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The buzz around the meadow is the High Queen seeks an heir. A grand test of skill and dexterity will be held to determine which fledgling queen will inherit the throne! So assemble your hive and make a beeline for the meadow!
BEEEEES! is a buzzing real-time dice rolling game for 2-5 players where brains matter as much as speed. Players frantically roll dice to claim hive tiles in front of them and their neighbors. The player with the most dice on the tile strategically places it into their burgeoning hive. At the end of the game, the player that has built the best hive wins!
BEEEEES! is a real-time, dice-rolling game for 2–5 players that plays in under 15 minutes designed by Marcus Ross. For more information, we encourage you to view the videos directly below, or simply read our draft rulebook here.
This deluxe version of the game includes components that will not be available in the initial retail release. It includes components that allow up to 6 players, including player dice, 16 hive tiles, and more!
BEEEEES! is the 35th project from the combined teams behind Indie Boards and Cards & Action Phase Games . With the successful execution of our first 34 projects, we have become experienced publishers with a reputation for great games (in design and production) that are delivered in a timely fashion.
is the 35th project from the combined teams behind . With the successful execution of our first 34 projects, we have become experienced publishers with a reputation for great games (in design and production) that are delivered in a timely fashion. BEEEEES! was designed by the talented Marcus Ross and Cara Heacock . This game has undergone extensive testing and development to ensure the best possible experience. We are confident that this game will be in your collection for years to come.
was designed by the talented and . This game has undergone extensive testing and development to ensure the best possible experience. We are confident that this game will be in your collection for years to come. The game features incredible artwork and graphics from Cara Heacock , Josh Cappel , and Daniel Solis .
, , and . The deluxe option of BEEEEES! offers a lot of content for very little, all of which will not be in the initial retail release.
offers a lot of content for very little, all of which will not be in the initial retail release. All of the art assets are complete and ready for immediate upload after the project funds. Prices include US shipping.
This project is also EU & Canadian friendly.
Kickstarter is the world's largest funding platform for creative projects. Every month, tens of thousands of people pledge millions of dollars to creative projects in dozens of categories.
A person who supports a project is called a "backer." The process of giving money to this project is called a "pledge."
In return for your pledge, we (the creators of the campaign) are able to offer "rewards," depending on the amount you pledge. For example, if you pledge $24 to help back the project, we'll offer you a copy of the game along with any stretch goals we achieve as soon as it is manufactured.
You can become a backer in just three easy steps:
Step 1: Read through the pledge levels and rewards we're offering in the right sidebar of this page.
Read through the pledge levels and rewards we're offering in the right sidebar of this page. Step 2: Click the large, green "BACK THIS PROJECT" button to the right of the trailer video at the top of this page.
Click the large, green button to the right of the trailer video at the top of this page. Step 3: Enter your pledge amount, and complete the steps for filling in your information. This process takes just a few seconds! That's it! It's really that simple! Thank you for backing!
Once you've backed this project, we encourage you to share this page on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, and share with your friends and family. Also, be sure to like Action Phase Games on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for real-time updates about this project and more!
HELPER BEE: (Pledge $1 or more) Your continued support will help the hive.
(Pledge $1 or more) Your continued support will help the hive. KILLER BEE: (Pledge $24 or more) One copy of the base game with all of the stretch goals. Shipping included in the US. Other shipping pledge rates based on location. For additional copies in the US and international, check our rates below.
(Pledge $24 or more) One copy of the base game with all of the stretch goals. Shipping included in the US. Other shipping pledge rates based on location. For additional copies in the US and international, check our rates below. QUEEN BEE: (Pledge $29 or more) One copy of the deluxe game, which includes the 6th player dice, tiles, bee line card, more helper bees and the dry erase marker and scoreboard with all of the stretch goals.
(Pledge $29 or more) One copy of the deluxe game, which includes the with all of the stretch goals. Shipping included in the US. Other shipping pledge rates based on location. For additional copies in the US and international, check our rates below.
Our plan is to have BEEEEES! available at Gen Con. While our current production schedule looks like Kickstarter rewards will ship out before Gen Con, it may be the case that we have games at Gen Con before the Kickstarter backer copies are sent. It may also be the case that we are unable to get games to Gen Con in time. I wish we were able to absolutely guarantee results, but we simply know that we can't make such commitments when so many other parties are involved in the process.
If you want Gen Con or Essen pickup – DO NOT PLEDGE FOR THIS PROJECT – all you have to do is sign up for our Gen Con email list by giving an email address here or the Essen email list by giving an email address here. Shortly before each event, we will ask you what you would like to reserve for Thursday pickup (NOTE: we cannot handle prepaid reservations or hold items past Thursday). All the specials & promo items will be available in the games we bring to Gen Con and Essen – your support is very valuable to Indie Boards and Cards & Action Phase Games and we look forward to seeing you again this year with lots of great new games. |
Everybody seems to be making battery packs for phones — including Apple. Not so much for the Apple Watch, which gets a day of power for most people but can die if you do a lot of exercising. Griffin's latest accessory is designed to solve for that. It's called the "Travel Power Bank" and it's essentially a little keychain battery with an inductive charging pad for the Apple Watch. It has a simple, square design that isn't exactly pretty, but it's at least unobtrusive enough to chuck in your carry-on or on your keychain just in case you need it. Griffin says that its 800 mAh battery is good for four charges of the Apple Watch — and that you can also use it as a travel charger.
In theory, that second feature means you have one less cable to tote around with you when you travel — but note that it looks like Griffin's battery juices up via microUSB, so you might need an extra cable anyway. Then again, there's a better-than-even chance that the battery pack you bought for your iPhone charges via microUSB anyway. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's capable of charging anything other than the Apple Watch.
The Travel Power Bank will retail for $69.99 and will be available for sale in the second quarter of 2016. As for when we'll see phones and watches that don't require us to tote around external batteries, well, let's just say that nobody expects that to happen this year. |
Fox News host Sean Hannity questioned when Hillary Clinton would be indicted after it was reported Friday that the first charges of the investigation led by special counsel Robert Muller had been approved by a federal grand jury.
“When will @HillaryClinton be indicted?” Hannity tweeted Friday night.
When will @HillaryClinton be indicted? — Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) October 28, 2017
Mueller is leading the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign had any ties to the Kremlin. A federal judge ordered the charges to remain sealed and sources told CNN that the plan is to have anyone charged be taken into custody as soon as Monday.
Hannity, a staunch supporter of President Trump, then accused Mueller of working in conjunction with the media and mentioned the "Uranium One" scandal, which is being investigated by the House Intelligence Committee and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee over the Obama administration's approval of the 2010 sale of a Canadian mining company to Rosatom, a Russian nuclear power company.
“Guess;Mueller and Media working hand in hand,” he said in a separate tweet. “Media to be tipped off. Mueller was FBI Director Who knew of Russian crimes before Uranium one.”
Guess;Mueller and Media working hand in hand. Media to be tipped off. Mueller was FBI Director Who knew of Russian crimes before Uranium one — Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) October 28, 2017
Mueller served as FBI director from 2001 to 2013.
A report from the Hill last week revealed that the FBI has evidence dating as far back as 2009 that nuclear industry officials from Russia had been involved in bribery, kickbacks, extortion, and money laundering that benefited Russian President Vladimir Putin's atomic energy project expansion with the U.S.
The report also verified that Russians sent millions of dollars to a Clinton charitable foundation from 2009 to 2013 while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state.
Hannity also called this, along with the latest revelations on the so-called “Trump dossier," a “distraction.
“Left needs a dramatic change in the narrative!! Uranium One, Fusion GPS dossier, all out this week. This is a distraction! TICK TOCK....,” Hannity tweeted.
Left needs a dramatic change in the narrative!! Uranium One, Fusion GPS dossier, all out this week. This is a distraction! TICK TOCK.... — Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) October 28, 2017
Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm hired by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, funded former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who then wrote the dossier.
The Washington Examiner reported Friday evening that the conservative news outlet Washington Free Beacon was the original funder of Fusion GPS's anti-Trump opposition research project before the Democrats came on board. |
A cycle starts when hype of a technology leads to big investments in that technology, which in turn creates more hype. Real-world use of the technology by customers can get lost in the cycle.
Investors and vendors in the fintech industry have heaped plenty of hype on “mobile wallets” — products, often built by wireless carriers and banks, with a stored value of money accessed via a mobile device that can be used for a range of financial services, such as peer-to-peer transactions, merchant payments and money lending.
Here is one data point to cut through the hype around mobile wallets: If you took a random set of 100,000 transactions in the money transfer business I run, roughly 19 of them will involve mobile wallets. A whopping 0.019 percent of these customers — generally tech-savvy folks using a mobile fintech service — use the service to send money to mobile wallets.
A few years ago, I too was fascinated by mobile wallets. Before founding a mobile remittance company, I worked at Barclays Bank in Kenya — the country that’s the “shining star” of mobile wallet adoption. During my time there I understood the key factors that led to widespread use of Safaricom’s M-Pesa mobile wallet. Safaricom’s mobile wallet may have been a good or poor technology product, but that’s not what mattered. It succeeded because Safaricom owned 81 percent of the mobile customers in Kenya and because it operated a financial service in a favorable regulatory environment — Safaricom was partially owned by the Kenyan government.
These conditions don’t exist in the vast majority of other markets. Mobile carriers around the world have tried to leverage their relationships with handset makers and mobile customers, but have failed fundamentally because the deck is rarely stacked in their favor as it was in Kenya. We’ve seen this with mobile wallets pushed by carriers in the Philippines, the U.K. and even the short-lived joint venture of three carriers that built a mobile wallet called Softcard in the United States.
Amazingly, we’ve allowed this old metaphor — the wallet — to not only creep into the product’s user interface, but to define the entire segment of the fintech industry and the way these products are used by customers. The metaphor of the wallet isn’t serving a real purpose any more than the shutter sound of your phone’s camera.
So if carrier-backed mobile wallets are failing more often than not, what could help mobile wallets go mainstream? Less involvement by mobile carriers and banks, and more knowledge about customers in developing countries.
And the news is getting worse for mobile carriers. The rise of the smartphone in the developing world will accelerate the move away from carrier- and bank-dominated mobile wallets (see figure below from Mary Meeker’s 2015 Internet Trends Report).
In the next five years, carriers will continue to lose their leverage with smartphone makers and, more importantly, mobile customers. This disintermediation is happening. Smartphones are now being sold directly to customers by the companies that built them — even using monthly payment plans to reflect the models used by carriers. Companies that don’t look anything like carriers and banks will gain new reach and relationships with mobile customers.
The metaphor of the wallet isn’t serving a real purpose any more than the shutter sound of your phone’s camera.
These new companies will reimagine the bundle of financial services that make up mobile wallets and parse them out to their customers as part of innovative insurance, micro-lending, merchant payment and other apps. Apps like WeChat will grow and deliver new financial services. The apps won’t have the logos of banks or the backing of mobile carriers. The technology companies that build them won’t have the billing and banking relationships with customers that the carriers and banks do, but they’ll have a deep understanding of how people use smartphones. This will spur them to compete purely to win customer satisfaction.
Disintermediation will level the playing field among new entrants and entrenched carrier and banking competitors. Instead of advancing the status quo, disintermediation of mobile carriers and banks will lead to mobile financial services that solve real problems for customers.
Future mobile wallet apps won’t have a leathery wallet user interface, they won’t be found in the “mobile wallet” section of app stores and investors who back them may not even realize they’re betting on what emerged from the mobile wallet hype. |
A pair of rallies — one in support of President Donald Trump, another in opposition — are expected to hit the Woodstock Square this Saturday.
A Spirit of America rally organized by supporters of the president is planned for noon Saturday, March 4, in the Park in the Square. Countering that event are plans for a Hate Has No Home in Woodstock rally at 11:30 a.m. the same day. That rally is set to circle the sidewalks of the Square.
Organizers of both events, which are part of broader nationwide movements, said they’re aiming to put forth positive messages.
“I saw these [Spirit of America rallies] were popping up, and I wanted to get on board, because there’s so much negativity,” said Teresa Kopec, a McHenry County resident and Spirit of America organizer. She said the goal is to provide the president’s supporters with an event where they can show appreciation for his policies.
She said the rally will be patriotic and suggested that attendees “keep a positive tone.”
“It’s not a left or right thing,” Kopec said. “This is a nonpartisan event, so everybody who wants to come out and support Trump and his policies and putting America first again, that’s all it’s about. We’re happy he’s putting America first, we’re happy he’s securing our borders and bringing back jobs.”
The event’s keynote speaker will be former Congressman Joe Walsh, a conservative radio talk show host.
Organizers of Hate Has No Home in Woodstock said they intend to counter the message from Trump’s supporters by rallying opponents of his policies.
“These Spirit of America rallies do not necessarily stand for us or represent our community,” said Woodstock’s Crystal Squires, a Hate Has No Home in Woodstock organizer. “Our community is very diverse, and we didn’t want those minorities to feel like they weren’t welcome here.”
Participants in the Hate Has No Home in Woodstock rally will gather in front of the Old Courthouse and Sheriff’s House, 101 N. Johnson St., before marching around the perimeter of the Square.
“I’m encouraging people to bring positive, respectful signs,” Squires said. “No anti-Trump signs. If you’re going to bring a sign, bring one that shows support for issues that you support, not against them or what they believe in.”
Like the Spirit of America rally, organizers of the Hate Has No Home in Woodstock rally described the event as nonpartisan. |
To recap, tonight we’ve been discussing Sen. McCain’s bizarre interview in which he appeared not to know who Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero was and, in an effort to wing it, assumed he must be another left-wing, anti-American leader from Latin America. In the Spanish press analysis of the interview, at least, many seem uncertain whether McCain even knows where Spain is, though that strikes me as a bit excessive.
Just how this will get played in the American press will be interesting to see because it cuts to two of McCain’s key vulnerabilities — the first being his apparently rather shaky foreign policy experience if can’t identify the leader of a major NATO ally and the second being what I guess we would call declining mental acuity.
Now, bear in mind that so far we’ve only been able to clearly hear the audio of the interview in the translations provided by the Spanish radio station that conducted the interview. But the interview, which was conducted entirely in English, was recorded. I’d assume that if this story gets any traction some media outlet here will prevail on the Spanish news organization to release the English language recording of the interview.
All of the Spanish language speakers I’ve heard from who’ve listened to the interview think there’s no doubt that McCain just got confused and didn’t know who Zapatero was or possibly didn’t even know where Spain was. But again, in the released audio, you just hear the translator, with the original English sufficiently far in the background as to be largely inaudible. So we probably won’t know just what happened until we hear the original. |
Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s pick for education secretary, greets Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) before her Jan. 17 confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Betsy DeVos, the Michigan billionaire President Trump nominated to be education secretary, wrote a letter to a senator about the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. What she said in that letter is very telling about her education priorities.
DeVos wrote the letter to Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, after a Jan. 17 confirmation hearing in which DeVos revealed a lack of understanding of basic education issues, including IDEA.
[Six astonishing things Betsy DeVos said — and refused to say — at her confirmation hearing]
A strong supporter of school choice, DeVos is perhaps the most controversial of Trump’s Cabinet picks. Supporters say she wants to provide new educational opportunities for students, and DeVos has said she wants to support all education options, including traditional public schools. Critics, however say that her years-long advocacy for charter schools and vouchers is really part of a movement to privatize public education. Some groups representing Americans with disabilities have come out against her nomination, saying she is no friend of students with disabilities.
IDEA requires public schools to provide free and appropriate education to all students with disabilities. During the hearing, DeVos said that states should have the right to decide on IDEA enforcement, suggesting she didn’t realize it was a federal law that required states to follow its mandates.
Watch the full exchange between Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for education secretary, at her confirmation hearing. (Reuters)
When Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) quizzed her about implementation of IDEA, she said, “I think that’s an issue that’s best left to the states.” Later, when Sen. Margaret Wood Hassan (D-N.H.) told her that IDEA is a federal civil rights law and asked DeVos whether she stood by her statement that it was up to the states to follow it, DeVos responded, “Federal law must be followed where federal dollars are in play.” Hassan then asked, “So were you unaware when I just asked you about the IDEA that it was a federal law?” DeVos responded, “I may have confused it.”
[Betsy DeVos apparently ‘confused’ about federal law protecting students with disabilities]
Days later, DeVos wrote a letter to Isakson trying to explain her position on IDEA. The letter raises new questions about her priorities.
DeVos wrote in the letter (see text below) that she understands IDEA is a federal law and that she is “eager to bring a sense of urgency” to enforcing it. She said that she wants schools to strengthen student IEPs, which are Individual Education Programs that spell out special-education learning goals and needed services/accommodations.
[DeVos says she will protect students with disabilities, but advocates aren’t convinced]
She then said she wants to provide students with disabilities more educational opportunities — and praised a voucher program that helps students with disabilities attend private school funded with taxpayer dollars.
“One additional strategy I will pursue is to look for ways to increase access by students with disabilities to a broader range of educational options. I have seen exciting changes in students with disabilities when they attend schools that meet their needs. My friends, Sam Myers and his mother Tera, attended my confirmation hearing last week. Sam, who has Down syndrome, was a Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship recipient. The program exemplifies how states can — and do — implement the federal law and use their flexibility to ensure parents can choose the learning environment in which their children with disabilities will achieve and thrive. “I am eager to bring a sense of urgency around all of these issues: implementation and enforcement of IDEA at federal, state and local levels; improving the quality of IEPs; and expanding the conversation about school choice opportunities for parents of students with disabilities.”
She doesn’t talk specifically about helping traditional public schools — which educate the vast majority of America’s schoolchildren — improve their special education programs or how they implement IDEA.
Rather, she praised the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship program in Ohio, which gives public funds to eligible K-12 students who have IEPs to attend the private school of their choice. That program, as well as many other voucher programs, require participating families to agree to give up special education due-process rights they are given under the IDEA law.
In her exchange with Kaine during the hearing, she referred to a Florida voucherlike program, saying that parents like it, but she didn’t mention that parents who agree to participate also have to give up legal rights to accept money for tuition.
Hassan focused on this issue in the statement she issued on Thursday saying she would not support DeVos’s nomination:
“While I’m glad Mrs. DeVos clarified that she is no longer confused about whether the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is a federal law and was able to define the basic tenets of this law, her letter does nothing to reassure me that she will enforce the IDEA or honor our commitment to ensuring that all students receive a free and appropriate public education. In addition, Mrs. DeVos failed to address the original question I posed to her in her confirmation hearing, which was about why she is comfortable with voucher programs that force parents and students to sign away their rights under IDEA. “Between her lack of experience with public education, her support for diverting taxpayer dollars to private schools without accountability requirements, and her lack of understanding of the challenges facing students with disabilities, Mrs. DeVos has shown herself to be completely unqualified for this position — and her recent letter has only reinforced that she is unfit to serve as Secretary of Education. I will vote against Mrs. DeVos’ nomination and I urge my colleagues to do the same.”
The American Association of People with Disabilities issued a statement saying in part:
The mission of the Department of Education must be to advance a national system of quality public education and protect the rights of all children, including children with disabilities, within that system. Ms. DeVos’ testimony during her confirmation hearing, together with her lengthy record of supporting the diversion of public tax dollars to private schools that limit the rights of students with disabilities, indicate that as Secretary she would undermine that critical mission….
Denise Marshall, executive director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA) issued a statement that said in part:
“It’s clear that Betsy DeVos is not, nor has ever been an advocate for children with disabilities. The fact that she didn’t understand the basics about education concepts or the three essential federal education laws is embarrassing and her lack of knowledge on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is appalling. We are alarmingly concerned. Furthermore, she advocates for vouchers writ large — as if they can solve every family’s dilemma.”
Here’s the letter DeVos sent to Isakson: |
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Monday, April 18, 2016 arraigned one Marco Antonio Ramirez alongside his companies-Eagle Ford Instalodge Group LP and USA Now LLC-before Justice Peter O. Affen of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court, sitting in Maitama, Abuja on an eight-count charge bordering on obtaining money by false pretence to the tune of $2.3m.
Marco Ramirez, an American national docked by EFCC for financial crime
According to the complainants, Prince Ejikeme Ubanagum Mgbemena and Frank Ifaluyi Egbon, the suspect allegedly assured them that he would invest the money under the Citizenship and Immigration Services Employment Based Fifth Preference (EB-5).
The complainants further alleged that the suspect promised to provide American Green Card for members of their families below 18 years.
Count one reads:
“That you Marco Anthonio Ramirez, being the Manager of Eagle Ford Instalodge Group LP and USA NOW LLC and you EAGLE Ford Instalodge Group LP and USA Now LLC on or about 21st of May, 2013 in Abuja within the jurisdiction of this honourable court with intent to defraud obtained through an account titled Eagle Ford Instalodge Group LP domiciled at Well Fargo Bank USA the sum of Fifty- Five Thousand United States Dollars ($55,000) from one Ejikeme Ugbanagum Mgbemena under the false pretence of investing for him under the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Employment Based Fifth Preference (EB-5) Regional Center Program with pretence you knew was false and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 1(2) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act, 2006 and punishable under Section 1(3) of the same Act.’’
The accused person pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In view of his plea, the prosecution counsel, Samuel A. Ugwuegbulam, asked the court for a date for trial.
Consequently, Justice Affen adjourned the case to May 21, 2016 for hearing of bail application and ordered the accused to be remanded in the EFCC custody.
Wilson Uwujaren
Head, Media & Publicity
18th April, 2016 |
Feds: Food stamps bought butts, bongs and hookahs
Federal officials say a Waterbury food store has a lucrative business in food stamp fraud and illegally trafficking in food stamp benefits. Three workers at the Willow Street store allowed customers redeem their food stamp benefits for cash and other ineligible items, including cigarettes, glass pipes, bongs and hookahs. The store operators often charged a premium for these illegal transactions. It is estimated that WB Trade Fair Grocery could lawfully redeem at most between $120,000 to $240,000 per year in food stamp benefits. However, during this approximately 18-month period, food stamp redemptions at the store totaled approximately $3.2 million. less Federal officials say a Waterbury food store has a lucrative business in food stamp fraud and illegally trafficking in food stamp benefits. Three workers at the Willow Street store allowed customers redeem ... more Photo: Paul Buckowski / Albany Times Union Photo: Paul Buckowski / Albany Times Union Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Feds: Food stamps bought butts, bongs and hookahs 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
There are some things you can’t buy with food stamps, like alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, paper goods and soaps.
Glass pipes, bongs, hookahs and selling food stamps for cash are also on the list.
Federal officials say from November 2014 until this June, three workers at a Waterbury food store ran a multi-million scheme in food stamp fraud and illegally trafficking in food stamp benefits.
But, there was a red flag that got federal officials’ attention.
It was: Given the stock of eligible food items at the store, the number of registers, and the customer amenities, it is estimated that WB Trade Fair Grocery could lawfully redeem - at most - between $120,000 to $240,000 per year in food stamp benefits. However, during this approximately 18-month period, food stamp redemptions at the store totaled approximately $3.2 million, U.S. Attorney Deirdre M. Daly said in a release.
Three workers at the Willow Street store allowed customers redeem their food stamp benefits for cash and other ineligible items, including cigarettes, glass pipes, bongs and hookahs. To increase their profits, the operators often charged a premium for these illegal transactions.
The federal food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service and uses federal tax dollars to subsidize low-income households to provide them with the opportunity to have a more nutritious diet by increasing their food-purchasing power. SNAP recipients purchase eligible food items at retail food stores through the use of an Electronic Benefits Transfer card, and SNAP benefits may be accepted by authorized retailers only in exchange for eligible items.
The program is designed so that the total amount of each purchase is electronically transferred to the retailer’s designated bank account.
On Thursday, three workers at the store were arrested on charges of federal food stamp fraud and illegally trafficking in food stamp benefits.
They include Tallat Mahmood, 63, of Waterbury; Raul Carlos Monarca, 40, of Waterbury; and Tahir Shahzad, 32, of Harrison, N.Y. If convicted, the defendants each face a maximum term of imprisonment of five years, a fine of up to $250,000 and full restitution to the government.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam in New Haven ordered Mahmood and Shahzad to surrender there passports and Monarca was detained. |
The FDA wants 15-year-old girls to get morning-after birth-control drugs over the counter, without the knowledge or consent of either parents or doctors. President Obama says he approves of this decision. But birth-control activists say it doesn’t go far enough. They want the requirement for teenage purchasers to show photo ID dropped, and they’d really like to see 11-year-old girls getting these pills.
Behind this drive to shower the Tiger Beat set with birth control supplies lies the conviction that young kids are sexy beasts whose urges cannot be controlled or suppressed. Fifteen, thirteen, eleven years old… they’re all swingers now, and nothing can be done to slow them down. All we can do is provide kids with the supplies necessary to cut down on sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy. The religious hangups and moral standards of parents cannot be allowed to interfere with the wisdom of the State in this matter.
(The ability of previous generations to set higher standards is an inscrutable mystery, which today’s birth control activists would rather not discuss. It’s also considered very bad form to point out that the sex partners of those young teenage girls might be considerably older than fifteen, and grateful for easy access to contraceptives that support their “lifestyle.”)
This all seems a bit inconsistent with the philosophy of socialized medicine, in which the behavior of citizens must be controlled to reduce health care costs. Individual health is supposedly a matter of public concern, because unhealthy behavior comes at the expense of the general public. The fit are unfairly expected to pay the freight for the fat. With this in mind, why is the same State that tinkers with restaurant menus, and takes other steps to either warn citizens away from unhealthy meal options or forbid them outright, so intent on facilitating a profoundly unhealthy lifestyle for children?
The answer can be found in the Left’s drive to hunt down and destroy all that remains of traditional sexual morality, because it’s a barrier to the proper relationship they envision between citizens and the State. The result is a hyper-sexualized but asexual world, in which the differences between men and women have been eliminated. This is a huge undertaking, so it’s important to get cracking when citizens are still young and impressionable.
The traditional understanding of sexual relations emphasizes the profound differences between men and women. They are not in any sense interchangeable. They have a unique need for one another, and different needs from society. The union of men and women is not seen as exclusively serving to produce and raise children, but child-rearing is exceedingly difficult without married men and women working together.
It seems like a laughable understatement to observe that pregnancy is one of the greatest differences between men and women. Technology and culture have alleviated most of the other life-shaping distinctions between the sexes. Male strength, for example, is obviously meaningful in professional sports or military endeavors, but it’s no longer a prerequisite for general career success or survival. Nevertheless, pregnancy remains the unique burden of women. That doesn’t mean it should be the unique responsibility of women.
This is the fundamental truth behind traditional sexual customs, which no amount of feminist social engineering has ever been able to erase. Pregnancy is the responsibility of both partners. It takes two people to make a baby, but only one of them has to carry it to term. The male partner in this endeavor often decides to walk away, leaving the woman alone to face childbirth and all that follows. Irresponsible men clearly see this as an attractive option.
The past half-century has seen a vast project, financed with gigantic amounts of public money, to make it a socially acceptable option. The power of society to shape individual behavior is enormous. Across a population of millions, widely-understood social expectations result in tectonic shifts of behavior. Not everyone cares what society thinks of their behavior, of course, but a lot of people do.
The traditional understanding of sex as an activity that binds men and women together, giving them different responsibilities toward each other, is very conducive to healthy social development and personal independence. The latter might seem counter-intuitive at first – the whole point of the “sexual revolution” was to give people sex without consequence so they could be more independent, right? – but consider the independence an intact family grants to its children as they enter the adult world. The emotional and financial support such a family offers its children is invaluable. Families are the gateway out of poverty; study after study has found no government program able to match an intact family’s ability to steer kids away from crime, drugs, and other dead ends. Families that stick together also have a better chance of avoiding dependency on government programs.
It is foolish to accept the Left’s insistence that we trade that sort of independence for a world in which we enjoy unlimited sexual license, beginning at a very young age, but every other aspect of our lives is controlled by the State. Distracting the public from poor governance with bread and circuses is a very old tactic, is it not? American culture today is filled with sexual distractions, including ongoing efforts to sexualize increasingly young children. Innocent childhood is erased, to the profit of certain industries, and the detriment of the family.
And even as childhood is cut down, adolescence is extended into our twenties and thirties. That’s how to reconcile the apparent contradiction between 26-year-olds officially treated as “children” by ObamaCare, and the drive to make morning-after birth control pills as readily available as candy to girls of fifteen (and younger!) The Left wants to mutate children into teenagers it can pry away from their families as quickly as possible, then keep them dependent and easily-manipulated adolescents for as long as it can. An “adolescence” beginning as soon as girls can have sex, lasting until they’re finished paying off their student loans, would be just about perfect.
Killing off the family requires erasing the distinctions between men and women… and that’s easier to do if you get started when they’re boys and girls. The effort to wipe out the consequences of sex, and the natural understanding of how those consequences are different for the male and female partners, continues. When every man, woman, boy, and girl has the sexual appetites and morality of Sean Connery-era James Bond, the last barriers of family separating American citizens from the benevolent State will have been removed.
Unlike old-fashioned moms and dads, the State won’t hassle kids about restraining their sexual desires – have fun, do whatever turns you on, and if a little “accident” happens to slip past the equipment dispensed at school, just nip on down to the corner drugstore for a fix! Hopefully soon you won’t even have to bring your photo ID, so it won’t really matter how old you are.
When the kids grow up, they’ll discover all the ways the State does plan to hassle them, but if all goes according to plan, the coming generation will be too weak to resist. |
SOMETIMES relief makes triumph all the sweeter. That is how Hillary Clinton must feel after this week’s Democratic primary in New York, when she broke a losing streak by beating Bernie Sanders handily. She is now almost certain to be her party’s presidential candidate in November. After a 50-year slog through American politics, even the cautious Mrs Clinton was emboldened to declare that “Victory is in sight!”
Mrs Clinton is experienced. In an age of extremes she has remained resolutely centrist. Yet, rather than thrilling to the promise of taking the White House or of electing America’s first woman president, many Democrats seem joyless.
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And America as a whole is seething with discontent. It may dodge putting a populist, an ideological extremist or a socialist in the White House in 2017. But, if voters’ anger remains unabated, it will not do so for much longer. Mrs Clinton needs a bold plan to counter this popular frustration. Alas, judging by her economic policies so far, she is more inclined to tinker.
The not-a-fan belt
To gauge Mrs Clinton’s programme, start with the Clintonomics that her husband pursued in the mid-1990s. Broadly, it got the big things right by transforming a tax-and-spend party into one that took deficits seriously. Under Bill Clinton, the Democrats made peace with Wall Street and free trade, and agreed to ambitious welfare reform. Thanks to these sensible policies, and the fortuitous tailwind of higher productivity growth, the economy boomed and prosperity was shared.
America today is more divided; its economy is weaker and beset by problems. Since 2000 most workers’ incomes have stagnated, even as those of the richest have soared. Scarred by the financial crisis, battered by technological change and globalisation, less-skilled workers have fared worst. Many have left the labour force (54% of over-25s with only a high-school education are in work, down from 63% in 2000). An opioid epidemic is lowering their life expectancy.
The Democratic Party looks different, too. Mr Sanders, victor of seven of the past nine primaries, thinks the Wall Street banks are criminal and suggests that the only solution to America’s ills would be to start a revolution. Many younger voters seem to agree with him.
Faced with all this, what are Mrs Clinton’s ideas? A lesser candidate would have veered to the left. Yet, even as Mr Sanders has proposed a top rate of tax of almost 70% and wants to scrap the trade pact with Canada and Mexico, Mrs Clinton has largely stood her ground. When she sets out to create “strong growth, fair growth, and long-term growth”, her rhetoric is hard to fault. In her plans to make college more affordable, grant paid leave to parents, introduce a $12 federal minimum wage and increase infrastructure spending, she has the rudiments of an agenda that does not stray too far to the left (see article).
But next to the ills they are supposed to correct, Mrs Clinton’s solutions too often seem feeble. A typical Clinton speech on the economy contains some reflections on the tornadoes of globalisation and automation that have torn up opportunities for less-skilled workers, then culminates in a proposal to introduce a minuscule, two-year tax credit for companies to encourage profit-sharing schemes. This risks repeating the worst parts of 1990s Clintonomics, which added a slew of micro-measures to America’s over-complicated and inefficient tax code.
Sometimes, her policies are fiddly. Rightly fearing that some Wall Street banks are too big to fail, Mrs Clinton wants an extra tax on their debt. Making sure banks hold enough capital and scaling back the tax-deductibility of interest on all firms’ debt would do the job better and be simpler. Her plans for personal income tax, which would take the top federal rate to around 45%, are equally complex, as is a proposed change to tax on the capital gains of long- and short-term investors, which looks like a solution to a non-existent problem.
America's primary agenda: our interactive 2016 election calendar
Worst of all, Mrs Clinton sometimes ignores her own diagnosis. She accepts that the main reason many American workers have seen living standards fall since the 1990s is technology and, to a lesser extent, trade with China. But she goes on to advocate policies that focus on punishing cruel bosses for screwing their workers. And, rather than rethink how to help those who lose from trade, she wants to abandon beneficial new trade deals, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Mrs Clinton can be bold when she chooses. She has proposed reforms to criminal justice that would lead to fewer non-violent offenders ending up in jail. This has attracted criticism, because it underlines how, in the 1990s, she backed her husband’s hardline views on crime. In fact, she should be willing to overturn applecarts more often.
Don’t monkey-wrench around
A bigger plan to help American workers would start by boosting competition, both by slashing unnecessary regulations for small businesses and by ensuring that big firms no longer operate in protected markets. Losers from globalisation and technological change need more ambitious support, from wage insurance to retraining and help to relocate for work. A big expansion of the earned-income tax credit—a kind of negative income tax—would be a start. More generally, Mrs Clinton should aim for a tax system that is efficient as well as progressive by stripping out deductions, including popular ones like mortgage-interest relief.
To be clear, we are holding Mrs Clinton to a higher standard than other candidates. She has released more detailed plans than anyone else and made more effort to make the sums behind them add up. But she needs a compelling pitch because, if Americans concluded that the only way to bring radical change was to elect a Trump, Cruz or Sanders, it would represent a disastrous failure of the political centre. We are also asking her to be ambitious just when Washington has been plagued by gridlock and obstruction for its own sake. Yet the mess the Republican Party has got itself into may present Mrs Clinton with a chance to reshape the nation. What a shame if her ideas were too small to seize it. |
Pride of Detroit is counting down the top 10 Lions players of 2012, as voted on by readers of the site. More than 400 ballots were submitted, and today we are taking a look at the No. 4 player on the list.
No. 4 - LB Stephen Tulloch - 2,190 points
Despite not receiving a single first-place vote, the No. 4 player on the top 10 Lions of 2012 is linebacker Stephen Tulloch. He has only been with the Lions since last year, but he made a very positive impression on fans in that one season. He was included on 383 total ballots and ended up receiving 2,190 points. This was mainly thanks to the fact that he received a total of 244 votes for third, fourth or fifth.
At this time a year ago, the Lions' group of linebackers didn't look all that impressive. The NFL lockout was still going on, and when free agency eventually began, it was evident that the Lions needed to fill some of the holes that existed at the position. Tulloch was one of the free agents Lions fans wanted the most, but initially it didn't seem like he was going to end up signing with Detroit.
Surprisingly, shortly after things quieted down on the Tulloch front, he ended up signing a one-year deal worth $3.25 million with the Lions. The hope at the time was that Tulloch would ultimately end up signing something of the long-term variety with the Lions, and he did just that back in March of this year. Tulloch and the Lions agreed to a five-year deal worth $25.5 million, meaning Detroit has its starting middle linebacker in place for the foreseeable future.
The reason it was so important for the Lions to re-sign Tulloch this offseason is because of what he did in 2011. He started in all 16 games in the regular season and had 111 tackles, three sacks, five pass defenses, two interceptions and one touchdown. He became the quarterback of the defense and picked up where he left off from his days with the Tennessee Titans.
In 2012, the Lions will have all three of their starters at linebacker back. In addition to Tulloch, Justin Durant and DeAndre Levy are returning to the starting lineup, and the hope is that with a year together under their belt, they will take their game to a new level. If they do, you can bet Tulloch will be a big reason behind their success, which is why he was voted the No. 4 player on the top 10 Lions of 2012.
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Geneva: Despite the government’s Make in India programme, India continues to perform poorly in the “incidence and location of innovation" with international patent applications filed from the country dropping slightly to 1,423 last year—as compared to Japan’s 44,235, China’s 29,846 and South Korea’s 14,626 in the same period.
In 2014, India filed 1,428 international patent applications as against 42,381 by Japan, 25,548 by China and 13,117 by South Korea, according to the latest figures released by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
The US continued to dominate the world of innovation and inventions by filing 57,385 international patent applications last year. International patent applications under the WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) grew by 1.7% last year.
The US, Japan, China and South Korea remain the major drivers of international patent activity. The three Asian IP giants—Japan, China and South Korea—contributed 43% of growth, which is an “extraordinary development", according to Francis Gurry, WIPO’s director general.
“Global intellectual property applications, like those of patents, trademarks and industrial designs, provide a good indication of the incidence and location of innovation," Gurry said.
“We see through this indicator that while the US maintains its premier position, the geography of innovation continues to shift and to evolve, with Asia, and in particular Japan, China and the Republic of Korea, forming the predominant geographical cluster," he said.
But India remained a laggard and almost flat in the filing of patent applications over the past three years, in comparison to the three Asian giants.
Indian firms and research organizations filed 1,320 patent applications in 2013, 1,428 in 2014, and 1,423 in 2015.
While patent filings are a measure of the spread of science and technology in a country, patent protection ensures monopoly rights to the inventor. The PCT is the milking cow for the WIPO, which generates income to the tune of over $200 million for the services it renders to companies seeking patent protection in different markets.
Gurry said that India’s performance in the arena of innovation doesn’t amount to “stagnation". “From 2010 to 2015, the average growth rate of international patent applications from India was 2.2%, which is almost the same with the European countries over the same period," he said.
“I would not say stagnation; however, it is not the growth rate of China," he added.
As regards the factors responsible for India’s underperformance in innovation, Gurry said, “Innovation policy is a complex matter and it doesn’t produce immediate results."
Higher investments in research and innovation are essential to accelerate the pace of IP activities, he said, adding that “transmission of existing knowledge is the basis for the generation of new knowledge".
In India, investments in innovation policy generally produce results in the medium and long term and not overnight, according to Gurry.
“You don’t expect investments in research and development would skyrocket patent applications next year," he said.
The three top companies that filed the highest number of patent applications in 2015 were China’s Huawei Technologies with 3,898 patent applications, followed by US-based Qualcomm (2,442) and China’s ZTE Corp. (2,155).
In the field of technology, computer technology and digital communications accounted for the largest numbers of filings in 2015. Patent applications filed in computer technology were around 16,385, followed by digital communications, electronic machinery and medical technology.
India’s performance in the filing of trademark applications under the Madrid System remains poor with just 150 applications last year as compared to China’s 2,401 applications. Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG is among the top filers of trademarks with 197 applications last year. |
The NFL's Competition Committee is having a call to discuss all of the rule proposals brought forth by the teams. There are 13 rule proposals, 7 bylaw proposals, and 1 resolution.
The Patriots set the tone with four rule proposals and some are more interesting than others.
First, Belichick proposed the extension of the field goal posts to make them 5 feet longer. We can all point to 2012's regular season game against the Ravens where a last second field goal was counted for the Ravens as the ball went over the top of the posts. If the posts were longer, it would have been no good and the Patriots would have been able to hold on for a victory.
Belichick also prosposes the league move the extra point kick back to the 25 yard line. We've talked about the implications of this decision:
1) Over the past five seasons, kickers have converted 99.1% of extra points (XP), or an Expected Point Added (EPA) of 0.991. 2) Over the past five seasons, kickers have converted 76.3% of field goals from the 25 yard line. When widening the range to field goals to the 23-27 lines, for the sake of additional data points, you have a more likely target of 78.9%. If we're using this bench mark as the new placement for extra points, the proposed EPA of an XP will decrease to 0.789. 3) Over the past five seasons, there have been 283 two-point conversion attempts. They have succeeded 48.8% of the time, or an EPA of 0.975. You'll note how similar this value is to the extra point play. While going for the extra point is the easier call for coaches to make, coaches who ask for the two point conversion will, over time, can expect to score roughly the same amount of points. 4) So when breaking down the decision from a long term point of reference, it would seem that this discussion is for naught. Moving the XP line would reduce its value and actually make the two-point conversion the smarter play to attempt.
The third proposal is for the addition of cameras on the boundary lines to supplement the television angles. This is a smart move and should all for better determination of whether or not a player is considered in or out of bounds.
His fourth proposal is to allow every play except for a scoring play to be challenged. There are some finicky rules that cost coaches time outs (challenge flags on turnovers) and where the language is cloudy. I support the decision to make challenges less constrained and make it easier for challenges to be thrown.
Other teams have posed moving the kick off to the 40 yard line (aka: entirely eliminating kick offs), allowing personal fouls to be reviewed, and a centralized replay command center to prevent botched booth reviews.
A more interesting proposal includes the elimination of the 1 yard pick zone (in response to the Patriots and the Broncos offensive techniques).
A bylaw proposal to increase the number of players on the Injured Reserve with Designation to Return should be useful, if it passes. |
The Red Sox will immortalize David Ortiz when they retire his number in a pregame ceremony Friday night — a much deserved honor for a catalyst in ending the Curse of the Bambino in 2004 (and delivering two more World Series titles in 2007 and 2013).
The 10-time All-Star was the 2013 World Series MVP and led the majors with a 1.021 OPS in his final season in 2016. Not bad for a guy dumped by the Twins after the 2002 season and signed by the Red Sox a month later.
Ortiz's No. 34 will join Ted Williams' No. 9, Carl Yastrzemski's No. 8, Pedro Martinez's No. 45, Carlton Fisk’s No. 27 and Bobby Doerr's No. 1, among others, at Fenway Park. But where does Big Papi rank among the Red Sox legends?
Here's a sampling (stats include performance only with the Red Sox): |
Guests: John Mulaney John Mulaney Guests: Nick Kroll Nick Kroll Guests: Airto Moreira Airto Moreira
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Photo: Jesse Thorn
John Mulaney and Nick Kroll are well seasoned comedians who have made a name for themselves in many different forms of media. The two met at Georgetown University where they became friends and began creating sketch characters together.
Mulaney was a writer on Saturday Night Live for 6 seasons, where he helped developed many of the shows most recognizable characters. He has also worked as a stand-up comedian, leading to the release of three stand-up specials. He created, wrote, and starred in a semi-autobiographical sitcom called Mulaney which ran on the Fox network.
Kroll is best known for his work on FXX’s The League where he plays the character Rodney Ruxin. He began his career as a stand-up comedian, which led to his work as a writer on Chappelle’s Show and Human Giant. He created and starred in Kroll Show, which ran on Comedy Central for two years.
Jesse sits down with Mulaney and Kroll to discuss their new broadway play, Oh, Hello, the downfall of Mulaney, and how they created their favorite alter ego’s, Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland.
Mulaney and Kroll star as George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon respectively in their new show on Broadway called, Oh, Hello.
Photo: Jesse Thorn
Arito Moreira talks percussion, Jazz Fusion, and Miles Davis
Airto Moreira is a Brazilian born Jazz percussionist and drummer. He has worked as a professional musician since the age of 13, moving to New York in the late 1960’s where he helped develop the “Jazz Fusion” genre of music.
He sits down with Jesse to talk about Brazilian percussion methods, his move to America, and his experience playing with Miles Davis and other great Jazz legends.
Jesse talks about Brooklyn based rapper Desiigner’s newest single “Tiimmy Turner.” The track combines melody, rapping, and auto-tune to create a very unique Southern Trap record. |
Coldplay in 2008. (Stephan Craneanscki)
Until now.
Yesterday, Coldplay posted a a link to a “Freedom for Palestine” video by the band OneWorld that featured lyrics like ‘it could be you and your family/forced from your home and your history,’ and images of Israeli army checkpoints and the security fence, angering a large number of its Jewish and pro-Israel fanbase.
Within less than a day, there were 12,000 comments on their post, including promises to boycott the band and a Facebook group that demanded an apology to Israel.
Anti-Israeli fans also posted comments to support Palestine, such as “Zionism is racism” and “Israel is an apartheid state.”
Coldplay’s sound has been influenced by a number of political bands, such as U2, Filter, and Radiohead, but until now, the band has kept their songs and statements largely apolitical.
Yesterday, Glenn Beck responded to the song on his Fox News channel show, calling it “propaganda” and saying it was “important to look evil in the eye.” Beck then began to cry. Comedian Mark Thomas and musician Billy Bragg, however, gave the song their ringing endorsement.
After some Facebook users reported the URL to the song as “abusive,” the link was blocked by Facebook. But OneWorld quickly created a new site here.
Watch the video of “Free Palestine” below. |
Planes at Hamadan airbase in Iran. Moscow is letting Washington know that it considers the Russian-Iranian partnership its strategic priority and will develop it even in those areas that the United States believes are "gray zones." Photo courtesy of mil.ru
The appearance of Russian pilots at Iran's Hamadan airbase is no accident and is not related only to the liberation of Aleppo. It was preceded by an entire chain of events bearing witness to the formation of a completely new context in the eastern part of the Middle East.
This concerns the meeting of the "Caspian Troika" in Baku on Aug. 8, which set a new level of economic cooperation between Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan, as well as the Aug. 9 visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to St. Petersburg, which significantly reduced the tensions in bilateral relations between Moscow and Ankara, and the rapid launch of Russian-Iranian economic interactivity, primarily in the fields of transportation and energy.
In other words, by the time Russia and Iran began speaking of the air base, Moscow had already guaranteed itself a reliable political base and a package of agreements with Iran on economic and social issues. Consequently, this important military-political move was only natural, proving that Russia and Iran are trying to be the decisive players not only in the Syrian conflict but also in the entire Middle East.
A setback for Washington
Certainly, in the evolving situation the United States appears to be among the losers. The Russian-Iranian agreement on the Hamadan air base has demonstrated that Moscow does not consider Russian-American relations a top priority, or at least one for which it should sacrifice its tactical achievements and positions. Moreover, this shows that "the honeymoon" in American-Iranian relations has ended with a high degree of distrust toward Washington's policy, including towards its capacity to influence its close ally, Saudi Arabia.
The United States may have to prepare for the possibility of losing its "veto right" on the development of political and military relations with Iran, and not only with respect to Russia but also to other countries.
Iran's consent to have Russia deploy its military contingent on its territory is also a sign of Iran's understanding of how important it is for the country as a regional "power center" to resolve the Syrian conflict on its terms and not on those of the West.
RELATED Why Russia needs a military base in Iran
In this situation, the United States must blame its own incapacity to understand the "limits of compromise" on the part of its partners and competitors. Significantly, after Russia's deployment of its aviation to the Hamadan base, China, which for a long time had remained on the sidelines, seems to have decided to expand its assistance to the Assad government in Damascus. Here the issue is not so much about supporting the Syrian regime as it is about China's desire to participate in future political and economic processes.
What signal is Moscow sending?
If we are to speak about those political, or better, military-political messages that Russia has sent by beginning to use Iranian territory, we can find three interpretations.
The first is that Moscow is letting Washington know that it considers the Russian-Iranian partnership its strategic priority and will develop it even in those areas that the United States believes, from the viewpoint of the earlier international agreements on Iran, are "gray zones." This does not mean that Moscow is completely renouncing the consensus strategy that the U.N. Security Council suggested for restraining Iran's political-military ambitions, but surely this policy's revision is taking place right before our eyes. And if this experience is successful, moves that will lead to an unprecedented convergence between Iran and Moscow are also possible in the future.
The second is that Russia is disillusioned by the United States' vision of what constitutes "moderate" and "immoderate" opposition in Syria. Irritation with Washington's continuously unclear position had been accumulating for several months, and it was difficult not to notice it. It is possible that the United States has significantly miscalculated, overestimating Moscow's readiness to negotiate regarding the list of terrorist organizations. This miscalculation may substantially weaken the position of organizations relying on American help on the battlefield in Syria and consequently, in future peace regulations. In any case, if Russia and Assad, with Iran's help, obtain significant progress in Aleppo, the former negotiation model will have to be changed: A large part of the moderate opposition organizations will no longer have much power in Syria.
The third is that Russia believes that destroying the Syrian opposition in Aleppo is such a priority that it is willing to, at least temporarily, sacrifice its contacts with the United States and the European Union on the Syrian issue. The deployment of Russian jets at Hamadan and the drastic intensification of the bombings of the opposition in Aleppo is not only Moscow's attempt to lay down a new ace in the game with the West. Behind the move may lurk Russia's disillusion with the possibility of a political dialogue with the current White House and a readiness to postpone the dialogue for a future time, when a new administration will establish itself in Washington.
Dmitry Yevstafyev is an expert political analyst and professor at the Higher School of Economics National Research University in Moscow. This article originally appeared at Russia Beyond the Headlines. |
According to the recently released Forbes Magazine, over 4,000 people are relocating to Houston each month. Houston real estate is on a two-year tear of strong sales thanks to the influx of new Houston residents.
Why are so many people moving to Houston? Here are 10 great reasons.
Houston By Numbers: 10 Impressive Houston Trends
1. With 230% recovered jobs, Houston is the top city in terms of job creation.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that Houston is way ahead of every American city in employment rate. Over 200,000 new jobs are expected this year, putting Houston on top of the “Ten Best Metros” list. Houston’s unemployment rate (5.9%) is almost two percent lower than the national level (7.5%).
2. Houston’s $75,256 average wage is tops in the nation (including cost-of-living adjustment).
Houston’s cost of living stretches the city’s median paycheck better than any US city. Even high-profile cities like New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco pale in comparison to Houston due to the cheaper consumer prices and services, utilities and transportation costs. Most importantly…
3. Houston has one of the lowest median home price to median household income ratio (2.9).
The Houston ratio of average home price to average annual household income is 2.9. The 2.9 ratio is surprisingly low considering Houston’s dynamic urban region. As a comparison, San Francisco homes for sale go 6.7 times the median local household income.
4. Houston has 2nd most number of Fortune 500 companies in the US.
Second only to New York, Houston has 22 Fortune 500 companies. The list includes Conoco Phillips, Marathon Oil, Sysco, Apache, Halliburton, etc. The city’s firm hold on the energy and industrial sectors further strengthen the local economy and Houston’s ability to create more jobs long-term.
5. Houston’s entertainment hubs are creeping up the country’s “most exciting places to go” scale.
Houston’s restaurants and watering holes are gaining popularity across all major networks. New York Times even gifted Houston favorites’ Oxheart and Underbelly with remarkably great reviews, with resident food critic calling the city “one of the country’s most exciting places to eat.” Galleria, Downtown, and other Houston Inner Loop areas also carry numerous exciting entertainment establishments.
6. Houston’s Texas Medical Center has the world’s largest concentration of health care.
With 21 hospitals, 8 academic and research institutions, and 50 total related organizations, the Texas Medical Center is the largest medical center in the world. The Center is home to the best doctors in the field and are even working to cure 5 types of cancer.
7. Houston’s 19 total museums in a 1.5 mile radius make it a hub for arts and culture.
Houston’s Museum District is home to 19 museums all housing various exhibits centered around culture and arts. For instance, the Museum of Fine Arts is among the largest museum’s in the nation. It also boasts of one of the best collections of American decorative art and furniture.
8. With 50,632 acres of parks, Houston is one of the “greenest” metropolitan cities.
Houston has the most number of parks out of the country’s top 10 metropolitan areas. The Memorial Park is one of the largest parks in the US and is home to miles of jogging trails snaking through a tree-roofed section of the city.
9. Houston is home to some of the smartest people in the nation.
Thanks to the University of Houston and Rice University, Houston’s higher education is gaining more respect. The University of Houston has roughly 41,000 enrolees, and was recently elevated to Tier One status as a research university by the Carnegie Foundation. Ranked 17th in the nation, Rice University carry competitive programs in applied sciences.
10. Houston home sales jumped 17% from last year.
Sales continue its strong push, marked by the 17% surge compared to last year. Currently on a two-year roll, homes in Houston continue to soar with record-breaking numbers of single-family, condos and townhouses sales.
Useful Real Estate Resources For Houston Homeowners: |
AUGUSTA — Leaders of Maine’s Indian tribes described the 37-year-old agreement between the state and tribal governments as “fractured and broken” during a meeting Thursday with lawmakers that highlighted longstanding tensions over sovereignty.
The five chiefs of Maine’s tribes – the Penobscots, the Passamaquoddies at Indian Township and Point Pleasant, the Aroostook Band of Micmacs and the Houlton Band of Maliseets – as well as dozens of tribal members gathered at the State House for a presentation on a report examining the 1980 agreement to resolve land claims against the state. Nearly 40 years after Congress approved the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, the tribes and state are still battling in the courts or at the State House over water-quality standards, sustenance fishing rights and other issues.
Speaking to members of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, Penobscot Chief Kirk Francis said the settlement was intended to be a “modern-day treaty” that would promote tribal self-government. But in the tribes’ view, the federal settlement and accompanying Maine Implementing Act adopted by the state have “failed” as the state regularly attempts to assert jurisdiction over tribal matters.
WILLING TO FIGURE OUT SOLUTIONS
“We have a very fractured and broken settlement agreement that tends to lead to a very fractured relationship,” said Francis, whose tribe withdrew its representative to the Legislature two years ago to protest the strained relations. “And quite frankly, if we don’t take the steps to improve that and get this act back in line with federal Indian law and the rights of self-determination … (the relationship) is never going to get any better. So we are willing to roll up our sleeves and figure out solutions. I believe we have the ability to do that and find common ground.”
Yet those tensions bubbled to the surface after committee members asked about state funding to the tribes or to the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission, the 13-member intergovernmental panel created by the 1980 agreement.
Chief Bill Nicholas of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township said such questions are belittling. And tribal members broke out in applause when Nicholas said he and others in the room would gladly pay back any state money given to the commission. Nicholas also accused the state of ignoring tribal fishing rights, alluding to what has become an ongoing flash point between the Passamaquoddies and the state: access to Maine’s lucrative elver, or baby eel, fishery.
“We didn’t ask to be told how we can fish. We already know how we fish,” Nicholas said. “We already know how to hunt and survive. We’re not asking the state for anything. We’re asking to be left alone. That’s what comes with sovereignty.”
The differing views on tribal sovereignty in Maine apparently go back to the crafting of the 1980 agreement, according to the new 42-page report by researchers at the Indigenous Peoples Rights Clinic at Suffolk University in Boston. The state treated tribes more as municipalities that are “arms of state government” rather than the “foundational federal Indian law principle of inherent tribal sovereignty,” the report states.
A GUIDE FOR FUTURE CONFLICTS
The report also calls attention to a clause – inserted just days before Congress voted and without public debate – that essentially says any federal laws adopted after 1980 that benefit tribes or tribal members do not apply in Maine. Nichole Friederichs, one of the researchers and authors of the Suffolk University report, said such a preemption clause is “uncommon,” and there is little documentation showing the rationale.
The federal principle of “tribal sovereignty” has only been strengthened since 1980, the authors wrote. The report recommends that those principles guide any future discussion in Maine on addressing conflicts over the settlement and addressing the “strained” relationship between the state and tribes.
In addition to access to the elver fishery, Maine’s tribes have clashed with the state over reservation boundaries, environmental regulatory authority and tribal courts. For instance, the tribes have fought unsuccessfully to allow tribal courts to try non-members who are accused of domestic violence or sexual abuse on a reservation, consistent with a federal law allowing such trials in tribal courts.
As tribal-state relations soured in recent years, Maine’s tribes forged stronger relationships with officials in the Obama administration and increased their legal and lobbying presence in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Department of Justice helped to represent the Penobscot Nation in a federal court case arguing that the tribe’s reservation boundaries extended “from bank to bank” in the Penobscot River. A federal judge rejected that argument, agreeing with the state that the Penobscot reservation includes specific islands within the river but not the water flowing around them.
Meanwhile, Maine Attorney General Janet Mills is suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over its decision to impose tougher water-quality standards on certain waterways. The EPA argues the stricter pollution standards are necessary to protect the health of tribal members who eat more wild-caught fish as a result of exercising their sustenance fishing rights. But Mills’ office, which has repeatedly clashed with the tribes over sovereignty issues, argues the EPA is merely causing confusion that could harm the economy.
Mills’ office had not yet read the Suffolk University report and declined to comment.
STATE ACCUSED OF IGNORING ISSUES
Chief Francis of the Penobscot Nation said the tribal courts issue is emblematic of the “breakdown” of relations with the state given that the majority of domestic violence against native women is committed by non-tribal members. But tribal members also face a host of other educational, health and economic issues – earning, on average, $25,000 less than the average Mainer – that Francis said the state is not helping to address while asserting jurisdiction over tribal affairs.
“This is not a gaming issue anymore,” Francis said, referring to tribes’ unsuccessful, decade-long battle to win voter approval to open gambling facilities. “We’re talking about fishing rights, we’re talking about … domestic violence, we’re talking about dealing with cancer rates that are three to four times higher. … We’re dealing with a whole host of issues.”
In 2015, the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes withdrew their elected but non-voting representatives to the Legislature to show their frustrations with Augusta. The Penobscot Nation has formally vacated the seat and will soon designate an “ambassador” that will represent the tribe in Augusta and Washington, D.C.
“It would be more of a representative of the (tribal) government in that capacity,” Francis said. “This is our view, but it gets away from this whole political subdivision mentality that we’ve heard a lot of in there today.”
Kevin Miller can be contacted at 791-6312 or at:
[email protected]
Twitter: KevinMillerPPH
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Have you ever been watching a more or less critically acclaimed film, enjoying yourself and humming merrily along, only to fall down a deep well of introspection when it comes to the handling of a few minor characters? That moment when you realize how different this sequence of events might look through their eyes, or the eyes of other bystanders?
I had that moment the other day, watching Richard Linklater’s School of Rock on TV for the umpteenth time.
My thesis is simple, and I’ll waste no time in stating it: Most of the non-band kids in School of Rock got an incredibly raw deal, and their parents SHOULD BE PISSED.
Yes, in a feel-good film that does an excellent job of making us fall in love with this class of musical ragamuffins, there’s a big, unanswered question hanging indolently in the air: What about those seemingly non-talented souls stuck doing menial labor as Jack Black’s elementary school group prepares for the big Battle of the Bands? As it turns out, a full quarter of the class is more or less stuck doing nothing in this story. They are THE FORGOTTEN KIDS.
Let’s break this down. Observing scenes of the class, such as this one, you can slowly get a feel for the size of that classroom. The desks are laid out in a square, rows of four going each way, for a maximum occupancy of 16 students (benefits of prep school!). However, there appears to be one missing desk, and we’re introduced to a total of 15 students, confirming that the total class consists of 15 kids. Of those, 4 are playing instruments, 3 are singing, 2 are doing technical work, 1 has the nebulous role of “manager,” 1 is a full-time “stylist” and 4 more are … THE FORGOTTEN KIDS.
Now, you could easily question the role of some of the non-forgotten kids as well. The backup singers, for instance—they’re really on-hand only to give us a few well-timed “ooh la la lahs,” which is hardly equal in importance. The tech kids are fairly unglamorous roadies, although they at least feel important in the sense that they provide the light and FX work for the band’s climactic performance. Summer, the manager? Well, I’m not entirely sure what her actual band-related duties are supposed to be, given that Dewey only gives her the title to shut her up, but at least she gets a lot of screen time.
Which leaves us with two groups, consisting of two boys (“Security”) and two girls (“Groupies”). These are the truly forgotten kids, representing 27% of the class.
Consider two things, as we begin to judge this segment of the class:
1. The film implies that Dewey Finn taught this class for at least three weeks, if not a month or more.
2. These kids’ parents would also have been at “Parents Night” and the resulting concert at the end of the movie. We simply don’t meet any of them, for obvious reasons.
The “Security” Kids
In the “lineup” scene of the film where Dewey assigns all of the kids their roles, he says the following to these two, who he refers to as “Tough Guy” and “Short Stop.” And by the way, “Fancy Pants” the stylist would also have ended up stuck in this role if he hadn’t been enterprising enough to escape it with his own ingenuity.
You guys are on security detail. Your job is to make sure no one outside this room knows what we’re doing in here. Your first mission: Soundproofing this room. Get on it!
Okay, soundproofing a room. Sort of a useful function … but one that presumably takes them all of a day or two in order to implement, considering that the band immediately starts hosting full-on rehearsals in the classroom. For the entire rest of the film, these kids do nothing but play lookout and inform the rest when they need to hide their instruments. But mostly, they spend a month sitting around, listening to their peers receive actual musical instruction.
Imagine you’re one of the parents of THESE kids, who the film never shows us. We’re shown the ones it makes sense to show: Severe Asian Dad, who’s suddenly proud to see his son shining in a social setting. Overbearing Guitarist Father, who beams at his son’s rockstar skills. Supportive Black Parents, thrilled by their daughter’s booming support vocals. Notably absent: The parent whose kid is standing backstage, wearing a “security” shirt and serving no function. Do you think that Mom and Dad are going to be coming up to hug Dewey after the show? Or do you think they’re stopping off at the family lawyer on the way home, preparing to bring a massive lawsuit against the school district? I think we know which seems more likely, yes?
How does Dewey even defend himself, to those parents? I imagine it’s something along the lines of: “Your kids learned a valuable skill in room soundproofing. Soon they’ll be using it on their own rooms so you can’t hear their porn.”
The Groupies
If possible, these two girls may have things even worse than the security boys do. Once again I should mention that just like with security there were originally supposed to be three of them, until Summer weasels her way into “band manager,” meaning that Dewey’s original roles would have made 40% of the kids in the class completely functionless. By the way, these are also the only kids he doesn’t even bother giving colorful nicknames to: He just refers to them as “you three.” That’s how inconsequential these class members are. Their official assignment:
“You three … groupies. Your job is simple. Just worship the band. You’re gonna be makin’ hats, you’re gonna be makin’ tee shirts, which leads me to your first assignment: Naming the band. Alright, sit down.
Oh, so these girls get a kind of “home ec” assignment, with hats and shirts and stuff, then? Well, no—for whatever reason, we never actually see any hats and shirts made by them. The band’s costumes, after all, are ultimately created solely by Fancy Pants the stylist. Therefore, in the MONTH that Dewey Finn is teaching at this school, the sole contribution of the groupies is that they coin the term “School of Rock.” Great job, Dewey! Really getting the most out of these young minds. I’m sure they do an excellent job of making all the other, more talented kids feel important, and all with ditzy smiles on their faces.
The parents of these girls … dear lord. Imagine standing up to that wrath afterward. “So let me get this straight: My daughter’s class spent a month secretly training to be in this rock show, and her job was … to worship the band? Oh my god, HAS MY DAUGHTER BEEN DEFLOWERED BY FREDDY THE DRUMMER?!?” PULLS OUT GUN
The more you think about it, the more ridiculous this gaping hole becomes, and the more I feel bad for this forgotten segment of the class. Just look at the band’s triumphant final performance at the Battle of the Bands, and search for the forgotten kids. They appear on screen for roughly three seconds during the performance, around the 3:10 mark … and the groupie girls can’t even be seen! They’re literally hidden behind the bulk of the security boys, proving that even among the forgotten kids, there’s still a caste system where groupies are clearly at the bottom. At meals, I assume they subsist on whatever food the band members drop on the ground.
Those are the groupies’ heads, back behind them
Is this an absurd thing to obsess over? Obviously. And yet I find it oddly humorous, and also perfectly indicative of the craft we use to construct storytelling in Hollywood, and in American cinema. Everything about the story is structured to build pathos for Dewey and the kids … but only the kids who matter. We don’t go into the homes of the little security boys as they pump iron and acquire black sunglasses to wear backstage (for some reason). We don’t hang out with the groupie girls as they chat vapidly about which boy in the band is the cutest. Any time they’re not on screen (which is almost all the time), you’re never meant to be thinking about them. They’re merely another part of the stage decoration for the actual characters of importance.
Which is all well and good, unless you’re one of those kids. In which case, it sucks to be you.
Jim Vorel is Paste’s resident movie nit-picker. You can follow him on Twitter for more film-related diatribes. |
A plan to roll out French government surveillance of emails and phone calls came before France’s National Assembly on Tuesday, sparking outrage from major online players such as Google and AOL.
The Military Programming Law would extend the government’s power to acquire internet-users’ data, as well as monitor email and telephone communications, without the need to be ratified in advance by a judge.
ASIC, the French Association of Internet Community Services, has called for a moratorium on the bill, which has already been given the Green light by the Senate. ASIC insists it is “not ok” for government bureaucrats to have “real-time access to internet data.”
The group – composed of major internet companies such as Google, AOL, Facebook and Dailymotion – has warned that the provisions of the plan go far beyond the fight against terrorism.
“In generically targeting ‘the prevention of criminality’, this plan will be applied to all violations [of the law],” ASIC said in a statement, pointing out that the Military Programming Law would extend electronic surveillance and data collection powers to the ministries of the interior, defense, budget, and finance.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, French Minister for Defense, for his part defended the plan, claiming that French citizens should be reassured by the fact that a “qualified person”, nominated by the prime minister (currently Jean-Marc Ayrault) would be in charge of all ministerial requests for the use of surveillance techniques.
“The National Supervising Commission on Security-related Interceptions (CNCIS), an independent administrative authority, will deal with the collection of login details and geolocation,” Le Drian was quoted as saying by BFMTV.
Indeed, one senior civil servant on Tuesday expressed his frustration with critics of the bill, pointing to the case of Mohammed Merah, an Al Qaeda-inspired gunman who killed seven people in south-western France in March, 2012.
"When the Merah affair happened, people were saying the police should have been able to prevent it. And now they're slamming law enforcement for trying to be preemptive [by using surveillance methods]," he told Le Figaro.
Looming fight over 'invasive' geolocation
The government of Socialist French President François Hollande, however, looks set for a clash with France’s highest appeals court, over the Military Programming Law’s provision for the use of geolocation involving mobile phones.
The Cour de Cassation in Paris ruled in October that any and all use of the technique by authorities – including police – must be given the green light by a judge in advance.
“Geolocation constitutes an invasion of privacy serious enough to require that it be carried out only under the supervision of a judge,” the court ruled, specifying that a public prosecutor would not have the requisite independence to authorize the use of the tactic.
One digital rights activist told The Local on Tuesday that proper oversight was crucial to any use of geolocation.
"It would be considered unacceptable for law enforcement agents to physically follow you around and track your movements in the offline world, without adequate oversight," he said, adding, "the exact same principle applies in the online world."
Tracing the location from which phone calls were sent, or text messages received, in the past, he emphasized, represented a "worrying new level of intrusion."
"It's impossible for law enforcement to travel through time and actually see where you were at a particular moment, say, two weeks ago. But geolocation allows for this, so it's particularly important that this power be properly supervised."
French-American tit-for-tat allegations
Tuesday’s parliamentary debate over the planned extension of surveillance powers comes after months of heated back-and-forth between French and American officials in the light of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about unprecedented US spying and electronic surveillance.
Back in August, The Local reported how a French court had opened a formal investigation into the PRISM program of electronic surveillance run by the US National Security Agency, and revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
On October 21st, France summoned the US ambassador to a meeting after French newspaper Le Monde published claims that the NSA had secretly taped 70 million phone calls made in France, in just one month.
However, little more than a week later, anonymous US officials alleged that those phone calls had been monitored by the French government itself, which then passed on information to the Americans. |
I spent 12 months going on over 50 interviews at places like Google, Uber, Twitter, and more. These are the exact formulas I used to land interviews and offers at these companies, in some cases, without any connections. This resulted in landing the job of my dreams along with a 200% bump in salary. Now I ‘m going to teach you how to do the same!
The Worst Feeling
Looking for a new job? Maybe even the job? Raise your hand if this has happened to you…
After weeks of searching you finally found it. The one. The day-to-day is perfect, the salary is a big step up, the hours are flexible, and the benefits are amazing (not to mention it’s less than 10 minutes from your place!). You head over to LinkedIn looking for connections and….they are all 3rd degree with your mutual being that weird kid from high school you haven’t spoken to in 8 years. Ugh…
We’ve all been there – the feeling of defeat washing over you before you’ve even had the chance to get started. So what do you do next? What anyone else the 21st century would do – Google it!
“Go to large meetups and network with as many people as you can!”
“Join professional organizations with like minded people in your field!”
“Just email people and ask!”
These are all suggestions that popped up when I searched for “how to get a job” (man, most career advice on the internet is really bad).
You know where you won’t find top performers looking to hire the best talent for Google, Facebook, or Apple? At networking events and meetups. They just don’t have time for that, and neither do you. Most of the people at these events are not very influential within their industrial niches and therefore aren’t going to do much for our cause.
Which one of you is Tim Cook?
What about emailing and asking? Well, how would you feel if some stranger emailed you and just asked for a job? You’d probably laugh them all the way to your spam folder.
You probably also noticed that I didn’t mention submitting your resume online into what I affectionately called the “Black Hole of Doom” (where resumes go to die). That sounds harsh, I know, but how many people do you know submitting 20 applications online hear back? It’s simply not a good use of your time.
So how do you get your foot in the door?
In this article I’m going to show you the exact process you can use to get a job interview at your dream company even if you don’t know a SINGLE person there.
How do I know it works? Because these are the exact steps I used to get job interviews and offers at companies like Google, Uber, Twitter, and more.
Referrals Are The Most Effective Way To Get Hired
If looking for mutual connections was your first thought when looking for career opportunities, then you’re on the right track. Referrals are easily the most effective way to secure a job interview and land the offer:
40% of hires come from referrals, the next largest channel is via career sites at 21% (almost half as many!)
Referrals get hired in an average of 3 weeks while other applicants take up to 7 weeks
Referrals get paid more on average than cold applicants
40% of hires come from referrals (courtesy of jobvite.com)
Ok, all of those things sound great to me, so how do we make it happen? You said you don’t know anyone at this company right? Not to worry, I’ve got you covered.
Want To Land A Job Referral In The Next 14 Days? My free Job Referral Toolkit covers all of the tools and steps you need to make connections and land a referral at your dream company. Click here to get the Job Referral Toolkit totally free!
Part 1: How To Get A Job Interview When You Don’t Know A Single Person At The Company
Ready? Let’s dive in.
Know Your Role (And Find It!)
The first step is having a solid idea of the specific role you are looking for, down to the company and title (if possible). Next, you need to make sure that role is available. For today, let’s assume that you want to be an Account Manager in the Technology B2B vertical at Google.
Nice! Looks like a spot is open in New York (where you’re from in this case):
Locate Potential Influencers
Now you are going to find someone who not only knows about the role, but could potentially have an impact on hiring for it. Time to fire up LinkedIn.
In the search bar, I want you to plug in the company name + all of the information I highlighted above (title, vertical/industry, preferred city). However, before you hit “Search,” we need to remember that you are looking for someone who can influence the hiring process.
With that in mind, I usually use a title that is one level up from the position that I’m looking for.
If you’re not familiar with title hierarchy structures in the corporate world, here is a quick guide (if you are already familiar with how titles are structured, feel free to skip this section):
~ Sidenote: A Brief Guide To Company Organizational Structures By Title ~
Every company has a hierarchy starting at the top with the CEO/Founder all the way down to the entry level employees. When researching companies, especially people to speak to within those companies, it helps to know where certain titles fit in the food chain. That way you can ensure you are talking to the right person.
Here is a general list of titles that fits almost any company, starting at the top:
C-Level (CEO, CTO, CFO, COO, etc.)
Vice President (VP)
Director
Senior Manager
Manager
Coordinator (Entry Level)
Associates, Executives, and Seniors
In many companies, the above titles have some sort of variation that allows for greater segmentation within that level. The most common forms of this are Associate, Executive, and Senior. Here is what those mean:
Associate: this title is usually given to someone who is halfway between positions for some reason (maybe there is typically a 4 year gap between levels and they are 2 years in). A person with Associate in their title is usually one notch below a person with the original title. For example, an Associate Account Manager would most likely be one level below an Account Manager.
Senior: this title is the more experienced version of an Associate. People with Senior in their title are usually one notch above the original title. For example, a Senior Account Manager would be one notch above an Account Manager.
Executive: this title is usually given to people who are very senior, or around the level of Vice President. The two most common cases are Sales Executive/Account Executive (synonymous terms for a senior salesperson) or Executive Vice President who is two notches above a Vice President and one notch above a Senior Vice President. That should be all the info you need to make an educated decision around where people stand within the company you are researching!
~ End of Sidenote ~
Now that you’re familiar with the company structure, let’s get back to finding that influencer who can help you land a this job.
Since we are looking for an Account Manager role, the next step up would be Senior Account Manager so your LinkedIn search would look like this:
Our first result? A Senior Account Manager who works in B2B at Google – nailed it!
Obtaining Contact Info
Now, we’re going to reach out and set up an in-person meeting.
What’s that? You don’t have their email address? I got you covered! Here are 3 strategies you can use to find almost anyone’s email address:
LinkedIn
This one is obvious, I know, but it’s a big time saver and definitely worth the 10 seconds it takes to check.
On the person’s profile, right under their picture, there can be a button labeled “Contact Info” (I say “can be” because people have the option to remove it). Occasionally, people will have their email address listed right there – voila!
If not, let’s move right along…
Reverse Lookup
Head over to Voila Norbert and enter the first and last name of the person you are searching for, as well as their company’s website. For example, if we were trying to find Larry Page’s email, our form would look like this:
Once it spits out their email you can confirm it using PeopleSmart or MailTester.
Matching Formats
If that doesn’t work, you can try finding someone else’s email at the company and use that format reverse engineering your target email address. For example, using Larry Page again, if I know that my buddy John Smith’s email is [email protected] then I can assume that Larry’s email is [email protected] (it’s not, sorry).
The easiest way to get a hold of a company email address is to reach out to someone in sales or media because both of these departments usually have inbound lead forms and people on the other end ready to pounce on those emails.
We can also use our LinkedIn method here and target salespeople. Salespeople almost always have their corporate email listed on their LinkedIn because it’s a free win for them. If someone is looking for their product and then finds them on LinkedIn, boom! They just got an effortless inbound lead.
Once you have the format, you can use the same two resources (PeopleSmart or MailTester) to confirm your target email address.
Research, Research, Research
Now that you have your potential influencer, it’s time to do some research so you can effectively reach out and build that relationship!
Start with the usual suspects – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and look for common points of interest. To be honest, most people are better at this online research thing than I am, so I’ll get back to the meat here.
One thing I will say is, don’t skimp! The more you get to know this person beforehand, the better your chances of landing a referral from them.
Some people have said to me, “Austin, isn’t this a little weird? I feel like I’m kind of stalking this person.” I totally get it. However, this information is critical for quickly building a strong relationship and getting that referral!
Also, in my experience, people tend to expect that you’ve done some research on them. The key is to understand what is kosher to bring up out of the blue and what isn’t. People are OK with you checking out their LinkedIn, but they may be a little weirded out if you mention that picture from Saturday’s Bar Crawl that you saw on Facebook.
My general rule of thumb is this: if it exists on LinkedIn, it’s fair game to bring up. If you found it somewhere else (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) use a different method. For example, if I see that my influencer is a skiing fanatic, I may bring up that I went on a ski trip a few weeks beforehand.
Sending The Email
Now that you have your potential influencer and their contact info, it’s time to reach out. Not only is this one of the scarier parts of this process, it is also one of the most pivotal. To help you get past that hump, I’ve included the exact email script that I used to reach out to people. In this case, I’m reaching out to Tim who works at Google:
Subject: Quick Question
Hi Tim,
My name is Austin and I currently work at Cultivated Culture. I was browsing through LinkedIn and came across your information – I hope you don’t mind me reaching out of the blue here.
I saw that you have extensive experience in Google’s Technology B2B vertical and I’m very interested in learning more about that space. I would love to have the opportunity to run some questions by you, as well as tap into any advice you may have given your knowledge of the industry.
I know that your time is extremely valuable so please don’t feel to need to respond in depth. If you do have 5 minutes to chat, I would really appreciate it.
Best,
Austin
There are a few key points to the email above:
Address the person you are emailing by name
State who you are and make it personable
Include some flattery that positions the person as an “expert”
As for the subject, Fast Company did a study where they emailed 1,000 C-level executives from Fortune & Inc 500 companies. They found that the subject line “Quick Question” made up 66.7% of total replies. That was good enough for me so I tried it out and saw similar results.
All of this said, the script is just a framework. You will most likely need to tweak your emails to fit the situation. When that time comes, I recommend checking out Sam Parr’s incredible guide on how to cold email like a boss (Sam has started conversations with Jeff Bezos and Brian Lee (aka Jessica Alba’s co-founder) via cold email!). It’s the same guide I used to help craft my email templates.
Now hit Send!
Prepare For Your Meeting
In order to prepare, we have to know what we’re preparing for. The goal of your meeting is to position your influencer as an expert, make them feel special, and build a relationship.
You will not and should not mention anything about the opening at their company. People innately enjoy helping others and if you follow the steps above, they will bring this up naturally.
You will want to prepare a list of questions that gets them to open up about themselves and the company. I like to ask them several softballs to get things warmed up and then hit them with a few questions they are guaranteed to remember.
Here is a quick set that I’ve had success with in the past (I’ve found the last one really seems to stick):
I saw you worked at [Previous Companies]. How did you end up going from [First Industry] to becoming interested in [Current Company]? You hear a lot about [Current Company] in the news, but I’d love to hear more about why you love working there. What’s your favorite part? What is one totally unexpected lesson you’ve learned from working at [Current Company]?
The “Million Dollar” Question
Regardless of the questions you choose, there is one that you must always be sure to ask:
“What is the biggest challenge your team is facing right now?”
Really dig in here, get them to be specific. This information is going to be critical in helping you land a referral from this person, as well as getting the offer further down the road.
Your Homework: Adding Value (In A Big Way)
Okay, so you met with your influencer, things went great, and you identified a major pain point that the team is having. Now we’re going to focus on that last part.
Over the next week you are going to research the crap out of your influencer’s problem. Then you are going to come up with a solution and draft up a proposal for how you would solve it. Your proposal should include:
A summary of the problem (to illustrate that you understand their pain)
A step-by-step framework of how you would solve this problem
A brief outline of how your skill set positions you as an asset to implement that solution
Truthfully, this process deserves a post of its own (I am drafting it now – stay tuned!) but this should give you a good idea of what you need to do. If you’re the type of person that likes concrete examples, check out this guerilla usability test Raghav Haran ran for Airbnb.
Once you have all of this information, consolidate it into a Word document, head over to Upwork, and hire a graphic designer to make your proposal look amazing. If you’ve never hired on Upwork before, here is an amazing guide by Dave Nevogt on how to do it right.
Following Up With Your Proposal
Now we’re going to reach back out to our influencer with the proposal. Here’s the template I used:
Hi [Influencer],
Thanks again for taking the time out to chat last week!
I spent a lot of time thinking about what you said regarding [team’s biggest challenge]. In fact, I created a short framework that should help you solve it! Please find that attached.
If you have some time, I would love to chat about it in more detail.
Please let me know if you have any questions, I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Best,
Austin
It’s very important that you do not mention the open position in any of your emails or the proposal. Be patient and wait for their response. When they do get back to you, they will not only bring up the opening but they will ask you if you’re interested. Kindly accept and play it cool. You’re in!
But What About My Resume & Cover Letter?
Resumes and cover letters are definitely an important part of the job search, but people tend to place too much emphasis on them. If you’re following the steps in this article to build relationships and add value , your resume won’t matter nearly as much because your contact will already have a full understanding of the value that you bring to the table.
That said, you should spend some time optimizing your job search materials so they’re ready to go when your contact offers to refer you in.
To help make sure your resume is on point, check out my guide on writing resumes that will actually get you hired. That will give you a great foundation and you can build off of it with these articles on writing highly effective resume bullets, accurately conveying your skills on your resume, and writing a resume objective that will boost your chances of getting hired.
Finally, this guide on writing cover letters will help you spin up a final draft in less than 30 minutes so you can move on to the next part of the process – interview prep.
Want To Land A Job Referral In The Next 14 Days? My free Job Referral Toolkit covers all of the tools and steps you need to make connections and land a referral at your dream company. Click here to get the Referral Toolkit totally free!
Part 2: How To Breeze Through The Interview Process
Ok, now we’ve got the in. Our influencer passed along our resume to HR and they reached out to set up a phone screen. Once we get past that, we’ll be on to interviewing with the team, and then getting the job! Easy though, we still have a lot of work to do.
[Insert Company Name] Interview Template
Interviews can be daunting, especially at companies like Google, Amazon, or Uber. I’m sure you’ve read the horror stories about crazy questions they ask people like “Quick! How many golf balls can fit inside a school bus,” or, “how many gas stations are there in Manhattan?”
The truth is, most of these companies have done away with those questions. They crunched the numbers and found that the answers didn’t correlate with high employee performance (shocker, I know). In fact, Google’s own Senior Vice President of People Operations called them a “complete waste of time.”
These companies have since reverted back to the standard style of interviews, which is great for us because it makes it much easier to identify patterns. We can essentially “guess” what questions will be on the test and prepare answers that will blow our interviewers away (it works way better than it did in college, I swear).
Here is the process I used to prepare for each interview:
Nailing The Basics: Questions You’ll Get In Every Interview
According to renowned career guru Penelope Trunk, one of the easiest ways to be a better interviewer is to prepare for the most obvious questions. You may be saying “well duh,” but you’d be surprised by how many people spread themselves too thin by trying to prepare answers to every possible question.
99% of the interviews you go on will follow the exact same template. If you can master the format, your confidence will skyrocket and you’ll be prepared for almost any situation you get thrown into.
The Universal Job Interview Format:
Tell me about yourself (your experience, why you are interested in this role, etc.) A mix of behavioral questions, which we’ll dive into shortly What questions do you have for me (the interviewer)?
Let’s tackle each individually.
Tell Me About Yourself!
This is your first impression. More importantly, it’s the only part of the interview that you totally control. Do NOT rattle off your resume like a grocery list.
In order to nail this part you need to craft an interesting story – your story. You want it to be concise (around 2-3 minutes) and you need to think about what you want to convey. I recommend:
Choosing 2-3 themes to build your story around (for me, those themes were Persistence, Agility, and Success)
Including quantitative metrics whenever possible
Addressing the question of why you want to leave your current position (they are going to ask you this anyways, addressing it early shows that you’re aware it’s a concern of theirs and helps put them at ease)
To help get you started, here is what my story looked like. To give you some context, I was a biology major who was interested in landing a job in digital marketing:
Growing up, like most people, I wanted to be a doctor. I went to [college] where I majored in biology and planned my course to medical school. Not long after, I decided that pre-med wasn’t for me. I wanted to get into digital marketing, and I wanted to be in New York. I set my sights on this goal and created a plan that would get me there.
In 2013, I graduated with my biology degree and took a job in medical device sales where I worked from 5:30am – 12:30pm covering surgical cases in the operating room. Then, every day, I would come home and study digital marketing until 8:00pm. In order to gain relevant experience, I got certified in Google Analytics & AdWords and created my own consulting firm that focused on using search engine marketing to generate leads for private golf communities. We were able to increase home sales by an average of 20% while reducing the cost per lead by around 10%. Armed with my new credentials, I began to look for positions in New York.
Eventually, I was offered a position at my current company (a promotional analytics company in New York). During my tenure there I have grown my book of business by 467%, spearheaded the creation of an internal group dedicated to marketing the company on the internet, and helped close the 2nd largest deal in company history.
However, the company has restructured several times since I was brought on. I’ve had 3 different managers over the past year, as well as 3 titles with different sets of responsibilities. I’m looking for something a bit more stable and has been somewhere that I have wanted to work since I got into this industry. I’m really excited to have this opportunity.
Pro Tip: You are telling a story. Don’t be afraid to embellish a bit. I’m not saying you should lie or make up stories, but you want to sell yourself and you can bet your butt that your competition isn’t afraid to inflate their credentials. Kathryn Sollmann says it best, “we can all say anything [we want], but it just registers as “blah, blah, blah” until you wake someone up with impressive results.”
Behavioral Questions
Next up is the dreaded set of behavioral questions. The ones meant to tease out your thought process and your ability to be a “team player.” This is the part where our educated “guesses” are going to come in handy.
The behavioral section is broken down into two parts that I call Standard Questions and Company Specific Questions. Let’s start with the former.
Standard Questions
You are going to be asked a variation of one, if not all, of these questions in every single interview you go to:
Why do you want to work for us? Tell me about a time you exhibited leadership Tell me about a time where you had to work as a team Tell me about a time you’ve had to work with a difficult person, or difficult people Tell me about a time you failed Tell me about a time you overcame an obstacle Tell me about a time when you had success
If you can answer these 6 questions, you could handle 9 out of 10 interviews with no other preparation and be totally fine. Just follow the same set of rules I mentioned above in the Tell Me About Yourself section:
Craft a concise story
Make sure to include quantitative metrics that illustrate your success
Anticipate and address objections
Company Specific Questions
These are questions that fall in the middle of the 7 listed above and “why are man hole covers round?” Never fear though, we can anticipate these too.
Head over to GlassDoor. If you’ve never heard of GlassDoor, it’s a great resource for any job seeker that includes salaries, reviews, and interview information for almost any company in the world.
First, you are going to search for the position you’re applying for. In keeping with our theme, we’ll search for “Google” under Companies & Reviews:
Next, we’re going to click on the “Interviews” Tab:
Then scroll down and click on “Filter Interviews” which will bring up some advanced settings. Here we’ll type in the title of the job we want (Account Manager, in this case) and the location (New York, NY). We’ll also select “Received Offer” because the people who didn’t receive offers tend to be slightly, ahem, biased:
This will pull up a list of reviews from everyone who interviewed and received an offer for that position. The general comments are really helpful, but we want to focus on a section called Interview Questions towards the bottom. I usually comb through 10 – 15 of these and add all of the interview questions into a Word doc so I can answer them later:
Now you have your second set of questions to prepare for!
What Questions Do You Have For Me?
Finally, once they are done peppering you with questions, your interviewer will ask if you have any questions for them. In my opinion this is the most crucial part of the interview.
Why? Because so many people neglect it. If you can ask some questions that are even slightly outside of the box, I’ve found that really sticks with the interviewer more than any other part of the meeting.
After every interview I’ve been on, I asked for feedback. Without fail, the interviewer made a positive comment about the questions I asked. The good news for you is that I asked the same exact questions in every single one! Here they are:
What is your favorite part about working here?
What is the biggest challenge you are facing right now?
Let’s say that, in one year, you are looking back on this hire. What has that person done to exceed expectations on every level?
Ask about a current event (for example – I saw that [Competitor X] came out with this product. How do you see that affecting your business?)
What is the most unexpected lesson you’ve learned while working at ?
Tell me a little bit more about you, what do you like to do outside of work?
The first four are fairly standard questions, but the last two really seal the deal. Don’t be surprised if you get a “wow, I’ve never been asked that – give me a second” when you drop the unexpected lesson.
The final question opens up a personal dialogue with the interviewer that allows you to establish a connection that moves you up from “interviewer-interviewee” status to “personal conversation” status. Plus it will give you great content to put in your thank you email.
Say Thank You!
While we’re on the subject, be absolutely sure to send a thank you email to everyone you interviewed with. Also include a personal touch to each one (something that you gained from that last question).
Many people I talk to say “but I don’t have their email Austin!” Ask for it!! At the end of every interview always, always ask for a business card or write down the person’s email in your notebook (you did bring a notebook, right??).
If you do end up in that bucket, try using the techniques I outlined above for finding people’s emails and you should be fine.
Want To Land A Job Referral In The Next 14 Days? My free Job Referral Toolkit covers all of the tools and steps you need to make connections and land a referral at your dream company. Click here to get the Referral Toolkit totally free!
Part 3 – Following Up & What To Do If They Say No
I Haven’t Heard Back In 3 Days!
Whoa, whoa easy there. This is one of the most common mistakes I see from job applicants. I understand how nerve wracking it is to sit there and wait while everything is completely out of your hands.
One of the toughest things I had to learn throughout my interview process was that, while this is a HUGE deal to you, it’s really just another agenda item on the hiring manager’s schedule.
They will get back to you, and if they don’t? You don’t want to work for someone who doesn’t have the courtesy of replying to the people they do business with.
So When Can I Send Them A Reminder?
The rule of thumb is one business week. If you interviewed on a Tuesday, wait until the next Tuesday to email them (as JT O’Donnell says, never send a nudge on a Monday!). When you do, don’t push or be blunt. Keep it short and sweet:
Hi [Interviewer],
I hope you had a great week!
I wanted to quickly follow up and see if there was anything else I could help with regarding the application process. If so, please let me know!
Best,
Austin
That’s it. If they don’t respond to that after another 3-4 days, you have your answer and it’s time to move on.
What Happens If They Say No?
Ugh. The worst case scenario. Don’t get down just yet though, we’re not done here!
I have this quality where I have trouble accepting “no” as an answer. When I was interviewing with Google, the initial screener told me that she wasn’t going to put me through because she “didn’t think I was qualified, and didn’t want to waste the team’s time.”
I was not happy. So I sent her this:
Hi [Recruiter],
Thank you again for carving out the time to speak this afternoon. I really appreciate your feedback, and I wanted to add one final note:
I completely understand your concerns regarding my experience with [skill]. You are correct that I didn’t have much experience with that at [previous company]. That said, this doesn’t stem from an inability to produce results, but rather a lack of opportunity to do so.
While my experience on paper may not match up to the initial expectations of the position’s description, I have do have two qualities that work in my favor: I am an extremely efficient learner, and am also very effective at translating those learnings into practice. Second, I’m much more tenacious than your average individual. My career has hinged on these two qualities.
I left college with no digital experience and a biology degree – all of my digital knowledge was obtained through self study. I spent 8 months selling myself without the on-paper experience to back it up. When I was finally given the opportunity to apply my knowledge in a business setting, I playing a critical role in landing the company’s 2nd largest deal in history. I am confident that I can have the same success in this role. I have the resources necessary to learn what I need in order to be successful at , and am prepared to do whatever it takes to make that happen.
I understand that interview process is extremely challenging, and that only the top talent ends up with an offer letter at the end. I also believe that I am worthy of a shot at that letter. [Company] is known for hiring people who excel at the intangibles, as well the ability to learn new things and apply them to existing knowledge. That is my forte.
I am not asking for an offer. I am simply asking for the opportunity to speak with the hiring manager to make my case for the position. I’m sure you will find the best person for the position, I would just like to have a legitimate shot at being that person. If you give me that chance, my next set of answers will not disappoint.
Thank you again for your continued consideration.
Best,
Austin
Nowww that may be a little aggressive…
Ok, it was pretty aggressive. But she wrote me back an hour later and pushed me through to the next round! Mission accomplished.
The moral of the story here is, don’t give up if you get a “No.” Try to identify why you were turned down and then send a note to hiring manager addressing those items (feel free to copy mine!).
Now, What Are You Waiting For?
There you have it. The exhaustive, step-by-step guide to landing an interview and then getting an offer from the company of your dreams. What are you waiting for? Get out there and start researching!
If you have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out. I made this site, and this guide, to help you land your dream job. I can’t wait to connect with you. Until then, cheers!
Want To Land A Job Referral In The Next 14 Days? My free Job Referral Toolkit covers all of the tools and steps you need to make connections and land a referral at your dream company. Click here to get the Referral Toolkit totally free! |
$ 40.00
2xLP Fuschia Splatter Vinyl
Music by Maclaine Diemer with Wilbert Roget II , Brendon Williams and Stan LePard
Includes Digital Soundtrack (5 bonus tracks)*
Tyria is in flames, and the beautifully orchestrated soundtrack to Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire™ wastes no time plopping us straight into the action.
After the success of Heart of Thorns™, ArenaNet again partnered to bring this epic and bold score by Maclaine Diemer with Wilbert Roget II, Brendon Williams, and Stan LePard, to vinyl. This dynamic two disc collection takes listeners on a sweeping journey, featuring heavy brass, soaring strings and driving percussion together to tell the tale of Balthazar’s wrath and the heroes who aim to defeat him. From the wistfulness of the Crystal Desert to the themes of the Kingdom of Elona, the music is magically transporting. Close your eyes and see for yourself.
*Digital soundtrack are emailed upon completion of checkout. |
CTVNews.ca
The announcement Monday that four large objects spotted in the Indian Ocean were not from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 but in fact were fishing debris must have been disappointing to family members hoping for answers.
But the news also highlights a wider problem facing investigators scouring the waters for clues: that our oceans are filled with massive amounts of garbage, swirling on the surface.
Marcus Eriksen, an ocean pollution expert and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, says across the world's oceans are five gyres, or systems of rotating ocean currents created by winds and the earth’s rotational forces.
These gyres act like massive, slow-moving whirlpools that gather up garbage on the water's surface and pull them into their vortices.
"In the Indian Ocean, you have cold water coming up from the southern ocean near Antarctica, coming up north along the coast of Perth and then whipping across," Eriksen told CTV's Canada AM Monday from Los Angeles.
"And in these gyres, there can be accumulations of trash coming off our coastlines, falling off of fishing vessels that get stuck in these gyres, where they'll sit for years, or decades."
Within these gyres can be all manner of objects, including glass bottles, rusting metal, plastics, and nylon ropes from fishing traps.
"It's pretty typical to find derelict fishing nets and buoys," Eriksen says.
But while there are large, identifiable pieces in these trash patches, the majority are "small particulates" from broken-down foam cups, plastic bags and other disposable plastics.
One of the largest of these marine debris patches is found in the North Pacific and has been dubbed the Great Pacific garbage patch. It is difficult to pinpoint its size, but the area is several hundred kilometres in diameter. Inside the garbage patch is debris of varying size from big to microscopic.
The area where investigators think that Flight 370 went down more than three weeks ago crosses into the Indian Ocean Gyre. That makes it possible that some of the plane's floating debris, such as seat cushions or composite aircraft parts, could have been swept up into the gyre.
Eriksen says that will make searching for the debris more complicated since it will be hard to distinguish any plane pieces.
"To identify what it is from a passing airplane or a passing ship is very difficult. There's a lot of stuff that's been out there long before this plane crashed," he says.
"So if you see one piece of debris, you don't know how long it's been there or what it is.”
That means that if pilots flying over the area spot a square object, it could be a seat cushion or it could be a gas can from a vessel that went by years ago, Eriksen says.
"So there's lots of confusion about what's out there because there's so much that's accumulating in these gyres." |
US Governors Call On Donald Trump To Back Wind & Solar
February 14th, 2017 by Joshua S Hill
A group of governors from across the United States and from both sides of the political divide have penned an open letter to Donald Trump calling on the newly-elected President to support the development of solar and wind energy.
The open letter was penned by the Governors’ Wind & Solar Energy Coalition, a bipartisan group of the country’s governors, currently representing twenty states. Specifically, the letter was penned by the governors of Rhode Island and Kansas, on behalf of the Coalition.
“The Coalition’s twenty member-states are home to hundreds of wind and solar energy facilities that employ hundreds of thousands of Americans and contribute significantly to each state’s economy, and the nation’s at large,” the letter explains (PDF), as the authors explained the current role of renewable energy in the electricity mix, as well as the role it is playing for jobs and the economy. Referencing the recently published National Solar Job Census, the Coalition explained that “the country’s solar industry employed over 200,000 and added 31,000 new jobs.”
“Members of the Coalition have seen the benefits of renewable energy firsthand, and agree that expanding renewable energy production is one of the best ways to meet the country’s growing demand for energy,” they write.
“Today’s wind and solar resources offer consumers nearly unlimited electric energy with no fuel costs, no national security impacts, and a number of environmental benefits. The boons of renewable energy can be virtually endless with your Administration’s and Congress’ support of the key initiatives detailed here. Your support of these initiatives will allow our nation to capitalize on renewable resources, meet the needs of Americans and bolster the economy.”
The letter then outlines and details several “key initiatives” the Governors’ Coalition hopes the President will support:
Grid modernization and Transmission Development
Adopt Comprehensive Long-term Offshore Wind Development Legislation
Increase Wind and Solar Research and Development Appropriations
Streamline and Improve Collaboration for Permitting Solar and Wind Energy Projects
Whether this open letter will have much of an impact on Donald Trump’s energy policy is unclear — and not entirely promising. A lot has already been said about the dramatic impact Donald Trump’s proposed energy policies might have, and within the last few weeks we have already seen him make several moves to hamstring renewable energy and climate change policy progress, including signing an executive order to re-initiate the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. However, the sheer number of open letters which have now been sent to Donald Trump’s White House, and the incontrovertible evidence that renewable energy is a boon to the US economy, energy sector, and consumers, surely has to begin weighing heavily against Trump’s ad-hoc, factually inaccurate fantasies.
Right? |
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Keenan Lewis may have never felt quite at home with Dennis Allen and the Saints.
But now, he’s looking at a place where they know him very well.
According to Josh Katzenstein of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Lewis is going to Pittsburgh tonight to visit the Steelers.
Apparently six other teams have expressed interest as well (and one of them is doubtless the Mystery Team, which always comes in handy in negotiations).
Lewis played his first four seasons with the Steelers before signing with the Saints in 2013. But his problems with Saints defensive coordinator Dennis Allen apparently went back much deeper, as the two never clicked during the pre-draft process, when Allen was the defensive backs coach there. Lewis thought that doomed him in New Orleans when Allen returned after the 2014 season.
But the Saints mentioned Lewis’ injuries (he missed 10 games last year and didn’t practice much this offseason) as the primary factor. |
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The Toronto Raptors have been on the rise since Masai Ujiri rejoined the organization as general manager in 2013. Under Ujiri, the Raptors have been extremely steady and consistent with their growth, culminating in the franchise’s first trip to the Eastern Conference Finals this year.
This offseason, the Raptors did what they were supposed to by re-signing All-Star guard DeMar DeRozan to a long-term deal. But fans hoping for more moves were left disappointed. In a market where free agents came and went, Toronto didn’t land any “big hitters” and kept their roster relatively similar to last season. Aside from the DeRozan deal, they lost Bismack Biyombo to the Orlando Magic, signed forward Jared Sullinger to a one-year contract and drafted rookie center Jakob Poeltl. This relatively inactive summer suggests that Ujiri and his staff are content with the pieces they have in place and believe that internal development is the key to the team taking the next step.
Toronto seems to be betting on their younger players to continue improving. Terrence Ross, the 25-year-old wing who was drafted eighth overall in 2012, is one such player the Raptors are counting on – especially after signing him to three-year, $33 million extension last fall.
Ross has had an up and down four years in Toronto. Over the course of his career, the former Slam Dunk champion has averaged 9.1 points and 2.6 rebounds in 23.4 minutes per game while shooting 41.9 percent from the field and 37.7 percent from three-point range. During the 2015-16 regular season, he contributed 9.9 points per game while hitting 43.1 percent of his field goals and 38.6 percent of his threes. He has shown progress, but he knows there’s still work to be done and his consistency must improve.
“I have just been focusing on getting better in every way I can,” Ross told Basketball Insiders. “I’ve been putting a lot of focus on getting stronger too; that’s the main goal for me this offseason. I want to make sure I can be more physical when my team needs me to be.
“I want to continue to get stronger and be able to absorb contact better when I’m driving. I’ve been shooting a lot of mid-range shots too. I’m just learning how to read defenses and make the best play possible when I’m out there. Strength helps a lot of things, but thinking about the game and putting myself in scenarios in practice is just as important. I want to become a complete player, so that means I have to work on every area of the game. I’m fully taking advantage of the offseason to improve my game and that’s what I’ve done since I came in the league.”
As Ross mentioned, he isn’t easing up just because it’s the summer. He knows that the offseason is when players must expand their game and put in the hard work that pays off when the season begins.
“It’s a dangerous time [for some players] because you can get distracted and lose focus,” Ross said. “You have more time to do whatever you want, so you just have to stay focused and not get too caught up in the extras. I’m pretty motivated and focused most of the time, so it’s not too hard for me. … I’ve been working out a lot and playing some games at the Drew League. It’s been a fun and productive offseason.”
During Toronto’s postseason run, Ross’ minutes decreased to just 16.8 per game and he averaged 6.3 points. But there’s no question that advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers motivated him and his teammates. They’re determined to advance even further next year, and Ross hopes make a bigger impact if the opportunity presents itself again.
“Playing in the Conference Finals was an amazing experience,” Ross said. “Playoff basketball is different as far as pace and intensity goes, but when it’s in the Conference Finals, it jumps [up] another notch. It made me hungrier because you realize how close you can get by playing the right way. It was as inspiring as it was an eye-opening experience. Obviously, losing to the eventual champs gives us confidence that we will use come next season. I definitely want to get back to that level with this group because I think we can go even further next season.”
For Toronto to go even further, Ross and others will need to step up. The Cavaliers aren’t going anywhere and fellow East contenders (like the Boston Celtics) have significantly improved. A breakout campaign from him would certainly raise Toronto’s ceiling.
“I want to win,” Ross said. “I love this game and would play it if I had to pay someone to let me play. So for me, it’s about getting better and competing at the highest level. I’m blessed to have this opportunity to play at this level and be successful, but I want to be better.”
Looking at the Raptors’ roster, Ross is confident in the squad’s ability to compete.
“I think we are a versatile team,” Ross said. “We have guys who can play different roles and guys who have different skill sets, so really everything boils down to matchups. Coach [Dwane] Casey plays whoever he feels can get the job done and I respect that.”
Because Ross was a top-eight draft pick and has so much potential, expectations have been pretty high for him since he entered the league. This, of course, comes with some criticism and negativity – even from Toronto fans (who are very passionate). He has tried block all of that out, focusing instead on his support circle of teammates, coaches and family.
“I just keep working. People have a right to say what they want to say, but I just lean on my teammates and coaches,” Ross said. “I always have to make sure I continue to do anything I can to help my team win. What people say is out of my control, good or bad.
“[My motivation comes from] my family mostly. I want to make them proud. I also get motivation from my teammates. We got pretty far this year and I want to get better so we can improve our chances next year. I think everybody on the team feels that way. That’s what makes being in Toronto with these guys so special.”
Whether or not Ross remains in Toronto long-term remains to be seen. While he just signed his extension last summer, his name has surfaced in trade rumors at times throughout his career. But, like the criticism he sometimes receives, this is out of Ross’ control. Rather than worrying about the speculation, Ross is just enjoying his current situation. Based on what he says, he seems really happy in Toronto and close with his teammates.
“I’m just looking forward to getting back out there and representing Toronto,” he said. “It’s a great basketball city with passionate fans. It’s just a great atmosphere for basketball.”
The Raptors have done a good job creating that positive culture. It’s clear that the organization has confidence in their team as currently constructed, and part of the reason for that is because of up-and-coming individuals like Ross, Jonas Valanciunas, Norman Powell and Cory Joseph among others. The Raptors have 10 players who are 25 years old or younger, including Ross.
Ross has the potential to become a complete player, as he stated, since he has impressive athleticism and the ability to shoot threes. He seems to possess all the necessary tools to be a talented scorer. Although his strength has been questioned in the past, he’s committed to improving that aspect of his game this summer.
Veterans like DeRozan, Kyle Lowry and DeMarre Carroll may be the Raptors’ leaders, but it’s Ross and the rest of the young core that seem to hold the keys to Toronto’s long-term success. |
Wisely, Cassie Newell — the high school softball coach at Kilgore High School in Texas who’s accused of bullying and then outing lesbian player Skye Wyatt, 17 — has privatized her Twitter account. Faced with a lawsuit claiming she criminally invaded the privacy of Wyatt, Newell (pictured) suddenly finds herself on the other end of things, with the media (including Queerty) quite interested in her life. Especially the part where she, and fellow coach Rhonda Fletcher, allegedly screamed at Wyatt in the locker room, accusing her of dating one of Newell’s supposed exes, and that if she didn’t “stop lying” Newell would sue her for slander. Named in the lawsuit are both coaches and assistant athletic director Douglas Duke (for improperly training his staffers), with claims of violating Skye’s Fourteenth and Fourth Amendment rights, for breaching her privacy by disclosing her sexual orientation and forcing her to remain in the locker room to receive their verbal lashing.
And yet superintendent Jody Clements (pictured, bottom) remains adamant the coaches did the appropriate thing — which included outing Skye to her mother Barbara — saying, “We feel confident we handled it the right way. But that’s why there is a legal system. We’ll proceed and let the courts decide what was right.”
Skye — to put it bluntly — disagrees completely. “If this event had not happened, I would never have told her – never,” says Skye about her forced coming out. “I would have snuck around. Even if I had gotten caught, I would have denied it. For a long time, it damaged our relationship.”
As for Skye’s mother Barbara, pursuing the lawsuit isn’t simply about righting a wrong. She’s going after Kilgore High “because every time you turn around, there’s a kid committing suicide over these types of issues.”
(NB: Though Skye’s name is listed as simply “S.W.” in the lawsuit, both she and her mother Barbara have spoken to the press using their full names, so we’re using them here too.) |
North Market’s 9th annual craft beer fest will take place September 12-14 in the lot outside the North Market.
More than 20 breweries will be participating in this year’s Ohio Craft Brew Festival. New additions include Christian Moerlein Brewing Co., Cincinnati; MadTree Brewing Co., Cincinnati; Rhinegeist Brewery, Cincinnati; Rockmill Brewery, Lancaster; Wolf’s Ridge Brewing, Columbus and Zauber Brewing Co, Columbus. Returning breweries include Barley’s Brewing Company, Columbus; Buckeye Lake Brewery, Buckeye Lake; Columbus Brewing Co., Columbus; Elevator Brewing Co., Columbus; Four String Brewing Co., Columbus; Gordon Biersch, Columbus; Great Lakes Brewing Co., Cleveland; Hoof Hearted Brewing Co., Marengo; Homestead Beer Company, Heath; Jackie O’s Pub & Brewery, Athens; Lager Heads Brewing Co., Medina; Mt. Carmel Brewing Co., Cincinnati; North High Brewing, Columbus; Seventh Son Brewing Co., Columbus; Smokehouse Brewing Co., Columbus; Thirsty Dog Brewing Co., Akron; and Weasel Boy Brewing Co., Zanesville.
This year’s festival will also include a Battle of the Brew Home Brew Competition sponsored by Seventh Son Brewing, SODZ and Matt the Miller’s Tavern. The competition is open to all styles of beer, and each contestant can can submit up to two entries for $10 per entry. Over 500 worth of prizes will be given to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, the grand prize winner leaving with Bragging Rights and the opportunity to have their recipe brewed at Seventh Son. More information about the competition is available online.
The North Market Ohio Craft Brew Festival will take place Friday, September 12 from 7-10pm, Saturday, September 13 from 12-9pm and Sunday, September 14, from 12-5pm. Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at door. Admission includes a souvenir pint glass, 10 tasting tickets and a $5 North Market food voucher. |
Image copyright PA
Thousands of people have had their movements tracked by the Office for National Statistics to see if they can find out where they live and work.
The ONS is trying to build up a picture of people's daily commute - something it normally asks about in the census.
Mobile phones create a record of every location visited by the user if the phone is switched on.
Statisticians believe the data, which is anonymised, could one day replace census questions in England and Wales.
But it admitted it would need to carry out "extensive evaluation" of "privacy impacts" if it went down that route.
'Children's mobiles'
The experiment was carried out using data from subscribers to the Vodafone mobile phone network. It was restricted to subscribers aged over 18 and did not include people who use pay-as-you-go phones.
It tracked where phones were overnight, to work out where users lived, and where they travelled during the day, which was assumed to be their place of work.
It focused on three London boroughs - Lambeth, Southwark and Croydon - and looked at how far people travelled to work during a four week period in March and April last year.
It painted a slightly different picture to the 2011 census, with more people appearing not to leave their home borough on their daily commute.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The Office for National Statistics tracked phone users around London
Some of this might be down to students, who may have been "mistakenly inferred as commuters as their movement behaviour will be similar", the report said.
"It's also likely that some parents will take out subscriptions for their children's mobiles," said the report, so in future "children of secondary school age and in higher education might therefore also be included".
Final census?
The mobile data underestimated some commuter flows, such as the number of people travelling into Lambeth every day.
The study may have failed to indentify commuters with "non-standard work patterns, such as night or shift workers; depot workers and those on zero-hours contracts" or those that were ill on holiday, the report said.
The ONS is now asking for feedback to decide whether the new system will be rolled out more widely.
The government and local authorities use this kind of census household and working patterns data to plan housing developments and transport networks.
The census has been carried out every 10 years since 1801, with the exception of 1941, to provide a snapshot of the size of the country's population and details about how people live and work.
But the government wants the next census, in 2021, to be the final one to be carried out using the traditional paper-based questionnaire method.
It has asked the Office for National Statistics to explore how it can get the information it needs from alternative sources. |
Education in the United States is constantly being portrayed as falling behind other nations like Finland, Singapore, or even China. According to a new report from the National Center for Education Statistics , that's only true in certain parts of the country.
The report converts scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress test given to eighth graders in order to compare them with the TIMSS assessment taken in other countries around the world. The conversion was needed because only some states took the TIMSS.
In Massachusetts, according to the report, eighth graders are getting one of the best educations in the world, with students scoring higher in both math and science than those from Finland's lauded education system. According to the report, the state's scores meet the "high benchmark" for math, which only Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea meet.
Massachusetts eighth grader's science scores are equivalent to number two in the world, behind only Singapore.
Alabama, the worst-performing state, doesn't even meet the "intermediate" benchmark for math and is behind countries like Kazakhstan and Lithuania for both math and science.
Here's the map comparing state performance to the international average:
NCES
To look at it another way, here are all of the states, laid out in comparison to the international average:
NCES
And here's the comparison of the best states to their international counterparts, alongside the worst performing states:
NCES
Read the full report here. |
SPIEGEL: Mr. Katzenberg, these days, your animation productions cost nearly as much as major blockbuster movies, or rarely less than 150 million ($205 million). Why have computer-generated films gotten so expensive?
Katzenberg: The movies we've been making are among the most complex films being made anywhere and by anyone in the world today. Animated films take four to five years to make and involve between 400 and 500 artists. On average, our movies have 130,000 frames a piece. Each frame has to go through 12 different stages of production in the course of making the movie, And, in each stage, each frame goes through anywhere from 10 to 100 revisions. If you do the math, that's about half a billion frames for making each one of our movies.
SPIEGEL: Can you cut down on costs by outsourcing a lot of the work to Asia?
Katzenberg: No. We have a studio in India, but it's not low-budget. We are there because there is great talent, and not because of the costs.
SPIEGEL: With animated films, do you always have to have children as the target audience? The 2011 Western comedy Rango, for example, was everything but a children's movie, but still very successful.
Katzenberg: Successful? Not really. It didn't make money. I don't know how you gauge success. It won an Academy Award, and it appealed to adults. But the movie lost money.
SPIEGEL: At what point are you able to estimate how much money your movie will make?
Katzenberg: In the US market, usually after a day or two. In the international market, it's much more complicated. You have movies that play differently in different parts of the world. But in the US market, you don't always know exactly the size and scale, but you do know if you're a success or a failure within literally two or three days.
SPIEGEL: Do traditional feature films without animation elements have any change of surviving in the future?
Katzenberg: I'm no spokesperson for the movie industry. But, if you ask me as somebody who loves and goes to movies, I think the answer is: yes. Let's not forget that 2013 is on track to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest year in box-office history. The movie business has its challenges; but it's very, very popular. People all over the world are going to the movies.
SPIEGEL: Macau recently hosted the equivalent of the Chinese Oscars. How important is the region for you financially?
Katzenberg: China is a tremendous market. Five years from now, it will be the biggest market in the world.
SPIEGEL: How does Germany differ from other countries as a market for animated films?
Katzenberg: It's a fantastic animation market and particularly one of the strongest for DreamWorks. Our movies have been wildly popular in Germany. I would say that one of the things that is clearly distinctive and stands out in Germany is that there is a great preference for movies that are fables. And fables are films that have animals as the main characters. So they much prefer animated films with animals as the main characters as opposed to humans.
SPIEGEL: Does it worry you that Netflix and other online movie platforms are overtaking the market?
Katzenberg: No. Netflix has been a blessing for DreamWorks. We were one of the first movie companies to make a deal with them. We also recently made a so-called "Blockbuster TV" deal with them, which means our new TV productions will be exclusively available on Netflix. It's one of the biggest deals in the history of the television business.
SPIEGEL: Which of your animated films came to you as the biggest surprise?
Katzenberg: I would say Shrek. When we made Shrek, we were doing something that was so different from anything that anybody had ever tried before. It basically took the whole concept of a fairy tale and turned it upside down and inside out. It was very risky enterprise for us, but it obviously paid off.
SPIEGEL: Legend has it that, at the beginning of your career, you would start your mornings with several hours on the phone in order to gather all the relevant information about deals, scripts and productions in the industry. Is that true?
Katzenberg: I used to spend a lot of time on the telephone. I don't have that kind of time anymore; it's just not how the world works today. Today, there are many ways to communicate and collaborate besides the telephone. But the telephone is still very effective.
SPIEGEL: After all your time in Hollywood, have you gotten tired of all the big egos?
Katzenberg: No, not at all. Hollywood is a place that actually has a lot of really nice, very normal people. Not everybody is the cartoon exaggeration that mythology has made up. I'm a family man. I've been married for 38 years and have two amazing kids. They're over 30, have great careers and are doing wonderful work. Not everybody in Hollywood is cuckoo. |
New York City officials on Wednesday reported the deaths of three more people with swine flu, and estimated that more than half a million New Yorkers may have become sick from the virus.
The latest deaths bring the city’s total to 12 since the outbreak began in late April. The city health department said that one of the latest victims was 30 to 39 years old, one was 50 to 59 years old and one was over 65.
The city also announced 102 new hospitalizations since its last report on Monday, bringing the total hospitalizations to 530.
Dr. Don Weiss, director of surveillance for the Bureau of Communicable Disease, said that what looked like a spike in hospitalizations actually represented catching up from a lag in reporting over the weekend. He said that hospitalizations were running at the rate of 35 to 40 a day, and “don’t appear to be going up or down appreciably.”
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Health officials said that in a telephone poll of New Yorkers, 6.9 percent of those surveyed reported having flulike illness, like fever and cough or a sore throat, between May 1 and May 20. |
Perchloric acid is a mineral acid with the formula HClO 4 . Usually found as an aqueous solution, this colorless compound is a stronger acid than sulfuric acid and nitric acid. It is a powerful oxidizer when hot, but aqueous solutions up to approximately 70% by weight at room temperature are generally safe, only showing strong acid features and no oxidizing properties. Perchloric acid is useful for preparing perchlorate salts, especially ammonium perchlorate, an important rocket fuel component. Perchloric acid is dangerously corrosive and readily forms potentially explosive mixtures.
Production [ edit ]
Perchloric acid is produced industrially by two routes. The traditional method exploits the high aqueous solubility of sodium perchlorate (209 g/100 mL of water at room temperature). Treatment of such solutions with hydrochloric acid gives perchloric acid, precipitating solid sodium chloride:
NaClO 4 + HCl → NaCl + HClO 4
The concentrated acid can be purified by distillation. The alternative route, which is more direct and avoids salts, entails anodic oxidation of aqueous chlorine at a platinum electrode.[5][6]
Laboratory preparations [ edit ]
Treatment of barium perchlorate with sulfuric acid precipitates barium sulfate, leaving perchloric acid. It can also be made by mixing nitric acid with ammonium perchlorate and boiling while adding hydrochloric acid. The reaction gives nitrous oxide and perchloric acid due to a concurrent reaction involving the ammonium ion and can be concentrated and purified significantly by boiling off the remaining nitric and hydrochloric acids.
Properties [ edit ]
Anhydrous perchloric acid is an unstable oily liquid at room temperature. It forms at least five hydrates, several of which have been characterized crystallographically. These solids consist of the perchlorate anion linked via hydrogen bonds to H 2 O and H 3 O+ centers[7] Perchloric acid forms an azeotrope with water, consisting of about 72.5% perchloric acid. This form of the acid is stable indefinitely and is commercially available. Such solutions are hygroscopic. Thus, if left open to the air, concentrated perchloric acid dilutes itself by absorbing water from the air.
Dehydration of perchloric acid gives the anhydride dichlorine heptoxide:[8]
2 HClO 4 + P 4 O 10 → Cl 2 O 7 + "H 2 P 4 O 11 "
Uses [ edit ]
Perchloric acid is mainly produced as a precursor to ammonium perchlorate, which is used in rocket fuel. The growth in rocketry has led to increased production of perchloric acid. Several million kilograms are produced annually.[5] Perchloric acid is one of the most proven materials for etching of liquid crystal displays and critical electronics applications as well as ore extraction and has unique properties in analytical chemistry.[9] Additionally it is a useful component in etching of chrome[10]
As an acid [ edit ]
Perchloric acid, a superacid, is one of the strongest Brønsted–Lowry acids. Its pK a is −10,[11] −15.2 (±2.0).[3] It provides strong acidity with minimal interference because perchlorate is weakly nucleophilic (explaining the high acidity of HClO 4 ). Other acids of noncoordinating anions, such as fluoroboric acid and hexafluorophosphoric acid are susceptible to hydrolysis, whereas perchloric acid is not. Despite hazards associated with the explosiveness of its salts, the acid is often preferred in certain syntheses.[12] For similar reasons, it is a useful eluent in ion-exchange chromatography.
It is also used for electropolishing or etching of aluminium, molybdenum, and other metals.
Safety [ edit ]
Given its strong oxidizing properties, perchloric acid is subject to extensive regulations.[13] It is highly reactive with metals (e.g., aluminium) and organic matter (wood, plastics). Work conducted with perchloric acid must be conducted in fume hoods with a wash-down capability to prevent accumulation of oxidisers in the ductwork.
On February 20, 1947, in Los Angeles, California, 17 people were killed and 150 injured when a bath, consisting of over 1000 litres of 75% perchloric acid and 25% acetic anhydride by volume, exploded. The O'Connor Electro-Plating plant, 25 other buildings, and 40 automobiles were obliterated, and 250 nearby homes were damaged. The bath was being used to electro-polish aluminium furniture. In addition, organic compounds were added to the overheating bath when an iron rack was replaced with one coated with cellulose acetobutyrate (Tenit-2 plastic). A few minutes later the bath exploded.[14][15]
See also [ edit ] |
First days of recreational marijuana sales generate about $500,000 in taxes
The first four days of legal recreational marijuana sales generated $3 million in sales revenue and about $500,000 in tax revenue, putting Nevada on pace to achieve an estimated $30 million in sales revenue over the next six months of recreational sales, according to the Nevada Dispensary Association.
The sales figure was generated from Saturday’s first day of recreational marijuana sales to Tuesday. The tax rate for recreational pot is 33 to 38 percent, depending on local regulations, with all state and local taxes included. A 15 percent tax on wholesale marijuana distribution from cultivation and production facilities included in the total tax rate did not contribute to this week’s tax revenue, as dispensaries loaded up on supply prior to July 1 when the new wholesale tax took effect.
“We had a higher demand than everybody initially thought,” dispensary association director Riana Durrett said. “It shows this market really exists.”
Thousands of marijuana shoppers took to dispensaries over the weekend, forming lines as long as three hours for their chance to legally purchase the plant. Nevadans passed Ballot Question 2 in November, legalizing the use and possession of up to one ounce of marijuana flower or up to one-eighth ounce of concentrates. Legislation allowing sales of the plant at medically licensed dispensaries was finalized in late May.
Nevada was one of four states to legalize recreational use of the plant in November’s election. In addition, four other states allow recreational pot sales.
Editor’s note: This story has been revised. An earlier version contained an incorrect figure on the amount of tax revenue that has been generated. |
"We won't see a presidential candidate like Bernie again in our lifetimes." As I heard these words, spoken by a woman at a Sanders campaign event recently, I felt a chill go through me. Because I knew she was right. We won't.
We won't see another presidential candidate who refuses to take campaign donations from the wealthy and the corporate elite. We won't see another candidate with the courage to take on Wall Street. We won't see a candidate with the guts to tell the American people that they have lost their democracy. We won't see another candidate who mentions the working class and the poor in his speeches. We won't see another candidate sounding the alarm bells over global warming.
It is no wonder that the wealthy owners of the New York Times and Washington Post and other media organs have reacted to Sanders' insurgency with such fury, emptying their stables of talent each day in an effort to run him down and exterminate him politically. It's like watching the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, standing in the window of her castle, arms outstretched, sending her flying monkeys hurtling through the sky on a mission to destroy her would-be destroyers.
Just recently, the day after Sanders crushed Clinton in the Wisconsin primary by 13 percentage points -- his seventh win out of the last eight caucuses and primaries -- the New York Times published a front page article on the results that included only a single, one-sentence reference to Sanders (falsely claiming that the race in Wisconsin had been "close"). That was all. Every other word in the 1500-word news story was about Ted Cruz's victory over Trump in the state.
In a normal election year, the fact that an avowed "democratic socialist" was routinely winning Democratic contests in states like Washington, Minnesota, Hawaii, and Wisconsin, or that he was raising far more money, from small individual donations, than an establishment candidate drawing on the vast resources and connections of her national party, would have been huge front page news.
But this is not a normal election year. It's the end game. It is a crisis, in the original sense of the ancient Greek word, krisis -- the turning point in an illness when a patient either dies, or recovers. Except that the patient, in this case, is both the American body politic and the living earth itself.
Global temperatures in February smashed all previous records, putting 2016 on track to be even hotter than 2015 -- previously the hottest year on record. Not only didn't we humans reduce our carbon emissions last year, we increased them -- and at a greater rate than ever recorded. As Piers Tan, a leading climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observed, "Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years."
Just four months after the supposedly historic climate talks in Paris, then, the world is plunging headlong toward a full-scale ecological meltdown. Drought, flood, fire, monster storms, acidification of the oceans, disappearing fresh water, the migration of tropical diseases into the northern hemisphere, pandemics, accelerating species loss -- we're just at the beginning of things. Crops and agriculture will fail. Billions of people will lose their homes and even nations. Whole regions of the earth may become uninhabitable.
Last week, scientists issued a stunning new estimate about the West Antarctic ice sheet: it's melting at a far greater pace than earlier studies suggested. Just a few years ago, climate experts at the United Nations warned that the oceans could rise as much as two to three feet by the end of the century. Such a rise was then considered the worst case scenario -- a true calamity to be avoided. The new study suggests that sea levels could instead rise as much as five or six feet. That means that dozens of world cities -- New York, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Dhaka, Cape Town, Bangkok, Alexandria, among numerous others -- will be swallowed by the sea in our children's lifetimes.
But the problem isn't just global warming. The entire biosphere of the earth is coming violently apart. Thousands of species across the phylogenetic spectrum are disappearing. The oceans are becoming acidic. Billions of sea animals are being "mined" from the sea, tearing the oceanic food web to shreds. The very fabric of life on earth is being destroyed.
Does this sound bad? It is beyond bad. If it is not literally the end of the world, it is certainly the beginning of the end of a livable world. For two million years, the earth has been an amazing, beautiful, bountiful place for our species. It is the only home we have ever known or ever will know. Now, the writing of impending calamity is on the wall -- it's just in letters so big that most people can't see them.
Liberals planning to vote for Hillary don't seem to grasp what is really at stake in this election. They imagine that the worst thing in the world would be to have Donald Trump in the White House. But they're not exercising their imaginations enough. This election is about far, far more than stopping the Republicans, as important as that is. It's about interrupting the system of global wealth accumulation before it destroys all life on earth.
There are many reasons to find Hillary Clinton repugnant as a politician: her support for the Iraq War in 2003 and for the Honduran military coup in 2009, her ties to Goldman Sachs and Big Pharma, her support for neoliberal trade and economic policies that hurt working people, children, and the poor, her depiction of Edward Snowden as a "traitor," her support for fracking, her past mockery of the women who accused her husband of sexual assault, and so on. But the worst thing about Hillary is simply that she represents the status quo.
Perhaps, twenty or thirty years ago, it was still plausible to argue that voting for "the lesser evil" might usher in the kind of changes that our society desperately needs. But not today. Not with fascism rising again in Europe, and perhaps now even here in the United States. Not with the hollowing out of our democracy by corporate money. Not in the face of an unprecedented ecological emergency. If a Trump presidency is unthinkable, a Clinton presidency is unacceptable.
Critics of Sanders dismiss his policy proposals, like a single-payer health care system or free higher education (rights long ago established in Europe) as "pie in the sky." But in reality, it is Clinton's supporters who are engaging in wishful thinking. Last month, Oxfam reported that the richest 62 individuals now own as much wealth as the poorest 3,500,000,000 human beings, half of the whole species. To believe that such a system can be "reformed," or that Hillary will give us the "incremental change" we need to disrupt this monumental theft of the world's resources, is dangerous self-delusion.
Yes, the 2016 presidential race is still about Democrats and Republicans. But it has also become a national referendum on capitalism. For the first time in modern memory, Americans are being given the rare opportunity to affirm, or to reject, the trajectory of their economic and political system.
It would be hard to exaggerate how much is at stake in the coming weeks. Think of the world system as an ocean liner, steaming toward a field of icebergs. Liberals in the key primary states of New York, Pennsylvania, and California will soon be given a historic choice: either to keep the ship on its present heading, toward the icefield, or to set the ship on a new course. |
Thus far it’s been a year of mixed emotions for Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko. It’s clear Red Bull Racing will not be challenging Mercedes and Ferrari for the 2017 championship, but sister squad Toro Rosso – seventh in 2016 – are pushing Williams hard for fifth place, despite some missed opportunities and driver 'disagreements'. We caught up with Marko for an exclusive chat about the season so far, with topics including Carlos Sainz, Robert Kubica, Sebastian Vettel and more… Q: Helmut, while things look pretty calm at Red Bull Racing right now, Toro Rosso seems to be a little more problematic. What is the issue? Helmut Marko: Why is it problematic? I think the team did deliver as it should. Incidents with the drivers like in Silverstone are unfortunate, as are the reliability issues. The aim was to finish fifth in the standings and I think that will be rather difficult. Budapest turned in our favour, but from Spa on you will see the Mercedes-powered cars showing us their rear. Yes, we had a lot of possibilities in the first half of the season that we haven’t taken. A shame. Q: We now know that Carlos Sainz is set to stay with Toro Rosso for 2018, but that didn’t stop earlier rumours of a mid-season switch to Renault to replace Jolyon Palmer. Could that have been a win-win situation for all involved - Renault get another driver who can score, and you can start developing more new talent in the second Toro Rosso cockpit? HM: Rumours! Typical summer-slump rumours. (Laughs) Q: So no surprises in store for Spa? HM: You will see Carlos in a Toro Rosso in Spa.
"From Spa on you will see the Mercedes-powered cars showing us their rear" - Helmut Marko
Q: There has been much talk of a potential comeback for Robert Kubica with Renault. Could you understand that, given that the trend lately seems to be for teams – yours included – to seek out younger and younger talent, rather than a driver in his 30s? HM: Before his accident, Kubica was one of the quickest drivers of his time. On top of that he had a successful time with Renault, and if they think that they can continue with that then it makes sense for them. I think it would be nice for Kubica to come back. And that age thing: I think that Verstappen is the exception. Generally you have to look at the personality of a driver – there are some, like Verstappen, who are ready in their teens while others need more time. If Kubica still has what it takes, then why not? Q: Driver-fathers: what springs to mind? Help or hindrance? You have to deal with two of them right now: Carlos Sainz Sr. and Jos Verstappen… HM: Ha. The driver has a contract with us. And we tell the fathers that we talk to our employee. Q: You have made no secret of the fact that you are not the biggest fan of the halo. Does that mean you are an advocate for an element of risk in F1 racing? HM: Yes. Take other sports: skiers are far more at risk of injuries than F1 drivers. Or take soccer players: every weekend you see players hobble off the field. Only if something goes really, really wrong in F1 does a driver get hurt. Risk should always be a part of the DNA of Formula 1.
"I believe in Vettel, because I know his mental strength" - Helmut Marko |
Gentlemen, I didn’t bother to watch the Superbowl. I know, I know—but when you don’t care about either of the teams, what’s the point?
In addition to not caring about which team won (I’m a Redskins fan and have long given up hope), I also hate the overtly socialist, multi-cultural Superbowl commercials that typically play. If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ll have noticed that they’ve been getting progressively more and more obvious over the past decade or so… and boys, this Superbowl was no exception.
Here’s 5 of the most blatantly globalist Superbowl commercials of 2017:
1. Coca Cola
Featured in Coca Cola’s super bowl commercial of 2017, is the song “America the Beautiful,” being sung in multiple languages. Again, this is just so overtly pro-globalist I’m struggling with what to say.
After all, what can be said? The entire song pictures the “beauty,” of all cultures—children are seen playing games, young adults are dancing, it seems like a great time. Of course, they forgot to leave out the fact that most Iraqi citizens vehemently hate Americans, and want us dead.
They forgot the fact that we’ve been at war with the Middle East for the past 16 years, but oh, no, don’t worry about that! Just listen to the pretty music and watch the cool scenery of peaceful individuals loving one another! Coca Cola is directly undermining the security of our nation by pushing this multi-cultural agenda, and it’s time to stop drinking their products for good.
2. Audi
Oh, so it’s 2017 and we’re still pushing the wage gap myth? Despite the fact that Time Magazine and Forbes Magazine literally debunked this YEARS ago, greedy corporate whores and bitter feminazis continue to spit out this lie.
This commercial starts off with a young cute little girl in a race, up against all boys, of course—her father gives a heart-wrenching speech about how women are being oppressed, again, to further this absurd oppressed vs. oppressor cultural Marxist narrative. Here’s a full transcript of the video:
“What do I tell my daughter? Do I tell her that her grandpa’s worth more than her grandma? That her dad’s worth more than her mom? Do I tell her that, despite her education, her drive, her skills, her intelligence, she will automatically be valued as less than every man she ever meets? Or maybe, I’ll be able to tell her something different.”
Again, this is blatant anti-male, fourth wave college campus feminist propaganda. Don’t buy an Audi.
3. 84 Lumber
Perhaps the most blatantly anti-Trump propaganda piece of all time, this commercial features a long and arduous journey made by a single mother with her young little girl. They journey far and wide, from some South American country, for miles and miles… only to be met by the Donald’s wall.
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There they stand, staring at said wall, in all hopelessness—they each shed their tears, and hug one another in a very emotional scene. Of course, this is nothing more than emotional propaganda meant to sway your political opinions, though. At the end of the commercial, the mother and her daughter push through the wall’s doorway, and the scene ends with the following:
“The will to succeed is always welcome here.”
Okay, so let me get this straight—two ILLEGAL immigrants come up from South America, and they’re condoning this? How disgusting is that? Again, the bleeding heart liberals will cry and complain and moan and whine about how “Muh feelings!” but the truth remains that we cannot accept illegal immigrants.
We have a system to help them come here, if they abide by said system. I’m sorry, but it’s just not financially possible to continue taking on so many illegal immigrants, with zero education. They’re a massive burden to the tax payers, and it needs to end—we need the wall.
4. AirBnB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qUTYHnLz2g
As beautiful piano music plays in the background, a collage of different skin colors and ethnicities are overlayed upon one another. Sentences appear, one by one, as the music plays, leaving us with a bunch of “good feels,” and “muh emotions.” Here is what is said in the commercial:
“We believe no matter who you are, where you’re from, who you love, or who you worship, we all belong. The world is more beautiful the more you accept.”
Okay, so basically they’re saying that being a violent extremist who wants to throw acid on a woman’s face for showing her ankles, is the same as someone who goes to Church every Sunday and donates 10% of his income to charity? Nice try, Soros.
Again, this is riddled with Leftist propaganda—obviously it would be nice if the whole world could get along, but this is CLEARLY not possible, and in fact, trying to do so is often quite dangerous. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to stop using AirBnB.
5. Mr. Clean
The video shows a sexy Mr. Clean dancing and flirting with some woman, who is in complete awe over him, as Justin Timberlake’s suggestive music plays in the background. Then, near the end of the commercial, “Sarah,” this girl, snaps out of it. She is greeted by her beta-male, cuck-looking husband who is completely lacking in any and all masculinity.
Despite his unkempt appearance, and chubby belly, she jumps on top of him, ready to make love—the message is, be a good little boy and clean for your wife! It doesn’t matter that the majority of American women don’t cook or clean anymore, because you could get sex if you clean!
The commercial ends by saying: “You gotta love a man who cleans,” urging beta-cuck husbands to take up a traditionally female role. Poor guy. If only he could learn how to be an alpha male.
Read More: How Superbowl Marketing Discredited Feminism |
From Article 19
Translated by Anonymous contributor to IGD
Heriberto Paredes, photojournalist and reporter of the Autonomous Agency of Subversive Communication, was threatened with death in the afternoon of August 31st in the Federal District. This is the fifth aggression toward the journalist and members of the media agency since May 2015. Paredes told an interviewer from ARTICLE 19:
“I feel quite uncertain. In these situations it is impossible to not feel a degree of fear, of worry. But definitely what I feel most is annoyance, anger. . .because I would like to have the liberty to work and express what I consider necessary without it being a a danger for my life or for the lives of my colleauges.”
Paredes said that he was outside a metro station, four hours after leaving a meeting of the network #RompeElMiedo (BreaktheFear) in the offices of ARTICLE 19, when a person around fifty years old approached him and said to him, “You’re fucked. We’re going to kill you.” “Not even money will fix this” “You’re fucked Cuatrovientos” (Cuatrovientos [Four winds] is the alias that Heriberto has used on social media for a while). The aggressor held an object in his pants pocket while threatening Paredes verbally.
“The Mexican state and its multiple tentacles continue attacking those of us who are willing to say the truth about what we report and document,” added Paredes.
The member of Subversiones has focused his recent coverage on themes related to social movements and journalistic investigation related to violence and human rights violations in the states of Guerrero, the State of Mexico, and Michoacán.
Solidaridad con @SubVersionesAAC amenazados por informar, basta de censura a la libertad de expresión #RompeElMiedo http://t.co/qLXXPIyG1d — Luchadoras (@LuchadorasTV) September 2, 2015
The aggression toward Paredes adds to a series of threats and harassment that the photojournalist and other members of Subversiones have experienced this year. On May 15, June 7, and June 13, Paredes received death threats over the phone; on June 2 another member of the press agency received a death threat via telephone, and on June 10 Paredes was harassed inside the same metro station where the threat occurred on August 31. Subversiones is part of the network #RompeElMiedo, an articulate platform composed of free media groups and collectives of rights defenders that document aggression and violations of human rights.
***
In Spanish:
ALERTA: Integrante de la Agencia Subversiones es amenazado de muerte
México, D.F. a 1 de septiembre de 2015.- Heriberto Paredes, fotoperiodista y reportero de la Agencia Autónoma de Comunicación Subversiones, fue amenazado de muerte la tarde del 31 de agosto en el Distrito Federal. Esta amenaza es la quinta agresión al periodista e integrantes del medio desde mayo de 2015.
“Me siento con bastante incertidumbre. En estas situaciones es imposible no sentir un grado de miedo, de preocupación. Pero definitivamente lo que más siento es molestia, enojo; primero porque me gustaría tener la libertad de trabajar y expresar lo que considero necesario sin que ello sea un peligro para mi vida o para la de mis compañeras y compañeros de trabajo.” Dijo Heriberto Paredes en entrevista con ARTICLE 19
Paredes comentó que él se encontraba afuera de una estación de metro, cuatro horas después de salir de una reunión de la red #RompeElMiedo en las oficinas de ARTICLE19, cuando una persona de alrededor de 50 años de edad se le acercó y le dijo “Ya valiste verga. Te vamos a matar” “Ni con dinero se va a arreglar” “Ya valió verga Cuatrovientos” (este es el alias que Heriberto utilizaba en redes sociales hasta hace algunos días). El agresor sujetaba un objeto en la bolsa de su pantalón mientras lo amenazaba verbalmente.
“El Estado mexicano y sus múltiples tentáculos continúan agrediendo a quienes estamos dispuestos a decir la verdad de lo que reporteamos y documentamos”. Agregó Paredes.
El integrante de Subversiones ha enfocado sus coberturas recientes en temas relacionados con movimientos sociales e investigación periodística alrededor de los temas de violencia y violaciones a derechos humanos en los estados de Guerrero, Estado de México y Michoacán. La agresión a Paredes se suma a una serie de amenazas y actos de hostigamiento que este año se han generado contra el fotoperiodista y otros integrantes de Subversiones. El 15 de mayo, 7 y 13 de junio Paredes recibió amenazas de muerte vía telefónica; el 2 de junio otro integrante del medio recibió una amenaza telefónica y; el 10 de junio Paredes fue hostigado dentro de la misma estación de metro donde ocurrió la amenaza del 31 de agosto. Cabe señalar que la agencia Subversiones es parte de la red #RompeElMiedo plataforma de articulación compuesta por medios libres y colectivos de personas defensoras que documentan agresiones y violaciones a los derechos humanos.
– Fuente: http://www.articulo19.org/integrante-agencia-subversiones-amenzado/#sthash.6hRFc3GX.dpuf |
In my new book “An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take it Back,” I began with a list of 10 Economic Rules that seem to govern the Dysfunctional U.S. Medical Market. Some readers reacted with disbelief: How could such seemingly callous and absurd-sounding principles form the underpinning of something as precious as our healthcare? So here, I’ve illustrated each of the 10 rules with some real-life examples from the book to show you how they do, indeed, come into play. What you’ll see is that the economic forces and incentives that motivate our health system often lead to medical practices that are not especially good for our health — or our wallets.
What you’ll see is that the economic forces and incentives that motivate our health system often lead to medical practices that are not especially good for our health — or our wallets.
More treatment is always better. Default to the most expensive option. The most expensive treatment for the most common benign type of skin cancer is a complex technique called Mohs surgery, in which skin is sliced off sequentially and analyzed after each cut. It is frequently followed by plastic surgery with resulting total charges often in the tens of thousands. Mohs can be highly useful in delicate areas like an eyelid, but it is now far more widely deployed. In most body locations such basal cell carcinomas can be cured with a host of cheap and quick treatments: burning, cautery, simple excision or applying a caustic cream. Nonetheless, the rate of using the expensive techniques rose 700 percent among Medicare beneficiaries between 1992 and 2009. The decision to use MOHs often likely reflects “the economic advantage to the provider rather than a substantial clinical advantage for the patient,” one prominent dermatologist told me. (Patients: If a doctor recommends Mohs, ask instead about the cheaper treatments!) A lifetime of treatment is preferable to a cure. Medically this sounds crazy. But financially this is a no-brainer: Type 1 Diabetes is a lifelong serious disease — as well as the basis of an industry worth billions, providing pumps, monitors and ever-more-expensive versions of insulin. Pharma has little incentive to finance research for cures to a disease that has created such a lucrative market. The book outlines the travails of Harvard Professor Dr. Denise Faustman, whose lab is researching a cure using a generic drug. Pharma declined to fund her work. “They said, ‘It’s really interesting but we’ve got a problem: Tell us how it will ever make us money?’” From the manufacturers’ standpoint, if diabetes could be cured there was no need for insulin, pumps, and monitors — all extremely lucrative products. Amenities and marketing matter more than good care. In Europe most hospitals look like junior high schools; in the U.S., hospital lobbies resemble 5-star hotels. Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital hired a hotel industry executive to upgrade its services and the “guest experience,” turning a once financially failing hospital around. That’s what brings in patient business. But none of that luxury correlates very well with the quality of care. When Paul Levy, formerly CEO of a major Boston hospital, told his board that he wanted to study infection rates, it balked. Why would a hospital want to uncover that? How much do you know about your hospital’s infection rates after surgery? Its 5-year survival rates after cancer treatment? The cost of a day in the ICU? Whether the ER doctors are in your insurance network? (Note to patients: Forget the art and free coffee, this is where we should focus attention.) As technologies age, prices can rise rather than fall. Between 2010 and 2015, the recommended wholesale price of different forms of insulin rose 127 to 325 percent. The monthly wholesale price of Humulin, the most popular insulin, has risen to nearly $1,100, up from $258 for the average patient between 2012 and 2015. One big reason: Patent protection and patent lawsuits have left one company cornering the market for the most popular form of the drug. Suffice it to note, also, that an echocardiogram, a sonogram of the heart, costs anywhere from about $1,000 to $8,000 in the U.S. In Japan, where regulators insist that the price charged for new technology decreases as it ages, it is now under $150. There is no free choice. Patients are stuck. And they’re stuck buying American. When your doctor tells you that you need a blood test, his computer is likely programmed to send your blood to his hospital’s lab — you’re pretty much captive and have no simple way to shop for a cheaper service. Likewise, even if you know your medicine is far cheaper overseas, it is illegal to import them, as you might for a car or flat screen TV. (Note to patients: Feel entitled to ask your doctor to send your blood to an outside commercial lab that is in your insurance network. I now do — it will save a lot of money.) More competitors vying for business doesn’t mean better prices; it can drive prices up, not down. When insurers negotiate discounts on hospitals and physician prices, they often use a standard called “usual and customary” to determine what is reasonable to reimburse in a given zip code. But if lots of providers in that area are charging high prices, then “usual and customary” doesn’t equal “reasonable.” Instead it equals “inflationary.” The result: in 2014 the “usual and customary” surgeon’s fee for gall bladder surgery in Queens, New York, was about $2,000, but twenty miles east in Nassau County, Long Island, where more doctors are in private practice, it was $25,000. (Note to patients: For elective procedures, look a little further afield online medical pricing websites.) Economies of scale don’t translate to lower prices. With their market power, big providers can simply demand more. Sutter Health’s Mills Peninsula Hospital billed about $122,000 for Susan Foley’s knee replacement, a price which did not even include any physicians’ fees. Her insurer paid the hospital $54,000. A knee replacement is a fairly standard procedure and studies have concluded that about $35,000 is a reasonable all-inclusive price that many high quality centers will accept. One big reason Sutter Health’s Mills-Peninsula Medical Center can get away with really high prices is because it is by far the biggest health system in Northern California — a near monopoly in some areas, thanks to serial acquisitions and takeovers of other healthcare institutions. Studies show that one dominant healthcare system can result in price increases as high as 40 to 50 percent. Premiums are 9 percent higher in San Francisco, Sutter Health territory, compared with those in Los Angeles, even though the latter boasts high-end hospitals like Cedars-Sinai and Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, because there are more players in the southern market. There is no such thing as a fixed price for a procedure or test. And the uninsured pay the highest prices of all. Patients who have insurance are lucky enough to have insurers’ do at least some negotiation on their behalf. An insurer’s contract with a hospital may stipulate that they’ll pay, say, $30,000 or $54,000 or $75,000 on a highly inflated $122,000 “list price.” But what happens to people who don’t have insurance and insurance negotiators in their corner? The book recounts the ordeal of Wanda Wickizer, who had a bleed in her skull just a week before the Affordable Care Act took effect, and was uninsured. The hospital billed her over $350,000 for her 3 weeks as an inpatient — and took her to court to pay it, though she “didn’t have that kind of money.” Medicare would have paid under $100,000 for the same services. There are no standards for billing. There’s money to be made in billing for anything and everything. Creative attempts at revenue capture are legion in our system. These are actual charges from bills that patients have contributed: A $17 Tylenol pill in the hospital. A $98 ice pack applied during physical therapy. A $70 additional “mileage charge” for a 15-minute ambulance ride. A $10,000 “trauma team activation fee,” when a triage nurse summoned surgeons to the emergency room. A $1000 “rooming-in charge” to a mother who opted to keep her newborn in her room, rather than having him admitted to the new-born nursery. Prices will rise to whatever the market will bear. The mother of all rules! Jeffery Kivi had long gotten monthly outpatient infusions of a drug to treat his autoimmune disease for about $19,000. But when his rheumatologist moved her affiliation to another hospital, 20 blocks uptown, infusions of the very same drug were billed at up to $132,000. And the still bigger shocker for Mr. Kivi was that his insurer came through with almost all of the cash, close to $100,000. “I was stunned when the first infusion bill finally showed up on my account,” Mr. Kivi wrote to me. “I couldn’t believe my eyes!! This was for the same drug at the same dosage as I’d always gotten. Nothing had changed.” Prices rise to whatever the market will bear.
These are only some of the many stories that I’ve heard directly from patients all over the U.S. that happen every day. And they will continue to. My hope in giving your stories a platform and calling out the perverse economic incentives that have created this dysfunctional system is to educate and become a rallying point for better and more affordable health care. Join me and the revolution at www.wethepatients.us!
My hope in giving your stories a platform and calling out the perverse economic incentives that have created this dysfunctional system is to educate and become a rallying point for better and more affordable health care.
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Source: Networkworld
CSO - Personal information on some 4,000 people in the banking industry, including bank officers, was posted online Sunday by the hacker collective Anonymous
The list was initially posted to the website for the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center (ACJIC), then apparently taken down by that site's operators. The ACJIC did not respond to a request for comment about the incident.
However, the list was also posted elsewhere online, and remains available through Google's web cache. It contains contact information on people with a range of job titles, from cashier to C-level officers to bank presidents. Phone calls placed to several of the people on the list indicates that the tally is current and accurate.
The list also contains logins, hashed passwords and their "salts" -- random characters added to a hashed password to make it more difficult to crack.
"That means they had to have very deep access to get those combinations," Cameron Camp, a senior researcher with Eset, said in an interview.
What's concerning is that the list involves people at many types of financial institutions, Camp said. "How were they able to get logins and passwords and salts for that many bankers?" he said. "That's kind of scary."
Read More... |
NEW YORK – At a press briefing today, the New York Police Department pushed back against the suggestion that they’d broken the law by monitoring Muslims in mosques, cafes, shops and schools in New York City and beyond, the New York Daily News reported.
Criticism has been growing against the NYPD for targeting anti-terrorism surveillance programs at Muslims living in the United States, CNN reported. Leaked reports obtained by the Associated Press have described how New York police spied on Muslim-owned business and mosques in Newark, NJ, and monitored Muslim student associations at colleges across the Northeast.
More from GlobalPost: NYPD monitored Muslim college students across the Northeastern US
“There's been a suggestion that what we are doing doesn't comport with legal requirements, and that's not the case,” Chief Spokesman Paul Browne said, according to the New York Daily News. “Everything we're doing is done constitutionally.”
“There is no constitutional prohibition against a police department collecting information,” Peter Farrell, senior counsel of the city’s Law Department, told reporters, according to the New York Daily News. “What's unconstitutional is if they then use that information to chill someone’s First Amendments rights or to impose harm on them.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker have both called for an investigation into the NYPD’s program in Newark, CNN reported.
"I strongly believe that we must be vigilant in protecting our citizens from crime and terrorism,” Mayor Cory Booker said Wednesday, according to CNN, “but to put large segments of a religious community under surveillance with no legitimate cause or provocation clearly crosses a line.”
Booker and his police director have claimed that the NYPD misled them by not revealing the true nature of their work when they notified Newark officials that they would be visiting the city as part of a terrorism investigation, the AP reported.
"If anyone in my police department had known this was a blanket investigation of individuals based on nothing but their religion, that strikes at the core of our beliefs and my beliefs very personally, and it would have merited a far sterner response," Booker said, according to the AP. |
It sounds like a scene from a science fiction film but if one food concept designer has her way this is how everybody will be eating in the near future.
While 3D food-printing technology is not a new thing, the invention of this self-growing snack that makes its own filling could change the way we consume food, forever.
The Edible Growth project is the brainchild of Dutch concept designer Chloé Rutzerveld who conceived of the idea to show that high-tech or lab-produced food does not have to be 'unhealthy and unnatural.'
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The Edible Growth project is the brainchild of Dutch food and concept designer Chloé Rutzerveld
Embedded in a pastry shell are seeds, yeast and spores, which take between three to five days to fully mature
The snack is a pastry shell embedded with seeds, yeast and spores, which take three to five days to mature, after which it is ready to be consumed.
On her website Ms Rutzerveld explained in a video: 'The Edible Growth Project is about creating a fully edible ecosystem with living organisms in which the base gets printed by a 3D-printer and gradually develops towards a fully-fledged dish.'
HOW DOES THE FOOD GROW? Multiple layers containing seeds, spores and yeast are printed according to a personalized 3D file. Within five days the plants and fungi mature and the yeast ferments the solid inside into a liquid. The product’s intensifying structure, scent and taste are reflected in its changing appearance. Depending on the preferred intensity, the consumer decides when to harvest and enjoy the delicious, fresh and nutrient-rich edible.
According to Ms Rutzerveld, the project is an example of high-tech but fully natural, healthy, and sustainable food made possible by combining aspects of nature, science, technology and design.
Edible Growth makes use of natural processes like fermentation and photosynthesis and lowers the use of resources.
She explained: 'It shows that high tech food doesn't have to be unhealthy or unnatural, but that it can actually have a lot of advantages.
'The printer is not only used as a kind of shaping machine in which material A gets in and also comes out in another shape but it is used to create innovative food that truly contributes to solving the world's food problems.'
The snack in its various stages: 3D-printed nylon prototype (left) and growth test to see if it will take (right)
Success: The inner workings of the Edible Growth prototype which shows mushrooms and sprouts
The food designer aims to use the new food technology to create natural, healthy, sustainable and nutrient rich food that cannot be made with traditional production methods.
'With Edible Growth a lot of unnecessary stages of the food chain disappear with as result a reduction of food waste, food miles and CO2 emission. At the same time the consumer will become more involved and conscious about the food they eat,' she continued.
The product is built from several layers, with an outer shell of crust made of dough or pasta, and on the inside spores, seeds, yeast and edible soiled are contained.
A new way of eating: From machine to mouth in five days. The food designer hopes her concept will change the way we view and consume food in the future
The new food technology will create natural, healthy, sustainable, and nutrient rich food that cannot be made using traditional production methods
After it has been printed, the consumer takes it home and within three to five days, it will develop into a complete dish that contains all the nutrients a the body needs.
She compares the process to the maturing of cheese.
'Just like Roquefort cheese, the intensity of its taste, smell and whole eating experience increases over time.
'If we could produce our food this way, you can imagine that the food supply chain would shrink immensely,' she said.
The project is still at a conceptual stage at this point.
'Apart from the necessary technological development, a lot of biotechnological research will be needed on the composition of ingredients and food safety for instance,' she said. |
Shakeel Ahmad Bhat (Kashmiri: शकील अहमद भट (Devanagari, Shakeel Ahmad Bhat), شکیل احمد بھٹ (Nastaleeq)) (born around 1978) is a Kashmiri activist.[1] He has been in photographs on the front pages of many newspapers and has become a cult figure on the Internet. He has been featured in newspapers such as the Times of India,[2] Middle East Times,[3] France 24,[4] and The Sunday Mail[5][6][7][8] He has been nicknamed Islamic Rage Boy by several bloggers.[9]
Biography [ edit ]
He was born into a Sufi family in Kashmir, India. He claims that, around 1990, during a raid on his home, Indian police allegedly threw his sister Shareefa out of an upstairs window; she apparently broke her spine and died from her injuries four years later.[1]
He lives in Kashmir, India, where he is often seen participating in demonstrations. Due to his angry look, he is often photographed by journalists. He took part in protests against the Indian Army, Israel, Pope Benedict, Salman Rushdie, and the Muhammed cartoons.[2] He was captured and spent three years in prison.[1] He claims that he has been detained almost 300 times since 1997.[1]
As icon [ edit ]
He was featured in numerous blogs and articles by Christopher Hitchens,[10] Robert Spencer,[11] Kathleen Parker,[12] Michelle Malkin,[13] and others. On various blogs, he was photoshopped as Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler or as an opera singer.[14][15] His picture has also been printed on T-shirts, posters, mouse-pads, and beer mugs.[1][2]
See also [ edit ] |
Shaun Pick (left) played in Featherstone's 2014 Championship Grand Final
Toronto Wolfpack have signed ex-Featherstone Rovers back-rower Shaun Pick, following the completion of a two-year doping ban.
Pick, 23, was caught with anabolic steroids in his system during an out-of-competition test, and banned for two years in 2015.
He spent time at Huddersfield before joining Rovers in 2013.
"Speaking to Shaun, he is committed to making this a positive experience," head coach Paul Rowley said.
"He wants to take this opportunity with both hands. Our staff did their homework on Shaun - as with all our players - to make sure we got our man with a clear focus on achieving our goals.
"The staff and I look forward to working with this young man, and providing clear and honest guidance, which will see him realise the huge potential he has."
Former Salford forward Luke Menzies has also joined Canadian side Toronto, who will begin their first season in the English League One this year. |
Washington (CNN) Trump Tower in Manhattan, home to President-elect Donald Trump and a fixture of American politics for the last 18 months, has become a de facto "fortress" as security measures go into place for the incoming president.
As Trump's top aides and leaders of the transition team headed to the new executive's New York headquarters Friday, they were met by jersey barriers and concrete blocks set up by police. And a large police presence was established on the block surrounding Trump Tower, limiting public access.
Securing Trump Tower, in the heart of Manhattan, has become a challenge for New York police and the Secret Service.
The entrance to Trump tower -- which sits near heavily trafficked luxury shops, including Tiffany & Co. and Gucci -- has become a special challenge. New York City zoning rules require that the space in front of Trump Tower remain open to the public, and Secret Service officials say they have told city officials they are trying to be mindful of any impact on business.
Secret Service officials have raised the possibility of shutting down some lanes on Fifth Avenue -- or even shutting down the major thoroughfare entirely -- in talks with city law enforcement. |
The Marshmallows turned out in droves this weekend to check out the theatrical debut of Veronica Mars. The Kickstarter-funded, cult TV show adaptation opened to a cool $2 million from 291 theaters (265 in the U.S.), earning the pic a spot on the top 10 according, to initial estimates.
The PG-13 pic was also released simultaneously on VOD — free for Kickstarter backers who’d contributed $35 or more to the record-breaking campaign, but also available for purchase or rental through digital download services such as iTunes or Amazon. The industry has not gotten into a mode where they share VOD earnings, but the multi-platform availability clearly did not dissuade fans from making the trek to the theaters.
But, is it a success?
In a note to Kickstarter backers coinciding with Friday’s release, Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas wrote: “My number one goal for Veronica Mars was to make our fans happy.” He added: “Do I still hope Veronica Mars does well in movie theaters, and sells a hundred billion copies on opening weekend? Of course I do. And is there a number I’ve discussed with Warner Bros. that would make it easier to start talking about a sequel? Of course there is. The more audience we can show for Veronica Mars, the better the odds that we’ll get to do this again in the future.”
Warner Bros.’ executive vice president of theatrical distribution Jeff Goldstein was happy with the opening, telling EW: “Our result starting with our Thursday fan events was $260K. You add that together with our weekend for a total of $2 million from 291 theaters? That’s pretty significant.”
This might not change the model for filmmaking and distribution as we know it, but Warner Bros. does have a few takeaways. “We recognize going forward that there’s room in the marketplace for huge movies, medium movies, and boutique films for a very specific audience,” says Goldstein. The biggest obstacle with this particular model was convincing movie theater owners to take a gamble and show the film theatrically, knowing that it would also be available on VOD — and free for many backers, who are arguably the most passionate of the fan base. AMC came through, and Goldstein says it was “hugely successful” for the chain.
“In so many of their complexes, Veronica Mars was the No. 1 movie for the entire weekend, far exceeding the next closest movie,” says Goldstein. “It’s not the number of theaters, it’s the quality of the theaters and the number of seats you can make available so that the patrons in the area can go see the movie. That’s what happened this weekend — they flocked.” The per theater average was about $6,945.
As for sequel possibilities? “We haven’t had that conversation yet,” says Goldstein. “We wanted to get through this weekend and then sit down and figure out where we’re going.” That includes looking at VOD numbers, which may actually be released. Take note, Marshmallows — everyone may be staying mum on what magic number they needed to hit, but there could be an answer soon. Goldstein says: “In a week we’ll have a better sense.” |
U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Vince Burden, annotates the serial number of a dropsonde on board a WC-130J Super Hercules aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean Sept. 17, 2010.
The new rules reflect a shift in intel-gathering from phone-tapping to capturing conversations on the internet.
A privacy update to 1982 Defense Department rules for conducting surveillance on Americans contains a loophole that lets the National Security Agency continue eavesdropping on a wide swath of online conversations, critics say.
“DOD Manual 5240.01: Procedures Governing the Conduct of DOD Intelligence Activities” was last issued when all email addresses could fit in a Parent Teacher Association-sized directory.
The new rules reflect a shift in intelligence gathering from bugging an individual’s phone to netting communications in bulk from the global internet. The revision aims to address the reality that many, many conversations now occur online and should be shielded from government surveillance, intelligence and civil liberties experts agree.
But the document creates a carveout that does not respect the privacy of data ferried along international communications wires, according to the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute.
The new manual is “making kosher the kind of upstream collection that allows for really widescale incidental collection, even if very time-limited collection, of Americans’ information,” said Robyn Greene, the institute’s policy counsel.
Unlike in the 1980s when transatlantic talk was cost-prohibitive (a 3-minute call between America and Western Europe cost up to $12.60), now the equivalent of several hundred Libraries of Congress worth of chatter traverses undersea cables everyday at a rate of a few cents per YouTube download.
So, the word “collection” takes on new meaning in the policy to try ensure personal data is handled with discretion. In the past, information was considered captured only when officially accepted for use by an analyst. Now, information is considered captured “when it is received,” according to the revised manual.
“The clock starts to run as soon as information is collected, meaning that collected information must be promptly evaluated to determine the proper retention period,” Cody Poplin, a former Brookings Institution researcher, commented in a Lawfare blog post.
However, privacy advocates say the timer to preserve confidentiality starts too late.
The new procedures do not consider short-term files like email contents and metadata swept up from the internet as “collections” that merit protection. The manual states: ”Collected information does not include: Information that only momentarily passes through a computer system; information on the internet or in an electronic forum or repository outside the component that is simply viewed or accessed by a component employee but is not copied, saved supplemented or used.”
“It’s great” that more stored communications will enjoy privacy protections, but the document “fails to address the core concerns that we have about bulk collection and the impact that has on Americans’ privacy and on nontargeted foreigners’ privacy,” Greene said.
Can’t Touch This
It remains to be seen, or unseen, how U.S. spies are following the new data-handling guidelines in practice when scanning networks.
On Wednesday, Defense officials declined to comment on internet cable-tapping.
In response to the concerns raised, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Eric Badger said in an email to Nextgov the “provision defining collection in the new manual, including the exclusions, does not diminish the protections that existed under the previous” guidelines.
He also said there is an existing classified annex containing “civil liberties and privacy protections for U.S. persons when conducting signals intelligence” that remains in effect until an update is issued.
“As to the hypothetical, we cannot comment,” Badger said.
The Aug. 8 rules apply to the entire Pentagon, including NSA. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Justice Department head Loretta Lynch signed off on the manual, after consulting with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
One intelligence community contractor says the policy reboot does a much better job at spelling out the dos and don’ts of siphoning Americans’ data from the internet.
The manual helps “clarify how that data could be used, how it’s going to be handled, how it’s going to be safeguarded, etc.” said Justin Fier, director for cyber intelligence and analysis at Darktrace, where many on staff formerly served British and U.S. spy agencies.
“It allows Americans to feel OK with the fact that they can use the internet and the internet might be a collection platform,” he said.
Five years is the cap for keeping data on Americans intentionally captured, as well as data “incidentally collected” while targeting a specific person in the United States, the manual says. Collateral data can be retained for up to 25 years if the target of the sweep is reasonably believed to be outside the United States, according to the policy.
“The procedures require that, at the end of the maximum evaluation period” data on Americans “is deleted from intelligence databases unless affirmatively determined to meet the criteria for permanent retention,” an accompanying Pentagon fact sheet reads.
Civil liberties groups contend much of that data should not be retained to begin with, but reversing course would take changes to presidential policy. The manual is still undergirded by a Reagan-era executive order (E.O. 12333) that allows the government to Hoover up data on Americans from outside the United States, without the restrictions that limit stateside searches.
“These new privacy protections don’t narrow the scope of collection authorized under E.O. 12333 to prohibit the mass surveillance that the NSA currently engages in,” Greene said. Until the order “is amended to address that problem, the NSA will still be able to use that authority to scoop up the communications of millions of innocent people.”
This week, NSA is dealing with an apparent counterespionage attack that perhaps leaked pieces of the spy agency’s hacking tool arsenal. Ex-intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who exposed the bulk data interception at issue here, has suggested the Russian government spilled NSA’s malicious codes as part of an ongoing plot to tamper with the U.S. presidential elections. |
Getty Image
Kyrie Irving played only nine minutes in his team’s shockingly easy win over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday, leaving early with what the team described as “flu-like symptoms.” After the Cleveland Cavaliers equally surprising loss to the Detroit Pistons 24 hours later, though, the flashy floor general set the record straight on his impromptu absence.
Was a stomach bug really what kept Irving from appearing in one of the biggest games of the regular season? Well, not exactly.
Asked how he was feeling following his team’s loss by Joe Vardon of the Northeast Ohio Media Group, the 23 year old responded thusly – in, believe it or not, what seems to be a completely serious manner.
I felt all right. Our team said I was out with flu-like symptoms. It was honestly from the bed bugs at the frickin Hilton that we stayed at. As you can see I got it at the top of my head, it’s just like bed bugs and I didn’t get any sleep. We came into the game, then I was freaked out, then I started feeling nauseous so it was just a whole bunch of BS honestly. Coming into today I got a lot of rest and felt better coming into today.
Yes, bed bugs prevented a three-time All-Star from playing even half of a nationally televised game against a potential NBA Finals opponent. The Oklahoma City Hilton obviously needs to call an exterminator – and preferably a very, very skilled one.
Irving, you may recall, played throughout last year’s playoffs on an incredibly fragile right knee that finally gave out during overtime of Game 1 of the Finals. He doesn’t exactly qualify as “soft,” basically, no matter your takeaway from this absolutely bizarre turn of events. Those bugs were just clearly from some other planet.
Irving, by the way, really did feel better on Monday than he did one day prior. He scored 30 points and doled-out five assists versus Detroit. But LeBron James struggled, shooting 5-of-18 from the floor en route to a measly 12 points. Might The King have been suffering from the affliction that plagued his superstar teammate? We’re not sure, but if those bugs were bad enough to keep Irving out of a game entirely, they’d likely be enough to negatively affect LeBron.
Right? |
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Sep. 11, 2013, 7:30 PM GMT By Katie Little
Soon, you may be able to pay for your McMuffin with the swipe of a cell phone.
McDonald's is testing a mobile payment application at its Salt Lake City, Utah, and Austin, Texas, stores, the company told CNBC in an email. Restaurants frequently test out new ideas in select markets before deciding to expand an item or service nationwide.
Thiscreenshot shows the Google Wallet application on a mobile device in New York. Plastic has replaced cash for everyday shopping for many consumers, but if some technological wizards have their way, mobile phones will replace plastic one day. Today
"We're always looking at new technologies to make the McDonald's experience better for our customers," said McDonald's spokesperson Ofelia Casillas. "We are testing some of these technologies in a few markets, so it's premature to speculate on the decisions we may make after the tests, but we're excited to bring a cutting-edge experience in the future to our customers."
(Read more: Secret's out! Hidden menu items)
The fast-food giant already has a nationwide app that provides a restaurant locator, nutritional facts and career information.
The move comes as McDonald's is battling tepid sales with new items like the addition of steak to its breakfast menu and Mighty Wings. On Tuesday, the company said U.S. same-restaurant sales rose 0.2 percent. Analysts had expected same-restaurant sales in the region to rise 0.8 percent.
McDonald's is the latest company to enter the mobile payment fray, joining Chipotle and Starbucks. Meanwhile, competitor Burger King allows customers to place delivery orders by phone or online in many markets.
"McDonald's is just evolving at the same pace as consumers—especially the younger generation and millennials who really don't pay in cash," said Darren Tristano, an executive vice president at Technomic, a research and consulting firm. "They use credit."
(Read more: McDonald's shakes up its menu)
McDonald's new payment option will improve transaction speed and accuracy, Tristano said—two of the highest priorities in the fast-food business.
"I don't know if it's going to move the needle in its effort to boost sales," he added. "I think it's an operational move. If there's a benefit to sales, it is for customers who don't have cash or credit cards but still want to purchase at McDonald's."
—By CNBC's Katie Little. Follow her on Twitter @KatieLittle. |
Bob Uecker cut back on his road schedule considerably last year and plans to do likewise this season. (Photo: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports)
PHOENIX - Bob Uecker insists he doesn't think about how much longer he’ll broadcast Milwaukee Brewers games on the radio.
But Ueck is pretty sure he doesn’t want a farewell tour if and when he decides it's time to walk away.
“The presents would probably be pretty crummy anyway,” he said.
Uecker, of course, was exercising his trademark self-deprecating humor with that remark. But he really has no thoughts at this point of stepping away from the microphone, which is very good news for Brewers fans. The 83-year-old Milwaukeean — yes, he is 83, no matter what reference site claims otherwise — is entering his 47th season in the booth and just might go for 50.
“Who knows? It could be next year or the year after that (when he retires),” Uecker said. “I really don’t know.”
One factor that won’t come into play is Uecker’s contract. That’s because the man known as “Mr. Baseball” never has worked with a formal agreement, beginning with his first handshake deal with former Brewers owner Bud Selig.
“I’ve never had a contract. Never,” he said. “When (current principal owner) Mark Attanasio came here, that’s the first thing he asked me: ‘Do you want to work the same way you did with Bud?’ I said yeah.
“I don’t need a contract. If you don’t want me back, tell me. If I don’t want to come back, I’ll tell you.”
Uecker cut back on his road schedule considerably last year and plans to do likewise this season. But, if the Brewers are playing at Miller Park, you can bet he will be in his customary seat in the WTMJ radio booth, working games with sidekick Jeff Levering.
“I think I did 110 games (total) last season,” he said. “I’ll probably do about the same this year. I’ll do some road games. I won’t do the West Coast. I might go to Yankee Stadium because it might be the last time.
“Jeff and Lane (Grindle) do such a good job (on trips Uecker misses). It’s time for them.”
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GAME REPORT: Royals outlast Brewers in pitchers' duel
Uecker has one loyal listener who always knows when to tune in to Brewers’ games long distance. Robin Yount, who became best friends with Uecker during his 20-year, Hall of Fame career in Milwaukee, loves listening in on satellite radio when driving in his car.
“It makes the drive more fun listening to Ueck,” said Yount, who lives in the Phoenix area. “I listen regularly. He’s the best. You hear people say somebody is ‘one of a kind,’ but that’s not always true. With Ueck, it’s true. He is truly one of a kind. That’s not a cliché in his case. I’ve never met anyone else like him.
“There’s no way to replace somebody like that. You can’t do it. Hopefully, it never happens. I know it will one day, but I hope that day is a long time away. I tell people all the time, 'This is the same guy today that I met in 1974.' He hasn’t lost a thing. He’s the best.”
Bob Uecker jokes around with Robin Yount during an interview at the Brewers Playoff Rally on Sept. 29, 2011, at the Summerfest grounds. (Photo: Journal Sentinel files)
One by one, Uecker has seen his radio contemporaries leave the booth. After the 2016 season, fellow Hall of Famers Vin Scully and Dick Enberg retired from calling games for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres, respectively.
“They are such good friends,” said Uecker. “I once apologized to Vin because he had to call games I played in. ‘Tricky’ (Enberg) and I go way back. Back when he was with the Angels, I did a pregame show with him about my ‘Passed Ball School.’ I said I was teaching kids to miss the ball on purpose so the game wouldn’t go into extra innings and their parents could go home (Uecker led the National League in passed balls in 1967 despite playing in only 59 games).
“(Angels owner) Gene Autry called, wanting to know what we were talking about. I offered Autry the California franchise for the ‘Passed Ball School’ if he wanted it. It turned out to be a funny deal.
“Enberg has done so many other things — tennis and football and basketball. He has done it all.”
Current Brewers fans might not realize it, but Uecker once called other sports over the radio as well in Milwaukee. He did Marquette basketball broadcasts with Tom Collins and also worked football and basketball games for UW-Milwaukee.
“UWM was actually pretty good in football,” Uecker recalled. “(Safety) Mike Reinfeldt played there (captain of the last team in 1974) and went on to be a big-time safety in the NFL.
“When I think back to all those years, working with all those guys, it was something.”
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Uecker always knew baseball, his first true love, was where his broadcasting future would unfold. In 1972, when former Milwaukee Braves teammate and pal Eddie Mathews took over as manager in Atlanta, he offered a coaching position to Uecker, who had just finished his first year in the Brewers radio booth.
“I turned him down,” said Uecker. “I didn’t really have interest in coaching. This broadcasting gig was such a nice thing.”
Over the years, Uecker would venture off into other successful, high-profile endeavors. Remember “Monday Night Baseball” on ABC-TV? The original broadcast crew was Uecker, Bob Prince and Warner Wolf in 1976, and Uecker later shared that booth with broadcast legends Howard Cosell and Keith Jackson.
His impressive list of credits expanded to more than 100 appearances on “The Tonight Show, Starring Johnny Carson,” where the "Mr. Baseball" moniker was born. Uecker also starred on the TV sitcom “Mr. Belvedere,” which ran for 122 episodes; became even more famous in the series of hilarious commercials with the Miller Lite All-Stars; and struck gold again with his memorable turn as broadcaster Harry Doyle in the “Major League” movies.
Bob Uecker is filmed inside the broadcast booth at County Stadium for his Harry Doyle scenes in "Major League." (Photo: Gray & Company)
A national celebrity was born, but Uecker always returned to the Brewers’ radio booth when all was said and done. It was his home, literally and figuratively, personally and professionally.
“The network stuff was fun but coming back to Milwaukee was always best,” he said. “Being born and raised there, it meant so much to me.
“I enjoyed all the other stuff. Whoever thought ‘Major League’ would do what it did? They basically let me do what I wanted. I didn’t have a script. I just looked at the scene, and they’d say, ‘Go!’ ”
Uecker will miss one home series for sure this season — three games against the Cubs from July 28-30. That weekend, Selig, whom Uecker loves to call "Al" to his face, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., a tribute to his successful 22-year stint as baseball commissioner.
“I want to go there and sit back, relax and watch,” he said. “That’s a big day for Buddy.”
Bud Selig, left, talks with Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, center, and Bob Uecker before a news conference at Miller Park in 2014. The Brewers announced they would be retiring a uniform with No. 1 on it in Selig's honor. (Photo: Journal Sentinel files)
Uecker is still renown for his knee-slapping speech at Cooperstown on July 27, 2003, when he was honored with the Ford C. Frick Award for career excellence in broadcasting. Inductees normally are told to get off stage in less than 10 minutes, in part because aging Hall of Famers are sitting there, often under hot and humid conditions, but Uecker was allowed to go twice that long with no complaints.
It was a performance of which any professional comedian would have been proud.
“The day before, Yogi Berra came up to me and said, ‘Ueck, don’t stay up there too long. It’s hot out there,’ ” recalled Uecker. “But (during his speech), I could hear (the Hall of Famers) laughing and yelling, ‘Keep going!’
“I remember (former) President (George H.W.) Bush, sitting there in the front row of the crowd, laughing his ass off. That was great.”
National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Gary Carter (center) is double-teamed by Ford C. Frick Award recipient Bob Uecker (left) and fellow inductee Eddie Murray during induction ceremonies July 27, 2003, in Cooperstown, N.Y. (Photo: Associated Press)
Uecker hasn't appeared in a movie since "Major League III: Back to the Minors," a box office bomb in 1998.
"I thought Major League II (in 1994) was pretty good but the third one, we probably shouldn't have made," he said, diplomatically.
But is Uecker done making movies? Back home in Milwaukee he has a script on his desk that intrigues him. It’s a baseball film, of course, and he would play a ghost who returns from the past with a specific mission. Suffice it to say his role would be largely comedic, and we’ll leave it at that.
“It’s a decent script,” he said. “I just don’t think I have the time to do it. It depends when they’d do it. I’m in a lot of scenes. I think it would be a good film.”
At this stage, Uecker is hesitant to do anything that draws him away from the radio booth for long. He is intrigued by the Brewers’ rebuilding process and would like to see it through to the other side, which he believes will be successful.
So, Uecker is ready for yet another season, his 62nd overall in the game. No contract. No plans for retirement. And, please, no victory tour.
“I’d never announce it beforehand,” he said. “When I came here, it was no big thing. That’s the way I want to go out.
“I’m not trying to set any records or anything. I still enjoy doing the games. As long as I’m not going to embarrass myself or embarrass the team in any way, I’ll keep doing it. I’d quit immediately if I was doing that.”
Of things to worry about in this world, that would be far down the list.
Bob Uecker jokes with photographers and well wishers during the unveiling of his statue April 25, 2014, in section 422 in an area known as the "Uecker Seats" at Miller Park. (Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) |
My family never had much money. Did paper rounds, worked in shops, warehouses when I could to help my mum/dad out with bills. We had a large family. My dad survived WWII, but his parents didn’t, orphaned when he was 10. My mum lost her mother when she was 4 yrs old. Consequently they instilled me a need for reading, education and practical skills. Be independent. Material things are not important at the end of the day, they would say. Good memories and experiences will always stay with you, and cannot be taxed, stolen or taken off you by the government or anyone.
Well as a student who worked weekends and holidays to pay themselves through uni. Lived in shared houses to save money until I graduated. Fortunate those years ago that I got a sponsorship with an international company who paid me a grant my last year based on my results. Got a great job, travel and all expenses..but sadly got married early. The ex would rack up GBP £3,000-£5,000 on credit cards monthly (clothes, shoes, eating out, drinking, shows, makeup, and spa’s). I never really spent money on myself. But maybe that’s because I never had any money at the end of the day, she spent it and I was too busy working. When I left that job and bought a house in the UK (because she was homesick), had even less money (and lower salary). Had to take out a bank loan.
Well after she left and we separated, I got rid of the large saloon car (on loan), sold the bike, and bought a little second hand car which I maintain, cut out eating out often, cooked at home more often, grow more in the greenhouse. Stopped spending on credit cards (to the point that my bank decided to cancel it because I never used it for 2 years). I worked freelance then and gave up my 9 to 5 job, and tried to take the best paying jobs available, wherever in the world and worked all the hours they could give to pay off the debts she racked up.
I have paid off my mortgage, avoid using credit cards, live more simply, don’t have cable tv, have internet, a laptop, mp 3 player, but that’s it in terms of luxury items. I follow the mantra, if I need it, I make it or buy it.
I have stopped paying into my pension when I went freelance, mainly as in the UK, a friend who is a independent financial advisor said, that once you put money into the pension, you can’t get at it until you retire. In the UK, the government has raided these schemes (by one off taxes) to point people retiring now are getting less money out than the capital they invested. His advice was not to put it in, unless you were a high band tax payer. Sure you get no tax relief, if you invest in other things, you keep the capital and decide what to do, when you want it.
But the advice that my father gave me was, spend less than what you earn, and you will accumulate.
I have a surplus in my account, because I earn and spend less than what I earn. I am happier because I went MGTOW. I have paid off my student loans, paid off my small house, no loans on a car or anything.
Work unfortunately is getting harder to come by. Most of my clients have laid off between 30-60% of their workforce. Salaries and benefits have been cut. Being freelance, I didn’t get that, but it taught me to save money because a period of unemployment could come at any time, even when times were good. My married friends aren’t so lucky. Most are close to bankruptcy.
The UK economy is pretty f*cked at the moment. We have 40% of the population on welfare. Most of our industry has been outsourced and hasn’t been replaced. The government thought financial services would replace it, but that’s concentrated in a small part of the country to a select few. The corporations that employed UK employees, increased their market capitalization i.e. value/worth by outsourcing to places like China etc but they avoided tax on that increase in wealth, so the government lost revenue, so they increased taxes on ordinary people…consequently it doesn’t pay to work in the UK in an ordinary job. Companies are cutting salaries, so people have less disposable so don’t spend in shops/going out. Consequently, they cut staff even more. The government gets even less taxes….and meanwhile the corporations are sitting on piles of cash….global capitalism at its best.
Go MGTOW. Live simply, work hard as you can, avoid debt, avoid material possessions which are not necessary. Learn practical skills, be independent. Be kind, seek knowledge, DGI, and be happy and stress not. its only a short time on this planet and best to live it with a smile. |
It wasn’t too long ago that our own Taylor Martin reviewed the sleek Dell Venue 8 7000 tablet, and it seems as though the company has already released it’s followup device. Dubbed the Dell Venue 10 7000, this new Android-powered tablet features similar specifications and build to the Venue 8 7000, but with a few interesting additions.
For starters, the Venue 10 7000 is mostly the same when it comes to specifications. Like it’s younger sibling, the new device is powered by an Intel Atom Z3580 processor, 2GB of RAM and also has an 8MP rear-facing camera complete with Dell’s RealSense 3D technology. It has a big 10.5-inch display with a resolution of 2560 x 1600. Thanks to that bigger screen, there’s more room to fit the giant 7000mAh battery. The tablet measures just 6.2mm thin, just .1mm thicker than the Venue 8 7000.
It’s easy to see the main difference between these two siblings is the chassis. While both tablets are extremely thin, the Venue 10 7000 sports a bulky cylinder on one of the long edges. That’s there so the tablet can connect with an optional keyboard, which Dell is selling for a hefty premium. The keyboard is backlit and runs off of the tablet’s battery, but Dell quotes the device for lasting up to seven hours on a single charge. The Venue 10 7000 is aimed at enterprise customers, as the tablet runs Android 5.0 Lollipop and Android for Work.
The tablet will launch in May in the United States, Canada and China for $499.00. If you’d like to tack on a keyboard to your order, you’ll have to pay $629.00. If you’re interested, be sure to check out our full review of its younger sibling, the Dell Venue 8 7000. |
Michael Green is a producer on TV shows including Gotham, American Gods, Smallville, and Heroes, writer on Smallville, Heroes, Gotham, and films such as Green Lantern and the upcoming Flash.
So, you know, he has form.
He also worked with Mike Johnson on the New 52 reboot of Supergirl.
Well, we understand Green is now taking that a little further.
Bleeding Cool has been reliably informed by a comics/Hollywood contact that DC Comics is currently actively pitching Supergirl as a TV series, and Green is attached.
Writing/producing of course. Not actually playing Supergirl. Although, you know….
Well, with Flash, Constantine and Gotham whizzing around, might as well get a little Superness on the screen as well, I guess.
There has been plenty of press about neither Marvel and DC giving any female character a solo movie or TV show of late. But now Marvel have a Jessica Jones Netflix mini-series planned. Could DC Comics be the ones to make it ongoing? And a Supercharacter to boot?
Will anyone bite?
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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Chinese Internet censors went into overdrive on Tuesday, desperately blacking out any reference to the 24th anniversary of the military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, which falls today.
Indeed “today” was one of the banned words on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. If you searched for it, you were told that “according to relevant laws, regulations, and policies, the results cannot be shown.”
Nearly a quarter of a century after a student-led reform movement ended on June 4, 1989, with the military occupation of Tiananmen Square and the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands of people, the whole affair is still taboo in China.
Since the government ruled the demonstrations “counter-revolutionary” no Chinese language newspaper has ever recalled them, no Chinese leader has ever referred to them, and citizens are not allowed to remember them.
Three activists in the southern city of Guangzhou were locked up last week because they applied for a city permit to hold a Tiananmen memorial march. A group of mothers whose children were killed in the crackdown and who have sought an official reckoning of the event ever since, wrote despairingly to President Xi Jinping last week that “to this day all our efforts have been in vain. We have received not a single response from the government.”
And frankly, this officially imposed amnesia has done the job the government intended it to do.
Political activists and “dissidents” recall the tragic events, of course, and do their best to communicate the fact that they have not forgotten. Like journalist He Gang, who yesterday posted “I remember that year. Passion on fire” on his blog, they find elliptical ways around the censor.
But they are a handful of voices. The vast majority of Chinese citizens pay the occasion no mind, and most people under 35 are not even aware of what 6/4 signifies.
Still, the paranoia that the censors displayed on Tuesday – banning any combination of digits that might add up to 64 or 89 – suggests that the authorities are by no means comfortable in their seats of power.
The mood in China is certainly very different from the 1980s, when the universities and the press were in political and intellectual ferment. Today, the dead weight of ideological orthodoxy stifles any debate about political reform and “democracy” is not a rallying cry for many Chinese citizens.
Instead, they are much more likely to be angry about the way in which their government has failed to take care of practical matters in the headlong rush for economic development. And they are not shy to express that anger.
Recent street protests in the southwestern city of Kunming against a gas factory reflected widespread environmental concerns. Angry comments on the Chinese web today about the locked doors that trapped victims of Monday’s deadly poultry factory fire suggested that corrupt safety inspectors may have played a role.
In the minds of democracy activists, of course, such practical matters are not unrelated to broader philosophical questions. A properly elected government, subject to democratic oversight, might have felt obliged to provide better protection for the country’s environment and its citizens’ lives, for example.
But this is not an argument that resonates with most Chinese citizens. Instead, they look to the authorities to show stronger guidance and control in order to correct society’s shortcomings.
For many liberals, official readiness to reconsider the ruling Communist Party’s harsh judgment of the Tiananmen protests would be a key indicator that the government was ready for political reform. (Get a sense of what the mood was like a year after the protests)
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There is little sign of that, however. Rebutting a statement from Washington marking the Tiananmen anniversary, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hong Lei insisted that “a clear conclusion has already been made concerning the political turmoil that happened in the late 1980s,” and that “the path we have chosen serves the fundamental interest of the Chinese people.”
That kind of statement, coming on top of a recent crackdown on independent-minded intellectuals, does not bode well for the sort of future some liberals foresaw under new President Xi. The Tiananmen Mothers were blunt in their open letter to the president. After 24 years “our hope is fading,” they wrote, “and despair is drawing near.” |
Three people were arrested Wednesday night after they entered a manhole and descended into a sewer in East Flatbush to look for valuables, police said. View Full Caption Shutterstock
BROOKLYN — Cowabunga!
Three men took a “Ninja Turtles”-style crawl through an East Flatbush sewer Wednesday night in search of valuables, but instead triggered a massive NYPD manhunt and came away with nothing but a court appearance, police said.
“God knows what they were looking for,” NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton quipped. “I know damn sure I wouldn’t be crawling through the sewers of New York, but these three evidently were.”
The bizarre episode began when Department of Environmental Protection trainee Marquise Evans, 21, allegedly opened a manhole on Avenue H and East 35th Street and went underground with two pals around 9:45 p.m., police said.
Evans eventually surfaced, but the pair remained in the sewer.
“He said he let two people down there who wanted to search for merchandise that may have been discarded,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said.
It wasn’t until four hours later when Emergency Service Unit officers discovered Damion Nieves, 35, and David Hannibal, 45, and took them into custody, police said.
“They basically said, ‘Yeah, that’s what we were doing,’” Boyce said.
Evans, of Brooklyn, is charged with reckless endangerment, criminal trespassing, criminal facilitation, unlawful possession of marijuana and disorderly conduct, the NYPD said.
The DEP said it has suspended Evans pending further investigation.
"Entering a sewer without proper authorization and training is illegal, incredibly irresponsible and dangerous," the DEP said in a statement. "Illegally accessing any confined space with potentially hazardous materials or conditions risks the safety of trespassers as well as the first responders who are called on to rescue them."
Nieves and Hannibal, both of Brooklyn, were charged with criminal trespassing, police said.
Bratton and Boyce said they were puzzled by the men’s actions.
“It was a little cat and mouse down there,” Boyce said. “We don’t really know why they’d be doing that.” |
Want to make half a million dollars disappear in no time? Try using a VPN in the UAE and the government will fine you that amount right quick.
Last week, UAE President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan issued a new federal law that bans the use of VPNs for any sort of digital crime, which includes obscuring your IP address and accessing blocked services:
Whoever uses a fraudulent computer network protocol address (IP address) by using a false address or a third-party address by any other means for the purpose of committing a crime or preventing its discovery, shall be punished by temporary imprisonment and a fine of no less than Dh500,000 ($136,000) and not exceeding Dh2,000,000 ($545,000), or either of these two penalties.
It might seem like that’s just a bummer for those who want to binge-watch shows from Netflix’s US library of shows and movies, but it also affects 88 percent of the country’s population, who are expats and need access to VoIP services to phone home.
Internet-based voice calling services like Skype, WhatsApp and Snapchat are largely banned in the UAE, with the exception of those allowed by telecom firms Etisalat and Du. Their offerings are reportedly a lot more expensive. As such, people were left with little choice but to use VPNs to spoof their location for making overseas calls.
The move to block access to services like VoIP is as shortsighted as it is restrictive: forcing people to adopt expensive services will likely reduce their usage and push them towards other modes of communication, like instant messaging, email and video chat.
Ultimately, the country will achieve nothing by imposing such restrictions except angering its large expat community and creating a less friendly environment for foreign businesses and families there.
Via International Business Times
Dh500,000 fine if you use fraud IP in UAE on Emirates 24/7 News
Read next: Your ultimate guide to GIFs: How to create them, when to use them and why they’re essential for marketing |
Dark clouds, bitter coldness and hard rains slam the streets. Restless ghosts of those who have passed on roam aimlessly. 2010 was a particularly harsh and deadly year for our neighbors without homes. This column is in reflection of and to honor them. As incredible as it is, death outpaced its work from last year when 27 homeless people died. This year, this tragic and sad body count is 31 so far.
Greg was a good friend, and his death caught me off-guard coming so early in the year and so soon after Freedom’s death. He was one of those special people I could always share a joke with. With so much pain and despair on the streets, this was a precious gift.
The next to die was a homeless Vietnam War veteran who passed away in Isla Vista. Then came the reality-warping weekend when three homeless people died within a 24-hour period. This cluster of deaths was not only shocking in and of itself, but the fact that one woman’s body had been subjected to a crime after her death added another layer of sadness.
But caring citizens of our city along with the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors rallied to this tragic weekend, and within days the Freedom Warming Centers were up and running thanks in part to the caring and compassionate hands-on management of Dr. Lynne Jahnke.
The deaths continue to pile up with Van, Andrei and an unnamed homeless man whose body was found in Goleta adding their names to the grim roll call, as did Troy, Richard and Earl. Then I heard that Ray, a man crippled by his disabilities, was hit and killed by a car on State Street. Many of us knew this kind and gentle man, and his death cut deep.
A man known as the Professor was the 16th homeless person to die. He had lived on and off the streets for more than a decade. The youngest person to succumb to the streets died next. Cyrus’ body laid for hours at East Beach as hundreds of tourists passed by this poor kid.
Jerry, another homeless veteran, was the 20th person to die. He was a quiet man who fought valiantly against the cancer that mercilessly ate away at his body. Ruth, at 74, was the oldest to die. Her very public downhill fight against death and the human condition saddened many, showing us that we aren’t God and our best efforts are frequently not enough.
The police, in responding to a fender-bender on Highway 101, discovered the body of a homeless man. Cancer claimed Terry, and still another homeless veteran, Shopping Cart Raye, finally saw his war memories laid to rest.
Death found the weakness in Crisco and Larry. He used this defect in their armor to add them to his morbid collective. When I heard that the unidentified body of a 50-year-old woman had been found in Carpinteria, it was with a great deal of sadness that I reflected on the lonely life and death of way too many homeless friends. Citizens had reported seeing her, acting out her delusional symptoms for some time in the general area where the body was found.
Another clue to her homeless status was that nobody had filed a missing person’s report. The aloneness of that statement is harsh. No one missed her. No one thought it odd that she didn’t show up for work, for coffee with friends, for meals or visits to family. This woman lived out one of the cruelest symptoms of her disease — to be disconnected from others. She died as she had lived — all alone.
Wendell died in a parking lot, and sadly, almost exactly a year after Freedom died from hypothermia, Robert succumbed to the same cold. In the end, he, too, died of the human condition.
Thirty-one deaths. The community of the homeless is not that large, and this toll cuts deeply among survivors. Over two years, nearly 60 — sixty — of our homeless neighbors have perished. That is truly a shocking and grime statistic.
I communicated this troubling count to Dr. Jim Withers, a dedicated doctor who works the streets of Pittsburg. It is an eastern city with severe weather that harshly impacts the homeless. According to Withers, its homeless population is 5,000 to 7,000. When I asked him about the death count, he said it was three. He told me that over the years the city averaged eight to 10 deaths, and that people feel fortunate for this year’s reduced count.
He said that if the deaths in our community had been because of a disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have flooded our city with doctors, nurses and mobile medical clinics. But these deaths are merely caused by extreme poverty — lack of housing, prejudice, untreated mental illness and deadly attempts at self-medication.
In such circumstances, it is up to a doctor and social worker to sadly note these deaths in our journals. The good people of our community, in which there are many, also refuse to turn a blind eye to this scandal, and they, too, mourn these deaths — good people who know death by extreme poverty is morally wrong.
The deaths of so many should give us all a moment’s hesitation in our daily rush. At the least it should cause us to reflect on the fragile nature of life, on our good fortune as well as the humbleness of all life as well as its interconnectiveness.
Hopefully, lifetimes of struggle, defeat and despair have been replaced with gentleness and acceptance for those neighbors of ours who lived and died wanting. And for those who believe in a spiritual dimension, a welcome home is finally attained.
— Ken Williams has been a social worker for the homeless for the past 30 years. He is the author of China White and Shattered Dreams, A Story of the Streets. |
What do you get when you cross the internet’s favorite animal with sword-wielding Japanese warriors? Well, something a lot like the 2014 Japanese comedy-drama Neko Samurai, which literally translates to “Cat Samurai” (or “Samurai Cat”).
Based on a TV series of the same name (that I have not watched), Neko Samurai‘s plot is pretty simple. A reserved, lone ronin (masterless samurai) named Kyutaro Madarame cloisters himself in an idyllic Edo-period town, only to find himself caught in the middle of two warring clans. Why are these clans fighting? Because one likes cats and the other likes dogs.
When they catch wind of his supposed warrior prowess, the dog clan pays Madarame to kill the cat clan leader’s pet cat Tamanojo. However, Madarame can’t bring himself to kill the cute, fluffy white kitty and takes her home instead. The grumpy and reticent Madarame must now deal with both Tamanojo’s inherent feline stubbornness and the two clans’ increasingly erratic rivalry.
Billed as a comedy-drama, Neko Samurai is more comedic than dramatic, but pretty light on both counts overall. The movie’s humor brings about amused chuckling rather than uproarious laughter; the main comedic sources are the characters’ absurd behavior and Madarame’s grumpiness. Madarame has a somewhat fleshed-out backstory, but it feels rather forced, told exclusively through flashbacks that seem inserted rather than weaved. The movie also fails to adequately develop its secondary characters, who end up feeling unnecessary. For instance, Madarame somewhat mentors a young samurai, named Shinsuke Zenba, who desires to avenge his father. However, we learn very little about the hapless Zenba and he becomes nothing more than a human prop.
Honestly, the movie’s only significant selling point is what you might expect it to be: the cat. Tamanojo’s aura of kitty-ness gives the movie its glow, and frankly I’m quite impressed the filmmakers got a cat to be cooperative enough to play such a big part. The movie is basically a 1.5 hour long cat video interspersed with humans doing insignificant things like trying to kill each other (for a samurai movie, Neko Samurai has some pretty underwhelming sword fights). It’s pretty damn great as cute entertainment, but not much else.
If you’re a cat lover, Neko Samurai is an awesome boredom-killer that will make you (and your feline companion(s), provided they’re feeling up to it) purr with content. If you’re a dog lover…why the hell have you read so far? For everyone in between…hey, it’s a movie about kitties, why not give it a try if you’re browsing cat gifs at work anyways?
Neko Samurai (Japanese: 猫侍)— Japan. Directed by Yoshitaka Yamaguchi. First released March 2014. Running time 1hr 40 min. Starring Kazuki Kitamura , Misako Renbutsu, Yasufumi Terawaki, and Yosuke Asari. |
When was the last time you pooped? Though it’s not really a magic number and more of a range, it was hopefully within the past couple of days. If not, you’re probably constipated. Imagine now not relieving yourself for much longer. It can end up killing you, like this 16-year-old UK girl who didn’t poop for eight weeks. Or, you could end up like this man from Chengdu, China, who allegedly didn’t poop for 10(!) years and lived to tell the tale.
The as-yet unidentified man reportedly complained over the past decade of severe stomachaches and constipation, but doctors were unable to determine what exactly was wrong. Well, eventually one of them caught on and allegedly found that he had an 11-pound blockage of fecal matter in his colon. The mass was so big that it reportedly moved his heart to accommodate the massive load. The doctors diagnosed him with congenital megacolon, which is a pretty sweet death metal band name. Congenital megacolon, otherwise known as Hirschprung’s disease, is defined by the Mayo Clinic as “a condition that affects the large intestine (colon) and causes problems with passing stool.” Symptoms include a swollen belly, constipation, and gas, while the cause may be a genetic mutation that affects the nerve cells of the colon.
The man from Chengdu reportedly had the 11-pound blockage surgically removed and is now in recovery.
It seems odd that someone would go 10 years without pooping, so if you ever find yourself in that kind of situation, here are some tips:
Eat More Fiber
This is probably the most important thing. Getting your daily intake of fiber — 38 grams a day for men and 25 grams a day for women — will get your bowels moving regularly and help you poop.
Drink More Water
Since poop is 95 percent water, getting your required intake of H2O, as well as ensuring you're hydrated throughout the day, will make your poops a little easier.
Get More Exercise
Moving around vigorously, whether walking, running, jogging, rowing, lifting, anything, will shake up the matter in your intestines and colon and help your next #2 go smoothly.
If all of these things fail to move your bowels, and they shouldn’t, your next best bet would be to find some laxative or other stool softener to ensure you visit the porcelain throne soon.
Constipation affects about 15 percent of the population, mainly women, those over the age of 65, and non-Caucasians. Everybody poops, so you shouldn’t be afraid to do it. |
Spain's El Confidencial are our favourites on Real Madrid. They carried the best reporting on the Gonzalo Higuain, Mesut Ozil and Angel Di Maria exits and for years have been saying that David De Gea's family took on Jorge Mendes to force a return back to Spain.
On Monday an article from their journalist Kike Marin goes over ground he's trodden before. Marin says that Arsene Wenger has initiated contact with Karim Benzema or his entourage about moving to Arsenal. The French striker didn't say no, which is always a good sign, and instead wants to wait and see what happens with Rafa Benitez at Real Madrid. Benzema doesn't want to be a bench warmer so wants to get an idea of what is happening at Madrid before committing himself either way.
There is little doubt that one of the instructions from Florentino Perez to Benitez when he took over was 'get the best out of Gareth Bale' and that appears to be at the cost of all others, so prepare for a sulking Cristiano Ronaldo if his nose is pushed out of joint to please the Welshman.
El Confidencial are reiterating their claims because Madrid played a pre-season friendly and Benzema didn't start, with different experiments being tried out by Benitez. Marin doesn't think that Benzema is a striker of the profile which Benitez usually likes, so that doesn't bode well for the future.
It's pondered that this one could drag on, to let Benzema's situation become clearer, and turn into a deadline saga like that of Mesut Ozil. Arsenal fans will be cool with that as long as Benzema follows the Ozil saga to the letter, and signs with Arsenal. |
Understanding modern programming languages is much easier when you know about the languages that influenced their design. David Chisnall looks at some languages that have shaped the modern computing landscape. Part 3 of this series investigates Smalltalk and the development of object orientation.
To understand modern programming languages and patterns, it's important that you know about the languages that originated them. In the first two parts of this series, we looked at ALGOL and Simula, which are intimately tied to the structured programming and class-based models. In this article, we'll look at a slightly more modern model: object orientation.
It's hard to talk about object orientation without talking about Smalltalk. The term object orientation was coined by Alan Kay, while he was at the University of Utah, to describe his style of programming. The Smalltalk language was created a few years later, after Kay had moved to Xerox PARC, to embody this style. The relationship between Smalltalk and object orientation is very similar to the relationship between ALGOL and structured programming.
Smalltalk, like Xen, was created on a bet. In this case, the bet was whether it was possible to specify a complete programming language on a single piece of paper.
Message-Sending
Most programming languages have a variety of flow-control constructs; for example, conditionals (such as if/switch statements), loops ( for , while , and so on), and function calls. Smalltalk has only one: a message-send.
The object-oriented programming model was created in response to the growing complexity of computer programs. When attempting to design a complex system, Alan Kay reasoned that you should split it into simple components. The simplest possible model for a component of a computer program is itself a computer. Objects in this system are simple models of computers, and they communicate by exchanging messages.
At the lowest level, flow control is implemented in terms of conditional branches. Conditional statements in most programming languages are a higher-level version of conditional jump instructions. Smalltalk has no direct equivalent. Every other flow-control construct is built on top of message-sending. For example, consider this statement in C:
if (someCondition) doSomething();
If someCondition is true, the doSomething() function executes. In Smalltalk, the equivalent would be as follows:
someCondition ifTrue: [ self doSomething ].
Here, someCondition is a Boolean object, an instance of either the True or False class. Both of these classes implement an ifTrue: method; in the False class it does nothing, and in the True class it will look something like this:
ifTrue: aBlock [ ^aBlock value. ]
The argument is a block (closure). Sending a value message to a block executes it. When you send an ifTrue: message to an instance of the True class, it simply executes the argument. This design allows you to implement something equivalent to C's if statement, purely in terms of message-sending. In fact, it's more powerful, because the receiver doesn't have to be a Boolean object. You can implement a new class that responds to these messages. For example, you could implement some form of trinary logic by providing a Maybe class that did nothing when sent ifTrue: or ifFalse: message.
Dan Ingalls, one of the designers of Smalltalk, proposed a test for whether a language is object-oriented. In an object-oriented language, a user should be able to create a new type of integer and use it to specify the coordinates for drawing in a system-provided window class. Very few languages satisfy this condition. Those that do are typically considered "pure" object-oriented languages; those that don't, but come close (such as Java), are called object-oriented, without the "pure."
The Ingalls test seems a contrived example, but it has some interesting uses. For example, suppose you want to create a window in which everything is clipped or wrapped into a rectangle. A trivial way of doing this would be to use coordinates that used modulo or saturating arithmetic. Without this capability, you need to perform the wrapping or clamping on every single arithmetic operation in your window. |
Nanotechnology: How Miniscule Science Will Save Mankind
Every day, it seems, a new team of researchers comes up with new ways to “nano.” And everything will be better for their efforts.
Revolutions in the 21st century won’t be televised. They’ll be Snapchatted, Instagrammed, tweeted, and YouTubed.
But what if you simply can’t see it?
That’s the case if it’s happening at the nanoscale — theoretically.
But thanks to Richard Feynman, one of the most famous physicists of the 20th century, we’re seeing real things made from the nanoscale up.
And Feynman’s ideas are still shaping innovations in such diverse fields as aerospace, biomedicine, computing, and communication.
He laid the foundation that led to carbon nanotubes, buckyballs, fullerenes, graphene, and other stuff made of nanoparticles.
According to the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), in 1959, Feynman “described a process in which scientists would be able to manipulate and control individual atoms and molecules,” basically inventing nanotechnology.
In 1984, he asked, “How small can you make machinery?” Pretty damn small, it turns out.
And we’re witnessing some truly fantastic achievements, as we described in the October 7, 2016, Wall Street Daily, including a molecular elevator, a molecular muscle, a molecule-based computer chip, a molecular motor, and a nanocar.
Think about these things for a moment: Nanotechnology is per the NNI, “science, engineering, and technology conducted at the nanoscale, which is about 1–100 nanometers.”
In addition to these super-tiny super-machines, we’re incorporating “nano” into production of materials and technologies that will make human-scale machines more durable, more efficient, and more informative.
When we talk about next-generation aircraft, next-generation wearable biomedical devices, and next-generation fiber-optic communication, the consistent theme is nano: nanotechnology, nanomaterials, nanophotonics.
For decades, manufacturers have used carbon fiber to make lighter sports equipment, stronger aircraft, and better textiles.
Now, as Dexter Johnson of IEEE Spectrum reports, carbon nanotubes will help make aerospace composites more efficient:
Now researchers at the University of Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute (ATI), the University of Bristol’s Advanced Composite Centre for Innovation and Science (ACCIS), and aerospace company Bombardier have collaborated on the development of a carbon nanotube-enabled material set to replace the polymer sizing. The reinforced polymers produced with this new material have enhanced electrical and thermal conductivity, opening up new functional possibilities. It will be possible, say the British researchers, to embed gadgets such as sensors and energy harvesters directly into the material.
When it comes to flight, lighter is better, so building sensors and energy harvesters into the body of aircraft marks a significant leap forward.
Johnson also reports for IEEE Spectrum on a “novel hybrid nanomaterial” based on oscillations of electrons — a major advance in nanophotonics:
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a hybrid nanomaterial that enables the writing, erasing and rewriting of optical components. The researchers believe that this nanomaterial and the techniques used in exploiting it could create a new generation of optical chips and circuits. … Of course, the concept of rewritable optics is not altogether new; it forms the basis of optical storage mediums like CDs and DVDs. However, CDs and DVDs require bulky light sources, optical media and light detectors. The advantage of the rewritable integrated photonic circuits developed here is that it all happens on a 2-D material. “To develop rewritable integrated nanophotonic circuits, one has to be able to confine light within a 2-D plane, where the light can travel in the plane over a long distance and be arbitrarily controlled in terms of its propagation direction, amplitude, frequency and phase,” explained Yuebing Zheng, a professor at the University of Texas who led the research… “Our material, which is a hybrid, makes it possible to develop rewritable integrated nanophotonic circuits.”
Who knew that mixing graphene with homemade Silly Putty would create a potentially groundbreaking new material that could make “wearables” actually useful?
Next-generation biomedical devices will undoubtedly include some of this stuff:
A dash of graphene can transform the stretchy goo known as Silly Putty into a pressure sensor able to monitor a human pulse or even track the dainty steps of a small spider. The material, dubbed G-putty, could be developed into a device that continuously monitors blood pressure, its inventors hope.
The guys who made G-putty often rely on “household stuff” in their research. Indeed, as Nature’s Mark Peplow reports, in 2014, they made “graphene by blitzing graphite in a kitchen blender.”
Humankind has actually been working with nanomaterials for thousands of years, for industrial as well as artistic purposes.
But it took a visionary like Feynman to imagine super-small technology.
His acolytes are making advances in nanotechnology and nanomaterials that will enable interplanetary exploration, facilitate supercomputing, and ensure the longevity of our species.
NBNBC
Butterfly Sciences is a one-man company founded on the concept of using gene therapy to improve the lives of AIDS patients.
It’s the brainchild of microbiologist Brian Hanley.
Hanley is so committed to his research that last June, he had himself injected with a gene of his own design, funded with his own savings. And he did it without FDA approval.
As Antonio Regalado reports:
The effort is the second case MIT Technology Review has documented of unregulated gene therapy, a risky undertaking that is being embraced by a few daring individuals seeking to develop anti-aging treatments. The gene Hanley added to his muscle cells would make his body produce more of a potent hormone — potentially increasing his strength, stamina, and life span.
His concepts have attracted little investor interest. But Hanley, 60, is determined to see if his approach is effective.
“I wanted to prove it, I wanted to do it for myself, and I wanted to make progress,” he says.
They say a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.
So what do they say about do-it-yourself gene therapy?
“I think it’s damn crazy,” says Bruce Smith, an Auburn University professor who works with dogs’ genes. “But that’s human nature, and it’s colliding with technology.”
Smart Investing,
David Dittman
Editorial Director, Wall Street Daily |
Texas and Texas A&M haven't faced each other on the football field since 2011, but the question on if the two teams will ever play each other again has been a hot topic since.
South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp, a former Texas defensive coordinator, will be facing the Aggies this weekend so it's only fitting the topic was brought up once more. He believes the Longhorns and the Aggies should face each other every year.
Will Muschamp: The Texas-Texas A&M game ought to be played every year...It’s a great game for state of Texas, (&) also for college football. — Brent Zwerneman (@BrentZwerneman) September 28, 2016
During his time at Texas, Muschamp was 2-1 against the Aggies. He also beat them once as the head coach at Florida and faced them as Auburn's defensive coordinator in 2015.
The talk on if Texas and Texas A&M will play each other in the near future has heated up after rumors spread this past summer that a game was in the works. However, a Texas spokesperson was quick to say no specifics had ever been discussed. |
When you read or hear news stories about the imminent takeover of robots and algorithms that will eliminate jobs for human workers, many times the first examples given are blue-collar jobs like factory workers and taxi drivers. And you may have mentally congratulated yourself because your “professional” job is safe from the threat of being outsourced to computers.
But don’t feel so safe just yet. More and more, sophisticated algorithms and machine learning are proving that jobs previously thought to be the sole purview of humans can be done — as well or better — by machines.
Boston Consulting Group has predicted that by 2025 as much as a quarter of jobs currently available will be replaced by either smart software or robots. A study out of Oxford University also suggested that as much as 35 percent of existing jobs in the U.K. could be at risk of automation inside the next 20 years.
Take a look at these 10 professional jobs that are threatened by advances big data and machine learning:
Healthcare Some aspects of a doctor’s job can now be done by computers. For example, surgeons already use automated robotic systems to aid with less invasive procedures. IBM ’s Watson proved it can diagnose lung cancer from analyzing MRI scans much more reliably than real people. In addition, the UCSF Medical Center recently launched an automated, robotics-controlled pharmacy at two UCSF hospitals that automatically dispense prescriptions based on barcodes scanned by nurses. In fact, Johnson & Johnson has an FDA-approved device that can deliver low levels of anesthesia automatically — no anesthesiologist required. Insurance Much of what insurance brokers and insurance underwriters do today can be done by computers using big data and machine learning. Formulas have been used for decades to determine how much insurance a person is qualified for and at what rate, but new tools will automate the decision-making process even more. Architects Programs already exist to help individuals design their own homes, making architectural skill and even design and color choices more automated. For now, most people are using the software mostly as a visualization tool, or to replace architects for very small projects. But as the sophistication of the programs improves, so will the need for human architects and designers diminish. Journalists Much of what journalists do can now be automated using machine learning tools such as narrative science that creates natural language news stories from analyzing data. In fact, if you’ve read a financial earnings report in the past year or two, you’ve probably read an article or press release generated by a machine. The first places these programs will be used is in financial and sports reporting, which rely heavily on data and numbers, but other fields are not far behind. Services are already appearing that “scrape” content from news sites and “rewrite” it to avoid outright plagiarism but include the same content for websites. Financial industry Algorithms can now analyze financial data and prepare accounts (as well as do tax returns) — without the need for accountants. Bank tellers have already been partially replaced by ATMs, but soon even higher level bankers, including loan officers, could be easily replaced by automated systems. Even governments are now using big data and machine learning to check tax returns and identify potential fraud in tax matters. We know that computers are already being used to make stock trades faster than humans ever could and they’re even used to predict how the market will react and make recommendations whether you should buy or sell. Teachers The job of teachers will definitely change with the digitization. Studies have already shown that algorithms used to customize leaning to individual pupils based on their progress and understanding can be more effective than a human teacher. While this may be a boon to school districts desperate to find qualified individuals to teach, it may also eventually reduce the role of classroom teacher to that of proctor or babysitter — or eliminate it altogether. Unmasked: The Man Behind The Silk Road
Click here to read about the shutdown of the illegal bazaar and its tale of online secrecy, murders-for-hire, courtroom drama and corruption. Human Resources Human resources, headhunting and hiring is already being affected by data mining as algorithms take on the job of sorting through resumes to find the perfect candidates. Other jobs of human resources, including collecting and filing paperwork, advising employees about benefits, etc., can easily be automated. Marketing and Advertising Marketing is all about that most human of skills, persuasion and manipulation. But even that is being successfully outsourced to computers. Persado, a natural language software firm, has put its computers to the task of writing compelling email subject lines for large retail organizations that can as much as double open rates. Companies are also experimenting with automated ad buying: instead of having people choose which magazines to place ads in and on which pages, the computers take care of it, using billions of data points for reference. Lawyers and Paralegals In the discovery phase of a lawsuit, lawyers and paralegals can be required to sift through thousands, even tens of thousands of documents depending on the case. Now, sophisticated databases can use big data techniques including syntactic analysis and keyword recognition to accomplish the same tasks in much less time. In fact, it’s likely that a Watson-style machine learning system could be legally “trained” to review precedent and case history and even draft legal briefs — which has traditionally been the job of lower level law firm associates. But don’t think it’s only the lowly junior associates whose jobs are at risk: lawyers are well paid now to predict the outcome of major cases, but a statistical model created by researchers at Michigan State University and South Texas College of Law was able to predict the outcome of almost 71 percent of U.S. Supreme Court cases. That ability to predict outcomes is possibly the most valuable (and lucrative) service lawyers provide, and it was easily matched by a computer. Law Enforcement Predictive policing is a hot-button topic. Many critics say that predictive policing is an infringement of civil liberties, but it’s not all as “Minority Report” as many people believe. In 2003, the same sorts of algorithms retailers like Wal-Mart use to predict demand for products was used to predict demand for police presence in New York City on New Year’s Eve, and the results were striking: 47 percent fewer random gunfire incidents, and a $15,000 savings in personnel costs during the 8-hour period. Better risk prediction could decrease the number of officers needed at any given time and for any given department.
The crux is: computers threaten more than low-skill jobs like factory workers, retail clerks, and waiters. As computers become exponentially more sophisticated, it naturally follows that they will be able to perform more sophisticated work. This will be a boon in many industries with increased accuracy and productivity. Any doctor would tell you that more accurate diagnostics are a good thing, and any lawyer would agree that faster, more comprehensive discovery is a benefit to the legal process.
The problem, however, lies in the fact that these technological revolutions might not create as many jobs as they eliminate. Certainly we will need more programmers, statisticians, engineers, data analysts and IT personnel to create and manage these sophisticated computers but it might be difficult to tell a factory line worker or taxi driver to shift gears and become a data analyst. How we fill the gaps when jobs are replaced will be the deciding factor as to whether all this automation is good for humanity or not. |
Volunteers In NYC Show Support For Immigrants At Court Appearances, Appointments
A new type of volunteer opportunity has taken off in New York City. Hundreds of people are going with immigrants to court appearances and appointments with immigration officials. With President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, they want to show solidarity, and be a friendly support system.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
A new type of volunteer opportunity has taken off in New York City. Hundreds of people are going with immigrants to court appearances and appointments with immigration officials. With President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, the volunteers want to show solidarity. WNYC's Beth Fertig brings us this story.
MARISSA LOHSE: Perfect. OK, tell me your name.
JEAN HALE: Jean.
BETH FERTIG, BYLINE: On a recent weekday morning, Marissa Lohse is gathering her troops in a coffeeshop in lower Manhattan.
LOHSE: Perfect, perfect. That would be great.
FERTIG: Lohse is with the New Sanctuary Coalition. It's a network of congregations and individuals who accompany immigrants facing deportation to the Federal Building, which is just down the street. Jean Hale is a first-time volunteer. She doesn't know what to expect.
HALE: I think it may be just emotional support and perhaps a big hug.
FERTIG: Hale says she's horrified by the Trump administration's aggressive enforcement of immigration laws. She's 73, a retired English as a Second Language teacher.
The volunteer program took off in 2010 during a previous crackdown under former President Obama. But Lohse - herself an immigrant from Argentina - says it's now bigger than ever. Several hundred volunteers came forward after Trump took office. A lot are retirees like her. They call the immigrants, friends.
LOHSE: Before, I was just going by myself with a friend. Now it's just, thank God we have so many volunteers. So I do it, and I cry when I think about it.
FERTIG: There's a lot on the line. These volunteers are joining people at immigration court hearings to determine whether they can stay in the country. Others are bringing them to check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many undocumented immigrants were allowed to stay as long as they regularly met with ICE. These check-ins used to be routine.
Now, some immigrants are detained without any warning. Lohse has seen that firsthand.
LOHSE: I've been one time when I was with a wife of a guy. Then, the ICE agent came out with a pair of glasses and a wallet. Your husband wants you to have this. They didn't give a chance for her to say goodbye.
FERTIG: This type of volunteering is not easy. It's emotional, and the issues are thorny. At a training session, volunteers are told all immigrants deserve support, even those who have committed crimes. That gave one man pause.
ED STUBIN: I can accept that the criminal justice system isn't always right, but I'm troubled having to go with some people that I don't think should be on this earth, much less in this country.
FERTIG: That's Ed Stubin, a business owner who says his father was an immigrant. He decides he will volunteer, however, when a coordinator assures him that immigrants who commit serious crimes are usually held in detention.
On the day of the coffeehouse meeting, about 40 volunteers are joining eight immigrants. One of those immigrants is Inez, a young mother seeking asylum who doesn't want us using her full name. She's got her 3-year-old son with her, and she's grateful to have six of the volunteers going with her to immigration court.
INEZ: (Foreign language spoken).
FERTIG: The group includes Jean Hale, the retired teacher and first-time volunteer. They spent four hours in the waiting room outside court. Mostly, they played with Inez's toddler. Finally, Inez had her hearing. The judge gave her three more months to find a lawyer.
Afterward, outside the federal building, Hale said some undocumented immigrants deserve to stay.
HALE: I would like to see our laws changed so that people could remain who have come to our country.
FERTIG: Hale also said she'll continue to volunteer. For NPR News, I'm Beth Fertig in New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE NEW GARY BURTON QUARTET'S "CAMINOS")
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It’s referred to as the “Gold Elixir,” in the Middle East and it’s actually the closest composition to breast milk. Nope, not goat’s milk, it’s camel’s milk! As natives from the Middle East have used camel’s milk for centuries now, and as many have begun to learn about it’s astonishing health benefits, it’s begun to creep its way into America and made more accessible to those in the United States by Desert Farms.
Many have touted about camel milk’s antibacterial, antiviral and antitumor properties that has led to testimonials from those who have shown major improvements from cancer, diabetes, autism, autoimmune disorders, and the like to take social media sites by storm. tweet
After doing some further investigation and trying it out for myself, I’ve become a believer. Looks like our grandparents knew what they were doing!
Here’s the Top 4 Benefits I was most intrigued with:
Diabetes
I always remember hearing how in the Middle East, camel milk was the answer for everything, but I never really took note of it. After listening more closely to what my elders were saying, I took heed that people have been using camel milk for diabetes.
I’m one of those gals who always wants to see the research behind everything, so I dug deeper into it and found an article by Medical News Today. It found a study from India which showed camel milk actually contained “high levels of insulin, or an insulin-like protein, which appears to be able to pass through the stomach without being destroyed.”
If you know anyone that has diabetes, you know that diabetic wounds are one of the worst symptoms of the disease and very hard to treat. Astonishingly though, a study published by BMC Immunology showed that camel whey improved the “healing and closure of diabetic wounds.”
Check out what these scientists from Mongolia had to say:
Cancer
The big “C” word. The dreaded word none of us ever want to hear being diagnosed to us or our loved ones. It’s the number one killer in the United States and has gotten so rampant that it’s led people to turn to natural alternatives – camel milk being one of them.
So how does camel milk help the body heal from cancer? A study published in Food Chemistry showed that a substance called lactoferrin, which is found in camel milk, could be beneficial for those diagnosed with colon cancer.
Their research showed that it stops colon cancer cells from reproducing and has the potential to cease DNA damage affected by cancer. tweet
They found over a 50% decline in cancer cells within just 48 hours after the introduction of camel milk.
Autism
Just last weekend, I met up with some family (who was actually the motivation behind this article). They told me that up until they started their son on camel milk, they had not heard their child speak. He was diagnosed with apraxia and is on the Autism Spectrum. They believed camel milk helped their son.
In April of 2014, Pediatric Research published the results of a two week study on children with autism who were given camel milk significantly improved clinical measurements of autism severity. They also saw a decrease in the thymus’ serum level, which was remarkable because it showed that stress levels were going down and the immune system was getting stronger.
Allergies
According to a study led by Drs. Yosef Shabo, Reuben Barzel, Mark Margoulis and Reuven Yagil, children who have severe food allergies, especially to dairy, not only have been shown to be able to digest the milk well but they have been shown to fully recover from their allergies to other foods.
Research is showing that kids who have allergies to cow milk may not have allergies to camel milk. tweet
Children who had allergies to cow milk were tested for reactions to camel milk. It was discovered that 80% of the participants in the study were not allergic to camel milk, making it a viable alternative to cow milk. Another study that was done in Qatar showed that it may even be safer than goat milk. Now, of course every child and adult is different, so it’s always wise to consult with your doctor before trying anything.
So, along with math, science and coffee, you can now add camel’s milk to the ever growing list of how the Middle East has changed the world, for the better. |
Defender to join St Johnstone in the summer after signing pre-contract with Saints.
Heart of Midlothian FC can announce today that defender Brad McKay has signed a pre-contract with St Johnstone.
The deal will see him move to Perth when his current agreement expires in the summer.
The centre-half has been at Tynecastle since June 2010, making his first-team debut in a goalless draw with Hibs at Easter Road in March 2013.
The 21-year-old has made 43 appearances for the Jambos to date and head coach Robbie Neilson told Hearts News this afternoon: “I think this will be a good move for Brad. We don’t want to stand in anyone’s way - he wants to be playing more first team games and hopefully he will do that next season.
“In the meantime I am sure he will continue to work hard for us and be ready if called upon.” |
Picture this.
The Russians have a long-range plan to take over the American Presidency, but indirectly. Just make it toothless on the world scene, and have an agent in the White House. Who cares if the U.S. has the greatest military? If our Prez is a complete dunderhead, he'll be neutralized and nobody will take America seriously. And if he fawns over whoever's in power in Russia, well, so much the better.
So they start grooming a candidate years in advance. They don't pick a politician. That might leave tracks and be too obvious. They choose someone totally unexpected: a loudmouth New York businessman. They set him up with a Czech wife who softens him up surreptitiously to admire the Russian way of life. Not that hard to do since he's a bully anyway.
They're really smart. They make the marriage fall apart in 1991, when Putin supposedly retires from the KGB, and next give their unwitting stooge a real American wife to further disguise what they're up to. Then they shuffle her off a few years later. His business career is tempestuous but he's not really a national figure--yet.
Eventually they throw him prize bait: a Slovenian supermodel even more enticing than the Czech agent--she's a classic femme fatale not even James Bond could resist. Putin's been President of Russia for one year by this point. Coincidence?
Fun fact: Only 5% of Slovenians were Communist Party members when she was growing up--and her father was in that cadre.
So once she's by his side, the Russians ply Trump with "secret" information that President Obama isn't American-born and he goes wild, launching him on the world stage as a major loon but also earning him points with American nimrods.
Wife no. 3 helps strengthen Trump's ties with Russia. Putin praises him and they develop a bromance--or so Trump thinks. Egomaniacs can sometimes be easily manipulated.
Melania suggests her husband proclaim that legal immigrants might be as dangerous as illegal ones. It's a perfect way to throw suspicion off herself, as good as having a murky immigration story of her own, or faking her college degree when that can easily be discovered, or making sure her nude photos get into print, or stealing lines from the First Lady. How could anyone suspect her of anything nefarious?
It's like an Xtreme spin-off of The Americans. |
A research group founded by India’s central bank has reportedly announced plans to launch a new blockchain platform.
Though the specifics of the launch aren’t clear, the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT), founded in the 1990s by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), is looking to create a range of banking-related services on top of the tech. According to a report from The Hindu Business Line, the project was disclosed on Friday during a technology awards event by IDRBT director A. S. Ramasastri.
“We will be launching this platform very soon,” he told attendees.
At the urging of the central bank, the research outfit has been exploring applications in the areas of banking since last year.
In a report published in January, IDRBT staffers suggested that India could use blockchain as the basis for a digitization of the rupee, the country’s national currency. That call came as India’s government pushed ahead with a plan to demonetize larger denominations of the rupee, a move that continues to be highly controversial to this day, according to recent reports.
As previously reported, regulators in India have been studying the tech since 2014, and work continues on possible new rules for cryptocurrency activities in the country.
Rupee image via Shutterstock |
In the US, approximately 70 percent of states use some form of electronic voting. Hacks on these voting machines have been detailed for years, but a CBS report shows that it doesn’t exactly require a security expert to hack the vote.
To hack a voting machine, it appears, all you need is a $15 card that you can find in a number of places online.
“I can insert it, and then it resets the card, and now I’m able to vote again,” said Brian Varner, a principle researcher at Symantec. “For $15 and in-depth knowledge of the card, you could hack the vote.”
Voters don’t even need to leave the booth in order to vote multiple times.
Symnatec Security Response director Kevin Haley added that each of these machines is also vulnerable to a number of other hacks, such as those that take place after the votes have been cast:
The results go from that machine into a piece of electronics that takes it to the central counting place. That data is not encrypted and that’s vulnerable for manipulation. There’s huge potential. There are so many places in the voting process once it goes electronic that’s vulnerable.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the biggest reason many of these machines are vulnerable is their age. More than 40 states are using voting machines that are more than a decade old, send unencrypted transmissions and aren’t up-to-date on the latest security protocols. CBS also reported that only 60 percent of states routinely test these machines by auditing post-election paper trails.
Hacker demonstrates how voting machines can be compromised on CBS
Read next: Please stop saying tech inventions are going to kill each other |
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina vowed to file suit against Ghana at a United Nations maritime tribunal on Wednesday if the country does not release a tall sailing ship seized after creditors won a court order to keep the vessel in port.
The frigate ARA Libertad, a naval training ship, was detained in Ghana’s eastern port of Tema on October 2 at the request of NML Capital Ltd, which claims Argentina owes it $300 million on bonds in default since 2002.
The South American country says international law prohibits warships from being seized in foreign ports.
“Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 13th, all the deadlines expire for Ghana’s government to lift the embargo, recognizing the Convention on the Law of the Sea,” Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman told reporters in Buenos Aires on Monday.
He said if Ghana did not release the ship, Argentina would be able to take its case to the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea the following day.
“The ministry’s legal representatives are already in that city to initiate these legal actions,” Timerman said.
Last week, a skeleton crew aboard the Libertad displayed their weapons on deck to keep Ghanaian port authorities from forcibly boarding the ship to move it to another berth. The port officials eventually desisted.
Timerman said Argentina had appealed a court order allowing the ship to be moved, which meant the order was suspended. Officials say the embargo violates Argentine sovereignty.
“We have nothing against the ship or the crew,” said the harbor master in Tema, James Quayson. “Every action that we have taken so far was based on the decisions of the court.”
Ghanaian officials say their country is not a party to the dispute and Argentina must respect the local legal process.
The Libertad was built to carry out training exercises and it has taken sailors on 40 expeditions since 1963. Its elegant, billowing sails harken back to the 19th century.
Creditors including NML have won several billion dollars in damages over Argentina’s default in U.S. courts, but they have largely been unable to collect because most Argentine assets are protected by sovereign immunity laws.
The litigating creditors are called holdouts because they rejected Argentina’s 2005 and 2010 debt swaps, through which the country restructured about 93 percent of the roughly $100 billion it defaulted on a decade ago.
The government refers to funds like NML as “vulture funds” because they buy distressed or defaulted debt and then sue in international courts to get paid in full.
President Cristina Fernandez said recently that Argentina will not pay “one dollar to the vulture funds.” |
The U.S. State Department spokesperson John Kirby urged the YPG on Saturday to avoid exploiting the chaotic situation in Syria to obtain control over new areas, amid recent shelling of YPG-held areas by Turkish military in retaliation.
"We are concerned about the situation north of Aleppo and are working to de-escalate tensions on all sides,'' Kirby has said, and added that the U.S. has 'urged Syrian Kurdish and other forces affiliated with the YPG not to take advantage of a confused situation by seizing new territory.'
State Department also confirmed the reports of Turkish shelling of YPG positions and added: ''We continue to encourage all parties to focus on this common threat, which has not subsided, and to work towards a cessation of hostilities, as agreed in Munich."
The U.S. wants the YPG to focus on its fight against Daesh and "not involve themselves in other fighting in Syria", State Department spokesman Mark Toner recently said.
Ankara summoned on Tuesday the U.S. Ambassador John Bass to the Turkish Foreign Ministry over the State Department spokesman John Kirby's remarks on 'not considering the PYD, YPG as terrorists'.
"Syrian Kurds are our partners against Daesh," Kirby said, stoking the flames of a rift between Ankara and Washington.
Turkey opposed PYD's participation in the Geneva talks, which were suspended after the first round due to intense air strikes and fighting.
The group was not invited to the talks by the UN's special envoy for Syria who called the meeting. Turkey lists the PYD and its armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG), as terror organizations.
The YPG has recently been supported by Russian air power in northern Syria.
The PYD is largely accepted as the Syrian wing of the PKK, which is recognized as a terror organization by the U.S., the E.U and NATO. The group recently opened an office in Moscow adorned with a poster of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. |
J-Stars Victory Vs. , the crossover fighting game that pits characters from 32 Shonen Jump manga against each other, debuts on Wednesday, and to celebrate the launch, Bandai Namco Games erected life-size statues of Dragon Ball Z's Son Goku duking it out with One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy on the streets of Tokyo.
Son Goku is about to unleash a Kamehameha, as Luffy slams his Gum-Gum Elephant Gun down on the shattered pavement. Off to the side, a car lies crumbled and overturned.
The 10-meter-wide (about 30-feet-wide) art piece will stay on the sidewalk outside the Shibuya Parco department store from Monday until March 23. A oversized version of the Sony PlayStation 3's DualShock 3 Controller buttons lets visitors activate sound effects and make the characters shout their attacks.
Bandai Namco Games also "hijacked" the JR Shibuya train station by plastering it with 20 different posters, depicting different "dream match-ups."
Source: Oricon |
Measuring EHRs’ Return on Investment
Paul Jason Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 14, 2017
Healthcare administrators must ensure that implementation of electronic health records software will enable their practice to improve patient care as well as increase fiscal benefits for it to be economically viable. Computing a return on investment (ROI) is important to evaluate whether the transition to the new system was successful in achieving the desired results.
The Costs:
Before taking this initiative, members from different departments, including the Administration and Operations units, should be engaged to carry out a detailed cost benefit analysis. This will help identify all possible methods of saving expenses and prospects to increase revenue. Other than the direct cost connected to EHR, there are also a number of hidden costs associated with it that may be difficult to compute and identify. These include custom interfaces charges, training of staff to adapt to the new system specific to the practice and ongoing maintenance etc. These expenses also consist of hardware that’s necessary to switch from a paper-based or semi-automated system to a fully automated one such as: database servers, laptops, printers, scanners, computers, tablets etc. During the transition period, changes in workflow may affect productivity briefly and cause temporary time management issues; however with the best EHR software, its usability will easily become second nature to all members of the staff.
Covering Implementation Costs:
A recent study at University of California, San Francisco, found that providers (including small practices) were easily able to recover EHR implementation costs in the short time span of approximately two and a half years. In fact, some saw it as the foremost reason behind their rapid financial improvement. The research also stated that as the medical industry continues to focus on quality of healthcare delivered rather than number/volume of patients, the ROI for EHR deployment will continue to grow.
Enhancing Revenue:
According to the UCSF study, accurate coding levels, charting, advanced reporting & analysis, and better tools were the key resources that made billing process and revenue cycle management simpler whilst saving time and money as well as improving outcomes. Savings ranged from $3,040 to $41,711 per FTE provider and revenue grew by $33,000 per FTE provider annually. Practices were able to increase efficiency and cut down administration costs up to $42,500 per FTE provider every year. The system was also able to eliminate supply redundancies and reduce overhead by decreasing or reallocating staff such as transcribers, record keepers etc. This made workflow increasingly efficient and value-based. As a result of processes being streamlined, more patients could be accommodated in a day which subsequently generated added revenue.
Adopting new technology also has certain reimbursement payments associated with them; in this case, Meaningful Use incentives for practices that meet the requirements and fulfill CMS guidelines, which further raises to the ROI.
In conclusion, incentives of EHR adoption are numerous and it is clearly a practice-building, cost-saving solution that provides long term operational and financial benefits, simultaneously increasing delivery of care as well as patient satisfaction. |
The cost of mayhem on the nation’s most congested roads in and around Washington — those fender benders, the medevacs, the lawsuits and lives lost — now has a price tag: $7.4 billion a year.
That is the cost calculated in the latest crunching of statistics from the region, taking into account 350 traffic deaths and 42,566 injuries recorded in 2009 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
If any good news can be found in this latest attempt to quantify the damage done to lives and property, it might be that, apportioned per capita, crashes cost less in this area than they do nationwide.
That’s apparently because the slow-speed accidents of cars caught in congestion do less damage and cause fewer deaths and injuries than those that occur at highway speeds.
The report was conducted by Cambridge Systematics for AAA.
Researchers say there is a silver lining to Washington’s gridlock: Slow-speed accidents cost less. (Mark Gail/WASHINGTON POST)
Researchers concluded that the cost per capita of a crash in this region is $1,363, compared with a national figure of $1,522.
“There is a silver lining,” said John B. Townsend II of AAA. “It doesn’t cost as much because we can’t go as fast.”
The overall national cost was pegged at $300 billion.
To draw their local conclusions, the researchers examined federal crash data from the same area that the U.S. Census Bureau uses to define the Washington region.
It includes the District and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas and Manassas Park, plus the counties of Arlington, Charles, Fairfax, Loudoun, Montgomery, Prince George’s and Prince William.
Figuring out the cost of an accident requires more than adding the medical and auto body shop bills.
Researchers used sophisticated federal guidelines that place a value on a lost life, and consider lost wages, time lost on the job, effect on the quality of life and other factors.
But the cost of congestion to Washington drivers was ranked fourth highest in the nation at almost $3.9 billion a year in the Texas Transportation Institute’s annual report for 2011.
That study — which said Washington had the worst congestion in the United States — put the annual additional cost of commuting in rush hour here at $1,495.
The institute, which is based at Texas A&M University, in College Station, found that Washington drivers were spending more than three days a year caught in traffic.
The Census Bureau confirmed the grip of gridlock on the region, determining that Maryland drivers, thousands of whom drive to work in the District or Virginia, have the longest average commute in the nation. |
Dodgin Profile Blog Joined July 2011 Canada 38849 Posts Last Edited: 2013-06-17 23:41:37 #2 Poll: Which Group is More Exciting?
Group A: Flash, Soulkey, Ragnarok, Yugioh (52)
73%
Group B: Innovation, Flying, Savage, Bbyong (19)
27%
71 total votes (52)73%(19)27%71 total votes Your vote: Which Group is More Exciting? (Vote): Group A: Flash, Soulkey, Ragnarok, Yugioh
(Vote): Group B: Innovation, Flying, Savage, Bbyong
Poll: Who Will Advance From Group A?
Soulkey & Flash (71)
80%
Flash & Yugioh (6)
7%
Flash & Ragnarok (4)
4%
Soulkey & Ragnarok (4)
4%
Yugioh & Ragnarok (2)
2%
Soulkey & Yugioh (2)
2%
89 total votes (71)80%(6)7%(4)4%(4)4%(2)2%(2)2%89 total votes Your vote: Who Will Advance From Group A? (Vote): Soulkey & Flash
(Vote): Soulkey & Yugioh
(Vote): Soulkey & Ragnarok
(Vote): Flash & Yugioh
(Vote): Flash & Ragnarok
(Vote): Yugioh & Ragnarok
Poll: Who Will Advance From Group B?
Innovation & Flying (43)
54%
Innovation & Bbyong (18)
23%
Innovation & Savage (11)
14%
Bbyong & Flying (3)
4%
Flying & Savage (3)
4%
Bbyong & Savage (2)
3%
80 total votes (43)54%(18)23%(11)14%(3)4%(3)4%(2)3%80 total votes Your vote: Who Will Advance From Group B? (Vote): Innovation & Flying
(Vote): Innovation & Savage
(Vote): Innovation & Bbyong
(Vote): Bbyong & Savage
(Vote): Bbyong & Flying
(Vote): Flying & Savage
Dodgin Profile Blog Joined July 2011 Canada 38849 Posts #3 GET HYPED BITCHES ITS THE OSL
Flossy Profile Blog Joined August 2011 United States 865 Posts #4 woooooooooooo hype etternaonline.com
Die4Ever Profile Joined August 2010 United States 15182 Posts #5 will my gomtv year pass allow me to watch this on gomtv.net in EHQ? "Expert"
TheDougler Profile Joined April 2010 Canada 8015 Posts Last Edited: 2013-06-17 23:33:35 #6 On June 18 2013 08:31 Dodgin wrote:
GET HYPED BITCHES ITS FLASH
FTFY
Seriously though, pretty stoked for his games. FTFYSeriously though, pretty stoked for his games. I root for Euro Zergs, NA Protoss* and Korean Terrans. (Any North American who has beat a Korean Pro as Protoss counts as NA Toss)
GolemMadness Profile Blog Joined September 2010 Canada 8533 Posts #7 JESUS CHRIST this is tonight?! http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=FLABREZU
Popkiller Profile Blog Joined March 2012 3391 Posts #8 Oooooo so many good players tonight.
FrostedMiniWheats Profile Joined August 2010 United States 30313 Posts #9 God damn it I want to be validated in my hype of Ragnarok, I want the hipster shades! Just don't see it happening though with Flash and Soulkey in the group. :/ NesTea | Mvp | MC | Leenock | Losira | Gumiho | DRG | Taeja | Jinro | Stephano | Thorzain | Sen | Idra |Polt | Bomber | Symbol | Squirtle | Fantasy | Jaedong | Maru | sOs | Seed | ByuN | ByuL | Neeb| Scarlett | Rogue | IM forever
insanet Profile Joined January 2010 Peru 438 Posts Last Edited: 2013-06-17 23:36:05 #10 the Bo1 madness starts today, this shit is gonna be crazy, people will flip tables left and right.
Dodgin Profile Blog Joined July 2011 Canada 38849 Posts #11 On June 18 2013 08:33 GolemMadness wrote:
JESUS CHRIST this is tonight?!
I was surprised too, I glanced at the TL calendar and saw it on the upcoming games and rushed to make the thread. I was surprised too, I glanced at the TL calendar and saw it on the upcoming games and rushed to make the thread.
theMagus Profile Joined February 2013 578 Posts #12 go go flash!! "Give away the stone. Let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and fated anchor. Let the waters kiss and transmutate these leaden grudges into gold. Let go."
Derez Profile Blog Joined January 2011 Netherlands 6040 Posts #13 Bo1, better prepare for drama.
StarVe Profile Joined June 2011 Germany 12271 Posts #14 I'm hyped for the cheese, BITCH!
Die4Ever Profile Joined August 2010 United States 15182 Posts #15 On June 18 2013 08:34 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:
God damn it I want to be validated in my hype of Ragnarok, I want the hipster shades! Just don't see it happening though with Flash and Soulkey in the group. :/
yea Flash and Soulkey both in the same ro32 group is pretty harsh lol yea Flash and Soulkey both in the same ro32 group is pretty harsh lol "Expert"
neptunusfisk Profile Blog Joined July 2012 2178 Posts #16 The rest of this years (blizzcon etc) WCS depends on these Bo1! Time to flip tables!! flash is back woo
rift Profile Blog Joined September 2007 1817 Posts #17 Why is TL not covering OSL? lazy.
Die4Ever Profile Joined August 2010 United States 15182 Posts #18 On June 18 2013 08:37 neptunusfisk wrote:
The rest of this years (blizzcon etc) WCS depends on these Bo1! Time to flip tables!!
I'm gonna laugh so hard if Flash and Soulkey both get knocked out with only cheese tonight I'm gonna laugh so hard if Flash and Soulkey both get knocked out with only cheese tonight "Expert"
StarVe Profile Joined June 2011 Germany 12271 Posts Last Edited: 2013-06-17 23:42:47 #19 On June 18 2013 08:38 rift wrote:
Why is TL not covering OSL? lazy.
Fionn is busy writing a 52,000 word article about former GSL champions. Wax got into the caster business and signed with EMG, Zealously is training for the Olympics, kollin got grounded and stuchiu was busy watching DreamHack. Fionn is busy writing a 52,000 word article about former GSL champions. Wax got into the caster business and signed with EMG, Zealously is training for the Olympics, kollin got grounded and stuchiu was busy watching DreamHack.
EkiMGnaW Profile Joined March 2011 United States 37 Posts #20 So early in the morning! =_=
Let's see if the OSL will be the OSL of old.
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From pretend play to house-rules stick ball to hastily conceived tabletop RPGs, making up your own games has been a childhood staple for as long as there have been kids with ample free time and unbridled creativity. 14-year-old Anshul Samar has taken this to its logical conclusion by creating, and now actively seeking backing to help mass produce, his own science-based fantasy card combat game Elementeo.
The game is based on a 121-card deck of chemical elements, compounds and catalysts. Every card has an explanation of the element or compound's uses and chemical properties. For example, the Oxygen card can rust neighboring metal cards and the Copper Conductor card can shock any metals. The oxidation state of an element is used as its attack power, and its physical state determines its movement on the board. The goal of the game is to reduce the opponents electrons to zero through strategic use of each card's chemical properties.
With $500 in seed money from the California Association of the Gifted, Samar crafted a prototype of the two-player CCG that went on to wow them at entrepreneur conference TiECON 2007. And with a unique blend of personal ingenuity, scientific know-how, and a good, old fashioned fantasy slant, this story is sure to thrill GeekDads everywhere.
Link to the game's website, where it can be pre-ordered.
Which begs the question: what types of interesting and exciting games have you and your geeklings concocted?
Via Science Daily
Update: Aaron Rowe of Wired Science pointed us to a video of the young man himself, describing the game at the ACS Conference in New Orleans last week:
http://ustream.tv/LBBUVqpsUOz55NtWJ19nTSgqtbNms,XZ.usv |
The Raspberry Pi was definitely a game changer when it hit shelves at only $35. But CHIP is hoping to make the Pi look positively pricey by comparison. The Kickstarter campaign has already blown way past its $50,000 goal. In fact, at the time of this writing its approaching $500,000. Like the Pi, CHIP is a fully functional computer. The tiny board is home to a 1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage, all of which power a full-fledged (if light-weight) Linux desktop. Even more impressive is that there's both WiFi and Bluetooth on board. It's mostly aimed at tinkerers and DIYers, hence the I/O pins waiting for your attention, but you could certainly use it as an inexpensive general purpose computer... so long as you're not particularly demanding. |
Evolutionary biology has helped scientists understand why the world looks the way it does for more than 150 years, since Charles Darwin released On the Origin of Species back in 1859.
But a team of researchers has now proposed an update to our current understanding of evolution - one that could completely shift our understanding of how species evolve.
Some of the world's best known biologists just converged in London as part of a Royal Society meeting to discuss if it's time to upgrade one of the most fundamental theories in science.
To be clear, the researchers aren't saying there's anything wrong with our current theory of evolution.
Instead, they want to update what we know so far with the latest discoveries in genetics and biology, because in recent years, we've realised that the human body is far more flexible, or 'plastic', than we ever realised - and it goes way beyond genes.
But before we go into the update, let's talk about the current accepted theory of evolution: modern evolutionary synthesis, or modern synthesis.
Modern synthesis merges Charles Darwin's famous ideas of natural selection with Mendelian genetics, which was developed by Gregor Mendel back in 1865 and laid out the subtle ways that we inherit traits through DNA.
This new modern synthesis was outlined in the 1930s and '40s, and quickly became the most widely accepted theory of evolution by the scientific community. It's the one we're all taught at high school today.
Basically, the modern synthesis states that evolution occurs via small genetic changes, that are regulated by natural selection.
This still holds true, even after decades of DNA research and human genome mapping. But new discoveries have also shown that changes can be passed down by more than just genes.
"The researchers don’t argue that the modern synthesis is wrong - just that it doesn’t capture the full richness of evolution," writes Carl Zimmer for Quanta magazine, who attended the Royal Society meeting from 7 to 9 November.
The researchers also argue that natural selection isn't necessarily the primary force in evolution - the limitations of development and the environments organisms live in can also play a role.
This new hypothesis of evolution is called the extended evolutionary synthesis, and it's been outlined in a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B by researchers led by Kevin Laland, an evolutionary biologist from the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
"It’s not simply bolting more mechanisms on what we already have," Laland explained to Zimmer. "It requires you to think of causation in a different way."
So what are these other ways that evolution can occur? In recent decades, scientists have shown that cells can use a range of molecules to control which of their genes are turned on or off, through a process known as epigenetics.
Basically, just having a gene isn't enough, you need it to be made into a protein to affect an organism. But epigenetic processes, such as methylation, can be used to stop that happening.
And researchers have shown that these epigenetic changes can actually be passed down, to allow offspring to better adjust to new challenges.
Epigenetic changes are more flexible than genetic changes, but they can have just as big an impact on the way an organism behaves or looks.
"The quality of food a woman gets while she’s pregnant can influence the size and health of her baby, and those influences can last until adulthood," writes Zimmer.
"What’s more, the size of a woman - influenced in part by her own mother’s diet - can influence her own children. Biologists have found that women with longer legs tend to have larger children, for example."
Modern synthesis doesn't account for those epigenetic changes, but extended evolutionary synthesis would.
And it could help explain some of the evolutionary mysteries in human history. For example, why so many fossils from the Homo genus that seemingly belong to the same species can look so similar in some ways, but so different in others - such as height and stature.
Extended evolutionary synthesis could also help to explain the birth of agriculture around 10,000 years ago.
We know that neolithic humans at the time started domesticating crops and animals, and transitioned from a hunter gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural one, laying the groundwork for modern civilisation.
But researchers have been puzzled as to how this happened, based on our understanding of modern evolutionary synthesis.
Modern synthesis would suggest that natural selection drove our ancestors to give up foraging and start growing crops instead, because it delivered the best payoff.
But growing crops would have taken a long time, and so scientists have struggled to explain how it would have initially benefitted our ancestors.
"You don’t get the immediate gratification of grabbing some food and putting it in your mouth," Melinda Zeder, an archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institute, told Quanta.
One hypothesis is that maybe the switch to agriculture occurred during a climate shift, when hunter gathering became harder than ever before. But there's been no evidence of that occurring.
Perhaps a better way of thinking about the transition is through the lens of extended evolutionary synthesis - maybe humans, not natural selection, steered their own evolution, and simply decided to start farming, whether or not there was initial payoff.
This is a process known as niche construction, where an organism adapts to their environment in new ways that don't necessarily have anything to do with genetics. Those changes can be passed down, and can shift the rest of the environment as a result.
Of course, extended evolutionary synthesis still has its critics - there were several talks at the latest meeting arguing against the need to update modern synthesis just yet.
So for now, extended evolutionary synthesis is just a hypothesis, and while there have been a lot of great minds thinking about how it could work, we need more evidence to figure out if it actually works.
"This is likely the first of many, many meetings," Laland told Zimmer. "It’s doing the research, which is what our critics are telling us to do. Go find the evidence."
You can see a full write-up of extended evolutionary synthesis in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. |
Photo credit: The Goldwater
New groundbreaking reports tonight flooding in that the United States Government under the previous Obama Administration did in fact wiretap conversations between then Candidate Donald J. Trump and the Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort.
The new allegations come amidst controversial suggestions that President Obama and the Department of Justice willingly and knowingly interfered in the Democratic Election Process by giving an unfair advantage to then Candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
Hypothetically, of the United States Government under Obama wiretapped President Trump's former Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, it would have given the Clinton Campaign an endless treasure trove of knowledge about future plans from the campaign as well as how to counter those attempts by the Trump Campaign in advance, which would undermine our electoral process.
Reports also have suggested that the wiretaps were part of an investigation into alleged work done by Washington Consulting Firms for Ukrainian politicians, but so far those on the left and in the Obama Administration have claimed that no such wiretaps existed to begin with.
So the narrative from the left to try and spin this is going to resemble something like, “The wiretaps were due to ties that Paul Manafort had to foreign governments.”
However, be sure to remind them that President Obama and Loretta Lynch had completely denied the existence of wiretaps ever being placed on the Trump Campaign, so you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
Paul Manafort did indeed have his home searched by Federal Agents through a legally obtained warrant with the suggestion that there may have been offshore accounts Manafort could have transferred money to or from.
So far however there has been no evidence produced to confirm those allegations and now it seems as if that was an attempt to cover up the wiretaps which were illegally made against the Trump campaign.
What it looks like to any impartial expert is that the Obama Administration per the DOJ used their authority to attempt to give Hillary Clinton an advantage during the campaign season and then Obama holdovers inside of the Federal Government trumped up false allegations against Manafort that they knew would produce zero evidence as a cover up attempt for why they placed the wiretaps to begin with.
Monday multiple intelligence community officials have confirmed that Manafort was under a form of surveillance due to a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, court order for an FBI investigation into the apparently overhyped consulting work.
According to those same officials the wiretap ended at some point during 2016 due to a lack of evidence against Manafort, and that's likely when this cover-up attempt began.
Contrary to the fact that there was never any evidence found, the FISA Court then issued a renewed order for surveillance on Manafort a second time that began late in 2016 and continued at least through the beginning of this year.
It's obvious, even to a man with both eyes blind, that there is a major deep state backed attempt by both Obama holdovers and plants left behind by the previous Administration to ensure that the truth never comes out, <i>which I fully believe the Obama Administration used their prowess to attempt to steal an advantage for Hillary Clinton</i>
During the same time frame of the now confirmed wiretaps, Manafort was in regular Communication with President Trump.
It's unknown if any of Manafort's personal conversations with Trump were picked up during the surveillance but it would be ignorant to not believe they were monitored albeit we may never know the full context.
Paul Manafort was a political and business consultant and of course he bad international dealings with many nations not just Russia and Ukraine.
There have been vulnerabilities found in all of the reports that Manafort had some illegally dealings with government officials from those two nations which are meant to attempt to shift public opinion that some wrongdoing occurred but again <i>there is zero evidence that anything illegal or even concerning took place</i> which ultimately suggests to me this is a false narrative hit job to cover up the actual wrongdoings of the Obama Administration.
To make matters worse Robert Mueller III, a clear cut globalist puppet, has a hard-on for Paul Manafort and President Trump.
Mueller is the definition of neoconservative and he's not only <a href="https://thegoldwater.com/news/3594-President-Trump-Should-Fire-Robert-Mueller-Who-Has-A-History-Of-Corruption-And-Illicit-Activities">disgraced America on several occasions prior to being appointed as Special Counsel</a> but he continues to embarrass this country's integrity every day he sits in that position.
After Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russian Investigation into President Trump's alleged ties due to criticisms from the Democratic Party’s most vocal mouthpieces and the radical Liberal Media, Robert S. Mueller III was appointed as special counsel to oversee the investigation.
Many of the Conservative allies of President Trump on Capitol Hill have touted that such an unnecessary action is a provocation from the left to further discredit and attempt to smear the current administration.
Who benefits from these relentless attacks against the President though, and why? The answer is clear to anyone willing to pinpoint the logic of dragging the administration through the mid further. The Democratic Party (and their allies in the Liberal Media) can keep their base rallied against any future legislation from the President or the GOP by casting an uncertain doubt over his legitimacy.
On PBS’ Newshour earlier this summer, a close confidant of President Trump Christopher Ruddy who is the chief executive of Newsmax Media made a statement. He met with President Trump at the White House on Monday and said that President Trump was wholeheartedly “considering, perhaps, terminating the special counsel.”
Robert Mueller has a long history however of presiding over controversial cover-ups and blatant violations of the Constitution. Not only did he serve under President Bush during the obvious intentional lies that led to the invasion of Iraq, but he's been accused of shutting down 9/11 truths as well.
So let's rewind to the beginning of September in 2001. A week before the devastating attacks of September 11th that would forever change the course of American History, Robert S. Mueller was sworn in as the FBI Director under President George W. Bush.
During the spring and summer of that same year prior to the attacks on 9/11, the intelligence community was given extreme warnings through intelligence gathering on the ground as well as foreign entities that AlQaeda was gearing up for a major attack on US soil. In fact, so many foreign agencies from Russian to British to Israeli intelligence all allegedly told the American Intelligence Community that an attack was imminent. Then September 11th happened. The single most deadly attack on American soil against civilians in the history of the nation. The world was shocked as America's anger raged at the same time it was mourning and feeling sorrow.
Later there would be countless investigations as per what actually occurred and what failures were made by the intelligence community to act upon the warnings they had been granted. In fact, the 9/11 commission referred to the FBI as ‘incompetent’ stating that “the system had been blinking red.” Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which an FBI agent witness termed “criminal negligence” in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely manner.
To make matters worse, Robert Mueller shrugged off these failures of the intelligence community instead claiming the warnings were somehow “insignificant”. Yes, America had just suffered the deadliest attack against its own citizens in history and this FBI Director called the warnings “insignificant”.
During a February 2003 letter from FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley to Director Mueller, she wrote “At this critical point in our country's history I have decided to try once again, on an issue of even more consequence for the internal security posture of our country. That posture has been weakened by the diversion of attention from al-Qaeda to our government's plan to invade Iraq, a step that will, in all likelihood, bring an exponential increase in the terrorist threat to the U.S., both at home and abroad.”
Again internal dismay from FBI Agents that the intelligence they were offering the President on Iraq was indeed a gross miscalculation, and it would only further expand terrorism at home and abroad. Mueller chose to ignore the concerns of his own agency and pushed forward with the Bush/Cheney narrative that Iraq was the enemy which must be invaded.
Later Mueller would go on to encourage the Bush/Cheney ‘War On Terror’ and invasion of Iraq. These very actions have been decided to have been based on completely bogus intelligence and misrepresented facts. Another major failure of the intelligence community under Mueller. Thus failure, however, has cost thousands of American lives, trillions of American dollars, and forever destroyed the Persian Gulf into a hotbed of terrorist training grounds.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attack Mueller oversaw the round up if over one thousand immigrants into detention as well. All of these one thousand immigrants were later deemed to have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. None of them were in fact criminals. So the very attacks used against the President by the left regarding unfair treatment of immigrants are the very actions of the man the left is touting as a hero in Robert Mueller.
Even before his time as FBI Director Robert Mueller had controversy surrounding him. He was Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston during an ongoing cover-up of the FBI’s illegal deals with mobster Whitey Bulger and other high profile informants who committed countless murders and crimes.
At the end of that period, it was finally uncovered by honest judges and actual investigative journalists that US taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to four men framed for murders committed by the FBI operated)Bulger gang. Yes, Robert Mueller oversaw that mishap too.
So would it be fair to assume Robert Mueller is not a man worthy of overseeing a legitimate and unbiased investigation into the President of the United States of America and his administration? Absolutely. Would it be fair to suggest Robert Mueller has a history of corruption and cover-ups? Certainly.
President Trump would be within his rights as a Patriotic and honest American President to terminate Robert Mueller from Special Counsel indefinitely.
Of course the backlash from such an action would be devastating when President Trump still holds the highest office in the nation and must focus on working across the aisle to Make America Great Again.
The situation is so gloomy for the left that they'd rather tirelessly act in a repetitive nature and repeat sweet nothings of propaganda than try and fix the country which needs repaired.
The new reports however show that the Obama Administration has engaged in some form of stacking the deck in the favor of Hillary Clinton with the wiretaps, the problem is that they expected Hillary Clinton to win and all of their corruption be swept under the rug.
Another concerning factor is that many in the GOP seem unwilling to investigate the crimes which were committed by the previous Administration and the Department of Justice.
Either its due to a lack of support in exposing the corruption of the American Government under Obama or possibly due to the lack of desire in displaying the very little integrity which exists in the Democratic election process; yet either way there's a failure to be transparent and honest.
Some would suggest that many in the GOP have skeletons in their own closets, which is one of the reasons they've remained silent in this battle for open truths due to a fear of possible implications or even blackmail of elected officials as we believe is occurring in the case of <a href="https://thegoldwater.com/news/8020-Wasserman-Schultz-Covered-Up-Illegal-Server-Imran-Awan-Was-Using-After-Police-Banned-Him-from-House">Imran Awan and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.</a>
Manafort was employed with the Trump Campaign between the months of May and August of 2016 as Campaign Chairman.
There has been a nonstop bounty on his head with hit piece after hit piece of fake news to try and de-legitimize President Trump.
Trump has continued to claim and we all agree that President Obama ordered intelligence officials to wiretap Trump Tower.
The Justice Department has continued to deny those claims earlier this summer and said no such evidence exists, but that's because they've likely erased any trace of such evidence from the offices of government.
Thats where the Manafort raid fits in, as a distraction and a cover up for the criminal wrongdoings of Barack Obama.
It began tonight with CNN’s Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz, and Pamela Brown reporting that “federal investigators got secret court orders to wiretap Manafort, at first before the 2016 campaign because of an inquiry into his work in Ukraine, and later as part of the investigation into Trump associates’ ties to Russia.”
That's just bullshit. For months they've denied that no FISA request or wiretap existed at all. Make up your damn minds you lying globalist bastards.
Then the second propaganda outlet, the New York Times’ Sharon LaFraniere, Matt Apuzzo, and Adam Goldman reported that “this summer, special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors ‘told Mr. Manafort they planned to indict him.’ They also add the detail that when federal agents searched Manafort’s home in July at the behest of Mueller’s team, they picked the lock rather than announcing their presence in advance.”
Seriously I have to laugh out loud at this. I've repeatedly pointed out that Robert Mueller is a con artist and a liar first and foremost and second he's suppose to simply “oversee an already ongoing investigation” now it's being referred to as “Mueller’s Team” by the failing New York Times?
They're right, it's his <i>hit team</i> designed to execute complete and utter bullshit and perpetually reinforce a lie.
So, the original FISA court order was to surveil Manafort’s alleged business dealings, but it was issued before he got involved with the Trump campaign, as part of an investigation into “work done by a group of Washington consulting firms for Ukraine's former ruling party.”
So it has nothing to do with Trump? These clowns can't even get their stories straight. President Trump was right, this is a witch hunt.
Source:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fbi-wire-tapped-trump-campaign-chairman-paul-manafort-report/article/2634824
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Apr 24, 2017; Atlanta, GA, USA; Washington Wizards forward Markieff Morris (5) defends Atlanta Hawks forward Paul Millsap (4) in the fourth quarter in game four of the first round of the 2017 NBA Playoffs at Philips Arena. The Hawks defeated the Wizards 111-101. Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports
Baltimore Orioles: Decreased playing time has led to the lack of RBIs for Caleb Joseph
Baltimore Orioles: Decreased playing time has led to the lack of RBIs for Caleb Joseph by Brian Pinter
The 2017 NBA playoffs are heating up in the Eastern Conference first-round playoff series featuring the Wizards vs. Hawks as Markieff Morris’ “crybaby’ remarks has excelled the play of All-Star Paul Millsap.
Tough, rugged, hard-nosed, sharp and crafty are just some of many words to describe the play of Washington Wizards power forward Markieff Morris in his NBA playoff debut. Morris scored 21 points along with seven rebounds in the Wizards’ Game 1 victory against the Atlanta Hawks.
On the other side, Hawks’ power forward Paul Millsap bore the brunt of Morris’ tough and gritty play, describing it as “MMA” in a postgame interview.
Morris, who was in good spirits after the Wizards playoff win, simply gave in to Hawks’ Paul Millsap’s “MMA” comments and fired back, suggesting the Wizards should take their MMA game up a level to “Double MMA” in Game 2.
After that comment, Morris’ play has come crashing down and has been a non-factor in three consecutive playoff games. The Wizards and Hawks playoff series is suddenly tied at 2-2 after the Wizards jumped out to a commanding 2-0 series lead. Since scoring 21 points and hauling in seven rebounds in the Wizards’ Game 1 win, Morris has combined for just 21 points in the last three games combined.
On top of his recent stretch of poor play, Morris continues to try and get in the head of Hawks’ Paul Millsap and to simply put it, it’s not working out for Morris. In fact, Morris made himself look more foolish when he called Millsap, “a crybaby” after the Wizards were demolished by the Hawks in Game 3.
In the last three games (Game 2, 3 and 4), Millsap has significantly outplayed Morris in every way.
As the graph reveals, Millsap is outscoring, outrebounding and most importantly outplaying Morris in three consecutive games.
Morris’ antics of attempting to get in the head of the Hawks’ All-Star quickly backlashed. Millsap responded to Morris’ “Double MMA” comments with a double-double, scoring 29 points with 14 rebounds in Game 3. After the game where not only he was outplayed, but also the Wizards, Morris continued with his antics, calling out Millsap once again.
Millsap chuckled at Morris’ comments and followed up his Game 3 performance with 19 points and nine rebounds in 36 minutes of play as the Hawks evened the series 2-2. Morris’ remarks and inferior play caught the attention of the pompous Stephen A. Smith who voiced his thoughts about the situation on ESPN’s First Take:
“I’m so disgusted with what I saw from the Washington Wizards last night!” –@stephenasmith pic.twitter.com/iMiTqrCShv — First Take (@FirstTake) April 25, 2017
The CSN’s Wizards Overtime crew aired their thoughts on Morris as well:
Is Markieff Morris’ trash talking getting old? The #Wizards Overtime crew debates. Tune in to CSN to watch the show! pic.twitter.com/E5b8VKXjy1 — CSN Wizards (@CSNWizards) April 25, 2017
Morris has been so concerned about playing physical against Millsap that he’s committed careless fouls early in three straight games, earning him a nice seat on the bench in a time the Wizards need their starting power forward most.
Morris and the Wizards return home for Game 5 as they strive to take back the series lead before heading back south to Atlanta for Game 6 Friday, April 28. |
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The DR900 - DR650 Big Bore Stroker buildup
This idea has been sitting on the back burner for a long while now. I finally have enough time and space to get on with it.
2 Years ago I had a Crankworks build a 10mm over stroked DR650 crank. Carrillo made up a special 5mm shorter rod which cost a bundle but makes the longer stroke crank fit within the DR motor without a bunch of difficult modifications.
Here's the crank:
The Carrillo rod is a thing of beauty.
I have collected a few organ donor DR motors.
On the left is a high mileage 1996 missing the top end. It's got good center cases. The other 2 motors are 1998s with broken crankcases because of the lack of a torque limiter in the starter drive.
I'll combine the best parts from these three motors for the DR-zilla. I've also got a 790 piston, cylinder and 190 cam set aside for the project. The final displacement will come to 886cc.
The biggest unknown I see is what to do with the clutch. I'll almost certainly have to come up with a way to add additional plates to the clutch pack.
No, sorry, this is not ever going to be a kit
Folks are really interested when they think they could buy a kit for a few hundred bucks. The fact is that a 900 kit would have to sell for at least $3000. That would be just a kit, no labor, no cam, no 3rd gear upgrade or any of the other things you would probably want to add at the same time. No, this is not a commercially viable project. It's just something I've chosen to do to push the envelope and learn about what is possible. If it doesn't explode on the first ride and someone else is crazy enough to want to build their own stroker I'll be happy to help point them in the right direction.
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Engine builds always get held up by something. My first holdup was getting all new bearings for inside the crankcase. The crankcase donor had around 50K miles so reusing the old bearings was not an option. Note the billet 3rd gear set. I'm sure there will be more internal parts needed but you never can tell until everything is apart and inspected.
So, armed with new bearings it is time to start tearing the motor down. It's easiest to start on the left side and remove the stator cover, shift linkage, starter drive and flywheel.
Everything from the left side stays together, gets cleaned up together, gets boxed up together. This eliminates the possibility of getting bolts, dowel pins, thrust washers, etc getting mixed up with other motor parts.
See the broken stator cover? That's crash damage that ended the useful life of this bike. Luckily I have good stator covers from the other donor motors.
Same thing happens on the clutch side. I'll pull the clutch stuff from a different motor because the first one has already been pillaged for clutch parts and I want to make sure I don't miss something.
Again, everything from the right side stays together through the whole process.
The neutral safety switch screws were only finger tight just as expected.
Since the top end was already removed from this donor some time back it's time to split the cases.
I made a case pulling tool out of a piece of half inch plate.
The case is held tightly by the press fit of the left crank bearing. The tool pushes the crankshaft out of the left case half and separates the cases in the process.
The left case half lifts off leaving all the internals in place in the right case half.
Here are the cases cleaned up and with the old bearings removed.
Heat makes removing the bearings really easy. I put the cases open side down in the shop oven and turn it up to 350 degrees. Come back in 25 minutes and all the bearings have fallen right out.
After getting the case halves clean I followed up by blasting them with walnut shells, masking off and painting the outside with high heat satin finish black. Walnut shells aren't abrasive enough to harm any of the machined surfaces like sand would. Glass bead blasting is a big no no because the glass will embed into the aluminum and end up inside the motor. Walnut shells are easy to thoroughly clean off too. Heat is just as useful putting the bearings is as it was taking them out. With the cases heated to 350 degrees to cure the paint it was simple to just drop the bearings into their bores.
Yay! It's always a good feeling when the project turns the corner and parts start going back together instead of coming apart. |
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Dec. 6, 2014, 4:37 PM GMT / Updated Dec. 7, 2014, 3:19 AM GMT
From 2.9 billion miles away, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft let its handlers know on Saturday that it has awakened from hibernation and is ready for the climax of its nine-year trip to Pluto.
The first signals were received at the mission's control center at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland via a giant radio antenna in Australia just before 9:30 p.m. ET, nearly four and a half hours after it was sent by the piano-sized probe. It takes that long for signals to travel between there and here at the speed of light.
Later readings confirmed that New Horizons was fully awake.
“This is a watershed event that signals the end of New Horizons crossing of a vast ocean of space to the very frontier of our solar system, and the beginning of the mission’s primary objective: the exploration of Pluto and its many moons in 2015,” Southwest Research Institute planetary scientist Alan Stern, the principal investigator for the $728 million New Horizons mission, said in a NASA statement.
New Horizons has been spending about two-thirds of the time since its launch in 2006 in hibernation, to save on electronic wear and tear as well as operational costs. Every few months, the spacecraft's systems have been roused to wakefulness for a checkup, or for photo ops such as its Jupiter flyby in 2007.
The probe also has been sending weekly blips known as "green beacons" — to let the mission team know it's not dead, but only sleeping.
The instructions for the wakeup call were transmitted to the spacecraft during a checkup in August, and the signal sent on Saturday confirmed that the instructions were executed earlier in the day. To celebrate the occasion, the New Horizons team arranged for English tenor Russell Watson to record a special rendition of the Star Trek anthem "Where My Heart Will Take Me" as a wakeup song.
From now on, New Horizons will remain awake continuously through its Bastille Day flyby of Pluto and its moons next July 14. After a few weeks of preparation, the probe's instruments will start making long-range observations on Jan. 15.
The spacecraft is currently about 162 million miles away from Pluto, but as that distance shrinks, the observations will get better and better. By next May, New Horizons' images of Pluto should be sharper than the best pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. And in July, the probe may catch sight of the clouds and ice volcanoes that scientists suspect may exist on the dwarf planet.
New Horizons will capture pictures of Pluto and its five known moons, but there may be surprises as well — still more moons, perhaps, or icy rings around Pluto. So many readings are expected to pile up that New Horizons will have to store the data in its memory and transmit it for more than a year after the encounter.
After Pluto, New Horizons' team is planning to send the probe past another icy object in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of cosmic material that lies beyond Neptune's orbit, in late 2018 or 2019.
“New Horizons is on a journey to a new class of planets we've never seen, in a place we've never been before," NASA quoted New Horizons' project scientist, Hal Weaver of the Applied Physics Laboratory, as saying. "For decades we thought Pluto was this odd little body on the planetary outskirts; now we know it's really a gateway to an entire region of new worlds in the Kuiper Belt, and New Horizons is going to provide the first close-up look at them."
The probe's computer eventually will be reprogrammed to carry digital "selfies to the stars," courtesy of the One Earth New Horizons Message project. |
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This case gives a new and an even more despicable meaning to the term, “Broken Windows Policing”
St. Louis, MO — Leon Walker and his family were settling down for dinner last week when they were violently interrupted as flashbang grenades came flying into their house and began exploding.
The front door was kicked down, and armed assailants rushed in with AR-15 rifles drawn and pointed Walker and his family. These armed and incredibly incompetent and dangerous assailants were members of the St. Louis Police Department’s SWAT team.
The SWAT team was looking for an evil man who allegedly committed the ‘crime’ of selling a substance to willing customers. This man’s name was Darron Ford, and he lived two doors down from the Walker family.
The fact that the man they were looking for lived two doors down was of no consequence to these thugs in uniform as they went along with the raid, in full. For two hours, police, who knew they were at the wrong address, tore the home of Leon Walker apart in search of a non-existent reason to justify their idiocy.
Never let a botched SWAT raid go to waste.
Had Walker tried to defend his home against the armed invaders, he would have been killed, and the world would have never known about it. The blurb on the nightly news would have been that police kill an armed man who fired on them.
“Obviously they think they’re being invaded,” family attorney Bevis Schock said. “The hope is that they won’t fight back but that they’ll cower in fear – the flight response rather than the fight response.”
Schock says that police should have stopped their madness once they realized they were at the wrong home. However, they were on an apparent mission to destroy and intimidate.
After the life-threatening home invasion and subsequent destruction of their home, the St. Louis Police Department sent out a building inspector. In turn, the inspector issued the Walker family a citation for a window the SWAT team broke during the raid!
“In this case the insult was to have the building inspector cite them for the window that had been broken by the police an hour earlier as part of the entry, and that’s outrageous,” Schock said.
The Walker family could have been killed by these barbarians as they followed their controller’s orders to seek out illicit substances. Instead of an apology for threatening all their lives and ransacking their home, the Walkers were extorted!
The Walker family has since filed a lawsuit against the city of St. Louis. The taxpayers will now foot the bill for the belligerent idiocy of the St. Louis SWAT team.
The Walker’s situation is hardly an isolated one either. Also this month, and in the same town, another family was wrongfully raided by St. Louis SWAT. Angela Zorich and family were subject to a massive military-style raid during which their house was destroyed, their beloved dog killed, and their mother kidnapped. The reason for this war-like assault on a family — Zorich was on hard times and was temporarily unable to pay her gas bill.
Sadly, many Americans are still unable to see the horrors of the massive and brutally negligent police state that has exploded in this country. The apologists sit back and tell people that if they don’t do anything wrong, they don’t have anything to worry about. Share this article with your friends and family who still think they have nothing to worry about. |
“It’s minimal,” said Savita Subramanian, head of United States equity and quantitative strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Over all, the sequester could reduce earnings at the biggest companies by just over 1 percent, she said, adding, “the market wants more austerity.”
As a percentage of national income, corporate profits stood at 14.2 percent in the third quarter of 2012, the largest share at any time since 1950, while the portion of income that went to employees was 61.7 percent, near its lowest point since 1966. In recent years, the shift has accelerated during the slow recovery that followed the financial crisis and ensuing recession of 2008 and 2009, said Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays.
Corporate earnings have risen at an annualized rate of 20.1 percent since the end of 2008, he said, but disposable income inched ahead by 1.4 percent annually over the same period, after adjusting for inflation.
“There hasn’t been a period in the last 50 years where these trends have been so pronounced,” Mr. Maki said.
At the individual corporate level, though, the budget sequestration could result in large job cuts as companies move to protect their bottom lines, said Louis R. Chenevert, the chief executive of United Technologies. Depending on how long the budget tightening lasts, the job cuts at his company could total anywhere from several hundred to several thousand, he said.
“If I don’t have the business, at some point you’ve got to adjust the work force,” he said. “You always try to find solutions, but you get to a point where it’s inevitable.”
The path charted by United Technologies, an industrial giant based in Hartford that is one of 30 companies in the Dow, underscores why corporate profits and share prices continue to rise in a lackluster economy and a stagnant job market. Simply put, United Technologies does not need as many workers as it once did to churn out higher sales and profits. |
Lawyers for the State Department want to limit the types of questions that a watchdog group can ask former aides to Hillary Clinton, and potentially the former secretary of state herself, about her creation and use of a private email system while she was in office.
The department asked a federal judge Tuesday night to grant “limited discovery” to Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that wants to depose some of Clinton’s closest associates and staffers.
State’s lawyers proposed that the group only be allowed to ask questions about “the reasons for the creation of the clintonemail.com system,” and not about how classified information was handled on the system or any issues related to protecting it from hackers.
The State Department lawyers also indicated that they may object to any attempt to depose Clinton. Judicial Watch hasn’t proposed to depose the Democratic presidential frontrunner, but has said it wants to interview Huma Abedin, one of Clinton’s closest aides and a personal friend; Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff; Patrick Kennedy, a senior State Department official; and others who were involved in discussions among State Department officials about Clinton’s email usage.
Based on the schedule that both State Department and Judicial Watch lawyers have proposed, interviews with ex-Clinton aides could begin in the weeks heading into the Democratic presidential nominating convention in July.
The questions that State wants to put off limits have been at the center of multiple inquiries by inspectors general and the FBI about how Clinton handled classified information and whether she or her staff violated any laws or rules about maintaining government records. Investigators have found that some of the emails in Clinton’s server contained classified information when they were sent, though she has maintained they were never marked as such.
The lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch is one of dozens by activists and journalists seeking information about Clinton’s private email system, which was run out of a “homebrew” server in her house in New York. It’s unusual, however, in that it’s only one of two cases in which a federal judge has agreed to allow discovery, including potential examination of government documents and interviews with current or former officials.
Judicial Watch brought the suit in an effort to obtain information about the government’s employment agreement with Abedin, a key member of Clinton’s inner circle who simultaneously held four jobs for a six-month period in 2012: at the State Department, at the Clinton family’s foundation, in Hillary Clinton’s personal office, and at a private consulting firm with connections to the Clintons.
The group also wants to depose Bryan Pagliano, who reportedly maintained Clinton’s email server. Pagliano has been granted immunity in exchange for his cooperation with FBI investigators, and State’s lawyers asked the judge to prevent Judicial Watch from asking questions about the bureau’s investigation.
Meanwhile, FBI Director James Comey told reporters in Buffalo on Monday that he was in no rush to complete the investigation, which he said could extend past the Democratic and Republican conventions.
“The urgency is to do it well and promptly,” Comey said. “And ‘well’ comes first.”
Clinton said Sunday on NBC News’ Meet the Press that FBI agents had yet to contact her for an interview but that she is willing to sit down with them.
The State Department had fought to keep Judicial Watch from conducting discovery at all, arguing that the group sought to expand the question about Abedin’s employment situation “into a far-ranging inquiry” about whether records laws had been broken.
But U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan expressed his frustration in a hearing last February over the fragmentary way that new revelations and disclosures about Clinton’s email system have come to light. He concluded that discovery, which is rare for cases like this one brought under the Freedom of Information Act, was warranted.
“This is a constant drip, a declaration drip. That’s what we're having here, you know, and it needs to stop,” Sullivan said, before ordering that limited discovery could proceed.
The lack of a complete explanation for why Clinton had set up a private email system gave rise to “a reasonable suspicion of bad faith” on the part of State Department officials, who may have been trying to thwart transparency laws, Sullivan said. There was no question that senior officials working for Clinton knew she was using a private email server, he noted.
“It appears that no one took any steps to ensure that agency records on Clintonemail.com were secured within the State Department’s record systems” in order to respond to records requests in the future, Sullivan said. “How in the world could this happen?”
At one point, Sullivan asked rhetorically, “Was the system created to accommodate the former secretary? Was the system created to thwart [Freedom of Information Act] compliance?” Until those questions are answered, he said, the court can’t determine whether the government had fully and adequately searched for records in the underlying case.
“We’re talking about a cabinet-level official who was accommodated by the government for reasons unknown to the public,” Sullivan said.
In the other case in which a judge has granted discovery, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled last week that “where there is evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith…”
That case, which was also brought by Judicial Watch, is about government talking points that officials crafted following the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. |
Saturn to Pull Celestial Houdini on August 11
Media contacts:
DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
[email protected]
Updated Aug. 13, 2009In 1918, magician extraordinaire Harry Houdini created a sensation when he made a 10,000-pound elephant disappear before a mystified audience of over 5,200 at New York's famed Hippodrome theatre. But a vanishing pachyderm is nothing compared to the magnificent illusion to be performed by our solar system's own sixth rock from the sun on Aug. 11. On that day, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, the planet Saturn, with no help from either Jupiter or Uranus, will make its 170,000-mile-wide ring system disappear.How does a mere gas giant planet, without the benefit of a magic wand, smoke and mirrors, or even sleeves for that matter, manage to hide an estimated 35 trillion-trillion tons of ice, dust and rock fragments? Saturn itself, perhaps adhering to the magician's code never to reveal how a trick is performed, is not talking. But fortunately for us, dear friends, Linda Spilker, deputy project scientist for the Cassini Saturn mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is not in the magician's guild."Saturn has been performing the "ring plane crossing" illusion about every 15 years since the rings formed, perhaps as long as 4.5 billion years ago, so by now it is pretty good at it," said Spilker. "The magician's tools required to perform this trick are pure sunlight, a planet that is tilted, and a main ring system that may be almost 200-thousand miles wide, but only 30 feet thick." All planets in our solar system have their spin axes tilted relative to their orbits around the sun to some extent. Earth's spin axis is tilted at an angle a little over 23 degrees. Saturn's is tilted a little over 26 degrees. And just as on Earth, as Saturn orbits the sun, one of its hemispheres is receiving more sunlight than the other. And also just as on Earth, this differential illumination causes seasons on Saturn.The exception to this planetary illumination rule occurs when a planet's position in its orbit places its equator directly in line with the photons of light streaming in from the sun. At that moment, sunlight brightens exactly the same amount of a planet's northern hemisphere as it does the southern hemisphere. This moment in time is called "equinox," and on Earth it occurs every year about March 21 (spring equinox) and September 22 (autumnal equinox). On Saturn, it occurs twice during each 29 Earth-year-long orbit around the sun (about every 15 years)."Whenever equinox occurs at Saturn, sunlight will hit Saturn's thin rings edge-on," said Spilker. "The light reflecting off this extremely narrow band is so small that for all practical purposes the rings simply vanish." While the second largest planet in our solar system has been conjuring its ring plane phenomenon for millennia, the audience for it only began showing up about 400 years ago. By December 1612, Galileo Galilei had been studying Saturn and its "two large moons" (through his primitive telescope he mistook the ring system for moons on either side of the planet) for over two years. He had been noticing these "two moons" getting thinner and thinner. After the rings disappeared from his eyepiece entirely, Galileo shared his surprise in a letter in which he wrote, "I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked for and so novel.""Galileo had every right to be mystified by the rings," said Spilker. "While we know how Saturn pulls off its ring-plane crossing illusion, we are still fascinated and mystified by its rings, and equinox is a great time for us to learn more." Far from being a loss, a solar ring plane crossing provides a unique opportunity for scientists. The sunlight hitting the rings edge-on has the potential to spotlight ring structures and oddities previously unseen, or throw shadows that reveal their locations.But fair warning for those miserly types armed with their own telescopes and determined to get a free celestial magic show. This particular conjuring of the ring-plane crossing illusion will have an audience of one."Saturn's position in its orbit has brought its position in the sky so close to the sun that it is extremely difficult to see even with the best of telescopes," said Spilker. "Fortunately, we have Cassini in the front row."The Cassini spacecraft has been observing Saturn, its moons and its rings from orbit around the planet for the past five years. The spacecraft's instruments have discovered new rings and moons, as well as changed the way we look at Saturn's ring system. Around equinox, Cassini's thermal instrument is tasked with measuring the temperature of both sides of the rings as the sun sets to look at how the rings cool as they go through this seasonal change. The spacecraft's cameras are looking for topographic features in the rings, like tiny moons and possible ring warps, which are only visible at equinox, while the near-infrared and ultraviolet instruments will be on the hunt for signs of seasonal change on the planet."The great thing is we are not sure what we will find," said Spilker. "Like any great magician, Saturn never fails to impress."The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. JPL manages the mission for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.More information about the Cassini mission is available at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini or http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov |
Patch 9.11.5 - New Hero, New Skins, New Features
Meet Witch/Moira, our wicked new hero! She’s arrived just in time for our Halloween event . Learn more about the Witch and Moira in the videos below:
Along with a new hero, we’ve brought patch 9.11.5 to the EN server. Here’s a full list of the patch notes. (Note: This patch does not include the upcoming Yellow/Green talent power change.)
Patch 9.11.5
In this version:
Improved battle start interface;
First Victory of the Day reward for Challenges mode;
Gradual rewards for Challenges;
Chat improvements both in the castle and in battle;
New shop item;
Many other tweaks and fixes.
Battle Search UI
We continue to improve the UI and make it easier to use. This time, the following parts have been changed: entering battle in a group, entering an arranged battle and Practice mode. The last played mode is saved in the selection window now, and it will be suggested as a default mode after re-entering the castle. If Challenges are the last played map, then their difficulty level is also saved.
Entering Battle in a Group Now you can invite players into a group not only via the Friends panel or via chat, but also using a new battle start UI. To do so, please click the "Group" button to the left from the selected map icon. Near a player's portrait, 5 free slots will open. If you left-click one of them or the search field above it, a list of online friends will open. There's up to 11 names displayed on the list. Your favorite players and members of your clan are displayed first. To add other friends, start typing any name. It will be immediately auto-completed, so you don't need to type a full name. When the group UI is opened, there's always 5 slots, and the first slot is occupied by you. If the selected mode is designed for less than 5 players, like Outpost, than the extra slots will appear unavailable. You can invite players for those slots too, but in this case you will not be able to start searching for battle unless you change the mode. To select your own hero, left-click your portrait or the Gate. After all teammates have selected their heroes, start battle search by clicking the "To Battle!" button again.
Arranged Battles and Practice To start an arranged battle, click the "Opponents" button to the right from the selected map icon in the battle search UI. 5 empty slots will open. Invite opponents to those slots. If the opponent slots are empty and you have selected Borderlands mode, it means you want to play with AI, and your group will go into Practice. If there's at least one player on the opponent team, than a regular arranged battle will start.
Castle Chat
Now it's possible to enlarge the chat window in the Castle. Click the button in the upper-left corner of the chat window to enlarge it. You can also shrink the window back by clicking the "Shrink chat" button.
Hotkeys for moving to the corresponding chat channel have been added, even if the chat is closed at the moment: F1 opens the World tab; F2 opens the Group tab if you are in a group; F3 opens the Clan tab if you are a member of a clan; F4 opens the Group Search tab.
Buildings
Talent Forge/Talent Garden: Earlier, the total number of talents was displayed on the book icon, including those talents that were in the slots and visible for a player. In the new version, the number refers only to the talents a player can't see.
Hero Info Window
Fixed: Mastery points for the clan level were not immediately displayed in a hero's stats after distribution.
For some of the heroes, recommended stats have been changed.
Pre-match Window
In the previous version, if a player selected another hero in the pre-match window, during the next battle search that hero was selected for battle, not the initial hero, even though the search was performed for the initial hero. In this version, this error has been fixed, and now after a battle with a pre-match window the correct hero is displayed.
Fixed: Penalties for abandoning a battle with a pre-match window were not reset in 23 hours.
In the new version, you can change your hero skin in the pre-match window, even after you've confirmed your choice by pressing "Ready." You can't select another hero after the confirmation though, just like before.
Miscellaneous
Now you can disable obscene language filtering. To do so, press Esc, open the Settings menu and uncheck the corresponding option. The same option is available in the session settings as well.
In the talent upgrade UI, there are now filters for the "Fill" button. They allow you to choose the rarity of talents that are added automatically when clicking this button.
A number of errors that prevented battle rewards from displaying after a battle has been fixed. (Sometimes it was needed to re-enter the Castle to see the reward.)
Now the Golden Rune doesn't vanish any more after account reset.
Fixed: If a player refused to confirm the default name, he/she sometimes couldn't enter a new name.
Multiple minor improvements.
Challenges Reward
The Victory of the Day reward for the cooperative Challenges has been implemented. With the Victory of the Day, you will earn twice the resources plus nearly 30% more talents. The Victory of the Day in Challenges doesn't depend on victories in other modes; therefore, you can obtain the Victory of the Day rewards both in Challenges and in other modes.
Now players get gradual rewards in Challenges. If they made it to the third wave of monsters (detonated the Artifact twice), they get 1 talent; if they moved through to the battle with the Dragon (detonated the Artifact three times), there will be 2 talents; and if players defeats the final boss, they receive the full reward. But remember that Vigor also affects the prize—a player gets the full reward only if their hero's Vigor is 40 or higher.
The reward for cooperative Challenges has been increased:
Now players will never get Common (yellow) talents as a reward for cooperative Challenges;
Now players get more resources for victory in cooperative Challenges. The more difficult the Challenge, the more significant the increase in resources;
The Touched
Wicked Tree: The Death Clutch ability now deals 20% less damage. Before, the monster could single-handedly kill heroes with high HP if he stuck them with Death Clutch all three times; Wicked Tree’s Health has been lowered by 30%; A special animation has been added to warn players that the Wicked Tree is going to attack with its most dangerous Death Clutch ability; Fixed: The Wicked Tree attacked a dead hero with Death Clutch if there were no other targets nearby.
Fixed: If Fat Boy managed to escape, monsters that appeared in his stead sometimes went to the tower through the forest, not down the path.
Fixed: The healing effect of several Amanita lawns applied to the same area was stacked. Due to this, it was very difficult to kill an enemy if two such monsters were nearby.
Solo Challenge
Due to optimization, it is now easier to get into solo Challenge for users with certain configurations.
Solo Challenge difficulty has been lowered, and now players who are not acquainted with this mode yet can win with a hero of any Power.
Miscellaneous
In the previous version, it was possible to start any Challenge with a low-powered hero. Some players abused this feature by starting battle search for Hard with weak heroes. In the new version, the harder the Challenge, the higher the requirements to Power.
Night Queen/Black Panther
Fixed: Life Glyph, which restores Health to heroes, didn't affect the Night Queen's/Black Panther beast in Challenge mode.
Pied Piper/Rat Master
Now, if a hero uses the Rat Rogues talent when invisible, he/she immediately becomes visible again.
A new Soul Reaper/Soul Catcher skin has been added—Shadow of Death/Fire Doom.
Fixed: If a hero learned the talents of the Witchcraft set when in Scroll Workshop, the number of reagents for this set was displayed incorrectly. This was only a display issue; the calculation itself was correct, and the number was back to normal after first use of reagents.
A new item has been added to the shops—Lantern. It reveals the surrounding area when summoned and, just like the Magic Lantern, is invisible, but it cannot reveal invisible enemies. Its purchase cost is 115 prime, which is about 75% of the cost of the Magic Lantern. This difference in price offers a choice to players who often use these items.
When in battle, you can use the following hotkeys to switch between chat channels: Ctrl+Enter: general chat; Shift+Enter: team chat. Press Enter to send messages to the channel which have been used the previous time.
In the new version, the status of pets is remembered until the next battle. If a pet was dismissed by the end of a previous battle, then in the next battle it doesn't appear automatically near a hero. Moreover, there will be no pet icons in the quick launch bar, and pets can be found in the Inventory only. If the player summoned a pet, however, then in the next battle this pet will be summoned by default and his icon will be in the quick launch bar (but not the other pets in case a player has two). If a player had 2 pets before the update, then after the first launch only one pet icon will be in the quick launch bar—of the pet who had been summoned; the other one can be found in the Inventory.
Some players used to send the distress signal to their allies in battle too often, and there's now a limit. If a player sends more than 6 minimap signals within 3 seconds, than for some time he/she will be able to signal his allies only once per 3 seconds.
Before this update, some players unintentionally dragged talent icons out of the quick launch bar, and therefore needed more time to place them back. Now there's an option to lock the bar by pressing the lock icon near it. If the button is active, the bar is locked and players can't change places of the talent icons by simply clicking them or to drag them out of the bar. To edit the talent bar, players need either unlock the icon or hold Shift to temporarily disable the lock.
Some visual effects in battle improved.
Miscellaneous |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Germany has seen no drop in the number of people arriving and seeking asylum despite EU efforts to confront a migration crisis, the deputy interior minister said on Wednesday, blaming a lack of controls at Europe’s borders.
Migrants wait at the Austrian-German border in Achleiten, Austria, across from Passau, Germany October 29, 2015. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle
More than a million people fleeing the Middle East and Africa arrived in Europe in 2015. Denmark began 2016 by imposing checks on its border this week, prompting the EU to call Germany, Denmark and Sweden to a meeting in Brussels.
Germany has been one of the most seriously affected EU member states. Sources in Berlin said on Wednesday the country registered some 1.09 million asylum seekers last year.
“We had an average influx of 3,200 refugees per day arriving in Germany, and the numbers are not declining in the last days,” Ole Schroeder, the deputy German minister, told a briefing in Brussels. “Our problem at the moment in Europe is that we do not have a functioning border control system, especially at the Greece-Turkey border,” Schroeder said.
The European Union is counting on Turkey to help reduce the number of migrants entering the bloc following a deal between Brussels and Ankara late last year for Turkey to absorb more people fleeing Syria’s civil war.
Schroeder was speaking after meeting with EU migration chief Dimitris Avramopoulos and with Danish and Swedish officials to discuss temporary border controls after Denmark implemented spot checks on its border, raising new concerns about the durability of the EU’s passport-free Schengen area.
Germany, Denmark and Sweden all said that they wanted to safeguard the Schengen zone but that effective controls on Europe’s external borders, as well as other agreed measures, were necessary.
The European Commission, which has sought to help forge an EU migration policy since the death of hundreds of migrants in the Mediterranean last April, underscored the limited progress so far.
Of the 160,000 migrants that EU governments have agreed to relocate from Italy and Greece to other parts of the Union, only 272 people have been moved so far, it said on Wednesday.
PREFERENCE FOR GERMANY
Three migrant screening centers, known as hotspots, are operational in Italy and Greece now, below the target of 11, although Italy is due to add two more early this year, the Commission said.
Pascal Brice, a director with Ofpra, the agency in charge of granting asylum in France, said this explained the slow start to some extent, but that refugees’ own destination preferences were also a factor.
“The French system is ready but the migrants’ appetite for it remains weak,” he told Reuters in an interview. Germany is attractive for its positive stance towards refugees as well as the strength of its economy, he said.
“You have to remember the relocation mechanism is offered to migrants on a voluntary basis,” he said.
“For now, most of the migrants choose Germany and also Britain to some extent, which explains the situation we face in Calais,” the French port city where thousands of migrants have been camped out in the hope of reaching Britain.
Brice said he was nevertheless confident France would be able to take in the 32,000 refugees it has promised to accept under the mechanism on top of those it grants asylum to annually. In 2015, France gave asylum to 25,000 citizens, up 60 percent year on year. |
Australia said on Friday that it was launching an "information warfare division," as well as expanding the scope of its cyberintelligence agency to go on the counterattack against foreign hackers in response to a growing wave of global assaults.
Watch video 03:35 Share Cyber warfare is on the rise Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2a48F Cyberwarfare is on the rise
The minister responsible for cybersecurity, Dan Tehan, told reporters in the eastern city of Melbourne that the new military unit would both launch its own attacks on foreign enemies such as the so-called "Islamic State" (IS), and help protect the armed forces from cyberattacks from outside.
"This is a result of the changing character of contemporary conflict," Tehan said.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said last year that cyberattacks carried out by Australia had already made "valuable contributions" in the fight against IS in Syria and Iraq. Australia is participating there in a US-led coalition battling the group.
The new unit is to start work on Saturday with some 100 personnel.
Fighting cybercrime
The country's cyberintelligence agency, the Australian Signals Directorate, will also see its tasks expanded to include targeting offshore criminals.
The move comes following two major global cyberattacks: the Wannacry attack in May and a second attack this week, originating in Ukraine, that wrought havoc on companies across the world.
Read: What is ransomware?
Germany's rail system was also hit by Wannacry
Although Australia largely escaped damage from the ransomware attacks, Tehan said their global scope showed the necessity of going on the offensive against foreign hackers.
"We have to make sure that we are keeping the mums and dads, small businesses, large businesses, government departments and agencies secure in this nation," Tehan said.
Turnbull also spoke in a statement of the need to become proactive.
"Our response to criminal cyberthreats should not just be defensive. We must take the fight to the criminals," he said.
tj/msh (dpa, Reuters) |
A well-known adware program is preventing users from installing antivirus products by leveraging a Windows feature that was designed for security.
The program, known as Vonteera, abuses the digital signature check performed by the Windows User Access Control (UAC) for executable files.
UAC prompts users for confirmation whenever a program wants to make a system change that requires administrator-level privileges. It therefore prevents malware from silently gaining full system access if executed from a limited user account.
Depending on whether an executed file is digitally signed by a trusted publisher, the UAC displays confirmation prompts indicating different levels of risk. For example, if the file is unsigned, or is signed with a self-generated certificate that Windows can't link back to a trusted certificate authority, the UAC prompt will have a yellow exclamation mark.
However, if the file is signed with a certificate that was blacklisted, UAC will simply block the file from running and a red warning will be displayed.
It seems that the creators of Vonteera, whose purpose is to hijack browsers and display ads, have figured out that they can abuse this UAC behavior to prevent users from installing security products.
The program copies 13 digital certificates that were used to sign antivirus programs and security tools to the "Untrusted Certificates" store in Windows, researchers from security firm Malwarebytes said in a blog post.
The blacklisted certificates are from Avast Software, AVG Technologies, Avira, Baidu, Bitdefender, ESET, ESS Distribution, Lavasoft, Malwarebytes, McAfee, Panda Security, Trend Micro and ThreatTrack Security.
Vonteera creates a service that periodically checks if these certificates are present in the "Untrusted Certificates" store and adds them back if they're not.
Fortunately, this blacklisting of vendor certificates is only partially effective, said Bogdan Botezatu, a senior e-threat analyst at antivirus vendor Bitdefender. The technique only prevents new product installations or the execution of stand-alone removal tools that need administrator privileges. System drivers and services created by antivirus products that are already running would not be affected, he said.
However, if the user already has an antivirus running and Vonteera has managed to make these changes, it means that the product already failed to detect it and the user would need to install another tool to remove it -- one that might now be blocked.
Vonteera is quite persistent and intrusive, so users would have a hard time getting rid of it manually. The program creates multiple scheduled tasks to ensure its execution and to display advertisements on a regular basis. It also registers a system service, installs rogue extensions in Internet Explorer and Google Chrome and alters the browsers' shortcuts to automatically open a URL when clicked.
Affected users have several options to bypass Vonteera's changes to the Windows certificate blacklist so they can install an antivirus product. They could disable UAC entirely, but this is not recommended because it reduces the system's security.
They could also manually remove the certificates from the "Untrusted Certificates" store by using the Windows Certificate Manager tool, but then they have to act fast before Vonteera puts them back. This can be done by hitting the windows key + r to open a Run prompt then typing certmgr.msc. In the left panel they can browse to Untrusted certificates > Certificates and remove certificates that have an antivirus vendor's name.
Finally, they could use a trick that uses scheduled tasks to bypass UAC prompts in order to install their desired antivirus tool, use it to remove Vonteera, then manually remove the blacklisted certificates, the Malwarebytes researchers said.
Because of this intrusive behavior, Malwarebytes has changed Vonteera's classification from a potentially unwanted application to a clearly malicious application, detecting it as a Trojan. Other antivirus products including Bitdefender and ESET also have detection routines for it. |
Details Published on Thursday, 16 October 2014 17:51
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INTRODUCTION
We all knew that wireless technology would eventually become mainstream and surpass the classic wired one in terms of popularity but judging by the number of WiFi compatible products that come out each day the time it actually took for that to happen was quite faster than what we'd imagined. Personally i admit that wireless freedom can't be compared to wires but at the same time the exact opposite can be said about security since wireless signals can be hacked much easier compared to wired connectivity. Of course most people use WiFi for everyday tasks that don't really involve sensitive information but the few people that do need to take extra security measures that regular consumers simply can't afford or just don't have access to. That being said today on our test bench we have a very useful product that combines the best of both worlds (Wired and Wireless connectivity) the dLAN 500 WiFi Powerline Network Kit by devolo.
devolo AG is the leading European company on the market in Powerline communication solutions. The company's core product is dLAN®, a technology that allows flexible networks over existing wiring such as electrical and coaxial lines. Powerline solutions are employed in private households as well as commercial environments and they lead the way in future-oriented energy data distribution and home automation. devolo invests its development resources into improving dLAN® technology through its own patented solutions. The globally operating company has been the world market leader in the Powerline segment since 2009. Numerous top-product test reviews and awards, not to mention over 20 million sold adapters, demonstrate devolo's success. Through sustainable market practices, devolo upholds its responsibility to customers, employees and the environment.
devolo decided to provide everything consumers would ever need to expand their wireless networks to effectively cover a very large area so unlike previous starter kits their dLAN 500 WiFi network kit includes three powerline adapters, one dLAN 500 Duo (acts like the source by injecting the signal it gets from the router into the electrical wiring) and two dLAN 500 WiFi ones (they receive and broadcast the signal). The dLAN 500 WiFi powerline adapter can output the received signal both wired (Rj45 LAN Port) and wirelessly (802.11/b/g/n - 2.4GHz/Single Antenna) but unfortunately unlike the AVPlus adapter due to size restrictions (this adapter is one of the smallest ones we've ever seen) it just doesn't offer the a power outlet and so you can't use the power socket you plug it into with another device. Now as many of you know it's been a while since we last tested a powerline adapter so we're all quite interested to see if anything has changed for the best (or not). |
EVERY so often, something happens to remind you just how distant England is becoming.
Whatever happens in the Scottish independence referendum, the two countries are growing further and faster apart. And this will only accelerate as we approach 2014.
It was Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party (Ukip) celebrating his defeat of the Tories in Eastleigh that brought this home. There he was, fulminating against the EU, immigration, gay marriage and wind farms – in that order. Between them, Ukip and the Conservative Party – two organisations that barely register in Scotland – had more than half of the vote in this crucial by-election. The centre of gravity of English politics is pulling dramatically to the right as issues such as immigration and Europe have come to dominate politics south of the Border.
And this is also affecting Labour. Explaining her party's dismal fourth place in Eastleigh, Angela Eagle MP on BBC One's Question Time mentioned immigration as Labour's priority issue. Can you imagine a Labour politician in Scotland saying that? Actually, given the party's ideological discombobulation north of the Border, I suppose anything is possible. But I just can't imagine Johann Lamont raising immigration along with the "something for nothing society" as key areas of Labour policy.
Immigration is simply not an issue in Scotland. Or rather it is, but only because increasingly restrictive UK policies are choking off the flow of migrants we need to cope with our ageing population. As the head of the Equality Commission, Trevor Phillips, put it in his Bob McLean lecture on Friday: "Frankly, unless we can find a way of putting three-year-olds in front of computer terminals, Scotland will need to import skills and labour for decades to come." He went on to lament the "unpleasant populist" drift of politics in Westminster. Now, Phillips is no nationalist and was supposed to be giving a speech supporting Better Together, but ended up putting his finger on a key difference between the constitutional debate here and in England. There is no ethnic or communal dimension to it, whereas in England, there is a very powerful underlying racial and ethnic debate going on.
Similarly with Farage's other hate figure: the European Union. In Scotland, the argument is all about how independence might endanger Scottish membership of Europe. In fact, it isn't even about that, it is about how Scotland might have to spend just 18 months out of the EU while it renegotiates membership. The possibility Scotland might actually leave Europe is never mentioned because it is considered politically unthinkable. This is actually quite odd because many small independent countries like Iceland and Norway do well outside the EU, and you might think there would be at least some debate here about the possibility of independence from Europe. But no – the consensus here is that Scotland has no real future outside Europe.
CONTRAST this with England where politics is going to be dominated by the possibility of Britain pulling out of Europe in the referendum in 2016/17. The gains made by Ukip will force David Cameron's Conservatives to move even further to the right on Europe, and on immigration, if they are to combat the threat from a party that is small, but could come second in a large number of marginal seats and rob the Tories of victory. It is beginning to look as if Britain is on a path which will lead at the very least to a profound change in its relationship with the EU, or its formal departure. Britain is becoming ever more semi-detached, and eventually Europe will tire of accommodating Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism
I'm not being complacent. I'm sure many people in Scotland have concerns about the EU, not least in fishing constituencies. And I have no illusions about Scots being in some way immune to prejudice, either against homosexual marriage or immigrants. There are still homophobes around. We know for certain there are a lot of people who don't like wind farms. But looking at the socio-political make-up of Scotland – with its two main parties competing for the centre left and the Conservatives almost irrelevant – it is hard to see how the countries that share the UK can be said to share the same political culture.
This divide is going to provide the backdrop to the Scottish referendum campaign over the next 18 months. The SNP are on the case, of course, and say the only way to protect Scotland from Tory austerity is by voting Yes to independence. But prominent figures in the UK Labour Party, like shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander, are also aware of the danger – as he sees it – of Scotland slip-sliding to independence because of unease at politics south of the Border, and the understandable fear among Scottish voters that a No vote could leave Scotland exposed to it.
Alexander is calling for the creation of a National Convention, a cross-party body based on initiatives to debate and fashion a new form of radical devolution for Scotland after 2014. He believes it is no longer enough just telling Scots they're better off in Britain when the UK has lost its credit rating, is heading for the exit in Europe, and is ruled by a political party – the Conservatives – which has little representation in Scotland and are pursuing increasingly right-wing policies.
Unionists need to provide guarantees, not just that they will deliver on more powers, but that Holyrood can still insulate Scotland from the tide of right-wing Conservatism in England. This is deadly serious for Labour because there is little chance of their forming a government in Westminster if they lose their contingent of MPs from Scotland. The question is: can Unionists craft a new form of devolution to meet these requirements? Could Scotland have its own welfare and immigration policies? Its own taxation policies to fashion a Scotland less committed to austerity? Is it possible to pay for this social democratic Scotland without North Sea oil? And what about Europe – how could Scotland stay in if England pulls out?
Nationalists will scorn Alexander's ideas as just another way of distracting Scotland from independence, by making "promises, promises" that will never be honoured. But as this column has argued before, if there is a No vote, the SNP is still going to be the government of Scotland, and it's going to have to have an idea of how it will show its continuous relevance. This is not defeatism, it is realism. If the SNP doesn't hold on to the centre ground in Scotland – the majority of Scots who want a kind of federalism rather than full independence – then it will lose it to the Unionists. You can still support independence and want a better Scotland short of it.
We are going to see some remarkable political changes in the next 18 months and both the Yes and No campaigns will need their wits about them to deal with the Farage factor. |
Iceland can be a very cold place, and the unnamed members of Toska have no difficulty portraying this fact. This new and exciting black metal project is being compared to acts like Dodheimsgard, Funeral Mist, and even Windir. That's high praise, but I found it to be warranted with this self-titled debut. The artists describe their music as “an inexplicable force that one can also find in the dark majesty of Mother North [that] transmit[s] the whispers of spirits dwelling in the night skies.” And they do this by taking inspiration from apocalyptic and mystical Polish poet, Tadeusz Micinski. I'm not sure I understand half of what I just wrote, but rest assured the outcome is powerful stuff.
Speaking of power, I think the first element that really struck me were the drums. The tone of that bass kick gets you right between the legs. Speed is a factor, but not at the expense of variety and panache. And this rhythm section is well met by some reliably swift axe work. It's a blizzard of distortion flinging hailstones of violent tremolo and neoclassical-tinged hooks in all directions. Things get intense enough that you'll welcome the soothing ambient reprieve of "Spirits Of The Winter Moon"... while realizing it's only been 4 songs.
Did I leave something out? Oh yes, the vocals. They are less singing or screaming than ultimately just another tool to further the sheer velocity and force behind this album. The physics nuts out there will recognize that force equals velocity times mass. These distorted howls have a lot of the latter. Completely indecipherable, the only comparison that comes to mind is Ulver's Nattens Madrigal recorded underwater on a radiofrequency that is slightly out of range.
Just realize that despite all I've said about how hard this album hits, it's an incredibly melodic beast as well. The guitar lines on "Night I - Algid Gales" absolutely soar in similar ways to the work of Panopticon or Au-Dessus. And at only roughly 25 minutes, I guarantee you'll be wanting more by the time Toska is through. This was another one that took me straight into playthrough #2. You might as well click that repeat button right now. Save you some time. Check it out below. |
WASHINGTON, Aug 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy on Wednesday called on the Federal Communications Commission to host hearings on its new proposed “net neutrality” rules outside of Washington, not just at its offices in the U.S. capitol.
The FCC is working to write new so-called “net neutrality” rules that regulate how Internet service providers (ISPs) manage traffic on their networks. In January, a federal court struck down their previous version.
More than 1 million comments have poured into the FCC on the issue, many of them in opposition to the rules tentatively proposed by the FCC. The proposed rules, while prohibiting ISPs from blocking any content, suggest allowing some “commercially reasonable” deals where content providers could pay ISPs to ensure smooth and fast delivery of their traffic.
The FCC is now planning six roundtable discussions in September and October at its offices in Washington, where the public can meet with FCC staff to talk about the proposed rules and how they may be changed.
Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, urged to expand the FCC’s roundtables to other parts of the country, which the FCC has done in the past on other controversial issues such as changes to the rules restricting who can own how many and what kinds of media outlets in local markets.
“Most of (those who had commented on the proposed rules online) will not be able to come to Washington to participate in the roundtables that have been scheduled, but their voices are more important than industry lobbyists and Members of Congress,” Leahy wrote to Wheeler.
An FCC representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FCC is collecting public comments on the proposed net neutrality rules until September 10. The agency has scheduled roundtables on various aspects of the rules on September 16, Sept. 19, Oct. 2 and Oct. 7 in Washington.
Following a firestorm against the proposed rules quickly launched by consumer advocates and some Internet companies, the FCC has sought to ensure it reviews the rules in a transparent matter. Last week, the agency began releasing all comments it received from the public through email, mail and its online comment submission portal in a form of a downloadable database for review and analysis. (Reporting by Alina Selyukh) |
As soon as winter rolls around I need lip balm and I need it ASAP. Considering I come from a dry climate (Edmonton), I’ve acclimated to the Toronto humidity quite quickly, and when it’s gone, I notice. Toronto goes from being a mostly humid city to zero suddenly, and it isn’t pretty. My usual go to product since I found them last year was Green Beaver’s gluten-free stick lip balm. Why a lip balm needs to be gluten-free I don’t know, but it was one of the better ones I’ve tried. Totally vegan (no beeswax/cera alba), and they managed to get it all into a smooth stick form without any issues.
Winter is coming; some people ask their joints, I can just ask my face. I was at Evergreen Market on Roncesvalles with a friend a couple of weeks ago, and I needed lip balm and I noticed something new. Bare English & Co. I was attracted to the box and the price, but doubted it was vegan. But since I tend to read ingredients out of curiosity anyway, I scanned through, waiting for one of the blacklisted (I’m looking at you beeswax/cera alba) ones to show up. But I was pleasantly surprised. Totally vegan. Sold.
After a couple of days of using it, my lips were happy again.
And then I started to get curious. I like ethical businesses, I like local businesses even more. I like knowing more about them. Who are these people? Who is Bare English & Co? I read through their website, and the details were vague. I wanted more, so I sent them and email and had the opportunity to meet with one of the founders last week.
Frank Roberts, a former courier business owner, now Bare English & Co. co-founder, entrepreneur, and brand evangelist, partnered with a vegan chemist, and a small team of Torontonians to create a new local, organic, vegan business. After a year or so of research and development, Bare English & Co. went live about 6 months ago. I think they have done something great with it so far. It’s nice to see a vegan, organic business with a modern, fashionable, approach and I look forward to seeing more from them in the future.
Every detail is taken care of, including something I’ve never thought of. The shape of traditional stick lipbalm is a totally round cylinder. I just put it in my purse and it doesn’t matter. For people that might keep their lip balm in their back pocket, they sit down and it can fly out. Bare English & Co.’s elliptical cylindrical shape aims to combat the flying lip balm problem. But I haven’t tested this out.
They have three varieties of lip balms available right now. Coco-Mint, a chocolate peppermint balm infused with peppermint tea and the first one I ever bought (and my personal favourite – you can see it’s the one that’s been used the most in the above photo.) Vanilla Coconut (Frank’s favourite), infused with green tea, and honestly it smells like heaven (and cookies.) Then there is the Raspberry Pear, immediately hitting you with a burst of raspberry and a hint of pear. Someday in the future they hope to expand beyond the lip balm market and on to 11 other potential product lines, including a Baby Bear Baby Care line.
Giveaway
Now it’s your turn to try it – I have samples to give away to 3 lucky people selected at random. You’ll get one of each variety of balm, either in the mail, or hand delivered if you live in Toronto, whichever you prefer. You can enter by commenting on this entry, tweeting “I want to win @BareEnglish Organic Vegan Lip balm from @mdgee”, or by liking the Bare English Balm photo I have on my Facebook page. You can do all or one. The more you do, the higher your chances. Good luck! This giveaway is open to US and Canadian Residents. Winners will be announced December 12th, 2012.
Winners have been contacted by Email – thanks for playing!
Company Information
Bare English & Co.
157 Adelaide Street. W Suite 500
Toronto, ON, M5H 4E7
Website | Facebook | Twitter
Full disclosure: I purchased my first Bare English & Co lip balm from the store and liked it enough to contact the company for more details. The product I’m giving away was provided by Frank Roberts of Bare English & Co. He told me to do whatever I wanted with it, and I want to share the love, or in this case, balm with you fine people. |
Designing for disabilities means more than ramps. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Katarzyna Bialasiewicz/Thinkstock
This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. At noon on Wednesday, March 4, Future Tense will host an event in Washington, D.C., on technology and the future of disability. For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.
Most new employees upgrade their mental faculties when they start jobs, acquiring skills, learning new software and organizational routines, and aligning their behavior with company expectations. But you’ve probably never needed a biophysical upgrade for a new job. Aside from starship pilots in science fiction stories, neural implants are not routinely required for employment; neither is the replacement of a hand with a specially designed prosthetic limb nor the redesign of lungs to enable underwater breathing. Thankfully, willingness to subject one’s body to technological enhancement is not yet the first question asked in a job interview—at least not for most of us.
One group, however, faces constant pressure to upgrade their bodies: the disabled. Think about it—it’s built into the very language of disability. Dis-abled: a body that is less able than or inferior to other bodies. Not surprisingly, as Regan Brashear has documented in her outstanding film Fixed, the most common response is to call for technology to fix disabled bodies. (The March 4 Future Tense event in Washington, D.C., was inspired by Fixed.) Prosthetic limbs, laser eye surgery, even the tummy tuck—all seek to return a seemingly damaged body to normal.
This cultural perspective pits people with disabilities—and perhaps all of us—in a competitive race against those with greater abilities. Twenty-five years ago, when the Americans With Disabilities Act passed, it was supposed to shift this logic. The ADA was not simply a declaration of the rights of people with disabilities, but a profound statement that the problem of disability was not inherent to bodies but rather a result of poor technological design. If people in wheelchairs couldn’t enter a building, it wasn’t because of their bodies’ limitations but rather was the fault of an architect with too narrow an imagination of the building’s potential users.
The ADA has been highly successful in certain respects. Almost all public buildings now have wheelchair entrances. And yet, the problem lies much deeper and runs to a much greater extent than the ADA ever imagined—and it has the potential to impact every one of us, whether or not we have a recognized disability. Rather than designing the world so that a diverse population can function and thrive within it, technology’s patterns force people to design their own bodies to fit in—or those patterns exclude people from participation when they don’t fit.
Consider the U.S. Black Hawk helicopter. Its engineers used conventional standards to construct their design. Those standards required that the design of workstations and equipment in the cockpit fit the bodies of 90 percent of users. In this case, the user population of the Black Hawk comprises Army pilots only, whose body sizes must fit into the existing aircrafts they fly. And here’s the problem: Fitting 90 percent of Army pilots doesn’t necessarily guarantee fitting 90 percent of Army personnel (or 90 percent of the U.S. population). A recent study of the body shapes and sizes of female pilots found that 90 percent could successfully reach all critical controls in the Black Hawk. However, in the general Army population, more than one-third of female soldiers and almost three-quarters of Hispanic female soldiers physically did not have the right size or shape body to fly a Black Hawk. The study did not examine men, but other research on variation among soldiers’ bodies would suggest that some subgroups of men might well also fall significantly outside the necessary range of body shapes and sizes. They could not have flown the Black Hawk if they wanted to. They were disabled by design.
Every technological design—every workstation, piece of safety equipment, computer, building, vehicle, etc.—must first imagine the bodies of its potential users. Yet current engineering design imagination and practice routinely exclude a variety of different kinds of bodies, including but not limited to people with disabilities. Only in a few explicit cases—and for a few specific kinds of bodily disabilities, such as those that require wheelchairs—are the bodies of people with disabilities reliably incorporated into the design imagination.
And the problem only becomes more complex when the relationship between technology and its users is more than simply physical. Technology designs can require cognitive skills as well as physical abilities to achieve optimal performance. A computer interface that presents information textually may fail to communicate effectively, for example, to people who learn visually or spatially or by working with their hands. We are used to thinking of such challenges as capable of being overcome through training, but that perspective may underestimate the scope of the barriers design poses to integration of diverse people into technological systems.
Technologies also do not stand by themselves, isolated from other facets of society. Rather, they are integrated into larger, more complex socio-technical arrangements that distribute their benefits, costs, and risks across different groups. These arrangements can require financial, social, or even political abilities in order to gain access to and use new technologies—as is well-known in problems of energy justice, the digital divide, and fair pricing for pharmaceuticals in poor countries. Human variation in cognitive, financial, and socio-political abilities is, of course, just as wide as in physical abilities. The failure to design for that variability is just as disabling.
No, companies do not yet ask new employees to upgrade their bodies as a matter of course. Yet as Regan Brashear’s interview in Fixed with Gregor Wolbring, a professor, biochemist, bioethicist, and ability activist at the University of Calgary, reminds us, we inhabit a culture that perpetuates the idea that disability lies in bodies rather than in design. Both democracy and capitalism are structured around competition and ability. In democracy, merit replaces birth as the judge of legitimacy, and resources like jobs are supposed to go to those with the highest ability, not those with the wealthiest parents. In capitalism, competition is supposed to enable those who are best able to serve the needs of the market to grow and prosper. Our culture thrives on the push to upgrade performance and enhance productivity. It may not be long before physical as well as cognitive enhancement becomes a routine feature of the world that is coming into being.
But democracy and capitalism are also committed to the logic of the fair playing field. And that is precisely where the design of technology today falls short. Technology powerfully shapes human outcomes. Increasingly, it is clear that these outcomes are unevenly distributed and that technological innovation is at least a contributor to inequality. The very success of technology in upgrading the lives of some has made it even more difficult for others to thrive. Can we do better in the future? Yes, by designing for diversity and ability. |
Image caption A lift links the Marsden Grotto to its car park at the top of the cliffs
A man has been found dead at the bottom of cliffs moments after escaping from a police vehicle.
Karl Carson's body was discovered next to Marsden Grotto cliffs, South Shields, just after 01:00 BST.
Northumbria Police had earlier arrested the 26-year-old, of Boldon Colliery, in connection with a fight and put him inside the police vehicle.
The force said it had referred the incident to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
Assistant Chief Constable Winton Keenen said: "This is an incredibly tragic incident and our thoughts are very much with the family and friends of Mr Carson.
"Specialist officers are providing support to the family and I'd like to reassure people that we're working closely with the IPCC to establish the full details of this incident."
'Ran off'
Police had been called to the area at about 00:30 BST after a report of a group of people fighting in the car park of the Marsden Grotto pub on Coast Road.
A spokesman said: "Officers were in the process of arresting a second man in connection with the disorder when the prisoner inside the police vehicle escaped and ran off from officers.
"Inquiries were carried out to locate him and at 01:03 his body was found at the bottom of Marsden Grotto cliffs."
An air ambulance was called and the man was given cardiopulmonary resuscitation by officers until paramedics arrived.
Despite efforts to save him, he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The area around the cliffs has been cordoned off while an investigation is carried out, and anyone with information about the incident has been asked to contact the force. |
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