade, go enjoy the photographs. Just remember that Matteo isn't as magical as he seems.
All images by Caters News via BuzzFeed
*Of course he has. Because when your four-year-old child takes a liking to a pack of wild animals, the normal thing to do is to start making yearly pilgrimages to the Austrian Alps so he can share meals with them. |
Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs) (also known as sexual orientation anti-discrimination policies) are the most devious tactic of the LGBT movement for stripping Christians of First Amendment protections and setting the stage for the “gay” takeover of any social, political or cultural entity. These SORs are the seed that contains the entire tree of the homosexual agenda with all of its poisonous fruit. Once implanted, the entire agenda emerges like the trunk and branches of a Manchineel tree, producing what looks deceptively like wholesome fruit but in fact is known in the island paradise in which it grows as the manzanita de la muerte, or “little apple of death.”
Read more: http://www.mnn.com/family/protection-safety/blogs/why-manchineel-might-be-earths-most-dangerous-tree#ixzz3k7xUeEyG
The antidote to the poisonous SORs is First Amendment Supremacy! The solution is already in the U.S. Constitution and simply needs to be re-affirmed in either of two ways:
Our First Amendment Supremacy Clause is designed to amend existing Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs) in cities, counties, states, corporations, schools and colleges, and other organizations to ensure that in any contest of SORs with the First Amendment, the First Amendment must prevail.
First-Amendment-Supremacy-Clause-Fact-Sheet
Our First Amendment Supremacy Bill is a stand-alone statute to be enacted by states which do not already have state-level SORs. FASB invokes the doctrine of preemption to “preempt the field” and mandate First Amendment supremacy over SORs within any sub-unit of its government and other entities within its jurisdiction.
First Amendment Supremacy Bill Fact Sheet
Send copies of these fact sheets to every pro-family political activist and public official you know and urge them to adopt the First Amendment Supremacy strategy.
Vigorously oppose any new SORs at any level. Attack them as “Gay Fascism Bills” because that’s what they are. (it worked in Springfield, Missouri http://www.scottlively.net/2012/07/09/christian-red-alert/)
It is SORs that have allowed the LGBT activists to take down Christian bakers, printers, florists, bed and breakfast hotel owners and others, and hung a sign saying “hateful bigot” around the necks of every Bible-believing Christian in America.
It is SORs that have allowed LGBT activists to take control of a vast number of huge corporations whose resources, identity, and community goodwill they are now cynically plundering to advance their selfish and destructive agenda.
Vigorously oppose the Federal Equality Act, which is an SOR at the federal level (ten times more dangerous than the SCOTUS “gay marriage” ruling).
Remind everyone that SORs are always sold as if they are limited to protecting homosexuals and transsexuals from employment and housing discrimination (despite almost zero evidence of such discrimination in America for at least 20 years), but in fact are ENFORCED as blanket prohibitions on all disapproval of the LGBT agenda!!
The LGBT agenda is poisonous, but we have the antidote in the First Amendment. Use it, or lose it! |
Let us know your thoughts. Post in the comments below, follow Karl Mathiesen’s Facebook page , email [email protected] or tweet @karlmathiesen
While Arctic sea ice continues to decline, Antarctic levels are confounding the world’s most trusted climate models with record highs for the third year running. Karl Mathiesen investigates.
Antarctic ice floes extended further than ever recorded this southern winter, confounding the world’s most-trusted climate models.
“It’s not expected,” says Professor John Turner, a climate expert at the British Antarctic Survey. “The world’s best 50 models were run and 95% of them have Antarctic sea ice decreasing over the past 30 years.”
The winter ice around the southern continent has been growing relatively constantly since records began in 1979. The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC), which monitors sea ice using satellite data, said this week that the year’s maximum was 1.54m sq km (595,000 sq miles) above the 1981-2010 average. The past three winters have all produced record levels of ice.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The growth of Antarctic sea ice has been observed since satellite records began in 1979. The past three years have all been record highs. Photograph: NSIDC
This contrasts sharply with the continuing decline of sea ice in the Arctic, which again recorded below average levels of ice during the summer. The 10 lowest recorded sea ice minimums – i.e. the lowest extent of sea ice in the summer – have all occurred in the past 10 years. This decline is consistent with climate models, every one of which predicts that continued man-made greenhouse gas emissions will eventually cause Arctic summer ice to disappear completely.
But Dr Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, says increasing Antarctic ice does not contradict the general warming trend. Overall the Earth is losing sea ice at a rate of 35,000 sq km per year (13,514 sq miles).
“Not every location on the Earth is having the same responses to climate changes. The fact that ice in one part of the world is doing one thing and in another part ice is doing another is not surprising. The Earth is large and as the climate changes it is normal to see different things going on,” says Parkinson.
In a video made by Eco Audit reader and journalist Fraser Johnston, Dr Guy Williams, a sea ice scientist at the Tasmanian Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (Imas), says that even though it had fooled climate models the increasing sea ice was well understood by scientists.
“In some ways it’s a bit counterintuitive for people trying to understand how global warming is affecting our polar regions, but in fact it’s actually completely in line with how climate scientists expect Antarctica and the Southern Ocean to respond. Particularly in respect to increased winds and increased melt water,” said Williams.
To explain why Antarctic sea ice fails to fit comfortably with a simple ‘warmer world, less ice’ narrative, it is necessary to understand that the climate system has many layers of competing effects. Often only the largest of these will be obvious or detectable.
Currently, the effect of greenhouse gases is being overshadowed by other local climate phenomena, says Turner. “By far the biggest impact has been the ozone hole. The signal of increasing greenhouse gases is buried beneath all the other signals.”
The depletion of the ozone layer above Antarctica during last century by emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) has caused an overall cooling trend on the continent.
Ozone itself is a greenhouse gas and its reduction has seen more heat reflecting back into space. Although the ozone hole has begun to show the first signs of recovery, levels are still significantly reduced. Parkinson says the loss of ozone is probably the second largest human impact on global climate after carbon dioxide.
One of the effects of ozone loss on the Antarctic has been the increasing frequency and ferocity of winds and storms around the continent. According to Turner, ozone depletion has caused winds in the Southern Ocean to increase by 15-20%. In particular, the cooling trend may have caused a low pressure system in the Amundsen sea to increase in intensity or frequency.
This vortex sucks air from the frozen inside of the continent and it rushes out over the Ross Sea to the west. This is where 80% of Antarctica’s ice expansion has occurred.
This map shows Antarctic sea ice growth is not uniform. The dark red area at the bottom is the Ross sea, where 80% of Antarctic sea ice is being created by cold air blowing off the continent. Above, near the Antarctic Peninsula, is the Bellingshausen Sea where circulation brings warm air from the north and sea ice is declining (blue area). Photograph: sd
The effect of the intensifying winds is coupled with a massive dump of cold, fresh water into the Ross Sea from the Pine Island glacier. This water, which floats on the surface, is less dense, colder and freezes more easily than the sea water below, and when it is struck by storm winds from the continent it forms ice floes.
It is estimated that the Pine Island glacier alone loses so much water that it is responsible for 10% of global annual sea level rise (which is about 3mm per year). Warm currents come from deep water and heat the underside of the ice sheet, causing it to melt. Turner says this process probably has little to do with global warming. “Pine Island seems to be an ongoing retreat that could have been going on for 10,000 years,” he says.
Further complicating the picture is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (Enso), which Turner believes is a factor in both the increase of storms and the warm currents that melt the ice.
Sea ice in Antarctica is very different to its northern counterpart. In the south, ice melts away almost completely every year. The new ice produced each year is thinner and more volatile than the older more stable ice in the Arctic. These large fluctuations, said Turner, meant the “input” of greenhouse gases was not yet the dominant force in the region’s climate.
Parkinson says that it is likely that global warming will eventually overtake these other factors.
“A few decades from now it might turn out that Antarctic ice decreases. I don’t think that would be a surprise at all. If warming reaches the level people think it might in the next few decades then its going to eventually reach the Antarctic and the sea ice will start to decrease.”
Have your say
The Eco Audit relies on input from you. Follow Karl Mathiesen’s Facebook page for upcoming topics, suggest issues you want to see interrogated and read commentary from this piece. |
Crown Verity Tailgate Grills
Hi, I’m Bill Verity, president of Crown Verity. Today we’re going to talk about Crown Verity’s world famous tailgate grills. There is nothing like this product on the market, this is an amazing product that lets you actually tow and grill to where the people are. Who doesn’t love tailgating? Our tailgaters have a huge market. Colleges and universities use our tailgaters, the rental market is a big market, football games and other sporting functions, car dealerships will actually buy these for customer appreciation, caterers, contract feeders purchase these. They all love our tailgaters. Let’s take a look inside. We have a 48 inch grill surface, 22 inches deep, and this is an optional bun rack which is adjustable. And again we have three burners on the left side and three on the right. A nice feature on our grills are the lighting ports. Another feature, if you notice here, we have a large lip on a roll dome, and the purpose of this is when we close it holds the grates in place so when you’re going down the gravel road at 60mph, your grates aren’t going to go up and down and pop out, a really good feature. Another feature we have is when we’re travelling we can actually lock the roll dome, you can put a padlock in here you can put a zip tie. Another great feature we have is a water pan. Always put water in the water pan, and when you’re grilling your drippings will eventually work their way down to the water pan where we have a drain right here, very easy to clean it up. We have end shelves on either side of the grill. These are great for operators that like that extra work space, this is just an amazing feature that every chef is going to appreciate. The unit can accommodate two 30 pound propane cylinders, one operates one side, and one tank operates the other. So this gives you a lot of fuel capacity. The actual trailers on our tailgaters conform to all safety standards for transportation in Canada and the United States. Our actual grills are NSF approved, and they comply with Canadian Gas Association gas standards and also American Gas Association gas standards. Our grills are available in three different models. We have a TG-1 which we are looking at right now, we have a TG-2 and we also have a TG-4. All of the different models are configured different, and we are going to talk about the difference in a minute. Now let’s take a look at the front end of the tailgaters. Every tailgater comes with a trailer hitch that accommodates a two inch ball. Also comes complete with a wiring harness and a trailer jack. Every tailgate grill also comes complete with a bracket system that will accommodate two 30 pound propane cylinders. The ton weight varies from 50-180 pounds and that all depends on what we have loaded up on the trailer. Another great feature that we offer is the stainless steel insulated containers. We are looking at the top of a TG-1 here, as you can see we have the same locking system, so we can lock these so they’re not going to pop open when you’re driving down the highway. That’s a nice feature. Now let’s take a look inside, just open this up and the first thing you should notice is the pneumatic piston. And this piston holds the door open for you, and makes it very easy to access. Another nice feature that our insulated bins have is a drain. We have an ice chest drain located right under the sticker, and that allows you to drain the water out of your ice bins. Another great feature of our tailgaters is the removable tongue. We have a nut and a bolt here, and we can loosen this off and the whole tongue assembly comes right out. And this is great for an event, so it takes up less room, you’re not going to come and hit your shins when you’re walking around it. And it also is a great feature, when we ship these, when we have to ship them from one coast to the other on a skit, we take the tongue and we put it underneath, and this decreases the cube and decreases the shipping rates. We are looking at a TG-1, and the actual physical weight of this is 852 pounds. Our TG-2 is 652 pounds, and the difference between the 1 and the 2 , TG-2 does not have the stainless steel insulated containers. Our tailgater model TG-4 is exactly the same as the TG-1 except we have an extra 31 inches of space at the front, it has a stainless steel deck, it has a sink with hot and cold running water and extra storage capacity. The TG-4 is 1,050 pounds net weight. If you’re a college or university, a sporting venue, a caterer, or a rental store, please consider Crown Verity’s TG-1, 2, or 4 for your next tailgate party. And let’s go tailgating!
Courtesy of Courtesy of WebstaurantStore Restaurant Supplies
Copy and paste the embed code above. |
We have always observed that people who receive things for free are often not appreciative of it or don’t value the item as much. Nothing could be more obvious than in the B2B Technology Channel. It appears that many, many channel partners do not value ‘free’ leads or even leads that they ‘partially’ pay for. What we observe is “Bad sales reps gone wild”. These sales reps seem to behave in a way that we think reflects how and what they receive for “free” often from OEM’s and distributors that can be less than effective. They demand new leads come from their marketing team but are used to receiving invites into existing customers from OEM’s, or as we refer to them as lay downs. But is this their fault or the way marketers are spending the money and executives incenting their sales team?
For Example, when there isn’t a closed deal in the short term, these reps often demand an explanation when the person has clearly told them that they are just evaluating new options right now. Often we also see distributor sales reps interject themselves into the process as well. They can be characterized typically as account managers who are waiting on VAR’s to develop new business. Anything sold through them, actually leads to them receiving commissions. So as a third party, this creates a lot of challenges for the process because these folks don’t control the marketing dollars needed to help their VARS, but because they are tied to the money they tend to only follow the path to the quickest commission. This leads to them inserting unrealistic goals into the marketing plan and being a constant advocate for the VAR as opposed to helping the overall process to be Win/Win for everyone. We don’t disagree with this, however it can create an unrealistic and/or unnecessary level of engagement and they often try to rewrite the rules midstream. With misalignment come many challenges instead of new revenue generation, the key focus of any demand generation effort.
We recently witnessed a sales team from a channel partner literally sit in their conference room with the manufacturers inside sales team to set them up with meetings. They just had to go through the list of companies they wanted and they would then get free calls from the manufacturer. Wow talk about short term gain and long term pain. What behavior does this set for the long haul? What does this teach the sales team at the VAR? I don’t have to work for it and these guys will always support me? What if they close a bunch of deals or focus on other products, if you aren’t there making calls for them are you now a priority? So the fact that channel partners demand more and more of the OEM and the distributor it doesn’t ultimately line up with everyone being invested and creating a Win/Win situation for everyone.
Bottom line is when you don’t have to work for it or invest in it, and then the value shrinks. However, if you have to give up your own money for it, it may tend to mean more to you. Marketing Development funds can be “Marketing Development funds of mass delusion” in our opinion, at times. . Meaning they aren’t ever used and they collect dust or they are frivolously spent or thrown at projects that are not really valued. This can create long term behaviors that hurt or lead to real sales growth not being achieved, because it wasn’t earned directly by the VAR they sometimes perhaps think of how to spend these dollars in the wrong way. If they truly had to spend their own dollars, perhaps they wouldn’t spend it on a golf tournament or a fancy lunch or better yet a high-priced suite at a ball game.
We encourage marketers and CEO’s/Owners in the channel to think differently. Truly look at how to manage your budgets to allow them to be the most effective. Also, how are you setting your sales teams behavior for now and/or the future? If you guarantee one thing or over promise or approach free dollars as something that is not as valuable as it could be then we think you will have long term challenges with potentially short term gains. We would fall out of our chairs if a CEO/Owner of a VAR actually made their sales team accountable for the appointments, which we develop and more importantly made their reps commission on or the lead which they only partially pay for. That kind of thinking may need to be changed as this process can and is often broken from our perspective. |
KLAIPEDA, Lithuania (AFP) - The "Independence", a huge floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal docked in the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda on Monday, becoming the first such facility to sever Moscow's energy grip on the Baltic states.
Several hundred onlookers waving Lithuanian flags and an honour guard welcomed the massive white-and-blue vessel measuring three football fields in length, an AFP photographer said.
Lithuania, despite joining the EU and NATO in 2004, has been completely dependent upon Russia for natural gas, a legacy of five decades of Soviet domination which wound down in 1990.
The terminal gives Lithuania, with a population of three million, the capability to import up to four billion cubic metres of gas per year after 2015 from sources such as Norway's Statoil.
This is well above the 2.7 billion cubic metres it bought from Russia last year, and leaves plenty of extra capacity for its Baltic neighbours Latvia or Estonia, analysts note.
Lithuania will use the terminal to import 0.54 billion cubic metres of gas from Statoil next year, about one-fifth of annual demand, the first alternative to Russian energy giant Gazprom.
The EU's energy chief described the arrival, broadcast live on the national TV, as "an important milestone by Lithuania to diversify its gas supply sources, ensure competitive gas prices and security of gas supply" in the region.
"The challenges that Europe faces today in terms of security of gas supply require a quick response, and Lithuania has shown how this can be delivered," Guenther Oettinger, the EU's energy commissioner, said in a statement.
Lithuania, which declared independence in 1990 after five decades of Kremlin rule, has repeatedly locked horns with Russian energy company Gazprom, accusing it of abusing its market clout to impose unfair pricing. Gazprom has denied the claims.
Baltic neighbours Latvia and Estonia, which are totally dependent on Russian gas, said they were also considering to use the terminal for LNG imports in the future. |
CityCop/Les Doux Split Stream By Xenophanes Tuesday January 15, 2013 CityCop and Les Doux are two bands that have been making names for themselves in the post-hardcore/emo scene, each releasing a handful of material that has been very well received. And rightfully so, as each band employs a chaotic yet cathartic brand of hardcore that draws inspiration from various acts such as Touche Amore and Pianos Become the Teeth. While both bands differ very much in regards to their inherent sounds, teaming up for the Family Ties/Labors of Love split feels fitting. The result is a varied, yet wholly wonderful combination of two truly talented bands. Luckily, we have an official stream of the split for you to enjoy!
Leave a Response
Login | Register
You need to be logged in to post a comment |
Arizona Congressman Trent Franks resigned on Thursday after learning the House Ethic Committee was investigating him for asking female subordinates to carry a surrogate pregnancy for him (and, possibly, for alleged retaliation after they said no). Franks is married to Josephine, and has two children. Here’s five things to know:
1. She Immigrated to America From the Philippines
Trent and Josephine Franks have been married since 1980. The Philippine Embassy, in a 2012 press release praising Rep. Franks for supporting joint maritime security and counterterrorism activities between the Philippines and the US, mentioned that “Representative Franks is married to Mrs. Josephine Franks, an American of Filipino descent.”
The Franks were mentioned in a 2013 Fox News report on Latinos serving in Congress. (Rep. Franks is not Latino but was a member of the COngressional HIspanic Conference because, as his then-spokesman Ben Carnes said, he “considers the Hispanic community a critically important part of the pro-family, pro-freedom, conservative coalition in America.” Carnes added that Franks’ wife “is an immigrant and speaks the better part of four languages, one of which is Spanish.”
2. She Taught Toddler Sunday School Classes for Over Two Decades
https://twitter.com/RepTrentFranks/status/900034351496396800
Josephine Franks is a private person, especially by the standards of political spouses; little is known about her beyond the tidbits appearing in her husband’s official House of Representatives biography, mentioned by her husband’s spokespeople, and similar sources.
Trent Franks’ House biography says that “Trent and his wife Josephine worked as Sunday School teachers for the one and two year olds in their Church Preschool Department for nearly 22 years.” The family attends North Phoenix Baptist Church.
3. The Franks’ Children Were Carried by a Surrogate
https://twitter.com/RepTrentFranks/status/735579781002104832
Trent Franks’ House of Representatives biography ends with this sentence: “After struggling to have children of their own for more than two decades, Trent and his wife Josie are now the deeply grateful parents of two precious Gifts of God; eight-year-old twins, Joshua Lane and Emily Grace.”
Apparently Josephine Franks was unable to have biological children, for in 2008 the Franks had children conceived through in vitro fertilization with a donor egg, and carried by a surrogate.
Full statement from @RepTrentFranks on leaving congress after Ethics Committee launched an investigation into asking two female staffers about becoming surrogates for his children. pic.twitter.com/NVpZbgAOUt — Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 7, 2017
In the statement Trent Franks released explaining his congressional resignation, he said that “My wife and I have long struggled with infertility. We experienced three miscarriages. We pursued adoption on more than one occasion only to have adoptive mothers in each case change their mind …. a wonderful and loving lady. to whom we will be forever grateful, acted as a gestational surrogate for our twins.”
4. Critics say the Franks’ Surrogate Children Contradict Trent Franks’ Own Anti-Abortion Standards
https://twitter.com/RepTrentFranks/status/917387978657419264
In his resignation statement, discussing his twin children, Trent Franks said that “The process by which they were conceived was a pro-life approach that did not discard or throw away any embryos.”
However, an August 2013 Huffington Post op-ed headlined “Trent Franks Killed a Limited Number of His Own Unborn Children” quoted Franks as saying “a trusted friend told us of a medical organization that would allow us to pursue a surrogacy effort where a limited number of eggs would be fertilized and no embryos would be discarded.”
This implies that Franks considers a “fertilized egg” distinct form an “embryo” and yet, as the Huffington Post columnist pointed out, “Trent Franks’ website says that the congressman believes: ‘Human life commences with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent.’ And he also cosponsored the Life At Conception Act, that says: ‘the right to life guaranteed by the constitution is vested in each human being’ and defines a human being as: ‘… species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including, but not limited to, the moment of fertilization…’ Obviously there’s nothing wrong with in vitro fertilization. But let’s follow Franks’ logic. If fertilized eggs are human lives, then Trent Franks and his wife went to a clinic and paid to have their babies aborted — kind of an “abortion clinic” — just when the pre-humans were at their tiniest and most helpless, practically still oven-fresh from their executioners’ gonads. Just a limited number, of course.”
5. Trent Franks has Officially Recommended his Surrogate Fertility Doctor
https://twitter.com/RepTrentFranks/status/735579781002104832
The Center for Male Reproductive Medicine and Vasectomy Reversal has, on its website, a .pdf copy of a testimonial written by Trent Franks on “Committee to Re-Elect Trent Franks to Congress” letterhead.
The “To whom it may concern” letter endorses Dr. Phillip Wertman because “Where others had failed on multiple occasions, Dr. Wertman succeeded on the very first attempt …. The results of this effort are personified by two of the most beloved of all children, Joshua Lane Franks and Emily Grace Franks.”
The letter also includes a couple of phrases which later appeared in Rep. Franks’ congressional resignation statement, specifically mention of “a surrogacy effort where a limited number of eggs would be fertilized and no embryos would be discarded.” |
GameStop shares are trading sharply lower this morning on a report that the next generation of Microsoft Xbox game consoles - which are expected to debut later this year - will prevent player from installing used games. That would be a blow to the game retailer, which does a bristling business in used game software.
The gaming site Edge reports in a blog post that the next gen Xbox will require an Internet connection to function. While games will still be sold on physical Blu-ray disks, according to the report, they will require activation codes, "and will have no value beyond the initial user."
The story provides some other specs on the new console: Edge reports that there will be new version of the Xbox Live online service, and that the box will ship with an updated version of the Kinect gesture control device. The box reportedly will run on an AMD eight-core x64 1.6GHz CPU, a D3D11.x 800MHz graphics solution and 8GB of DDR3 RAM.
In the company's October quarter, GameStop reported that sales of used products accounted for 28% of overall sales - and more than 48% of gross profits.
GME this morning is down $1.81, or 6.8%, to $25. |
A fortnight after he was forced out of Canadian Grand Prix with a battery issue, Verstappen also ground to a halt in FP3 this morning with an electrical shutdown.
In Azerbaijan GP qualifying on Saturday, he encountered engine cuts and a gear synch issue, and believes the latter issue cost him two places on the grid.
"It's not really nice to be fifth," he said. "Of course, the problem in P3 was not ideal. But also in Q2 I had some problems going to the limiter – the engine was cutting out a bit. So that was not good.
"Then in Q3, my final lap, which of course counts, I was three tenths faster than my previous one then I lost gear synch, so on the straights I was losing a lot of time, which is of course very painful.
"We need to get on top of that, because it shouldn't happen. A lot of issues.
"I'm a bit disappointed with fifth, even though with all the issues, we should have been third."
Verstappen was upbeat about recent developments, which include a software update from Renault which is allowing Red Bull to have more horsepower.
"You can see there is a bit more horsepower, that's good, but we always want more!" he quipped.
"We definitely made a step forward here, with all the long straights. Second sector, where all corners are, we are in the fight – so that's good." |
by RUSS STEWART
In the movie "Field of Dreams," a farmer sees a vision of a baseball diamond in his cornfield and hears a voice whisper, "If you build it, they will come," meaning the ghosts of baseball past.
That’s the obverse of Illinois Republicans’ philosophy in the developing 2014 congressional elections, which is, if it’s a mid-term election with Barack Obama in the White House, the Democratic base will not come out, and if you contest Democratic incumbents Brad Schneider (10th), Bill Foster (11th), Cheri Bustos (17th) and Bill Enyart (12th), victory is plausible, as 2014 could be another 2010.
Call it the Obama slump or, more aptly, Obama fatigue, as far fewer Democrats voted in 2010 than in 2008. As is detailed in the adjoining chart, the Democratic vote in those four districts declined by 327,582 between 2008 and 2010 and the turnout plunged by 323,894. That, astonishingly, means that about the same number of 2008 Republican McCain voters came out in 2010, but that almost a third of the 2008 Obama Democrats didn’t vote in 2010.
If that is replicated in 2014, with 300,000-plus Democratic voters missing in action, it will be a very good year for the Republicans.
In 2008 the Democrats had a 12-7 majority in Illinois’ congressional delegation. In 2010 the Republicans knocked off Democratic incumbents Melissa Bean (8th), Bill Foster (14th), Phil Hare (17th) and Debbie Halvorson (11th) and easily kept Mark Kirk’s North Shore 10th District seat. That gave the Republicans an 11-8 delegation majority.
In the 2011 remap, the Democratic-controlled Illinois General Assembly reconfigured the 8th, 10th, 13th and 17th districts and made difficult, if not impossible, the re-election prospects of Republican incumbents Joe Walsh, Bob Dold, Judy Biggert, who was put in the new 11th District with Foster, and Bobby Shilling. All four lost in 2012, and the state lost one seat due to population decline, with two Republican districts combined. That gave the Democrats a 12-6 delegation majority.
As is shown in the chart, the 2012 Democratic congressional vote, aided by Obama atop the ticket, bounced back to near the 2008 level. Schneider beat Dold by a minuscule 2,518 votes, Bustos beat Shilling by 18,259 votes, Foster beat Biggert by 38,850 votes, Tammy Duckworth beat Walsh by 20,938 votes, and Enyart, in the open Metro East/East Saint Louis seat, won by 26,039 votes. Republican Rodney Davis squeaked out a 1,587-vote win in the open Champaign-Urbana-Decatur seat.
For the 2014 election, all those districts except Duckworth’s are in play. Republican recruitment has been noteworthy. Dold and Shilling are attempting comebacks, and well known state representatives Mike Bost and Darlene Senger are running against Enyart and Foster, respectively. If the Democratic vote collapses by one-third as it did in 2010, Schneider, Foster, Bustos and Enyart are in serious jeopardy. Only Duckworth, who has no credible Republican opposition looming, is safe.
Here’s an analysis:
10th District: The Democrats’ 2011 remap excised the Republican Wheeling-Palatine area from the district, eliminating 100,000 voters, and added Democratic Waukegan and Zion, making Lake County dominant over Cook County. In 2008, when Kirk, now a U.S. senator, was re-elected, turnout was 291,258, and Kirk won 153,082-138,176, a margin of 14,906 votes over Democrat Dan Seals. Seals lost in 2006 by 107,929-94,278, in a turnout of 202,207.
Of the 2008 votes, 161,214 were cast in Cook County and 130,044 were cast in Lake County. Kirk won Cook County by 16,498 votes, and Seals won Lake County by 1,592 votes. Turnout dropped to 215,231 in 2010, 76,000 less than in 2008. Dold defeated Seals by 4,651 votes, carrying Cook County by 10,321 votes but losing Lake County by 5,670 votes. In 2010 Dold had 109,941 votes, 43,141 fewer than Kirk had in 2008, and Seals had 105,290 votes, 32,886 fewer than in 2008. Both parties’ vote was down by 30 percent, but the Republicans maintained a slight districtwide edge.
The remap was decisive in 2012. Only Northfield and New Trier townships and parts of Maine and Wheeling townships remained in the Cook County portion of the district, which now casts just 25 percent of the district vote. Obama won Lake County with 57.1 percent of the vote, and Schneider won with just 50.5 percent of the vote, buoyed by majorities of 72.8 percent in Waukegan Township and 63.4 percent in Zion Township. Obama won the Cook County part of the 10th District with 58.6 percent of the vote, and Schneider got 51.1 percent. Schneider won Lake County by 103,495-101,389, a margin of 2,106 votes, and Cook County by 30,373-29,161, a margin of 1,212 votes.
In a recruitment coup, the Republicans enticed Dold to run again in 2014. The most recent Federal Election Commission filings indicate that Dold raised an impressive $546,000 through June 30, with $616,000 cash on hand. Schneider, who is a loyal Obama vote, raised $387,000 and had $531,000 on hand. Each will spend $6 million on the 2014 election.
"It will be all about brand and enthusiasm," said one Lake County Democratic activist, who acknowledged that Schneider is a competent but colorless congressman. "He hasn’t solidified himself." Turnout was 73.7 percent in 2008, collapsed to 51.3 percent in 2010, and revived to 70.2 percent in 2012. In 2012 Dold spent $7.5 million, to $4.9 million for Schneider.
Outlook: Each side will spend $4 million. Without Obama atop the ticket, turnout will drop to 215,000. Minimal negative baggage attaches to Dold and Schneider, so the negativity will attach to Obama. His popularity and credibility in October of 2014 will be crucial. If there’s an anti-Obama trend, Schneider will lose.
12th District: South of Interstate 80, Illinois is culturally conservative and increasingly Republican. Nowhere is that more notable than suburban Saint Clair County, in the East Saint Louis suburbs, and, to the north, Madison County, which contains Collinsville, Granite City, Edwardsville and Alton. The Democrats’ remap split Madison County three ways: the east third to Republican U.S. Representative John Shimkus, the central third to Davis, and the west third to Enyart, of Belleville.
In a mild 2012 upset, Enyart, a former commander of the Illinois National Guard, beat Jason Plummer, the scion of a wealthy family which owns a chain of lumber stores. Enyart won by 154,621-128,582, in a turnout of 283,203. The reason: The remap dismembered the Madison County Republican vote, black turnout in East Saint Louis (population 27,006) was exceptionally high, and those black voters backed Obama-Enyart overwhelmingly.
The Republicans recruited Bost, a 20-year legislator from the Carbondale area, for 2014. The district takes in the southern tip of Illinois and stretches from the Mississippi River to Mount Vernon. More than 60 percent of the vote is outside of Metro East. Bost will be well funded by outside groups and Washington Republicans. Democratic incumbent Jerry Costello won 212,891-74,382 in 2008, in a turnout of 298,180, while in 2010 Costello won 121,272-74,046, in a turnout of 202,705. Costello’s vote plunged by 91,619, and the Republicans’ stayed virtually the same. In 2012 Enyart ran 58,270 votes behind Costello’s 2008 showing, and Plummer had 54,000 more votes than the Republican base.
Outlook: Turnout in 2014 will barely top 200,000. Bost has a solid rural base. Enyart is a reliable Obama vote. Bost will win.
13th District: Davis was appointed nominee in 2012 after Republican incumbent Tim Johnson quit. Johnson’s old district was in Eastern Illinois, including Champaign, Urbana and Bloomington. The new district now runs from Champaign-Urbana through Decatur to Madison County. Davis won by 135,596-135,309 over a weak Democratic opponent. His 2014 foe is former Madison County Judge Ann Callis.
Davis has $703,000 on hand, and Callis has $211,000. Davis faces primary opposition from former Miss America Erika Harold. Outlook: Davis will be re-elected.
11th District: Foster won a 2008 special election to replace Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert, voted in lockstep with Obama, and got trounced in 2010. The Democrats created a new one-third Hispanic district for him, cobbling together Aurora, Joliet, Bolingbrook and Naperville. He easily beat Biggert, whose home of Hinsdale was put in a different district. Outlook: Foster still votes with Obama, but Senger, a state representative from Naperville since 2008, is a formidable opponent. Foster has $372,000 on hand. Foster favored.
17th District: Complacent Democratic incumbent Phil Hare was unopposed in 2008, but he got blind-sided 104,583-85,454 in 2010, as his vote dropped by 135,507. The remap changed the district from one which stretched from the Quad Cities to just north of Madison County, including Quincy, to one which stretched from Galena, at the Wisconsin border, to Macomb, taking in Peoria and Rockford. Bustos beat Shilling 148,229-129,970. Outlook: Bustos has $381,000 on hand, and she is favored.
Send e-mail to russ@russstewart. com or visit his Web site at www. russstewart.com.
Illinois Congressional Election Chart
Incumbent 2012 Margin 2008 Turnout 2010 Turnout Turnout Decline Dem Vote Decline 2012 Turnout Schneider (D-10) 2518 291,258 215,237 76,207 32,886 259,364 Duckworth (D-8) 20,938 295,528 195,140 99,585 81,619 221,658 Foster (D-11) 38,850 321,062 211,014 110,048 86,759 240,870 Davis (R-13) 1,587 291,242 212,863 78,379 28,173 271,905 Bustos (D-17 18,259 229,901 190,037 39,864 28,173 271,905 Enyart (D-12) 26,039 287,273 195,318 97,955 91,619 283,203
*Districts were remapped in 2011 |
Thomson Reuters Google has canceled the domain registration for The Daily Stormer, a company spokesperson confirmed Monday.
"We are cancelling Daily Stormer's registration with Google Domains for violating our terms of service," the spokesperson told Business Insider.
You can read Google's registration agreement here.
Google didn't want its services used to incite violence, a source close to Google told Business Insider. Daily Stormer registered its domain with Google at 7:51 a.m. Pacific. Google canceled the registration at 11:02 a.m. Pacific, the source said.
Daily Stormer moved its domain registration to Google after it was canceled by GoDaddy on Monday. The white supremacist site published a story that denigrated Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman killed when a car rammed into counter-protesters in Charlottesville, VA over the weekend. The story, which attacked Heyer for her physical appearance and referred to her using various offensive epithets, prompted GoDaddy to give Daily Stormer 24 hours to find a new host for its domain.
Zoho, a company that provides enterprise computing services for companies, also said it was dropping Daily Stormer in a statement on Twitter. |
JOHANN Lamont’s party remains well behind the Nationalists in relation to this year’s European elections – the final major test of public opinion before September’s independence referendum, a poll has revealed.
That is despite the SNP’s lead over Labour narrowing from a previous survey.
The new survey for The Scotsman shows Labour on 29 per cent of the vote with 41 per cent of those polled intending to back the SNP.
The poll, conducted by ICM Research, came after another survey by the same polling company earlier this year showed Labour trailing the SNP by 19 points and set to win just 24 per cent of the vote in the European Parliament elections on 22 May.
However, the 12 per cent gap between the two main parties in Scotland would still see the SNP win the most number of MEPs and add to its tally of two Euro seats, with Labour retaining its two Scottish representatives in the parliament.
Backing for the Liberal Democrats plummeted from 6 per cent earlier this year to just 5 per cent in the latest poll of 1,000 voters – a result that would see the party lose its only MEP George Lyon, who won his seat at the last Euro elections in 2009 with 11.5 per cent of the vote.
Support for the Conservatives fell by one point to 13 per cent, although the party would retain its sole Scottish representative if the polling results were replicated on 22 May.
The poll that showed Labour narrow its polling deficit to the SNP by seven points was carried out before the party set out radical plans to devolve new powers to Holyrood with an increase in income tax for those earning £150,000 or more to 50p in the pound.
Anti-EU party Ukip saw its support fall from 7 per cent to 6 per cent, ahead of the Lib Dems but still well short of the support needed to secure the election of an MEP. The Scottish Greens were on 4 per cent of the vote.
The ICM poll also showed that support among Scots for pulling out of the EU has fallen, with fewer than a third stating they would vote to leave Europe in the referendum Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to hold if the Conservatives win next year’s general election.
The research showed that 14 per cent of Scots said they would probably vote to leave with 16 saying they would definitely back an EU exit.
A previous Scotsman poll showed that 15 per cent of those polled said they would “definitely” vote to leave the EU, with 19 per cent saying they would probably vote for UK withdrawal. However, in the latest survey there was a slight increase in the number of Scots who intend to vote against the UK leaving the EU with 25 per cent saying they would “definitely” vote to stay and 22 per cent stating they would “probably” vote to remain in Europe.
SNP business convener Derek Mackay MSP last night said: “This is a remarkable poll – after nearly seven years in government, the SNP are still far and away Scotland’s most popular political party, and in a strong position as we approach the European elections.
“The European elections will be a fantastic opportunity to stand on the SNP’s positive message of an independent Scotland playing a constructive role at the heart of Europe – in contrast to Westminster threatening isolation through an in/out referendum.”
However, the increase in support for Labour comes after the party defeated the SNP in the Cowdenbeath and Dunfermline by-elections this year.
A Scottish Labour spokesman suggested the party was in a stronger position than at the last Holyrood election, when it suffered one of its biggest ever defeats at the hands of the SNP.
The party spokesman said: “We are aiming to build on the by-election successes of Dunfermline and Cowdenbeath and will continue to put forward the case for Scotland remaining within a strong UK.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Liberal Democrats dismissed suggestions that the party was facing another electoral meltdown in Scotland – three years after its representation at Holyrood was reduced to five MSPs.
He said that the planned televised debate between Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Ukip leader Nigel Farage ahead of the Euro elections would help boost support for the party in Scotland.
The Scottish Conservatives declined to comment on the findings.
SEE ALSO
• Lesley Riddoch: Resist shooting the messenger
• Brian Monteith: Davidson, be bold on devolution |
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Jan. 18, 2017, 10:21 AM GMT / Updated Jan. 19, 2017, 12:36 AM GMT By Jason Cumming, Erin Dean and Erik Ortiz
While George H.W. Bush remains in the intensive care unit of a Houston hospital after experiencing "shortness of breath," the former president's wife, Barbara, has also been admitted for a separate health issue, the couple's spokesman said Wednesday.
The former first lady was taken to Houston Methodist Hospital on Wednesday morning "as a precaution after experiencing fatigue and coughing," spokesman Jim McGrath said in a new statement following an update on her husband's condition.
Her husband, 92-year-old Bush, was first admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital Saturday for shortness of breath, but on Wednesday underwent a procedure to treat an acute respiratory problem stemming from pneumonia, McGrath said.
Former President George H.W. Bush, and former first lady Barbara Bush attend the Texas A&M University commencement ceremony in College Station, Texas, December 12, 2008. Larry Downing / Reuters
"Doctors performed a procedure to protect and clear his airway that required sedation," McGrath said. "President Bush is stable and resting comfortably in the ICU, where he will remain for observation."
McGrath said doctors believe the procedure, in which a tube was used to remove a blockage in a lung, was a success. Until Wednesday morning's issue, Bush was making great progress, McGrath said. "Yesterday, he was telling everybody he'd be out by Thursday or Friday," he said.
Bush chief of staff Jean Becker earlier said he's "fine and he's doing really well," according to the Houston Chronicle.
President Barack Obama was among those wishing George and Barbara Bush well. "They are as fine a couple as we know. So we want to send our prayers and our love to them."
Former President Bill Clinton said his thoughts were with the Bushes after learning about their hospital stays Wednesday. Hillary Clinton also sent her well wishes in a tweet and President-elect Donald Trump said he was "looking forward to a speedy recovery."
Bush, who served as U.S. president from 1989 to 1993, has a form of Parkinson's disease and uses a motorized scooter or a wheelchair for mobility. He was hospitalized in Maine in 2015 after falling at his summer home and breaking a bone in his neck.
In December 2014, he was hospitalized in Houston for about a week for shortness of breath. Previous to those stays, he spent Christmas 2012 in intensive care for a bronchitis-related cough and other issues.
Despite the loss of mobility, he celebrated his 90th birthday by making a tandem parachute jump in Kennebunkport. Last summer, Bush led a group of 40 wounded warriors on a fishing trip at the helm of his speedboat, three days after his 92nd birthday celebration.
His office announced earlier this month that George H.W. and Barbara would not attend Donald Trump's inauguration this week due to the former president's age and health.
"Barbara and I are so sorry we can't be there for your inauguration on January 20th. My doctor says if I sit outside in January, it likely will put me six feet under. Same for Barbara. So I guess we're stuck in Texas," Bush said in a Jan. 10 letter. "But we will be with you and the country in spirit."
"Bush 41," as he affectionately became known, entered politics in 1964 when he lost his bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas. But he went on to win a House seat two years later and run again for Senate in 1970 at the urging of President Richard Nixon. He was unsuccessful, however, Nixon rewarded Bush by appointing him as ambassador to the United Nations.
Related: Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush Stay Clear of WH Race
George H.W. Bush, right, and his wife Barbara Bush, wave to the crowd at a victory celebration rally in Houston, Texas, on Nov. 8, 1988. J. Scott Applewhite / AP
From there he went on to hold a host of different titles, including chairman of the Republican National Committee, the U.S. envoy to China, and director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The experiences would prove the cornerstone of his failed 1980 presidential campaign that led to his selection as Ronald Reagan’s running mate. It catapulted his own presidential campaign in 1988 when he defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis.
As the 41st president, he helped oversee the end of the Soviet Union, made two selections to the Supreme Court and, most notably, stood up to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, temporarily boosting him to record-high approval ratings.
But a faltering economy and breaking his famous “no new taxes” pledge led to Bush’s 1992 loss to Bill Clinton.
McGrath said the outpouring of support and well wishes have been comforting.
"It's been truly heartwarming to see the positive messages, the prayers, the thoughts that are being directed to both President and Mrs. Bush — emails and phone calls from all over the country and all over the world," he said. |
Recently, I came across a post from 2001 which allowed downloading the entire collection of UTZOO NetNews Archive of earliest USENET posts. These were essentially the earliest available discussions posted to the Internet by folks working for various Universities connected to the Internet. Millions of posts created between Feb 1981 and June of 1991.
Until 2001, these early Usenet discussions were considered being lost, but miraculously Henry Spencer from the University of Toronto, Department of Zoology was backing it up onto magnetic tapes and kept them stored for all these years (apparently at the great cost).
H. Spencer had altogether 141 of these magnetic tapes, but there were of no use, so eventually, him and a couple of motivated people such as David Wiseman (who dragged 141 tapes back and forth in his a pickup truck), Lance Bailey, Bruce Jones, Bob Webber, Brewster Kahle, and Sue Thielen; embarked on a process of converting all of these tapes into regular format, accessible to everyone.
And that’s the copy I downloaded. What a treasure, right?
Well, not so fast, once I unzipped the data, I realized that the TGZ format contains literally millions of small text files (each post in its own file). While it was certainly nice to have, it wasn’t something that I or anyone else could read. Certainly not in a forum like discussion format, it wasn’t obvious which post is the one that starts the discussion or which ones are the replies to the thread. And forget about searching through these files, that was utterly not possible. Just to put things into perspective, it took me over 5 hours to just unzip the archives.
That said, it didn’t take long for me to decide to develop a Java-based converter that would attempt to convert the entire collection from millions of flat files into a fully searchable MySQL database. The following post talks about the process and also includes the Java code of the solution released as open source.
[Read more…] |
In September, Preller was suspended by Major League Baseball as a result of undisclosed medical information in the trade that sent left-hander Drew Pomeranz from the Padres to the Red Sox in July.
SAN DIEGO -- A.J. Preller's 30-day suspension ended on Wednesday, and the Padres general manager returns to duty with a busy offseason on the horizon.
SAN DIEGO -- A.J. Preller's 30-day suspension ended on Wednesday, and the Padres general manager returns to duty with a busy offseason on the horizon.
In September, Preller was suspended by Major League Baseball as a result of undisclosed medical information in the trade that sent left-hander Drew Pomeranz from the Padres to the Red Sox in July.
Preller is returning to an undoubtedly different environment, as the Padres recently parted ways with team president and CEO Mike Dee, who hired Preller in 2014 and largely oversaw Preller's decisions.
The Padres are leaning toward a structure in which Preller would report directly to ownership, while the new team president handles the business side.
With that in mind, here are the key baseball decisions awaiting Preller and the Padres this offseason:
• Extending Wil Myers: Both the Padres and Myers have expressed their interest in coming to an extension that would keep Myers in San Diego past 2019 -- the earliest he would be eligible for free agency. The Padres believe Myers could eventually be a veteran piece on a perennial contender. Myers is only 25, meaning he'll still be in his prime when some of the organization's talented prospects arrive on the scene.
• Filling out the rotation: Injuries have put Tyson Ross, Colin Rea and Jarred Cosart in question for the Opening Day roster. Erik Johnson and Robbie Erlin are question marks for the 2017 season due to Tommy John surgery, and the Padres will likely be in the market for at least two starters -- preferably proven innings eaters. Clayton Richard and Edwin Jackson are free agents and have expressed a desire to return. Preller could look to the open market, which is weak at the top but at least somewhat deep.
• Developing a plan for Ross: The 29-year-old Ross pitched on Opening Day before missing the remainder of the season with an inflamed right shoulder. He underwent Thoracic Outlet Syndrome surgery last week, and the Padres are hopeful he will return in Spring Training. Ross is a free agent after the 2017 season, and given his injury, it's doubtful Preller would trade him during the offseason. But it's worth testing the market for Ross, who -- if he returns to form -- could be one of the most sought-after commodities at next year's non-waiver Trade Deadline.
• Adding some veteran presence: Among Padres under contract for 2017, 30-year-old Brett Wallace is the only player past his 20s. In many ways, that's a very good thing for the Padres, whose recent youth movement could portend a bright future. Veterans like Jon Jay, Adam Rosales and Carlos Villanueva had strong voices in '16. If Preller decides not to bring those players back, he'll at least be looking for players to fill similar roles.
• Trading a catcher: Presumably, this would be Derek Norris, with the Padres poised to hand the keys to 24-year-old Austin Hedges. After a lackluster 2016 season, Norris' value wouldn't seem to be high. Still, he's the club's likeliest trade candidate entering the offseason. The remainder of the roster is full of young players who are -- presumably -- part of the future. Then again, Preller has never been shy about making offseason trades.
AJ Cassavell covers the Padres for MLB.com. Follow him on Twitter @ajcassavell. |
Two Days, Two Shootings, Two Sets Of Cops Making Recordings Disappear
from the command-control dept
There are cameras everywhere. But when cops start shooting, it's usually bullets and never footage. The first recordings that ever make their way to the public are those shot by bystanders. Anything else captured during a shooting remains under strict control of law enforcement… even when the recordings don't belong to law enforcement.
Minutes after two cops killed Alton Sterling outside of a convenience store, police confiscated all surveillance video of the incident without a warrant and allegedly without permission. An attorney for the owner of the Triple S Mart, Abdullah Muflahi, told The Daily Beast a hard drive containing the complete recording of the Sterling’s death at the hands of Baton Rouge Police Department Officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake was unlawfully taken by police. Muflahi showed The Daily Beast the barren cabinet where the hard drive had been. All that’s left of the storage unit is a sole barren wire.
If this tactic sounds familiar, it's because we've seen it on multiple occasions. After Laquan McDonald was shot by Chicago police officers, several cops went to a nearby restaurant and seized its surveillance recordings. It took the city of Chicago over a year to release dashcam footage of the incident -- footage that was oddly missing the audio that normally would have been captured when the camera was turned on.
In California, cops raided a marijuana dispensary. Before helping themselves to edibles and playing a game of darts, officers attempted to disable the store's surveillance cameras and seized recording devices.
In Baton Rouge, officers were wearing body cameras. Chances of seeing this footage is nil. According to reports, the cameras "came loose" during the shooting and apparently did not record "quality" footage of the incident. And, as of now, city attorneys, the police department, and the FBI (which is conducting its own investigation of the shooting) are refusing to discuss the missing surveillance equipment.
When The Daily Beast requested both the surveillance video and the supposed warrant from the Baton Rouge Police Department, a lawyer from the department first denied the request by saying they could not turn over any documents from a “criminal investigation.” When told that a warrant is a public court document and could not be withheld, the lawyer then outright refused to confirm or deny if a warrant for the surveillance video even existed. After backtracking on the existence of the warrant, the attorney backtracked on the possession of the surveillance video, saying that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had the hard drive. “My client has not been informed of that,” said Porter, the attorney for the store owner. The FBI refused to confirm or deny the police department’s claim.
What has been confirmed is that it was a warrantless seizure. Both the Baton Rouge District Attorney and the clerk of courts have admitted there is no record of a warrant being issued or even an affidavit submitted.
Another controversial shooting, following one day after the Baton Rouge incident, has also resulted in missing footage -- albeit only temporarily.
The driver of the car in which passenger Philandro Castile was shot by police officers posted a horrifying video of the aftermath to Facebook using its live-streaming option. Not too long after it was posted, the video vanished. Facebook blamed it on a "technical glitch" and restored the recording an hour later. The details behind the video's disappearance now suggest this wasn't a glitch, nor was it Facebook inappropriately flexing its content policies.
Castile, his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, and her four-year-old daughter were pulled over by police in the Falcon Heights suburb of Minneapolis for a broken tail light. Using her cellphone and Facebook Live, Reynolds web-streamed footage of her dying boyfriend after he was shot by a police officer as he reached for his ID in his wallet. The video was mysteriously removed from her Facebook profile as it went viral across the internet. On Thursday, Facebook said a “technical glitch" caused the recording to be pulled from its social network. However, Reynolds claimed officers seized her phone and took over her Facebook account to delete the evidence. Multiple sources with knowledge of the event have tonight confirmed to The Register that someone – highly suspected to be the city's police – used her phone to remove her recording from public view shortly after the shooting.
This, too, is a common occurrence. While the Supreme Court's Riley decision may provide an easy way to determine whether someone's Fourth Amendment rights have been violated by a search/seizure of their cell phone, it doesn't prevent an officer from simply taking a cell phone and deleting incriminating footage. The path for redress is clearer, but it's powerless against those whose first reaction is to vanish away evidence of their misconduct. [Update: For what it's worth, Facebook is standing by its "technical glitch" story and says the cops did not delete the video]. To quote law professor Butler Shaffer [h/t Faultline's Matt Brown]:
The Constitution is that sacred document which prevents the government from doing all the terrible things it does.
Fortunately, a number of streaming options and cloud services will keep some recordings from disappearing just because a phone is illegally seized and accessed. But both of these shootings -- and their responses to "uncontrolled" recordings -- show law enforcement has a long way to go before it can be considered trustworthy.
Filed Under: alton sterling, evidence, philandro castile, police, shootings, videos
Companies: facebook |
Adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo put on hold by National theatre 'to give the project some more development time'
Richard Bean's first new play since One Man, Two Guvnors has been indefinitely postponed by the National theatre "to give the project some more development time".
The Count of Monte Cristo, Bean's family-friendly adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's swashbuckling novel, had been scheduled to run in the National's largest theatre, the Olivier, over the crucial Christmas period. Tickets had been on sale for shows taking place from November until January, with the production set to continue in repertoire into 2013.
However, ticket holders received an email yesterday explaining that the production had been "put back".
The move could prove costly, since early indications pointed to very strong sales. National theatre members had purchased some 6,000 tickets before bookings were opened to the public in April – more than six months prior to its planned start date. Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National theatre, is now seeking an alternative production to fill the Christmas slot, which has previously produced War Horse and Coram Boy.
A spokesperson for the theatre said: "Nicholas Hytner and Richard Bean felt that the show would benefit from more development time, and we hope to put it on in future years. We're presently deciding what we'll do in its place."
Timothy Sheader, artistic director of Regent's Park Open Air theatre, was due to make his National theatre directorial debut with the production, for which casting had not yet been finalised.
It is the second time in nine months that the National has shelved a major production, following its postponement of the hotly anticipated musical by Tori Amos, The Light Princess, in October. That production was not on sale at the time the decision was taken. |
Advertisement
Many people in the West have Iran pegged as a 'hostile country'.
It's understandable, too, given that just last week thousands marched in Tehran carrying 'Death to America' banners, following President Trump putting the country 'on notice' for a missile test.
But here British adventurer Rebecca Lowe reveals that when she visited Iran last year as part of a journey by bicycle across Europe and the Middle East she discovered a people genuinely curious about Britain, 'extraordinarily welcoming' and an underground party scene where 'gallons of spirits and wine' were drunk – and even drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy taken.
Rebecca Lowe reveals that when she visited Iran last year as part of a journey by bicycle across Europe and the Middle East she discovered a people genuinely curious about Britain, 'extraordinarily welcoming' and an underground party scene. Here Lowe poses for her photographer and couchsurfing host in Yazd, Amir Mousavi
Lowe named her bicycle Maud. She's pictured here 'at rest' on the way to Yazd
Lowe said that Iranian parties often feature copious amounts of booze and even drugs. Pictured here is an Iranian showing off his home brewed alcohol
Party-goers at a Tehran bash, in a flat rented out by a wealthy young man for $2,000 a month. 'Very similar to the parties I attended in my 20s,' said Lowe
She left with the definite impression that Iran has been misunderstood.
The 35-year-old from High Wycombe told MailOnline Travel: 'Many seem to believe the entire region is crawling with terrorists and rapists, which just isn't the case. Iran in particular fascinated me because of its reputation as a fanatically Islamist country and the very different reality on the ground. While the regime may be a tyrannical theocracy, it's clear that a large proportion of Iranians oppose it.
'Iranian hospitality is extraordinary. To me, it felt like a soft protective cloak, reassuring and ever-reliable. So much wonderful, utterly impractical food was given to me while I was cycling - watermelons, bread, bags of cucumbers - that much had to be discarded, even during Ramadan, which most people secretly avoided, it seemed. All I had to do to find somewhere to sleep was turn up somewhere looking sweaty and helpless, which wasn't hard, and wait for someone to take me in.
The brooding goat farmer who saved Lowe after she got a puncture in the mountains
Shiite Bandari women from southern Iran wearing embroidered Boregeh masks
'Everyone I stayed with went out of their way to make me feel welcome – often overwhelmingly so. In one village, a young scholar delayed my departure until I'd read his eight-page literary critique of Sherlock Holmes and given credible interpretations of various British idioms, including "Bob's your uncle" and "mad as a bag of ferrets". In another, a girl held my padded cycling shorts hostage until I made a solemn promise, in writing, to return to her town as soon as I could.'
Lowe, who spent two months cycling northwards through the country, from Bandar Abbas to Tehran, explained that even the police officers were hospitable.
She said: 'The police were surprisingly accommodating. Unlike Egypt, they were generally happy to let me cycle by myself and I was only stopped on a handful of occasions. The first incident occurred after I took my helmet off under a bush in 40C heat, when some officers pulled over to tell me to put on my headscarf. Five minutes later, however, one of them invited me to his family's house for khoresht gheymeh (lamb stew), so it wasn't such a great hardship in the end.'
The ubiquitous Nutella in Tehran, which is viewed as an elite delicacy, apparently
CYCLING IN IRAN Cycling in Iran hasn't really taken off. Lowe said: 'The only place I met cyclists was in Tehran, and my impression was that it's not yet part of Iranian culture - and certainly not for women. City traffic is utterly horrendous. I arrived in Tehran in the dark with a flat front tyre and am still perplexed how I lived to tell the tale.'
One of the most interesting aspects of her visit, she said, was having the chance to examine the interior designs of the houses she visited.
She said: 'Visiting Iranians' homes was especially interesting as the decor revealed a great deal about the people, socially and economically. In rural areas, many houses had no furniture at all, just beautiful Persian carpets and thin mattresses brought out at night to sleep on. They also had enormous hamams (bathrooms) that were about half the size of my London flat. Urban houses were generally more western, though people still frequently ate off plastic sheets on the floor.
'People fed me so whole-heartedly that my biggest concern was becoming so immense that Maud, my bike, could no longer support me. Dishes mainly comprised kebabs or meat stews, plus twice my bodyweight in rice. Fruit and sweets were also consumed constantly, while Nutella was seen as an elite delicacy. Everything was delicious - with the exception of kalah pacha - sheep or cow's head broth - which entailed savouring the eyes and ears, so as not to seem rude, then receiving mandatory seconds.'
Lowe's incredible adventure in Iran also drew her into the country's vibrant underground party scene, which is awash with alcohol and drugs.
Lowe said that when she stumbled across the town of Naein - 'which is bursting with historical monuments' - she couldn't afford a hotel so the manager of one lodging kindly put her up in a prayer room. 'Bewitchingly green and cosy,' she said
She said: 'While alcohol is banned in Iran, many people drink in private and there's a popular underground party scene. I soon realised that 'going to the mountains' did not only mean that literally, but was a metaphor for 'doing something illegal'. Youngsters often have pool houses outside the city, away from the prying eyes of the police, while the richest sometimes hire apartments for thousands of pounds a month just for parties.
'At the bashes I attended, there were gallons of spirits and home-brewed wine, along with cannabis, MDMA [ecstasy] and other drugs. Police raids are now less common than they used to be, I was told, while punishments – usually fines or lashes – are milder. One person told me that the severity of lashes depends on who is lashing you, and sometimes they agree to do it very lightly or not at all. As elsewhere, those with money usually escape the worst penalties through bribes or connections.'
In addition, Iranians are obsessed with their looks.
Imam Square in Isfahan, with the Safavid 17th century Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque in the background
Lowe's hosts in one mountainous village are pictured here eating watermelon under a shady tree. She said that this was a favourite pastime for Iranians
She said: 'Iranians are surprisingly obsessed with their appearance. The rate of nose jobs per capita is seven times that of the US, according to a recent study by the Rhinology Research Society of Iran and Johns Hopkins University. Labiaplasty – the reduction of the female labia – is reportedly also very popular. Plastic surgery is not just about beauty, but status; in Tehran you'll see dozens of women every day wearing their nose plasters with pride. Many also wear heavy make-up and paint lip liner in a clownish fashion around the mouth to give the impression of fuller lips.
'The reason for this seemed to be a combination of Hollywood aspirational ideals and a desire to mitigate the restrictions of the hijab. This may also explain the kinky lingerie worn by many of the women I met, which put my voluminous M&S briefs to shame.'
So the picture that emerges from Lowe's recollection of her trip is definitely at odds with common perceptions of the country held by westerners.
A little boy whose father comes to buy the sheep is given a lamb as a pet, who turns out to be a proficient cyclist
As well as the warm hospitality she experienced and the party scene, she said she was 'particularly impressed by the level of religious tolerance in Iran… most people had no problem with Jews, Christians or Sunni Muslims' and the 'level of development and infrastructure'. Tehran's metro, she said, was cleaner and cheaper than London's Tube network.
However, not everything in Iran is rosy.
For example, they are definitely suspicious of Britain.
She said: 'Iranians have an interestingly paradoxical attitude towards the British. On the one hand they like the country, due to our long history and culture, and their desire to practise English and connect with the outside world. On the other hand, they are highly suspicious of the British government, seeing it as a 'wily fox' ever-determined to keep Iran weak.
Lowe said: 'Everyone I stayed with went out of their way to make me feel welcome – often overwhelmingly so.' She is pictured here in Persepolis
Lowe said that these two men in Qom tried unsuccessfully to fix her perforated inner tube
Lowe pictured with her host outside the Fatima Masumeh shrine in Qom, Iran's second holiest city. She said: 'It is banned for women to hire bikes here, though nobody seems to mind me cycling'
'It was hard to blame them for this, however. In 1813, Britain designed a treaty that forced Persia to concede territory to Russia, and in 1925 it helped put Reza Shah Pahlavi on the throne, before deposing him again in 1941. Most significantly, in 1953 the UK and US orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq following his nationalisation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. They later supported Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose corruption and kowtowing to the West precipitated the 1979 revolution.
'Cynicism about the UK is so strong that even Pahlavi believed that the Brits engineered his downfall in 1979, stating: 'If you lift up Khomeini's beard, you will find MADE IN ENGLAND written under his chin.' Many Iranians share this belief, and see the BBC as a propaganda mouthpiece of Westminster. A common joke when anything bad happens is to exclaim 'the British are to blame!' - a phrase first used in the popular Iranian novel and soap opera My Uncle Napoleon.'
And she added that the human rights situation is 'dire'.
She said: 'There's no question that the human rights situation is dire in Iran. There is no free press, independent judiciary or civil society.
'However, the country is far from a North Korea or Soviet Russia, and its stance has softened over recent decades. Prison terms and punishments are less severe than in the past, and the police do not seem to have a reputation for mistreating people (though beatings and psychological torture are known to happen inside prisons such as Evin).
'People have the impression Iran is the same as it was straight after the revolution,' one senior human rights lawyer told me. 'But it's changed significantly since then.'
Lowe said of this picture: 'Another unsuccessful attempt to fix my tube while sheep are elegantly weighed for sale'
Lowe continued 'The general opinion seemed to be that the Iranian intelligence services are extremely rigorous, though some felt this may be more image than reality.'
'The main problem is that the red line is uncertain and unpredictable,' leading human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh told Lowe in Tehran. 'So everyone is forced to self-censor and act cautiously.'
Lowe said that by the end of her trip, having stayed with people across the socio-economic spectrum, she felt she possibly had a more comprehensive grasp of the diversity and complexity of Persian society than most Iranians, who 'rarely step outside their own demographic bubble'.
'One of the main problems in Iran is how socially divided it is,' she said. 'There's extremely little interaction or crossover of values between the conservative and liberal sides. It's like Brexit Britain on heat.'
Would she go back? 'In a heartbeat,' she said. 'It's such a fascinating, colourful, complex country, and in two months I feel I only scratched the surface.'
For more on Lowe's adventures visit www.thebicyclediaries.co.uk. She can be found tweeting at twitter.com/reo_lowe and her Instagram pictures can be found here. |
The Yorkshire Evening Post can today reveal fresh details of the financial crisis at Leeds United which has halted payment to some suppliers – and delayed the installation of a new Astroturf pitch at the club’s training ground.
Emails passed to the YEP show that suppliers of the Championship club, some of whom have not been paid for services since October, are being told that they will receive no further money until the shambolic ownership saga at Elland Road is over.
The details emerged at the end of a week in which Leeds were forced to accept a £1.5million loan from Massimo Cellino, the Italian businessman poised to buy 75 per cent of the club, to fund their wage bill for January.
Mounting financial pressure has been increasingly apparent at Elland Road since the turn of the year, and beleaguered club owner Gulf Finance House has been working for months to sell its majority stake in Leeds.
Cellino has struck a deal to take charge of United last week, an agreement which is subject to Football League approval, but the club have given no timescale for completion nor clarified whether Cellino’s prior convictions for fraud are likely to see him pass the Football League’s Owners and Directors Test.
Local businesses and sections of the club itself are feeling the effect of chronic uncertainty and the YEP can reveal how work to lay a state-of-the-art 3G Astroturf surface at Leeds’ Thorp Arch training complex has ceased due to a disagreement about payment.
The outdoor pitch – a fundamental part of United’s attempt to secure category two status for their academy under the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) – is close to completion but appears unlikely to be finished until United meet their financial obligation. The situation was described as a “nightmare” by one source.
One of United’s suppliers, meanwhile, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said: “If I ran my business the way Leeds United run theirs I wouldn’t be able to get suppliers to even talk to me let alone provide products or services. But then football’s a funny business.”
GFH was approached for comment but did not respond. United were last week served with a winding-up petition by Andrew Flowers, the managing director of Enterprise Insurance which loaned £1.5m to Leeds in 2012 and is now seeking to recover the money.
In response, an angry GFH statement read: “The winding up petition issued by Enterprise Insurance, a sponsor whose managing director, Andrew Flowers, claims to support the club, is misconceived and an abuse of legal process.
“It is being vigorously contested by the club’s lawyers and there are no valid grounds to issue the petition. Under the ownership of GFH Capital, Leeds United has always met its financial obligations, and it will continue to do so.”
GFH has considered no fewer than three takeover offers in the past three months, and Cellino remains the most likely buyer of Leeds after a number of other proposals collapsed.
Sport Capital – a consortium including Flowers and club managing director David Haigh – abandoned one bid last week and Flowers then failed with a separate attempt to match Cellino’s £25m offer.
Together Leeds, a group lead by former Manchester United international Mike Farnan, appear to be the only rival party to Cellino but they admitted in a statement on Wednesday night that they were struggling to draw GFH into productive negotiations. |
Close Your Eyes And Imagine A Protein. See Anything? A Housefly, Maybe?
Courtesy of Maja Klevanski
Pay no attention to this housefly. We'll get to it later, but first, how about a "Do You Recognize This?" quiz.
If I say "DNA," what do you see? Well, instantly, you see one of these:
iStockphoto.com
But what if I say "protein"? What comes to mind? Anything?
Well, for many people, "protein" is what you find on a plate ...
iStockphoto.com
But if you are summoning up a science-y image, what would it be? You know proteins are small, microscopically small. You may not know how important they are, but they are — very. They make all living things grow, repair, operate. Deep down, in your cells, they are the workers that move things around, that build, destroy, copy, attach, react — they are absolutely essential, and yet if you put one on the cover of Time Magazine, most people would say, "What's that?"
What's That?
They have no "face," no image that ordinary people recognize. But as they become more newsy — Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, type-2 diabetes are all caused by defective proteins — you will be seeing them on front pages, TV, magazine covers. Proteins are about to get much more famous.
Which raises the question: What should they look like?
In real life, they are large, very complicated molecules. Science reporters (and scientists too) need an edited, media-friendly version that will give the public a sense of what proteins do.
But they do so many things. There are many ways to picture a protein. Sir John Kendrew, in Britain, tried building a 3-D model, but it was ridiculously complex and too, too big. It took months to build ...
Enlarge this image Courtesy of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Courtesy of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Proteins are chemicals (amino acids) arranged in zigzaggy chains — something like this ...
Or seen from the outside, they'd look like a clump of connected Styrofoam packing peanuts ...
Courtesy of Dr. David Goodsell
But none of these images really gets it right, captures their essence — which is they have a shape, but they can twist, fold and unfold when they have to.
Enter Jane Richardson
Which brings us to Jane Shelby Richardson. In 1980, Jane's husband David got a job in the biochemistry department at Duke. Jane, also a biochemist, couldn't get a job there because Duke had a "nepotism" rule; no spouses could work in the same department. So she was given a lesser position in Anatomy, and since she had the time, she got interested in drawing proteins.
Jane wasn't a trained artist. "I'm no good at drawing other things," she told the Duke oral history project. But she knew her chemistry, knew what scientists needed to see, and wouldn't give up. "I did an awful lot of drawing and erasing and erasing and drawing and erasing," she says, and after a year doing nothing but — she came up with this ...
It looks like something you'd find on the floor after a New Year's Eve party. Sort of ribbony, with arrows and bits of shoelace — but to protein scientists, it was a breakthrough — a big fat "Hooray!" She'd drawn what they'd been waiting for, eliminating atoms and emphasizing the shape, the parts that fold, bend and hold the thing together. Very quickly her "ribbon diagrams" became everybody's favorite way of representing proteins.
Her drawings appeared on the covers of scholarly journals; she got a promotion at Duke, then tenure; her design coordinates are now computer programs, so if someone discovers a new protein and wants to show it to the world, you enter the data, and ZIP! Out comes a "ribbon diagram."
They are everywhere and your children and your children's children will see so many of these things in the next 50 years, they will know right away, "that's a protein!" But since we're not quite there yet, here's a joyous way to get used to them.
Enter Maja Klevanski
Maja Klevanski is a grad student at Heidelberg University in Germany. She spends a lot of time thinking about proteins because she is studying Alzheimer's disease, and on her blog Protein Art she doesn't just display ribbon diagrams, she fantasizes about them.
Here, for example, is the ribbon diagram for insulin that moves sugar from your bloodstream into your cells.
Courtesy of Maja Klevanski
But when Maja looked at insulin, instead of a hormone, she saw a housefly. And why not? Look back at the ribbon version and try to erase the housefly. It won't leave.
Enlarge this image Courtesy of Maja Klevanski Courtesy of Maja Klevanski
Here's a signal transduction protein (called PII) found mainly in bacteria and plants. Maja sees it as a bee sipping nectar.
Enlarge this image Courtesy of Maja Klevanski Courtesy of Maja Klevanski
This next one (Lipoate-Protein Ligase A) seems to be in the attaching/connecting business, but to Maja it's a Pashtun man from Pakistan or Afghanistan wearing a "Pakul," a traditional hat.
Enlarge this image Courtesy of Maja Klevanski Courtesy of Maja Klevanski
Maja's getting loose here, because this is not one, but two proteins: ribosomal protein L11 methyltranferase on the left and a different ribosomal L11 on the right, but together they become the bible story about Moses seeing the burning bush ...
Enlarge this image Courtesy of Maja Klevanski Courtesy of Maja Klevanski
And finally, since we're already on the desert, here's a protein called a nanobody; like its larger cousin, the antibody, it fights invading pathogens, and says Maja, this one was actually found in a camel! Which is why she calls it "Bedouin Riding a Camel" ...
Enlarge this image Courtesy of Maja Klevanski Courtesy of Maja Klevanski
Maja's website has many, many more of these; keep looking at them and soon you will be seeing proteins everywhere. Which makes sense, because in their very tiny way, they are everywhere. |
Op-ed: The Black Gay Trans Man at Minneapolis City Hall
Phillipe Cunningham was told he could never get into politics. Now, he's the right-hand man for one of the most powerful women in Minnesota.
I was assigned a seat next to Mayor Betsy Hodges my very first meeting as an appointed member of the city of Minneapolis’s Youth Violence Prevention Executive Committee. I was incredibly nervous. I was not an executive of anything, but a rather vocal youth worker in a low-paid fellowship, sitting next to the mayor of Minneapolis.
She leaned over and asked me how I got involved with the committee. I gulped and through a shaky voice explained that I had been recruited at Minnesota’s Trans Equity Summit a few months earlier. I suddenly felt uneasy because I had just passively outed myself as transgender to the mayor. To my surprise, her eyes brightened and she gave me a soft punch of approval on the shoulder with a big smile.
I outed myself and in response received a warm welcome? I was flabbergasted. For the first time, I felt comfortable to share my full life experience as an openly transgender person. And it was in front of a room full of elected officials and executives.
I have always viewed sustainable social change as requiring three simultaneous “tiers” of work: community mobilization, better cross-cultural relationships, and institutional change through public policy. I view my role in the social progressive movement as an advocate for positive system changes among the decision-makers, but as time went on and I grew into who I am — a black gay trans man — my goals felt too unrealistic.
It certainly did not help that I grew up in a rural town as an extreme minority. A teacher chastised me in front of my class, remarking, “You will never be a politician because you are black and a woman.” So when I finally pieced together my trans and gay identities and began the internal process of self-acceptance, I mourned the presumed loss of my dream career. If I stood no chance as a black woman, there was definitely no chance as a black queer trans person.
I could tell Minneapolis was a different kind of city when City Hall sent policy aides to the Minnesota Trans Equity Summit to recruit transgender folks to sit on boards, commissions, and committees. That was further confirmed when I met Andrea Jenkins, the black trans woman who worked at City Hall for nearly 13 years and organized the summit. She paved the way for my dreams to be possible.
Prior to moving to Minneapolis, I lived in Chicago, where I transitioned as a junior in college. After I graduated, I started my career in a teaching fellowship and taught special education on the South Side.
I had the “passing” privilege to go into teaching stealth (not telling anyone I am transgender), but that did not save me from the hostile, transphobic work environment.
Because there are not many stories out there about black trans men, I was unprepared for the consequences of transitioning into being a black man.
I struggled with accepting my gender identity because I could not cope with the different world that now surrounded me.
I have never performed black masculinity in conventional ways. As an effeminate man who struggled with being shy, I found myself isolated in my workplace. I was mocked and ridiculed. I became the butt of everyone’s jokes.
On top of difficulties in my professional life, I now was experiencing for the first time in my life, at 23, the stark reality of being a black man in America. I started being followed in stores. People were no longer friendly. I repeatedly had to prove my intelligence to be taken seriously. I was confused by everyone’s sudden suspicions of me and was no longer given the benefit of the doubt. Misunderstandings now escalated quickly.
I juggled newfound frustration and fear in a vast majority of my interactions. It was exhausting. While I have always known how much better I feel in my body and life now, for a while I questioned if I had made a mistake in transitioning because of how much harder it made my life.
In order to cope with my new reality, I looked critically at what was making life so much more difficult. I wanted to truly understand what caused these struggles.
Leveraging knowledge from my studies, I began to learn as much as possible about social policy. I read everything I could about economics, history, the political process, the struggles of marginalized communities, and what has and has not worked to address community needs.
There came a point when I knew it was time to leave the classroom to make a larger impact and have the freedom to bring my authentic self to my work.
I moved to Minneapolis to make a career change into youth public policy. It worked. I landed two fellowships both focused on promoting racial equity in leadership and decision-making. I found myself surrounded by colleagues who all spoke the language of social justice and authentically engaged in meaningful work.
I came with the passion and knowledge, and Minneapolis provided me with a pathway to be authentically me. I am now seen, heard, and respected as a peer in my field.
Minneapolis is not a perfect liberal haven for everyone; it has some of the greatest disparities between people of color and white people in nearly every facet of life, from high school graduation rates to home ownership. Minneapolis has also not always been good to black trans people, as made apparent in CeCe McDonald’s case.
Mayor Hodges stepped into office in January 2014. With her leadership, racial equity has been made a priority in dialogues and decisions in municipal politics.
Late this past spring, I was asked to be a speaker at the Call to Action event for the My Brother’s Keeper Initiative in the Twin Cities. I nervously stood in front of a crowd of over 200 people and gave an impassioned talk about systemic oppression, accountability, and community healing. Afterwards, Mayor Hodges asked me to apply to be her education and youth success senior policy aide and adviser. A few months later, I stepped into my new office.
In my role, I connect her to the community and occasionally serve as her representative. I also advise her on youth-related issues and analyze policies through a racial equity lens.
I am surrounded by some of the most brilliant people I have ever met, all committed to supporting the mayor and her vision for our city. The desire for shared success for one another is palpable. I am grateful every day for the opportunity to be working with the mayor’s team in an effort to build a better Minneapolis for everyone.
Never underestimate how much giving someone an opportunity can change their life. My whole life changed because the legendary Andrea Jenkins raised awareness for trans equity and the City of Minneapolis responded by starting to recruit transgender people to join in making decisions for our city.
If you have the access to uplift trans people of color, speak up. Pass on knowledge, experience, and decision-making power to trans people of color so we too reach our full potential and can be CEOs, directors of nonprofits, and maybe someday, even elected officials.
PHILLIPE CUNNINGHAM is the education and youth success senior policy aide and adviser to Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges. Follow him on Twitter @PhillipeMack. |
Myth: Injecting medicine straight into your heart can be beneficial in some way.
Ah, the dramatic scene that ends with an actor stabbing a needle straight into their heart, narrowly escaping death and magically curing whatever ailment just befell them. While very dramatic, it’s also very untrue and an exceptionally bad idea if your goal is to get better.
Advertisement
In the end, it doesn’t matter whether or not the medication attempting to be delivered would actually work in the described situations; this myth comes down to one thing: if you stick a needle in your heart, you will bleed to death from the small hole you just placed there. Just like a balloon, if you put a hole in it, it’s really hard to keep the air from escaping. The other problem with this method of delivery is your lungs. The chances of you putting a hole in one of them, as well as your heart, is pretty good. Not only would you be bleeding to death, you would be really short of breath while you slowly died.
The truth is that there are much easier ways to get medication to your heart. Medication requiring a needle has two options that are much better than a hole in your heart. The preferred method is starting an IV and giving it to the person through their veins. Considering most people have their entire blood volume pumped throughout their body in about a minute (depending on a person’s heart rate and left ventricular ejection fraction), medication delivered this way would reach the heart rather quickly. If you can’t get the medication in a vein, numerous types can simply be placed in any muscle group and have it reach your heart in under 5 minutes.
Currently, there is no treatment in modern medicine that requires a doctor to stick a needle into your heart. The closest is called a pericardiocentesis. This procedure involves a doctor sticking a needle into the sac surrounding the heart (pericardium), in an effort to remove excess fluid that’s putting pressure on the heart (cardiac tamponade). They even take great care not to advance the needle too far, causing it to rupture the heart itself. As they know, a hole in your heart is a bad thing.
Advertisement
While the method of medication delivery in this myth is easily debunked, it does make one wonder what else about this treatment presented in movies is also false (or true). Never to be one that leaves a person wondering, let’s break apart arguably the two most famous Hollywood scenes that used this treatment and see if we can’t reveal some other interesting facts while doing so.
Scene #1- Pulp Fiction: In which John Travolta needs to give an injection of “adrenaline” straight into the heart of Uma Thurman’s character, presumably altering the effects of the heroin she just snorted, thinking it was cocaine. After stabbing her heart, she immediately wakes up and is completely fine.
When a medical professional gives a person an “adrenaline” shot, the medication in question is called Epinephrine. Epinephrine has many uses in medicine, including cardiac arrest, allergic reactions, asthma attacks, and helping with acute low blood pressures, to name a few. It’s a hormone and a neurotransmitter that acts on several different types of nerve cells. The response involves the stimulation of your “fight or flight” nervous system (sympathetic nervous system). While beneficial in many aspects, it’s usually never given in a heroin overdose. Unless of course the person’s heart has stopped, then maybe. Even in that situation, you would also need to preform CPR and defibrillation (shocking) to be helpful.
Advertisement
Heroin is in a drug class called an opioid. Other opioids include codeine, morphine, oxycodone, methadone, and fentanyl to name a few. (Aside: Heroin was originally marketed as a non-addictive cough medicine by Bayer. Another common early use of Heroin was to help treat people who were addicted to morphine, even though Heroin ultimately proved to be more addictive. Funny enough, when morphine was first isolated from opium in 1805, one of its early uses was as a “non-addictive” drug to treat people who were addicted to opium…)
In any event, one of the biggest problems with these types of medications, and usually the cause of the person’s death in an overdose, is respiratory depression or failure. When the person takes too much, the person can begin to breathe slower and shallower, or stop breathing all together. The heart will soon stop once this happens. Giving a person epinephrine in this situation wouldn’t help. While theoretically you might get some respiratory increase, although I can’t find any study that shows this, epinephrine would wear off long before the heroin, leaving the person still dead.
There is, however, a medication that can have the same effect as adrenaline did in the movie. It’s called Naloxone. Developed in the 1960s, it’s known as an opiate antagonist. It’s the drug of choice for treating any opiate overdose. When given, it will bind to the receptor site’s opiate drugs do, in effect, knocking them off the cells and not allowing the drug to work its magic. The effect is rather quick and nearly absolute. It can take a person from not breathing and unconscious, to completely awake and “sober” in about a minute. There can, however, be some complications from using it.
Advertisement
The drug itself doesn’t last as long as an opiate does, so there is a chance the person could stop breathing again. Due to the fact that the result is so absolute, if the person is an addict, completely taking away all of the effects of the opiate could cause them to immediately go into withdrawals. The results of those can be things like nausea, vomiting, muscle cramps, diarrhea and seizures. From personal experience treating these types of overdoses, I would say the two most common problems are the person’s violence just after they realize you took their “high” away, followed almost immediately by them throwing up all over you. Don’t do drugs kids!
In the end, this movie had Uma Thurman’s reaction to an antidote correct. They simply chose the wrong medication and a completely wrong delivery method.
Scene #2- The Rock: In which Nicholas Cage has to inject Atropine straight into his heart to counter the effects of VX poison gas.
Advertisement
In this scene, the movie makers got most of it right. There is such a thing as VX poison gas and part of the treatment for an exposure is Atropine.
VX is classified as a lethal nerve agent. Like most nerve agents, VX works by inhibiting an enzyme called Cholinesterase. The result is a build up of a neurotransmitter called Acetylcholine within the body. This build up causes an over-stimulation of glands and muscles. The results are things like dilation of your blood vessels, slower heart rates and constriction of the bronchioles in your lungs. All of this happens while simultaneously you’re subjected to what is known as SLUDGE- “SLUDGE” being an acronym for excessive Salivation, Urination, Defecation, Gastric irritation and Emesis caused by exposure to the toxin.
If you become exposed, the toxin causes you to stop breathing due to the over-stimulation of your diaphragm (and many other muscles)- all of this while leaking fluids from most every orifice of your body.
Advertisement
The treatment for this does include atropine. It also includes a drug called Pralidoxime. Pralidoxime helps by reversing the effect on Cholinesterase thereby helping to reduce the amount of Acetylcholine in the body. Atropine helps by competing with Acetylcholine at its receptor sites, reducing its affect.
The recommended treatment for exposure to this type of toxin includes the use of both. The military, and some civilian emergency services, use what is called a “Mark 1 kit” that has both medications in an auto-injector. No, it doesn’t inject anything in to the heart for the aforementioned reasons. The recommended sites are on the thighs and hips.
While this movie did get some of the treatment right, it got the delivery method completely wrong, but a gigantic needle to the heart is certainly slightly more dramatic I suppose. Just don’t try that at home kids. ;)
Advertisement
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:
Advertisement
Bonus Fact:
While Nicholas Cage inappropriately stabbed himself in the heart in “The Rock”, he did successfully, and appropriately, treated a heroin overdose with Naloxone in the movie “Bringing Out The Dead”. In that movie, Cage played a paramedic who gave Naloxone via an IV- not a needle to the heart- to a heroin user who was unconscious and had stopped breathing. His partner, Ving Rhames, who knew what the outcome of Cage’s treatment would be, loudly prayed for a miracle with the victim’s friends. When Cage successfully revived him, Rhames proclaimed to his friends that a miracle had been performed by God. As such, they should respect God and stop using drugs.
$6 The Rock 1 bought by readers GMG may get a commission Buy now
Advertisement
Scott writes for the wildly popular interesting fact websiteTodayIFoundOut.com. To subscribe to Today I Found Out's “Daily Knowledge” newsletter,click here or like them on Facebook here.
This post has been republished with permission from TodayIFoundOut.com. |
"She has to eat the whole heart? Hope that wasn't my horse." ―Viserys Targaryen observes the ritual in which his sister Daenerys eats a raw stallion's heart. [src]
The dosh khaleen priestesses in the Dothraki holy city of Vaes Dothrak officiate a special ceremony when a khaleesi is expecting a child. The pregnant khaleesi must consume an entire raw stallion heart (Dothraki: hrazef zhor), accompanied by chanting from the dosh khaleen as they read the meaning of numerous omens. If the pregnant khaleesi is able to consume the entire stallion's heart, it means the Khal's unborn child will be strong. It is a negative omen if the pregnant khaleesi fails to consume the entire raw heart, or retches any of it up (made all the more difficult because a pregnant woman's stomach is more sensitive than under normal circumstances).
After Daenerys Targaryen learns that she is pregnant with Khal Drogo's child, she must go through the heart-eating ceremony. While for a moment she almost vomits it back up, she manages to regain control of herself and finish the entire stallion's heart. Having succeeded, the dosh khaleen proclaim that her child is a son who will be the Stallion Who Mounts the World. Triumphant, albeit smeared with raw horse blood, Daenerys proclaims that a young prince rides inside of her, and she will name him "Rhaego" - combining the names of her dead older brother Prince Rhaegar Targaryen (the last great champion of House Targaryen), and of her husband Drogo.[1]
Behind the scenes
According to actress Emilia Clarke (Daenerys), the prop she used for the stallion's heart was made of gummy bear-like material, which actually tasted awful, so the difficulty with which she seems to be choking it down is actually a genuine physical reaction. It had to be something she could really bite, chew, and swallow, because it would have seemed fake if she was only miming the act of eating a prop without actually consuming pieces of it.
The gummy-heart was injected with fake-blood which was basically a sugary syrup, so that it could burst out as she bit into the heart, the way real coagulated blood would if she were eating a real stallion's heart. By the end the actress was covered in the stuff, which was like glue, and everything stuck to her. When she used the bathroom she even glued herself to the toilet seat.[2]
In the "Inside the Episode" featurette, D.B. Weiss described the prop as "basically a giant, three-pound gummy bear, covered in fake sugar-blood...which had the added attraction of drawing real flies." Weiss also confirmed that the point when Daenerys almost retches up the heart was a real physical reaction. Moreover, Clarke is a relatively small young woman (as TV-Daenerys is only sixteen years old), and the horse heart prop was literally half the size of her head. The production team also pointed out that Daenerys might only have eaten the heart once within the story, but Clarke had to film multiple and prolonged takes eating the heart, because the entire scene focuses on it, and it has to go on in the background even while Viserys is talking to Jorah. The prop was intentionally made to taste bad to further Clarke's performance - if it tasted pleasant like regular candy, it would have lost some of the effect that Daenerys is choking down awful-tasting, bloodsoaked raw meat. Clarke herself noted in the featurette that the prop was incredibly realistic, and even contained dried pasta (dyed red) to simulate veins running through the heart.[3]
In the books
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, it is forbidden to bare bladed steel within Vaes Dothrak. The TV series mentions this with regard to people, but the book goes on to establish that it is even forbidden to use steel blades to butcher animals. Thus Drogo and his bloodriders slaughtered the stallion and cut out its heart using stone knives.
The book also states what the negative consequences are if Daenerys fails to eat all of the stallion's heart: it is an ill omen meaning that the child might be stillborn, come forth weak or deformed, or worse, female.
Daenerys' handmaidens helped her ready herself for the ceremony by having her dine on bowls of half-clotted horse blood, to prepare her for the taste. Daenerys also didn't eat for a full day and night beforehand in the hope that hunger would help her keep the large amount of tough meat down. Even with this preparation the ceremony is grueling: Daenerys nearly gags several times and her stomach churns, but she finds the strength to finish.
As Daenerys had only recently begun to learn the Dothraki language, the book explains that Daenerys learned her responses to the dosh khaleen by rote. Her handmaiden Jhiqui taught her the phrase "Khalakka dothrae mr'anha"! (A prince rides inside me!), and she practiced it with her for three days beforehand. |
For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser .
Residents of Australia's other major cities might disagree, but international travellers have voted Sydney the world's friendliest city for 2015.
Readers of the highly-regard luxury travel magazine Condé Nast Traveler named Sydney the friendliest city for visitors in the publication's annual rankings, saying there was "nothing not to like".
See Also Sydney travel guide
"Such friendly people," enthused one reader, "so much so that after we met an Australian woman on our flight there, she offered to pick us up at our hotel and spent a whole day showing us her favourite parts of the city."
Sydney's highlights for visitors were the usual suspects, with the tours of the harbour and the Harbour Bridge climb cited as highlights.
The city tied last year as the fifth friendliest in the world, when Melbourne was named No.1. But Victoria's capital failed to make Condé Nast's top 10 list this year.
Melbourne may not have topped the list for visitors, but it remains No.1 for residents, clocking up the title of 'world most liveable' city yet again earlier this month.
Dublin was named second in the friendliness stakes, with the locals praised for their sense of fun and their welcoming pubs and restaurants.
Our neighbours New Zealand also did well, with Queenstown named the third friendliest city and Auckland coming in at No.9.
Condé Nast Traveler's readers also ranked the least friendly cities, with Caracas, Venezuela rated the worst, followed by Casablanca in Morocco and Guangzhou in China.
Advertisement
The results were determined by the publication's annual Reader Choice Awards survey, which received over a million votes from nearly 77,000 readers.
FRIENDLIEST CITIES
1. Sydney, Australia
2. Dublin, Ireland
3. Queenstown, New Zealand
4. Kraków, Poland
5. Bruges, Belgium
6. Edinburgh, Scotland
7. Kyoto, Japan
8. Budapest, Hungary
9. Auckland, New Zealand
10. Reykjavik, Iceland
UNFRIENDLIEST CITIES
1. Caracas, Venezuela
2. Casablanca, Morocco
3. Guangzhou, China
4. Guatemala City, Guatemala
5. Nairobi, Kenya
6. New Delhi, India
7. Cairo, Egypt
8. Moscow, Russia
9. Jakarta, Indonesia
10. Cannes, France
See also: The best things about the world's most liveable cities
See also: Why some cities don't like tourists any more
Follow the writer on Twitter and Instagram. |
Commercially, this shift coincided with broader mainstream acceptance of funk, as performers like MC Koringa found acceptance for their songs on the nightly soap operas. In São Paulo, a brash new variety called funk ostentação (ostentation) has emerged, with singers flaunting wads of cash and imported sports cars. Where did Neymar, the star of Brazil’s national soccer team, go to relax before the World Cup? The Dom Room, a funk club near São Paulo. Reflecting the genre’s elasticity, some in Brazil’s evangelical Christian community decided it was time to join the funk scene rather than criticize it. Thus the subgenre of “gospel funk,” featuring biblical-inspired lyrics.
Yet in Rio, funk’s cradle, some of the marginalized proibidão singers persist. Some work in favelas still controlled by gangs, reflecting Rio’s fractious urban peace process. Fewer than 300 of the city’s estimated 1,000 or so favelas are pacified; even in slums now featuring a large police presence, there has been a startling spike in shootings of police officers this year. Around the city, muggings have surged. The homicide rate is also climbing once again in Rio, setting the city on edge just as visitors start arriving for the World Cup.
Amid this tension, new funk stars are emerging, exemplified to a large extent by women like Valesca Popozuda and Anitta. One rising voice in Rio’s clubs is MC Lexa, 19, whose real name is Léa Araújo. She doesn’t come from a favela, pacified or otherwise, but from Jacarepaguá, a sprawling suburban area interspersed with slums. On the cusp of stardom, MC Lexa delayed her civil-engineering studies and has begun performing in cities like Brasília and São Paulo. “Few people have a real chance for a career in funk,” she says. “I need to make this moment count.” |
Story highlights "I don't think that you can have any more than one president at a time," Christie said
Flynn cannot rule out that he spoke to a Russian official about sanctions, an aide said Friday
Washington (CNN) New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie criticized President Donald Trump's national security adviser Michael Flynn Sunday, saying he needs to clear up questions about whether he discussed sanctions in his pre-inauguration conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
"I don't think that you can have any more than one president at a time," Christie told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."
"And, you know, General Flynn has said up to this point that he had not said anything like that to the Russian ambassador. I think now he's saying that he doesn't remember whether he did or not," Christie said, pointing to a discrepancy in what Flynn told Vice President Mike Pence previously and what he said after reports of those conversations emerged last week.
Flynn cannot rule out that he spoke to a Russian official about sanctions, an aide close to the national security adviser said Friday.
Read More |
This is a mentality the Islanders haven’t had in a long time. Instead of bracing for what it means to be Stanley Cup contenders, they should embrace it and go all in.
As general manager Garth Snow readies for the first round of the NHL draft Friday, he has to figure out how best to utilize his No. 19-overall pick. With not another pick until the fourth round, this is not an Islanders draft of old, where prospects were being stockpiled and Snow’s phone was on silent.
The franchise now is ripe with prospects — some good, some not so good. Does it make sense to add another that won’t mature for another couple years, or would it make more sense to put that pick in a package with one of those overflow prospects in hopes of getting that perpetually absent top-line winger?
You can’t force a good trade, and maybe the best move will be to keep the pick, but the priority has to be the here and now, not the future.
What has become clearer in the month since the Isles lost to the Lightning in the second round of the playoffs is there will be a void next to John Tavares — if there ever was a rock. Kyle Okposo, the career-long Islander, almost is assuredly going to leave for greener pastures come the opening of his unrestricted free agency July 1.
On the radio last week, Snow made that rather clear.
“Kyle’s a great person,” Snow said. “He’s been a terrific player for this organization. Wish him nothing but the best.”
It seems as though fourth-line hit-master Matt Martin will be leaving, as well. Even though the Players’ Association agreed to the 5 percent salary-cap escalator, raising the ceiling from $71.4 million to an even $73 million — and thus more escrow taken out of their paychecks — Snow is wisely considering any raise on Martin’s previous $1 million a year deal to be too much.
Also smartly, it seems all signs are pointing to Snow getting closer to an extension with Frans Nielsen, the indelible 32-year-old center who was just named captain of Team Denmark in the Olympics qualification tournament in September. Good. Nielsen is needed at both ends of the rink, and his leadership for this young squad would be desperately missed.
But Nielsen cannot carry the offensive load behind Tavares. There needs to be more high-end talent. There needs to be maturity from the likes of Ryan Strome and Brock Nelson and more consistency from Anders Lee, who is coming off a broken leg. The franchise needs to know who among young defensemen Ryan Pulock, Adam Pelech and Scott Mayfield is worth keeping and who can be jettisoned.
Really, what Snow and his staff need is to make hard decisions about each one of those young players. They can no longer hope that potential is going to be fulfilled. They have to decide now in whom they believe and in whom they don’t. Whoever ends up on the outside of that circle should be actively shopped for a proven NHL commodity.
The Islanders no longer have the luxury of time. Tavares is signed for another two years on his ridiculously club-friendly $5.5 million annual cap hit, and as much as he likes it here, don’t think a disappointing season caused by Snow’s inaction won’t bother him and push him toward Lou Lamoriello, Mike Babcock and Friday’s assumed No. 1 pick of his hometown Maple Leafs, Auston Matthews.
And don’t think new owners Jon Ledecky and Scott Malkin feel obliged to keep dear any sort of agreement with Snow’s job security that was granted under the receding stewardship of Charles Wang. Consider the same pressures to be on the shoulders of highly underpaid coach Jack Capuano.
The reality is the Islanders are a win-now team. It’s been a long, dark road to get here, but they’re here. They need to recognize that and go for it. Anything less than all-in would be a disservice. |
Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonalds, Subway turn vegetarian in Gujarat
India
oi-Nairita
Ahmedabad , March 6: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. US food giants such as KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Subway seem to have started following the saying after introducing complete vegetarian food at their outlets situated in Gujarat
The fast food giants, which are mainly known for non-veg food items, aimed the vegetarians in the state. Subway also has started offering Jain food in which they do not even use onion and garlic as ingredients.
Times of India quoted Durlabh Singh, Subway's development agent for Gujarat and Daman-Diu as saying, "We carried out a survey in Gujarat and sent a proposal to the US HQ to open an all-veg outlet with a pure Jain counter in Ahmedabad."
"We will now add more vegetarian items on the menu in Gujarat, which is the only state that contributes 60% of the total sales from vegetarian food," Singh added.
Informing about its first all vegetarian counter at a private university in Punjab, Singh also said, "We plan to open similar outlets in Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot, Anand, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar soon."
According to sources, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, KFC also have plans of setting up all-vegetarians outlets in different parts of the state. Spokespersons of the food giants also informed that they would increase the vegetarian items in the outlets which have already been opened.
Veggie Delite, Veggie Patty, Paneer Tikka, Veg. Shammi and Aloo Patty are some of the complete vegetarian food which are currently available at the outlets of Subway.
OneIndia News |
Accepting that this isn’t really about my usual topic of London, I still think the below panorama drawing of New York City as it was in 1855 is still rather impressive to look at.
Whether, as predicted in the news article that accompanied the drawing, New York has indeed rivalled London is a matter which both sides of the Atlantic continue to debate even to this day.
Image and article below taken from my collection of the Illustrated London News.
NEW YORK.
The rise and progress of the commercial metropolis of the United States may be included among the marvels of modern history. That part of the American coasts which comprehends the State of New York was discovered by Sebastian Cabot in 1497 ; but he made no claim to it on behalf of King Henry VII of England, by whom he was employed. In 1608 Henry Hudson sailed up the river which bears his name. The Dutch made a settlement by building some stores and cottages in 1620, and called the district in which they planted a colony the New Netherlands. On the island which the Indians called Manhattan they built a city which they named New Amsterdam. When Charles II. of England gave to his brother James, Duke of York, Long Island, Hudson’s .River, and other contiguous possessions, New Amsterdam became New York. In 1697 the population cf the city was 4302; in 1784 it had increased to 23,614; and at the present time it exceeds 600,000.
Seated on a river navigable for 160 miles from the sea, and possessing a sheltered harbour where a ship can ride in safety, it has become the emporium of trade between Europe and America. Its progress has been rapid since its independence was recognised; and it may almost be asserted that, while Liverpool has built New York, New York has built Liverpool.
It is within the last thirty years that improvement and enterprise have advanced with the steps of a giant. It is within that period that the first line of sailing packet-ships was established between Liverpool and New York; and it was deemed so doubtful an experiment that it was only undertaken with two vessels of 450 tons each. Complete success rewarded the adventurers; and very quickly similar lines were established from nearly all the Atlantic cities.
In 1819 a steamer sailed from Savannah having the same name as the port from which she sailed, and reached Liverpool in safety ; and in 1833 the Royal William, of 180-horse power, sailed from Quebec to Picton, and thence to London. But these voyages seemed to have been overlooked, or only regarded as lucky accidents, for scientific men had declared the navigation of the Atlantic by steam impracticable. In 1838, however, the problem was solved by the arrival of the Great Western from Liverpool, and of the Sirius from Bristol in New York harbour. The Canard line of steamers was then established, followed by the Collins line; the former British North American, the latter United States, but both running to New York. Then were added lines to Southampton, Havre, and Bremen.
While rapidity of intercourse was thus promoted between America and Europe, a net of railways and of electric telegraphs brought into almost immediate contact all the main points of the United States, and an extended system of canalisation brought all the lake districts into juxtaposition. From these multiplied improvements New York derived incalculable benefits as the great port of distribution for the products of the Old and New World. Mr. William Chambers, in his recently-published tour in America, states that in one single establishment for the sale of “dry goods”—that is, clothing and haberdashery of all kinds—the annual returns exceed seven millions of dollars. It is called Stewart’s Store, a huge building of white marble. This alone gives a vast idea of the traffic of New York.
The churches, theatres, and especially the hotels, are magnificent. One of the most remarkable objects in the neighbourhood of the city is the Croton Aqueduct. In the second volume of the ” First Report of the Commissioners for the Health of Towns” the height of the water is described as 115 feet above tide, about 105 feet above the lowest, and 60 feet above the highest grade of streets. There are 150 miles of mains, besides 40 miles of aqueducts. The sizes vary from 36 inches to 6 inches. They are always charged, and the water is kept at high pressure in all the streets and at all times—a most valuable aid in case of fire. This splendid work cost 14,000,000 dollars. There are numerous educational establishments in New York, and some noble libraries. One of the most splendid is the Astor Library, called after its munificent founder, John Jacob Astor, who bequeathed 400,000 dollars to erect a suitable building and fill it with books.
Should the United States remain at peace with the world, New York may rival London at the close of the present century, for it must continue to flourish as the Far West is peopled and cultivated. |
Can you guess which RuPaul’s Drag Race queen this is way back in 2003? Get the answer after the jump!
RAVEN from RuPaul’s Drag Race season 2 and RuPaul’s All Stars Drag Race! She says on her Facebook page:
2003. So this was back in the beginning stages of my drag. I didn’t know how to block my eyebrows, so those were my actual eyebrows. My contour was just a dab here and there. Lace fronts were not as easy to come by as they are now…I would blend my own hair into the wig. Obviously, the lips have changed tremendously. I used to have albums of photos from the first few years I started on this journey. I wish I still had them. My friend, Gilbert has been sending me these over the past couple of days. I can’t wait to see more!!!!
#ButtholeMouth
You can watch her every Wednesday on Fashion Photo RuView! And see her at RuPaul’s DragCon 2016! Sign up for the newsletter for exclusive early access to tickets & VIP Packages!!! |
It didn't take long for new Seahawks tight end Jimmy Graham to warm up to a Seattle attack that unabashedly puts the ground game first.
"That's why I'm excited to be a part of it," Graham said this week, per The Seattle Times. "No. 1, with maybe multiple tight end sets, that's gonna just open it up. These last couple of years for me, playing against guys who aren't concerned about the run at all. They know I will try to do a double move and run this go route. It makes it more difficult. So this will just make my job easier when it comes to the passing game."
Graham averaged 138 targets per year during his past four seasons in New Orleans, where the three-time Pro Bowler was the favorite target of quarterback Drew Brees. Seeing routine double coverage, Graham relied on his dominant 6-foot-7 frame to win matchups.
"I know I'm probably not going to get targeted 130 times," Graham said of his new team. "But that's not my concern; I just want to win games. And I know there will be times -- big moments in a game -- where I'm going to have to go out there and make a play. That's what I'm focusing on."
With Seattle already drawing up plays to highlight Graham's gifts, early reports from OTAs suggest that the former basketball player has been "unstoppable" in practice, per Scout.com's Rob Rang.
"It's really cool," play-caller Darrell Bevell said of having Graham on the roster. "We missed him a couple of days when he had to go down south (for a funeral). But it's good to see him out here. You could see him show up in the ways that we're hoping he's going to be able to. It's really cool. The sky's the limit for us right now."
Around The NFL scribes routinely ranked Seattle first or second in our recent offseason NFL power rankings. The team has retained its own stars, injected youth and traded for one of the league's bona fide game-changers in Graham. Seahawks fans: You're in for another wild ride.
The latest Around The NFL Podcast discusses the latest news including Cam Newton's massive extension and the return of Adrian Peterson. Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW. |
Ned and Dave do the Vuelta
David Millar, back in the days when he was racing it, once described the Vuelta as a “hot little bastard” of a race.
This, I always thought, was an extremely well-wrought phrase, born from the ghastly lived experience of pinning on a number and then suffering the whims of a course designed with a penchant for sweltering dual carriageways and vertiginous goat tracks. A helter-skelter mash-up of a Grand Tour played out against a backdrop of endless arid vistas and swollen Asturian skies. Nasty, frankly, but in a fun way, at least for those of us watching on.
He did rather well at the Vuelta, did Mr. Millar, racking up five stage victories, two of which straddled the chasm of his doping ban (so you should make your own minds up about the context). His last pre-bust win was at the 2003 Vuelta, his first post-bust win was at the 2006 edition of the race, where, racing clean, he beat Fabian Cancellara by the merest fraction of a second. A “hot little bastard” indeed.
These days, he experiences the Vuelta from a rather different perspective. Horizontally, for the most part. Let me explain.
The 2017 race was the third Vuelta that David and I have jointly commentated on for ITV’s highlights show. I do not think that I am breaking news (or hearts) when I confess, publically, that we are nowhere near Spain, as we commentate. In fact, it’s weirder than that. David Millar, a resident of Spain, leaves Spain for a month and takes up residency at an Ealing hotel, in West London.
Every morning, he greets the hotel staff, as if he were the Major in Fawlty Towers, and heads off on his Brompton to work. Two minutes later, he arrives. His hotel in no more than three hundred yards away from Ealing Studios, home to a significant portion of British film history, and latterly to ITV’s Vuelta operation. It’s probably fair to say that David’s experience of working on the Vuelta has lost some of its physical intensity over the years.
I have generally arrived at the studios an hour or so earlier, and set about some intensive highlighter work, as well as starting to practice my ropey pronunciation of the key climbs of the day, repeating their teasingly difficult names until they sounds generically, and implausibly garbled and therefore authentic:
‘Colleda de la Hoz’ ‘Coyeda da Oz’ ‘Coead’aOth’ ‘Coyya’oth’ ‘Coth’
A matter of seconds before the live pictures from Spain flicker onto our screens, the door to our tiny commentary booth swings open, and the former time-triallist breezes into work.
‘What’s happening on the bike race, Ned?’
I look round. ‘Oh, you know. Stuff.’ Then I furnish him with all the salient details. ‘Bunch of blokes up the road.’
‘How many k?’
‘82 to go.’ This, for David, is the signal for lunch. And every day it is the same.
The peculiarities of commentating for highlights only mean that, unlike our endless live broadcasts on the Tour de France (for which, let me assure you, we are indeed in France), we spend a good portion of the day watching, rather than talking. In the knowledge that the highlights show is only an hour long, and that the programme can only contain around 45 minutes actual commentary, we do no waste our precious words on the early phase of the race. There is no point. And, besides, there are Singapore Fried Noodles to be eaten. David is capable of demolishing an entire plate in the time it take Thomas de Gendt to sweep up maximum points over a Cat Three climb.
‘Right. Wake me up if anything happens.’ With 73 kilometres remaining, and 38k until the next climb of the day, David assumes his usual pre-commentary position, flat out on his back, eyes closing gently as he listens to the soothing white noise of a bike race; helicopter rotor blades and motorbikes. This serene preparation for the rigours of commentary has become known as reverse planking and is the closest thing to Sport in David Millar’s life right now. And so it goes. The race rumbles on, as the athlete rests.
And yet, what is most remarkable is the sudden transformation he is able to effect, the flicking of a hyper-alert commentator switch. The signal for his sudden re-emergence into the brightly-lit world of the expert summarizer might be a Bardet crash, a Contador attack or a Froome mechanical. Either way, it is awe-inspiring; something to behold.
Springing back into life, David is straight back into the action. In a split second he has grasped the bigger picture, as well as the minutiae of the race situation. I have no idea how he does it. His eyes light up. The words come tumbling out.
“So, this is perfect for Nibali, with Zakarin on the attack, Kelderman’s forced to put his team on the front and…”
And, boom. It’s game on. Suddenly we are both poised on the edge of our seats, literally, and engrossed in the action unfolding on the monitor in front of our desk. When one of us is talking, the other is looking elsewhere, checking facts, pointing at a detail on the screen, moving the discussion on. It’s team work, and it’s not only great fun, it’s also extremely satisfying. We know our roles, we know our traits, we know the rhythm of our words. The kilometres fly past and we hurtle, collectively towards the finish line. The race, the hot little bastard, takes over. ‘Matteo Trentin! Again!’
And then it’s over for another day. Quiet sweeps back into the booth.
I shuffle papers, update a few notes, close my laptop. David picks up whatever cap he has picked for the day, and makes his way to the exit. I follow him out of the studio compound. We roll through the gates on our folding bikes.
‘See you tomorrow.’
‘See you tomorrow, David.’
It’s the Vuelta, but maybe not as he knew it. I wonder which he prefers. |
The sound of soft music reached Clara’s ears before she even made it to the top of the basement stairs.
She couldn’t help but smile at the sound. There was something so comforting about listening to piano music. There always had been. When she was a child, her parents’ home was always full of the sound of her mother’s beautiful playing. And now that she was grown, she had her husband’s music to take its place.
For some people, “home” was the smell of their mother’s chocolate chip cookies, or the feeling of a loved one’s embrace. For Clara, it was the sound of a piano.
Florian stopped playing at the sound of his wife’s approach.
“Hey, babe.” He smiled gently. “What’s up?”
“Just wanted to see what you’re up to.” She replied casually. “Still working on that same song?”
Florian nodded. “It’s coming along… slowly.” He placed his fingers back on the keys and played a few bars for her.
“Aw, I love that!” Clara smiled brightly as he finished. “That hook’s awesome!”
“It’s Lucas’.” Her husband replied. “It was a new guitar riff he’d been messing around with… I thought it’d be nice to try and turn it into something.” He shrugged slightly, his smile fading away as he spoke.
Clara felt her own smile waver. “That’s really nice. I bet Lucas would love it.” She said seriously.
To her surprise, Florian’s expression darkened at her words. He rose to his feet, walking around the keyboard as he spoke. “I wish people would stop saying shit like that. We can’t know what he’d think or want, okay? Because he’s gone.”
“I’m sorry.” Clara’s voice was soft. She knew better than to take her husband’s anger personally. He was hurting worse than he ever had, just like she was. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
Florian shook his head. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. I just…” He paused for a moment. “It’s the same damn line David and Mia keep using.” He said at last.
Clara nodded in understanding. “Ugh. I almost forgot. Those greedy pieces of shit…” She muttered, scowling.
Florian’s former bandmates had been relentless ever since the fire. Though they’d been kicked out of the band years ago, they were eager to capitalize on Lucas’ death, begging Florian to agree to a re-release of their old material. “Trust me, fans eat this type of shit up.” David’s email had said. “It’s just business… I’m sure Lucas would understand.”
The memory was enough to have Clara seeing red. She quickly chased the thought away, calming herself as best she could.
“Anyway,” Florian continued, changing the subject, “I’m glad you like the song so far. It’s nice to be writing again.”
His wife nodded, her smile returning. This is my chance… She took a deep breath, fighting to keep her tone as casual as she could manage. “So… have you, uh, thought about writing other things?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Like what?”
Clara shrugged. “Something slow… Like… a lullaby, or something?” She suggested.
Florian laughed heartily. “Honey, the twins are a little old for lullabies, don’t you think?”
“I know.” She agreed. “But… I wasn’t thinking about the twins.” Clara eyed him intently for a few moments, waiting.
It took only seconds for him to understand. “Oh my God. Oh my God! You’re… We’re…?!”
Clara grinned. “We are!”
“Finally!” Florian smiled, his eyes flicking down toward her abdomen. “God, this is amazing! I can’t believe it…”
“I know!” Clara agreed. “It’s crazy, right?!”
It had been nearly a year since Clara and Florian had decided to try for another baby. And they’d been struggling ever since. Who would have imagined it would be so easy the first time, and so hard the second, when they actually wanted it?
“How far along do you think you are?” Florian’s question called her back to the present.
“Maybe two months?” Clara guessed. “I’m gonna schedule an appointment soon so we can be sure… At first I thought it was just stress or something. But I had a feeling… So I decided to do a test.”
“So you’re sure then?”
His wife’s smile widened. “Definitely.” She assured him.
He leaned forward and kissed her again in reply. Clara smiled against his lips. She loved seeing him so excited, so happy. It was a welcome change.
“Well… We should probably wait before we tell anyone though, right?” Florian asked as he pulled away from her. “Including the kids…”
Clara nodded in agreement. After struggling to conceive, it seemed best to wait a bit longer before sharing the big news. She felt the smile slowly vanish from her lips as the thought crossed her mind. The idea of sharing the pregnancy with the rest of the family had sent a strange wave of sadness washing over her.
“It feels weird, doesn’t it?” Clara asked softly, breaking the silence. “I mean, after Mama and Papa, the first people I thought of telling were…”
“Me too.” Florian sighed, his own smile disappearing. He fell silent for a few moments before speaking again. “God, it’s just not fair.”
Before she realized what was happening, Clara felt the hot sting of tears prickling at the corner of her eyes.
They hadn’t told many people, but Lucas and Hazel had begun trying for another child too, just a few months after Clara and Florian had made the same decision. It had turned into something of an inside joke between the two couples – a game, almost. Who would get pregnant first?
Clara never imagined she’d win like this.
One stupid mistake – one cigarette not fully snuffed out – had stolen two of their dearest friends away from them. There was no way of knowing whether the cigarette had belonged to Lucas or Hazel. But either way, it didn’t matter. No matter whose fault it was, they were gone.
Their little boy was all alone now. He’d never have a little brother or sister. His parents would never have the second child they’d dreamt of. And they’d never meet this baby either. This baby would never know their Onkel Lucas and Tante Hazel. They’d be nothing more than stories and old photographs. The thought made Clara cry even harder.
“How are we gonna tell anyone about this, Florian?” Clara asked at last, choking back a sob. “How can we expect them to be happy for us when they’re going through this? When everything still hurts? When Lucas and Hazel are…” Even nearly four months later, it was too painful for Clara to say the words out loud.
Florian reached forward, pulling her into his arms and pressing his lips against her hair.
He left the question unanswered.
Advertisements |
Lake Diversion Residents Are Being Forced to Leave Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Video
Hundreds of residents at Lake Diversion will now have to leave their homes, some of which have been in their families for generations.
This after the new owner and management of the Waggoner Ranch told them their leases will not be renewed, and to get off the property by next January.
Most residents found out about the lease termination when a notice was posted on the community bulletin board Thursday. And Friday they received a certified letter with the same notice.
It stated the reason for the decision was that the owner wants "to restore the shoreline to its natural uninhabited landscape to improve the microecosystem" and that means the current inhabitants must get off, and take their homes and buildings with them, if they can.
When Annette McNeil got the notice that the lease on her Lake Diversion home she's lived in for 10 years will not be renewed, she said it had the same impact as seeing it burn down in a fire.
Like every other resident here, she has until Jan. 31, next year to get off, whether she can move her home off or not.
"You can't give somebody a piece of paper and say I'm taking your home away from you," said McNeil.
The instructions in the notice tell residents they should make arrangements to remove all property from the lot and completely vacate premises by termination date.
Any property left on the premises after termination date will be deemed abandoned by tenant and landlord may remove and dispose of such property without liability.
The letter also states, if a tenant enters any of those areas after the termination date, such entry will be regarded as trespassing.
This comes after the Waggoner Ranch was sold to Stan Kroenke, owner of five professional sports teams and more than a million acres of land around the world.
And for McNeil, the thought of walking away from the home she's lived in for 10 years is too much to bear. She said she can't afford to start over .
"This does not give you enough time to prepare for your future," McNeil said. "This is the only home I've lived in my whole entire life 10 years. This was my home."
Lynn and Jo Sharon Postelwait bought their home at Lake Diversion in 1969 and they've been living out there permanently the last 34 years.
"It's going to be hard when I see them destroying my house, because we've done everything in here ourselves," said Jo Sharon.
She said she's been on the Board of Directors of the Cabin Owners Association for 20 years and she said it's going to be hard saying goodbye.
"It's getting me upset just thinking about it," Jo Sharon said. "And everybody that comes up here says 'oh you have the prettiest view from up here."
Mickey Jordan said Lake Diversion has been a part of his life since he can remember. He said his grandparents and parents had homes out there and he just bought a home of his home.
"I planned to keep my house for quiet a long time and that my parents planned to retire and stay at the lake and fish and do some stuff they've always wanted to," Jordan said. "But now it doesn't look like they're going to get to."
For the Jordans, McNeil, the Postelwaits and scores more families life as they have known it on this lake is coming to an end....and they have to figure out what to do next about the homes they have lived in and paid taxes on ....and whether there is any hope of a change in the decision.
And the next step is that the Cabin Owners Association are having a meeting Saturday at Lake Diversion at 7pm. Tune into KFDX 3 News Saturday night at 10, for more.
GoFundMe page to donate to families. |
Don't expect any optimistic emails from Tim Cook to Jim Cramer for a long time, because according to a just released report in Japan's Nikkei, Apple will continue its reduced production of iPhones in the April-June period in light of sluggish sales, according to parts suppliers notified of the plan.
The website reports that slow sales of the flagship iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, which debuted last autumn, have forced Apple to adjust inventories. It lowered production for the January-March quarter by about 30% from the year-earlier period. With sales still sluggish, the U.S. company has told parts suppliers in Japan and elsewhere that it will maintain the reduced output level in the current quarter.
Apple apparently does not plan to produce a large enough volume of the small iPhone SE released last month to offset the slump of its flagship series. However, should Apple decide to release its next flagship model earlier than the usual September launch, parts production for that smartphone could take off around late May.
A prolonged production cut would hurt Japanese parts suppliers such as liquid crystal display panel manufacturers Japan Display and Sharp, memory chip supplier Toshiba and Sony, which provides image sensors for cameras. With their plants already operating at reduced rates, they may be forced to downgrade their earnings forecasts for the April-June quarter.
The current production cut could last longer than the one Apple implemented in 2013. Some 1.5 billion smartphones are shipped globally in a year, but the market's growth is slowing.
Investors are unhappy at the news.
Time for some more buybacks? |
Tampa, Florida -- One of Prince's former drummers who lives in Tampa is trying to get his rhythm back. He's trying to beat a life-changing health scare.
John Blackwell, Jr. performed with Prince for 15 years. With a sharp hat on his head and decked out in a snazzy suit Blackwell is considered a master drummer and is known for his unique style of drumming. These days he plays all over the world but that music came to an abrupt stop recently.
SEE ALSO: Tampa drummer relives his days playing with Prince
"I got to Japan and this." He picks up his lifeless left hand and then drops it and adds, "And this left leg just dropped out on me."
Blackwell is now recovering at Tampa General Hospital's Rehabilitation Center. He's had to put down his drumsticks after major surgery and describes what the surgeon had to do.
"He basically took out a part of the brain where the tumors were."
Blackwell now spends his days now just learning how to walk again. "I was like, impossible. How did this happen?"
Sign up for the daily Brightside Blend Newsletter Sign up for the daily Brightside Blend Newsletter Something went wrong. This email will be delivered to your inbox once a day in the morning. Thank you for signing up for the Brightside Blend Newsletter. Please try again later.
Submit
With his wife Yaritza and friend, John, who is also a drummer by his side, Blackwell knows the therapy he's scheduled to do each day could make all the difference in whether he picks up his drumsticks again.
"I get lazy as everybody knows. I'll be like, 'I don't want to go,' but then something tells me in my mind, 'Hey bro if I'm going to get out of here and get back to the drums ... go to your therapy.'"
Blackwell says Prince was like a father figure to him and recruited him to play with him. He says a dear friend recently told him that he can just imagine Prince calling for him to play even in heaven. Blackwell laughed saying, "I can hear Prince now say 'I'll just call John.' No you ain't! I don't want to do that gig. Not yet."
Meanwhile, Blackwell says he's going to fight hard to get back in the drummers seat because he's just not ready to give up on his love of drumming.
John has medical insurance but isn't able to earn a living when he's not playing so a special GoFundMe account has been set up for him to accept donations. John is also in the process of writing a book about his time performing not only with Prince, but Justin Timberlake and Patty LaBelle just to name a few. |
Japanese superstar Orfevre will always have a special spot on any list of the craziest racehorses. Photo: AFP
Follow @AndrewNJHawkins
Every sport has its eccentric characters. Where would basketball be without Dennis Rodman? Boxing without Mike Tyson? Tennis without John McEnroe? I mean, you cannot be serious.
Racing has its loveable – and not so loveable – human larrikins, but let’s celebrate the equine eccentrics, those gallopers better suited in the racehorse equivalent of a mental asylum
So it is with horse racing. Racing has its loveable – and not so loveable – human larrikins, but let’s celebrate the equine eccentrics, those gallopers better suited in the racehorse equivalent of a mental asylum rather than in the stables.
It seems rather timely with the Japanese Derby, the Tokyo Yushun, on this weekend – a race that has been a breeding ground for nutcases. And besides, there have been a couple of nasty incidents in the past week which have been a reminder that horses are fragile creatures.
After Sunday’s thunder-marred straight race at Sha Tin, a number of horses returned clearly spooked. One mafoo suffered more than most, though, with his finger bitten off by one of the beaten runners. Who could blame the horse after competing in those conditions?
And if that wasn’t enough of an incentive to look at some of the crazier horses to step foot on a racetrack, former Hong Kong galloper Mirage gave us another reason after he threw away certain victory at Randwick on Saturday.
Mirage had a troubled career in Hong Kong after he was sold to prominent owner Larry Yung Chi-kin. He was always a bit nutty – he even had the stable name Spook when with Peter Moody the first time around, when he raced as Royal Haunt. It didn’t stop him showing his talent, though, as he went three-from-three pre-export.
However, he went crazy on the flight over, fracturing his jaw and requiring a lengthy stint on the sidelines.
Maybe he was just claustrophobic, as his biggest hurdle in Hong Kong was an aversion to the barriers, something that caused John Size many a sleepless night as he nursed the horse back to health.
Considered a contender for the 2014 Classic Mile, eventually won by Able Friend, he was ruled out of the race once and for all when he went berserk in the gates before his intended Hong Kong debut two weeks out, injuring Tye Angland in the process.
He eventually stepped out once in Class Two, recording a half-length victory in March 2014, but that was all we saw of Mirage.
Clearly, it’s still the same spooked Mirage back in Moody’s Melbourne stables now – although it’s now not the start of a race but the finish that’s the issue.
He’s not the only Hong Kong-trained horse, past or present, with a crazy streak. Richard Gibson’s lowly Class Four galloper Mi Savvy is one, remembered for taking a nibble of Silver Dragon in the closing stages of a January Happy Valley race.
They are but a few who show signs of insanity here, cooped up in the multi-storey stable blocks, hardly leaving Sha Tin. No wonder it takes time to acclimatise.
However, if there’s a stronghold of crazy gallopers anywhere in the world, head across to Japan. Forget the land of the rising sun, a more apt description for Japan is the home of the insane equine.
Whether it’s the fact that more than 95 per cent of their male horses are still intact, so to speak, or whether it’s a result of the closeted bloodlines – think of the Sunday Silence influence – Japan is a haven for the certifiably mad.
Take Hakusan Moon, a Group One-placed sprinter who has made a name of spinning around in circles after his rider is legged up.
It’s become a bit of a sideshow for Japanese fans, who crowd around, get dizzy and then cheer him home.
Unfortunately, it was another crazy animal that had the better of him last start in the Takamatsunomiya Kinen – Paul O’Sullivan’s Aerovelocity, a horse so on edge he’s been known to take bites out of mafoos and handlers.
Hakusan Moon’s antics haven’t even been the craziest seen on a Japanese racetrack this year, though. That honour belongs to the talented grey, Gold Ship.
The best quip about Gold Ship came from an American fan on Twitter, who said: “If he’s calm and relaxed in the paddock, you know he’s off his game. Avoid him at all costs!”
He was mental behind the barriers at his last start, the Tenno Sho (Spring), and raced accordingly – unwilling to go early, lugging off the track and fighting the rider in the middle stages, before surging to the lead on the corner and finding enough to hold his rivals at bay.
Freaky.
But the clear winner for insanity has to be the 2011 winner of the Tokyo Yushun – the one, the only Orfevre.
The striking chestnut with a big white blaze and oodles of talent, he swept Japan’s Triple Crown and the Arima Kinen in 2011 to stamp himself as one of the country’s best gallopers – certainly the most popular, anyway.
But upon his reappearance in 2012, it all started to go wrong.
The Grade Two Hanshin Daishoten was expected to be a walkover for Orfevre and he was sent out at 10-1 on. Simply, he should not have lost.
But about 800m from home, he ran off the track, the jockey steadied in order to get him back into a rhythm, and he lost his prominent position and ended up at the rear.
Remarkably, he still almost won.
Later that year, he looked to have ended Japan’s Arc wait when he raced clear well into the Longchamp straight. However, he drifted in sharply, hit the rail and the somewhat mediocre four-year-old mare Solemia – in terms of Arc winners anyway – raced past to deny Japanese hopes yet again.
And hey, any excuse to show this video of the devastated Japanese again.
At least Orfevre was able to retire in a blaze of glory 12 months later with a crushing eight-length win in the Arima Kinen, with none of his crazy antics on display.
Perhaps the likely favourite for Sunday’s Tokyo Yushun, Duramente, can join Orfevre in the future, for he shapes as a nutcase to watch – definitely possible if his Satsuki Sho win is anything to go by.
Watch as he knocks half the field down on the home turn, under a man familiar to Hong Kong punters, Mirco Demuro.
Will he become the new Orfevre?
POSTSCRIPT: Since we suggested a few of the craziest horses to have graced the racetrack, a whole stable of lunatics have been put forward by those on social media. These include:
Aqua D'Amore - Coolmore-owned mare, good enough to finish second in the 2006 Caulfield Cup and fourth a week later in the Cox Plate, but who made a nasty habit of sitting down in the gates. It was so bad, she was barred from coming to Hong Kong to contest the Champions Mile.
Mad Moose - Dual purpose galloper in the United Kingdom who refused to race a number of times, both on the flat and over the jumps. And even when he did jump away, on many occasions he was reluctant to continue and it was an exercise in futility. A ban was placed on him in late 2013, but he was allowed to return to the racetrack again in December 2014. Of course, he refused to race once more and was retired.
Spicer Cub - American galloper Spicer Cub was only a claimer, but he turned plenty of heads with his erratic run at Pimlico last year. Seemingly travelling well on the lead, he ducked out sharply approaching the bend. Jockey Xavier Perez straightened him up again, but he ducked out to the outside rail in the stretch, coming around the dormant starting gates. Somehow, he still ended up in a photo for first!
Pravda - Trainer Paul O'Sullivan is near the top of the Hong Kong ranks again through his feats with noted nutter, gun sprinter Aerovelocity, but he is well used to some crazy antics. O'Sullivan prepared Kiwi staying mare Pravda for a tilt at the 2000 Melbourne Cup, and all went swimmingly - until the time came for her to gallop down to the start. She dug her heels in, refused to move and was withdrawn from the race.
Vanilla - The one-time Australian Derby second may have run second at Sha Tin on Wednesday night, but it took a long time for him to acclimatise to Hong Kong. In particular, all he wanted to do was to return to his box. At what was to be his third start, he was withdrawn after dumping the jockey and heading for the stables, while he also pulled the same stunt before the 2014 Classic Cup but was recaptured and passed fit to start.
Helmet - The striking Darley galloper was as wayward as they come, almost throwing away certain victory in two juvenile Group One events in Australia. In the second of these, the Champagne Stakes, Helmet hugged the rail and looked all over a winner before ducking out sharply to the middle of the track. Somehow, he maintained momentum and still won the race.
Storming Home - There are few American references on this list, but Storming Home can give a bit of an American flavour. The English-bred American-trained galloper spooked near the finishing line of the 2003 Arlington Million, dumping jockey Gary Stevens and causing mayhem all around. The horse crossed the line first with Stevens still holding onto the reins, but Storming Home was disqualified, with Sulamani the new winner. |
The Alberta government is giving cities, towns and counties three years to figure out how to plan and share costs for regional services, defined as anything from roads to swimming pools to policing.
Municipal Affairs Minister Danielle Larivee introduced this and a sweeping set of amendments to the house Tuesday that could fundamentally change the way cities and regions work together across Alberta. The changes will be debated at 20 open houses across the province this summer and finalized early next year.
The cost-sharing requirements apply to the large city regions of Calgary and Edmonton, and to smaller municipalities, which must create collaboration frameworks with every entity on their borders. Calgary will see its voluntary membership in the Calgary Regional Partnership made mandatory, while Edmonton will see an expanded mandate for the already mandatory Capital Region Board.
The new rules will “require communities to come together,” said Larivee, and will go to independent arbitration if no agreement is reached. “We need to recognize our communities are interconnected.”
But Rocky View County, which abandoned the Calgary Regional Partnership seven years ago over concerns the voting structure was skewed in favour of denser urban areas, says it’s wary of being forced into a new arrangement, now called a growth management board.
“Our position was and still is when they were trying to gather information on these boards we felt that collaboration and co-operation were the way to go rather than mandating a group together,” said Greg Boehlke, reeve for Rocky View County.
“The main driver to Rocky View, Foothills and Wheatland leaving Calgary Regional Partnership was the rules changed one month before the ratification of the CRP that gave Calgary the double majority vote,” said Boehlke.
Amendments to the Municipal Government Act introduced Tuesday also addressed how to pay for new suburban neighbourhoods.
“Growth is not paying for growth,” Larivee said. “We’re just making sure the people who are benefiting are the people who are paying.”
Cities will now be able to charge developers for libraries, police stations, fire halls and community recreation centres if at least 30 per cent of the benefit from those new facilities goes directly to the new areas. The province is still writing regulations to ensure the cost to new homeowners is proportionate to the benefit.
“We’re not exactly sure how that’s going to work,” said Coun. Jim Stevenson, one of two Calgary councillors on the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association board. “We know that you just can’t lay a whole bunch of extra charges on the developer because then that gets passed on to the end homeowner.”
“There has to be a balance there,” Stevenson said. “We’re not sure exactly how that’s going to be but there will be something there to compensate (developers).”
Cities will also be able to take land, units or cash in lieu of units for affordable housing.
Morinville Mayor Lisa Homes, head of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, called the amendments a “great start.” The province still needs to legislate base infrastructure funding tied to inflation, she said. It needs to give municipalities alternative tax powers, such as the ability to charge a hotel tax in resort towns.
She’s disappointed the changes don’t address how school sites are assembled and used, either. The current wording still wouldn’t allow anyone to build seniors homes or a recreation centre connected to a school on reserve land, and doesn’t require the province to consult cities on which school projects move forward first.
Larivee said school-related changes may be added this fall after further negotiations with the school boards.
Al Kemmere, president of the Alberta Association of Districts and Counties, said the biggest challenge now is going to be “expectation management.”
Towns and cities need to realize their country neighbours rely on pipeline and telecommunication taxes to run their services and can’t easily subsidize their neighbours. But many counties and municipalities have already created voluntary cost-sharing agreements. Everyone will be watching for the detailed regulations, he said. “We’re hoping it never has to get to arbitration.”
[email protected]
[email protected] |
Star : Useful for creating 1:N topologies where there's a centralized device that others are especially interested in. For example, the host of an offline game, or the teacher's device in a classroom quiz app.
: Useful for creating 1:N topologies where there's a centralized device that others are especially interested in. For example, the host of an offline game, or the teacher's device in a classroom quiz app. Cluster: Useful for creating M:N topologies that allow for creating looser mesh-like networks. For example, a classroom app that supports forming ad-hoc project groups for realtime collaboration, or an offline hyper-proximity-based chat app.
The Weather Channel is building on-demand mesh networks in data-deficient areas to spread urgent weather warnings.
Hotstar enables offline media sharing in places with spotty/no internet connectivity (like on public transportation, airplanes, etc.)
GameInsight is using Nearby Connections to not only find nearby players, but also to run entire games offline.
Android TV is building a remote control app (powered by Nearby Connections) to simplify initial setup, and to enable subsequent second screen experiences.
Posted by Ritesh Nayak M, Product ManagerImagine walking into a hotel room and having the temperature set just right, your favorite sub-genre of progressive-math-rock playing in the background, and the TV urging you to continue binging on your saved guilty-pleasures watchlist. What if your phone's contact book could expand to merge with your spouse's when you're together, so you're never again put in the excruciatingly compromising position of having to ask for your mother-in-law's phone number (which you ought to have had on speed dial, in your favorites, and listed as an emergency contact)? Now imagine a world where you can drive up to an empty driveway or private parking space in a city like New York or San Francisco, and negotiate with that space to rent it out until its owner returns.The common thread among all these scenarios is being able to detect proximity to -- and being able to communicate with -- people, places, and things "near" you.At I/O this year, we spoke about a refresh to the Nearby Connections API that can provide high bandwidth, low latency, encrypted data transfers between nearby devices in a fully-offline P2P manner. Today we're announcing the availability of this API across all Android devices running Google Play services 11.0 and up.Nearby Connections uses WiFi, Bluetooth LE & Classic Bluetooth under the hood to discover and establish connections to nearby devices. It abstracts away the inherent complexity of these radios by leveraging the strengths of each, while circumventing their respective weaknesses. Aside from the obvious advantage of sidestepping the pain of dealing with the vagaries of these radios across different OS versions and devices, this abstraction enables seamlessly upgrading the bandwidth of a connection by switching between the radios as and when it makes sense, as well as getting invisible over-the-air updates to use new radio technology as it becomes available -- with no change whatsoever in the application code.At the heart of this API is a connection (with Unix-socket-like semantics) that you can use to transfer bytes, files, or streams of data. There are two supported connection topologies:As a part of the process of building this API we worked with a few partners, each with unique offline-data-transfer needs and environments. It's been great to see what they've built on top of early versions of this API, and their feedback has been invaluable in guiding us towards today's launch. Take a look at some of the cool things they're building:Now that the API is publicly available, we can't wait to see how you will use Nearby Connections in your applications. To get started, visit our developer site , check our code samples , and post any questions you have on Stackoverflow (tagged with google-nearby ). To stay up to date on the latest Android Nearby offerings (and our other Context-related APIs), please subscribe to our mailing list |
Most of us have an idea how strange the universe can be. We have heard of the unusual things that are out in the cosmos such as pulsars and quasars. We’ve also heard of how the fundamental laws of physics can break down through a black hole (in theory). But there are many, many more wild things that lurk deep in our universe. Some of the most extreme objects identified are known as “Magnetars.” Although not much is known about them, it is believed that magnetars are a type of neutron star that were made during a Supernova explosion, similar to that of a pulsar. They are one of the densest objects in the known universe. It is theorized that the dynamo mechanism may be the cause of their formation. Basically, if the spin, temperature and the magnetic field of a neutron star are within the right ranges it can convert the heat and rotational energy into Basically, if the spin, temperature and the magnetic field of a neutron star are within the right ranges it can convert the heat and rotational energy into very strong magnetic energy.
Although neutron stars and a magnetar are similar in formation they hold very different characteristics which sets them apart from each other. For instance, magnetars rotate at a very slower rate, usually once every 8 to 10 seconds (as opposed to one or so rotations a second for neutron stars). Another difference between a magnetar and a neutron star is that a magnetar emits a steady glow of x-rays with more radiant power than could be supplied by the rotation of a neutron star. The magnetic fields made by a magnetar are about 1,000 trillion that of the Earth’s magnetic field and can reach surface temperatures of 18 million degrees Fahrenheit. Unfortunately for the magnetar, this strong magnetic field decays within 10,000 years, which is a very, very short span of time for stars. When the magnetic force gets immensely strong it deforms the magnetars crust thus resulting in starquakes which lead to one of the most powerful gamma-ray flare-ups in the universe, outshining all of the stars in the galaxy for a few tenths of a second and powerful enough that, if it were just 10 light-years away, the burst would wipe out our ozone layer, causing mass extinctions. If you were to be unlucky enough to be just about a thousand miles from a magnetar, the magnetic force would warp the atoms in your body and the gravitational forces would literally tear you apart.
A magnetar just 100,000 miles away from the earth would wipe out all the data in every credit card in the world. Fortunately for us, magnetars are very, very rare. It is hypothesized that out of every ten supernovae, one becomes a magnetar. So far we have only been able to detect sixteen of these fascinating objects and with the help of the Chandra X-ray Telescope, astronomers are on the path to unlocking the secrets of these strange phenomenon and guide us deeper into the understandings of our universe in all its (incredible) weirdness. This APOD image from NASA came with the following caption in 2004: “Indicated on this infrared image of the galactic center region are positions of candidate magnetars — believed to be the strongest magnets in the galaxy. Classified by observers as Soft Gamma Repeaters (SGRs) and Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs), these cosmic powerhouses are likely city-sized, spinning, highly-magnetized neutron stars. How strong is a magnetar’s magnetic field? The Earth’s magnetic field which deflects compass needles is measured to be about 1 Gauss, while the strongest fields sustainable in earthbound laboratories are about 100,000 Gauss. A magnetar’s monster magnetic field is estimated to be as high as 1,000,000,000,000,000 Gauss. A magnet this strong, located at about half the distance to the Moon would easily erase your credit cards and suck pens out of your pocket”. |
Evansville-Vanderburgh County Central Dispatch has released the frantic and emotional 911 call that alerted authorities to Joelle Lockwood's rescue on Saturday afternoon.
Here is a transcript of the call. The audio from the call can be found on this page.
***
Operator: Evansville 911...
Candice Lockwood: Yes, I need to get a hold of Detective Mayhew. This is Candice Lockwood.
Operator: Okay, I don't think he's working today is there something I can help you with?
Candice Lockwood: Yes, he has been on my daughter's case, Joelle Lockwood. We have got her.
Operator: You have Joelle?
Candice Lockwood: Yes.
Operator: Where are you right now?
Candice Lockwood: 2953 Jefferson.
Operator: Is she okay?
Candice Lockwood: Yes, she's fine. We have not talked to her yet. A man found her and she's alive.
Operator: You're physically looking at her and she's okay?
Candice Lockwood: She's not physically injured right now.
Operator: Okay, this is your daughter right?
Candice Lockwood: Yes.
Operator: And what is your name?
Candice Lockwood.
Operator: Okay. I've got everybody on the way and they'll be there in just a minute.
Candice Lockwood: Thank you.
Thank you. Bye. |
The governing body had intended for the clampdown – aimed at preventing the discarded strips getting lodged in brakes and causing trouble – to come into force for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
But after concerns expressed by teams on race morning, the ban was originally delayed until Spain and was then put back until this weekend's Monaco race.
Drivers had been resigned to experimenting with ways to store the strips in the cockpits, or on pouches on their overalls, in a bid to store them during the race.
But a bigger issue emerged when questions were asked about complications that could be caused in fires by the plastic strips potentially burning through overalls.
The FIA accepted that such a situation would not be ideal, so teams have now been informed of a change of stance for the Monaco Grand Prix.
Mercedes executive director Paddy Lowe said: "For this race, we've been permitted to two tear-offs during the race itself, so I think that will be sufficient. I think there's a constant dialogue with the FIA to find a practical way forward with this."
F1 race director Charlie Whiting was due to discuss the matter with drivers during their regular post-practice briefing on Thursday night, when plans regarding what happens over the longer term are likely to be discussed. |
Every year, Maha Shivaratri is celebrated by those who follow Hinduism.
In every luni-solar month of the Hindu calendar, there is a Shivratri on the 13th night and 14th day, but the biggest celebration of the Hindu god Shiva comes once a year, in late winter – either in February or March – and before spring arrives.
Maha Shivaratri means ‘the great night of Shiva’, and will be celebrated this year on 24 February – but what is the festival all about and how do people mark the occasion?
What is the story behind it?
According to the most popular legend, during the great mythical churning of the ocean – known as Samudra Manthan, and conducted by gods and demons so that nectar could be obtained to make them immortal – a pot of poison emerged.
This poison was so potent that nobody was prepared to even touch it – it had the potential to burn the whole world.
The only one who could get rid of the poison was Lord Shiva, who agreed to consume it.
The poison was so deadly, that if any had entered Lord Shiva’s stomach – which represents the universe – the world would have been destroyed.
He held it in his throat, which then turned dark blue as the poison took effect, and became known as Neelkanth.
Maha Shivaratri is a day where Hindus acknowledge their thanks to Lord Shiva for protecting the world from this poison.
Indian Hindu devotees offer prayers to a Shiva Lingam, a stone sculpture representing the phallus of Hindu god Lord Shiva, to mark the Maha Shivaratri festival at the Shiva Mandir in Hyderabad on 17 February 2015 (Picture: Getty)
How do people honour the festival?
In India, major temples are attended during Maha Shivaratri, and the Mandi fayre is a particularly famous celebration, held for seven days.
There are many Shiva followers in central India, with the festival celebrated enthusiastically across the country.
In Nepal, there are various music and dance performances throughout the night, and holy rituals are performed.
Married women pray for their husbands’ well-being, and unmarried women pray they will have a husband like Shiva – who is seen as the ideal.
In Indo-Caribbean communities, Hindus spend the night in temple, offering jhalls (an offering of milk and curd, flowers, sugarcane and sweets) to Lord Shiva.
A boy dressed as Hindu God Shiva participates in a procession eve of Maha Shivaratri Festival on 26 February 2014 in Jammu, India (Picture: Getty)
What is eaten at the celebration?
It is traditional to fast during Maha Shivaratri, and many eat simple foods that are easily digested, such as milk, yogurt, fruit, almonds, peanuts, cashews and honey.
Some people go on a diet of fruits and milk, while others don’t take in anything for the entire festival. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.