text
stringlengths 465
100k
|
|---|
Photo: Insitu
Advertisement
We’ve written entire posts on how tricky it can be to recover a fixed-wing drone. Only the ridiculously large and expensive and over-engineered drones are able to land themselves (Predators, Global Hawks, things like that). Most other fixed-wing drones land themselves by crashing into the ground as gently as possible if they’re small and cheap, or maybe using a parachute if they’re slightly less small and cheap. Bigger fixed wing drones have to get more creative, especially if a precision landing is required (like recovery to a ship). Unmanned aircraft system developer Insitu, a Boeing subsidiary based in Bingen, Wash., has developed one of the most creative and awesome drone launch and recovery systems I’ve ever seen, using an enormous octocopter carrier aircraft.
This thing is called FLARES, for Flying Launch and Recovery System, and it’s been flying since late 2014, with the first successful launch and recovery taking place this past August. Insitu is the maker of the ScanEagle UAV and the company says FLARES can handle a “low-weight ScanEagle,” which is probably 18 to 20 kilograms in total weight: quite a payload.
The launch is mostly self-explanatory: the ScanEagle gets hauled up a few hundred feet, throttles up, and drops, quickly achieving enough lift for horizontal flight. The catch is a bit trickier: the octocopter is attached to an anchor on the ground with a long cable that it carries up into the air, acting as a sort of sky-anchor. The ScanEagle drone navigates to the cable and flies into it, catching it in a little hook at the tip of one of its wings.
Insitu tells us that pulleys on the ground anchor release tension on the cable, “letting it unwind, like a fishing reel.” This allows the cable to absorb some of the drone’s energy (although you can hear the octocopter’s engines revving up a little bit). Finally, the cable is reeled in, and both drones are recovered. It’s pretty incredible to watch on video, but according to Andrew Hayes, Director of Advanced Development for Insitu, it’s way better in person:
“There’s a tremendous amount of power in the system—the vehicle almost leaps off the ground at takeoff. It’s surprising to watch. Also, the vehicle is completely rock solid in the air throughout capture—meaning it doesn’t move at all when ScanEagle hits the line. It’s like someone bolted it into the sky.”
This version of FLARES was built primarily with commercial off-the-shelf parts. At this point, it’s mostly autonomous, although Insitu is working on making the system even more flexible, with the capability of (among other things) operating on ships. They’re also working on increasing the launch weight, which probably means a ScanEagle with a heavier payload, although watching FLARES deal with one of Insitu’s 60-kg Blackjack drones would be pretty cool, too.
[ Insitu ] via [ theUAVguy ] |
RockNRollNerd has a few:
Ok so firstly, generic fan question- could you pick a favourite song (either personally or to perform) that you have written for your shows and then is there any that you slightly dread performing because you have made it hard work for yourself- complicated lyrics etc? ;)
Secondly, what have been your top 'f**k yeah that's brilliant' moments in songwriting? I imagine the point of realisation that the word GINGER is spelled with a couple of G's, an R and an E, an I and an N was quite the way up there ;)
Do you think you would ever consider writing an album of more serious songs?- I know you have said before that you tried and it always ended up in comedy because you never took yourself too seriously but Not Perfect, White Wine In The Sun, Beauty, Feel Like Going Home, Understand It, My House, When I Grow Up and the 'new one'(Seeing You For The First Time?), from Groundhog Day I believe, are all SO beautiful and wistful and give me this sort of bittersweet feeling that makes me want to smile and cry simultaneously ;)
Have you ever worried about audience reaction when performing a song for the first time? |
Only in Italy could the people countenance the possibility of a comedian holding the reins of power.
From Mussolini to Berlusconi and endlessly changing governments of every hue in between, the country has seen it all.
But foul-mouthed Beppe Grillo, a former stand-up comic whose very name is redolent of the big top, is something else again. Even our own Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson seem tame by comparison.
Virginia Raggi, a 38-year-old former lawyer, who in June became Rome’s first female mayor, sweeping to victory with 67 per cent of the vote, is a star in Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement
Unthinkable though it might seem, Mr Grillo’s party, or movement as he prefers, which grew from his blog (of all things) just seven years ago, is now closer to forming a government than ever.
Next Sunday, the country goes to the polls in a referendum that might well shape the future of Europe, though on the face of it the vote doesn’t appear particularly consequential, concerning as it does constitutional changes to Italy’s equivalent of the House of Lords.
Yet its result has the potential to eclipse Brexit, and possibly bring the threat of EU disintegration closer to reality – while propelling Mr Grillo’s party ever upwards.
The referendum has effectively turned into a vote on the leadership of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi – and if he loses, which looks probable, there are fears it will set in train a sequence of events leading to the country abandoning the single currency, an outcome dubbed ‘Quitaly’.
As David Cameron did over Brexit, Mr Renzi has staked his political future on the vote, saying he will step down if he loses.
And if that happens, Mr Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S) already the biggest opposition party, is widely tipped to triumph at the next election. If he wins, the comedian has vowed to hold a referendum on the single currency.
It is little wonder that the December 4 vote, which takes place amid a crippling financial crisis, is being viewed with nervous anticipation across Europe and beyond.
Beppe Grillo, of the Five Star Movement, makes Nigel Farage look tame by comparison
After Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, a vote against Mr Renzi would be what analysts call the ‘third domino’ as contagious dissatisfaction with political establishments shapes a new world order.
And it is feared that by going a step further and ditching the single currency, Italy would destabilise Europe’s financial system, catching UK investors in the backlash.
What long-term damage it would do to Britain, still beset by uncertainty in the aftermath of leaving the EU, one can only guess.
Sandro Gozi, a minister in the Renzi government, warned yester-day that it might even result in ‘the end of Europe’.
Putting his constitutional reforms to the people was always going to be a high-risk gamble for Mr Renzi.
Doubtless he never thought that the No campaign he faces, with the anti-establishment M5S at its forefront, stood much of a chance.
Yet Grillo’s remarkable rise owes much to the power of the web. That and the belief, sharper in Italy than elsewhere, that the political elite is out of touch with ordinary citizens.
When voters began to look past traditional parties for new groups to represent their interests, Mr Grillo, 68, was ready and waiting.
At the heart of his movement’s philosophy is the idea that it is not a ‘party’ at all. Parties, it says, should be banned.
People power: Protesters demonstrate against Italian premier Matteo Renzi as support grows for Five Star leader Beppe Grillo
There is plenty more that is unconventional or, to some, frankly dotty. It aims to devolve responsibility for decision-making, for instance – from Government to citizen, using the internet.
It is in favour of a universal basic income, though it hasn’t explained how this will be funded – especially when it also wants to lower taxes and increase spending.
And it’s also keen on environmental issues, for which Mr Grillo has endured much teasing, mainly because he owns a Ferrari sports car and a motor yacht.
BRUSSELS' FERTILISER WAR ON OUR BLOOMS LOWERS that flourish in traditional British gardens are under threat from a proposed new edict from Brussels to ban a crucial ingredient that helps them grow. The European Commission wants to ban the plastic-coated balls that are mixed with compost to feed the roots of plants. The European Commission believes the products – Controlled Release Fertilisers(CRFs) – can harm worms, insects and other wildlife. It says they should only be sold if they decompose within two years. At present it takes three to five years. Raoul Curtis-Machin, horticulture director of the Horticultural Trades Association, said: ‘If we are unable to use them it will lead to the leaching of fertilisers into drains and the environment.’ An EC spokeswoman confirmed the plan is to impose new rules on sale of the product. A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokeswoman said: ‘We will consider these proposals, which must be based on sound scientific evidence.’
His opponents see him as a dangerous populist whose rant-and-rave oratory at piazzas up and down the country has evoked comparisons to fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
The German news magazine Der Spiegel has called him ‘the most dangerous man in Europe’.
In truth, despite wielding significant power, Grillo would make way for others to lead in the event of a triumph at the polls, though he would no doubt play a prominent role.
Luigi Di Maio, a smooth-talking Neapolitan with a penchant for sharp suits, has already been crowned ‘prime minister-in-waiting’ by the Italian media. He’s only 30, but experience counts for little in the M5S. In many ways it is part of the movement’s appeal.
Mr Di Maio told The Mail on Sunday yesterday that his party’s popularity was due to its determination to make society ‘less corrupt and more meritocratic’.
He said: ‘This is something that the political class in Italy has always ignored. The Centre-Left and Centre-Right have created a system where one or the other is always in power. Now they fear losing everything they have built up over the past 40 years.
‘We are not in favour of leaving the European Union. We are in favour of a referendum on the euro. If we win, we will not punish the UK for Brexit.’
In the past the party has spoken of the euro not working, and the need to consider ‘other alternatives such as a euro 2’. But experts claim that would prove disastrous.
Professor Anand Menon, director of the think-tank UK In A Changing Europe, said: ‘There’s the issue of recreating a national currency that devalues as soon as you’ve done so which casts into doubt all your international contracts.’
Another of the movement’s leading lights is Virginia Raggi, a 38-year-old former lawyer, who in June became Rome’s first female mayor, sweeping to victory with 67 per cent of the vote.
Unthinkable though it might seem, Mr Grillo’s party, which grew from his blog (of all things) just seven years ago, is now closer to forming a government than ever
As she took up her new job in Rome’s City Hall, she told her supporters: ‘This is a historic moment and a turning point. We’re going to change everything.’
Yesterday saw the mayor and Beppe Grillo joining 1,000 No campaigners on a march across the Eternal City.
Ms Raggi told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Italy is ready for Five Star because they are tired of a political class who look after themselves, big business and the banks. We want to put citizens at the centre.
‘If we get into government we will stay in Europe but we must be equal partners. We will hold a referendum on the euro. We want to give people a choice.’
The march ended at the La Bocca della Verità – the Mouth of Truth – an image of a man-like face located in the portico of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin.
The referendum has effectively turned into a vote on the leadership of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi
It featured in a famous scene in the 1953 film Roman Holiday starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, and legend has it that if you tell a lie with your hand in the sculpture’s mouth, it will be bitten off.
Perhaps it wasn’t the best place for a politician to linger and Ms Raggi wisely resisted temptation. Not that she had anything to fear. She has spoken frequently of the need for transparency and ‘honest dialogue’, both central tenets of her party’s philosophy.
M5S already has 163 parliamentarians in Italy’s Senate and Chamber of Deputies, many of them ordinary citizens such as house-wives and students. Candidates were chosen in online polls.
Undoubtedly, M5S and the No campaign have been given impetus by Brexit and the US election. But Italy is a country in perpetual crisis and discontent has festered for too long.
In the early 1990s there were high hopes for change when the ‘mani pulite’ (clean hands) operation exposed corruption at the highest levels of politics and business.
But instead of leading to radical reform, the new political landscape came to be dominated by the multi-millionaire businessman Silvio Berlusconi, who himself became synonymous with scandal.
According to Sandro Gozi, a European affairs minister, his prime minister’s constitutional reforms will help curb corruption and inject some much-needed stability.
DON'T PANIC... FRANCE MAY GET A WELSH FIRST LADY France’s Elysee Palace is the epitome of glitz and glamour – hosting well-heeled dignitaries at dinner parties all year round. But soon it could be home to a softly spoken grandmother from Wales who shuns the limelight, potters around in gardening clothes and describes herself as a ‘country peasant’. Penelope Fillon, 61, a solicitor’s daughter from Abergavenny, is a world away from the first lady image encapsulated by former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s model wife Carla Bruni. But she has been thrust into the spotlight after her husband Francois emerged as the surprise front-runner to lead the Republican party at next year’s crucial presidential elections. Penelope Fillon, 61, a solicitor’s daughter from Abergavenny, pictured with her husband and French presidential hopeful Francois Mr Fillon, a former prime minister, won a stunning victory against his former boss Mr Sarkozy last week. It is expected that the committed Anglophile (pictured here with Penelope) will be confirmed as the conservative candidate in a final vote tonight – which would make him the favourite to win next year’s election. Mrs Fillon, born Penelope Clarke, was the eldest of five children of solicitor Colin Clarke, an Englishman, and his Welsh wife Glenys. She studied English, French and German A-levels at the local King Henry VIII Grammar School, then a degree in French and German at University College London. Penelope met her husband, then a law student, during her final degree year which she spent as a teaching assistant at a middle school in Le Mans. They married in 1980 and have five children and four grandchildren. Curiously, Francois’s brother Pierre is married to Penelope’s sister Jane. Francois and his wife live in an idyllic 12th Century chateau in Sarthe but they could swap that for the Elysee Palace if he wins next May. ‘I can’t imagine living in the Elysee,’ Mrs Fillon said yesterday. A fluent French speaker, she has shunned the gilded lifestyles of the Paris elite. She said she hoped she could ‘bring a bit of British humour’ to the role of the president’s wife. ‘I’m just a country peasant, this is not my natural habitat,’ she told one interviewer. ‘I am not a Paris party animal… When I’m at our country home, I can go out in old trousers and it doesn’t matter because the locals think, “Oh, she’s just one of those English gardening types.” ’
‘They [the M5S] know that it will be a positive change but they became too carried away with the mood sweeping the world, events like Brexit and Trump,’ he said.
Some doubt that MS5 has the ability to take the reins of power.
Bobo Craxi, secretary of Italy’s Socialist Party, said: ‘Five Star is a spontaneous movement of amateurs and not qualified. |
Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2015 October 15
M16 and the Eagle Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Jimmy Walker
Explanation: A star cluster around 2 million years young surrounded by natal clouds of dust and glowing gas, M16 is also known as The Eagle Nebula. This beautifully detailed image of the region includes cosmic sculptures made famous in Hubble Space Telescope close-ups of the starforming complex. Described as elephant trunks or Pillars of Creation, dense, dusty columns rising near the center are light-years in length but are gravitationally contracting to form stars. Energetic radiation from the cluster stars erodes material near the tips, eventually exposing the embedded new stars. Extending from the ridge of bright emission left of center is another dusty starforming column known as the Fairy of Eagle Nebula. M16 and the Eagle Nebula lie about 7,000 light-years away, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake). |
About
Motivation The number one motivation factor is to give my wife a better life. Number two is to make it happen and help as many as possible people who nearly lost hope to duplicate my success and get them back on track again.
Goal The core Goal of this Venture is teaching internet entrepreneurs how to go from Zero to 6 Figures in the shortest possible time, leveraging social media and e-mail marketing to the fullest. The System I will join is water & bullet prove. Compensation and Marketing Plan is available. Note: This is not MLM!
I am a retired Swiss native (67) working my whole life for corporate America and Europe in several Industries. Since my pension (for many fold reasons) is at the minimum, I chose to start again with an online Affiliate/Licensing Business. Due to monetary reasons, today my wife and I live most of the time in India where we get the most value for our money. My monthly pension is as little as CHF 970.- only!
Budget
Spending’s 1st. Month Initial System Cost: USD 1’500.- yearly) License for RISE Application: USD 2’000.- (one time) Marketing: USD 4’000.- (traffic generating) Software/Banking Charges USD 500.- (PayPal/Autoresponders/etc.) Miscellaneous/Reserve USD 2’000.- (unforeseeable expenses) Total USD 10’000.-
Spending’s 2nd.Month Banking Charges USD 500.- (PayPal etc.) Miscellaneous/Reserve USD 1’000.- Total USD 5’500.- (USD 2’900.- from 1st. Month income)
Spending’s 3rd.Month Marketing: USD 4’000.- (traffic generating) Banking Charges USD 500.- (PayPal etc.) Miscellaneous/Reserve USD 1’000.- Total USD 5’500.- (USD 4’800.- from 2nd. Month income)
Projected Income for the first 3 Months 1st. Month USD 2’900.- (100% Re-Invest into Marketing) 2nd.Month USD 4’800.- (100% Re-Invest into Marketing) 3rd.Month USD 7’400.- ( 50% Re-Invest into Marketing) Total USD 15’100.-
USD 10’000.- is needed to start up and secure healthy business development! |
A veteran died 10 minutes after being baptized in a pool at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Dallas, a government watchdog has found.
The VA inspector general said the death was one of several examples of untimely deaths and poor quality of care at the facility from 2011 to 2013.
The unnamed veteran in his 60s checked into the medical center for cancer treatment in 2011, and asked to be placed on “do not resuscitate” status. He requested a full-immersion baptism, a request that was referred to the facility’s chaplain.
The chaplain’s office indicated it could take several days to arrange the baptism. The next day, a staff member and a nurse manager who had training as a minister performed a full-immersion baptism for the patient in the facility’s spinal-cord injury pool without notifying the chaplain’s service.
“Following the baptism, [the patient] returned to his wheelchair,” the report said. “Staff spoke with [the patient] and took photographs with him, and then [he] became unresponsive “less than 5 minutes later.”
The staff did not perform resuscitation or clear the patient’s airway because of the DNR status, and pronounced the patient dead 10 minutes after the baptism.
The facility’s management conducted a review of the incident, and an ethics consultant made several recommendations, including that baptisms “should be thoroughly assessed by all relevant parties,” and that religious activities should remain under the chaplain’s service.
As a result of the case, staff at the facility received more than a year’s worth of “sensitivity to diversity” training.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
It’s no secret that Republicans by and large are not fans of President Obama’s new push for laws aimed at reducing gun violence. Most in Washington are using traditional means to oppose him — vowing to vote against his legislation in Congress, for example.
But out in the states, some Republicans have a better idea: they’ve decided to secede from any new federal regulations related to guns they deem to have gone too far. This applies especially to Obama’s executive actions on guns, which some conservatives have suggested could be grounds for Obama’s impeachment.
Leading the charge to ignore new federal regulations is Mississippi, where the state’s Republican governor and state House speaker took to the mics right after Obama finished announcing his plans and pledged to ensure the ones they don’t like don’t take effect in the state.The Constitution is clear that such an effort would be illegal. Nevertheless, the Mississippi leaders say they have a plan.
From the Jackson Clarion-Ledger:
Gov. Phil Bryant and House Speaker Philip Gunn said they would block any federal measures limiting the right to bear and possess arms from being enforced in Mississippi.
…
State Rep. Chris Brown, R-Aberdeen, said he is drafting legislation to say that firearms manufactured in Mississippi would fall under state law and wouldn’t be subjected to federal regulations.
Earlier in the day, Bryant made his intentions known in a letter posted online. Bryant wrote that Mississippi lawmakers should be read to block any Obama executive actions that infringe on the right to bear arms. Once the list of Obama’s executive actions were announced, Bryant held a press conference in the capitol to say they don’t all bother him. “He isn’t opposed to background checks and enforcing laws already on the books, but he doesn’t believe in limiting the type of guns or ammunition a person can possess,” according to the Clarion-Ledger.
“When it’s for self protection, you need as much firepower as needed to protect your family,” he said.
And so the effort to block Obama’s gun regulations goes forward. It’s not an effort led by the fringe. Along with the governor and the leader of the state House, “about 30 Republican lawmakers and a couple of Democratic lawmakers” joined in the press conference. Here’s video of Gunn explaining that people in rural Mississippi need guns because it takes police a long time to respond to calls:
Mississippi isn’t the only state with with this idea. Texas state Rep. Steve Toth (R) said last week that his state can make new federal gun regulations illegal if it wants to. After Obama spoke Wednesday, he took to CNN to say that the Constitution is on his side.
“We will do everything in the state of Texas to ensure that as texas we follow the United States constitution. And if this government infringes on our Second Amendment rights, which gives us the right not only to bear arms but tells the government, the federal government, not to create any laws that infringes on those rights, we will do everything we can to push back against that,” he said.
In Tennessee, a Republican state legislator proposed a bill calling on federal agents who enforce new gun laws in the state to be arrested.
A few sheriffs have said they won’t enforce Obama-backed gun laws they don’t like, and a conservative group in Utah has pushed for that state to ignore new regulations as well.
But so far Mississippi, which is putting actual legislative force behind a plan to ignore new federal gun laws, seems to be leading the gun secessionist movement. |
Talk about spoilsports. Police have told Toronto’s famous “dancing crossing guard” Kathleen Byers to stop dancing on the job out of concern she’s distracting motorists.
The 64-year-old former fitness instructor has been keeping an eye on a street in the city’s west end for a decade without any accidents or complaints, and started dancing three years ago. But police say it’s against procedure.
“You have to be aware of what’s happening at the intersection at all times,” Const. Clint Stibbe told CBC News. “That means you need to be focused.”
A short film made about Byers in 2011 highlights some of her dance moves, as well as the appreciative pedestrians who’ve grown used to their eccentric crossing guard in the neighbourhood.
“It’s important to create good vibrations and good energy in any community because it just brings out the best in people,” she says of her job.
Byers keeps up a rigorous schedule, bringing order to Dufferin Street three hours a day, five days a week. She tells CBC she will continue in the job but restrict her party to the sidewalk. And she’ll turn the music down too.
This is why we can’t have nice things. |
A handful of photos making the rounds on social media today have piqued the interest of G1 enthusiasts. Seems Hasbro may be offering another set of reissued G1 Insecticons in the near future, but also teased in the photos are reissues of the three ‘conehead’ seekers – Dirge, Thrust, and Ramjet!
The photos, as you can see, show the three Insecticons packaged as one set, just like their 2008 Transformers Universe reissue, and are emblazoned with the Generations series Platinum Edition packaging dress. Interesting to note, one photo showing off the back of the box clearly shows off Dirge, Thrust, and Ramjet, hinting at another future release. If this pans out, it’ll mark the first time Thrust and Ramjet have been reissued by Hasbro (Dirge was released as part of Hasbro’s Commemorative Series in 2004, but planned reissues of Thrust and Ramjet failed to materialize).
Excited by the chance to finish off your seeker army? Bored by more G1 reissues? Head into the Allspark Forums and tell us what you think!
Like this: Like Loading... |
Image copyright AFP Image caption Ethnic Russians in Crimea reject the new pro-Western leaders in Ukraine's capital Kiev
Russian MPs have proposed new laws that would make it easier for Russia to incorporate parts of Ukraine, and allow Russian citizenship to be fast-tracked.
Pro-Kremlin party A Just Russia put forward both bills, and linked them directly to the situation in Ukraine.
Separatist and pro-Russian feelings are strong in Ukraine's Crimea region, which is now the focus of the crisis.
Russian MPs say a referendum or a plea from a territory's leaders would be enough to trigger the new provisions.
There are already many Russian citizens in Crimea.
In Sevastopol, base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, a majority hold Russian passports.
Under Russia's existing law, a neighbouring state would have to sign a treaty with Russia to allow part of its territory to become a new "subject" of the Russian Federation.
But Mikhail Yemelyanov, deputy leader of A Just Russia, said the law had been drafted for peaceful times, and did not go far enough for situations where a state was falling apart.
"In conditions where a neighbouring state is disintegrating I don't think the Russian Federation should be restricted in its ability to accept a territory whose people have expressed a clear will and desire to be in Russia," he said.
Since Russia's war with Georgia in 2008, the breakaway Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have come under Moscow's control.
Russia poured troops into both regions to help pro-Russian separatists who did not recognise Georgia's authority.
The other bill to be considered by the Duma - Russia's lower house - would speed up the procedures for issuing Russian passports.
Passport applicants would not have to pay a state tax, and previous residence in Russia would no longer be required.
In addition, they would not have to have sufficient funds to support themselves and would not have to give up their Ukrainian citizenship.
'Fascist threat'
The bill's preamble says it is aimed "at supporting the fraternal people of Ukraine, especially the Russian-speaking ones, who are defenceless in the face of the 'brown threat'," a reference to World War Two fascists who wore brown uniforms.
The bill would allow Ukrainians to apply for Russian passports at Russian diplomatic missions before 1 August, and they could become citizens after two months, instead of waiting a year, as is currently the norm.
The plan to have a new fast-track procedure for issuing Russian passports was announced in Sevastopol on Thursday by A Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov.
Several Russian MPs have also gone to Crimea, including Russian celebrities - former Olympic ice skating champion Irina Rodnina, former cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova and heavyweight boxer Nikolai Valuev. |
ROCKFORD – Tyler Motte likes how his game was coming around. That game that showed great promise and power with the Blackhawks before he suffered his lower-body injury in November seems to be returning with the Rockford IceHogs.
"The pace and style's a little different but I'm getting at top speed more often, using my speed in certain situations," said Motte following the IceHogs' skate on Friday morning. "I'm getting open for my linemates to make plays, to get the puck on my tape or for me to get it on theirs. The confidence is definitely coming back, if not back already."
Hence the point of the Rockford assignment not just for him, but for fellow forward Nick Schmaltz. The two, who had their ups and downs in their first few months with the Blackhawks, are currently linemates (with Spencer Abbott) in Rockford. And while it was disappointing to leave Chicago, both know the work they do with the IceHogs now will benefit them going forward.
"I'm playing a lot of minutes and my offensive game has been improving and I've been making plays and playing well with the puck," said Schmaltz, who has six goals and three assists in 12 games with Rockford. "Hopefully I can keep that going and keep building my confidence."
Rockford coach Ted Dent said both have looked good with the IceHogs.
"[Schmaltz] has been good. He's handling the puck and he's playing in all situations – we're using him on the penalty kill as well sometimes. He looks comfortable," Dent said. "[Motte's] got a really good power move to the net on the right and left-wing side, because he's not afraid to go to the net and protect the puck, which is one of his strengths."
Motte has three goals and an assist in four games with the IceHogs. Anyone who saw Motte in his first few NHL games saw his power move to the net, one where he would out-hustle defenders and score a few goals in the process. But after returning from his injury, Motte didn't have that same drive.
"I don't think anyone comes back 100 percent right away after any injury but the injury itself can't be an excuse," said Motte, who added that he now feels as close to 100 percent as he has all season. "I don't think I played my best when I came back, was put in a little different role when I did come back, didn't see quite the same opportunities I had before. But again there's no excuse for not playing to the best of my ability and contribute more when I was up there."
[SHOP: Get your Blackhawks gear right here]
Schmaltz was healthy in his time in Chicago but still struggled to find consistency. With the IceHogs he's getting the minutes, responsibilities and confidence, and he's doing it with regular linemates. He and Abbott were together for several games before Motte joined them, and Schmaltz and Motte played together at development camps in the past.
"It's just a little bit of predictability," Schmaltz said. "You know what your line mates are going to do. They're two high-end skill players so that makes my job easier. Motte can shoot the puck and Abbs is a good play-making guy you can feed off. We have a little bit of everything on the line."
Guys like Motte and Schmaltz are there to improve their on-ice game but their mental approach to the situation is just as critical. Dent said both forwards have the right attitude about why they're there.
"Most of the time they start in Rockford and then they go to Chicago. It's different with these two and we haven't had that in a long time. So mentally, it's harder than anything else," he said. "It's just the right mindset. But they've been coached well and told the right things: go to Rockford, have the right attitude, play a lot of minutes, be the man, get your confidence back. And at some point in the near future I'm sure they'll go back up."
Getting that first taste of the NHL and then being reassigned can be a tough adjustment. Motte and Schmaltz are like any other player: being in the NHL is ultimately what they want. Right now, the stint in Rockford is what they need.
"Obviously, eventually I want to be back. That's where everyone wants to play," Schmaltz said. "I'll keep working hard, keep building my game. In the long run, I'll look back and it and I think this will benefit me." |
British archaeologists have discovered more than 40 German U-boats sunk during the first World War. Located just off England’s southern and eastern coast, the subs have been disintegrating for nearly a hundred years. It’s now a race against time to examine the wrecks before they vanish forever.
Top image: A German minelaying submarine lies on the beach in Hastings, Sussex, after it ran aground while been towed to France, where it was to be broken up for scrap in April 1919. Credit: Alamy.
The U-boats were discovered by underwater archaeologist Mark Dunkley along the southern and eastern coasts of the UK. It’s the largest conglomeration of sunken subs ever found, consisting of 41 German U-boats and three English submarines — all from World War I.
Advertisement
The subs, all of them near the coast, rest at depths of about 15 meters (50 feet). And because many of the subs sank with crew on board, future expeditions will likely find the remains of sailors inside the wrecks (or “disaster samples” in the parlance of the field).
Interestingly, some of the subs have been linked to several U-boats still listed with the German Imperial Navy as missing, including UB 17, a subway crewed by 21 men under the command of naval Lieutenant Albert Branscheid, and the 27-member crew of UC 21, a minelayer commanded by naval Lieutenant Werner von Zerboni di Sposetti.
Der Spiegel reports:
The British could see it as a peculiar irony of history that these measures are now benefiting the heritage of their former enemy. Since the Germans attacked civilian targets in World War I, British propaganda derisively referred to the submarines as "baby killers." "Many have forgotten how successful the German U-boat fleet was for a time," says Dunkley — an assessment that is by no means intended to glorify the German attacks. In fact, one of the goals of the most recent English Heritage project is to remind people that, although they might be more familiar with submarine warfare from World War II, the ships also caused considerable devastation in the previous world war. Indeed, it had practically vanished from popular memory that the Germans caused great losses to their main enemy, Great Britain, in World War I through targeted torpedo strikes against the royal merchant navy.
Advertisement
At the start of WWI, there were only 28 U-boats under the command of Kaiser Wilhelm II, a tiny number compared to the Allied fleet. But by the end of the war, the Germans produced some 380 U-boats — half of which were lost at sea.
The find could also shed some insight into the war itself. It’s interesting to note that two or three German U-boats were often found lying in close proximity to one another — possible evidence of a certain German combat strategy. By early 1917, the Germans began to target British commercial ships on a large scale. In turn, the Royal Navy reacted by providing freighters with warship escorts, along with airships and aircraft to spot enemy subs from above.
"We owe it to these people to tell their story," says Dunkley, who works for English Heritage, a public body that is part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Dunkley and his team will explore the wrecks in the coming months. In some cases, they’ll use robotic vehicles to cut open the hatches of the subs to get inside.
Advertisement
[Der Spiegel] |
Modern web applications now use huge amounts of Javascript. Javascript is often given a bad rep because of its lack of strong typing, namespaces and many other features that would help keep a large project tidy and maintainable. Because of this, TypeScript, CoffeeScript and a few other languages have been made which generate Javascript, enforce type safety and provide other modern language features which help developers write cleaner code.
Before we dive in, you can download the example project here. Or view it on GitHub here.
Breaking down your large Javascript application into more manageable pieces like reusable classes/modules will help improve maintainability but typically Javascript on a webpage is loaded in a file at a time. Modern web browsers will try to load these files in asynchronously but are restricted by the number of connections to the same domain which is usually only 2 files per domain at a time. Now imagine your application has a few hundred individual Javascript files, this limitation starts to become really noticeable adding seconds of waiting time before your page is responsive.
Enter Bundling! There are many different ways you can bundle your assets for distribution, the requirejs optimizer, webpack even MVC has built in support for bundling. Bundling assets together into a single massive bundle may seem like a good idea and for small applications it may be, but if you have a huge application, the last thing you want is a massive Javascript file which needs to be downloaded and parsed by the Javascript engine before your page becomes responsive. Instead you want to load just enough in the first bundle that you end up with a page that becomes responsive as soon as possible and doesn’t need to load many additional files.
In the example above, we have gone from 40 js files down to 16 js files and from 419ms of loading to 140ms of loading.
So, now that you know about the benefits of Javascript transpilers and the benefits of bundling, let’s put the pieces together. In this post we will be using TypeScript and requirejs as our AMD loader.
While developers are working on adding features, they don’t want to have to worry about remembering to add new assets to bundles, the project structure should allow the devs to get on with their work and any new assets that they have created should ideally be added to the correct bundle at publish time.
Let’s imagine we have a large single page application where different sections are loaded on demand. There could be a dashboard module which you see when you first login, then from the dashboard, clicking a link may load in a second or third module. Each of these modules uses knockout and jquery. Because we are using TypeScript we will make each plugin inherit an abstract base class.
BasePlugin.ts
export abstract class BasePlugin { public abstract Name: string; }
DashboardPlugin.ts
import { BasePlugin } from "BasePlugin"; export class DashboardPlugin extends BasePlugin { public Name: string = 'Hello From Dashboard Plugin'; }
ExamplePlugin.ts
import { BasePlugin } from "BasePlugin"; export class ExamplePlugin extends BasePlugin { public Name: string = 'Hello From Example Plugin'; }
ExamplePlugin2.ts
import { BasePlugin } from "BasePlugin"; export class ExamplePlugin2 extends BasePlugin { public Name: string = 'Hello From Example Plugin 2'; }
Main.ts
import { ExamplePlugin } from 'Plugins/ExamplePlugin/ExamplePlugin' import { DashboardPlugin } from 'DashboardPlugin' function printName() { document.writeln(new ExamplePlugin().Name); document.writeln('<br/>'); document.writeln(new DashboardPlugin().Name); } printName();
Let’s take a look at the project structure. We have a folder called “ts” this is where our TypeScript files will go. We have a folder called “lib” this is where any 3rd party Javascript packages will go that have been loaded in via bower in this scenario that will be knockout and jquery. Then finally we have a folder called “js” this is where our transpiled TypeScript will end up. Developers should never be editing anything in this folder. It’s important that we have our TypeScript files inside our webroot folder and not in the project root because when we press run, IISExpress will only serve files from within the wwwroot folder and we want to be able to access our TypeScript files (only at development time) via the web browser. When TypeScript creates the Javascript files, it also creates .js.map files. These files are loaded by your web browser’s dev tools to allow you to put breakpoints in your TypeScript files instead of having to trawl through generated Javascript files while debugging.
In this scenario, the best bundling strategy would be to include the dashboard plugin, abstract base plugin, knockout and jquery in the main bundle, then have a separate bundle for each of the other plugins.
So how do we go about creating these bundles? Visual Studio 2015 added support for Gulp as a first class feature. We are using Visual Studio 2017 here but the process is the same. Start by creating a file in the root of your project called gulpfile.js. Once you have created this file, a good place to start would be to take a basic example from here. You will then see these gulp tasks in your Task Runner Explorer window.
I like to prepare my final files in a separate folder to keep the webroot folder clean and containing only the development files. Then publish this new dist folder. This also makes it harder to accidentally publish source files that you didn’t intend to publish. Let’s update the gulpfile to use a dist folder for the final output.
"use strict"; var gulp = require("gulp"), rimraf = require("rimraf"), concat = require("gulp-concat"), cssmin = require("gulp-cssmin"), uglify = require("gulp-uglify"); var paths = { webroot: "./wwwroot/", distroot: "./dist/" }; paths.js = paths.webroot + "js/**/*.js"; paths.minJs = paths.webroot + "js/**/*.min.js"; paths.css = paths.webroot + "css/**/*.css"; paths.minCss = paths.webroot + "css/**/*.min.css"; paths.concatJsDest = paths.distroot+ "js/site.min.js"; paths.concatCssDest = paths.distroot+ "css/site.min.css"; gulp.task("clean:js", function (cb) { rimraf(paths.concatJsDest, cb); }); gulp.task("clean:css", function (cb) { rimraf(paths.concatCssDest, cb); }); gulp.task("clean", ["clean:js", "clean:css"]); gulp.task("min:js", function () { return gulp.src([paths.js, "!" + paths.minJs], { base: "." }) .pipe(concat(paths.concatJsDest)) .pipe(uglify()) .pipe(gulp.dest(".")); }); gulp.task("min:css", function () { return gulp.src([paths.css, "!" + paths.minCss]) .pipe(concat(paths.concatCssDest)) .pipe(cssmin()) .pipe(gulp.dest(".")); }); gulp.task("min", ["min:js", "min:css"]);
So at this point we should be able to run our “min” task and we should get a dist folder with our minified Javascript all shoved into a single file called site.min.js. This isn’t ideal, so let’s have a look at how we can use requirejs optimizer to create multiple bundles. For this we will be using gulp-requirejs-optimize which basically wraps the requirejs optimizer.
At runtime we need to configure requirejs to tell it what bundles each module is in. This is done by calling requirejs.config.
requirejs.config({ bundles:{ "main":["BasePlugin","DashboardPlugin","main"], "ExamplePlugin":["Plugins/ExamplePlugin/ExamplePlugin"], "ExamplePlugin2":["Plugins/ExamplePlugin2/ExamplePlugin2"] } });
Now, we could just create a separate gulp task to create each bundle and manually configure what is in each bundle in the gulpfile.js. But that would require that every developer working on the project have knowledge on how gulp works, the bundling strategy and just remember in general that every time they create a new file, they have to put it in a bundle or the project will fail when published. Instead we want to bundle by convention. The reason we created a Plugins folder and have a separate folder for each plugin within that folder is because the bundling convention we intend to use here is to create a separate bundle for each sub folder in the plugins folder and one main bundle containing everything else.
This is where things get interesting. We can hook into the writing event of requirejsOptimize using the onBuildWrite function. This event is fired for each javascript file that is getting written out to the bundle. This means that we can return an empty string when it is trying to write a file that we don’t want in the current bundle.
If we call requirejsOptimize for each bundle that we want to write we can exclude any modules that don’t match the convention, which will leave only the modules that we want in each bundle. Because we don’t want to include a module in a Plugin bundle that has already been included in the main bundle, we will need to run these requirejsOptimize tasks synchronously and keep track of what has been added to the main bundle to avoid including a module in multiple bundles. This also has the happy side effect of us having a list of which modules are in which bundles and we can use that information to generate a bundle.config.js file.
As gulp tasks are run asynchronously, we will need to do all of the above in a single gulp task and use promises to ensure that they are run synchronously.
gulp.task("min:js", function () { var bundles = {}; var main = function (resolve, reject) { ... }; var plugins = function (resolve, reject) { ... }; var bundleConfig = function (resolve, reject) { ... }; return Promise.all([new Promise(main)]) .then(function () { return Promise.all([new Promise(plugins)]); }) .then(function () { return Promise.all([new Promise(bundleConfig)]); }); });
This gulp task will run the main function, then the plugins function then the bundleConfig function in that order, every time. Let’s take a look at how we create the main bundle.
var main = function (resolve, reject) { gulp.src(paths.webroot + 'js/main.js') // hard coded entry point for our application .pipe(requirejsOptimize({ optimize: 'none', //Disabled optimization for now so we can easily see what is in the final bundles onBuildWrite: function (moduleName, path, contents) { // if the module is inside the Plugins folder, // we dont want it in the main bundle so return empty string if (moduleName.indexOf('Plugins/') == 0) { return ''; } else { // Add the main bundle to our object which contains our bundle information if (bundles['main'] == null) { bundles['main'] = []; } // Add the current module to our array of modules in this bundle bundles['main'].push(moduleName); return contents; } } })) .on('error', reject) .pipe(gulp.dest('dist/js')) .on('end', resolve); };
In order to allow for new plugins that may be added in the future, we don’t want to hard code anything in the gulpfile, instead we will use fs to enumerate the folders in the plugins folder. Here is a helper function that we will use in our gulpfile
function getFolders(dir) { return fs.readdirSync(dir) .filter(function (file) { return fs.statSync(path.join(dir, file)).isDirectory(); }); }
Then we can use this in our plugins requirejsOptimize tasks.
var plugins = function (resolve, reject) { var folders = getFolders(paths.webroot + "js/Plugins"); folders.map(function (folder) { console.log('Generating ' + folder + '.js'); file(folder + '.js', '', { src: true }) .pipe(requirejsOptimize({ out: folder + '.js', baseUrl: paths.webroot + "js/", optimize: 'none', include: ["Plugins/" + folder + '/' + folder], // Include entry point to plugin onBuildWrite: function (moduleName, path, contents) { if (bundles['main'].indexOf(moduleName) < 0) { if (bundles[folder] == null) { bundles[folder] = []; } bundles[folder].push(moduleName); return contents; } else { console.log('Excluding ' + moduleName + ' from ' + folder + ' bundle as it is included in main bundle.') return ''; } }, })) .on('error', reject) .pipe(gulp.dest('dist/js')) .on('end', resolve); }); };
Notice how we aren’t starting with a gulp.src method here. We instead start with a file which is part of gulp-file and allows us to create a file from scratch rather than starting from any source files. We then pipe into it a call to requirejsOptimize but include our plugin’s entry point. This will cause requirejsOptimize to start from this plugin and add all of its dependencies to the bundle. In this scenario it would also include our abstract BasePlugin class, but that has been already included in our main bundle and we are checking if the module is in the main bundle before we add the current module to the current bundle.
Finally let’s look at how we generate the bundle.config.js file.
var bundleConfig = function (resolve, reject) { console.log('Generating bundle.config.js'); file('bundles.config.js', 'requirejs.config({\ bundles:' + JSON.stringify(bundles) + '});\ require([\'main\'], function () { });', { src: true }) .on('error', reject) .pipe(gulp.dest('dist/js')) .on('end', resolve) };
Again this uses file rather than gulp.src because we are creating this file from nothing. We simply stringify the bundles object we have been populating and wrap it with the requirejs.config call. To keep it simple, we have also added the require main function call which means that my index page points to the bundle.config.js as the entry point. But you could instead have this bundle.js.config information injected into the top of your main bundle and keep your main bundle as the entry point for the application.
You should now have gone from this…
To this…
And that’s it. We now have a project setup where any developer can create a new plugin or add new modules to an existing plugin and not have to worry about how things get bundled, then at publish time everything comes together and just works. While this plugin convention may work for some applications, it may not work for others, but bundling by some kind of convention rather than manual bundling will save you a lot of time in the long run, especially on larger projects.
Feel free to use our TypeScript requirejs example project from GitHub as a starting point for your projects.
Have fun guys, and if you got this far, thanks for reading! |
The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), founded in 1885 as a trade school, is among the world’s leading technological and scientific research institutions.
It has been ranked by Tech. Co as North America’s top public university for ‘the best-equipped graduates to make an impact in the world of technology’, and among the top 10 public universities in North America by U.S. News and World Report. It also produces more women engineers than any other institution in the nation.
The university caters for more than 21,500 students in total and offers degrees through the colleges of Design, Computing, Engineering, Sciences, the Scheller College of Business and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.
Boasting state of the art resources and strong partnerships with business, industry and government, it comprises more than 100 centers for interdisciplinary research. The university’s Invention Studio, a 3,000 square-foot, student-run space, is open 24 hours a day, to allow students to generate ideas and develop prototypes in a collaborative environment.
Located in the Midtown district of Atlanta, the state capital, Georgia Tech offers a lush 400-acre, tree-lined campus in the heart of the city, as well as a collegiate atmosphere incorporating 20 intramural sports, 43 sports campus, campus traditions and approximately 400 student organisations.
Atlanta is a major global city and, away from campus, students have access to a vast range of cultural attractions, economic and recreational opportunities.
The city is also famed for being the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr, with Atlanta playing an integral role in America’s Civil Rights Movement. In 1961, the university became the first in the Deep South to admit African-American students without a court order, while women students were first enrolled in 1952.
Vocational study is offered at Georgia Tech with students encouraged to get involved in community service projects and to develop practical skills that will help them secure high-end jobs. Its Centre for Career Discovery and Development is regarded as one of the best university career support offices in the country. |
By Derrick Broze
Privacy and civil liberties advocates won a small victory this week as the California Supreme Court ruled that license plate data secretly gathered from millions of drivers can not be kept secret.
On Thursday the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California by confirming that law enforcement cannot keep secret about license plate data gathered from millions of unwitting drivers. The court ruled that license plate data was gathered indiscriminately and not as part of an investigation targeted at a particular crime. Thus the records can not be classified as records related to an ongoing police investigation.
The EFF and ACLU originally filed their lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff Department in early 2014. The groups sought information related to how the law enforcement agencies are using Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR) to gather information. The two watchdog agencies successfully argued that the two departments are illegally keeping quiet on how the information is used. According to the ACLU, LAPD and the LASD collect, on average, three million plate scans every week and have a database of half a billion records.
Automatic License Plate Readers are used to gather license plate, time, date and location, that can be used to create a detailed map of what individuals are doing. The devices can be attached to light poles, or toll booths, as well as on top of or inside law enforcement vehicles. In 2012 the Wall Street Journal reported that the five previous years the Department of Homeland Security distributed over $50 million in grants to fund the acquisition of license plate readers.
“This is a big win for transparency in California,” attorney Peter Bibring, director of police practices at the ACLU of Southern California said of the Supreme Court decision. “The Supreme Court recognized that California’s sweeping public records exemption for police investigations doesn’t cover mass collection of data by police, like the automated scanning of license plates in this case. The Court also recognized that mere speculation by police on the harms that might result from releasing information can’t defeat the public’s strong interest in understanding how police surveillance impacts privacy.”
The court sent the case back to the trial court to decide how much of the data can made public and how much will be redacted. The ruling should provide the public with a precedent regarding future cases dealing with mass, indiscriminate data collection.
“Location data like this, that’s collected on innocent drivers, reveals sensitive information about where they have been and when, whether that’s their home, their doctor’s office, or their house of worship,” warned EFF Senior Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch.
The American Civil Liberties Union has been working to expose the growing use of ALPRs for the last several years. In 2015, the ACLU revealed the existence of a national program operated by the Drug Enforcement Administration which collects and analyzes license plate information. According to heavily redacted documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act Requests, the DEA has gathered as many as 343 million records in the National License Plate Recognition program. The initiative allows the DEA to connect its Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) and collected data with that of law enforcement agencies around the nation. Using the Department of Homeland Security’s Fusion Centers this program only adds to the growing list of data collection by the US government.
Download Your First Issue Free! Do You Want to Learn How to Become Financially Independent, Make a Living Without a Traditional Job & Finally Live Free?
Download Your Free Copy of Counter Markets
One document shows the DEA has at least 100 license plate readers in eight states, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and New Jersey. Law enforcement in Southern California’s San Diego and Imperial Counties and New Jersey are among the agencies providing the DEA with data. The program opened to local and state partners in 2009.
The Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) is one of the federal agencies working with the DEA. The documents also reveal the program mining license plate reader data “to identify travel patterns.” The DEA has established 100 license plate readers in eight states, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and New Jersey. A 2010 document also explains that the DEA had by then set up 41 plate reader monitoring stations throughout Texas, New Mexico, and California.
In addition to the DEA and DHS, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in license plate reader technology. Emails released through a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU show internal discussion on surveillance concerns related to the network of cameras that are used to capture and store license plate information.
In the Summer of 2015 the ACLU also identified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as a source of hundreds of thousands of dollars to local and state law enforcement agencies for purchasing ALPRs.
“The NHTSA is funding license plate readers for highway safety purposes only, but it’s far from clear how law enforcement agencies are interpreting this and whether they are using the funding to buy license plate readers for non-safety uses,” the ACLU wrote. “The NHTSA should not be funding police technology for surveillance purposes and it should not let law enforcement apply for funding to decrease traffic fatalities and then turn around and use those funds to track people not suspected of any crime.” |
Three years ago, it looked like the Florida agency that oversees care for children and adults with disabilities had finally had enough.
It filed a legal complaint that outlined horrific abuse at Carlton Palms, a rambling campus of group homes and classrooms near the small town of Mount Dora.
A man called “R.G.” was punched in the stomach, kicked and told “shut your fucking mouth,” the complaint said. “R.T.” was left with a face full of bruises after a worker hit him with a belt wrapped around his fist. A child, “D.K.,” who refused to lie face down so he could be restrained, was kicked in the face and choked until, eyes bulging, he nearly passed out.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
State officials wanted to bar Carlton Palms from accepting new residents for a year.
“(A) moratorium on admissions,” wrote a lawyer with the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, “is necessary to protect the public interest and to prevent the continuance of conditions that threaten the health, safety and welfare of Carlton Palm’s (sic) residents.”
Two months later, the state backed down.
Carlton Palms’ owner, the for-profit company AdvoServ, had deployed a Tallahassee lawyer and lobbyist who counted a former governor among his clients. The company admitted no wrongdoing and paid no fines when it settled with the state. It did agree to install more cameras to monitor workers.
The state of Florida – and its public schools – then went right back to sending Carlton Palms new clients.
AdvoServ’s homes and tens of thousands of facilities like them were supposed to be an antidote to the ills of institutional care for society’s most vulnerable: children and adults with profound disabilities like severe autism. Tucked away in neighborhoods across the country, the homes are often a last resort for overwhelmed families and schools, as well as state officials who shuttered their public asylums over concerns about mistreatment.
But the sprawling system of privately run residential programs is quietly – and with few repercussions – amassing a record as grim as the institutions it replaced, a ProPublica investigation found.
Particularly haunting are the deaths of children in residential facilities, often far from their homes. At least 145 kids have died from avoidable causes in such facilities over the last three decades, a ProPublica review of news accounts found.
In one group home, a worker strangled a teenaged resident during a struggle; at another, a boy died of an infection after employees taunted him and accused him of faking illness. Other children suffocated while workers held them down.
AdvoServ’s Carlton Palms is one of a dozen residential programs nationwide where two or more children have died in separate incidents from potentially preventable causes. Most recently, a 14-year-old girl died there after a night during which she was tied to a bed and chair. She’d entered the program just six months after the state dropped its call for a year-long moratorium.
A deep examination of AdvoServ – a veteran industry player now owned by a private equity firm – shows how a powerful, well-financed provider can exploit a fractured system, using its deep pockets to beat back sanctions, bully regulators and shape the very rules it plays by.
The company’s ascension reveals, too, the fraught marriage of convenience that binds the growing ranks of private providers to the public agencies that rely on them, sometimes paying upwards of $350,000 a year in taxpayer money for each resident’s care.
Officials with Florida’s disabilities agency said the state sees itself as partnering with, as well as policing, Carlton Palms.
“Our approach has been very, very aggressive in working with Carlton Palms,” said Tom Rankin, a top official with the agency. “It’s also been very, very collaborative.”
State and federal officials often give operators like AdvoServ wide latitude on key decisions such as figuring out how to control unruly patients, meet medical needs and staff homes. When problems occur, the limits of regulators’ power can become starkly clear.
One infamous program for instance, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center outside Boston, has been condemned for its use of electric shocks to halt residents’ undesirable behaviors. At least two states tried and couldn’t get Rotenberg to stop. The facility continues to receive more than $60 million a year in mostly public money to care for 240 people with developmental, intellectual or emotional disabilities.
Calls for federal action have failed. A bill first introduced in 2008 would have required the federal government to track abuse complaints and create a website listing residential providers for kids nationwide. It has gone nowhere.
Even some in the industry say more oversight is needed. “We definitely support regulation because bad things have happened to kids in residential programs, and not just 10 years ago,” said Kari Sisson, executive director of the American Association of Children’s Residential Centers, which promotes best practices. “They happen to kids today.”
Florida’s aborted effort to sanction AdvoServ surprised few who knew of its nearly five decades of dealings with regulators. The company cares for roughly 700 people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and behavioral problems in Delaware, where it is headquartered, as well as New Jersey and Florida.
“I always got the feeling they were pretty untouchable,” said Kevin Huckshorn, a national behavioral health consultant.
AdvoServ executives say there is no pattern of abuse in its facilities and that employees who mistreat residents are disciplined. “In a program like ours in which we serve individuals with significantly challenging behaviors, incidents are going to be inevitable,” said Robert Bacon, the company’s chief operating officer and a 29-year AdvoServ veteran.
“We acknowledge we are not perfect,” CEO Kelly McCrann told ProPublica. “But what we do does not allow perfection.”
In a written statement, top officials at AdvoServ also said they are proud of the company’s record and that they “responsibly” address problems when they arise. AdvoServ supports strong oversight and clear standards, the statement said, “because they help us deliver the highest quality care.” (Read the full statement.)
The parents of five teenagers and adults living at AdvoServ homes praised the company, which provided ProPublica their contact information.
“We have had nothing but unbelievably good experiences with Carlton Palms,” said Ginny Robinson of Kennesaw, Ga., whose son Jonathan has an intellectual disability and can have violent tantrums. He first entered the program 19 years ago. “I truly believe had we not found them he would be either in jail or dead.”
But a more troubling picture emerges from thousands of pages of public records reviewed by ProPublica, as well as from the accounts of current or former residents laid out in lawsuits and in interviews with relatives. Many complaints have centered around the company’s aggressive use of mechanical restraints, such as leather cuffs, chairs with straps, and a “wrap mat” akin to a full-body straight-jacket. Such tactics, records show, have resulted in broken arms, collarbones and jaws, knocked-out teeth and cuts needing stitches.
In late June 2013, Carlton Palms’ staff members assured Paige Lunsford’s parents in emails that their daughter, a waifish girl with brown eyes, “was having a nice day in class today” – even though she had begun vomiting and clashing with staff just days after arriving. Lunsford had autism, was bipolar and schizophrenic, and couldn’t speak. She struggled with compulsions to bite her skin or bang her head. Workers tied her down when she ran from them, threw things or tried to hurt herself.
A Carlton Palms doctor saw her but, despite her worsening condition, chose not to send her to the hospital. The next morning a 911 call brought medics to Lunsford’s bedroom, where they found her dead of dehydration brought on by her stomach illness.
The sole concession Florida regulators wrung out of AdvoServ after dropping the admissions moratorium – that the company improve video monitoring – did little to bring about accountability.
When detectives went to examine video from cameras where Lunsford lived, they discovered all but an hour or so was gone. Company officials said the footage was mistakenly erased.
In recent decades, states have largely outsourced the day-to-day care of people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Group homes are now overwhelmingly run by private organizations, and while nonprofits rule the sector, for-profit investors have increasingly taken interest. AdvoServ founder Kenneth Mazik was at their vanguard.
Mazik opened the Au Clair School for children with autism in 1969 in a stern-looking 28-room mansion in Bear, Del. A broad-shouldered University of Delaware graduate who had worked at a state institution, he said a particularly gruesome encounter had inspired him: A boy he was counseling had pulled out his own eye. “So, following my usual pattern, I overcompensated,” he told a reporter at the time. “I threw myself into autism – which was what was wrong with the boy.”
He took in castaways — his first patients were teenage boys who had been kicked out of another program — and Au Clair soon had 30 children. It received national attention in the early 1970s when “Silk Stockings,” a racehorse owned by Mazik and his then-wife, started winning harness-style races, infusing the school with prize money. The media loved the tale of how the horse saved the little school for those with autism.
Another source of cash for Au Clair appeared when Congress mandated in 1975 that public schools take responsibility for educating all children with disabilities. Local classrooms still sometimes couldn’t handle children with the most serious impairments, so families implored local officials to pay tuition for special private schools. Mazik’s Au Clair, and schools like it, took the cases no one else would.
But signs of trouble began soon after the glow from Silk Stockings’ wins faded, when former workers said they had witnessed children being beaten at Au Clair as part of their treatment.
Articles in the Wilmington News-Journal in 1979 described children hit with plastic bats and dunked in a dirty swimming pool. Mazik himself, the newspaper said, had repeatedly whipped a 16-year-old boy with an intellectual disability across his backside with a riding crop.
Mazik acknowledged in the story that he had struck the boy, but said it didn’t constitute abuse. The employees who complained were disgruntled, he said.
Delaware officials considered shutting down the school, but instead chose to work with it to improve conditions.
The company continued to grow, opening a second Au Clair in 1987 in Florida, northwest of Orlando. That school – later rechristened Carlton Palms — took root on the isolated lakeside campus of a former retirement community, tucked between orange groves.
The company had told local officials the school would house 20 to 30 children, ages seven to 18. But within three years, it had grown to 48 students coming from 28 states.
Keeping large numbers of children with disabilities under one roof was exactly the model the country was moving away from. The goal was to replace big institutions with a network of community-based homes.
But in Florida, a lobbyist for the company urged legislators to carve out an exception for “transitional” programs with tiered levels of care and more people living together than was typically allowed. The change — which only benefited Au Clair — also later helped justify higher rates of pay from the state than what other programs received.
By 1997, Au Clair had changed its name to AdvoServ and expanded to about 130 children at schools in Delaware and Florida. That year, it faced two crises.
On April 2, Mazik telephoned relatives of a 14-year-old student to tell them the boy had died of an apparent seizure at Carlton Palms.
A caller to the state’s abuse hotline a few months later reported that the boy, Jon Henley, hadn’t received immediate medical care for the seizure, and that staff had neglected him.
Investigators from the county sheriff’s office and state Department of Children and Families discovered a roommate had told staff that Henley was shaking their bunk bed early that morning, but workers had done nothing to help him. One staffer said she just told the boy — who was face down — to be quiet because she thought he was masturbating. Workers were supposed to check on his wellbeing every 15 minutes all night. But he was found dead at wake-up time, 7:30 a.m., still face down.
Henley had autism and took medication to prevent convulsions. But an autopsy found it present in his blood at levels far below the “therapeutic range” typically needed to control seizures.
Ultimately, despite signs of potential lapses in care, the sheriff’s office did not file criminal charges and state investigators closed their inquiry with no finding of mistreatment. The facility faced no repercussions.
Henley, a joyful child whose loved ones called him “Prince Jon Jon,” had gone to Carlton Palms because his St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, school district wasn’t equipped to teach him. “If they had the accommodations on the island for him we would have never sent him there,” his aunt Laurice Simmonds-Wilson recalled.
When he died, she said, Carlton Palms officials said the company would pay for a casket and arrange to return his body to St. Thomas.
Family members only recently learned through ProPublica’s inquiries about the state investigation and allegations that Henley had not received proper care. The family didn’t even know an autopsy was conducted. “We feel we were lied to and fooled for all of these years,” Simmonds-Wilson said. “Jon Jon deserved justice. Period.”
A former staffer said Carlton Palms administrators had offered little information about what happened to the well-liked student, even to workers. “I was confused,” said Susan Knoll, who was a behavior analyst there at the time. “They didn’t tell us, which seemed strange.”
AdvoServ officials, in a statement, said Carlton Palms cooperated with the investigations, which found no wrongdoing, and that “(w)hen incidents like this occur, we responsibly address them.”
Just a month after Henley’s death, the next crisis hit: The New York Times published a scathing story on Mazik’s schools and his influence on federal welfare reform.
The story — which didn’t mention Henley’s death — revealed New York inspectors had once discovered children at the Delaware Au Clair school living in trailers that smelled of urine and feces. One weeping deaf boy, the story said, had been confined for hours in a wrap mat that had cut off his circulation.
“I cried all the way back on Amtrak,” a New York official told the Times.
The story also detailed how Mazik had maneuvered to dip into a stream of foster care funding by urging federal lawmakers to strike the word “non-profit” from a section of the 1996 welfare reform legislation signed by Bill Clinton.
Mazik quickly sent a letter to Delaware officials blasting the story. “Because of your involvement,” he wrote a top licensing official, “I want to provide you with some facts to help alleviate any discomfort you may feel as a result of the Times piece.”
But any worries Mazik might have had proved unfounded. The company experienced no major fallout and proceeded with plans to enter a new market. AdvoServ would soon become the largest provider of group homes for adults with developmental disabilities in New Jersey.
Mazik’s circumstances seemed to reflect the company’s growing prosperity. He kept homes in Delaware and Florida, shuttling between them in his private plane. He collected fine art, cigars and wine and increased his real estate holdings. He also developed other business ventures, launching a video surveillance company that supplied his group homes and schools.
AdvoServ’s expanding portfolio of programs routinely used mechanical restraints, such as the wrap mat or cuffs – which other operators were abandoning – to manage agitated residents. The company battled fiercely to fend off any limits on such measures.
In 2003, New Jersey lawmakers introduced a state bill to curtail restraints in residential programs, particularly those serving people with developmental disabilities or brain injuries. The measure was inspired by Matthew Goodman, a 14-year-old who had died of pneumonia after being repeatedly restrained while living at another operator’s group home.
At an assembly committee hearing on the bill, then-AdvoServ CEO Judith Favell passionately defended the tactics. “I believe that restraints should be used to assist in decreasing a behavior problem,” she said. “In my experience, the abuses involved in restraint are, indeed, rare.”
Favell also met with the committee’s chairwoman, Democrat Loretta Weinberg. Two weeks later, one of Mazik’s companies donated $2,200 to Weinberg’s campaign. Mazik gave another $25,000 to the state Democratic Party’s senate political action committee – the first installment of nearly $125,000 he would give the party over the next four years.
Weinberg’s assembly committee went on to pass a weakened version of the measure with fewer limits, and a restraint bill did not gain traction in the state senate.
Weinberg, now a state senator, told ProPublica she agreed to the compromise bill not because of AdvoServ, but because she didn’t think stronger legislation could pass and had heard from parents who supported restraints. “I have never in my 20-some years in public life sold a vote,” she said.
In the end, the company got its way: The effort at reform fizzled.
A few years later, the restraint issue resurfaced – this time on the national level. In 2009, Congressional lawmakers introduced the first of what would become a series of bills to restrict the use of restraints on public school children.
AdvoServ pushed back, using heavyweights such as former HealthSouth lobbyist Eric Hanson – who was later joined by former Congressman Jerry Weller. The company has paid the lobbyists’ firm nearly $1 million over the past decade.
The legislation was reintroduced repeatedly but stalled, never achieving significant Republican support.
Two opponents of the restrictions were the most vocal, a former Senate staffer said: One was the controversial Rotenberg Center. The other was AdvoServ.
AdvoServ has proven as adept at working over the state agencies that deliver it clients — and the millions of dollars that follow them — as it has the political process. The company’s relentless advocacy in Delaware kept a stream of residents flowing to its facilities even after two sets of regulators raised alarms about children hurt in its care.
In 2011, Delaware’s agency for foster care and children’s mental health took a bold step: It decided to stop sending kids to AdvoServ.
Agency officials objected to mechanical restraints and thought kids were staying too long in what should have been short-term placements. AdvoServ had also resisted even telling regulators about all restraints – a move that one official in an email called an effort “to prevent any oversight of their practice.”
AdvoServ leaders responded to the agency’s decision with “intense outreach,” emails show, urging it to reconsider and promising the company was making improvements. But state workers saw no such improvements.
“I have checked with others here in the Kids Department, who have been on site there in recent months,” wrote Vicky Kelly, director of the agency’s family services division, in 2012, “and they don’t report evidence of these changes.”
Even the state psychiatric center for adults was cutting back on restraints at federal officials’ insistence. But AdvoServ was “unbending” in its commitment to them, another of Kelly’s emails from that year said. “So the state is in a precarious position right now,” she wrote, “in agreeing that restraint is prohibited for adults, yet still allowed for youth with serious disabilities.”
As foster care officials continued to avoid placing kids with AdvoServ, Delaware lawmakers took up a bill to prohibit using mechanical restraints on public school students and limit holds with bare hands.
That posed a problem for AdvoServ because Delaware public schools referred more children to the company’s homes than the state’s child welfare agency did, sending about 20 boarding students and 10 day students a year. Each student brought in substantial revenue: Six-figure bills are typical and, for one AdvoServ student, the state and local agencies paid a combined $383,000 per year.
AdvoServ – whose Delaware lobbying firm was led by prominent former state Rep. Bob Byrd — pushed for a loophole in the restraint measure involving schoolchildren: The company wanted providers to be able to seek waivers if they thought mechanical restraints were needed for a particularly challenging resident.
A state lawmaker told an education official that because of AdvoServ’s intervention, the bill would go nowhere without the waiver provision, according to state school officials and the director of the state Developmental Disabilities Council.
In June 2013, the restraint bill passed with the exception AdvoServ had sought. (It has not, to date, sought a waiver.)
Soon after it won that battle, the company faced a new one with state education officials. They, too, had objected strongly to mechanical restraints on students, which the company was phasing out. While officials hadn’t barred schools from sending kids to AdvoServ, company executives perceived a downtick in the number of schoolchildren referred to the company’s program in 2013.
AdvoServ responded by ramping up pressure on state bureaucrats.
“One of my clients represents AdvoServ,” former Delaware Controller General Russell Larson wrote in an email to top education leaders in August 2013. “I would love to meet with you to find out if there’s anything I can tell my client to help them improve their service.”
Education officials told him they were already talking with AdvoServ directly. Unsatisfied, AdvoServ brought its concerns to Gov. Jack Markell’s office two months later – threatening to leave the state if school referrals didn’t pick up, emails show.
As AdvoServ tried to muscle state leaders into line, rank-and-file staffers at Delaware’s education department expressed frustration.
“They HAVE gotten new referrals,” one education official wrote to another after learning of the company’s complaints to Markell. “I wish they would own the problems they caused for themselves and acknowledge the inordinate amount of time we have devoted to them to help them remain open!”
Amid the wrangling between the company and school officials, a rash of complaints about mistreatment in AdvoServ homes rolled in, with seven landing between November 2013 and July 2014. “It is out of control,” a state licensing official lamented to another.
In one case, an AdvoServ worker threw scalding water on a resident, causing first-degree burns. Employees, including a supervisor who had left the home to play video games with a friend, sought to cover up what happened by claiming a cup of hot water had fallen off a dresser when the resident was trying to injure herself, records show. Workers didn’t take her to a doctor right away. Instead, they popped her burn blisters and falsified an injury report.
They later told authorities what they had done was “typical” behavior at AdvoServ. The workers resigned or were fired. The company said they lacked credibility.
In another case, a Delaware worker covered a boy’s face with a folded-up pillowcase to prevent him from spitting, leaving him gasping for breath. That led to one of three citations from the state last year for improper restraints.
In August 2014, the state education department approved keeping AdvoServ on the list of places public schools could send schoolchildren for the next three years.
Education officials said recently the decision was based on improvements the company had made, as well as parents’ and school districts’ positive comments.
After the scalding incident and other problems, Delaware’s foster agency gave one AdvoServ school a “warning of probation,” an action two steps before license suspension. The agency required AdvoServ officials to hire a consultant to help it improve safety at all its Delaware facilities.
Though the agency still wasn’t referring kids there, AdvoServ met all the requirements. This past May, state licensing authorities lifted their warning.
AdvoServ was, once again, a residential school in good standing.
While AdvoServ largely succeeded in smoothing over conflicts in Delaware, it faced what looked like a greater threat in Florida: 14-year-old Paige Lunsford had died from a treatable medical condition and state investigators wanted to know why.
A tip to the state’s abuse hotline five days after Lunsford’s death on July 6, 2013, implicated Lunsford’s care at Carlton Palms, as well as workers’ use of restraints on her.
The caller said Lunsford had been in “too much restraint for longer than necessary” and that the restraints may have made her underlying medical problems worse. Records of her care, the caller said, went missing the morning after she died.
Carlton Palms hadn’t notified the agency of Lunsford’s death, though it was supposed to immediately report any incident where abuse or neglect was suspected.
Child welfare investigators and detectives descended on the remote campus to interview employees. They discovered a tangle of conflicting accounts.
Lunsford’s parents said Carlton Palms’ doctor, Dr. Robert Lynch, had initially told them she was rushed to the hospital, where she collapsed and died, state records show. Yet medics said that when they arrived at Carlton Palms, she was already dead.
Tom Shea – the center’s director – told investigators that overnight, Lunsford had rocked herself to sleep in the restraint chair and staffers carried her to her bed.
But workers said Lunsford had endured multiple mechanical restraints on her last night while vomiting as many as 25 to 30 times — “like water out of a sink,” one staffer told investigators. Workers tied her arms and legs to a bed while she lay on her back.
Then, in one of the night’s most harrowing moments, they decided to move her to a restraint chair in the hallway. They said Lunsford, down to 69 pounds, fought back so hard it took six of them to wrestle her into the chair – where she was bound in six places. They said she never slept.
Her caregivers said they sought help from the program’s top nursing and behavioral staff, but no one directed them to call an ambulance.
After a nearly eight-month investigation, state child protection officials cited Carlton Palms for medical neglect and for inadequately supervising Lunsford, singling out Lynch and head nurse Bonnie Clugston.
“(W)rongful death due to medical neglect is probable,” one state report concluded.
The state health department found Clugston, the facility’s head nurse, had violated state law by failing to get Lunsford emergency medical help. (The department has not made a similar finding for Lynch.)
In its statement, company leaders said they “fundamentally disagree” with the child protection agency’s conclusions and are awaiting the health department’s determination in Lynch’s case. AdvoServ also said it stands by Shea’s account of Lunsford’s last night and that the video deletion was accidental.
“Paige’s death was very tragic and heart-wrenching for us all, and it still hurts quite a bit,” said Bacon, AdvoServ’s chief operating officer. He declined to answer specific questions about Lunsford.
Clugston and Lynch resigned, the company said. Shea retired in the spring. Lynch did not return messages left at his office. Clugston could not be reached.
Lunsford’s parents filed a lawsuit in May 2015 against Carlton Palms and certain staff members, alleging negligent medical care.
The job of figuring out what sanctions, if any, should be levied against Carlton Palms fell to the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, the same department that had sought, then dropped, a year-long moratorium.
As before, officials there chose not to halt admissions or levy fines.
“(A)s my staff previously discussed with you, the Agency is willing to forego the imposition of administrative fines at this juncture and allow your facility to apply those resources instead to complying with the expectations outlined herein,” the agency’s director, Barbara Palmer, wrote in a letter to AdvoServ almost 10 months after Lunsford’s death.
The state required more upgrades to the facility’s video monitoring, including letting regulators call in for access to remote feeds, and an overhaul of how the program managed medical cases. Officials also mandated that the company retrain workers on restraints and that company officials meet regularly with regulators.
Three months after Palmer’s letter, as the Miami Herald prepared to publish a story about Lunsford, another alarming incident took place at Carlton Palms.
A boy broke his arm while staffers were restraining him in a wrap mat, according to state records. They didn’t take him to the hospital for five hours. He had surgery to insert pins in his upper arm, then landed back in the hospital days later with an infection after Carlton Palms workers didn’t properly care for the wound.
The Agency for Persons with Disabilities finally imposed an informal moratorium, pledging not to refer any residents to Carlton Palms.
The ban lasted five months, during which the state agency still allowed the facility to admit an out-of-state resident, according to the company.
“It is important to understand that the moratorium was not a punitive measure, it was done out of an abundance of caution to allow the agency and AdvoServ to work through any potential issues,” the company’s statement said. “We fully support the process.”
AdvoServ also paid a $10,000 penalty, the maximum allowed by law.
Today, AdvoServ appears poised for more growth. The company is expanding into Virginia.
In 2009, Mazik sold a majority share in the company to California-based GI Partners – which recently sold the company again to another private equity firm, Wellspring Capital Management in New York. AdvoServ says Mazik no longer has any ownership stake in the company.
Mazik did not respond to questions sent to him. In a letter, his lawyer said that since the 2009 sale, Mazik “has had no operational or managerial role regarding day to day operations” of the company.
Critics of Carlton Palms worry it has grown so big that regulators can’t effectively oversee it. The facility cares for nearly 30 percent of all Floridians who need such services. Finding so many beds elsewhere would be difficult.
When the Agency for Persons with Disabilities filed its complaint asking for a moratorium in 2012, it acknowledged a concern that suspending or revoking Carlton Palms’ license “could unnecessarily disrupt the lives of the existing residents.” The agency shut down two residential providers for people with similar disabilities to those at AdvoServ in the past year. But Carlton Palms dwarfs them in size and influence.
In a statement, the Agency for Persons with Disabilities objected to the idea that it is unable to properly oversee Carlton Palms. It said, however, “closure of a facility is always the Agency’s last resort … and is only done in cases where a provider is either unwilling or unable to correct identified problems.”
When AdvoServ executives gave me a tour of Carlton Palms last summer, the placid campus gave no indication of the previous year’s turmoil.
We traveled in a golf cart over wide grassy lawns past skinny palms and live oaks draped in Spanish moss, visiting tidy classrooms and silent halls in dorm-style buildings. Only about 20 of the facility’s roughly 200 residents were in view.
Company officials said the rest of their clients were at vocational assignments or off-campus trips such as to a bowling alley. About 80 residents do landscaping and janitorial work for minimum wage at sites, it turns out, that include buildings owned by Mazik’s leasing company in downtown Mount Dora.
The golf cart rolled past a chapel by a fountain, a field where residents play flag football, and a squat modular unit that serves as the administrative building. We saw teenage boys listening to a lesson about managing money, and, in another building, girls with more severe physical impairments doing crafts.
We didn’t stop at the site where Lunsford’s parents had been told Carlton Palms would plant a tree in her memory, just as it had planted one for Henley.
Meral Agish contributed research for this report. Production by Emily Martinez, Rob Weychert, and Hannah Birch. |
Engineers at the Terminal Island Naval Shipyard in Long Beach, California, had a problem on their hands: how does one reassemble one of the tallest and largest cranes in the world? That was the situation in January, 1948 as the U.S. Navy worked to erect the gigantic, floating Schwimmkran Nr. 1, taken from Germany as war reparations at the end of World War II.
The gigantic crane, “naturalized” after the war as YD-171, was one of four built by Demag A. G. in 1941 in Bremerhaven, Germany to lift U-Boats out of the water for repair and for other heavy-lifting tasks. Crewed by three officers and twenty men, the four Schwimmkräne served in the Baltic Sea, Denmark, and the northern seaports. “Self propelled, the crane [could] slither through the water forward, backward, or sideways,” noted Lieutenant Warren R. Hughes in a 1949 Proceedings article, by virtue of its six azimuth thrusters mounted below. Though quite maneuverable, the crane could not outmaneuver British and American bombers during the war. It was hit on several occasions and repaired.
One of her sister cranes was sunk in Hamburg, and the three others were divided among the victorious Allies by the Triparite Naval Commission. One, incomplete at the end of the war, went to the Soviet Union, who moved it overland in pieces to Danzig (Gdańsk) where for decades it was thought lost until it was spotted working at St. Petersburg’s Admiralty Wharves as late as last year.
The other went to Great Britain, where it capsized in the English Channel under tow. The American crane, unofficially dubbed “Herman the German,” was dismantled and towed across the Atlantic starting on 14 August, 1946, through the Panama Canal, and arriving at the Terminal Island Naval Shipyard on 18 November 1946. After its arrival, the delicate work of reassembly could begin.
The chief concern facing the engineers was how one reassembles a crane taller than the ones available. The Navy had USS Crane Ship No. 1 (AB-1), the former battleship Kearsarge. It could lift the 200-ton booms but could not lift it high enough to reassemble them. Finally, one bright engineer came up with the idea to put the big German derrick into drydock, lowering it by about 50 feet below sea level while Crane Ship No. 1 remained afloat. With the added height, the delicate operation of assembly could be accomplished.
Riggers working on the mammoth crane “clung to the booms by their imaginations,” remarked Master Rigger O. A. Faircloth, as they dealt with the rolling of the crane ship, high winds, and the delicate process of hammering home linking pins. But it all went smoothly. “Never did a job I was more proud of than this one,” continued Faircloth, “And to do it I had some of the best riggers in the world, all trained in the fact that safety comes first and showmanship plays no part in the rigging game . . . . When it was over I took a deep breath and went fishing.”
After extensive testing throughout the year, YD-171 was officially placed into service on 31 December 1948, and was a fixture at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard for decades. She lifted everything from the gun barrels of USS New Jersey (BB-62), steam locomotives for South Korea, the underwater habitat SEALAB II, the first atomic reactor on the West Coast, and even Howard Hughes’ H-4 Hercules (the “Spruce Goose”) when she was placed on display in Long Beach in the early 1980s.
Under the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1990, the Naval Station at Long Beach was ordered closed by 30 September 1994, and YD-171 was deemed obsolete. She was sold to the Panama Canal Company on 19 September and was moved there in 1996 — this time, fully assembled aboard a float-on/float-off ship.
The crane still serves there tending the locks and expansion project with a new name — Titan. |
Gullholmen island and Gullholmen chair. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gullholmen_lighthouse_in_Moss_commune,_Norway.jpg and IKEA
The other day I went to IKEA and bought four Pax, a Malm, a PS Gullholmen, an Ofelia, a Blanda Matt, a Mysa Ronn, and a few other essentials. To many that list may be incomprehensible, yet there are enough customers around the world who swear by IKEA's cheap and stylish, albeit flimsy, products that surely some readers will understand.
Where do these crazy names come from? It turns out they are part of a system created by dyslexic founder Ingvar Kamprad, who wanted to avoid relying on numbers.
Here's the system:
Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish placenames
Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian place names
Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names
Bookcase ranges: Occupations
Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays
Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes also other names
Chairs, desks: men's names
Fabrics, curtains: women's names
Garden furniture: Swedish islands
Carpets: Danish place names
Lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months, days, boats, nautical terms
Bedlinen, bed covers, pillows/cushions: flowers, plants, precious stones
Children's items: mammals, birds, adjectives
Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms
Kitchen utensils: foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries, functional descriptions
Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions, also Swedish place names |
The unsolved mystery of the Van Meter Visitor - a winged creature with a glowing horn that caused terror in an Iowa town 110 years ago
A new book explores the strange legend of a winged monster that terrorized the town of Van Meter in Iowa over several nights
It was described as a half human/half animal with enormous bat wings and a blinding light shooting from its horn
The townsfolk chased the creature to a local mine shaft which it disappeared down, never to be seen again
110 years later the mystery has never been explained
A sketch of the bizarre creature that terrorized Van Meter in 1903 based on eyewitness accounts
A bizarre legend and unsolved mystery which has haunted a small Iowa town for more than 100 years is the subject of a new book called The Van Meter Visitor.
For several nights in 1903, the small town of Van Meter, Iowa was terrorized by a giant bat-like creature that emerged from an old abandoned mine.
The identity of this mysterious monster has never been discovered, but over 100 years later a new book is retelling the amazing tale and hoping to shed some light on what happened all those years ago.
The legend dates back to the fall of 1903, when several of Van Meter’s most well respected citizens reported a half human, half animal with enormous, smooth bat wings flying about.
The creature is described as moving at speeds the townsfolk had never witnessed before, plus it let off a powerful stench and shot a blinding light from its horned head.
Each time the townsfolk encountered the creature they fired their guns at it, but this appeared to have no impact on the creature.
On the first night it was first spotted flying across the building tops. The next evening it was spotted by both the town doctor and bank cashier Peter Dunn who took a plaster cast of its 'great three-toed tracks.'
On the third night, a man spotted it perched atop a telephone pole. Another resident who saw it, described the monster as hopping like a kangaroo, while the local high school teacher likened it to a devil.
Scared and angered by what they had witnessed, the townsfolk followed the creature to an abandoned coal mine near an old brickyard where they heard a noise from the mine.
‘Presently the noise opened up again, as though Satan and a regiment of imps were coming forth for battle,’ reads an article in the Des Moines Daily News from Oct. 3, 1903.
The unsolved mystery of the strange creature has haunted the Iowa town of Van Meter for more than 100 years
A photo of the '1901 Bachelors of Van Meter,' including several men who claimed to have seen the mysterious monster
The monster appeared together with a smaller version. In a flash of bright light they sailed away, but returned in the morning when the town's men had gathered with weapons ‘to rid the earth of them’.
‘The reception they received would have sunk the Spanish fleet, but aside from unearthly noise and peculiar odor they did not seem to mind it, but slowly descended the shaft of the old mine.’
The creature was never seen again.
This amazing tale has survived and been retold for several generations now and a written version even exists in the town’s centennial book.
The new book is the work of Chad Lewis, who has written over 15 books about the supernatural, plus co-authors Noah Voss and Kevin Lee Nelson and help from local librarian Jolena Walker.
Author Chad Lewis visited Van Meter to speak to local residents about the creature and visit several historic locations including the mine
A historic portrait of Van Meter, Iowa near the time of the unexplained sightings in 1903
The myth of the strange creature has survived and been retold for several generations and a written version even exists in the town’s centennial book
The authors visited the quiet town and spoke to local residents who told them the stories about the creature which passed been down and they visited several historic locations including the mine.
Lewis says he has found no evidence to suggest the monster was a hoax, although be believes the facts of the story may have been embellished over the years.
Lewis told the Des Moines Register that even though he said he’s unsure what happened those fall nights in 1903 in Van Meter, seeking the answer was more important than finding it.
'It was an era when anything was possible. Science was starting to gain momentum. In fact, they had just discovered the mountain gorilla. So the beast in the jungle was real,' he told. 'People were open to the fact that anything could happen.'
A new book explores the unsolved mystery of the strange creature that attacked the Iowa town of Van Meter more than 100 years ago |
Editor’s note: Alberta Justice said Friday there was no longer an assault charge against Const. Kevin Humfrey. The Crown prosecutor has since informed Global News that Alberta Justice had an error in its system and there have been no changes to charges against any of the accused officers. Global News has updated the story to reflect the new information.
A trial began Monday for three Calgary police officers who were charged with assault after the July 2016 arrest of a man. It’s alleged the officers caused injuries including broken ribs, a collapsed lung, cuts to the man’s face and “significant bruising.”
READ MORE: Alberta police watchdog cites ‘dishonesty’ of Calgary officers charged with assault
Constables Mike Sandalack, Kevin Humfrey and James Othen each face a charge of assault causing bodily harm in connection with the arrest of Clayton Prince, who had been handcuffed at the time of the alleged assault on July 30. Othen also faces a charge of assault with a weapon.
Humfrey and Othen also face charges of public mischief.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) investigation alleges the officers lied, saying the 34-year-old man resisted an officer when evidence suggests he did not.
Prince testified Monday morning. All three officers were present in court, along with ASIRT and a Crown prosecutor brought in from Edmonton.
Prince told court he ran from police during a traffic stop on Macleod Trail because he didn’t have a valid driver’s licence and was carrying a small amount of marijuana. He admitted he had smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine with friends prior to the incident.
Watch below from Oct. 5, 2016: ASIRT considers the allegation that officers lied to be the worst aspect
He said a police officer caught up to him and pointed his gun, telling him to get to the ground.
READ MORE: Man alleged to have been hurt in arrest by Calgary police officers speaks out
Prince testified he was kneed by at least one officer and punched by possibly several officers while lying on the ground. He claimed he was not resisting.
“They beat the sh-t out of me,” he told court.
While he was handcuffed, Prince said an officer pushed his head into a police vehicle door, cutting his lip. He said he spent five days in hospital being treated for his injuries.
ASIRT began investigating the case after the discovery of police dashcam video of the incident. ASIRT declined to release the video at the time.
When the charges came to light, Calgary Police Chief Roger Chaffin vowed to investigate and deal with the situation “in the most serious of fashions.”
“It’s not representative of the kind of policing we’d expect in the city and it raised an enormous amount of questions about what happened there,” Chaffin said last Oct. 5, after explaining he had seen the video.
Watch below from Oct. 5, 2016: Chief Roger Chaffin says as soon as police saw the dashcam video, it went to ASIRT
“Calgarians can be assured they won’t be seeing these officers while this process is going on,” he said at the time. “That’s not to convict them, but that’s to say I see enough in this that I don’t believe that would be appropriate to have them out there.”
Prince had been charged with one count of resisting Const. Othen in the lawful execution of his duty and one count of possession of a small amount of marijuana at the time. The Crown stayed those charges Aug. 29.
With files from Global’s Gary Bobrovitz |
Rochester, N.Y. - Two University of Rochester students were held hostage and were rescued by the SWAT team, Rochester Police Chief Michael Ciminelli said at a news conference Sunday night.
One of the students was shot before police began their operation at 9:20 pm Sunday night, Ciminelli said.
The students were not injured during the actual rescue operation at 22 Harvest Street in Rochester, and they are now recovering in the hospital, according to police.
Four people were taken into custody, and kidnapping and assault charges will be filed, according to Ciminelli. Additional arrests could be coming.
Ani Okeke Ewo and Nicholas Kollias, both seniors, had last been seen around 2 a.m. Saturday near the university.
Ewo is from Aurora, Illinois, while Kollias is from Northbrook, Illinois.
A statewide alert was issued by RPD before it was cancelled Sunday night.
Ciminelli said this was a targeted event and there is no reason for other students at the University of Rochester to be worried because of this incident.
It's unclear why these two particular students were abducted.
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren issued the following statement:
"Tonight the University of Rochester Student Community and our entire city can be grateful for the professionalism and dedication of the Rochester police Department and particularly our SWAT Team," said Rochester Mayor Lovely A. Warren. "As our city's Mayor and also as a mother I am grateful that our police officers helped make the ultimate outcome of tonight's situation a good one. Many thanks to Chief Ciminelli and his officers for a job well done." |
Get the biggest Manchester United FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Manchester United are keen to wrap up all their summer transfer business as rapidly as possible and avoid the late glut of newcomers that complicated Louis Van Gaal’s plans last year.
The Reds will up their pursuit of PSV Eindhoven’s Memphis Depay and ideally want all their new faces in place by the time the club fly out for their pre-season tour of American in mid-July.
Van Gaal was appointed in May last year as David Moyes’ successor but his World Cup commitments with Holland didn’t help make for a smooth introduction or having his desired squad in place for the 2014 kick-off.
Ander Herrera and Luke Shaw were July imports but Angel di Maria, Daley Blind, Marcos Rojo and Radamel Falcao were not captured until the campaign was already under way.
Bedding so many buys in without the luxury of a pre-season jaunt put the Reds on the back foot as Van Gaal set about implementing his philosophy.
The Dutchman is desperate to avoid the same disjointed summer planning and executive vice chairman Ed Woodward has been on the case laying the groundwork for the next close season’s splurge.
Depay is emerging as the likely first through the door.
“We have had a telephone call from them (United) about him,” PSV’s technical director Marcel Brands has already revealed this week.
“But no talks have been held. Several top clubs have expressed interest.”
Brands has confirmed Depay won’t move from the Philips Stadion cheaply and PSV have turned down a near £15m bid from Spurs this term.
“It will be much higher than the offer from Tottenham Hotspur,” the technical director added. “He will be very expensive.”
That will not worry United as they pursue their new ‘Galactico’ style of recruitment following on from last summer’s record £155m outlay.
Depay scored last weekend in PSV’s Erevidisie title-winning 4-1 victory against Heerenveen and the youngster, who was in Van Gaal’s Holland World Cup squad last summer, is understood to have been advised by the United manager to remain at PSV this season before looking to move on.
Now is his time and with the early capture of the Erevidisie title the road is clear for United to finalise the capture early.
Similarly, Jurgen Klopp’s departure from Borussia Dortmund at the end of the season is likely to bring forward defender Mats Hummels’ decision to leave the Westfalenstadion and the Reds can snap up their target as soon as the Bundesliga relegation battle is decided. |
They are called blue zones – places in the world where people live longer and healthier than anywhere else on earth. Several of these blue zones exist, and in each of these places people living to 90 or even 100 years is common. And they aren’t just living long either—these people are living healthy—without medication or disability (see video later in this post).
Five blue zones have so far been identified and thoroughly researched by journalist Dan Buettner in a partnership with National Geographic during more than five years of on-site investigation. So what is the secret to longevity and health underlying these fascinating communities? Do they possess modern technology, do they take massive amounts of supplements, do they run on treadmills, do they have special genes? As you may have guessed, the answer is none of these.
The five blue zones are as follows:
The Italian island of Sardinia
Okinawa, Japan
Loma Linda, California
Costa Rica’s isolated Nicoya Peninsula
Ikaria, an isolated Greek island
Its Lifestyle, Stupid!
So lets cut to the chase instead of building up the suspense any further. After more than five years of investigation, what has Buettner discovered about why people in these places are living so long? The secret is lifestyle. Quite simply, these people live a lifestyle that includes a healthy diet, daily exercise, and a low stress life that incorporates family, purpose, religion, and meaning. Sure we can go into more detail, and we will, but at a high level it really is this simple.
Although it may seem hard to achieve this lifestyle, the absolute simplicity and power of it should actually be refreshing and uplifting. People are always thinking that complicated medicine and expensive modern technological therapies are required to live long and healthy. But it simply isn’t so. The gift of a long and healthy life is already in the hands of each and every one of us. It is up to each of us to choose the lifestyle of health, and sadly most of us are choosing not to live that lifestyle. To each his own.
Pollute Your Body And It Suffers – Imagine That!
So lets get into a bit more detail. First off, what do we mean by a healthy diet? A healthy diet, according to mountains of literature, and now supported by blue zone investigation, is one that is loaded with vegetables, fruits, fish, and nuts and low on meat, sugar, fat, and the toxic processed foods of modern civilization. Buettner actually goes into even more detail, highlighting red wine, goats milk, local teas, and several other aspects of blue zone diets that seem to be beneficial. Sure you can get all precise about it if you want, but my take is that the exact details, such as red wine, are not so important. What is most important is the high level theme of generally eating good stuff (fruits, veggies, fish) and cutting out the bad stuff (meat, fat, sugar).
Your body is a living biological machine. Is it surprising our bodies suffer when we stuff them with inflammatory, chemically destructive diets high in saturated fat and sugar? The literature shows that heart disease and diabetes can often be almost 100% attributed to a lifetime of obesity and poor diet. It has been documented in thousands of trials and scientific studies that the incidence and severity of several major diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer’s, can be severely restricted by a healthy diet.
People in blue zones eat healthy diets, and not surprisingly they suffer from these major diseases either less frequently or not at all. That means they live longer and healthier. According to Beuttner, in blue zone Ikaria the people suffer from one half the rate of heart disease and 20% less cancer than Americans and there are more healthy people over 90 than anywhere else in the world.
Work That Body…or Watch it Wither
A daily routine of regular exercise is another theme that is common across all blue zones. Wait a minute you say—I don’t see treadmills and fitness centers in the remote Nicoya peninsula of Costa Rica. But that is just it! The people in blue zones don’t need to artificially incorporate exercise into their lives with machines. The exercise comes for free, already built into their daily lives naturally. Common across all of the blue zones is that the people climb mountains, walk through the hills, work the land, and generally use their bodies in a constant grind as they perform their daily activities. And it doesn’t have to be high intensity “run as fast as you can” exercise either. Often the exercise is slow and relaxed, but ongoing throughout the day. These people are using their muscles, burning calories, and circulating their blood. Their bodies are tough and healthy, conditioned by the daily routine to be fit and alert. Ready to fight disease. Quick to break down toxins and waste.
Especially in America, when we see those rare individuals that actually make it to 90 years old, they are often frail and weak, hunched over in wheelchairs and propped up with countless medications. Not so with the individuals in blue zones. Buettner shows us a man in his 90’s who actually bests him in an arm wrestling match, and this is not just a special case. The individuals who are reaching 90 or even 100 years old in the blue zones are often able to live active, normal, medication free, mostly healthy lives all the way to the very end. Its an amazing revelation, and it gives hope to all of us that we too can live healthy in addition to living long.
But to live long and healthy you have to earn it! You have to work your body everyday, or nearly so. Sit around all day and let your body turn into a low efficiency, low energy, low impact carcass and you can kiss your health goodbye. Your bones will weaken, your muscles will wither, toxins and waste will accumulate. Use it or lose it.
A Happy Low Stress Life – Now Who Doesn’t Want That?
A life of low stress and filled with happiness. In theory most of us want this, but in reality few are achieving it. Buettner has found that those who live long and healthy in the blue zones unanimously live low stress, happy lives enriched with strong family ties, a sense of purpose, and a healthy dose of spirituality, and plenty of sleep. Unlike the straightforwardness of eating healthy and exercising, this third pillar of a healthy lifestyle is hard to precisely define. How do we measure stress? How do we measure happiness? Can one go to church once a day, once a month, or not at all and still qualify as spiritual?
Although the specifics may be hard to define, I think at a high level we all should be able to grasp the point. If we are generally happy with our place in life then we behave in ways that promote longevity and health. We are more likely to take good care of our bodies and our bodies are more often flooded with hormones and chemicals associated with happiness and health.
Stress is especially proven through mountains of data and studies to have serious harmful effects on the body. Cortisol, the hormone in our bodies produced in response to stress, is especially harmful to the body. Those that are living a life constantly full of stress, anger, and resentment have high levels of cortisol constantly flowing in their bodies. The long term effects of this are dramatic, increasing blood pressure, and generally increasing the onset and severity of heart disease and several other major diseases.
So Its Just Lifestyle Then?
Is it really that simple that the secret to longevity and healthy is nothing more than lifestyle? No magic pill is needed? No advanced machinery is needed? The answer is yes!
Living long and healthy is not mysterious. It is not hard to understand. It is a choice. And sadly most people are choosing wrong. If you are already living the blue zone lifestyle then good for you! Keep on doing it! If you aren’t living the lifestyle, then it is never too late to start. Several studies show that dramatic improvements in longevity and health can return to an individual very soon after correcting a bad lifestyle.
Living long and healthy like people in the blue zones is not achieved through shortcuts or quick fixes. You can’t workout hard on Sunday and then sit on your butt Monday through Saturday. You can’t say you are eating healthy just because you stick a bunch of “healthy” vegetables on top of that “unhealthy” greasy pizza. You can’t repent spiritually one day and expect to erase the damage of decades of stressful decisions and anger.
To live long and healthy requires a constant, daily lifestyle of positive enrichment for the body and mind. For many this may seem hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Find ways to make healthy food taste good. Find ways to make exercise a meaningful part of your daily routine rather than a burdensome chore. Surround yourself with others that share your interest in living a full life that is low in stress, happy, and meaningful. Get plenty of sleep.
It is interesting to note that one of the blue zones is in the United States, in Loma Linda, California—proof that even Americans can live long and healthy lives! Want to learn more? Check out Buettner’s website, aptly named bluezones.com, which is an entire site dedicated to revealing Buettner’s findings and posting daily developments in the field. |
The three women who allegedly assaulted a Uber taxi driver at Vytilla in Kochi on Wednesday being taken into custody by the police. (Photo: DC)
Kochi: Three women who hailed an online share taxi allegedly assaulted its driver after he turned down their demand that the rider boarded before them should alight.
The Maradu police later arrested Angel Baby (36), Clara Shibin (27), both natives of Kannur, and Sheeja M. (30), a resident of Pathanamthitta, based on the complaint of driver Shafeeq (37), a Kumbalam native, who was hospitalized soon after the incident at Vytilla at noon.
According to cops, the trio availed UberPool, Uber's on-demand carpooling service launched in the city barely a week back. When the cab came, another rider who was picked up from Kadavanthra was already there.
They said the other rider asked the trio where they were proceeding to. The women then wanted the driver to oust him, but he refused saying it was a shared ride.
The argument soon escalated, and the three brutally assaulted the driver, injuring him in the head and tearing away his shirt. Passers-by rushed to the spot and took them to the nearby traffic police kiosk, they said.
The injured driver was first taken to a nearby private hospital and then shifted to the Government General Hospital. The police later arrested the women.
A case was taken against under sections 341 (wrongful restraint), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 294 (B) (use of obscene words) of the IPC among others. The trio was later released on station bail.
Meanwhile, the online cab aggregator said it would extend all help to the driver in proceeding with the case.
“What has been described is totally unacceptable,” a Uber spokesperson said.
“Violence in any form is against the spirit of our community guidelines, and we have barred the riders from accessing the app. We are cooperating with the law enforcement authorities and assisting the driver partner as best as possible.” |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption A fire at a warehouse storing fireworks has ripped through Lagos, Nigeria's biggest city.
An explosion in a warehouse has sparked a major fire and killed at least one person in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city and commercial capital.
Officials said a building storing fireworks in the largest market area of Lagos Island exploded, and the ensuing blaze spread to up to nine buildings.
The blast reportedly shook windows in homes miles away and a thick cloud of smoke could be seen over the city.
More than 30 people have been injured.
At the scene A cloud of smoke billowed from the scene of the explosion, accompanied by the sparks of fireworks. The sound of popping and crackling carried on as the fire raged on in this densely populated part of Lagos, full of closely packed buildings in narrow streets. Residents of the area told me they thought it was a bomb at first when a blast shook buildings around Jankara Market, the largest in Lagos. A few people showed me shrapnel wounds they suffered even though they were a fair distance from the explosion. There was little that people could do but watch, with some trying to get photographs of the incident on their mobile phones. Emergency workers say they had problems getting past the huge crowds of onlookers, similar to a complaint they raised in June when a plane crashed into a residential area in another part of Lagos.
An official from the National Emergency Management Agency (Nema) told AFP news agency that a charred body had been pulled out of the building where the fireworks detonated.
The force of the initial blast was such that some residents reportedly mistook it for a bomb or a falling plane.
Windows in nearby buildings were shattered and a neighbouring school was badly damaged.
Desperate search
Thousands of people in the area gathered to watch, as the fire destroyed neighbouring buildings.
Some were desperately searching the crowd for information on family members while the fire was burning and sporadic fireworks explosions could still be heard.
"Everything has burned now. I don't see my brother now or his son - I've not seen anybody now. They might have collapsed inside there, nobody can enter there," said one man.
Some residents jumped out of windows in panic as fireworks exploded long after the initial blaze, according to a statement from Nema quoted by AFP.
The BBC's Tomi Oladipo described seeing other people who had sustained shrapnel wounds some distance from the fire.
Some were hurt as they tried to put out the flames and were taken to hospital for treatment.
Firefighters took about an hour to reach the scene, partly because of the huge crowds, our correspondent says.
Residents grabbed hoses from fire engines in attempt to fight the blaze, but the water quickly ran out, Associated Press reports.
A government official told Reuters news agency that the firefighting operation was hampered by the risk of new explosions from so many fireworks.
"It's very dangerous for the firemen to go in, because the government don't want any of these men to be injured."
Police and security officials reportedly recovered mortar-like fireworks and empty firework shells from the scene.
Our correspondent says that for years there have been calls to ban fireworks.
However, they continue to be widely used during the Christmas and new year holidays. |
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
A Frost Enhanced Landscape
ESP_042895_2495 Science Theme:
•
HICLIP
WALLPAPER
HIFLYER
HISLIDES
is the rim of an old and infilled impact crater. The sediments that were deposited within the crater have since formed polygonal cracks due to repeated cycles of freezing and thawing. The process of polygon formation is common at these polar latitudes, but polygons are not always as striking as they are here. In this image, the polygons have been highlighted by persistent frost in the cracks.
The crater rim constrains the polygon formation within the crater close to the rim, creating a spoke and ring pattern of cracks. This leads to more rectangular polygons than those near the center of the crater. The polygons close to the center of the crater display a more typical pattern. A closer look shows some of these central polygons, which have smaller polygons within them, and smaller polygons within those smaller polygons, which makes for a natural fractal!
Written by: HiRISE Targeting Specialists (audio: Tre Gibbs) (23 December 2015) |
Ocean City has approved a plan to purchase two new Jeep Wranglers to pull the boardwalk tram during the 2018 tourist season.
For a town that prides itself on its annual Jeep Week, it was only a matter of time before Ocean City started purchasing wranglers. Yet, instead of working beach patrol, these new Jeeps will be put to work pulling the boardwalk trolley back and forth.
The current boardwalk trams have certainly seen better days and with constant exposure to the salt water and ocean air, they have begun to reach the end of their intended lifespan. For the better part of a year, resort officials have been debating what to replace the trams with.
Town council officials put out a Request for Proposal earlier this year to get bids on new tram vehicles. Ocean City wanted bids on both a gas-powered and electric towing vehicle. However, when the bids came in, a dedicated tram vehicle proved to be well above the town’s budget.
The idea of purchasing Jeep Wranglers to pull the trams was floated and on December 4, 2017, the mayor and Council voted unanimously to purchase two of the vehicles to pull the boardwalk trams during the 2018 season.
Some were originally hesitant about purchasing the Wranglers without adequately pricing out alternatives, however when compared to other vehicles in its class, the Jeeps were unmatched in both price and towing capacity. It was also necessary that Ocean City settle on a domestic vehicle or else lose out on government subsidies. While there were some foreign-made vehicles that could have done the job, they would not have been eligible for government purchase discounts.
Each of the Wranglers will cost approximately $23,000, which is a typical price. However, in order to retrofit the Jeeps to pull the trams, the Council is earmarking an additional $27,000 per vehicle. This budget has left some Jeep owners scratching their heads, given the fact that a stock Jeep Wrangler equipped with a tow package would be able to pull the trams without additional modifications. Nevertheless, the 2018 budget includes $200,000 for tram improvements and even with these pricey modifications, the two Jeep Wranglers will actually come in significantly under budget.
One councilman raised an issue at the fact that a two-door wrangler will only be able to comfortably seat three or four passengers (plus the driver), while the current tram vehicles seat six. That concern was quickly squashed as another Councilman pointed out that any lost seats in the towing vehicle can simply be made up by adding an additional tram car.
A key selling point was the fact that the two Wranglers do not need to be a permanent solution. While they are getting the nod for the 2018 season, the Council wants to continue examining and pricing-out dedicated tram vehicles. If the township is able to find another vehicle in a year’s time, these two Wranglers could be repurposed to fill other roles, such as beach patrol.
While the thought of Jeeps rolling down the boardwalk may seem foreign to some, this will not be the first time that the iconic Wrangler has towed Ocean City’s boardwalk trams. Back in the 1990s, the boardwalk trams were indeed pulled by Jeep Wrangler YJs, seen in the featured image above of a 1990s Ocean City postcard.
Now that the Council has decided on a vehicle, the next fight is over what color to get them. When Wranglers pulled the trams decades ago, they were flat white with a Ocean City emblem on the side. Public Works Director Hal Adkins pointed out to the Council that if they have any interest down the road of selling advertising space on the Wranglers, they should go with white. Knowing Ocean City’s propensity to sell advertising, that is probably exactly what they will do.
Are you excited for the Jeep Wranglers to return to the boardwalk? Let us know in the comment section below! |
WEEK 4
ARGOS vs Bluebombers
I like the colour Blue, so this was a really troublesome pick. It can go either way. I pick the Riders, they have lots of fans so that means they should win.
ALLYOOPS vs The Stampeders
Montreal is bad so only Calgary can win but Glenn is a backup quarterback so it’s obvious that the Allouetes are going to “Je suis” all over The Stampeders
ESKIMOS vs LIONS
Japanese Canadian internment refers to confinement of Japanese Canadians in British Columbia during World War II. The internment began in January 1942,[1] following the attack by carrier-borne forces of Imperial Japan on American naval and army facilities at Pearl Harbor. The Canadian federal government gave the internment order based on speculation of sabotage and espionage, although the RCMP and defence department lacked proof.[2] Many interned children were brought up in these camps, including David Suzuki, Joy Kogawa, and Roy Miki. The Canadian government promised the Japanese Canadians that their property and finances would be returned upon release; however, these assets were sold off cheaply at auctions.[3]
Tiger-Cats vs The Riders
The Riders have watermelons on their heads. Check mate, Tigers
Advertisements |
If you haven’t figured it out already, I can’t get enough holo in my life. I own soooo many polishes with this finish, and it’s my failsafe happy place manicure whenever I’m lacking in inspiration or just need something sparkly without the pain of glitter removal. Recently, someone in a nail polish Facebook group asked whether people were sick of holo yet, and I promptly had a mini anxiety attack thinking about brands no longer putting out holos! That’s right – that’s how obsessed I am. This is why I have a Holo Humpday on this blog o’ mine – I have so many that I want to show off and hopefully I’ll convince y’all to keep utilizing holos so they’ll stay forever!
So today’s Holo Humpday shall feature a stunning (they’re all stunning, let’s be honest here people) polish by Chaos & Crocodiles. Hold on to your butts! *Movie reference anyone?* Decoy is another crazy strong linear holo from the Secret Agent collection – take a peek!
WOULD you look at that?! Decoy is such a beautiful silvery lavender holo that is just so incredibly pretty! The holo is crazyface, and I found the same with every polish I’ve tried in the Secret Agent collection (Check out Security Breach here and an accent of Sleeper Cell here).
PS – do you remember what my cuticles looked like last week?! They were dry and nasty, if I do say so myself. It’s a wonder what a week of beauty bootcamp for your hands will do! If anyone’s interested in a post on my hand & cuticle routine, let me know in the comments below.
But first let me show you a closeup of this polish. 🙂
So what do you think? Are holos here to stay? They’re still in so many collections, and I will pray to my heathen Holo God that they’ll stay around forever! 😉 Also, would you like to see a post on my hand, nail, and cuticle routine?
Advertisements |
Coral coring at Rowley Shoals, west of Broome in Western Australia, November 2009. Analyzing coral cores is one way scientists can look back into the oceans’ climate history. (Credit: Eric Matson, Australian Institute of Marine Science) FOR USE WITH STORY ON ABRAM ET AL. 8/24/16
A new paper is challenging our understanding of how long human-caused climate change has been at work on Earth. And the authors say their findings may question existing ideas about how sensitive the planet is to greenhouse gas emissions — with potentially big implications for our global climate policy.
The new study, just out on Wednesday in the journal Nature, suggests human-caused, or anthropogenic, climate change has been going on for decades longer than existing temperature records indicate. Using paleoclimate records from the past 500 years, the researchers show that sustained warming began to occur in both the tropical oceans and the Northern Hemisphere land masses as far back as the 1830s — and they’re saying industrial-era greenhouse gas emissions were the cause, even back then.
“I don’t think it changes what we know about how the climate has warmed during the 20th century, but it definitely adds to the story,” said Nerilie Abram, an expert in paleoclimatology at Australian National University and the new study’s lead author.
People first started keeping organized, global temperature records starting around the 1880s, and these are the records that many scientists reference when looking back on how the climate has changed over the last century. And it’s clear that it’s been warming — and that human activities are the primary cause. But just looking at records from the 1880s on doesn’t tell the whole story, according to Abram.
“We can see that by only looking from the 1880s on, we don’t have the full picture of how we’ve been changing the climate,” she said.
The new research involved 25 scientists from around the world, including more than a dozen researchers from the PAGES 2k (or Past Global Change 2000 year) Consortium, a group supporting research into Earth’s past in order to gain a better understanding of its climate future. The PAGES team has been involved with creating paleoclimate reconstructions of temperatures over both land and sea. These reconstructions have relied on special analyses of coral, tree rings and ice cores, all of which contain chemical fingerprints that can give scientists insights into what the climate was like hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
The research team used these paleoclimate records to look back at the progression of industrial-era warming across the Earth over the past few hundred years. The industrial era is a period of time loosely beginning around the mid-18th century, when industrial growth around the world led to a sharp increase in the burning of fossil fuels and the emission of greenhouse gases, which contributed to the onset of anthropogenic climate change on Earth.
If carbon emissions continue unabated, expanding oceans and massive ice melt would threaten global coastal communities, according to new projections. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)
The team’s reconstructions indicated that significant and sustained warming began in the tropical oceans around the 1830s, about the same time it began over the continental land masses in the Northern Hemisphere. Warming in the Southern Hemisphere was delayed until about 50 years later, the reconstructions suggested — this likely has to do with differences in oceanic and atmospheric circulation there, Abram said.
(This video, which the researchers have put together to help summarize their findings, helps illustrate the temperature changes indicated by the reconstructions over the past 500 years.)
The reconstructions suggest that the current pattern of sustained, long-term warming on Earth began much earlier than existing temperature records might lead us to believe. The findings are “further evidence that the climate has already changed significantly since the pre-industrial period,” said Ed Hawkins, a climate researcher at the University of Reading who was not involved with the new study, in an emailed comment.
The researchers also examined climate models to find out whether climate simulations would match up with their reconstructions, as well as to gain some insight into what exactly was causing the warming effect. They found the models generally agree with their reconstructions for the Northern Hemisphere, although they don’t quite capture the delayed warming effect in the Southern Hemisphere for reasons that remain unclear.
And importantly, the researchers say, the simulations suggest that the influence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is the cause behind the early onset of warming.
The researchers suggest that this early, human-influenced onset of warming may mean the climate is more sensitive to the effects of greenhouse gas emissions than scientists previously thought.
The researchers do note that “naturally forced climate cooling may have helped to set the stage for the widespread onset of industrial-era warming in the tropical oceans and over Northern Hemisphere landmasses during the mid-nineteenth century.” In 1815, powerful volcanic eruptions in Indonesia were responsible for a strong cooling effect on Earth, which reversed when the sustained warming pattern began to emerge.
But some experts are saying that the research team should be ascribing more importance to this early 19th-century cooling effect in the context of the warming that came after it. Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University said he is “troubled” by the researchers’ suggestion that the planet may be more sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought.
Mann said a lot of the warming observed in the early 1800s was actually just the climate naturally recovering from this unusual cooling effect, and not primarily caused by the influence of greenhouse gas emissions, which would not become a primary driver of warming until decades later.
“There was certainly some anthropogenic warming prior to the late 19th century,” he worte in an email, pointing to some recent research he co-authored that supported this effect. “But the authors overstate how much, and how early, by incorrectly conflating early 1800s warming caused by the recovery from these eruptions with early greenhouse warming.”
But the researchers stand by their interpretation of the reconstructions.
“Our initial reaction to detecting this early onset of warming was the same – that what we were seeing was the climate rebounding from the big eruptions in the early 1800s and that later the effect of greenhouse gases kicked in,” Abram noted in a follow-up email to The Post. “But as we continued to test the data and our methods it became clear that you don’t need these big eruptions in the early 1800s to explain the early warming.”
According to Abram, the findings could have important implications for the ongoing global discussions about the range of temperature increases that should be considered safe for the planet. At last year’s UN climate conference in Paris, participating nations agreed to a goal of keeping global warming within 2 degrees Celsius of their pre-industrial levels at most — and within 1.5 degrees if possible — in order to avoid triggering more dangerous climate consequences.
According to Abram, the study’s results suggest that “we have already warmed the planet more than what we would think we have if we’re basing our assessments just on the period since the 1880s.” And this means we may actually be closer to the kind of dangerous climate consequences many experts have predicted the planet could see if we blow past the 2-degree threshold, she suggested. For instance, some natural ecosystems — coral reefs, for instance, which are already known to be suffering from the effects of global warming — may have experienced much greater climate changes in the past few hundred years, far beyond the conditions they originally evolved to tolerate, than scientists previously thought. These are points that policymakers could take into consideration when considering how much climate warming we should be willing to accept in the future.
In any case, the researchers feel that the climate reconstructions can provide important insights into the Earth’s sensitivity to human activities, which can help inform our understanding of how future climate change might progress. And they point to the importance of creating reconstructions in the first place for making these insights possible.
“Actually finding that humans had a measureable impact on the climate in the mid 19th century was somewhat of a surprise,” Abram said. “It’s a finding that, no matter which way we tested, we kept coming up with that same answer.”
In his weekly address, President Obama marks the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service and urges action on climate change to protect "our parks and our planet for generations to come." (Reuters)
Read more at Energy & Environment:
As sea levels rise, nearly 1.9 million U.S. homes could be underwater by 2100
How air pollution is causing the world’s ‘Third Pole’ to melt
A luxury cruise ship sets sail for the Arctic, thanks to climate change
For more, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here, and follow us on Twitter here. |
Thanks for visiting, why don't you come back? Follow me on Twitter and get blog updates by e-mail: subscribe here
Our extinction crisis continues; 2013 allowed us to safely conclude that we will never again see the animals listed below ( Our extinction crisis continues; 2013 allowed us to safely conclude that we will never again see the animals listed below ( 2012 version here ).
One of the last known photos of
a Formosan Clouded Leopard;
taken by Torii Ryūzō.
The Formosan Clouded Leopard (Neofelis nebulosa
brachyura
) of Taiwan
. None have been seen in over thirty years, despite a recent and intensive 13-year effort to document one. We did just about everything we could to eliminate this animal; we destroyed their habitat, killed them for their skins, and got rid of the other animals they normally ate. They didn't have a chance.
Chioninia coctei), which hasn't been seen since 1912, The Cape Verde Giant Skink (), which hasn't been seen since 1912, has been declared extinct , although a jawbone from one of these lizards was found in some cat scat in 2005. However, since then the cat
(i.e., house cat)
population has increased substantially and, aided by rats and dogs, has likely wiped out the skink.
Macrognathus pentophthalmos) The Sri Lanka Spiny Eel ( is probably extinct . As recently as 1980 the species was considered common but it was likely done in by a non-native species of fish that ate many of them.
The Eskimo Curlew (Numenius borealis) was once so abundant that the sizes of its flocks were compared to those of Passenger Pigeons. They now have something else in common. The last known Eskimo Curlew was observed in 1963; Canada is likely to decide it is officially extinct because it has been 50 years since one has been seen. Eskimo Curlews probably suffered from a decline in their locust prey as well as loss of habitat but the primary cause of extinction is thought to be overhunting. Indeed, the last known Eskimo Curlew was shot by a hunter in Barbados.
The Southern Darwin's Frog
(i.e., not the extinct one);
by Mono Andes, Wikimedia.
This year, scientists concluded that the Northern Darwin's
Frog (
Rhinoderma rufum
), known only from Chile,
. Closely related to the Southern Darwin's Frog (
Rhinoderma darwinii
), it was only recognized as a distinct species in 1975. The last one ever seen alive was found just five years later, in 1980. Fascinatingly, males of both of these frogs hold (er, held, in the case of
R. rufum
) their tadpoles inside of them, as if they were pregnant (think seahorses). Based on previous sightings of these species and intensive surveys where they were known to occur, a group of researchers from Chile and the UK estimated that
R. rufum
blinked out in 1982. They were cautious though, and suggest in their study that the species should be considered critically endangered (and only possibly extinct). Maybe some frogs are still hanging on somewhere.
The Santa Cruz Pupfish (
Cyprinodon arcuatus
) of Arizona
. This small fish was probably once found in a few small wetlands that disappeared due to water management practices that dried them up. The last (and only?) spring known to harbor the species was altered into a pond and canal many years ago. The altered habitats were then invaded by predatory bass, which did their part by eating a bunch of pupfish.
Macrobrachium leptodactylus) from Indonesia found once in 1888 and never since A freshwater shrimp () from Indonesia found once in 1888 and never since has been declared extinct . The area where the shrimp was discovered has been heavily developed.
This is a madtom, but not a Scioto Madtom;
image by Ellen Edmonson and Hugh Chrisp.
The Scioto Madtom (Noturus trautmani), a small catfish
known from Ohio,
. The species hasn't been found since 1957. Habitat degradation is the likely cause: runoff and increased siltation degraded the streams the madtom called home.
Two butterflies known only from South Florida, the Zestos Skipper (Epargyreus zestos oberon) and the Rockland Grass Skipper (Hesperia meskei pinocayo) are likely extinct. Habitat loss and modification are probably to blame for the extinction of these two butterflies.
Diceros bicornis longipes) was declared extinct in 2011 but for some reason it received a lot of press in late 2013. The Western Black Rhinoceros () was declared extinct in 2011 but for some reason it received a lot of press in late 2013. Here is a comprehensive breakdown of how we lost this magnificent beast
It is just unfathomable, if not unconscionable, that we are responsible for causing a single species to completely disappear from the planet forever. Yet, we continue to do so over and over again. Extinct species have no future, they are gone to us and everyone that comes after us.
Let's hope that our 2014 list is shorter than this year's. Did I leave something out? Let me know below. To learn about
species on the brink of extinction, do not miss John Platt's excellent blog:
.
Check Out The Following Scientific Article For More on Darwin's Frogs: |
1987 studio album by Eric B. & Rakim
Paid in Full is the debut album of American hip hop duo Eric B. & Rakim, released on July 7, 1987, by Island-subsidiary label 4th & B'way Records. The duo recorded the album at hip hop producer Marley Marl's home studio and Power Play Studios in New York City, following Rakim's response to Eric B.'s search for a rapper to complement his disc jockey work in 1985. The album peaked at number fifty-eight on the Billboard 200 chart and produced five singles: "Eric B. Is President", "I Ain't No Joke", "I Know You Got Soul", "Move the Crowd", and "Paid in Full".
Paid in Full is credited as a benchmark album of golden age hip hop. Rakim's rapping, which pioneered the use of internal rhymes in hip hop, set a higher standard of lyricism in the genre and served as a template for future rappers. The album's heavy sampling by Eric B. became influential in hip hop production. The record has sold over a million copies and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified it platinum in 1995. In 2003, the album was ranked number 228 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Background [ edit ]
Eric B. and Rakim met in 1985 after Eric B. looked for a rapper to complement his turntable work at the New York City radio station WBLS.[2] After Rakim responded to Eric B.'s search for "New York's top MC",[3] Eric B.'s friend and roommate Marley Marl allowed him to use his home studio. The first track they recorded, "Eric B. Is President", was released as a single on the independent Zakia Records in 1986. After Def Jam Recordings founder Russell Simmons heard the single, the duo were signed to Island Records and began recording the album in Manhattan's Power Play Studios in early 1987.[3] Rakim wrote his songs in approximately one hour while listening to the beat. He then recorded his vocals in the booth by reading his lyrics from a paper. In 2006, Rakim revealed, "When I hear my first album today I hear myself reading my rhymes but I'm my worst critic."[4] The duo completed the album in one week. They have said that they worked in 48-hour shifts and recorded in single takes to complete the album within budget.[5] In a 2008 interview with AllHipHop, Eric B. stated, "[T]o sit here and say we put together this calculated album to be a great album would be a lie. We were just doing records that felt good."[6]
The album's success led to a contract with Uni Records and MCA Records, where they released their second album, Follow the Leader (1988).[7] Eric B. and Rakim are credited as officially producing Paid in Full. Although Marley Marl claimed to have produced two tracks ("My Melody" and "Eric B. Is President"[8]), Eric B. has argued that Marley Marl was only an engineer.[6] In 2003, Eric B. alleged the duo had not been fully paid for their work, and filed a lawsuit against the Island Def Jam Music Group, Lyor Cohen, and Russell Simmons.[9]
The album cover featured a photo of Eric B. and Rakim wearing custom-made Gucci "knock-ups" by Harlem tailor Dapper Dan.[10]
Music [ edit ]
Rakim's rhyming deviated from the simple rhyme patterns of early 1980s hip hop. His free-rhythm style ignored bar lines and had earned comparisons to Thelonious Monk.[11] The New York Times' Ben Ratliff wrote that Rakim's "unblustery rapping developed the form beyond the flat-footed rhythms of schoolyard rhymes".[12] While many rappers developed their technique through improvisation, Rakim was one of the first to demonstrate advantages of a writerly style, as with for instance his pioneering use of internal rhyme.[13] Unlike previous rappers such as LL Cool J and Run-D.M.C. who delivered their vocals with high energy, Rakim employed a relaxed, stoic delivery.[3][14] According to MTV, "We'd been used to MCs like Run and DMC, Chuck D and KRS-One leaping on the mic shouting with energy and irreverence, but Rakim took a methodical approach to his microphone fiending. He had a slow flow, and every line was blunt, mesmeric."[15] Rakim's relaxed delivery resulted from his jazz influences; he had played the saxophone and was a John Coltrane fan.[8][11][16][17] His subject matter often covered his own rapping skills and lyrical superiority over other rappers.[18][19]
AllMusic editor Steve Huey characterized Rakim for his "complex internal rhymes, literate imagery, velvet-smooth flow, and unpredictable, off-the-beat rhythms."[20] Pitchfork writer Jess Harvell described his rapping as "authoritative, burnished, [and] possessing an unflappable sense of rhythm".[19] Paid in Full, which contains gritty, heavy, and dark beats,[21] marked the beginning of heavy sampling in hip hop records.[12] Of the album's ten tracks, three are instrumentals.[22] As a disc jockey, Eric B. had reinstated the art of live turntable mixing.[8] His soul-filled sampling became influential in future hip hop production.[15] Music critic Robert Christgau noted that Eric B. had incorporated "touches of horn or whistle deep in the mix" of his sampled percussion and scratches.[23]
Singles [ edit ]
"Eric B. Is President" was released as the first single with "My Melody" as the B-side.[11] It peaked at number 48 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks and number forty on the Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales.[24] The track sparked debate on the legality of unauthorized sampling when James Brown sued to prevent the duo's use of his music.[25] PopMatters' Mark Anthony Neal called it "the most danceable hip-hop recording" of 1986.[26] According to Touré of The New York Times, "It is Rakim's verbal dexterity as well as his calm, deep voice and dark tone that has made this song a rap classic: 'I came in the door/ I said it before/ I'll never let the mic magnetize me no more/ But it's bitin' me/ Fightin' me/ Invitin' me to rhyme/ I can't hold it back/ I'm looking for the line/ Takin' off my coat/ Clearin' my throat/ The rhyme will be kickin' it/ Til I hit my last note.'"[27] The second single, "I Ain't No Joke", peaked at number 38 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks.[24] Described as one of the album's "monumental singles",[28] Michael Di Bella wrote in the All Music Guide to Rock that "Rakim grabs the listener by the throat and illustrates his mastery of the rhyming craft".[7]
The third single, "I Know You Got Soul", peaked at number 39 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart, number 34 on the Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales, and number 64 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks.[24] The track's production contains "digitized cymbal crashes, breathing sounds, and a bumping bass line."[29] The song popularized James Brown samples in hip hop songs.[30] The British band M|A|R|R|S sampled the line, "Pump up the volume", on their number one UK single, "Pump Up the Volume".[31] Rolling Stone ranked it at number 386 on "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".[32] The fourth single, "Move the Crowd", peaked at number three on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart and number 25 on the Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales.[24] The track's B-side, "Paid in Full", was released as a single in 1987 and later remixed by the production duo Coldcut. The remix used several vocal samples, most prominently "Im Nin'Alu" by Israeli singer Ofra Haza.[31] In 2008, the song was ranked at number 24 on VH1's "100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs".[33]
Reception and influence [ edit ]
In a contemporary review for The Washington Post, Mark Jenkins highlighted the single "Eric B. Is President" but was unimpressed by the rest of Paid in Full: "Its beats are monotonous, and the attempts to take 'jazz and the quiet storm' and 'convert into hip-hop form' fall flat."[41] Robert Christgau from The Village Voice said it has "four groundbreaking masterworks" in "I Ain't No Joke", "I Know You Got Soul", "Paid in Full", and "Eric B. Is President", but was less enthusiastic about the other six songs: "They're pure, innovative, in-your-face—no doubt. But they're also turntablism with spoken decoration, of small use to anyone who hasn't internalized the 'real' hip hop aesthetic."[42] In the newspaper's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll, it was named the 27th best album of 1987.[43]
Paid in Full was released during what became known as the golden age hip hop era.[44] In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Sasha Frere-Jones called it "one of hip-hop's perfect records",[38] while Alex Ogg considered it to be the duo's magnum opus in his book The Men Behind Def Jam.[3] Rakim's rapping on the album set a blueprint for future rappers and helped secure East Coast hip hop's reputation for innovative lyrical technique.[13][45] Author William Cobb stated in To the Break of Dawn that his rapping had "stepped outside" of the preceding era of old school hip hop and that while the vocabulary and lyrical dexterity of newer rappers had improved, it was "nowhere near what Rakim introduced to the genre".[44] The New York Times' Dimitri Ehrlich, who described the album as "an artistic and commercial benchmark", credited Rakim for helping "give birth to a musical genre" and leading "a quiet musical revolution, introducing a soft-spoken rapping style".[46] Allmusic's Steve Huey declared Paid in Full one of hip-hop's most influential albums and "essential listening" for those interested in the genre's "basic musical foundations".[20] MTV ranked it at number one in "The Greatest Hip-Hop Albums of All Time", stating it raised the standards of hip-hop "both sonically and poetically" and described it as "captivating, profound, innovative and instantly influential".[15] The album is broken down track-by-track by Rakim in Brian Coleman's book Check the Technique.[47]
In 2003, Rolling Stone listed Paid in Full at number 228 on "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", calling it "Ice-grilled, laid-back, diamond-sharp: Rakim is a front-runner in the race for Best Rapper Ever, and this album is a big reason why."[48] Similarly, Blender magazine included the album in its "500 CDs You Must Own Before You Die".[49] Time magazine listed it as one of the eighteen albums of the 1980s in its "All-TIME 100" albums; editor Alan Light acknowledged the record changed the "sound, flow, and potential" of hip hop and that if Rakim is "the greatest MC of all time, as many argue, this album is the evidence".[14] Jess Harvell of Pitchfork complimented Rakim for an "endless display of pure skill" and described the album as "laidback and funky", but believed it contained "too much filler to get a free 'classic' pass".[19] Pitchfork placed Paid in Full at number fifty-two in its "Top 100 Albums of the 1980s"; editor Sam Chennault wrote that Rakim inspired a generation of MCs and "defined what it meant to be a hip-hop lyricist".[50] Slant Magazine listed the album at #32 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s" saying "For his part, Rakim didn't need to rely on macho jargon and trite gangsterisms for his self-aggrandizing sermons; he would simply reel off line after line of spellbinding wordplay, influencing an entire decade of tongue-twisting MCs in the process."[51]
Rakim is credited with influencing rappers including the Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and Nas,[46][52] who cited Paid in Full as one of his favorite albums.[53] 50 Cent told NME that Paid in Full was the first album he bought: "I used to get my grandmother's tape recorder – the one she used to tape church services – and record hip-hop off the radio. And, with Eric B. & Rakim, I think that was the first moment where I felt like, 'I've got to own this. This is crucial.'"[54]
On July 11, 1995, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album platinum.[55] As of December 1997, it has sold over a million copies.[46]
Track listing [ edit ]
All songs written and produced by Eric B. & Rakim.
Personnel [ edit ]
Adapted from AllMusic.[57]
Ruth Kaplan – art direction
Patrick Adams – engineer
Robert Hill – executive producer
Herb Powers – mastering
Ron Contarsy – photography
Eric B. & Rakim – producers
Marley Marl – remixing
Charts [ edit ]
Reissues [ edit ]
Region Date Label Format Catalog United States October 27, 1998 Island/PolyGram Records Double CD (Platinum Edition) Out Of Print 524 573 November 4, 2003 Island/IDJMG/Universal Records Double CD (Deluxe Edition) 986 083 April 26, 2005 Island/IDJMG/Universal Records CD (Expanded Edition) 988 042
Notes [ edit ] |
Workshop program Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013 9:30am Welcome Dan Boneh 9:45am slides] Requirements for random number generators Jesse Walker (Intel) 10:15am slides] The Challenges of Distributing Distributed Cryptography Ari Juels (RSA) 10:45am slides] iDecrypt Juan Garay (AT&T Research) 11:15am Break 11:30am slides] Cryptographic challenges in and around Tor Nick Mathewson (Tor) 12:00pm slides] Practical Anonymous Subscriptions Jon Katz (U. Maryland) 12:30pm Lunch 1:45pm slides] Instantiating Random Oracles Mihir Bellare (UCSD) 2:30pm slides] Data Privacy Models in the Payment Industry Terence Spies (Voltage) 3:00pm Break 3:15pm slides] Identity Mixer: From paper to pilots and beyond Gregory Neven (IBM Zurich) 3:45pm slides] CryptDB: Protecting Confidentiality with Encrypted Query Processing Raluca Ada Popa (MIT) 4:30pm End of day 1 Thursday, Jan. 10, 2013 9:30am slides] Mining Your Ps and Qs: Detection of Widespread Weak Keys in Network Devices Nadia Heninger (Microsoft) 10:00am slides] JavaScript Cryptography and the Case Against Crypto Reductionism Ben Adida (Mozilla) 10:30am Break 10:45am slides] Counter-cryptanalysis: analyzing Flame's new collision attack Marc Stevens (CWI) 11:30am slides] Multi Party Computation: From Theory to Practice Nigel Smart (Bristol) 12:15pm Lunch 1:45pm slides] The Evolution of Authenticated Encryption Phil Rogaway (UC.Davis) 2:30pm EMV Proposals for Key Establishment Kim Wagner (Visa) 3:00pm slides] The low-call diet: Authenticated Encryption for call counting HSM users Gaven Watson (Bristol) 3:30pm Break 3:45pm slides] HTTPS: things that bit us, things we fixed and things that are waiting in the grass Adam Langley (Google) 4:30pm Rebuilding the airplane in flight Eric Rescorla 5:00pm End of day 2 Friday, Jan. 11, 2013 9:30am slides] AES-GCM for Efficient Authenticated Encryption - Ending the Reign of HMAC-SHA-1? Shay Gueron (University of Haifa and Intel Corporation) 10:00am slides] On the Security of the TLS and DTLS Record Protocols Kenny Paterson (Royal Holloway) 10:30am slides] Enforcing honesty of certification authorities: Tagged one-time signature schemes Bertram Poettering (Royal Holloway) 11:00am Break 11:15am slides] The Difference Between a Killer Deal and a Deal Killer Markus Jakobsson (PayPal) 12:00pm Lunch 1:15pm slides] Transparency, Trust Agility, Pinning: Recent Developments in Server Authentication Trevor Perrin (Consultant) 2:00pm slides] Real world SSL: the most dangerous code in the world Dan Boneh (Stanford) 2:30pm slides] How much crypto in one microJoule? Ingrid Verbauwhede (UCLA) 3:00pm Break 3:15pm slides] Exploiting weak randomness in web applications Aggelos Kiayias (U.Conn) 3:45pm slides] Message-locked Encryption and Secure Deduplication Tom Ristenpart (U.W.Madison) 4:15pm Workshop end |
By Locoghoul
Hello, we have all wished we were Gym Leaders at some point, haven’t we? You probably have a favorite type and collect a lot of Pokemon of that type. Well, if you are one of the many trainers interested in creating a team based on your favorite type, then Monotype is a metagame you might want to look into.
Monotype is a format in which all six Pokemon on your team share one type. There are no wildcards allowed, and depending on where you are playing there are additional rules regarding Mega evolution typing. This article will try to cover some basics and give a quick overview of the most used types in Mono. At PRL we host auditions to choose for new Gym Leaders on a seasonal basis. Hopefully you can use this information to build a unique team of your own!
First of all, in order for you to start building your own team, you need to realize that the best types are the ones that have a wider pool of useful pokemon. Typically these types can be successful with different team archetypes and have great defensive and offensive cores. Some types, due to limited pokemon availability or because of poor options, are only capable of playing in a certain style.
I’ll give you a quick overview on the most used types and the archetypes you can use with them. In the coming months, we at PRL will be using this blog as a forum to post guides to each type; for now, a quick gloss will suffice…
Psychic: The best type right now. Can run stall, balanced and offensive spreads pretty well, although a balanced team is probably the best option at the moment. Very well rounded.
Flying: Close second. It also has access to a great diversity of Pokemon due to flying nearly always being paired with another type. It is most effective running balanced and offensive teams.
Water: A favorite of many, water has the largest pool of Pokemon from which to choose. Unsurprisingly, it can run stall, balance and offense (especially rain offense) very well. Lots of options here.
Fighting: Most effectively used as an offensive type. Doesn’t have as much variety as the previous types but has plenty of offensive options to make an effective team.
Dragon: Surprisingly good because of its resistances and great offensive stats. Not a lot of variety, most Pokemon fill a specific role and there is not much to choose from but its typical build works very well as a hyper offensive team.
The above mentioned types are more user friendly when it comes to team building and should be easier to use than others. On the other spectrum the least used types are as follows:
Electric: Electric can run a successful balance team but it struggles versus Dragons and specially bulky mons in general, such as Chansey, Umbreon, Goodra, etc. It lacks a good physical attacker and often times a physical Thundurus-I (or mixed) is needed to make it work.
Poison: Similar to Electric, Poison can only run balance but Poison has less viable Pokemon to choose from. It really struggles against defensive teams since it lacks good wallbreakers.
Ghost: Ghost is typically used as balance or semi stall. But to be honest, the ubiquity of Knock Off in the meta makes this type really hard to play. It also doesn’t have much variety to choose from and lacks switch-ins to powerful special attackers such as M-Gardevoir or Thundurus-I.
Ice: Poor Ice types have one of the worst defensive typings, with four common weaknesses and only a lone resistance to themselves. The only thing Ice can run is offense because Ice offensively is a good attacking type and has a few mons with nice dual typing like Weavile and Kyurem-B. However, ice types are often glass cannons, meaning they rely heavily on their offensive stats and moves to win. Just remember you must apply constant offensive pressure or you will lose.
Rock: Like Ice, Rock is also better for offense since its typing is easily exploitable. The standard Sticky Web offense is a good team to start with but should still be careful if there is a Scizor or a Keldeo on the opposing team.
Now that we have reviewed a few archetypes, I will guide you through building a team based on what we know so far. For example, monofighting is a good offensive type but it struggles if you were to use a balanced or a stall team using fighting Pokemon. Despite having great Pokemon, it just doesn’t have the right resistances or defensive stats to pull it off. However, it possesses everything you need to build a really good offensive team. Note that you can always build how you want, but this guide will point at you how to maximize the effectiveness of each type. Building a stall fighting team, for example will result on a subpar team.
Second of all, once you decide on a team archetype for your favorite type, you need to choose Pokemon that will fill certain roles in your team. Even though you are using a team with all members sharing one type, you can’t just spam a bunch of your favorite pokemon together. You need to find what your teams need and how to check offensive threats. Continuing with the example above, let’s pretend we are building a hyper offensive fighting (HO) team. Since it is HO, we don’t really need walls but we definitely need one support pokemon that may act as a bulky pivot or rock setter or both. Most, if not all offensive teams really appreciate the presence of Stealth Rock and hazards in general. It helps them getting OHKOs rather than 2HKOs or relying on high roll damage. Only a few viable fighting pokemon learn Stealth Rock; among them we have Terrakion, Cobalion and Infernape. Terrakion is a great pokemon but we don’t really want him to be the stealth rocker (more on this later), so we are left with Cobalion and Infernape. Both have the same speed and both could be decent leads. We will come back to see which one fits better after we go through other roles.
We now need a special attacker, a physical threat and possibly a scarfer. The purpose of having attackers on both sides of the spectrum is to force switches and not to be walled by one pokemon, like Skarmory. Remember we are using HO, so switching is very limited and most of our pokemon don’t have the bulk to take hits repeatedly. So, the way to counter stuff is to play aggressively, control the momentum, sacrifice stuff (sac) and revenge kill. Let’s look at the special attackers fighting has: Keldeo, Infernape (can be mixed), Lucario (can be mixed), Cobalion (can be mixed), Virizion (can be mixed) and Poliwrath. Right from the bat we are going to discard Poliwrath as its stats are just underwhelming. Moreover, it is completely outclassed by Keldeo who does almost everything Poliwrath does but better. Since Fighting have a lot of physical options, it is better to just stick to one or two special attackers at the most since Fighting will typically have better options on the physical side. We will pick Keldeo as our special attacker because it has great coverage with just its STABs, his great speed tier and his ability to muscle through special walls using Secret Sword. Notice that Cobalion and Virizion are not great options because they need to boost to do significant damage. Lucario is a decent option but it lacks good speed to fit in our HO team. A Nasty Plot set could be used but it will have a hard time finding an opportunity to set up with those defenses.
Now on the physical side we want a combination that will break walls aka hit really hard and a cleaner that will finish the job late game. For wallbreakers we could use either a banded pokemon like Heracross or Terrakion or we could use a Mega such as Mega Gallade or Mega Medicham. Both are good megas to use, however we are going to choose Mega Medicham because it fits with our role better, it hits like a nuke, has priority and can help versus fairies in a pinch better (Fake Out + Bullet Punch). If you decide to use Mega Gallade, notice that it is used in a different way, it is meant to use as a set up sweeper instead. So, you will need a wallbreaker to pair with it. Again, both choices are acceptable but we are just going with Mega Medicham for our team. Now that we have locked our Mega and our wallbreaker, let’s think of potential cleaners for our team. Remember we want something fast that will hit hard enough to not fail to KO once the opponent’s pokemon are weakened. Decent options are scarf Keldeo, scarf Terrakion, SD Hawlucha or SD Breloom. Although scarf Keldeo is not a bad option, we are using it in our team to nuke on the special side so a Specs set will work better for our purposes. SD Breloom is a great pokemon, however it is very slow and its priority move, while strong, can be resisted easily by many types we are trying to overcome. Instead, we are going to choose scarf Terrakion because it helps us greatly versus +1 pokemon that sit on the 100 speed tier such as Charizard X, scarf/DD Salamence, scarf Staraptor, scarf Jirachi and anything slower like +1 Dragonite. It also gives us an offensive check to fast Flying pokemon that could potentially sweep our team like M-Pidgeot, scarf Togekiss, scarf Staraptor, Talonflame, Tornadus-T, etc.
So far we have a special attacker (Specs Keldeo), a physical threat (Mega Medicham) and revenge killer/cleaner (scarf Terrakion). What we are looking for now is a set up sweeper in case the opportunity arises. This will be our primary win condition (wincon), scarf Terrakion being our second wincon in case everything is weakened enough. For this set up sweeper we need something that will have good coverage and will have the speed to potentially sweep the opposing team. As options we have SD Lucario, SD Hawlucha, SD Toxicroak, SD Breloom and Nasty Plot/SD Infernape. Infernape doesn’t really work well as set up sweeper because it unfortunately lacks the coverage necessary to sweep consistently. A lot of common pokemon will wall him or resist its priority moves (like Latios or Slowbro). Infernape is better used as a mixed attacker hitting from both ends. SD Lucario could work really well but again it is hard to find a moment to set up with him and not get status or crippled by a hard hitting move. You can consider him but be aware of its limitations. A +2 Close Combat will go through almost anything unresisted though. For this team we will use Hawlucha since its speed tier is greatly appreciated and its STABs also give great coverage. Notice that before activating Unburden its checks must be weakened (like Zapdos), otherwise its sweep will be stopped.
This is where we go back to our stealth rocker. Remember we had the choice of Infernape or Cobalion. If you look at our team the steel typing Cobalion has will come in handy to take unboosted Psychics, Flying type attacks or weak Fairy attacks. A bulky spread with speed investment can guarantee Stealth Rocks will be on the field. Additionally, it has great moves like Volt Switch, Taunt, Thunderwave, Flash Cannon, Iron Head, etc. This pokemon will be our defensive check to a lot of pokemon like Scarf Jirachi, Clefable, Mega Pinsir, Togekiss, etc. Even when it will be go down most of the times, paralyzing Jirachi or Tornadus-T can be huge for this offensive team.
To recap we have so far Lead/support Cobalion, specs Keldeo, scarf Terrakion, SD Hawlucha and Mega Medicham. The last slot can be used to give us better coverage and it is entirely up to you. Think about what could cause problems to Fighting (Psychic, Flying and Fairy) and if your team needs extra help against one of these. One common threat you will encounter is Azumarill. You need to have an answer to this pokemon or you will have a bad time since its strong priority compensates for its speed and its good typing allows it to wall and set up on many of your pokemon. If your sets don’t have something against him I’d recommend using either Sheer Force Poison Jab Conkeldurr (EVed to outspeed Azumarill) or Technician Breloom. Breloom will add some priority and help you versus Azumarill while Conkeldurr will give you a decent answer to slow, bulky fairies like Clefable or Azumarill.
So this is where our little tutorial on how to identify what works for a type and how to build based on it comes to an end. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something from it. Fighting type has plenty of options so this is by no means the only team you could use. Just remember to pair your role pokemon well, since you would still try to ideally open the field for one of your wincons.
Advertisements |
SHERWOOD, Ore. Tyler Boggs is into sustainable farming and he also takes in animals when others can't care for them.
Now, Boggs is also wearing a sidearm because of death threats posted on Facebook that include pictures of hangings and promises to destroy his Heart 2 Heart farm. Even People as far away as the United Kingdom were posting threatening comments to Boggs on social media.
The apparent reason?
Boggs offered a piglet up for adoption on his farm's Facebook page.
The posts accuse Boggs of ruthlessly tearing the little piglet away from its mother.
Boggs says the reality is that the piglet was the runt of its litter. Runts often die a slow wasting death, unable to compete with their siblings for food from its mother which is why Boggs wanted to help the little piglet.
"Absolutely they don't understand," says Boggs, "There are many things that people don't understand because they've never lived on a farm."
The irony is the farm Boggs runs; "Heart 2 Heart" prides itself on raising animals humanely and naturally.
Tracy Massey lets her son volunteer and stay weekends at the farm.
"But hearing stuff like that scares me for his safety, being out here," says Massey with tears running down her cheeks, "You know, it kind of made me stop to think is it safe to bring him out here."
KATU News found the adopted piglet at its new home in Dayton.
Sophie Foley's family named it Lucy.
The family makes sure the piglet gets enough milk to survive.
Foley can't believe Facebook hasn't blocked the death threats and other harassing posts.
"I think it's cyber bullying at its finest," Foley says.
KATU News sent a message to Facebook asking if the company is aware of the farm's complaints about the threating posts and what it might do about them. Facebook hadn't replied by late Friday night. |
The UK government was found guilty by the Court of Appeal yesterday of using it’s Back to Work programmes to procure forced labour for corporations, at the cost of the tax payer. Its response was to rewrite the regulations that same afternoon and declare the programmes legal. This ignorance of the law is just one in a chain of worrying examples of power usurping law in 21st century Britain.
Taxpayer Funded Forced Labour Anyone?
I won’t retell the story of workfare and the court case here, but for the background please see yesterday’s post. What concerns us now is the government’s reaction. The verdict, while on narrow grounds stated that:
a) All workfare programmes other than the Mandatory Work Activity scheme were quashed.
b) As of yesterday, all people on such schemes could leave freely, without sanction
c) All who had faced sanction as a result of refusing such schemes were entitled to full reimbursement of withdrawn benefits.
The government’s response was sheer truculence.
Mark Hoban MP, Minister for Employment at the Department of Work and Pensions, stated in his response to the ruling:
“We are seeking permission to appeal against the Court of Appeal’s judgment and, if permission is granted, we will take our case to the Supreme Court. As we are currently seeking permission to appeal, claimants who have already served a sanction will not be able to appeal on the basis of the Court’s decision until our appeal is heard.
We are considering a range of options to ensure we do not have to repay these sanctions. Today we intend to lay new regulations which will come into force immediately and enable us to continue to refer Jobseekers Allowance claimants to our employment schemes and to provide the best chance for people to find employment.”
True to his word the department did rewrite the regulations by mid afternoon and presented them to parliament for approval the same day.
While the court says the schemes are illegal, all people subject to them are free to leave and all those who’ve had their benefits withdrawn are entitled to recompense – the government simply says no.
If an ordinary person committed actions at work which led to our organisation being taken to court and found guilty we would find ourselves not only out of a job, but potentially facing criminal charges ourselves. Meanwhile, a government minister responsible for the same is permitted the platform to make such counter jurisprudence statements.
This should be deeply worrying to anyone with the faintest interest in justice, freedom and fairness. Sadly, it seems part of a growing trend of one rule for the plebs, and quite another for the powerful.
Taxes Are For the Little People
“We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes”
These apparently were the words uttered by so called ‘Queen of Mean’ business woman Leona Helmsley as her long suffering house keeper testified against her for tax evasion. Taking a look at the way tax rules are designed and applied, this may well be a case of ‘never a truer word spoken’.
Recent work by campaign groups such as UK Uncut, the Public Accounts Committee (a House of Commons select committee of MPs charged with ensuring value for money for the tax payer) and brave whistleblowers like Osita Mba has demonstrated that in tax law, it is truly one rule for the powerful and another for the plebs.
The case of Osita Mba is a metaphor for the whole scam. Ostia Mba, whilst working as a tax solicitor at the HMRC (the organisation responsible for ensuring proper tax contributions by persons and corporations) discovered HMRC Chief Executive Dave Hartnett made an off the books sweetheart deal with Goldman Sachs. The deal, made over coffee, saw Hartnett unilaterally relieve Goldman Sachs of their legal obligation to pay £10m of interest on back taxes they’d aggressively avoided paying for five years. Mba wrote to Amyas Morse, the auditor general of the National Audit Office, in March 2011 outlining his concerns over the deal. In response, The HMRC immediately suspended Mr Mba and referred him and his wife’s details to its Criminal Investigations Unit. Mba was not allowed to return to his office to work for over a year and now faced the possibility of sacking or criminal prosecution. This is how the HMRC treat an employee who seeks to ensure that corporations follow the tax rules.
So how did they treat Dave Hartnett, the Chief Executive who rather than recouping due taxes took corporate hospitality and offered sweetheart deals? Despite this clear breach of his duties, and several shambolic appearances before the Public Accounts Committee, he was not forced to resign but allowed to retire with a £1.7m pension pot. He has since taken up a position with recently convicted money launderers HSBC as part of its new anti tax avoidance division. You could not make it up.
In January this year, a session of the Public Accounts Committee made breathtaking viewing. It revealed a sinister collaboration between the HMRC and private interests. It was discovered that companies who were involved in proceedings with the HMRC, that is those companies refusing to pay due taxes, were simultaneously sitting on working groups with the HMRC drafting tax legislation. Furthermore, accountancy firms brought in to support HMRC creating tax rules were publicising this role in their advertising; the firms were responsible for drafting tax breaks, then advising clients to exploit these tax breaks to the maximum. None of these predatory accountancy firms have been taken to court for their role in this tax evasion epidemic.
Contrast this with the way ordinary people on PAYE are treated by the HMRC. Far from being invited in to consult on tax policy, the PAYE tax payer is treated with constant suspicion and brutal repercussions if found to underpay even the most modest sums. To take one example, in 2010 the HMRC discovered it had made a massive PAYE blunder; 4.3 million people were found to have overpaid, 1.4 million people had underpaid , through no fault of their own. The HMRC issued warning letters to all those who had underpaid due the HMRC’s own IT failure, and mandated immediate repayment of the taxes due. This meant some of the poorest in the land receiving up to £3000 tax bills for immediate repayment under threat of sanction.
It is plain to see that went it comes to tax; it is designed by corporations, avoided by corporations, forcibly taken from plebs, and diverted to the powerful.
Fraud by any Other Name, is Still Fraud
On top of this are a whole sea of recent crimes by financial institutions which have met with nothing more than fines, with no one held personally responsible for the crimes. Meanwhile the plebs face swift and uncompromising justice. This leads one to the inescapable conclusion that if you are in jail for theft, you simply didn’t steal enough. If you are in jail for fraud, your lie was not big enough.
When almost the entire banking sector was found to be guilty of deliberately rigging the base interest rate (LIBOR) to maximise their profits (estimated at up to $850 trillion), with the impact of lowering the values of pensions and saving – they got a fine and no one went to prison. When HSBC was found guilty of setting up a whole subsidiary bank in order to launder over $7bn for Mexican drug cartels and making illegal transactions with Iran (breaking US sanctions) – it received a fine worth only a tenth of its annual profit and no one went to prison. When the entire banking sector required a taxpayer bailout or bankruptcy after clearly fraudulent derivatives trading, resulting directly in what looks to be at least a decade of austerity policies for the taxpayer – no one got a fine, no one went to jail, and no one lost their job for their role in the crash.
In the meantime, a 27 year old mum from Stoke on Trent was jailed for 12 months for illegally claiming £38,000 in child tax credits. The owner of a launderette found guilty of money laundering and VAT fraud of £750k went to prison and lost his business. Two property fraudsters who took out fraudulent property loans in Allied Irish Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland received 12 years on prison for their crimes. These three crimes are substantively no different from the crimes of the banks above, only committed by isolated individuals who were not part of criminal networks and for a much smaller value.
Living in a Lawless Land
“Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
The breakdown of law and order such that the worst offenders are able to avoid its reaches based on personal wealth or political power is an existential threat to our society. The collaboration between corporate interests and government to redraft laws so as to make legal their destructive practices is to make an ass of the law. Corruption is bad; but legalised, institutionalised corruption is worse. Corruption so deep that it is ceased to be defined as corruption, but simply the way things are done poisons the well of our democracy. Our institutions have created a two tier legal system, and they are busy extending the breadth of their protection. If we cannot have justice, we cannot have social justice. It simply cannot be one rule for the powerful, and another for the plebs.
Take Action
You don’t have to just sit there and feel angry about all this. You can choose to channel that anger into a constructive reply to those destroying our legal system. Below are links to campaigns of interest which you can link up with and be part of the change. It is not hopeless, unless we choose to give up hope. We need you.
UKUncut – stage demonstrations and legal challenges to highlight corporate tax avoiders.
Boycott Workfare – making the stand against workfare
Tax Justice Network – excellent information on tax affairs |
Virtus.pro are struggling, but they've made some internal changes lately to try and remedy the situation. Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas has taken over Janusz "Snax" Pogorzelski's duties as IGL and will try to lead his team to their former glory as they attend EPICENTER in St. Petersburg next weekend.
To gauge the team's spirits before the tournament, we caught up with VP's current IGL, where we also discussed if FaZe Clan are unbeatable and if not -- how do you stop them; how does TaZ feel about the recent balance attempts by Valve; and what's the most important component of winning.
* * *
This particular group has been together longer than pretty much any other CSGO team, and while a lot of people outside VP are calling for changes to the roster, you guys have always stayed true to continuity and loyalty. Why is that?
I’d say that it’s what people call “experience”. Three of us went through some ups and downs. To come to this place, during all the years, we learned that only hard work and true dedication can bring success.
This team has all the ingredients that are needed to achieve greatness, changes won’t make this team better, unless someone feels burned out. You truly need to enjoy the game, have fun, be natural. If you are here for the money only, well, get ready for a short career, because you won’t have the balls to go through tough times and losses.
Other legends like SK Gaming and Astralis are slumping too, do you see any particular reasons for that? [The interview was conducted before Astralis' 2nd place finish at ELEAGUE -- Ed.]
I don’t see SK or Astralis slumping, they lose some games in deep runs of the events. I’d still say that the main reason for slumping is overconfidence or lack of motivation. First you are confident and winning, then when you lose you either show resilience or you go down like a fly. The thing is, our team showed through all the years that we are more like phoenix then fly, we were always able to rebound, and this time won’t be different. Mindset is the key, that’s why there are so few true champions.
On the other hand, why do you think teams like Team Liquid are trending up?
Definitely other teams are getting better and better, yet these are still the same people that were competing one or two years ago. In my opinion, CS:GO is a game where if you are talented it is easier for you to start/show up than to hold to your level for a longer time. To put it frankly, ballsy and often stupid plays pay more in CS:GO. With time, you make some mistakes, and your game will change to more structured, and this is the moment where you start being predictable, and your level might dip a bit down.
Do you feel like FaZe Clan, with their new roster, plays with a certain amount of disrespect because of their skill level?
No, I think that people have wrong approach towards their team. This is the kind of respect that people always paid to the best players in CS 1.6 like NEO or f0rest, when you played vs. these guys, in your head you already felt it will be a hard game, so a couple of nice plays and they are in your head for good. These are normal players, with their strong sides and weak sides. Find and expose these, and those players won’t have the same impact in your head.
That’s how I see it, I don’t believe that they have the five best players in the world. I really like what they have in FaZe, strong leader, great coach and all the cast around it, but the level in CS is very high nowadays, the skill level is very close. I do think that CS:GO is about attitude: either you believe you can win a duel, or you die. You win some, you lose some, that’s why games on high level tend to have close results.
Is their current form sustainable in your opinion? What do you think is the key to beating a team like FaZe?
Play smart, play your game, if you are good enough you will get your wins. In the end, most of the high level games come to couple plays that turn the game, these plays are called “ the confidence plays”, either you do a move and win your team a game or you fail. FaZe at the moment are getting these plays, left and right. They are probably closest to Fnatic from 2015/2016, it takes time to change your attitude and approach towards a team that is feeling it.
Photo by: PGL Flickr.com
VP is a family. Not only is that the team’s driving philosophy, but a lot of VP players are a little older and have actual families, unlike most esports teams with younger cores. You’ve got a wife and a baby to take care of now, does that change the equation as far as how much longer you want to play this game?
Yeah, it changes. I want to play the game more, I’m motivated more. I’m more confident in why I’m doing this.
The best part is that for me, it’s back to the roots. When I was younger I had two reasons to play: fun and survival. People say money, salary etc., or that I don’t have the same drive anymore, but they don’t know anything about my drive, they see statistics, they don’t see behind the scene. I've made some bad decisions in the past, but some good ones too, and I believe the best is still ahead of us.
Just recently you took over Snax’s duties as IGL on Virtus.pro. How did you, as a team, decide to put you on that role instead of giving it back to someone like NEO, who was also IGL at one point? What was the internal thought process like?
Going back couple months, Neo wanted a break from the IGL role, so me and Snax had a talk. He wanted to try the role, and knew that it can take some time before everyone will feel comfortable. Sometimes even if you really want it, things don’t click at the snap of your fingers.
How do you think the team will change moving forward with you as IGL? What are you looking to achieve first and foremost on the way back to the top?
Let’s talk about this, when we’re back on top.
Photo by: PGL Flickr.com
Valve has made a concerted effort to rebalance pistols, many of which like the Tec-9 were overpowered for a long time. What are your thoughts on these new changes?
I like the changes, I like that Valve put constant effort to balance CS:GO, no matter if they do things better in our minds or worse. As long as they are trying to improve, we will keep on adapting and this will keep the game interesting.
You’ve talked a lot about how the AWP is too powerful. Why would it make the game better to have a weaker AWP? What are your ideal nerfs to the AWP?
Haha, I just don’t use the AWP, and I don’t like games when you feel your game but one shot in the body or leg makes your rounds total hell. (laughs) We have three guys who can use this weapon on a high level, so I don’t see a reason to pick it up too.
Do you think the M4A1-S needs a buff? Maybe by bumping up its reserve ammo?
It’s hard to talk about a buff, at the moment it feels like both M4s are balanced. M4A1-S is better for certain spots, and M4A4 is better for others. It's also playstyle dependent in my opinion.
What are your overall thoughts on the current CSGO meta? Anything you’d ask Valve to change?
Give us rings/medals/anything like that for winning a Major. Give us The International, do more for the community, we need people who play CS:GO on a daily basis to enjoy the game more, to have something to play for. Like in League of Legends they have the ranking, page etc. They can compare to each other, and the same goes for Dota2. We need this in CS:GO too, 128 ticrate MM servers! Ohhh and goooo China! Happy to have CS:GO there!
Photo by: PGL Flickr.com
Obviously, you guys want to win and believe you can win at the highest level still, but are you starting to at least think about the next step after pro CS yet?
I know that the next steps are very important in the life after pro gaming, and I have that in mind, yet my 100 percent focus is on getting back to the top. Topic for another time!
What are your opinions on the young, up-and-coming talent in the Polish scene? A lot of fans have already anointed MICHU as the savior of Polish CS.
I really love that we have so many talented players in our scene. In the past it wasn’t the case, but now it feels like there are at least three other teams from Poland who can compete on high level with a small push (Team Kinguin, AGO Esports, Pride Gaming). I cheer for them every time I see them compete, and I hope that we will be seeing more Polish teams at international LANs. This would be huge for our community, and all the youngsters who dream about going pro. Let’s hope that our scene doesn’t need saving, just yet. Still, I believe Michu is a great player, and he can bring Kinguin to another level. |
ELLSWORTH, Maine, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Police in Maine said a small dog was to blame for driving its owners pickup truck into a lake by knocking the vehicle out of gear.
The Ellsworth Police Department said the Yorkie's owner had been walking the dog around Branch Lake Saturday afternoon and he put the canine back into his pickup truck while it was idling.
Lt. Harold Page told the Ellsworth American the dog "knocked the truck out of gear and it rolled down the parking lot into the lake."
The Ellsworth Police Department said in a Facebook post the dog was rescued from the submerged pickup by a woman who is a friend of the owner.
"The truck was fully submerged and without the quick response of the family friend the man would have lost his companion. She is a hero in my book," the post said.
Police said the pickup was fished out of the lake by a towing crew, but the vehicle was considered a total loss. |
Helena Bonham Carter, Mindy Kaling, Rihanna and Awkwafina also are joining the ensemble heist film, dubbed 'Oceans Ocho.'
Warner Bros is moving forward with its all-female spinoff of Oceans Eleven, this time dubbed Oceans Ocho, and has filled seven of the eight titular spots, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett -- both of whom have been long rumored to star in the movie -- will head up the cast of the Gary Ross-helmed heist film that is scheduled to begin production in October in New York.
Like the Oceans Eleven films, the rest of the ensemble is stacked with major stars including Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter. Mindy Kaling also is joining the cast, with music stars Rihanna (Battleship) and Awkwafina (Neighbors 2) rounding out the group.
Ocean’s Eleven director Steven Soderbergh, who is based in New York and is expected to be deeply involved with the spinoff -- perhaps taking on a below-the-line job like he has done on other studio films like Magic Mike XXL -- is producing solo (Oceans Eleven producer Jerry Weintraub passed away last year). Olivia Milch and Ross wrote the screenplay. The plan is for Soderbergh to finish shooting his own heist film Logan Lucky in Atlanta before seguing to the Oceans spinoff.
The prospect of launching an all-female spinoff of a beloved franchise is risky move given that a similar all-female spinoff of Sony's Ghostbusters failed to ignite at the box office in a way that justified the film's $150 million budget. Ghostbusters will result in a $70 million write-down for Sony. However, Warner Bros. plans to keep its Oceans Ocho budget much smaller considering that it wouldn't call for the level of special effects that Ghostbusters required.
Susan Ekins is executive producing. Greg Silverman and Jesse Ehrman are shepherding the film for the studio. |
Andrew Mackay sure has a way of telling the story that Joy Attwood gave him. He has you wondering if this next book is worth Joy interviewing the Russian Model Oksana Volkov. It starts out sketchy with a young boy answering the door and having Joy follow him up to their flat. It is an open concept with open being the main word. Now this Oksana is not only a high end model, she is a mother of a 6 year old boy, Johnny and an artists. She has very strange ways of handling things. Here in America it would come under child abuse. But she clearly loves her son and would kill for him.
As Joy is getting to know her new subject, a man bursts into the room all strong up and acting very "way out there". Joy wonders if her is high on drugs or is this really him. He has the task of driving Johnny to school. Oksana tells Joy that they are going with them and be dropped off at their first destination. Ya!
As the day goes on, Joy finds this women very gorgeous, but very strange at the same time. The work out, head to a photo shoot where Joy is to take part in. Okay, I can do that Joy thought. But what she has to do is xxx rated and Oksana has to remind her that they are getting paid a Lot of money to do this. But when it goes a little farther, Joy flat out refuses, until Oksana persuades her to do it. Talk about of your comfort zone!
They have a big job latter in the afternoon. Oksana is to model of the very very high end Synapse/Vladychestvo. The fashion show is to show off their Spring line, and the models are wearing just that, a line. There are all kind of shapes and sizes to model. The whole setup was weird and the runway looked like a tongue, weird.
Well things went down hill from there. there is overdose, fire, explosion, fast getaway and so much more. Joy just couldn't end it there, nooo, she had to find out what Oskana and Alex was going to that night, Big Mistake!
Andrew and Joy had me at the end of my seat most of the time. You know, you really wonder if this happens in the Modeling world? I wouldn't be surprised if some of it really does. I wonder who Joy will end up with for the next In Their Shoes? Can't wait to see! Will it be just as hot and sexy as this one? |
I think I've about had it with discs. Never thought the day would come. The process of inserting a game is so cumbersome. And having to hear that shit spin up..terrible. Having to open a case, take out a disc, close the case back and then repeat the process with whatever disc was in the drive...terrible. It really hit me last night as I realized I had a pile of unopened games I simply didn't feel like messing with lol. I'd rather just play stuff that's already downloaded.
It's not like I'm saving any HDD space (aside from the Wii U) since they still require installation. And I hardly sell or trade them in. Sure it's slightly comforting knowing the option exists if I hate the game (ahem...MGSV) but it's a rarity. Over at my buddy's house and we want to play something I own? I simply login into my account and download them to their PS4. Magical.
I stream all my music and movies. Download all my books to a kindle. And, still, here I am in the dark ages fumbling around with physical video games. It's the last frontier. Yet I can't seem to let go. But I have to.
There's no real point to this thread, just venting. If anyone has any recommendations for a 1-2 TB HDD I'd greatly appreciate it. Still rocking the stock 500 GB and it's been a huge hindrance. All I know is that they need to be 2.5" and to avoid Seagate. |
Google’s plan to deliver Internet service from balloons in the stratosphere has come a long way since being unveiled in June 2013.
A single “Project Loon” balloon can now remain in the air for more than six months and provide 4G LTE cellular service to an area the size of Rhode Island, according to Google. Company officials have taken to calling Loon balloons “cell towers in the sky.”
While there’s no announced date for a widespread service launch, Google has provided Internet to a school in Brazil and is partnering with cellular operators Vodafone New Zealand, Telstra in Australia, and Telefónica in Latin America.
The US probably won’t be the first place Loon powers a commercial service. Google is aiming to get more people in developing countries on the Internet (and that’s good for Google’s business, since a lot of those people will use Google services).
“For some countries, having Internet once a day for an hour is a huge deal,” Google software engineer Johan Mathe, who plays a key role designing Loon’s navigation system, told Ars in a phone interview last week.
Rather than offer Internet service itself as it does with Google Fiber, Google’s Project Loon is building technology that can integrate with the networks run by cellular operators. Telco operators can send signals from existing cell towers to Google’s balloons, and then the balloons send the signals down to smartphones and other cellular-connected devices. While Google says one balloon can cover an area the size of Rhode Island, the coverage area is really bigger than that because one balloon can send its signal to another balloon, which can then send Internet signals down to the ground. (A single balloon can cover an 80 km [49.7 miles] diameter. Rhode Island is 77 km [47.8 miles] north to south and 59.5 km [37 miles] east to west.)
“The main cost gain comes from the fact that you can cover a much bigger region with existing infrastructure,” Google told Ars. “Telcos take their preexisting infrastructure, point them to the sky, and they get a much broader coverage. For instance, if you already have towers to cover a city, you can point part of it to the sky, and you will be able to cover the whole region through the loon balloon network.”
The Loon devices are two balloons in one, an outer balloon filled with helium and a smaller one inside filled with air. “We can either pump air in it, which is going to make the balloon go down, or we can remove the air, which is going to make it go up. That's how we change altitude,” Mathe explained.
Each balloon has a radio for sending and receiving signals and can send its GPS position to the ground so that Google’s mission control software can track it in real time.
Google has boosted the balloons’ potential altitude range from about 800 meters to a couple of kilometers, allowing more control over where they fly. Early on, Google could keep the balloons in the air for about five days. Now the average is more than 100 days, with a record of 187. A Google announcement this month gives a sense of how that flight was achieved:
In the same time it took the Earth to complete half of its annual orbit of the sun, our record-breaker managed to circumnavigate the globe 9 times, enduring temperatures as low as -75c (-103 F) and wind speeds as high as 291 km/h, soaring to a maximum height of 21 km and drifting over more than a dozen countries across 4 continents. Having been in the air for just over 3 months we decided to put the balloon through its paces, making a series of altitude changes on its last circumnavigation to test our ability to fly north out of southern latitude bands. The test was successful and we managed to turn up to the Northern tip of Australia where we were able to access a much slower wind stream going in the opposite direction and sending our balloon lazily back over to South America. Finally, we brought it back into its original southern latitude band to swoop in and land in one of our Argentinian recovery zones for collection.
187 days is more than enough for Google’s purposes. In fact, the three-plus month average is enough because the company wants to be able to frequently upgrade the technology on the balloons, Mathe explained.
The shift from home Internet to cellular
When Loon started, Google was testing a system that delivered Internet service to antennas on people’s homes. Mathe explained that this was due at least partly to technology limitations. Project Loon is now capable of sending signals that can be picked up by the smaller antennas on phones.
“Because the power in a handset is smaller, you actually have to send more energy to send a data stream to a handset with a low antenna power than a… slightly more powered antenna you could have in a home,” he said.
There’s also a practical reason for focusing on cellular connectivity. “We see trends in developing countries where people are skipping laptops altogether and going straight to mobile,” Google spokesperson Katelin Jabbari told Ars.
Loon began with 3G-like speeds and is now using LTE, hitting about 10Mbps downloads. Real people have used Loon, but at small scales. “We've been doing extremely small experiments so far, one in Brazil where we gave Internet to a group providing Internet to a small school,” Mathe said.
Loon could help carriers reach villages with tiny populations where it wouldn’t be economically feasible to build cell towers, Jabbari said. Google is negotiating with telecommunications partners to expand the tests into bigger pilot projects within the next year, with the goal of eventually starting commercial operations.
Google has also been doing short duration tests in California to evaluate connection technology and designs, but the long flights have been outside the US.
“Right now we are launching primarily from New Zealand,” Jabbari said. “We chose that latitude initially because there are good winds and New Zealand is really excited to have us. The countries we're flying over were happy to give us overflight permission. Now we've gotten overflight permissions from all countries in the Southern Hemisphere.”
As for where pilot projects will begin, Jabbari said, “given that we have an established launch site in New Zealand and an established recovery zone in Latin America and other places, that's where you're most likely to see us, somewhere around there.” However, “we've had conversations with countries elsewhere and telcos elsewhere, those have all gone really well.” Jabbari said Google wants to create a “ring around the world” with its balloons.
What the service eventually looks like depends a lot on telecommunications providers.
“We’re actively looking for various partners everywhere to grow our potential,” Mathe said. “It really depends on partners and the kinds of things they want to provide to their customers and the kind of network access they want to provide.” |
Google’s Hangouts has always existed as this weirdly nebulous platform that’s not quite on the level of an iMessage or WhatsApp. It’s easy to use when communicating with other Google users, but it has always seemed lacking, like there was never a clear focus. It got better when Hangout conversations were merged with SMS, but it sounds like that feature will actually get stripped from the service in a future update.
According to Phandroid, sources close to Google’s plans say the company is going to remove SMS/MMS from Hangouts altogether, though the reason why is unknown. One possibility is that the Hangouts team wants to focus its efforts on making the platform better without worrying about SMS and MMS functionality. But, otherwise, the source didn’t provide Phandroid with an answer.
The silver lining here is that Project Fi and Google Voice functionality will remain, so all is not lost. It sounds like Google took two steps forward, and one step back. Apparently the update will prompt users to head on over to Google’s dedicated Messenger app when the update to Hangouts hits.
Having to bounce back and forth between two messaging apps doesn’t sound like the most intuitive way to communicate, but we’ll no doubt hear Google’s reasons if this does come to pass. |
Bloomington, Ind.
FOR many Tibetans, the case for the historical independence of their land is unequivocal. They assert that Tibet has always been and by rights now ought to be an independent country. China’s assertions are equally unequivocal: Tibet became a part of China during Mongol rule and its status as a part of China has never changed. Both of these assertions are at odds with Tibet’s history.
The Tibetan view holds that Tibet was never subject to foreign rule after it emerged in the mid-seventh century as a dynamic power holding sway over an Inner Asian empire. These Tibetans say the appearance of subjugation to the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries, and to the Manchu rulers of China’s Qing Dynasty from the 18th century until the 20th century, is due to a modern, largely Western misunderstanding of the personal relations among the Yuan and Qing emperors and the pre-eminent lamas of Tibet. In this view, the lamas simply served as spiritual mentors to the emperors, with no compromise of Tibet’s independent status.
In China’s view, the Western misunderstandings are about the nature of China: Western critics don’t understand that China has a history of thousands of years as a unified multinational state; all of its nationalities are Chinese. The Mongols, who entered China as conquerers, are claimed as Chinese, and their subjugation of Tibet is claimed as a Chinese subjugation.
Here are the facts. The claim that Tibet entertained only personal relations with China at the leadership level is easily rebutted. Administrative records and dynastic histories outline the governing structures of Mongol and Manchu rule. These make it clear that Tibet was subject to rules, laws and decisions made by the Yuan and Qing rulers. Tibet was not independent during these two periods. One of the Tibetan cabinet ministers summoned to Beijing at the end of the 18th century describes himself unambiguously in his memoirs as a subject of the Manchu emperor.
Photo
But although Tibet did submit to the Mongol and Manchu Empires, neither attached Tibet to China. The same documentary record that shows Tibetan subjugation to the Mongols and Manchus also shows that China’s intervening Ming Dynasty (which ruled from 1368 to 1644) had no control over Tibet. This is problematic, given China’s insistence that Chinese sovereignty was exercised in an unbroken line from the 13th century onward.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
The idea that Tibet became part of China in the 13th century is a very recent construction. In the early part of the 20th century, Chinese writers generally dated the annexation of Tibet to the 18th century. They described Tibet’s status under the Qing with a term that designates a “feudal dependency,” not an integral part of a country. And that’s because Tibet was ruled as such, within the empires of the Mongols and the Manchus. When the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, Tibet became independent once more. |
Report: Bandai Namco Recruiting For A Smash Bros. Game Coming In 2015
By Sato . April 7, 2014 . 2:00am
Something is going on with Super Smash Bros. While Nintendo will be talking about their new Smash Bros. games for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS in a Nintendo Direct on Tuesday, Game Jouhou reports a recruitment listing from Bandai Namco—who are developing the new games—for a “Smash Bros. 6,” scheduled for release in 2015.
According to Game Jouhou’s report, Bandai Namco recently posted a recruitment ad on a Japanese career job opportunity website, e-Career FA, with a listing for programmers for “Smash Bros. 6,” which is expected to be released sometime in 2015 for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. The page has been taken down, but Jouhou managed to take a screenshot (right) before it went down.
The recruitment page notes that the project currently has 120 people working on it, and they expect that number to increase to 200. At the moment, they’re in need of programmers for various roles, who will then be put into different teams to handle characters, stages, 3D programming, motion, game mode, mini-games, menu, UI, and more.
Additionally, the following message is also listed on the recruitment page:
“Social games are currently a big hit, but the current state of job opportunities for making retail games is critically low. In the midst of this, this will likely be your only chance to be part of a development project for the Smash Bros. [series], which has surpassed a total of 10 million in worldwide sales. And Bandai Namco believes that now is the best time to recruit programmers for retail games.”
Note that, so far, we’ve only had three Super Smash Bros. titles. This year’s Wii U and 3DS games would count as the fourth. Director Masahiro Sakurai has said that the two versions will be similar—if not identical—in terms of their character roster, but that the Wii U version will feature more stages from console games, while the 3DS version will focus more on stages from portable games. There will be other differences between the two, but the point remains that the two games together are generally thought of as “Smash Bros. 4”. Or at least, they have been so far.
There are a couple of possibilities here. The first—and most likely—is that the “6” is simply a typo or a result of miscommunication, and that the Super Smash Bros. game for Wii U and/or Nintendo 3DS has been delayed to 2015. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that Nintendo have delayed a marquee title in order to let it cook a little longer. Given the Wii U’s poor sales, this alone is of significance.
The other—and this is more far-fetched—is that the 3DS and Wii U Super Smash Bros. games are being counted as the fourth and fifth in the series, and that “Smash Bros. 6” is an entirely different (or perhaps updated) version of the game being released next year. This seems rather unlikely, but we’ll entertain the possibility, just in case.
Something to note: While the original recruitment page has apparently been deleted from e-career FA, it doesn’t appear to be fake. Tatsuya Matsumura, a consultant who uploaded the ad, seems to still have all of his other recruitment ads live on the website, which includes career opportunities for other companies such as Square Enix, Capcom, Tecmo Koei, and various mobile developers.
Upon further research, Matsumura appears to have been in the business of a career consultant to connect developers and software companies with programmers and engineers since 2011. He currently specializes in getting people in touch with gaming and software developers, and has successfully helped the recruitment of over 2,000 people thus far.
Either way, Tuesday’s Nintendo Direct presentation on Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS should prove to be interesting.
Food for thought:
Last year, The Pokémon Company trademarked “Pokkén Tournament” and “Pokkén Fighters,” which sounds like some sort of Pokémon game that draws influence from Bandai Namco’s Tekken series of fighting games. Is Namco’s Smash Bros. team going to be involved with that title as well? |
For the past 10 years, the Camera Culture group at MIT’s Media Lab has been developing innovative imaging systems — from a camera that can see around corners to one that can read text in closed books — by using “time of flight,” an approach that gauges distance by measuring the time it takes light projected into a scene to bounce back to a sensor.
In a new paper appearing in IEEE Access, members of the Camera Culture group present a new approach to time-of-flight imaging that increases its depth resolution 1,000-fold. That’s the type of resolution that could make self-driving cars practical.
The new approach could also enable accurate distance measurements through fog, which has proven to be a major obstacle to the development of self-driving cars.
At a range of 2 meters, existing time-of-flight systems have a depth resolution of about a centimeter. That’s good enough for the assisted-parking and collision-detection systems on today’s cars.
But as Achuta Kadambi, a joint PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science and media arts and sciences and first author on the paper, explains, “As you increase the range, your resolution goes down exponentially. Let’s say you have a long-range scenario, and you want your car to detect an object further away so it can make a fast update decision. You may have started at 1 centimeter, but now you’re back down to [a resolution of] a foot or even 5 feet. And if you make a mistake, it could lead to loss of life.”
At distances of 2 meters, the MIT researchers’ system, by contrast, has a depth resolution of 3 micrometers. Kadambi also conducted tests in which he sent a light signal through 500 meters of optical fiber with regularly spaced filters along its length, to simulate the power falloff incurred over longer distances, before feeding it to his system. Those tests suggest that at a range of 500 meters, the MIT system should still achieve a depth resolution of only a centimeter.
Kadambi is joined on the paper by his thesis advisor, Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor of media arts and sciences and head of the Camera Culture group.
Slow uptake
With time-of-flight imaging, a short burst of light is fired into a scene, and a camera measures the time it takes to return, which indicates the distance of the object that reflected it. The longer the light burst, the more ambiguous the measurement of how far it’s traveled. So light-burst length is one of the factors that determines system resolution.
The other factor, however, is detection rate. Modulators, which turn a light beam off and on, can switch a billion times a second, but today’s detectors can make only about 100 million measurements a second. Detection rate is what limits existing time-of-flight systems to centimeter-scale resolution.
There is, however, another imaging technique that enables higher resolution, Kadambi says. That technique is interferometry, in which a light beam is split in two, and half of it is kept circulating locally while the other half — the “sample beam” — is fired into a visual scene. The reflected sample beam is recombined with the locally circulated light, and the difference in phase between the two beams — the relative alignment of the troughs and crests of their electromagnetic waves — yields a very precise measure of the distance the sample beam has traveled.
But interferometry requires careful synchronization of the two light beams. “You could never put interferometry on a car because it’s so sensitive to vibrations,” Kadambi says. “We’re using some ideas from interferometry and some of the ideas from LIDAR, and we’re really combining the two here.”
On the beat
They’re also, he explains, using some ideas from acoustics. Anyone who’s performed in a musical ensemble is familiar with the phenomenon of “beating.” If two singers, say, are slightly out of tune — one producing a pitch at 440 hertz and the other at 437 hertz — the interplay of their voices will produce another tone, whose frequency is the difference between those of the notes they’re singing — in this case, 3 hertz.
The same is true with light pulses. If a time-of-flight imaging system is firing light into a scene at the rate of a billion pulses a second, and the returning light is combined with light pulsing 999,999,999 times a second, the result will be a light signal pulsing once a second — a rate easily detectable with a commodity video camera. And that slow “beat” will contain all the phase information necessary to gauge distance.
But rather than try to synchronize two high-frequency light signals — as interferometry systems must — Kadambi and Raskar simply modulate the returning signal, using the same technology that produced it in the first place. That is, they pulse the already pulsed light. The result is the same, but the approach is much more practical for automotive systems.
“The fusion of the optical coherence and electronic coherence is very unique,” Raskar says. “We’re modulating the light at a few gigahertz, so it’s like turning a flashlight on and off millions of times per second. But we’re changing that electronically, not optically. The combination of the two is really where you get the power for this system.”
Through the fog
Gigahertz optical systems are naturally better at compensating for fog than lower-frequency systems. Fog is problematic for time-of-flight systems because it scatters light: It deflects the returning light signals so that they arrive late and at odd angles. Trying to isolate a true signal in all that noise is too computationally challenging to do on the fly.
With low-frequency systems, scattering causes a slight shift in phase, one that simply muddies the signal that reaches the detector. But with high-frequency systems, the phase shift is much larger relative to the frequency of the signal. Scattered light signals arriving over different paths will actually cancel each other out: The troughs of one wave will align with the crests of another. Theoretical analyses performed at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University suggest that this cancellation will be widespread enough to make identifying a true signal much easier.
“I am excited about medical applications of this technique,” says Rajiv Gupta, director of the Advanced X-ray Imaging Sciences Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. “I was so impressed by the potential of this work to transform medical imaging that we took the rare step of recruiting a graduate student directly to the faculty in our department to continue this work.”
“I think it is a significant milestone in development of time-of-flight techniques because it removes the most stringent requirement in mass deployment of cameras and devices that use time-of-flight principles for light, namely, [the need for] a very fast camera,” he adds. “The beauty of Achuta and Ramesh’s work is that by creating beats between lights of two different frequencies, they are able to use ordinary cameras to record time of flight.” |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The ambulance burst into flames outside the hospital's emergency department
A man has died in a fire in an ambulance outside a hospital in County Kildare in the Republic of Ireland.
Two paramedics were also injured when the vehicle burst into flames at Naas General Hospital.
Health Service Executive chief executive Tony O'Brien has confirmed the death was as a direct result of the fire.
Mr O'Brien said one possible cause being examined relates to the oxygen tanks on the vehicle.
A notice has been issued to all other ambulance crews around the country as a result.
Image copyright Kevin Killick Image caption The fire broke out at the Naas General Hospital at about 14:00 local time
Image copyright RTE Image caption Patients from the hospital have been transferred to other hospitals
The fire broke out outside the hospital's emergency department about 14:00 local time and the hospital was evacuated.
The victim, who is in his 70s, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Gardaí (Irish police) in Naas and the Health and Safety Executive are investigating.
Image copyright RTE Image caption Members of the public are advised not to visit the hospital
Patients have been transferred to other hospitals in the area.
The area has been cordoned off for a technical examination and members of the public have been asked to stay away from the hospital. |
In the couple of years I have been in the hobby of 3d printing, it has come a very long ways. When I bought my first 3d Printer a little over two years ago for $500 dollars that was a steal. Now you can find 3d printer kits for sub $200 that with a little bit of work can print as well as some much more expensive printers on the market.
The MonoPrice Maker Select Mini 3d printer is a $200 dollar 3d Printer that was introduced mid 2016. What made this printer so special was that not only was it $200 and came pre-assembled and ready to print, but it also printed extremely well. I have had my eyes on this printer since I first saw it and had debating buying it multiple times but always talked myself out of it.
This last week, I finally took the leap, and wow am I happy I did. I am lucky enough to live driving distance from MonoPrice out here in California so Wednesday of last week I ordered it and just a few hours late ran down to their Will Call to pick it up. I raced home unboxed the printer and right away was impressed by how solid and well built the thing felt.
It really is in my opinion a good looking printer, I mean damn is it clean! I skimmed through the instructions and a few minutes later had it powered on. Leveling was the bed was extremely easy using their supplied hex key and within 10 minutes I was printing the sample cat file that was included on the microsd card that came with the machine.
It was a long print at 0.1 layer high, somewhere in the 2.5 hour range. I ended up napping will it was printing (do not recommend sleeping during a print until the machine has been used awhile for safety/fire) and when I awoke I was shocked. This $200 printer printed as good as any printer I own even the more expensive ones as well as the modified ones.
Since last Wednesday I have printed probably 40 hours worth on it (no joke). It is amazing, the quality is killer. Now, I cannot say it is a perfect machine, and I must state their are a few things that I need to get dialed in. The first is that the z rods are not completely solid making the x-axis vibrate which is a bit noisy (there is a fix for this that can be printed, there is quite an amazing community that have made some awesome mods to this printer! Facebook Page Here)
The other issue I am having is in one design I print and sell, it needs to be very strong and when I am printing it on this machine and test it for strength I am able to snap it which on my other machines there is no way I could snap it. This is more than likely a temperature or speed issue that I will have to play with. Finally, this machine is no speed demon but honestly the 3d printing process is not a very fast one and it does not bug me much at all.
Those little things aside and to me this printer is one I would recommend to anyone. Someone looking to get into 3d printing or someone looking to add one to their existing printers. For what you are getting its a steal! I will probably end up picking up a second one in the following months to give this one a friend.
For those that want a highlight of its features to me this is it:
-PLA/ABS compatible printing (included hot bed)
-Easy Leveling
-LCD Screen
-Micro SD Card Slot For Untethered Printing
-Impressive Quality
-No Building Required
We will also summarize the cons:
-Small build area 4.7″ x 4.7″ x 4.7″ (Not that small to be fair and their is a mod to upgrade)
-No Open Source (you cannot modify the firmware like you can with marlin/repetier)
-Slow Print Speeds 50mm/s Max
-Noisy Axis Vibrating (easily fixable)
I honestly love this printer and know that it is really a killer printer, MonoPrice nailed it with the Maker Select Mini 3d Printer.
For those who have one comment your experience below!
Find Out More Or Purchase Yours Here! |
If you would like to see more articles like this please support our coverage of the space program by becoming a Spaceflight Now Member . If everyone who enjoys our website helps fund it, we can expand and improve our coverage further.
As Orbital ATK engineers aim for the next launch of the company’s Antares rocket from Virginia this fall, early planning for missions to keep the International Space Station supplied through the early 2020s is already underway.
The Cygnus supply ship is booked for at least 10 more hardware delivery missions to the space station, joining SpaceX’s Dragon freighter and Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser spaceplane in the U.S. fleet of unpiloted commercial cargo transporters under contract to NASA.
Orbital ATK plans to send heavier loads, and perhaps large unpressurized elements, to the space station in the future. SpaceX’s Dragon and Japan’s HTV supply ship currently haul up payload packages and spare parts for mounting outside the complex.
NASA has penciled in Oct. 11 for Orbital ATK’s next station cargo launch aboard an Antares rocket from pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a launch complex located NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
Frank DeMauro, vice president and general manager of Orbital ATK’s advanced programs division, said the company’s rocket and spacecraft teams would be ready to launch as soon as NASA confirms the space station is ready to receive the robotic cargo craft.
“With Cygnus, the hardware is ready to go to the next phase, which is launch site integration,” DeMauro said in a recent interview with Spaceflight Now. “Antares is also in great shape. They’ve completed all their integration and testing, and they’ve gotten it all the way to the point where they’re ready for their next phase of integration.”
“The Antares rocket, as well as the Cygnus spacecraft that it will launch on the next cargo mission to the space station are now essentially built and tested and ready for cargo loading at the Wallops Island launch site,” said David Thompson, president and CEO of Orbital ATK, during a quarterly call with investment analysts Thursday. “We were, and are, on schedule to carry (cargo loading) out this month, but I think NASA’s going to delay that probably until October in order to provie a full load of cargo.”
“There’s one particular item, a spare part or subsystem for the space station, that they’d like us to carry on this mission, and that cargo element is going to pace the launch and it’s running a bit later than previously expected,” Thompson said.
Orbital ATK officials said in June they could be ready to launch the next Antares rocket before the end of the summer, with liftoff then targeted for Sept. 12.
The launch date has been rescheduled for Oct. 11, according to Sam Scimemi, director for the International Space Station program at NASA Headquarters. Scimemi briefed members of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee on the station’s status in late July.
DeMauro said the Cygnus spacecraft, which comes in two major pieces, is nearly ready for the flight this fall, named OA-8 in Orbital ATK’s mission sequence. The ship’s pressurized cargo module, transported from its Thales Alenia Space factory in Turin, Italy, is at Wallops, and the Cygnus service module for the OA-8 mission has completed testing at Orbital ATK’s manufacturing facility in Dulles, Virginia, and is ready for the trip to Wallops launch site, he said.
Thompson said Thursday that the OA-8 launch delay makes it unlikely the company can fit two more station cargo flights this year. The next one, OA-9, is expected to lift off in the first quarter of 2018, and DeMauro said the Italian-built cargo module for that Cygnus spacecraft is already at Wallops, too.
Three of Orbital ATK’s last four Cygnus flights have lifted off on United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rockets as engineers redesigned the Antares first stage propulsion system in the wake of a launch failure in October 2014. The first Antares launch with new Russian-made RD-181 engines last October went well, officials said, increasing the weight of cargo that can be lofted by the rocket.
The earlier version of the Antares could send an “enhanced” Cygnus spacecraft — flying with a lengthened cargo module — packed with up to 5,950 pounds (2,700 kilograms) of supplies to the space station. Engineers initially predicted the upgraded Antares could lift up to 7,050 pounds (3,200 kilograms) of cargo and experiments, but the redesigned rocket performed better than expected, and the OA-8 mission will be capable of hauling up to 7,385 pounds (3,350 kilograms) of payloads to the space station, according to Kurt Eberly, the Antares program manager at Orbital ATK.
“We’ve done a detailed data review from all the data on that mission, and it was a very clean mission,” Eberly said in a June press briefing. “Very good performance. We got a little more energy out of the first stage and the second stage than we were counting on. We always put a little margin in, and it turns out we can release a lot of that margin, and that’s helping us achieve some of these higher performance levels.”
By the time Orbital ATK launches its 11th cargo mission, a flight scheduled no earlier than December 2018, officials said the Antares/Cygnus combination will be able to deliver more than 7,700 pounds (3,500 kilograms) of logistics and provisions to the space station per launch.
The new RD-181 engines produce more thrust than the Antares rocket’s previous AJ26 engines, and they burn their kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants more efficiently.
Eberly said mission designers took a conservative approach on the Antares launch last October, the first with RD-181 engines.
“We flew to a delta velocity threshold,” Eberly said. “When we hit that, we shut down the engines. We had a lot of fuel left in the tanks. Now, we’re just going to move that threshold a little higher and burn more of the fuel in the first stage. At that point in the flight regime, the acceleration is pretty high because the stage is pretty light. Most of the propellant is gone, so you actually pick up quite a bit of performance by burning just a few more seconds into that propellant residual in the tanks.”
NASA awarded Orbital ATK — then called Orbital Sciences — its first commercial resupply contract alongside SpaceX in December 2008. The space agency selected the companies to ferry equipment to the space station after the space shuttle’s retirement.
Each company has suffered one launch failure while attempting to deliver supplies to the station.
NASA asked for bids again in 2014 for contracts to meet the station’s logistic’s needs from 2019 through 2024, and again chose Orbital ATK and SpaceX. The agency added Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Dream Chaser spaceplane as a third cargo transportation provider. Each company is guaranteed at least six missions under the new cargo contract.
DeMauro said Orbital ATK’s future missions will give NASA flexibility in choosing what type of equipment it needs to haul to the orbital research outpost.
Starting in 2019, station managers can pick between three different types of Cygnus resupply missions.
“The first mission type is a pressurized cargo mission on Antares, very similar to what we’re flying on OA-8 to OA-11,” DeMauro said in a July 11 interview. “Those will have a little bit more cargo capacity, but it’s an Antares-based mission.
“The second mission type is an Atlas-based mission,” he said. “It’s still a pressurized cargo mission, but it has even more cargo. We included that as an option for NASA just so they could optimize what they wanted in terms of cargo delivery from our system.”
The Antares missions will continue to lift off from Virginia, while future Atlas 5 launches with Cygnus cargo carriers will depart from Cape Canaveral. Thales Alenia Space would build a bigger version of the Cygnus pressurized cargo module for the Atlas 5 flights, DeMauro said.
“The third mission type is an unpressurized cargo mission, and that’s based on Antares,” DeMauro said. “So two of the three are Antares-based and one is Atlas-based, and we included that Atlas-based mission (option) just to give NASA the flexibility for a larger pressurized cargo delivery.”
Orbital ATK’s concept for the unpressurized cargo system would involve removing the Cygnus pressurized cabin from the service module and adding a platform to hold experiments and spare parts that will go outside the space station. Many of those components are the size of a coffee table and are relocated from cargo ships to the station with the aid of robotic arms.
“You can think of it as having various shelving and strongback structures to be able to carry those big ORUs (Orbital Replacement Units) up inside an Antares,” DeMauro said.
NASA has authorized the first of the six Cygnus flights planned from 2019 through 2014. Named OA-12, that mission will launch on an Antares booster from Wallops Island with pressurized cargo.
“We have six missions that have been contracted for on CRS-2,” said Frank Culbertson, a former astronaut and president of Orbital ATK’s space systems group. “The first one has been given a go-ahead for activity, so we are doing long-lead purchasing, beginning the process to … start building the structure. That one should launch in, we hope, 2019.”
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1. |
In December 2013 I visited Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy located just behind the Harrods store in London. It was a rather depressing experience, in spite of the kindness of the embassy personnel. The embassy is a six-room apartment with no garden attached, so that Assange cannot even take a daily walk in fresh air. He also cannot step out of the apartment into the house's main corridor – policemen are waiting for him there. A dozen or so of them are all the time around the house and in some of the surrounding buildings, one even beneath a tiny backyard toilet window, in case Assange will try to escape through that hole in the wall. The apartment is bugged from above and below, its internet link is suspiciously slow... so how come the British state decided to employ around 50 people full time to guard Assange and control him under the legal pretence that he refuses to go to Sweden and be questioned about a minor sexual misconduct (there are no charges against him!)? One is tempted to become a Thatcherite and ask: where is austerity politics here? If a nobody like myself were to be wanted by the Swedish police for a similar interrogation, would the UK also employ 50 people to guard me? The serious question is here: where does such a ridiculously excessive desire for revenge stem from? What did Assange, his colleagues, and whistle-blowing sources do to deserve this?
Jacques Lacan proposed as the axiom of the ethics of psychoanalysis: “Do not compromise your desire.” Is this axiom also not an accurate designation of the whistleblowers’ acts? In spite of all the risks their activity involves, they are not ready to compromise on it – on what? This brings us to the notion of event: Assange and his collaborators enacted a true and authentic political event – this is what one can easily understand the violent reaction of the authorities. Assange and colleagues are often accused of being traitors, but they are something much worse (in the eyes of the authorities) – to quote Alenka Zupančič:
Even if Snowden were to sell his informations discreetly to another intelligence service, this act would still count as part of the ‘patriotic games’, and if needed he would have been liquidated as a ‘traitor’. However, in Snowden's case, we are dealing with something entirely different. We are dealing with a gesture which questions the very logic, the very status quo, which for quite some time serves as the only foundation of all ‘Western’ (non)politics. With a gesture which as it were risks everything, with no consideration of profit and without its own stakes: it takes the risk because it is based on the conclusion that what is going on is simply wrong. Snowden didn't propose any alternative. Snowden, or, rather, the logic of his gesture, like, say, before him, the gesture of Bradley Manning – is the alternative.
This breakthrough of Wikileaks is nicely encapsulated by Assange's ironic self-designation as a “spy for the people”: “spying for the people” is not a direct negation of spying (which would rather be acting as a double agent, selling our secrets to the enemy) but its self-negation, ie, it undermines the very universal principle of spying, the principle of secrecy, since its goal is to make secrets public. It thus functions in a way similar to how the Marxian “dictatorship of the proletariat” was supposed to function (but rarely ever did, of course): as an imminent self-negation of the very principle of dictatorship. To those who continue to paint the scarecrow of Communism, we should answer: what Wikileaks is doing is the practice of Communism. Wikileaks simply enacts the commons of informations.
In the struggle of ideas, the rise of bourgeois modernity was exemplified by the French Encyclopedia, a gigantic venture of presenting in a systematic way to broad public all available knowledge – the addressee of this knowledge was not the state but the public as such. It may seem that Wikipedia already is today’s encyclopedia, but something is missing from it: the knowledge which is ignored by and repressed from the public space, repressed because it concerns precisely the way state mechanisms and agencies control and regulate us all. The goal of Wikileaks should be to make this knowledge available to all of us with a simple click. Assange effectively is today’s d’Alembert, the organiser of this new encyclopedia, the true people’s encyclopedia for the twenty-first century. It is crucial that this new encyclopedia acquires an independent international base, so that the humiliating game of playing one big state against another (like Snowden having to look for protection in Russia) will be constrained to a minimum. Our axiom should be that Snowden and Pussy Riot are part of the same struggle – which struggle?
Our informational commons recently emerged as one of the key domains of the class struggle in two of its aspects, economical in the narrow sense and socio-political. On the one hand, new digital media confront us with the impasse of “intellectual property”. The World Wide Web seems to be in its nature Communist, tending towards free flow of data – CDs and DVDs are gradually disappearing, millions are simply downloading music and videos, mostly for free. This is why the business establishment is engaged in a desperate struggle to impose the form of private property on this flow. On the other hand, digital media (especially with the almost universal access to the web and cell phones) opened up new ways for the millions of ordinary people to establish a network and coordinate their collective activities, while also offering state agencies and private companies unheard-of possibilities of tracking down our public and private acts. It is into this struggle that Wikileaks intervened in such an explosive way.
In his Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, T S Eliot remarked that there are moments when the only choice is the one between heresy and non-belief, when the only way to keep a religion alive is to perform a sectarian split from its main corpse. This is what Wikileaks did: its activity is based on the insight that the only way to keep our democracy alive is to perform a sectarian split from its main institutional corpse of state apparatuses and mechanisms. In doing this, Wikileaks did something unheard of, redefining the coordinates of what counts as possible or admissible in the public space. I wrote a book on the notion of “event” precisely to create the space for the proper understanding of phenomena like Wikileaks, when a political act does not only violate the predominant rules but creates its own new rules and imposes new ethical standards. What we hitherto took as self-evident – the right of the state to monitor and control us – is now seen as deeply problematic; what we hitherto perceived as something criminal, an act of betrayal – disclosing state secrets – now appears as a heroic ethical act.
From this brief description, we can already see how an event is located within a narrative field. Our historical experience is formed as a narrative, ie, we always locate real occurrences within a narrative which makes them part of a meaningful storyline. Problems arise when an unexpected shattering turn of events – an outbreak of war, a deep economic crisis – can no longer be included into a consistent narrative. At that point, it all depends on how this catastrophic turn will be symbolised, on what ideological interpretation or story will impose itself and determine the general perception of the crisis. When the normal run of things is traumatically interrupted, the field is open for ideological competition – for example, in Germany in the late 1920s, Hitler won in the competition for the narrative which will explain to Germans the reasons for the crisis of the Weimar republic and the way out of it (his plot was the Jewish plot); in France in 1940 it was Marshal Petain’s narrative which won in explaining the reasons for the French defeat. And the same goes for the ongoing financial and economic crisis: which narrative will prevail? Will it be the neoliberal one, blaming the strong state, the conservative one, bemoaning the loss of traditional values, or the radical Leftist one, advocating radical emancipatory politics? The event is the successful imposition of a new narrative which makes a historical situation readable again to those caught in it.
The important lesson of this example of Fascism is that there are also what one could call negative events. Imagine a society which fully integrated into its ethical substance the great modern axioms of freedom, equality, democratic rights, the duty of a society to provide for education and basic healthcare of all its members, and which rendered racism or sexism simply inacceptable and ridiculous – there is no need even to argue against, say, racism, since anyone who openly advocates racism is immediately perceived as a weird eccentric who cannot be taken seriously, etc. But then, step by step, these achievements are undone, one can openly propagate racism, advocate torture, etc. Did Hitler not do something like this? Was his message to the German people not “Yes, we can…” – kill the Jews, squash democracy, act in a racist way, attack other nations? And are we not witnessing signs of a similar process today? In the middle of 2013, two public protests were announced in Croatia, a country in deep economic crisis, with high unemployment rate and a deep sense of despair among the population: trade unions tried to organise a rally in support of workers’ rights, while right wing nationalists started a protest movement against the use of cyrillic letters on public buildings in cities with Serb minority. The first initiative brought to a big square in Zagreb a couple of hundred people, the second one succeeded in mobilising hundreds of thousands, the same as with a fundamentalist movement against gay marriages. Croatia is far from being an exception in this regard: from Balkan to Scandinavia, from the US to Israel, from central Africa to India, a new Dark Age is coming, with ethnic and religious passions exploding, and the Enlightenment values receding. These passions were lurking in dark all the time, but what is new now is the outright shamelessness of their display.
This ongoing process of undermining the very fundamentals of our emancipatory achievements takes place at different levels. The debate about water boarding being torture or not should be dropped as an obvious nonsense: why, if not by causing pain and fear of death, does boarding make hardened terror suspects talk? As to the replacement of the word “torture” by “enhanced interrogation technique,” one should note that we are dealing here with an extension of the Politically Correct logic: in exactly the same way that “disabled” becomes “physically challenged,” “torture” becomes “enhanced interrogation technique” (and, why not, “rape” could become “enhanced seduction technique”). One should insist on this parallel between torture and rape: what if a film were to show a brutal rape in the same neutral way, claiming that one should avoid cheap moralism and start to think about rape in all its complexity? Our guts tell us that there is something terribly wrong here: I would like to live in a society where rape is simply considered unacceptable, so that anyone who argues for it appears an eccentric idiot, not in a society where one has to argue against it – and the same goes for torture: a sign of ethical progress is the fact that torture is “dogmatically” rejected as repulsive, without any need for argumentation. So what about the “realist” argument: torture was always going on, if anything even more in the (near) past, so is it not better to at least talking publicly about it? This, exactly, is the problem: if torture was always going on, why are those in power now telling us openly about it? There is only one answer: to normalise it, ie, to lower our ethical standards.
And it is crucial to see this ethical regression as the obverse of the explosive development of global capitalism – they are the two sides of the same coin. So where do we stand today? Maybe, we don’t even stand but just lean forward in a very specific way. Close to the children’s museum in Seoul, there is a weird statue which, to the non-initiated, cannot but appear as staging a scene of extreme obscenity: it looks as if a group of young boys leaning forward behind each other are sticking their heads into the rectum of the boy in front, while the first boy is standing in front of the queue and has the head of the first boy who is leaning pushed into his crotch. When we inquire, we are informed that the statue is simply the staging of malttukbakgi, a fun game that both Korean girls and boys play till high school. There are two teams; team A has one person stand up against the wall and the rest of the team have all their heads up in someone else’s butt/crotch area to form what looks like a large horse. Team B then jumps up onto the human horse one by one, each jumping with as much force as possible; if anyone from any team falls to the floor, that team loses.
Is this statue not a perfect metaphor for us, common people, for our predicament in today’s global capitalism? Our view is constrained to what we can see with our head stuck into the ass of a guy just in front of us, and our idea of who is our Master is the guy in front whose penis and/or balls the first guy in the row appears to be licking – but the real Master, invisible to us, is the one freely jumping on our back, the autonomous movement of the Capital.
How, then, are we to proceed in such a messy situation? There is a wonderful common Scottish verb tartle which designates the awkward moment when a speaker temporarily forgets someone's name (usually the name of his/her partner in a conversation) and the verb is used to avoid that occasional embarrassment, as in: “Sorry, I tartled there for a moment!” Were we all not tartling in the last decades, forgetting the name “Communism” to designate the ultimate horizon of our emancipatory struggles? The time has come to fully remember this word – its full public rehabilitation would have been in itself an authentic political event.
Event by Slavoj Žižek, the second in Penguin’s Philosophy in Transit series by leading philosophers, is out now in paperback, priced £8.99 |
FC Dallas opens play in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup on Tuesday night at FC Dallas Stadium against the Charlotte Eagles of USL Pro. However, FCD will be at less than full strength, which has been the norm all season.
Midfielder Brek Shea, who just finished serving a three-game suspension in league play after kicking a ball at an official, has been ruled out for the game as he continues to be bothered by turf toe. The Bryan native did not train on Monday morning, first riding a stationary bike and then doing some work with an exercise band before leaving the field with his left foot in a boot.
“Still banged up a little bit,” Dallas coach Schellas Hyndman said when asked about Shea’s condition. “I think what happens when you have something like a turf toe, a normal thing to do is you try to play through the pain. And when you try to do that, because you’re protecting it, you start to alienate something else so maybe a different part of his foot now is becoming an issue. Yeah, he won’t play tomorrow night.”
Fellow midfielder Daniel Hernandez also won’t play on Tuesday but for a different reason. The former FCD captain earned a red card in Dallas’ lost at Seattle in the 2011 USOC semifinals and won’t be available for selection.
“He’s gone through three games in eight days. He’s not playing tomorrow because of the red card he got in Seattle,” Hyndman said.
Central attacking midfielder Ricardo Villar will also not play as he continues to recover from a foot injury suffered back in April. However, Tuesday may or may not mark the return of Fabian Castillo, the speedy Colombian who has missed the last few games with an ankle issue.
Castillo did go through training on Monday morning on the stadium field but did so with his left ankle wrapped. “We’ll make a decision whether we’re going to start him or have him off the bench but he’s probably about 85 percent,” Hyndman said. |
It is a fundamental rule of politics: If you don’t define yourself, you will be defined by your opponent. Barack Obama’s charisma and inspirational message may have his supporters fainting in the aisles but his bio and voting records are a blank slate for Republicans to fill, if Obama gets the nomination, which appears increasingly likely.
Norquist trotted out a lie that worked well against John Kerry in 2004 — that Obama’s Senate voting record was more liberal than, say, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist Independent or the liberal Democrats Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer.
Republicans noise-machiners met recently to develop lines of attacks against Obama. In yesterday’s London Sunday Times, Grover Norquist, who once compared the U.S. government to something he’d like to drown in a bathtub, previewed other lines of attack:
Grover Norquist, an influential conservative tax reform lobbyist, said: “Barack Obama has been able to create his own image and introduce himself to voters, but the swing voters in a general election are not paying attention yet. He is open to being defined as a leftwing, corrupt Chicago politician.”
And then Norquist trotted out a lie that worked well against John Kerry in 2004 — that Obama has the “most liberal” voting record in the Senate, putting him to the left of, say, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist Independent or the liberal Democrats Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer:
Obama has the voting record of a “hard-left” socialist, according to Norquist, from his time in the Illinois state legislature to the US Senate. He was recently judged by the nonpartisan National Journal to have the most liberal voting record in 2007 of any senator. “It will be easy to portray him as even harder-left than Hillary,” said Norquist. “Hillary could lose the election, but Obama could collapse. People already know Hillary and she is not popular, but the disadvantage for Obama is that Republicans can teach people who don’t know him who he is.”
Roger Stone, a Republican operative with ties to Reagan era — and who was fired last year by N.Y State Senate Republicans after he left threatening messages on the phone of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s elderly father — trotted out more of the attacks developed at the strategy meeting on MSNBC’s “Tucker” show yesterday.
He used the word “liberal” repeatedly, of course, and focused on Obama’s unequivocal support for issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented aliens. The MSNBC transcript is unavailable at this hour, but here’s how Stone framed the issue on his website, stonezone.com:
However, it was not until Governor Spitzer proposed giving New York State Drivers Licenses to illegal immigrants that his political popularity hit rock-bottom – a condition from which he has still not recovered. Hillary Clinton had the good political sense to abandon Spitzer’s position, even if she did so inartfully. Barack Obama, on the other hand, drank the Kool-Aid. There is no better issue to demonstrate the naivete of Senator Obama and his National Security views. Fifteen of Nineteen 9/11 hijackers had 38 drivers licenses between them. These licenses were used to rent cars and trucks, secure hotel rooms and to obtain passage on the fateful air carriers the day America was attacked. Obama, like Spitzer, will argue that giving licenses to illegals will actually improve security – a position which defies the facts. If John McCain needs a wedge issue to demonstrate his superior grasp of National Security issues and Senator Obama’s lack of serious credentials to be President – this is it.
Of course, none of the 9/11 hijackers were here illegally, and all carried valid passports issued by their home countries, all of which were U.S. allies, including Saudi Arabia.
Update: After I wrote the above, I found this report at the Politico about the meeting, which was held here in Los Angeles last Saturday:
The RNC’s “winter retreat” for major donors at Los Angeles’ Beverly Wilshire Hotel featured such party stalwarts as Karl Rove, RNC chairman Robert Duncan, former Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, as well as some Hollywood types, including Dave Berg, a segment producer and “political director” for “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno.
The meeting opened with a Powerpoint presentation: |
TORONTO -- It engaged their fans and prompted a profane response from their general manager, but the Raptors want to move past the focus on Paul Pierce's commentary as they prepare for Game 2 of their first-round series with the Washington Wizards.
"Paul Pierce is a Hall of a Famer. I give him a lot of credit, he got everybody's attention," Raptors guard Greivis Vasquez said Sunday. "If we keep talking about Paul Pierce this is going to be a Paul Pierce series, not the Wizards. What he's doing is motivating his team, talking trash, so why would we talk trash? We don't have any trash talkers in our locker room."
"If we keep talking about Paul Pierce this is going to be a Paul Pierce series, not the Wizards. What he's doing is motivating his team, talking trash so why would we talk trash? We don't have any trash talkers in our locker room."
Pierce grabbed attention in a pre-series interview when he said the Raptors didn't have "it," and didn't worry him as an opponent. Then Pierce, after he prompted Raptors fans to boo him heavily and GM Masai Ujiri to issue a profane response at a rally before Game 1, went out and scored 20 points in the Wizards' 93-86 overtime victory in Game 1.
After the win, Pierce said he felt he could play a "psychological war." The Raptors, despite the lead of their GM, don't want to further engage.
"We give him a lot of credit, he's got big balls, that's the reason he's The Truth," Vasquez said, referring to Pierce's nickname. "What else can I tell you? Good for him. He's a Hall of Famer. I love his game, good for him. I've got a picture of him. He's an idol, that's it. But we've got to play. But you can stop asking questions about Paul Pierce."
When word of Vasquez's comments reached Pierce in Washington, where the Wizards returned for two practices before Game 2 on Tuesday, he chuckled but said he had no comment. Wizards coach Randy Wittman dryly replied: "Well, I think all NBA balls are the same size."
It might be good for the Raptors not to incite Pierce. Wizards guard Bradley Beal said he feared for Toronto when Jonas Valanciunas set a hard screen that sent Pierce to the floor in pain early in the third quarter.
"They 'p'd' him off a little bit," Beal said. "He got screened and hit pretty hard. He likes contact, so I know when I see him on the ground -- that is not happening often -- he is going to be upset about it. I was kind of scared for Toronto because when Paul gets going, he gets going."
"His leg has to be broke and probably amputated in order for him not to play or for him not to try to win," Beal added of Pierce, who admits he has been playing with a heavily bandaged knee that has been bothering him for about 40 games. "He has the guts to take those big shots, even with a 7-footer in his face. Just his confidence the whole game, we just feed off it."
The Raptors, however, do have some things to do to deal with Pierce. Wittman found some success putting Pierce at power forward in a small lineup for stretches in Game 1, though the Raptors quickly made some adjustments within the game. Nonetheless, that lineup was a plus-5 in a game that went to overtime, making it a difference-maker.
"I guess Paul has [talked trash] before ... and he's a master. He's got a championship, so I guess he's been successful at it," Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. "I haven't seen very many times that people talk their way to winning a game. If that's what he feels, that's fine. He's a great player and his game speaks for itself more than anything he's put in print."
ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk contributed to this report. |
If the set of this Sunday's episode of The Walking Dead looked familiar, that's because it was featured in a pretty popular horror film: Saw.
When Carol and Maggie were held hostage by the Saviors in their hideout, the room they were initially locked in was the very same room used for most of first movie in the Saw franchise.
We KNEW last week's episode of #TheWalkingDead looked familiar... pic.twitter.com/31K4KabTxp — The Walking Dead (@TheWalkingDead) March 17, 2016
Yep, as spotted by The Walking Dead Twitter account, that's the room in which Adam and Lawrence were locked inside of and forced to sever their own legs in back in 2004. It's a possibility that the entire facility was actually the set of the hallways in the same facility seen in the later installments of the Saw franchise. One has to wonder if this is executive producer Greg Nicotero trying to be sly and indicate that The Walking Dead exists in the Saw universe (probably not) or just another one of the many Easter Eggs the show likes to incorporate (probably). |
+1 Pin 656 Shares
The continued fragmentation of modern Western culture is driving us towards social isolation. However, humans are emotional beings; we learn through relationship. Without relationship we are stuck, unable to grow or evolve, much less survive. We live in a society that glorifies independence, when in reality, we are in greatest harmony when we are interdependent. For each of us co-authoring this article, entheogens and psychedelics have evoked a deep understanding of how critical community is when going through a psychospiritual process of transformation.
Within entheogenic community, we are able to surrender to the metamorphosis that takes place when a strongly held worldview is shattered. Community brings us humor and hope when we feel the return from dismemberment is impossible. This is why we strive through the non-profit Entheogenic Research, Integration, and Education (ERIE) to create a culture around “integration,” the process by which the material accessed and insights gained in an entheogenic experience are incorporated, over time, into one’s life in a way that benefits the individual and their community; a culture that prioritizes the collective, respects the sacred and mystical, and in addition, weaves in a practical application of the transpersonal into the modern context we live in.
Incorporating integration that is appropriate to our modern context is critical. One of the main reasons that “integration” is not a prominent concept in more traditional entheogenic cultures is that integration is an inherent part of them already. The community is naturally involved in mentoring and discussing entheogenic realms; it is spoken about openly, and the practicing shaman lives locally. Integration is part of everyday life. Unfortunately, the majority of us don’t live in places surrounded by such openness to entheogenic exploration; thus, a significant part of our integration is making sure the insights we gain can be applied to modern life.
So, what key aspects of a culture of entheogenic integration—inherent, traditional, or modern—are so important? A culture of entheogenic integration values and validates the entheogenic experience without the judgment or stigma that much of the Western world does. A key component to integration is a community that is compassionate and encouraging of inner personal work. A supportive safety net is established when we are surrounded by loved ones who are there to witness our personal journey and offer reflections along the way. They bring depth to our understanding, offer helpful perspectives, and provide feedback at the times we may go astray. Altogether, our friends, family, teachers, and elders hold us accountable to actualize insights so that we may live the full potential of personal transformation accessed by psychedelic and plant medicines. The wisdom from an elder can provide just the right resource when we struggle with a piece of shadow we faced in a journey. A hug from friends and family carries us when we continue to release grief cracked open. The right teacher helps us discern where and when we use entheogens; if it is the right time, and if it is in a safe container.
It is also important to remember that we live as part of a greater social ecology. As much as we invest in others and ourselves, others invest in us, and we all benefit. When we transform as individuals, there is a ripple of transformation outward. Everyone in relationship to us has the opportunity for change; thus, the whole community gets stronger. Community is a co-creation; the better we take care of ourselves, the better we take care of each other, and the better we take care of our environment. The stronger the symbiosis between us, societies, Mother Earth, and beyond, the greater the resilience we can hold in the face hardship.
Greater social cohesion and healthier relationships are examples of how modern society and the current psychedelic movement could benefit from a culture of entheogenic integration. Below is a list of 5 additional components to consider.
Beyond Research Trials and Visiting Underground Healers: Providing Resources for Participants
Psychedelic Science is booming, providing empirical evidence to support centuries of anecdotal research. As the potential benefits of psychedelic research have emerged in mainstream media articles, so has a growing interest in underground ceremonies. Long-term integration is outside of the scope, and financial availability, of the privately-funded psychedelic studies. Travelling healers who bring this work to the underground also do not have the time and energy available to engage with integration processes. There is no doubt that entheogens are potent; studies at Johns Hopkins show that experiences with them are often some of the most profound and important experiences of one’s life. The research session, or ceremony, is only the beginning of the work to come. For transformative experiences to actualize, each individual must follow up and dedicate themselves to practices aimed at personal growth and continued exploration of their newly-inspired wonder. A supportive community is critical to offer guidance and frameworks of accountability for the integration process. This comes in the form of family, peers, friends, elders, and integration consultants. The reemergence of the psychedelic movement has sparked the need for integration, and a niche of professionals are gathering to assist individuals requiring short and long term integration. You can find a list of California-based ERIE integration consultants here.
Beyond Productivity: Who’s Going to Have a Job When Everything is Automated?
The paradox of technology is that it improves the quality of independent life, but it also has the potential to be our greatest competitor. As we zoom into the age of automation, artificial intelligence will be like that overambitious and efficient coworker setting an unattainable standard of success. With capitalism as the predominant economic system, the drive towards efficiency preoccupies the greater population. This has lead to the development of neurohacking technology, including the growing popularity of LSD microdosing. Microdosing certainly has benefits; however, the current media trend to package it as a productivity enhancer misses the point of what makes these substances unique. Our modern culture is already driving towards unsustainable expectations of human performance, leaving many of us physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. Do we need to include psychedelics in this conversation?
This begs the question: Is productivity the goal or the byproduct of the psychedelic experience? Is there something to be said for the value of wonder and awe to inspire and motivate new ideas and possibilities? The full potential of entheogenic experiences suggests a profoundly different and more holistic world beyond the context of unsustainable production and growth. By encouraging a culture of entheogenic integration, we can engage the motivating aspects of the inner experience and allow them to have value within their unique context. James Fadiman’s early research suggests psychedelic visionary insights provide answers to questions that seem impossible, sparking new trains of thought. The concerns of the future world require these epiphanies and profound insights to succeed and break out of the unsustainable aspects of the current system. They do not cry out for a more productive capitalist cog in the machine.
Beyond Spiritual Materialism: What’s the Value in Losing Your Insights?
It’s a common misconception that the psychospiritual growth associated with entheogens only comes from the experience itself: however, the impact of entheogens is beyond temporary “ah ha” moments, or actions on neurochemical pathways. Implementing these experiences and associated insights is a dedicated path and lifestyle. Commonly, individuals will jump from peak experience to peak experience, oversaturating their minds and bodies, without putting effort to truly actualize their lessons, creative inspirations, or look at their unresolved emotions. This spiritual materialism may hinder growth by not allowing adequate time and space for psychospiritual development.
Navigating through personal experience, and making plenty of mistakes along the way, we have learned that the more we engage with our integration assignments, the more fruitful our next entheogenic experiences will be. Although repeated content around core lessons is common within psychedelic and entheogenic experiences, revisiting the same content relentlessly due to poor integration work can be tedious and counterproductive. A culture of entheogenic integration provides a compassionate container to ground and fully unpack our experiences, thus tilling the ground of being and planting seeds for the next journey into the extraordinary.
Beyond Reductionism: From Quantitative to Qualitative
Embedded in a positivist empirical framework, the contemporary acceptance of psychedelics is emerging through the lens of clinical research and neuroscientific studies. This research has played a significant role in the psychedelic resurgence, opening a path through the veil of stigma; however, it has also begun to operationalize and measure the experience within the reductionist model of science. Current neuropsychology locates consciousness inside the brain; a bizarre interaction of neurotransmitters accidentally producing the byproduct of awareness. This model offers little insight into the phenomenology of the experiences, and avoids transpersonal, archetypal, or humanist approaches.
After five years of offering integration services, we have yet to encounter anyone talking about their neurochemistry during integration. The inner visions they share, the insights, the embodied transformations, have a much more rich and elaborate narrative. Carl Jung refers to these narratives as archetypes of transformation; the experience itself has transformative potential despite the neurochemistry involved. A culture of entheogenic integration provides an opportunity for meaning-making, storytelling, and reflection, building a relationship with the experience that is absent from the neuropsychological framework. The mysterious nature of entheogenic experiences suggests that consciousness is much more complicated than its individual parts, and perhaps humanity as a whole would benefit from looking at the bigger picture.
Beyond the Patriarchy: It Takes a Village
Entheogens also offer insights into new ways of being in community and relationship, helping people become advocates for social systems beyond the paradigm of patriarchy. Slowly, this structure is being dismantled and, through entheogenic insights, we have the opportunity to help design more fluid, gentler, and balanced ways of living. A culture of entheogenic integration provides an opportunity to practice dynamic relationships: radically inclusive, cross-generational, non-hierarchical, reflective, and in harmony with the Earth and her ecosystem.
In relation to this topic, the recognizable consequences of the patriarchy include the criminalization of sacred plants and fungus, the suppression of traditional entheogenic cultures and their practices worldwide, and the stigmatization of inner mystical experiences. One way we could all participate in dismantling this oppressive system is to begin exercising new ways of being in the world, by building reflective community and practicing authentic relationships.
We utilize a simple model that has stood the test of time is the peer-sharing circle. This is a non-hierarchical community space that utilizes aspects of the counsel model, such as a talking stick, for individuals to share aspects of their entheogenic experiences. This model empowers each of us as both a student and teacher, valuing our inherent inner wisdom for reflection. Through sharing, we learn together how to offer insights and reflections without giving advice. How we hold each other in the circle can become how we hold each other in the world. Dismantling happens one brick at a time.
Entheogens and other non-ordinary states of consciousness have been part of the human relationship with nature for thousands of years. In our current times, we have a lot to learn from their past. Recently, there has been an increased interest in entheogens in contexts as wide-ranging as the indigenous, the underground, tourism, academia, science, recreation, and mental health. The emphasis on integration is an effort to complete the picture, illustrating that it is not just about the “trip” alone. A cultural container around entheogens and integration simply mirrors a structure that society as a whole can benefit from. When we live our lives aligned with an intention that resonates deeply within ourselves, we can bring an intention of greater service and cohesion to the world and the modern psychedelic movement.
Remember, it is important to pick a community wisely: one that is receptive to entheogenic or psychedelic work, is non-judgmental, holds a high standard of values and ethics, teaches quality discernment, is physically and emotionally available, and advocates for the personal development that occurs with proper entheogenic integration. These communities serve to keep us grounded while we learn to weave our mystical exploration into modern life.
We are ERIE, a 501c3 non-profit, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. For the last five years, we have been hosting entheogenic educational events and lectures, as well as community based, peer-facilitated integration circles. Our primary focus, our labor of love and passion, is entheogenic integration. What we active organizers of ERIE share in common is, not just an interest in psychedelics, but more precisely, we share community. We have each had experiences that have pushed us to our edges—at times well beyond our edges—and what we all learned, sometimes the hard way, is that community, and “all our relations,” are the most critical components to our personal growth and expansion. If you would like to learn more, make a donation, or review our suggested integration guidelines, please visit us at erievision.org.
Acknowledgements
We’d like to acknowledge Hank Obermayer for his work with intentional communities and brainstorming this article. |
Netherlands coach Louis van Gaal has suggested to the Daily Mail that Robin van Persie is currently not enjoying his football at Manchester United.
• Payne: Only one team in Manchester
• Van Gaal to trial new blood in friendly
United have struggled for form under Sir Alex Ferguson's successor, David Moyes, this season, with the Premier League champions seventh in the table.
Van Persie's campaign has been disrupted by injury but he has still managed 10 goals in 15 league appearances for the Red Devils.
Van Gaal is looking forward to linking back up with Van Persie at this summer's World Cup, as he feels the striker relishes playing with his compatriots.
He said: "I think he should be great in the tournament because he loves to play in the Dutch squad.
"The football from Man United now is for him maybe difficult but then he wishes to show his techniques. Techniques in the Dutch team for him is higher.
"He has shown that all the qualification matches more than ever because he’s our top scorer and I hope he can continue this." |
I did not think that Mitt Romney would choose the Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. Nor did I think that Romney should pick Ryan as his number two. But now that he’s done so, let’s consider what might have made the presumptive Republican nominee choose the way he did.
1) Ryan is a formidable political talent. Three years ago, the congressman was well- known only to his conservative admirers, and his plans for reforming entitlements were so radioactive that only Democrats wanted to talk about them. Today, the Ryan budget is the congressional G.O.P.’s governing agenda, and Ryan himself is a darling of the Beltway media. What’s more, he’s accomplished all of this while representing, not a safe-as-houses Republican seat, but a blue-collar district that went for Barack Obama by four points in 2008. He’s not a brilliant orator, but he has some of John McCain’s skill at selling himself in town halls and some of Ross Perot’s flair for data presentations, and his persona is exactly right for the message that he’s pushing: Wonky, earnest, non-threatening, all-American. (Plus: Cute kids!) He obviously has never experienced anything like the glare of the presidential campaign trail, but he has more experience in the spotlight than most of the other alternatives available to Romney — and if part of the case against a figure like Pawlenty was that he had seemed to wilt in the primary-season heat, then the fact that Ryan has thrived as the de facto leader of the opposition these last two years, despite unrelenting Democratic attacks, has to count as a strong point in his favor. There’s something to be said for just picking the best available politician in these circumstances, and even Ryan’s fiercest critics acknowledge that he’s pretty good at the business of selling himself and his ideas.
2) Ryan will help Romney govern. If the Republican ticket triumphs in November, having Ryan on-side will help Romney, a non-Washingtonian, navigate the complexities of Capitol Hill. But here it’s important to keep in mind that Ryan is an ideologue and a Beltway wheeler-dealer, attuned to both the possibilities for bipartisanship (recall that his latest Medicare proposal is co-sponsored with a Senate Democrat) and the need to sometimes swallow hard and take one for the team (hence those Bush-era votes for TARP and Medicare Part D). Thus if Romney wants to push an aggressive agenda in his first hundred days or year in office, Ryan will be a natural point person — but if the Romney White House then needs to compromise well short of conservative objectives, Ryan will be capable of negotiating the deal and ready and willing to sell it to a reluctant base. What’s more, having Ryan as a loyal administration foot soldier (whose own presidential ambitions are bound up in Romney’s success) will prevent the Wisconsin congressman from setting up a rival center of power within the party, or becoming a locus of conservative dissent. Some conservatives may think that the Ryan choice brought Romney permanently on-side for their ambitions. But it’s also possible that the choice will ultimately be remembered as the moment when Romney co-opted conservatives instead.
3) Ryan fits the demographic profile Romney was looking for. This is an election that will be won or lost for Republicans among swing voters, many of them Catholic, in the Midwest and Old Northwest. Ryan is a Catholic politician from Wisconsin, a state that the Romney campaign has some hope of tipping into its column in November, and there’s at least some polling evidence that a Romney-Ryan ticket would overperform in the Badger State. He brings some of what Pawlenty and Rob Portman offered, in this sense: He has long experience campaigning and winning among the kind of voters Romney desperately needs to win. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s also a youthful-looking family man who makes a nice visual complement to Romney on the stump. (Just watching them together this morning, there’s a potential father-son, older partner-junior partner dynamic there that might be helpful to a candidate heretofore somewhat lacking in the human touch.)
*
None of these three points, however, change my basic skepticism about the pick. This is a game-changer, of a sort: Romney has been running a cautious, content-free campaign, and picking Ryan will effectively force him to become much more substantive on policy, while giving the country the clearest possible choice heading into November. But setting up a clash of worldviews doesn’t address Romney’s most glaring policy weakness, which is the (understandable) fear among hard-strapped voters that Republican policies will benefit the rich more than the middle class. Ryan’s association with entitlement reform is at best orthogonal to that weakness, and at worst it exacerbates it substantially. What’s more, by picking him Romney may have passed up a golden opportunity to take advantage of the Obama campaign’s leftward tack over the last year: Instead of making a sustained play for the center of the country, he’s chosen to raise the ideological stakes.
This will make the race more exciting and more serious, and I’m looking forward to watching it play out. But I don’t think it’s made a Romney victory more likely. |
OTTAWA - There were no excuses, and few explanations, for the Detroit Red Wings' woeful first period Tuesday in their 3-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators at Canadian Tire Centre.
They were well-rested and even gave key players the day off Monday. They should have been energized and they should have played with urgency from the opening faceoff, since they stressed it enough.
Instead, the Ottawa Senators dominated the first period, outshooting them 16-2, and would have blown it open if not for the outstanding play of goaltender Jimmy Howard, who kept it scoreless.
"I thought they played good and I thought we were as bad as we could be," Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said.
"Disappointing, obviously, our preparation, the job we did as coaches, the focus we had for the game, taking care of the puck. We obviously didn't get our message across, didn't do a very good job to have our team ready and we didn't play hard enough as a group and in the end ... it's real simple, you do good things, good things happen to you, and we got exactly what we deserved here tonight."
Despite the start, the Red Wings had a chance to win it in the third period. But Patrick Wiercioch snapped a 1-1 tie with 5:23 to play and Clarke MacArthur scored into an empty net with 58 seconds remaining.
The Red Wings' four-game winning streak in Ottawa was snapped. They fell to 6-3-3.
The Red Wings outshot the Senators 30-16 over the final 40 minutes to pull even in shots at 32-32.
"We had chances and yet I'm a big believer that if you do things right it goes your way over time," Babcock said. "We didn't do enough right and we didn't have enough good players. We didn't have enough guys competing hard enough, doing good enough things, and in the end good goaltending kept us around.
"I don't think you're ever disappointed in your group or yourself when you put everything out there but when you play like we did tonight you got to be disappointed.
Babcock blamed turnovers for the first two goals his team surrendered.
Erik Karlsson opened the scoring on the power play at 14:37 of the second. Henrik Zetterberg tied it at 2:34 of the third.
"They really dictated the play, they skated in the first period and we didn't," Howard said. "It's tough to get the puck in the offensive zone when they're catching you from behind all the time. We did not do a good job of getting the puck out at our blue line and getting it in at theirs, getting in on the forecheck."
Despite his brilliance, Howard blamed himself for the winning goal.
"I didn't get a good look at it; I had two guys skate in front of me right when the shot was being taken so my eyes were a little bit taken away," Howard said. "But I think at that point in the game it's a save I got to come up with for the guys."
Zetterberg said Howard was the only reason his team had a chance in the third period.
"We only played two periods, so we gave it away for the first period," Zetterberg said. "I think the only player who played for our team was Howie, and really kept us in the game. We can't show up in the first like we did today and expect that we'll win the games."
Niklas Kronwall rattled a shot off the post with minutes remaining as Detroit had a late power-play chance to tie it.
"If you don't skate it's tough to win battles," Kronwall said. "We didn't even play in the first."
It won't get any easier Wednesday as the Red Wings visit the New York Rangers, having to play on back-to-back nights against the rested defending Eastern Conference champions who shut them out twice at home last season behind Henrik Lundqvist.
"We obviously got to sort out a few things," Babcock said. "We'll do that prior to our game tomorrow. We just got to get our whole group to play harder."
Call to paramedics a false alarm
Paramedics reportedly came into the Red Wings dressing room after the game, but apparently nobody was in any danger.
In a text message, general manager Ken Holland said, "False alarm. All good and heading to airport." |
The US Internal Revenue Service is putting tax payers at risk by operating thousands of web servers that contain security vulnerabilities or have not received proper authorization, a new report has concluded.
According to the Treasury Inspector for the Tax Administration - a Treasury Department watchdog - the IRS operates 2,093 web servers with at least one vulnerability. It said 540 of those servers contained one or more vulnerabilities rated high risk. The report identified 1,811 internal servers that had not been approved to connect to the network. Some 1,150 of those were being used for non-business purposes.
Under IRS rules, all internal websites and servers must be registered with the agency's Modernization and Information Technology Services organization.
"Unauthorized servers pose a greater risk because the IRS has no way to ensure that they will be continually configured in accordance with security standards and patched when new vulnerabilities are identified," the report's authors wrote. "Malicious hackers or employees could exploit the vulnerabilities on these web servers to manipulate data on the servers or to use the servers as launch points to attack other computers connected to the network."
Examples of high-risk vulnerabilities included buffer overflow weaknesses and servers that used blank passwords. The authors blamed the vulnerabilities on employees who failed to carry out duties as required.
The report offered five recommendations that included assigning responsibility for registration of specific servers, the blocking of unauthorized servers from the IRS network and an annual scan of the network to identify all machines that are connected.
The full report is available here. ® |
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Actor and television star Charlie Sheen has publicly requested a meeting with President Barack Obama to urge him to reopen the official investigation into 9/11 in light of the fact that the majority of the 9/11 Commission members have now publicly gone on record to express their conviction that the government agreed to lie about the official story.
Sheen’s request takes the form of a letter to the President in the context of a fictional meeting between the two entitled “20 Minutes With The President,” published exclusively on radio talk show host Alex Jones’ Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com websites.
The letter cites evidence, backed up by a substantial online bibliography, that proves the official story behind 9/11 is a fraud and that this conclusion was also reached by the majority of the 9/11 Commission members, a fact that mandates President Obama to reopen the investigation into the terrorist attacks.
Sheen expresses his hope that President Obama will follow through on his promises of change, accountability and government transparency by using his executive powers to re-examine 9/11, adding that he voted for Obama with the understanding that he would follow a different course to the Bush administration.
However, as Sheen highlights in his letter, the course of Obama’s first year in office clearly indicates that he will do nothing to reverse policies crafted by the Bush regime, and in fact has sought to exceed outrages of the previous administration in areas such as warrantless wiretapping, rendition, detention without trial, and wars in the Middle East – all of which arrived as a consequence of 9/11.
Sheen’s letter is a public declaration demanding the truth behind 9/11 as America approaches its eighth anniversary since the tragic events of that day. His questions are shared by a majority of victims’ family members, according to Bill Doyle, the representative of the largest 9/11 families group.
[efoods]
The letter focuses around the fact that no less than 60 per cent of the 9/11 commissioners have now publicly stated that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11 and that the Pentagon was engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack.
Sheen also presents a plethora of other evidence to illustrate how the official story is a fraud, including the revelations of whistle blowers like FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who recently broke a Federal gag order to expose how Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were working for the U.S. government right up until the day of 9/11.
The issues highlighted by Sheen do not represent idle speculation or conspiracy fodder, they are documented facts that have been deliberately ignored by strawman 9/11 truth hit pieces that are now doing the rounds again as the anniversary approaches, particularly last months’ 9/11: Science and Conspiracy which was aired by the National Geographic Channel and wasted little time in portraying people who have doubts about the official 9/11 story as extremist cranks, while failing to acknowledge that the majority of the members of the 9/11 Commission have publicly expressed similar concerns.
Charlie Sheen is once again using his prominent public platform in an attempt to expand a national debate about the disturbing unanswered questions behind 9/11, having first spoken out on the issue in March 2006. After he first went public, Sheen was asked to do more and now he is doing more as he feels there is a chance to get more traction behind a new investigation with a new President in the White House.
Sheen is directly appealing to Barack Obama to read his letter and to look into the lies surrounding 9/11 for himself.
Regardless of whether or not President Obama agrees to meet with him, Sheen is confident that his letter will serve as a catalyst from which questions surrounding 9/11 and other false flag events will be brought to national attention.
This is a call to action and a declaration of war on the lies of 9/11 that have formed the foundation of the endless wars abroad and the police state at home as the Republic falls. Sheen is demanding that truth activists and those who simply care about the future of the country stand up beside him and speak truth to power.
Sheen is now urging grass roots political organizations and individuals across the country, such as the town hall protesters and We Are Change groups, to go to press conferences and other public events and demand answers about the truth behind 9/11. As much awareness as possible around the issue of false flag terrorism needs to be generated in order to prevent tragedies like 9/11 from happening again. Sheen emphasizes in his letter that we cannot let 9/11 become ancient history, try and forget about it or just move on, because if a nation forgets its history then it is doomed to repeat it.
We cannot allow governments to continue to advance their political agendas by exploiting forged pretexts, argues Sheen, and the fact that big budget hit pieces against 9/11 truth are still being rolled out proves that the establishment is upset that the population is waking up to false flag terror.
Sheen will appear live on The Alex Jones Show on Wednesday and Friday to discuss the content of his “20 Minutes With The President” piece and how he plans to move forward with this exciting new initiative. You can listen free here or subscribe to prison planet.tv to watch live streaming video.
No matter what your views are on 9/11, Sheen is begging the thinking public to look at how many members of the 9/11 Commission itself have questioned the official story, along with the scores of other highly credible former and current government officials, intelligence professionals, military officials, scientists, structural engineers and architects, and legal scholars who have all publicly denounced the fraud that continues to masquerade as the official 9/11 story.
For media requests on this subject email [email protected]. |
I TAKE a lot of photos. Heaps.
It’s become an obsession of mine, which is a bit amusing given that I’ve made a career out of words or out of being in front of a camera.
I recently snapped a shot of Sydney’s iconic Anzac Bridge, with its supersized Aussie and Kiwi statues posted like armed sentinels at the western end, in the dawn’s ethereal light.
It was part of a photo essay I’m cobbling together for April 25 this special year.
The commemoration of Gallipoli — and those first, wide-eyed Anzacs who jumped ashore — is about to wash over our collective emotions, on both sides of the ditch. In 1915 our brothers died on that godforsaken Turkish peninsula at the appalling rate of 45 Anzacs a day.
But. When I focused on the high Anzac Bridge flagpole all I could see was a fluttering Union Jack. The Southern Cross — with it’s familiar Federation Star — was somehow lost in the flag’s folds.
News_Image_File: Sergeant Tom "Diver" Derrick hoisting the red ensign up a tree in New Guinea, during World War II, Nov. 1943. Source: Australian War Memorial
I smiled to myself, thinking how appropriate it was — given that most of the 10,920 Anzac boys who died at Gallipoli had fought under the Union Jack.
Or, occasionally the red Australian ensign.
The mythology — and rampant misinformation — about Australians “dying under the flag” boggles the mind. It’s just not true.
For neither of the two World Wars.
The now familiar blue ensign, which didn’t officially become our flag until April 14, 1954, was rarely even sighted at Gallipoli — or any of the other bloody killing fields that followed on the Western Front.
In the War Memorial’s prized photograph taken on December 23, 1943, Sgt T.C Derrick — a South Australian who went on to win the VC — is shown hoisting the red ensign in Sattleberg PNG, after the village had been taken from the Japanese.
But it isn’t just ‘ at war’ that the facts are distorted.
The famous Septimus Powers’ painting of the 1927 grand opening in Canberra of the old Parliament House shows a sparkling white building festooned with Union Jacks on the top and red Australian flags obligingly waving below.
There’s not an Aussie blue flag to be seen.
News_Image_File: Septimus Power: The Arrival of Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and. Duchess of York at the Opening of federal Parliament House Building, Canberra 9 May 1927.
What’s more, rather than having some sacred, pristine origin, the truth is that the flag we fly so proudly on this Australia Day resulted from what began as sales promotions for a magazine and also a tobacco company. A bloody cigarette ad.
And what about every state flag — every one a relic from our colonial past, every one sporting the Union Jack in pride of place, in the top left hand corner?
How many of our soldiers died fighting under those state flags? None.
So why are those state flags all still so untouchable, too? And what does it say about us and our need to cling to the apron strings of England 114 years after Federation?
Meanwhile, New Zealand (whom we condescendingly pat on the head as a bit rustic and slow in all but rugby) has decided to seize ‘the one hundred year anniversary’ of Gallipoli to launch a fair-dinkum flag debate.
Unlike us, our Anzac mates have decided it’s time to grow up and become truly independent.
“We want a new flag design”, conservative Prime Minister John Key declared, “a flag that says ‘New Zealand’, in the same way that the maple leaf says ‘Canada’ or the Union Jack says ‘Britain’. Without a word being spoken.”
(Incidentally, the Canadians ditched the Union Jack in 1965.)
Quite frankly, the Kiwis are tired of being mistaken for Australia in the sporting world, with a flag “dominated by the Union Jack in a way that we ourselves are no longer dominated by the United Kingdom”.
How refreshingly laudable is that?
News_Image_File: Ray Martin. Source: SBS
So, later this year they’re going to “formally, carefully and respectfully” consider a range of new designs and then choose one which will be put up against the current flag and voted on by every Kiwi in a referendum.
No doubts about the result.
Meanwhile, as we see at every press conference and as we saw at all the G20 meetings in Brisbane, Tony Abbott’s staff now scrupulously fold the flag behind the PM so all we see is the Federation Star — not the Union Jack. How absurd is that?
So, by the end of 2015 Australia will be of the last countries in the old British Empire — in the world — to still slavishly curtsy to its colonial past.
“Great Britain by night!!!” as Jerry Seinfeld once deliciously described the Aussie flag. What a sad yet amusing description.
That aside, have a wonderful Australia Day.
Attention readers: This footnote has been added to the original article to clarify for readers that the winning design for the Australian flag resulted from the Commonwealth Government Federal Flag Competition in 1901. The 200 pounds prize money for the design included 50 pounds from the Havelock Tobacco Company and 75 pounds from the Review of Reviews journal which had launched its own flag competition in 1900 and agreed to later merge its competition in with the Commonwealth competition |
President Thomas S. Monson, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, attends the memorial service for Mormon leader Boyd K. Packer at the Tabernacle, on Temple Square Friday, July 10, 2015, in Salt Lake City. (Photo: AP)
About 100 people walked to Temple Square to formally sever ties with the Mormon church following a Saturday gathering in downtown Salt Lake City.
Participants visited The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Office Building at the Mormon church's headquarters to deliver resignation letters, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
After submitting the letters, they gathered about a block away at City Creek Park, where the excommunicated co-founder of a Mormon women's group addressed the crowd.
Kate Kelly, who helped found Ordain Women in 2013, told people they should stay in the Mormon faith if it brings them joy, and leave if it does not.
"If you stay, you should raise hell," she said. "I think you have a moral imperative to make it a better place for children and especially for girls."
Ordain Women advocates for the inclusion of women being in the church's all-male lay clergy. Kelly lost her membership in the church last year after being found guilty of apostasy, defined as repeated and public advocacy of positions that oppose church teachings.
The organizer of Saturday's event, Brooke Swallow, said she wanted to provide a sense of community for people leaving Mormonism.
"We know that it's a painful process," Swallow said. "Some people are ostracized or they feel like they need to ostracize themselves from their Mormon families."
The resignations were not done out of anger or to provoke the church, but to show a sense of dissatisfaction, according to Swallow.
Church spokesman Dale Jones addressed the mass resignation event in a statement.
"Every person is valued and loved. They are our brothers and sisters, colleagues and friends," Jones said. "Each makes their own decisions about their participation and church membership. Regardless of their choice, we love them and wish them well, and hope they will find the support and answers they seek."
Former LDS bishop Earl Erskine, host of the online video series "Ex Mormon Files," also addressed the crowd on Saturday.
Erskine said he began to withdraw from the church after finding inconsistencies in church documents that opened him up to questions about other areas of church history.
"I gave myself permission to think," he said. "Mormons, bless their hearts, they're very intelligent, but they don't critically think very much."
Mormon leaders are currently "on the defensive" and scrambling to maintain order, said Erskine.
He pointed to a series of articles from church leadership that confronts touchy topics like polygamy and the former ban on black males holding the priesthood. The articles have earned praise for their evenhanded treatment of historical and doctrinal issues, even from the faith's critics.
Bret Parkin, another speaker at the event, said he thinks the resignations are the beginning of a mass exodus of disaffected Mormons.
"The house of cards," said Parkin, "is falling down.
Read or Share this story: http://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/local/2015/07/26/exiting-lds-members-formally-resign-salt-lake-city-event/30709421/ |
Thursday was not exactly the most exciting first day of the NCAA Tournament we’ve ever seen. The day featured only two upsets (and neither was really that shocking) and only a few games that truly came down to the final seconds.
Still, despite a lack of games that made you text your friend to turn on the TV immediately, the NCAA is reporting strong ratings on CBS and Turner Sports.
First Thursday TV coverage across 4 networks averages 5.9/14 HH Rating, up +5% over 2016 — March Madness TV (@MarchMadnessTV) March 17, 2017
According to a press release, CBS, TNT, TBS and TruTV averaged a 5.9 household rating, up 5 percent from last year’s 5.5. In fact, that 5.9 is the third highest average rating for an opening Thursday since 1991, the first year every NCAA Tournament game was shown on TV.
The NCAA also says March Madness Live got 29 million live video starts Thursday, up 19 percent from a year ago. Here we have to give credit where it’s due: March Madness Live is about as good as sports streaming services go, with smooth video quality and few glitches.
All that viewership is somewhat surprising for a few reasons. 1) The aforementioned lack of upsets and close games. 2) The lack of marquee teams playing (Duke, UNC, Kansas, UCLA and Kentucky all play Friday). 3) The historically poor ratings for CBS’ selection show.
Overall, it seems that a slightly underwhelming day on the court still yielded good results for rights-holders. We’ll see if the relatively unexciting first day has any effect on Friday’s ratings. |
Photo via Flickr user alexazul
In the land of liberté, égalité, and fraternité, pork-free meals are apparently not guaranteed.
Or at least that's the case in the riverside town of Chalon-sur-Saone, near Dijon, where Mayor Gilles Platret announced in March that Jewish and Muslim pupils did not deserve the right to school meals made without pork.
Although pork-free meals have been offered for 31 years in the Burgundy town, Platret wrote in a letter to parents that "school canteens … should revert to neutral spaces."
Shortly after the Platret issued his "pork or nothing" policy, the Muslim Judicial Defence League filed a legal complaint, claiming that "a child would be extremely traumatised if a pork cutlet was served to him and he was obliged to eat it after he has been repeatedly told from a young age that it's forbidden food."
This week, a French court will rule on the legality of the ban, according to the AFP.
Platret is not the only French politician to have made a move priding pork over religious observance recently.
In December, the mayor of the little town of Sargé-lès-Le Mans announced that students who did not eat pork would not receive a substitute meal. According to TheLocal, the move affected 15 Muslim pupils in the school, but the school was not believed to have any Jewish students.
"The mayor is not required to provide meals that respond to religious requirements," Mayor Marcel Mortreau said at the time. "This is the principle of secularism."
That echoes the words of Platret's attorney, who recently said that France's authorities were not required to "provide everyone what they need to exercise their religion."
That unflagging commitment to "secularism" is increasingly common in France, one of only two countries in the world to have an enacted a nationwide ban on the wearing of burqas in public. France is also home to the largest population of Muslims in Western Europe.
Tensions over Islam have remained high in the country in the wake of the attack on Charlie Hebdo in January, and the ISIS-related beheading of a man in June. Earlier this summer, French recipe site Marmiton decided to post a series of Ramadan recipes, only to be met with racist trolls.
As the AFP notes, moves like Platret's are viewed by many "as pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment at a time of heightened tensions over jihadist attacks."
But the right's xenophobic crusade predates the violence at Charlie Hebdo. In April of last year, far-right Front National party leader Marine Le Pen led her own charge against halal and kosher meals, telling a French radio station, "We will accept no religious requirements in the school lunch menus … There is no reason for religion to enter into the public sphere." |
CptSmiley 3rd Party Developer
Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 1,046
Okay guys, I took a very quick flight and I can definitely say something is wrong. For full transparency, depending on the FBW mode the rate limit on the servo-actuators in anywhere between 60 to 120 deg/sec. It appears I messed up a decimal point causing it to move 600 to 1200 deg/sec for all purposes, is nearly instantaneous!
Just took a flight with the fix and things behave much better. That isn't to add with the FCS the stop/start on roll is very fast but not as quick as you guys are all seeing. Also the return to steady state is a tad softer due to the now correct physical limitation on the servo movement.
Thanks for all the detailed feedback everyone. __________________
"Witness mere F-14s taking off from adjacent flight decks, gracefully canting left and right, afterburners flaming, and there’s something that sweeps you away—or at least it does me. And no amount of knowledge of the potential abuses of carrier task forces can affect the depth of that feeling. It simply speaks to another part of me. It doesn’t want recriminations or politics. It just wants to fly.”
― Carl Sagan |
After a deflating loss in Super Bowl 51, the polarizing and controversial Kyle Shanahan was hired as head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, leaving a vacancy at offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons. Also, it was announced that Richard Smith would not be returning defensive coordinator position for the 2017 season, meaning both the Falcons’ offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator in 2017 would be new faces.
Steve Sarkisian
Sarkisian was brought in almost immediately after the departure of Shanahan. He previously served as an offensive assistant for the Alabama Crimson Tide under legendary head coach Nick Saban, and served as offensive coordinator for the Tide in the College Football Playoff National Championship after Lane Kiffin departed for Florida Atlantic University.
Before working for Saban, Sarkisian was head coach of the University of Washington and the University of Southern California. As a college head coach, Sarkisian totalled a 46-35 record over five seasons and a partial sixth season. He was known for his offensive prowess and creativity, acting as his own offensive coordinator while head coach.
Also, before his head coaching ventures, Sarkisian served as quarterbacks coach for USC from 2001-2003, again in 2005-2006, and as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach from 2007-2008. During this period at USC, he coached Heisman winning quarterbacks Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart, helping the Trojans claim several Pac-10 Championships.
Unfortunately, Sarkisian is not without controversy. He was fired from his head coaching job at USC in October of 2015. Shortly after his termination, it was revealed that Sarkisian struggles with alcoholism and it negatively affected his ability to coach.
He remains in treatment today and is very open about his difficulties with drinking.
Overall, Sarkisian has a proven track record of offensive success, and the effect his personal issues will have on the Falcons remains to be seen. Hopefully, he can overcome the struggles he faces in his daily life and be the offensive genius he was known as before the stories of his alcoholism came out.
Further reading on Sarkisian can be found here.
Marquand Manuel
Manuel is definitely a less heard of name than Sarkisian. In college, he played DB at the University of Florida, and then spent 8 years in the NFL as a safety. While a player, he was known for his fiery leadership and passion for the game.
After his playing days were over, he found a job as an assistant special teams coach in Seattle under Pete Carroll in 2012. He quickly worked his way up the defensive ladder, serving as a defensive assistant in 2013 and as a defensive assistant specifically for the secondary in 2014.
When Dan Quinn was hired as the Falcons head coach in 2015, Manuel followed him from Seattle to Atlanta. Since then, he has worked as a secondary coach and senior defensive assistant for the Falcons.
Manuel has experience coaching a young secondary, which will be beneficial in the coming years as the Atlanta defense will be one of the younger defenses in the league. He also has a long history of playing the game, so he understands what those young players are going through and how to help them take the next step. His passion and leadership from his playing days could be a great asset in bringing together a young and developing defense.
Further reading about Manuel can be found here.
The Falcons will have new faces in major roles next season. It’s time for them to help the team get better, and to make it back to the big game for a chance to right the mistakes of Super Bowl 51. Rise Up. |
A 53-YEAR-OLD woman has been placed on parole after defecating in her partner’s lap following a heavy drinking session.
A 53-YEAR-OLD woman has been placed on parole after defecating in her partner’s lap following a heavy drinking session. Mike Knott
A 53-YEAR-OLD woman has been placed on parole after defecating in her partner's lap following a heavy drinking session.
The woman was on a domestic violence order and had been ordered to stay away from her partner, but on August 19 Bundaberg police responded to a disturbance at the woman's home to find the man in an upstairs toilet covered in faeces.
Bundaberg Police Prosecutor Sergeant Barry Stevens said at about 7pm police arrived at the address and entered the property through an unlocked front door.
"They found the defendant sitting in the lounge room in total darkness," he said.
Sgt Stevens said the defendant told them there was no one else in the house but officers found the victim in an upstairs toilet.
He said the victim told them the defendant had defecated over his lap.
Officers also noted faeces on the couch and lounge room floor.
"Officers also noted faeces on the couch and lounge room floor," Sgt Stevens said.
Sgt Stevens told the court just three days earlier the defendant was intercepted by police and found to be driving while under the influence of alcohol, recording a reading of 0.167%.
On September 2, the defendant was once again found to be in contact with her partner after police responded to a incident at his home.
Heavily intoxicated, the defendant spat on the back seat of a police car while being removed from the property.
Magistrate Deb Vasta described the relationship between the defendant and the victim as "toxic".
Probation and parole officer Greg McMahon and Sgt Stevens did not seek further time in jail given the defendant had already spent 56 days behind bars.
"We are not saying she's a bad character but when she gets out of custody we want to address the issues and help her," Mr McMahon said.
The woman was disqualified from driving for 12 months.
Mrs Vasta released the woman on parole and placed her on a 12 month probation order and urged her to seek counselling to overcome her alcohol and emotional issues. |
On a Friday morning conference call with reporters, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis boasted that, in partnership with the RNC, he expects to have outspent Barack Obama on television ads to the tune of $10 million in the last 10 days of the race. He described the campaign as "pretty jazzed up" during its sprint to the finish.
Davis said his internal numbers showed that Obama's 30-minute infomercial was "mostly watched by Obama supporters. ... It was an interesting use of something in excess of $5 million in campaign cash." Davis noted that Obama could have run "a week's worth of 30 second ads in all targeted states" for the amount of money spent on that one night. Noting that Obama is going up on the air today in Arizona, North Dakota and Georgia, Davis taunted: "We encourage them to please go up in other states that we intend to win, and spread out their campaign cash."
McCain's campaign manager said that the GOP had always believed that the last week of television was the most important, because they could target "late breakers." (He may just inspire Obama donors to take the Democratic nominee's latest fundraising pitch more seriously.)
Davis said that he was looking at the best ten days of internal polling since the Republican convention, and that the campaign had "shaken off effects of the financial collapse that suppressed our numbers" -- admitting that the economic crisis has damaged his candidate.
For his part, McCain political director Mike Duhaime said the campaign's ground game was crushing the Bush-Cheney's respected 2004 effort -- making 5.3 million calls and door-knocks in the past week alone, compared to 1.9 million over the same span of time in 2004.
The McCain high trust also pushed back against recent polls -- specifically, the high Democratic party identification that many respected polling firms assume. Gallup, for example, gives Democrats an 11-point lead over Republicans in party ID.
Lead McCain pollster Bill McInturff argued that those numbers are outdated, because America is now a "center right" nation. Noting Thursday's Fox poll showing Obama ahead by only three points (with a nearly equal amount of Republicans and Democrats sampled), McInturff defended the poll's party balance. He claimed that his "friend" Andy Kohut at the PEW poll is using a party identification model that would be appropriate in "1976, after Watergate" but doesn't make sense today. "I don't see how you have party ID at negative 8 [percent for Republicans]" he said. "That's not America ... anywhere in the last generation and a half." |
Depending on where you are in the world, your access to free Wi-Fi while on your travels will vary greatly. Larger cities filled with coffee houses probably offer the best connectivity, where as more remote or rural locations will rely much more heavily on owning a 3G dongle and signing up for a data contract.
Japan is usually near the top of the charts when it comes to speed of access to the Internet, and now one company has figured out a very simple way to create a healthy grid of wireless access points consumers can connect to with their mobile devices.
The Asahi Soft Drinks company installs and stocks thousands of vending machines across Japan. It has decided that in future new vending machines will come pre-installed with the kit necessary to act as a Wi-Fi hotspot. In so doing, anyone within 50 meters of a machine will be able to connect for free and surf the web. The only limit seems to be an auto cut-off after 30 minutes, but you can just re-connect if you need to.
By offering free Wi-Fi, Asahi should attract more consumers to its machines. As well as offering up drinks and Internet access, the hotspots will include information about the local area and services–potentially offering the company some advertising revenue too.
As vending machines are always turned on, and located in busy pedestrian areas, the move to offer free Wi-Fi access makes sense. Vending machine technology is also receiving a major overhaul in the coming years, some of which requires an Internet connection anyway. Examples include Pepsi’s social vending machine and Sanden’s 65-inch transparent touchscreen solution with facial recognition.
If this works in Japan, I see no reason for it not to make the trip West. Vending machines can be found in most public areas, and I think we’d all appreciate switching over to Wi-Fi whenever we can to help keep within our contracted data allowances.
Read more at TechCrunch |
Colleen Barry, The Associated Press
MILAN, Italy -- Italian director and screenwriter Francesco Rosi, whose films took on corruption in postwar Italy, winning top honours at the Venice and Cannes film festivals, has died. He was 92.
Rosi's most famous works include "Hands over the City," a film about political corruption that won the won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1963, and "The Mattei Affair," which dealt with the mysterious death of an oil tycoon. It won the Golden Palm at Cannes in 1972.
Italian filmmakers, from Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino to long-time friend and collaborator Franco Zeffirelli, mourned Rosi's death on Saturday.
Zeffirelli said in a statement that Rosi was for him "a friend, a lifetime companion and brother," and that the loss was "like experiencing a mutilation." Zeffirelli, 92, and Rosi started out together as assistants to Luchino Visconti, becoming collaborators and life-long friends.
Born in Naples, Rosi was an innovator of socially committed filmmaking that took on both controversy and corruption in Italian society.
In addition to the awards in Venice and Cannes, he won a Silver Bear in Berlin in 1961 with "Salvatore Giuliano," a film about a Sicilian bandit.
He was also honoured in 2012 with a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement for having left "an indelible mark on the history of Italian filmmaking."
"There are directors, and they are few and far between, who are capable of constructing worlds, and they do it by the invention of methods and styles. Rosi was one of the very few," Sorrentino was quoted as saying by Italian news agency ANSA.
Roberto Saviano, whose book "Gomorrah" about Italian organized crime became an award-winning film, said on Twitter that "no one knew how to portray power like Francesco Rosi."
The cause of Rosi's death wasn't released, but Corriere della Sera reported he had been suffering from bronchitis.
He is survived by daughter, Carolina, an actress. His wife of nearly 50 years, Giancarla Mandelli, died in 2010 at age 83, when her clothing caught fire from a cigarette.
Rosi's body will lie in state for mourners to pay tribute at Rome's Casa del Cinema on Monday. |
AUSTIN, Texas — The batteries we use every day may soon become cheaper, smaller and lighter. Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered a family of anode materials that can double the charge capacity of lithium-ion battery anodes. This means that the batteries that we use in everything from cellphones to large-scale energy storage systems could be more efficient in the future.
The new family of anode materials, which the researchers dubbed the Interdigitated Eutectic Alloy (IdEA) anode, saves time and materials by producing an anode using only two simple steps instead of the multiple steps traditionally required to mass-produce lithium-ion battery anodes.
The researchers created a foil material that is one-quarter of the thickness and half of the weight of the graphite and copper anodes used in virtually all lithium-ion batteries today. As a result, a smaller, lighter rechargeable battery could be made with the new anode in the future.
“It is exciting to have developed an inexpensive, scalable process for making electrode nanomaterials,” said Arumugam Manthiram, a professor and the director of the Texas Materials Institute, who led the team. “Our results show that the material succeeds very well on the performance metrics needed to make a commercially viable advance in lithium-ion batteries.”
Recent efforts to improve lithium-ion battery electrodes have focused on building new nanomaterials atom by atom. Manthiram and his team, which includes postdoctoral fellow Karl Kreder and materials science and engineering graduate student Brian Heligman, developed a new class of anode materials in which eutectic metal alloys are mechanically rolled into nanostructured metal foils.
Since the 1990s, the primary anode for mass-produced rechargeable lithium-ion batteries has been a graphite powder coated on a copper foil. The copper adds bulk to an electrode without improving the battery’s power and the anode requires a laborious, fastidious manufacturing process. By omitting the complicated slurry coating process, the manufacturing of the IdEA anode is drastically simplified.
Kreder, who is the lead author on the study, realized that a micrometer-scale alloy anode could be transformed into a nanomaterial using traditional metallurgical alloying processes.
“The eutectic microstructure forms naturally because of thermodynamics,” Kreder said. “Then, you can reduce the microstructure by rolling it, which is an extraordinarily cheap step to convert a microstructure into a nanostructure.”
The team’s resulting anodes occupy significantly less space, overcoming a critical barrier to commercializing better batteries for use in portable electronic devices like cellphones and medical devices, as well as larger applications like electric cars.
The research was published in the journal ACS Energy Letters. It was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering. |
Last year, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) to allow the family members of those killed in the 9/11 attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia for any part it played in those acts of terrorism.
President Obama vetoed JASTA, but Congress voted to override the veto.
Now, less than a year after Congress voted to let the victims and the families of victims of 9/11 sue Saudi Arabia, the current administration is proposing the largest-ever arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
The arms sale allows the Saudis to immediately get nearly $110 billion in American weapons and an unimaginable $350 billion in arms over 10 years.
After the veto override, former U.S. Senator Bob Graham stated, “[F]rom what I know today, there is ample evidence that 9/11 would not have happened but for the assistance provided by Saudi Arabia.” He went on to say, “The results of that assistance was (nearly) 3,000 persons murdered, 90 percent of them Americans. And a new wave of terrorism with Saudi financial and operational support has beset the world.”
The sale includes laser-guided bombs in the form of Paveway II and III weapons systems, as well as Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), guidance that converts unguided bombs into smart munitions.
Selling military weapons to questionable allies is not in our national security interest. At some point, the United States must stop and realize that we are fueling an arms race in the Middle East.
Even Hillary Clinton questioned the loyalty of Saudi Arabia in an email released by WikiLeaks, saying, “We need … to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”
When we choose to intervene and provide or sell weapons to one nation, we only invite other nations to match or grow their own armaments – Iran and Israel will likely devote more of their funds to keeping up.
Furthermore, U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia, which has come in the form of intelligence, refueling missions, and the sale of major U.S. defense equipment, has not abated the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. If anything, it has exacerbated it.
In January, the United Nations estimated that the war in Yemen had so far cost at least 10,000 lives, and horror stories of civilian casualties continue to emerge from the conflict, including a Saudi-led bombing of a funeral in October that wounded hundreds and killed over 100.
A coalition airstrike on a hospital in August killed 19 and injured 24, according to Doctors Without Borders. And these are only a couple of the examples one could cite.
After the April airstrikes in Syria, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared, “We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world.”
Do we have to amend this statement to say, “… unless they have billions of dollars to invest in the United States”?
So what does the U.S. gain from cutting this deal with Saudi Arabia?
During my fight last year against a $1.15 billion sale of Abrams tanks and associated major defense articles to Saudi Arabia, CNN host Wolf Blitzer attempted to answer that question by discussing maintaining full employment at U.S. defense contractors.
He expressed concern that arms industry-related jobs were at risk of being lost if Congress did not allow the sale to proceed. President Eisenhower warned our nation during his farewell address to be very wary of the military industrial complex and its encroachment on civil society. The moment when the best interests of defense contractors start determining what is in the national security interest of our country, the tail has begun to wag the dog.
Saudi Arabia’s relationship with radical elements is an open secret. Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations, wrote an article about Saudi Arabia’s admitted relationship with Islamic extremists. Regardless of its origins, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been using their ties with Islamic fundamentalists to further their influence throughout the Middle East and abroad through charities, schools, and social organizations.
In a New York Times op-ed, Ed Husain stated, “Al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram, the Shabab and others are all violent Sunni Salafi groupings. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has been the official sponsor of Sunni Salafism across the globe.” Does this administration expect Congress to look the other way as it attempts to sell U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia?
Since Saudi Arabia’s incursion into Yemen, Iran has started shipping weapons to Houthi rebels, Al Qaeda has increased its territorial presence, and ISIS has several satellite offices in the country. The U.S. and coalition naval blockade of incoming vessels is just one of many examples of heightened tensions and military escalation on the Arabian Peninsula.
Our prolonged military campaigns in the Middle East quagmire have not produced any net gains.
When President Trump spoke in Saudi Arabia, he proclaimed the United States would not tell other people “how to live” or “what to do.” That is a welcome change of tone from previous interventionist-happy leaders from both sides of the aisle.
Realism, however, doesn’t mean we should sell arms to a country that doesn’t share our values or enhance any strategic vital interest of America.
In the next few weeks, I, along with a bipartisan group of senators, will force a vote disapproving of this arms sale to Saudi Arabia. Let’s hope the Senate will have the sense to stop this travesty. |
EV Battery Costs Already ‘Probably’ Cheaper Than 2020 Projections
March 26th, 2015 by Guest Contributor
The cost of electric vehicle battery packs is falling so rapidly they are probably already cheaper than expected for 2020, according to a new study in Nature Climate Change.
Electric vehicles remain more expensive than combustion-engine equivalents, largely because of battery costs. In 2013 the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated cost-parity could be reached in 2020, with battery costs reaching $300 per kilowatt hour of capacity.
But market-leading firms were probably already producing cheaper batteries last year, says today’s new research. It says its figures are “two to four times lower than many recent peer-reviewed papers have suggested.”
High costs, falling
Even though the EU electric vehicle market grew by 37% year on year in 2014, it still made up less than 1% of total sales. High cost is a major reason why electric vehicles have failed to break through, alongside range and a lack of recharging infrastructure.
The new research is based on a review of 85 cost estimates in peer-reviewed research, agency estimates, consultancy and industry reports, news reports covering the views of industry representatives and experts, and finally estimates from leading manufacturers.
It says industry-wide costs have fallen from above $1,000 per kilowatt hour in 2007 down to around $410 in 2014, a 14% annual reduction (blue marks, below). Costs for market-leading firms have fallen by 8% per year, reaching $300 per kilowatt hour in 2014 (green marks).
Cost estimates and future projections for electric vehicle battery packs, measured in $US per kilowatt hour of capacity. Each mark on the chart represents a documented estimate reviewed by the study. Source: Nykvist et al. (2015).
For the market-leading firms, shown in green on the chart above, costs last year were already at the bottom end of projections for 2020 (yellow triangles).
The paper estimates prices will fall further to around $230 per kilowatt hour in 2017–18, “on a par with the most optimistic future estimate among analysts.” The crossover point where electric cars become cheapest depends on electricity costs, vehicle taxes, and prices at the pump.
In the US, with current low oil prices, battery packs would need to fall below $250 per kilowatt hour for electric cars to become competitive, the study says. Behavioural barriers to electric vehicle uptake present additional hurdles to widespread adoption.
The paper says:
“If costs reach as low as $150 per kilowatt hour this means that electric vehicles will probably move beyond niche applications and begin to penetrate the market more widely, leading to a potential paradigm shift in vehicle technology.”
Learning rate
To reach that level, costs will have to fall further. But a commercial breakthrough for the next generation of lithium batteries “is still distant,” the paper says, and many improvements in cell chemistry have already been realised. This seems to pour cold water on frequent claims of new battery types “transforming” the electric vehicle market.
However, there are still savings to be made in manufacturing improvements, industry learning, and economies of scale, which have already brought down costs in recent years. Cumulative global production and sales of electric vehicles are roughly doubling annually, the paper says.
That means the 30% cost reduction expected at Tesla Motors’ planned “Gigafactory” battery plant by 2017 represents a “trajectory close to the trends projected in this paper.” On the other hand, Renault-Nissan’s plans to build battery manufacturing capacity for 1.5 million cars by 2016 have hit the buffers as electric car sales have trailed expectations.
There are large uncertainties in the paper’s findings. Despite being the most comprehensive review to date, it relies on “sparse data” and acknowledges that a secretive industry might avoid revealing high costs, or conversely might subsidise battery packs to gain market share.
Overall it is “possible” that economies of scale will push costs down towards $200 kilowatt hour “in the near future even without further cell chemistry improvements,” the paper concludes. If the paper is right, then electric vehicle uptake could exceed expectations. That will be a good thing for the climate — just as long as the electricity that fuels them is not from coal.
Nykvist B. et al. (2015) Rapidly falling costs of battery packs for electric vehicles, Nature Climate Change, doi:10.1038/nclimate2564
Reprinted with permission. |
TAMPA — A burglar was shot and seriously wounded Tuesday after the occupant of a home spotted him remotely on her mobile surveillance app and called her father to investigate, police said.
The incident happened around 10 a.m. at 1713 W North B St., said Tampa police spokesman Steve Hegarty. The resident, Jordan King, wasn't home at the time but received a text message from a mobile phone application alerting her of movement in the house, Hegarty said.
King, 25, was able to pull up a live surveillance video feed on her phone and spotted a man in her bedroom with socks on his hands rifling through her belongings.
King called 911 and her father, 54-year-old Jerry King. He lives about one block away and went to investigate.
When he arrived at his daughter's home moments later, he saw 23-year-old Michael Stewart leaving the house, police said. King told investigators Stewart had something in his hand that "put him in fear," according to a news release. He fired one shot, hitting Stewart in the upper torso.
Stewart, of Tampa, was taken to the hospital with serious injuries and was listed in stable condition Tuesday, police said. He will face charges related to the burglary.
Jerry King was cooperating with investigators and has not been charged.
A man who answered the door of Jordan King's home Tuesday declined to comment. A woman who answered the door at a Tampa address listed for Jerry King said he wasn't home.
State records show Stewart was released from state prison in April after serving nearly six years for multiple counts of burglary and grand theft. On Aug. 11, Stewart was arrested by Tampa police and charged in another, unrelated burglary. He was released on $9,500 bail.
On July 26, Stewart was arrested for driving with his license canceled, suspended or revoked. He spent four days in jail and was released for time served.
Jerry King comes from a military family and is the 38th president of the Tampa Rough Riders. He has been a club member since 1999 and met his wife, Renee, at a Rough Rider event in Key West, according to the club website.
Jordan King is a graduate of Florida State University and a member of the Krewe of Ann Jeffrey, according to the Rough Riders website.
Police are currently investigating if Stewart had an accomplice in the burglary, Hegarty said. In the surveillance footage obtained by Jordan King, it appears that Stewart is talking or listening to a cellphone, he said.
The surveillance app Jordan King used to spot the intruder is one of a number on the market. They typically connect a mobile phone to an in-home camera. Some also provide audio.
Times senior news researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Contact Tony Marrero at [email protected] or (813) 226-3374. Follow @tmarrerotimes. |
One day in the not-too-distant future, a mindless horde of cannibalistic killing machines will come shambling through the streets of America. And when that day comes, the U.S. Army will be on it faster than you can scream "BRAAIIIINNSS!"
Lucky for us, the Army Zombie Combat Command has put together a nifty manual on how to identify, fight, and kill those murderous mobs of the undead. Soldiers can now add the FM 999-3 Counter-Zombie Operations at the Fireteam Level to their arsenal – "the primary doctrinal reference on conducting fire team sized infantry operations in a Zombie infested environment in the United States."
And as far as we know, this is the only (non) arm of the service that "guarantees the survival of the United States in the event of any Zombie emergency."
Danger Room has already provided the civilian guide for the next zombie apocalypse. We're glad to see such a forward-thinking authority prepare our nation's troops to counter the next non-existent threat. It's "based on intelligence collected from various Zombie outbreaks around the world," so you know it's reliable.
So how should our enlisted men and women fight the troves of Zombies who threaten to eradicate our species? Well, since every Zombie outbreak is slightly different, this guide is a handy how-to for dealing with unexpected developments.
First, identifying these flesh-eating monsters. Unfortunately, only "qualified medical personnel" can identify Type A infections (the weaker version that only starts the zombie-conversion process upon death). But never fear, the manual has precise instructions for identifying zombies at any stage of their rotten existence.
Stage 1, Infection: See someone shivering, vomiting, and whose pupils don't respond to light or darkness? Quick, kill them immediately. Don't forget to destroy their brains.
Stage 2, Recently Reanimated: Things get slightly trickier in this stage. Key movements to note are staggered walking, arms extended, slight groans. The manual advises immediate neutralization.
Stage 3, Active Zombie: This should be the easiest to identify. No body fat, mostly gray, clothing is probably damaged or missing. You know what to do.
Next up, fighting equipment. While your standard M4 is the weapon of choice for counter-Zombie operations, there are multiple think-outside-the-box options. Try a spear (highly recommended, aim for the head), aluminum baseball bat (the shortest melee weapon practical for use against Zombies) or sword (Attention! Decapitated heads can still bite you). But stay away from chainsaws (waste of fuel), pitchforks (not sturdy enough to penetrate the skull) or axes (they have the unfortunate habit of getting lodged in the target).
Next are elaborate instructions on how to regain order and control in a zombie-infested battlefield (this is crucial to due anticipated chaos and separation). Officers can choose from diamond, triangle, trident or file formations. Roof tops, very steep mountains or large trees are ideal defensive points in urban settings. Avoid islands, if possible – zombies will just walk under water and emerge on the other side.
Of course, no manual is complete without a thorough review of terrain and weather. Unfortunately, this section is short – zombies can operate in almost any condition, although they slow down once it dips below zero degrees Celsius. But remember, a frozen Zombie is still dangerous, once it thaws.
Now, this manual is intended for trained soldiers of the United States Army – so don't rush home to try any of these anti-undead tactics yourself. Unless, of course, your living room has been invaded by a bunch of corpses who want to eat you alive. Then, all we can say is, best of luck. |
A Republican candidate in Montana's special election, Greg Gianforte, allegedly 'body-slams' Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs in May 2017, prompting a police investigation into the incident. (Courtesy of The Guardian)
The audio of Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs’s encounter with Montana GOP congressional candidate Greg Gianforte features a lot of commotion. “Crashing sounds,” is how a transcript on the Guardian site describes what happened after Jacobs yesterday approached Gianforte at an event with a question about the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the Republican health-care bill.
“We’ll talk to you about that later,” responds Gianforte, who is in a special-election race against folk singer Rob Quist. Like a good reporter, Jacobs doesn’t buy that pledge and objects that there won’t be any time later. “Okay, speak with Shane, please,” says Gianforte, referring to his spokesman, Shane Scanlon.
Whether it’s a presidential, congressional, mayoral or city council race, this very interaction happens thousands of times around the United States every year. A campaign reporter’s core job is to hound the candidate, find little creases in their campaign schedules and sneak in a question. We see video of these moments all the time. Sometimes they produce responses that illuminate the candidate’s mentality; sometimes they add texture to a debate; most of the time they yield yet another recitation of a talking point that gets hauled out at every campaign stop.
They rarely end in what is alleged to have happened yesterday in Bozeman.
Greg Gianforte just body slammed me and broke my glasses — Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 24, 2017
“He took me to the ground,” Jacobs told Guardian reporters from an ambulance. “I think he wailed on me once or twice … He got on me and I think he hit me … This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me in reporting on politics.” A Fox News crew happened to be on the scene, with correspondent Alicia Acuna later providing this account on FoxNews.com:
Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him. Faith, Keith and I watched in disbelief as Gianforte then began punching the reporter. As Gianforte moved on top of Jacobs, he began yelling something to the effect of, “I’m sick and tired of this!” Jacobs scrambled to his knees and said something about his glasses being broken. He asked [Fox News crew members] for our names. In shock, we did not answer. Jacobs then said he wanted the police called and went to leave. Gianforte looked at the three of us and repeatedly apologized. At that point, I told him and Scanlon, who was now present, that we needed a moment. The men then left.
A statement from Gallatin County Sheriff Brian Gootkin: “Following multiple interviews and an investigation by the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office it was determined there was probable cause to issue a citation to Greg Gianforte for misdemeanor assault.”
As they go about their business, the authorities will find quite a contrast between Acuna’s recollection and the version released by the Gianforte campaign, which said that Jacobs “entered the office without permission, aggressively shoved a recorder in Greg’s face, and began asking badgering questions. Jacobs was asked to leave. After asking Jacobs to lower the recorder, Jacobs declined. Greg then attempted to grab the phone that was pushed in his face. Jacobs grabbed Greg’s wrist, and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground. It’s unfortunate that this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene at our campaign volunteer BBQ.”
The audio released by the Guardian gives no quarter for that chain of events. Let the authorities hash that all out. Thanks to Tucker Carlson, we at the Erik Wemple Blog know better than to draw definitive conclusions about an incident before a criminal proceeding concludes.
Yet there’s one angle of this case that is beyond any dispute, and that’s the part in which Gianforte vents his anger at Jacobs. “I’m sick and tired of you guys. The last guy that came in here, you did the same thing … Get the hell out of here. Get the hell out of here. The last guy did the same thing. Are you with the Guardian?”
“Yes, and you just broke my glasses,” responded Jacobs.
“The last guy did the same damn thing,” said Gianforte.
And just what is the “same damn thing”? The Erik Wemple Blog checked with the Guardian’s U.S. editor, Lee Glendinning, on this front and have yet to get a response. She issued this statement about the altercation: “The Guardian is deeply appalled by how our reporter, Ben Jacobs, was treated in the course of doing his job as a journalist while reporting on the Montana special election. We are committed to holding power to account and we stand by Ben Jacobs and our team of reporters for the questions they ask and the reporting that is produced.”
From the looks of things, “the same damn thing” appears to boil down to asking questions of the candidate. Could this video report by the Guardian on the Montana race provide a clue? It features reporter Paul Lewis trudging around Montana, talking to voters and seeking out input from the candidates. On two occasions, Gianforte disses Lewis, telling him at one campaign event, “I’m here to talk to the folks.”
Make no mistake about it — that dodge is a bipartisan thing. Hillary Clinton, for example, was famous for ignoring reporters in favor of chats with voters.
At another event, Lewis again approaches Gianforte and receives this response: “We’re here to visit with our folks here.” Later the candidate relents, answering questions for one minute. Lewis fails to draw Gianforte into an extended discussion about his stance on President Trump. Gianforte bolts, leaving Lewis alone with his microphone. The cold shoulder from the campaign surprised the Guardian because its video team had been in contact with the campaign before making the trip to Montana, according to video producer Adithya Sambamurthy.
Watch the video: Lewis goes about his work with a soft and deferential touch, at least from what can be gleaned from the footage. He comes off as the opposite of the hard-charging campaign reporter.
Polite and relevant questions: Are they what had made Gianforte so “sick and tired”? Are polite and relevant questions what he was bemoaning when he talked about “the same damn thing”? We’ve asked the Gianforte campaign for comment on this matter.
As the Missoulian noted in April, Gianforte took a question from a man at an event: “Our biggest enemy is the news media … How can we rein in the news media?” The man pointed out a reporter and raised his hands in a neck-wringing motion. Gianforte took the bait, responding, “We have someone right here. It seems like there is more of us than there is of him.”
Speaking of the news media as the people’s enemy and singling out reporters in menacing fashion at public events are both aspects of Trump’s trickle-down authoritarianism. He has done both. For decades, Republican candidates talked and talked and talked about the ravages of the so-called liberal media. Historians may look back at recent events — the manhandling of reporter Michelle Fields by a Trump campaign aide last year; the Jacobs confrontation — as the beginning of an action phase. |
A Russian rocket carrying two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut blasted off on Tuesday for the International Space Station.
Russia’s Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin and NASA’s Kevin Ford blasted off in a Soyuz TMA-06M space craft on schedule at 1051 GMT from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, an AFP correspondent said.
Russian state television showed live footage of the astronauts strapped into the cramped craft and reading instructions, with their mascot, a toy hippo with a “Russia” logo swinging above them.
The Soyuz spacecraft is due to dock with the ISS on Thursday at 1235 GMT. The crew will join NASA’s Sunita Williams, Russia’s Yuri Malenchenko and Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide, who arrived in July and are due to leave in mid-November.
The trio had been set to blast off on October 15 but the lift-off was delayed due to the need to replace a piece of the on-board equipment. The astronauts are set to spend around 140 days on their mission.
The Russian cosmonauts are making their first journey into space, while flight engineer Ford flew to the ISS in 2009 on the US shuttle. He will take over command when Williams leaves in November. |
The welterweight title unification fight between Keith Thurman (27-0, 22 KOs) and Danny Garcia (33-0, 19 KOs) on Saturday (CBS, 9 p.m. ET) is a heavily anticipated match and one of the toughest fights to pick in a long time. Both fighters are undefeated and in their prime. So who’s going to win the big fight?
Here are predictions from some top fighters and trainers:
Shawn Porter (former welterweight titlist) Thurman MD 12 Garcia I've watched both Danny Garcia and Keith Thurman all the way through the amateurs and now in the pros. They're both really good fighters. Both strong. Both intelligent. Both make good adjustments over the course of a fight. I'm choosing Thurman to stay undefeated because I think not only is he a little stronger, and a little smarter, but I also think his boxing ability is superior to Garcia's. I think he's going to give Danny problems when he moves. I think Thurman is going to have Danny off-balance. I think Thurman is going to make it very hard for Garcia to set up his offense. And I think based off of that one element Thurman will win a majority decision
Mikey Garcia (lightweight titlist) Garcia W12 Thurman I think Danny Garcia takes it. He finds a way to win. He has experience and has been able to make adjustments to get the win. Garcia by decision over Keith Thurman.
Jarrett Hurd (junior middleweight titlist) Garcia W12 Thurman I haven't seen Danny Garcia hurt before, but I've seen Keith Thurman hurt to the body against Luis Collazo. Garcia took punches from hard-hitting Lucas Matthysse. No matter how much Garcia's been the underdog, he always finds a way to pull the upset.
Andre Berto (former welterweight titlist) Thurman W12 Garcia It's going to be a great fight. I'm learning toward Keith Thurman over Danny Garcia.
Robert Guerrero (former two-division titlist) Thurman W12 Garcia I'm picking Keith Thurman to win by decision over Danny Garcia. Both fight with a lot of heart, and it's going to be a Fight of the Year type of fight. I just think Thurman has more weapons in his arsenal. Both are undefeated, so may the best man win.
Ronnie Shields (trainer of Jermall Charlo) Thurman D12 Garcia Keith Thurman-Danny Garcia is a 50-50 fight. Both guys are well-schooled, and I predict that it will end in a split-draw.
Stephen Edwards (trainer of Julian Williams) Garcia W12 Thurman Keith Thurman has the faster feet and more skittish style. Although he is looked at as the puncher, Danny Garcia has to not chase Thurman. Garcia has to make Thurman come to him so he can counterpunch. Garcia's dilemma is does he chase Thurman or does he wait. He always makes the right decision. I say that he waits and wins a controversial decision.
Derrick James (trainer of Errol Spence Jr.) Garcia SD12 Thurman It should be an interesting fight. Danny Garcia has the speed, and he should be able to use that to his advantage. On the other hand, Keith Thurman should have more power and if he lands, Garcia may be in trouble. I am focused on our fight with Kell Brook, but I hope that we are able to fight the winner, which I think will be Garcia by close split-decision victory.
Ernesto Rodriguez (trainer of Jarrett Hurd) Thurman W12 Garcia I pick Keith Thurman due to adjustments to box when he's in trouble and his ability to hurt you with a punch. Tough bout to pick but I'm picking Thurman to beat Danny Garcia by decision.
Abel Sanchez (trainer of Gennady Golovkin) Garcia W12 Thurman In my opinion, Danny Garcia wins a tough, hard-fought decision. I never really thought that Keith Thurman would be able to pull it out in a hard, 12-round fight.
Ruben Guerrero (father and trainer of Robert Guerrero) Thurman W12 Garcia I think Keith Thurman is going to win the fight, but he needs a knockout. If it goes to the distance, I think they'll give it to Danny Garcia. |
July 15, 2013
Apart from the Fed, i
t is incorrect to state that Rothschild owns all central banks.
This is important, because getting straightforward facts like these wrong
is clearly damaging the credibility of conspiracy theorists.
- See more at: https://henrymakow.com/#sthash.tO9ZC2iO.dpuf Central banks are a mixture of both: they have public and private aspects. But the bottom line is that central banks do the bidding of the Money Power. It originated in Babylon and spread through the world via Jewish Supremacism. It hides within Jewry and behind other proxies, most notably Freemasonry and the Vatican. And of course the Banking Cartel, which is a global, monolithic bloc. Through banking it also controls all major industries. This power base allows them to control every Government and every Nation on the Globe and they are looking to externalize the Hierarchy in a New World Order.- See more at: https://henrymakow.com/#sthash.tO9ZC2iO.dpuf
"But the bottom line is that central banks do the bidding of the Money Power. It originated in Babylon and spread through the world via Jewish Supremacism. It hides within Jewry and behind other proxies, most notably Freemasonry and the Vatican. And of course the Banking Cartel, which is a global, monolithic bloc. Through banking it also controls all major industries. This power base allows them to control every Government and every Nation on the Globe and they are looking to externalize the Hierarchy in a New World Order.
Central banks are a mixture of both: they have public and private aspects. But the bottom line is that central banks do the bidding of the Money Power. It originated in Babylon and spread through the world via Jewish Supremacism. It hides within Jewry and behind other proxies, most notably Freemasonry and the Vatican. And of course the Banking Cartel, which is a global, monolithic bloc. Through banking it also controls all major industries. This power base allows them to control every Government and every Nation on the Globe and they are looking to externalize the Hierarchy in a New World Order.
- See more at: https://henrymakow.com/#sthash.tO9ZC2iO.dpuf
"
See "Migchels caught exaggerating" below
by Anthony Migchels
(henrymakow.com)
Controversy continues to rage about Central Bank ownership. Most major Central Banks, except for the Fed , are publicly owned. However: this is not really important. Control is what matters and Central Banks are controlled by the Money Power, i.e. the Rothschild syndicate, whether private or publicly owned.
The shocking realization that the Federal Reserve Bank is privately owned by its member banks is one of the defining moments in any truthseeker's life. Eustace Mullins, coached by the indefatigable Ezra Pound, wrote 'The Secrets of the Federal Reserve', listing the banks owning the system. Ed Griffin then infamously plagiarized this book with his 'Creature of Jekyll Island', to push the John Birch/Libertarian Gold Standard. We're still dealing with this today, as seen in the 'End the Fed' movement.
The FED itself is now starting to move against its critics, claiming they ARE a Government institution, although partly independent. As Central Banks should be, which is today's conventional wisdom in the Mainstream.
Here's some text from the link, from the Fed itself:
"The 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by the Congress as the operating arms of the nation's central banking system, are organized similarly to private corporations-possibly leading to some confusion about "ownership." For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year."
So while the Fed tries to downplay private ownership, it does not deny it. Its stock cannot be traded, but this is not a limitation; it's a sure way of keeping outsiders out. After all, it's a club, and we're not in it. Furthermore, a dividend of 6% per year is not bad.
On the other hand, after paying its shareholders, the Federal Reserve returns what remains to the US Government, so it's not entirely fair to say that the Fed is printing money and then has the State pay interest on it. It refunded $89 billion in interest in 2012 after taking its 6% dividend cut. The private banks do most of the money creation by far.
EUROPE
It becomes even more complicated when we realize that all European central banks are completely publicly owned. They are corporations with 100% government ownership. They do operate as 'independent' entities, though. Before the ECB, they set interest rates and managed the volume without Government interference. Nowadays, this is done by the ECB, which in turn is owned outright by the national Central Banks.
Before the Second World War, all European Central Banks were owned privately. But the massive upheaval caused by the Great Depression and the powerful monetary reform movements that shook the Money Power had raised awareness about private ownership of the financial systems of the West and nationalizing the Central Banks was a handy way of diverting attention. After the war all major European Central Banks became publicly owned.
Therefore, it is incorrect to state that Rothschild owns all Central Banks! This is important, because getting straightforward facts like these wrong is clearly damaging the credibility of conspiracy theorists.
CONTROL VS OWNERSHIP
Central Banks were created by the banks for the simple reason that Fractional Reserve Banking is incredibly unstable. There is an incentive for the banksters to loan out more than they can cover with fractional reserves, leading to all sorts of busts. This was hurting the Money Power's control over the money supplies of the world and central banks were created as 'lenders of the last resort.' In case of a panic, a Central Bank could keep busted banks afloat, maintaining sufficient confidence in the system.
Furthermore, they were useful tools for Sovereign borrowing. The basic contract between national governments and central banks was that the central bank would always provide the state with all the money it would ever need, in return for guaranteed interest payments through taxation.
Also important was the monopoly on national currency. In earlier days, both in Europe and the US, free banking and local Sovereign money created a diverse monetary environment, more difficult for the Money Power to control. By 'legal tender' laws their units became the sole accepted way of paying taxes, giving the banking units a massive advantage in the market place. These were the early steps in further and further monetary centralization in ever fewer units, with World Currency as the final goal.
Finally Central Banks 'regulate' banks. This is a simple trick: make regulation incredibly complex and expensive, and it becomes impossible for the vast majority of market players to comply. It's the same deal as the Pharma Mafia has with the FDA: new drugs are so incredibly expensive to test that it is impossible for low cost natural cures to go through the process. Exit competition and another excuse to keep prices artificially high for the cartel.
CONCLUSION
Public vs. Private is just another dialectic. It matters not whether money is managed privately or publicly. What matters is whether we have stable and cheap (interest-free) money. If a private interest-free mutual credit facility can provide it, grand. If Government can do it, fine. A mixture of both is probably the way forward.
Central banks are a mixture of both: they have public and private aspects. But the bottom line is that central banks do the bidding of the Money Power. It originated in Babylon and spread through the world via Jewish Supremacism. It hides within Jewry and behind other proxies, most notably Freemasonry and the Vatican. And of course the Banking Cartel, which is a global, monolithic bloc. Through banking it also controls all major industries. This power base allows them to control every Government and every Nation on the Globe and they are looking to externalize the Hierarchy in a New World Order.
Central banks are staffed by Goldman Sachs alumni. They keep competition out of the market. They prop up busted banks, maintaining some kind of 'stability'. They oversee private usurious credit creation and maintain the banks' ability to rake in trillions per year in interest. They allow the banks to create the boom/bust cycle.
It's high time for a new paradigm.
Related:
Anthony Migchels is an Interest-Free Currency activist and founder of the Gelre, the first Regional Currency in the Netherlands. You can read all of his articles on his blog Real Currencies
First Comment from
Anders: Migchels Caught Exaggerating - Makow caught being too trusting of longtime contributor..apologies from both.
I have the following objections:
1. The Danish Central/National Bank is privately owned - and it is impossible to learn who owns its shares!
The National Bank writes in Danish
http://www.nationalbanken.dk/DNDK/opgaver.nsf/side/Kort_om_Nationalbankens_opgaver! (Denmark´s National/Central Bank is) "National Bank is a private and independent institution established by law. Independence can be traced back to its establishment in 1818 (author´s note: after Denmark´s bankruptcy due to i.a. loans from Nathan Rothschild. Unknown who finance Denmark after the bankruptcy and under what conditions). In the 1936 Act National Bank's independence is shown by the fact that the National Bank's Executive Board has the sole responsibility for setting the interest rates of monetary policy.
The principle that central banks must be independent, is also enshrined in the EU Treaty (Article 130). This stipulates that neither the European Central Bank (ECB) nor national central banks shall seek or take instructions from Community institutions, national governments, or any other body."
2. Oh, yes. It does indeed matter who prints our money
Denmark´s National debt was 487 bn DKR in 2012 -acc. to the National Bank http://www.nationalbanken.dk/DNDK/Statsgaeld.nsf/side/Statens_gaeld!OpenDocument .
Thanks to Denmark having the highest taxation pressure in the world Denmark has managed to have nearly the lowest debt in Europe per capita acc. To the National Bank. Nevertheless, this growing debt (+ mass immigration) is now killing our social state, since our taxes cannot service it .
If the state printed the money - instead of letting the private Central Bank doing it out of thin air and then lending the money to the state against interest, the rates of which the private Central bank sets itself, Denmark would not have had that debt. Our taxes would not be used to pay returns and interest to the private owners of our National Bank.
The deeper we sink into dependence of the national bank owner(s), the greater our political dependence on them. And the more austerity they impose on us for borrowing the money, we should print ourselves without these parasites, the poorer we grow.
--Community Currency Battles Bank of Kenya - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/the-crime-of-alleviating-_b_3519858.html
It is worth reading the following in the discussion about the central banks being private or public/governmental.
The central banks have a supreme central bank, The bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel. It was founded by Rothschild agents Charles Dawes and Owen Young alongside with Hjalmar Schacht of the Deutsche Reichsbank. About this system Bill Clinton´s mentor, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Professor Carroll Quigley wrote in his book "Tragedy and Hope" 1975 , which was based on years of studies in the Archives of that Council:
"The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far reaching (plan), nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences.
The apex of the system was to be the Bank For International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland*, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations.
Each central bank ... sought to dominate its government by its ability to control treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the Country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."
See Andrew Hitchcock "The History of the Money Changers", year 1930 on the timeline http://iamthewitness.com/ books/Andrew.Carrington. Hitchcock/The.History.of.the. Money.Changers.htm
Migchels admits exaggerating:
Yes, I've overstated the case, inadvertently. Greece's CB is also private, as is BoJ.
There are undoubtedly more. To err is human..
But the Bundesbank, The Dutch CB, the Bank of China and others are public.
So it's mixed territory and the basic issue of the facts about Rothschild owning them all and the control vs. ownership issue is still very much on target.
2. is not really so to the point: clearly I understand his point, but I was saying that the issue is not whether it's public or private, but whether it's done well or badly, including what that entails: no usury and stable.
Anders suggests that it's being done badly because it's done privately and that the State would automatically solve these problems, but this is not true. Public banking, also as proposed by Ms. Brown, is interest-bearing, although the State would have interest-free credit, which is PB's great boon.
--
Anders replies:
You write: "But the Bundesbank, The Dutch CB, the Bank of China and others are public."
Could you, please, document that?
I have evidence in the opposite direction as for Germany:
From the University of Hamburg http://tinyurl.com/ptzphl9 (in German)
"The federal government establishes a monetary and Federal Reserve Bank as a bank..In the context of the European Union, its tasks and powers can be transferred to the European Central Bank that is independent... " (Basic Law, Article 88).
From the above conceptual analysis, it clearly results that the legal position of The Deutsche Bundesbank is not: partly, the Bundesbank appears in the guise of a monopoly enterprise producing bank notes, sometimes in the guise of a dealer in bank businesses and partly in the guise of an authority or in the guise of an Ltd.
After 1998, the responsibility for the German currency matters has been assigned to the European
Central Bank (ECB)."
So, the Problem is: Who own and who run the ECB?
.
Although the ECB is governed by European law directly and thus not by corporate law applying to private law companies, its set-up resembles that of a corporation in the sense that the ECB has shareholders and stock capital. Shares in the ECB are not transferable and cannot be used as collateral.
The owners and shareholders of the European Central Bank are the central banks of the 27 member states of the EU (in all probability Rothschild Banks) . http://tinyurl.com/ozcyxm3
The governing Council of the ECB consists of the central bank directors of all EU countries + Mario Draghi http://tinyurl.com/p2osljp
The Board of the ECB acc. to Bloomberg Business Week has 5 directors
http://tinyurl.com/qc4wfcb
Mario Draghi http://tinyurl.com/q79v74s : President of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank. Mr. Draghi serves as the Chief Executive Officer of The Brookings Institution. He served as Managing Director of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. - Rothschild´s main investment bank http://tinyurl.com/pzaek8h
Jens Weidemann http://tinyurl.com/obndtdv has been the Chairman of Executive Board and President for The Deutsche Bundesbank since April 30, 2011. Mr. Weidmann has been a Director
of Bank For International Settlements (Rothschild´s central bank for his central banks) since May 1, 2011. |
If these activities all test the theory that threats of violence can deter an adversary from engaging in violence of its own, they also test a concept Jervis articulated several decades ago, in the context of the Cold War nuclear standoff. His central insight in the 1978 paper “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” was that “many of the means by which a state tries to increase its security decrease the security of others.” It’s not hard to find examples of this in East Asia. U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises are ostensibly designed to increase those countries’ security, but North Korea sees them as decreasing its own. American missile defenses on the Korean peninsula, meant to blunt the threat of the North’s missiles, have radars that look to China like they could help America spy on China’s own weapons, threatening Beijing’s ability to defend itself. North Korea itself maintains its missile development is to defend against the kinds of attacks the U.S. is now hinting at.
I recently spoke to Jervis about the security dilemma in East Asia, and the grand international-relations experiment of the Trump presidency. A condensed and edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Kathy Gilsinan: Walk me through how the security dilemma is working in the context of the U.S. and North Korea.
Robert Jervis: Let’s start with North Korea’s explanation for its missile program. It argues really that it is defensive and it doesn’t want to intimidate anyone else, except as that’s necessary for its defense. And after all, the U.S. had threatened to drop nuclear bombs on [North Korea] during the Korean War, and has implicitly or explicitly made nuclear threats in periods of tension. Secretary Tillerson has just threatened a pre-emptive strike, and while we see this only as a last-ditch defensive measure, I’m sure North Korea sees it quite differently.
North Korea argues and may believe that the reason it needs nuclear weapons and the missiles is to make sure that the U.S. doesn’t attack or, more likely, overthrow the regime. [The North Koreans] did explicitly point out after the Iraq invasion that the U.S. does overthrow regimes it doesn’t like, as long as they don’t have nuclear weapons. So there is a legitimate defensive rationale. Most people who know North Korea better than I do say that this isn’t the entire story, that North Korea [also] wants to exert greater influence in the region, to intimidate South Korea. Crazy as it seems, all the experts say that the whole Kim dynasty believes Korea will be unified—under North Korean auspices, a unified North Korean regime. As usual there are a mixture of motives and drives, offensive as well as defensive. But I think it’s easy for us to forget that there is a defensive aspect to this.
The next layer is that sometimes U.S. policy has sought to ameliorate any legitimate fears North Korea would have, and even the Bush administration finally decided, after a lot of internal debate, that we would reassure North Korea and make a promise that if negotiations were successful we would not seek to attack the country. Victor Cha [adviser on North Korea to President George W. Bush] tells the story in an article that he was tasked to tell the North Koreans this, and we really thought it would have some impact on them. These were verbal promises, but they represented a real policy change. The Russians went up to the North Koreans to say, essentially, we wanted this kind of guarantee during the Cold War and the Americans didn’t do it. Why this didn’t work not entirely clear; maybe the North wasn’t really worried, or it is the credibility problem. [Cha writes: “It seemed to me at the time that the DPRK finally received the security guarantee and the end to ‘hostile’ U.S. policy that they had long sought. Yet, after holding this out as a precondition for progress, in subsequent rounds of negotiations they proceeded to brush this off as a meaningless commitment, a piece of paper that guaranteed nothing for North Korean security.”] |
Former University of Kentucky basketball player Michael Porter was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison after pleading guilty to giving and receiving oral sex with an underage girl.
Porter, 26, was placed in custody and was headed to the Fayette County jail after Judge Ernesto Scorsone handed down the sentence.
Earlier this year, Porter pleaded guilty to third-degree sodomy and first-degree sexual abuse with a girl he met through Southland Christian Church. He was arrested May 15, 2012, after a sting operation by Lexington police yielded evidence that he had sex with the girl, who was 14 and 15 years old during a prolonged relationship with Porter.
Scorsone sentenced Porter to one year on the sodomy charge and two years on the sexual-abuse charge. The sentences are to run concurrently, for a total of two years.
Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to the Lexington Herald-Leader
However, because he was in a home-incarceration program for about four months, officials were checking whether he would be eligible for about 128 days credit of time served.
Defense attorney Jim Lowry argued for probation. Lowry said that a pre-sentence report graded Porter as zero risk as a potential reoffender, and as a low risk to be a repeat sex offender.
"I've never seen anyone with a zero," Lowry said. "He's a quality individual who is very unlikely to do anything wrong again."
Lowry said that Porter was not employed by the church and was not a church leader, but that he merely acted as a facilitator for youth groups that met in private homes.
Porter met the girl through a youth group and the two had a crush on each other, Lowry said. "It was a bad situation that got completely out of control," Lowry said. "It was an incredible mistake of judgment" on Porter's part.
In a statement to the judge, Porter said, "I want you and everyone else to know I do take full responsibility for this. ... I am very sorry for what I have done."
Porter also apologized to the girl and her family, none of whom were in the courtroom.
"Though it may have been voluntary, I have a responsibility to any woman to uphold her purity," Porter said.
He also apologized to his wife. "I am very lucky that my wife has chosen to stay with me because I do not deserve it," he said.
Scorsone said he didn't doubt the sincerity of Porter's remarks. But even if Porter was not technically employed by the church, he clearly was facilitating a youth group and had a responsibility to provide a safe and nurturing environment, Scorsone said.
Scorsone noted that the relationship was over a lengthy period. For these reasons, the judge said, he could not grant probation.
Porter must also register as a sex offender and undergo a sex-offender treatment program.
Relatives of Porter had no comment after the sentencing. |
Special report Jeff Hawkins has bet his reputation, fortune, and entire intellectual life on one idea: that he understands the brain well enough to create machines with an intelligence we recognize as our own.
If his bet is correct, the Palm Pilot inventor will father a new technology, one that becomes the crucible in which a general artificial intelligence is one day forged. If his bet is wrong, then Hawkins will have wasted his life. At 56 years old that might sting a little.
"I want to bring about intelligent machines, machine intelligence, accelerated greatly from where it was going to happen and I don't want to be consumed – I want to come out at the other end as a normal person with my sanity," Hawkins told The Register. "My mission, the mission of Numenta, is to be a catalyst for machine intelligence."
A catalyst, he said, staring intently at your correspondent, "is something which accelerates a reaction by a thousand or ten thousand or a million-fold, and doesn't get consumed in the process."
His goal is ambitious, to put it mildly.
Before we dig deep into Hawkins' idiosyncratic approach to artificial intelligence, it's worth outlining the state of current AI research, why his critics have a right to be skeptical of his grandiose claims, and how his approach is different to the one being touted by consumer web giants such as Google.
AI researcher Jeff Hawkins
The road to a successful, widely deployable framework for an artificial mind is littered with failed schemes, dead ends, and traps. No one has come to the end of it, yet. But while major firms like Google and Facebook, and small companies like Vicarious, are striding over well-worn paths, Hawkins believes he is taking a new approach that could lead him and his colleagues at his company, Numenta, all the way.
For over a decade, Hawkins has poured his energy into amassing enough knowledge about the brain and about how to program it in software. Now, he believes he is on the cusp of a great period of invention that may yield some very powerful technology.
Some people believe in him, others doubt him, and some academics El Reg spoke to are suspicious of his ideas.
One thing we have established is that the work to which Hawkins has dedicated his life has become an influential touchstone within the red-hot modern artificial intelligence industry. His 2004 book, On Intelligence, appears to have been read by and inspired many of the most prominent figures in AI, and the tech Numenta is creating may trounce other commercial efforts by much larger companies such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.
"I think Jeff is largely right in what he wrote in On Intelligence," said Hawkins' former colleague Dileep George (now running his own AI startup, Vicarious, which recently received $40m in funding from Mark Zuckerberg, space pioneer Elon Musk, and actor-turned-VC Ashton Kutcher). "Hierarchical systems, associative memory, time and attention – I think all those ideas are correct."
One of Google's most prominent AI experts agrees: "Jeff Hawkins ... has served as inspiration to countless AI researchers, for which I give him a lot of credit," said former Google brain king and current Stanford Professor Andrew Ng.
Some organizations have taken Hawkins' ideas and stealthily run with them, with schemes already underway at companies like IBM and federal organizations like DARPA to implement his ideas in silicon, paving the way for neuromorphic processors that process information in near–real time, develop representations of patterns, and make predictions. If successful, these chips will make Qualcomm's "neuromorphic" Zeroth processors look like toys.
He has also inspired software adaptations of his work, such as CEPT, which has built an intriguing natural language processing engine partly out of Hawkins' ideas.
How we think: time and hierarchy
Hawkins' idea is that to build systems that behave like the brain, you have to be able to take in a stream of changing information, recognize patterns in it without knowing anything about the input source, make predictions, and react accordingly. The only context you have for this analysis is an ability to observe how the stream of data changes over time.
Though this sounds similar to some of the data processing systems being worked on by researchers at Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, it has some subtle differences.
Part of it is heritage – Hawkins traces his ideas back to his own understanding of how our neocortex works – that's the part of the brain that handles higher functions such as conscious thought and language processing.
His understanding of our grey matter is based on a synthesis of thousands of academic papers, chats with researchers, and his own work at two of his prior tech companies, Palm and Handspring. His approach seeks to model the structure of the neocortex, whereas most other approaches to artificial intelligence build upon the idea of a neural network, a model refined from a 1940s paper [PDF], A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity.
"[Neural networks] may be the right thing to do, but it's not the way brains work and it's not the principles of intelligence, and it's not going to lead to a system that can explore the world or systems that can have behavior," Hawkins told us.
So far he has outlined the ideas for this approach in his influential On Intelligence, plus a white paper [PDF] published in 2011, a set of open-source algorithms called NuPIC based on his Hierarchical Temporal Memory design, and hundreds of talks given at universities and at companies ranging from Google to small startups. |
Kainos CodeCamp is an opportunity for STEM students to learn how to build apps and websites from scratch, take part in interactive sessions with IT geniuses and hear talks on everything from cybercrime to artificial intelligence, gaining an insight into the latest tech.
The camp is made up of two courses - Foundation and Advanced. Students on the Foundation course will learn how to build apps from scratch, take part in interactive sessions with IT geniuses and hear talks on everything from cybercrime to artificial intelligence, gaining an insight into the latest tech.
If you're aged 17-18 or you have previously attended CodeCamp, you're eligible to take part in the Advanced course. Here you'll learn about HTML, CSS and JavaScript and you'll develop your own website with the help of our skilled mentors.
Plus, you'll get to compete for some very cool prizes as well as present your final app or website to a panel of industry experts! Places on both courses are free.
Interested in attending CodeCamp 2019? Register your interest now and we’ll make sure you are the first to know about where and when it will be taking place!
What happens at CodeCamp Learn everything you need to know about coding from our professional mentors Enjoy talks from inspirational guest speakers and interactive demos of the latest technology Design, build and launch your own fully-functional app or website using the latest tools and technology Present your app to a panel of expert judges for the chance to win epic prizes
There are a million reasons to attend Kainos CodeCamp, and you don’t need to take our word for it, hear straight from our campers about why they loved it so much.
What will you learn?
What skills will you take away?
The best bits of Kainos CodeCamp
Improve your skills, from programming to project management Enjoy hands-on experience of the latest tech Get mentoring from our friendly software developers Kick-start your future with academic and career advice Be inspired by talks and demos from our guest speakers Get the chance to win great prizes or even ongoing support for your app
Frequently asked questions When is CodeCamp 2019? CodeCamp 2019 will take place from Monday 22nd July – Friday 2nd August.
Who can attend Kainos CodeCamp? Kainos CodeCamp is open to students aged 14-18 who are studying a STEM subject, e.g. maths, science, computing, engineering and technology.
Depending on your circumstances you may be eligible to attend the Foundation or Advanced course.
Attendees need to be able to commit to attending the course full time for all 10 days – part time attendance will not be permitted.
Which Camp is right for me? CodeCamp is open to students aged 14-18 and depending on your circumstances you may be eligible to attend the Foundation or Advanced course. Entry criteria is as follows:
Aged 14-16 and HAVEN’T attended CodeCamp before?
If you’re aged 14-16 and haven’t been to CodeCamp before, you’re eligible to take the Foundation course. Here, you’ll gain an understanding of the principles of coding by developing your own app as well as getting an insight into the latest technologies, all with the help and guidance of our skilled mentors.
Aged 14-16 and HAVE attended CodeCamp before?
If you’re aged 14-16 and have attended CodeCamp previously, you’ve already completed the Foundation course and are eligible to take the Advanced course. Here, you’ll gain an understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript and develop your own website with the help and guidance of our skilled mentors.
Aged 17-18?
If you’re aged 17-18, you’re eligible to take the Advanced course. Here, you’ll gain an understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript and develop your own website with the help and guidance of our skilled mentors.
I’ve attended a previous CodeCamp event – can I still come? Yes, as a previous attendee you are eligible to take the Advanced course. Read ‘Which Camp is right for me?’ for more information.
Due to the popularity of CodeCamp, which sells out every year with large waiting lists, priority for places will be given to students who haven't attended before.
I can’t attend the whole course – can I still apply? To apply to CodeCamp you must be able to commit to attending full time for all ten days. If during the course you’re unable to attend for any reason for more than two days in a row, you will forfeit your place. We ask for this commitment to make sure that everyone gets the most of out the course – each day will build on work done on the previous day, so it’s important you’re there for the whole time. Do I need to have any previous experience of programming? This depends on whether you’re taking the Foundation or Advanced course.
Participants of the Foundation course don’t need any previous experience – all you need to have is an interest in software development and our mentors will guide you through the rest.
Participants of the Advanced course are expected to have a basic knowledge of coding, and even some previous experience. For instance, if you’ve attended CodeCamp before, you’ve completed the Foundation course and would be ready to switch things up a gear!
How do I apply for a place at CodeCamp? Please complete the Register Interest form on this page to be placed on our mailing list and be kept up to date on where and when CodeCamp 2019 will be taking place. How will you choose who gets a place? We’ll select applicants from everyone who meets the entry requirements based on your 250-word statement about why you want to attend CodeCamp – so take your time to answer this. There's some tips on what we're looking for below. Will I need to bring anything? Please bring your unique confirmation email – either printed or on your phone – so that we can check you are who you say you are! Food isn’t provided so we recommend you bring a packed lunch each day – there is a shop a few minutes away if you wish to purchase something.
For participants of the Foundation course - if you have your own Android device, we recommend you bring this with you to test your app regularly.
What technologies will I experience at CodeCamp? At CodeCamp, you’ll get hands-on time with lots of different technologies and gadgets, including the latest VR and AR headsets!
Participants of the Foundation course will use App Inventor to build an Android app, while participants of the Advanced course will use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to develop a website.
What happens if my application is not successful? We’ll place everyone who submitted a strong application but didn’t get a place onto a waiting list. If anyone drops out prior to the event, we’ll allocate their place to someone on the waiting list.
CodeCamp 2019 |
Story highlights Wu Yebin and An Wei live in rural China where homosexuality remains largely taboo
They dream of seeing same-sex marriage becoming legal in China one day
Homosexuality not illegal in China, long-removed from official list of "mental disorders"
Activists and experts agree that prejudices and discrimination persist
With arms around each other's shoulders, Wu Yebin and An Wei strolled past rows of food booths and game stalls along the main road cutting through their small village in northern China one recent Friday morning.
Looking like two buddies soaking in the sights and sounds of the village fair, the young men wearing matching rings blended in perfectly with the local crowd. Their story, however, stands out: They are an openly gay couple living in the Chinese countryside, where homosexuality remains largely taboo.
"They sought medical treatment for me and hired a shaman to exorcise me," recalled Wu of his family's reaction when he came out. "I had to comply -- but at the same time I found information on homosexuality online and shared with them.
"The more they learned, the more accepting they became," he added.
It took his parents several years to come around, but Wu and An -- who had met online and quickly fallen in love -- now live together and run a roadside convenience store next to the Wu family home in rural Hebei province.
As news of advancements in gay rights in other countries spreads, the two partners in life and business have been thinking more about cementing their own relationship.
"I hope to see same-sex marriage become legal in China one day," An, 32, said. "We'll go get the license right away to enjoy all the rights like married straight couples."
"It's going to happen," Wu, 29, chimed in. "I bet next year."
Not everyone is so optimistic though. A lesbian couple in Beijing recently saw their marriage application rejected by local officials and video of their futile attempt made the rounds on the Internet.
Activists also complain about periodic government crackdowns, citing a recent case in May. In the central city of Changsha, a 19-year-old activist leading a street rally against homophobia was jailed for 12 days. Local police accused him of "holding an illegal protest" in a statement.
"They aren't just targeting gay groups," said Xiaogang Wei, a prominent gay rights advocate who heads the Beijing Gender Health Education Institute. "The authorities are increasingly worried about the organizational capability of various rights groups, especially when we band together, because it could challenge their political power.
"Sometimes we have to take to the streets to raise the visibility of our cause," he added. "It stirs discussion and debate, which could eventually lead to more understanding and acceptance."
Homosexuality is not illegal in China and the Communist government has long removed it from the official list of mental disorders, but activists and experts agree that prejudices and discrimination persist.
"Gay people still can't make their voices heard and they have no representation in the legislature," said Li Yinhe, a renowned sociologist with the Chinese Academy of Social Science.
Li conducted China's first comprehensive surveys on gay men and published her findings in a popular 1992 book. For more than a decade, she has been calling on national legislators to legalize same-sex marriage but sees a prolonged uphill battle ahead.
"This is an issue affecting a minority group and ranks really low on the government's agenda," she said.
Opposition to a different kind of "gay marriage," however, has become a priority for many activists. Unlike in the West, experts say the vast majority of gay people in China -- especially men -- stay in the closet and marry the opposite sex.
Noting the lack of hostility toward homosexuality throughout Chinese history, Li explains that the Confucian concept of carrying on the family line is "the only thing akin to religion in traditional Chinese culture.
"That's why so many gay men are put under tremendous pressure to get married and have children, especially in the countryside."
An had three girlfriends and almost tied the knot with the last one. Wu was married to a woman for 40 days -- and regrets have dogged him since.
"Sometimes when I lie on bed, I think of my ex-wife and still feel guilty," he said, recalling how much she cried during their brief sexless marriage. "My momentary lapse of judgment ruined her life: Even though I never touched her, it'd be hard for her to find an ideal husband as a divorcee."
State media has cited one estimate putting the number of Chinese women married to gay men at more than 10 million. Sociologist Li calls those unions "tragedies" and has counseled many women in such marriages.
While a nationwide support network has emerged to help so-called "gay wives" -- or "tongqi" in Chinese -- break free, observers note a small but growing number of young gay men in big cities marrying lesbians to placate families and maintain their lifestyles at the same time.
Wu and An are no fans of such arrangements, and predict personal and financial complications.
After he met An, Wu started tweeting on Sina Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter with more than 300 million users. By telling his own story and re-posting news on global gay rights campaigns, Wu hopes to inspire more closeted gay Chinese to come out.
Remembering his own days of feeling lonely, helpless and even suicidal, Wu points to his experience as evidence of progress and hope in gay acceptance in China -- even in the most unlikely families and places.
Back at the village fair, Wu and An -- whose rural hometown has no cinemas let alone gay bars -- paused for a "face-changing" opera performance as an actor quickly switched colorful masks on stage without revealing his identity.
After cheering the entertainer, the two young men who have taken off their "masks" in real life moved on to buy groceries as meat and vegetable sellers greeted them as old friends.
"Many people say they admire us -- they say we did something amazing," Wu said. "We are just two ordinary people who came out to our families so that we can live with our loved ones."
And maybe one day, get married. |
Donald Trump is five weeks away from completing his first year as president.
Things are going well. With that few can argue. The economy is booming, unemployment is down, job creation up. And Trump has been doing just what he said he would do during the campaign — a rarity for presidential candidates (remember when Barack Obama, pledging "hope and change," said he would work to end the partisan rancor in Washington? Ha!).
But it is the very fact that Trump is keeping his word — and succeeding, mind you — that has left the mainstream media crestfallen. They played the role of Chicken Little throughout the campaign and Trump's first year in office, saying he was too stupid, too petty — perhaps even too loco — to handle the job of president.
Now, some of them are starting to eat their words — and they don't like it.
"Sadly, Trump Is Winning," the headline in the HuffPost said.
"This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to write and admit: Trump is winning," writes Earl Ofari Hutchinson, an author and political analyst.
Of course, the piece is a screed against the things on which Trump is winning, the same old canards the Left pushes time after time: Giveaways to the rich, hating on Muslims, the horrible conservatives he's put on the Supreme Court, all the usual things.
But Hutchinson notes that Trump does in fact control the media.
"The third winning front for Trump is his perennial ace in the hole: the media. He remains a ratings cash cow for the networks and makes stunning copy for the print media. He knew that from day one of his presidential bid and he knows it even more now. He will continue to suck the media air out of everything that the Democrats do and try to do," he wrote.
"The public and networks take the bait every time. Other than in the New York Times and other liberal print publications, there is no real sobering, in-depth discussion of the dangerous and destructive consequences of his administration’s policies. But those publications are anathema to Trump devotees in the heartland and the south anyway. So the withering criticism of Trump in these publications is tantamount to a wolf howling in the wind."
Hutchinson concludes that "for Trump so far this has been a win-win, and a sad one to admit."
This is the second time in a week that the liberal media has been forced to acknowledge Trump's successes.
On Thursday, a CNN staffer wrote a piece headlined "Donald Trump — keeper of promises."
A politician who actually does what he told voters he would do seems almost unfathomable in Washington, a town of broken promises. For Donald Trump, being a president who delivers is especially crucial, since it's one of the golden keys to his so far unbreakable bond with supporters. It was just the latest instance of the President obstinately honoring the bumper-sticker vows he made to his ultra-loyal supporters -- even those that horrify the political and foreign policy establishment, media critics and allied leaders.
While so many in the media were predicting that Hillary Clinton would win in 2016, few bothered to look ahead to a Trump presidency. But now it's clear they should have turned to the Bible for this quote: "There shall be tears and gnashing of teeth." |
Record Crowd Not Enough For Razorbacks
Box Score (PDF)
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.- The Razorbacks were unable to respond to a fierce offensive attack from No. 1 Penn State Friday night at Razorback Field, falling 4-2 in front of a record crowd of 3,401 fans.
Freshman Taylor Malham scored her second goal in as many weekends, while sophomore Stefani Doyle added her first goal of the season. However, Penn State proved why it was considered one of the top teams in the nation by having an answer for each goal that Arkansas scored.
Freshman goalkeeper Rachel Harris got her second start of the season in the net and made four saves, setting a season-high. Doyle led all Razorbacks on offense with four shots, two on goal, including her one score.
“You’re definitely not going to draw major conclusions from this,” Arkansas head coach Colby Hale said. “It’s the number one team in the country. We have to figure out who we are right now. We didn’t feel like we were all on the same page. Those are things that are fixable.”
Arkansas (1-2-0) began the game quickly with a goal in the second minute by sophomore Stefani Doyle, her first of the season. Doyle scored on a one-timer that she received off a cross from Parker Goins and was able to sneak it past the keeper at near point blank range.
Her goal gave the Razorbacks a quick 1-0 lead, but the Nittany Lions (3-0-0) responded with a pair of goals by Charlotte Williams and Marrissa Shiva just 10 minutes later to retake the lead at 2-1.
Both teams were nearly even in possession time in the first half. Penn State edged out Arkansas in shots (6-4) in what was a fast paced first 45 minutes.
Coming out in the second half, the Razorbacks scored with incredible pace, once again, this time with a goal from Taylor Malham in the 46th minute to tie the match at 2-2. Goins created the scoring play for the second time as she found Malham racing into the left side of the box. Malham was able to send a right-footed shot into the upper 90 past the diving Penn State goalkeeper.
Unfortunately, that was the last goal Arkansas was able to make as Penn State’s offensive power showed in the latter part of the second half. Shiva, who scored her first goal of the night just before the break, came up big again to give Penn State the lead in the 55th minute with her second score to put her team up 3-2.
The Nittany Lions added an insurance goal in the 71st minute off a header from Kaleigh Riehl to finish the scoring for the night.
Both the Razorbacks and the Nittany Lions seemed to have equal chances in the first half, but Arkansas was unable to contain Penn State’s attack after halftime as it was held to just three shots in the final 20 minutes of the game.
Arkansas looks to bounce back when it returns to Razorback Field Sunday afternoon against Abilene Christian Wildcats Sunday at 1 p.m. The game can be seen on the SECNetwork+ and the WatchESPN App.
For more information on Razorback Soccer, follow @RazorbackSoccer on Twitter. |
On Sunday, Yu Darvish became the fastest starting pitcher ever to reach 500 strikeouts, MLB.com's T.R. Sullivan notes. He struck out the first two batters he faced on Sunday, hitting 500 whiffs in just 401 2/3 innings. Kerry Wood previously had the record with 404 2/3, and behind him were Mark Prior with 421 2/3 and Stephen Strasburg in 426 1/3. Wood and Prior's struggles to stay healthy are an indication that 500 quick strikeouts provide no guarantee of future success, but Darvish's accomplishment is still an impressive one. Darvish finished fifth in the AL in strikeouts in his 2012 rookie season, and topped the league with 277 last year, the most of any pitcher in a single season since Randy Johnson had 290 in 2004. Here are more notes from around the big leagues. |
Reading the November issue of Literary Review (a British monthly, somewhat like the New York Review of Books but less claustrophobically liberal), the following thing caught my attention. It’s in Donald Rayfield’s review of Stalin, Vol. 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928, by Stephen Kotkin:
Medical historians conclude that Stalin was in more or less acute muscular, neurological, and dental pain all his adult life … Stalin’s brutality towards the medical profession, hitherto sacred to all Russian authorities, hints at the frustrations of a man in unremitting pain.
That brought to mind a remark I”ve seen attributed to Winston Churchill: “Most of the world’s work is done by people who are not feeling very well.” For persons of Stalin and Churchill’s generation”they were born four years apart”I”d bet that was true.
Churchill himself had, according to his biographer, “been prey to ills since childhood. Some of his vacations were taken on doctor’s orders; others were interrupted by bouts of influenza or infectious fevers.”
Until the middle of the last century there wasn”t much relief for illness, even if you were a Russian despot or a British prime minister. The title of Lewis Thomas’s 1983 book about medicine tells it all: The Youngest Science.
“The main component of the surgeon’s art was speed“getting the job done before the patient died of shock.”
Thomas (1913-1993) was a doctor, the son of a doctor and a nurse. The early chapters of his book are devastatingly frank about the near-uselessness of doctoring prior to the introduction of antibiotics in the mid-1930s.
Explanation was the real business of medicine. What the ill patient and his family wanted most was to know the name of the illness, and then, if possible, what had caused it, and finally, most important of all, how it was likely to turn out … During the third and fourth years of [medical] school it gradually dawned on us that we didn”t know much that was really useful, that we could do nothing to change the course of the great majority of the diseases we were so busy analyzing, that medicine, for all its façade as a learned profession, was in real life a profoundly ignorant occupation … Once you were admitted [to hospital] … it became a matter of waiting for the illness to finish itself one way or the other … Medicine made little or no difference.
This was actually an advance on medicine as practiced before the 20th century, when medical procedures like bleeding, cupping, and purging all too often did make a difference, but in the wrong direction. Whether, as is commonly believed, the multiple bleedings administered to George Washington in his last illness were what killed him, they surely didn”t help.
In the company of medical people who know the history of their craft you can get a good discussion going about the exact date after which medical attention was more likely to help than harm you. Opinions generally settle somewhere between 1910 and 1940.
That’s within living memory. People of the generation before my own had little to hope for from medicine. The more realistic among them knew this. My own father, born 1899, regarded the entire medical profession with fear and mistrust. A hospital, he believed, was a place where poor people went to die. A major theme in the background noise of my childhood was the voice of my mother”a professional nurse”nagging Dad to go see a doctor about some ailment he was suffering. “Why won”t you at least go see him? He won”t HURT you.” Dad knew better. Most things mend by themselves. He lived to be 85, dying at last of pneumonia, which was known to people of that generation as “the old man’s friend.”
It wasn”t all negatives before “the early 1950s, when medicine was turning into a science” (Lewis Thomas). There was nursing; there was surgery; there were a handful of useful drugs.
Nursing”the art of keeping patients clean, comfortable, and cheerful”must have saved far more lives than doctoring in the long dark ages before antibiotics. Florence Nightingale (a significant mathematician, by the way) has to be reckoned one of the great benefactors of humanity.
Surgery before modern anesthesia (which arrived in the 1840s) was a horror show. Fanny Burney’s account of her mastectomy in 1811, when she was 59, is hard to read. She survived it, though, living to be 87, and even stayed friends with the surgeon.
The main component of the surgeon’s art was speed“getting the job done before the patient died of shock.
Pay to Play - Put your money where your mouth is and subscribe for an ad-free experience and to join the world famous Takimag comment board. |
This year alone, officials at Yellowstone National Park have dealt with several issues regarding tourists: The people who put a baby bison in their SUV because they they thought it was abandoned and cold and would die without their help or the 23-year-old tourist who died after falling into one of the park's famed hot springs when he was more than 250 yards off the designated path. And don't forget the other lower-profile cases in which tourists got too close to wildlife, trampled through delicate wilderness areas or otherwise behaved badly and ignored the park's safety messaging.
That safety messaging is posted on signs throughout the park and handed to visitors on a pamphlet as they enter. Park rangers have been handing out tickets and fines to rule breakers, but they're also trying another approach to combat the issue. Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk says the park hired a full-time social scientist last summer to study the park's most troublesome species — humans.
"In recent weeks, visitors in the park have been engaging in inappropriate, dangerous and illegal behavior with wildlife," said Wenk in a press release. "In a recent viral video, a visitor approached within an arm’s length of an adult bison in the Old Faithful area. Another video featured visitors posing for pictures with bison at extremely unsafe and illegal distances," he added.
Here's one of the videos Wenk was describing. Why this woman thought it was safe to approach — and pet — a bison is beyond me. But sadly, the hundreds of thousands of people who have watched this video may now think it's safe and acceptable.
For decades, Yellowstone officials have studied the park's wide variety of flora and fauna, but little attention has been paid to understanding the park's most abundant — and damaging — species.
"The least-studied species of animal in Yellowstone National Park is the human and the visitor experience,” said Wenk. "And that’s what we’re trying to change."
Wenk also noted that social media encourages more people to break rules and put themselves and others at risk in an attempt to get that perfect Instagram shot or viral Facebook video.
"More people see what we term as inappropriate behavior," said Wenk. "So I think they wonder, ‘Why shouldn’t we be allowed to do the same thing or take advantage of the same situation?’"
Yellowstone's social scientist, Ryan Atwell, is studying the impetus behind this behavior and hopes to come up with new ways to present rules and safety information so tourists might actually heed their warnings.
Yellowstone is studying its most troublesome species — humans
A string of incidents with tourists leads Yellowstone National Park to hire a social scientist to study human behavior. |
The Israeli Ynet (Hebrew edition) published a few hours ago an interview with retired Israeli police commissioner, Major General Assaf Hefetz. Hefez is highly critical of the French police’s recent operation in Toulouse. According to the Israeli Major General, the French waited for too long (32 hours). He contends that the French police should have been more assertive and far more aggressive. I hope that you have a hard stomach to read how Israel would handle a similar situation.
They should have implemented the ‘pressure cooker tactics’ says Hefetz-
“massive fire at the walls of the house, throwing grenades around the building followed by bulldozer erasure of the building walls till the suspect turns himself.”
Frightening isn’t it? Welcome to occupied Palestine. It seems as if Major General Hefetz came short of suggesting to evacuate the city and to nuke the neighborhood.
In fact General Hefetz is describing here the Palestinian reality. Hefetz lethal approach explains the devastation the Israel left behind in Jenin (2002). It also explains the genocidal tactics employed by the IDF in Gaza massacre (2009). It is more than likely that General Hefetz better seek help and find a way to deal with his aggression. Yet, we have to remember that at the time of Operation Cast Lead, 94% of Israeli Jews supported IDF genocidal tactics. It seems as if we are dealing here with a psychotic collective.
Gilad Atzmon’s New Book: The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. |
Mayor Darrell Steinberg likely has more political clout at the Capitol than any Sacramento mayor in recent history. He’s been an assemblyman, president of the state Senate and an attorney at a powerful law firm.
Yet even with his connections, the city of Sacramento is spending more on Capitol lobbyists than nearly every other city in the state.
Recent filings with the Secretary of State show the city spent $226,077 on lobbying in the first six months of 2017. The only cities that spent more were Los Angeles and Redding.
Sacramento’s lobbyist tab was the highest it’s been through June 30 since it plunked down $244,542 during the same time period in 2006. It’s also a significant increase over the amount the city spent in recent years; this year’s figure was a 45 percent jump from 2016.
Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Sacramento Bee
This year’s bill included an $80,735 payment to the League of California Cities, a statewide advocacy group that collects dues from cities around the state. It also included about $67,000 in payments to agencies that lobby on water-related issues and $66,750 to the city’s lobbyist, Emanuels Jones and Associates.
The city has lobbied on several key issues this year, including the state budget, affordable housing and the $52 billion gas tax and vehicle registration increase to fund road upgrades. It also lobbied on more than two dozen bills before the Assembly and Senate, most pertaining to water issues.
Steinberg’s office said the lobbying efforts helped the city land $32 million in federal funding that will be matched with another $32 million in local funds to be used for homeless outreach and services through a program called Whole Person Care. Sacramento is the only city in California to receive the funding, which is administered by the state.
The mayor said he “isn’t in there (the Capitol) a lot,” but has used his connections at times since taking office in December. And he said the city has vital work to conduct in the Capitol.
“Number one, I can’t do everything alone,” he said. “And number two, what I brought here (to the mayor’s job) is an ambitious agenda. We’re running on all cylinders.”
The city of Sacramento’s lobbying expenses are high, but likely necessary in the competitive environment of state politics, said Sacramento political consultant Steve Maviglio.
“With a powerful legislative delegation and a new mayor who knows more than just about anyone how to shake the trees in the Capitol to get things done, it is legitimate that taxpayers should be wondering why we’re spending so much on lobbying,” Maviglio said.
“But as the saying goes, ‘If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,’” he added. “The capital region is competing with every other jurisdiction for budget money and on policy. The metric needs to be the results these lobbying efforts are getting, and the jury is very much out on that.”
Local governments are spending more on lobbying at the Capitol this year than any other special interest group, records show. Cities, counties and special districts spent a combined $24.3 million on lobbying through the first six months of the year, according to Secretary of State data first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
The League of California Cities has spent $746,152 on lobbying this year. Los Angeles County spent $745,577, leading all local governments.
Sacramento’s total of $226,007 is less than the $375,294 reported on the Secretary of State’s website because the city double-counted some expenditures in its first and second quarter filings. Other governments in the Sacramento region did not appear to make the same error.
Local governments and special districts in the Sacramento region have combined to spend more than $1.2 million on lobbying in 2017, records show. Sacramento County, the largest government in the area, has been the biggest spender with a tab of $347,522.
While that places the county among the biggest lobbying spenders in the state, that figure is also a significant decrease compared to recent years, figures show. The county reported spending more than $1 million in both 2015 and 2016.
Sacramento County Supervisor Don Nottoli said it’s important for the county to participate in conversations at the state level because changes in transportation, land use, water, social services and prison policy can have huge impacts at the county level. For instance, he said health care costs at the county jail began rising after the state shifted responsibility for low-level offenders from state prisons to counties.
“Sometimes it’s budgetary, sometimes it’s policy and sometimes it’s requirements that seem innocuous, but then you look and you’ve inherited a new obligation,” he said. |
Check out the rest of my recipes in the index.
It is no secret that Schwarzbier is a bit of a white whale for me (irony duly noted). Dark and smooth with a crisp toasty breadiness, Schwarzbier straddles the line between malty and hoppy while remaining balanced and crushable. Why am I so obsessed? Besides being a noted lagerhead, Schwarzbier satisfies my innate desire as a homebrewer to brew beers that I otherwise would never be able to find “in the wild.” But who am I kidding, really? I love brewing Schwarzbier because it gives me statistically one of the highest chances of advancing to the final round of the National Homebrew Competition 👌. Previous attempts of mine either turned out too roasty, like a porter, or too dry and austere, not even worth a full writeup. But as they say: practice makes perfect and I feel like I am getting really close.
Having been interested in performing my own split batch experiments for a while, my wife graciously gifted me a set of three gallon Better Bottles as well as a set of 2.5 gallon ball lock kegs so I could split my typical 5.5 gallon batches. I figured why not kill two birds with one stone? This Schwarzbier is the first of what I hope will be a great many split batch experiments of varying levels of scientific significance.
Lager Fermentation Temperature Experiment
I think most folks would agree that Marshall and the crew over at Brulosophy have really changed the game when it comes to homebrewing practices. They have done well to show us that there is a wide gap between what the Brewing Lords hath decreed and the “proof of the pudding is in the triangle testing” realities. One aspect that we have jived on for a while now is that lager fermentations are more traditional than practical, most notably it terms of fermentation temperature.
Every lager batch I brew I push my temps a bit higher, desperately seeking “the line” where the lager has obviously gone off the rails. To that end, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to evaluate the extreme case of lager fermentation temps and what would happen if I pitched cold and then completely removed temperature controls. Why should the Brü Crew have all the fun?
Hypothesis
If most off-flavors are generated during the lag and reproduction phases, then cold pitching a large, heathy batch of yeast–ensuring those phases are sufficiently cool–means that later stages do not require rigorous temperature control.
Method
5.5 post-boil gallons of the same batch of Schwarzbier will be equally split between two 3 gallon Better Bottles. Both batches will be chilled to 48ºF, oxygenated for 60 seconds with pure O2, and each pitched a decanted 1L starter. One will be held at standard lager temps (a slow ramp from 50ºF to 55ºF before a diacetyl rest) and the other will be placed in my “cellar” (the small space below the stairs) without temperature control (~68ºF this time of year).
Schwarz, 2.0
This is Schwarz 4.5 or so, but I never bothered to write the other batches up. My goal was to remain clean and crisp while hitting some moderate bready notes and moderate spicy hop character. I am excited to test out Sterling hops–sometimes described as “Super Saaz”–which I have heard lots of good feedback about.
Recipe Details Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV 5.5 gal 60 min 25.2 IBUs 28.2 SRM 1.051 1.015 4.7 % Actuals 1.051 1.013 5.0 % Style Details Name Cat. OG Range FG Range IBU SRM Carb ABV Schwarzbier 8 B 1.046 - 1.052 1.01 - 1.016 20 - 30 17 - 30 2.5 - 3 4.4 - 5.4 % Fermentables Name Amount % Pilsner (Weyermann) 6 lbs 60 Munich II (Weyermann) 3 lbs 30 Blackprinz 12 oz 7.5 Melanoidin (Weyermann) 4 oz 2.5 Hops Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha % Sterling 1 oz 15 min Boil Leaf 11.1 Sterling 1 oz 5 min Boil Leaf 11.1 Yeast Name Lab Attenuation Temperature German Lager (WLP830) White Labs 77% 50°F - 55°F Mash Step Temperature Time Beta 145°F 30 min Alpha 158°F 30 min Mash Out 168°F 10 min Notes Perform mash without Blackprinz, then add it just before lautering (cap the mash).
Water profile: Ca 56 | Mg 6 | Na 22 | Cl 93 | SO4 48 Download Download this recipe's BeerXML file
Tasting Notes
Follow along with the BJCP guide for Schwarzbier [PDF].
Aroma
Cold – Moderately bready malt with some light crackery and coffee/chocolate notes. Low spicy hop character with a dash of citrusy essence in the background. Clean & crisp with no sulphur or ester.
Warm – Low bready malt that seems less rich than the cold fermented version, just a hint of chocolate. Low spicy hops and no detectable citrus. No sulphur, but a low pear ester and maybe a bare hint of alcohol in the tail end. Not hot or an ester bomb, but not as clean as the cold fermented version.
Appearance
Cold – A crystal clear dark brown with some faint ruby highlights. Moderate fluffy tan head with good retention and lacing.
Warm – A crystal clear dark brown with some faint ruby highlights. Moderate fluffy tan head with good retention and lacing. Pretty much the same as the cold version, but maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me: the head is maybe a teensy bit darker?
Flavor
Cold – Moderate bread-crust malt character with low cracker and chocolate notes with a low richness. Moderate-low bitterness with a moderate-low spicy hop character and again, a hint of citrus. Balance is mostly neutral, but leans a little toward the malt. Clean, no sulphur or esters. Smooth finish and no harsh roasty notes.
Warm – Low bread-crust and cracker malt notes, just the faintest notes of chocolate. Moderate-low bitterness and low spicy hop character without the citrus notes found in the cold version. Balance is more equally neutral than the cold version. Generally clean, no sulphur, but moderate-low pear esters are evident as it warms up (very low when cold). A dash of alcohol, but by no means hot. Smooth finish and no harsh roasty notes. Part of me wonders if the more vigorous fermentation “blew off” some of the deeper complexity that seems to be missing from this version.
Mouthfeel
Cold – Moderate-high carbonation and medium body. No creaminess or alcohol warming. Smooth & crisp finish, no harsh roasty or astringent character anywhere throughout the sip.
Warm – Moderate-high carbonation and medium-light body. No creaminess, but a low alcohol warmth. Mostly-smooth & crisp finish, no harsh roasty notes, but there’s a little bit of astringency in the back end. The finish is not harsh, per se, but when sampled next to the cold version it is clearly not as smooth.
Overall Impression
Cold – Finally, after years of trying, I have made the Schwarzbier I have always wanted to make. This attempt I finally hit that middle ground between clean and malty, bitter and smooth. There is just enough bready malt and spicy hop character to bridge the gap between Pilsner and Dunkel while remaining megasmooth and drinkable. I think in the future, if I decide to change anything, would be to either reduce the Munich to 20% or raise the bitterness by another 5 IBU. Otherwise, I am very pleased with this result and feel confident it should place well in AFC and NHC. I am also pleased with the character of the Sterling hops, an underrated American hop variety that I plan on using much more for my lagers in the future.
Warm – To be honest, I thought this version was going to be a train-wreck. Well, that is not entirely true, I knew from my previous efforts at pushing lager temps that warm ferments were less of an issue than many folks believe. However, minus the cool pitch, I thought absolutely no temp control would lead this version into dumpster territory. Instead, what I got was a version that, while not as super clean and smooth as the cold version, is actually better than many US brewed craft lagers I have sampled. At room temperature I could certainly tell the difference side-by-side, but when cold it was very easy to mistake the two.
Considering that preference for this version (see below) was exactly evenly split with the cold version shows that most folks agreed that it was passible. I hope this result encourages folks to try their hand at brewing a lager even if they do not have sophisticated refrigeration and temperature control. I would wager that if you pitched cold and were able to keep max temps within the mid 60’s–easily obtainable with swamp coolers and the like–no one would be able to tell the difference!
Other Notes
Both batches finished within a half a gravity point of each other. Minus flocing your yeast out such they finish too early, it seems wort attenuation might be much more independent of fermentation schedule than many folks might believe.
Survey Results
Not content with merely relying on my own analysis of the two Schwarzbiers, I shared the two versions with the members of the Society of Barley Engineers. I did not have the capacity to do a triangle test, but to be honest, I am more interested in preference over statistical significance. Blind to the nature of the experiment, I had everyone fill out a simple online survey asking: “Which Schwarzbier did you prefer?” and some optional comments about what they thought the difference is. Here are the responses:
Hah! I love this so much, an even tie! A handful of astute tasters thought the difference was either yeast strain or temperature based on subtle fruitiness, but for the most part most folks could barely tell a difference. Included below is a sampling of the responses.
Preference What do you think the difference is? Warm The yeast Warm More malt flavor and body. Warm Pyramid [cold] has some slight oxidation or different hops Warm I think triangle [cold] has a drier, chalkier, almost astringent finish, with perhaps higher carbonation. Warm Final gravity? Not sure what from, but diamond [warm] is sweeter finish. Warm I felt it was more full body, finished lasted longer. 🔺[cold] had a very quick finish Warm More tannin/bitter in diamond [warm]. Warm The diamond [warm] has more character and a better mouth feel, triangle [cold] was ok plane jane Warm Not use chalk in triangle [cold] beer? Maybe not mash dark malt? Cold Triangle [cold] is toasty and nutty, diamond [warm] is sweet and fruity Cold Triangle [cold] seems smoother- lager yeast? Diamond [warm] beer seems to have more esters – ale yeast? Cold Aging method? Cold Diamond [warm] is a bit heavier, fuller malt flavor, with some yeast character, more ale like. Triangle [cold] is crisper cleaner lager character. Cold Maybe another malt in the triangle [cold]? Seems sweeter. Cold Smoother, rounder mouthfeel. Overall more enjoyable. Cold Different yeast strain Cold Triangle [cold] is spicier, but better aromatics. Diamond [warm] is smoother. Perhaps a different yeast? Cold I’m guessing it’s a different yeast strain b/c mouthfeel is a bit more full with a nice roasty finish while the diamond [warm] is almost…watery? Over-attenuated? Cold More citrus, brighter, more carbonation bite Cold Fermentation Temp Cold I get a acidic quality from the diamond [warm] one, it’s brighter. Triangle [cold] has a dullness to it, maybe oxidized.
Check out the rest of my recipes in the index.
Advertisements
Like this: Like Loading... |
Mars Inc. announced Thursday night that it will not sponsor its longtime driver Kyle Busch in the final two races of the 2011 season because of his actions at Texas Motor Speedway.
Busch intentionally wrecked Ron Hornaday during a Truck Series race under caution and was parked by NASCAR for the entire weekend.
Busch has driven the No. 18 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing with sponsorship from Mars' M&Ms brand of candy.
But the No. 18 will be sponsored this weekend's Sprint Cup race at Phoenix and for the season finale at Homestead by longtime Gibbs partner Interstate Batteries.
"We strongly support Mars' decision," said team owner Joe Gibbs. "This gives us all time to work together to foster a positive change where Kyle can continue racing in a way we can all be proud of."
Mars said it would return in 2012 to sponsor Busch with the expectation that there will be no similar incidents in the future.
"As a proud member of the racing community, Mars and the M&M'S brand strongly support the partnership we have with Joe Gibbs Racing and are committed to NASCAR. Yet, Kyle's recent actions are unacceptable and do not reflect the values of Mars," said Debra A. Sandler, Chief Consumer Officer, Mars Chocolate North America. "While we do not condone Kyle's recent actions, we do believe that he has shown remorse and has expressed a desire to change. We believe our decision will have a positive impact on Kyle and will help him return next season ready to win." |
Last week, House Republicans released their plan to replace Obamacare, giving Americans a sense, at long last, of how their health insurance might change under the Trump administration. Today the Congressional Budget Office followed up with an estimate on what would happen if the law is passed, and its findings were grim: 24 million people would lose their coverage by 2026. That’s much larger than anyone anticipated, and it’ll be devastating for many Americans.
In its report, the CBO outlined another alarming effect on health: If implemented, the GOP’s American Health Care Act would kill the funding that established the Prevention and Public Health Fund, the federal budget’s largest budget allocation for disease prevention, by 2019.
“Funding under current law [Obamacare] is projected to be $1 billion in 2017 and to rise to $2 billion in 2025 and each year thereafter,” the CBO report says. “CBO estimates that eliminating that funding would reduce direct spending by $9 billion over the 2017-2026 period.” This assessment “fails to take into account that these dollars will have to be replaced through the regular appropriations process,” the American Public Health Association pointed out in a statement, calling this a “health policy disaster.”
The ACA established the Prevention and Public Health Fund with a simple mission: to boost public health money, much of it for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to support activities that keep people from becoming sick. (At a time when more Americans would be gaining insurance, keeping people healthy and out of the health care system carried extra appeal for lawmakers.)
The Prevention Fund helps kids and their families get the vaccines they need. It supports programs that reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, and lead poisoning in communities. “It also pays for key elements of the emergency preparedness systems that are in place throughout the nation,” explained John Auerbach, president and CEO of the public health nonprofit the Trust for America’s Health, “including the people who respond quickly when there is a weather disaster, a new infectious disease outbreak like Zika or an elevated number of fatal drug overdoses.”
Over the years, the fund has become a prime target for Republicans, who generally regard public health as paternalistic and have called the program a “slush fund for jungle gyms.” Congress has subjected it to a slew of cuts. So it’s not a surprise that the American Health Care Act plans to sever the fund altogether.
But killing that funding is going to have an outsize impact on many of America’s key public health activities.
It’ll cripple the Section 317 vaccines program, which has been called “the backbone of our nation’s immunization infrastructure.” Section 317 ensures that doctors get the vaccination doses they need, helps people who can’t afford vaccines gain access to them, and mobilizes responses to outbreaks such as measles, among other things. Getting rid of the fund will mean Section 317 would lose half its funding, which is frightening at a time when vaccination rates are already down in some states.
Eighty percent of the funding for evidence-based education and health programs prevent heart disease — the No. 1 cause of death in America — comes from the Prevention and Public Health Fund, so that’ll disappear, too. So will 100 percent of the funding for programs to reduce the risk of health care–associated infections at hospitals.
The CDC will also face a major cut. Over the years, several items in the CDC’s core budget have been shifted over to the fund. With the fund’s disappearance, $890 million (or about 12 percent) of the CDC’s annual budget would be lost.
“Simply put, without the Prevention Fund the American people will be less healthy and some will die unnecessarily,” said Auerbach. The effects here will be a lot more slow-burning and subtle than the immediate tragedy of an individual losing her insurance. But over the long run, they could be just as devastating. |
The Incident – Why Buses Open Their Door at Railroads
April 8, 2011 at 2:00 am Chad Upton
By Chad Upton | Editor
Although it was required by law for school bus drivers to stop at railway crossings in 1938, drivers were not required to open their door.
On December 1st of that year a gruesome accident changed that. It was a blizzard in Salt Lake City, Utah and a school bus driver stopped his bus at a railway crossing. Because of the snow, the visibility was terrible and the driver was not able to see an approaching freight train.
24 of the 40 passengers died, including the driver. According to surviving passengers, the train was broadsided without notice. Although the driver was familiar with the train schedule, the weather had delayed the train which should have passed two hours earlier. To make matters worse, the train was travelling faster than normal to make up for lost time.
Unfortunately, the same crossing saw accidents in 1995, 1997 and 2002. Thankfully, it is now closed.
The snow ultimately led to the horrific crash in 1938, but investigators wanted to know if any precautions could have prevented it. Stopping the bus and looking for trains works great when the visibility is good, but it’s useless in snow and fog. Opening the bus door (and driver’s window), allows the driver to hear trains.
Today, opening the door and/or driver side window is law in many parts of the United States and Canada. The same law is also extended to trucks that carry hazardous materials.
Some crossings do not require these vehicles to stop and they are marked with an “Exempt” sign. This is typical if the crossing is no longer active.
Railroad crossing signals do fail and there are thousands of collisions each year between trains and cars, many of which end in fatalities. Although the signals are fairly reliable, it doesn’t hurt to pay close attention when you approach railway crossings.
Broken Secrets
Get secret updates: Facebook | Twitter | Email | Kindle
Sources: The Pittsburgh Press, NSC.org, Deseret News
Photo: You Need Style (cc)
Share: Facebook
Twitter
Google
More
LinkedIn
Tumblr
Pocket
Reddit
Print
Pinterest
Email
Like this: Like Loading... Related
Entry filed under: History and Origins. Tags: 1938, accident, bus, crash, crossing, railroad, railway, salt lake city, school, school bus, train, utah, xing. |
KTRK (Channel 13) anchor Dave Ward, who underwent surgery last weekend to repair his left hip after a fall on the set, said today he’s recuperating at home and hopes to return to the nightly newscasts the first week in February.
Ward, 72, said he was doing the same thing he’s done every weeknight for more than 40 years – walking onto the riser of Channel 13’s studio set to begin the newscast – when he tripped on Friday the 13th.
“It was 10 minutes until 10, and I go stepping up on the riser to the set,” Ward said. “Melanie Lawson was already there and I had my script in my hands and said, ‘Hi, Mel, how you doing?’ and I tripped on the last step, lost my balance, stumbled all the way across the riser and fell back on the concrete floor on my left hip.
“When I hit that floor, the pain was instant from my left hip all the way through my left foot. And I knew then that, oh, boy, I’d done busted my ass again.’”
Ward said the fall broke the femur at the point where the bone enters the hip socket. Surgeons repaired the damage, inserted a metal rod into the bone and had him up and walking less than 24 hours later. He was released from the hospital Wednesday and returned home to find a flood of get-well messages, for which, he said, he is very grateful.
“People are really nice when you get hurt,” Ward said. “(Longtime Houston TV host) Warner Roberts wrote me a card that said, ‘When Dave Ward hurts, Houston hurts,’ which I thought was so wonderful. People just come out of the woodwork at a time like this, and you get an idea of how far-reaching our signal is and that I’m accepted by so many people in their homes and have been for so many years. I’m grateful to everyone for their messages of concern and support.”
There’s just one problem, Ward noted. His fall took place on Friday the 13th — and there are a couple more Friday the 13ths coming later this year.
“That was going to be my kicker that night, that it was Friday the 13th, and that is always a special day for us at Channel 13,” he said. “I think I’ll get the chance to use it again.”
Ward recently celebrated his 45th anniversary at Channel 13. He has been the station’s lead anchor since 1968 and is believed to be the nation’s longest-tenured newsman at the same station. He also suffered a concussion and a broken pelvis while racing in a charity motorcycle race at the Astrodome in 1974, and in 2003 he suffered a broken leg in an auto accident. |
I know that a lot of you are wondering when there’s going to be new stuff in the Dead Philosophers store. “I have too much money!” you cry, as it piles up around you: useless, unfeeling cash that is nothing compared to what is truly important in life.
Novelty t-shirts.
Does your money keep you warm? One of our t-shirts does – admittedly to a limited degree. Does your money have pictures of philosophers on it though? Maybe, if you’re Greek or something. I haven’t checked. Either way, you know that it’s nice to support the site financially, because we’re saving up to buy a bigger gold bin to store all of our excess gold in. At the moment all our excess gold is just lying around the place, and frankly that looks a little tacky. Also, every time you buy something from us we get an email, and get to feel genuinely good about the idea of someone on the other side of the world walking around wearing a Dead Philosophers shirt. We picture you wearing it, and buddy, you wear it well.
Soon, is the answer. There will be new stuff in the store soon.
Congratulations if you are one of the select few who managed to buy one of our Nietzsche/Batman shirts before we were politely informed that Warner Brothers has something called a “lawyer” and that this means we can’t sell them anymore.
– Nick |
Chinese media have censored reports relating to three women who attempted to commit suicide at the Tiananmen East metro station. The trio had sought to file petitions after losing money in phone scams, though their efforts were ineffective.
Petitions, particularly those which are lodged in Beijing, are often the last resort for Chinese citizens who are seeking justice or assistance from the government. The chances of petitioners having their grievances addressed are also slim.
Reports appeared on Wednesday but were censored in Chinese media by Thursday. An article on the Beijing News website, which reported on the matter, generated a “404 Not Found” error soon after it was published.
The three, who were from Jiangsu, drank pesticide and were found lying on the floor of the subway station. Three brown bottles and pools of liquid were found next to them.
They were later taken to three different hospitals: Beijing Hospital, Beijing Tongren Hospital, and Peking Union Medical College Hospital. They received treatment to flush the pesticides out of their system.
The Peking Union Medical College told Beijing News that the woman who ingested the pesticide had signs of bleeding in her stomach, and her condition was being monitored. The other hospitals told the paper that the other women were in stable condition.
One of the women involved, surnamed Han, told the paper that she was scammed out of RMB170,000 (HK$190,635) and her husband had cancer. She could not find a place which would look into her complaint, and thus drank the pesticide with the other two women, who were also cheated out of money. |
The coital alignment technique (CAT) sex position, known colloquially as grinding the corn,[1] is used primarily as a variant of the missionary position and is designed to maximize clitoral stimulation during sexual intercourse (coitus). This is achieved by combining the "riding high" variation of the missionary position with pressure-counterpressure movements performed by each partner in rhythm with coitus.[2]
Technique [ edit ]
Coital alignment technique
When used as a variant of the missionary position, the male lies above the female but moves upward along the woman's body, until his erection, which would otherwise point "up," is pointing "down", the dorsal side of the penis now pressing against the clitoris; and as opposed to the missionary position, the male’s body moves downward (relative to the female's) during the inward stroke, and upward for the outward stroke. She may also wrap her legs around his. Sexual movement is focused in the pelvises, without leverage from the arms or legs. The rocking upward stroke (where the female leads) and downward stroke (where the male leads) of sexual movement builds arousal that partners let develop and peak naturally.[3] The woman on top variant is known as the reverse coital alignment technique.[4]
History and geography of studies [ edit ]
The technique for coital alignment was first defined by American psychotherapist Edward Eichel,[3] and the original study was published by Eichel, De Simone Eichel, and Kule in 1988 in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. Since then, the topic has been studied several times in the same journal. A 1992 report by Kaplan and her sex therapist trainees described the team's cursory trial of the C.A.T., acknowledging that they may have resorted to old routines after only a few attempts out of fear of disappointing their partners. Their call for other sex therapists to give the technique more rigorous testing instigated a series of controlled studies by Hurlbert and colleagues reporting statistically significant results in the treatment of female hypoactive sexual desire sex therapy.[citation needed]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ] |
Share This Video Facebook Twitter EMAIL
Ben Carson arrived onstage at the Republican National Convention as the last high-profile speaker of Tuesday evening. This was a relatively low-key night compared to the recent Melania Trump-related speech shenanigans. Her husband, Donald, was officially named as the Republican nominee on this second convention day, and a host of speakers congratulated him.
Many of these podium takers also slammed presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. None went quite as far as former neurologist and ex-Trump rival Carson, who freely peppered “Saul Alinsky” and “Lucifer” references throughout his speech. According to Washington Post deputy national political editor Rebecca Sinderbrand, the Lucifer mentions were not present in the original script. Carson, who stood as “the quiet one” throughout most of the primary season’s Republican debates, really let loose, essentially accusing Hillary Clinton of being an agent of Satan.
While praising Donald Trump and shunning all enemies, Carson invoked one of Newt Gingrich’s favorite political references — often used while criticizing President Obama — to eviscerate Clinton. Carson brought the hammer down on her for idolizing radical leftist Saul Alinsky, who Carson insisted is “somebody who acknowledges Lucifer.”
Perhaps Carson anticipated some backlash to his words, for he also bashed political correctness as wrong and “antithetical to the founding principles of this country.” He projected that Clinton would push a “secular progressive” agenda and silence the nation while doing her bidding.
Carson, who was frantic by that point, continued to praise Trump as the candidate who would bring God back into American lives: “This is a nation where every coin in our pocket and every bill and our wallets has ‘In God We Trust.’ So, are we willing to elect someone as president who has, as their role model, somebody who acknowledges Lucifer? Think about that.”
You heard the man. Think about that. |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.