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A week earlier the Federal Reserve had to extend a huge credit line to AIG to keep the troubled firm from collapsing
The world's largest insurance company, AIG, spent $440,000 (£250,000) on a lavish corporate retreat at one of California's top beachside resorts just a week after accepting an $85bn emergency loan from the US government to stave off bankruptcy.
Details of the getaway emerged at a congressional hearing today where lawmakers expressed outrage at AIG executives "wining and dining" at the height of a financial crisis.
An invoice from the St Regis resort in Monarch Beach, south of Los Angeles, shows that AIG spent $139,375 on rooms, $147,301 on "banquets", $23,380 on spa treatments and $6,939 on golf at an eight-day company event which began on September 22.
A week earlier, on September 17, the Federal Reserve had to extend a huge credit line to AIG to keep the troubled firm from collapsing due to vast liabilities on risky financial insurance policies.
"Average Americans are suffering economically," said Henry Waxman, chairman of the House oversight committee. "They are losing their jobs, their homes and their health insurance. Yet less than one week after the taxpayers rescued AIG, company executives could be found wining and dining at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation."
Set in 172 acres of grounds on a bluff overlooking the Pacific ocean, the St Regis resort describes itself as "Tuscan inspired". Rates for its 325 rooms are typically upwards of $500 a night and the travel guide Fodor's gives the place a rave review, saying: "Exclusivity and indulgence carry the day here; you can even have someone unpack for you."
An AIG spokesman said the event was to entertain independent insurance salesmen of AIG American General - one of the company's main US operations which offers life, health and accident policies.
"It was a recognition event for independent agents of AIG American General who distribute insurance policies," said the spokesman. "It was planned months ago."
In written evidence to Congress, AIG's former chief executive, Robert Willumstad, blamed an "unexpected and unprecedented market-wide crisis of confidence" for the company's financial predicament.
AIG wrote off more than $50bn in unrealised losses on complex mortgage-related instruments such as credit default swaps. But Willumstad, who stood down as a condition of the federal bail-out, blamed mark-to-market accounting rules for accentuating the impact of the company's exposure, prompting downgrades by credit rating agencies.
"Looking back at my time as CEO, I don't believe AIG could have done anything differently," said Willumstad. "The market seizure was an unprecedented global catastrophe." |
Story highlights Too many people are dying in their attempts to reach safety in Europe, writes Maurice Wren
This incident is an appalling reminder of what happens when people escaping persecution are denied access to safety, he says
Wren: In the absence of safe, legal ways to reach European territories, refugees are forced into dangerous and abusive situations
European governments must work in solidarity to ensure people fleeing human rights violations and persecution are given entry, he says
The events unfolding off the coast of Lampedusa are both tragic and shocking . More than a hundred people are confirmed dead and the death toll is almost certain to rise dramatically.
Although it may be awful, sadly this is neither an unusual nor unfamiliar story. According to the UNHCR, in 2012, some 15,000 migrants and asylum-seekers reached Italy and Malta and almost 500 people were reported dead or missing at sea.
The figures are damning and shameful. Too many people are dying in their attempts to reach safety in Europe and much more needs to be done to address the root causes of why people risk their lives in this way.
One thing is clear -- this latest incident is an appalling reminder of what happens when people escaping persecution are denied access to safety at the EU's frontiers.
While we don't know the personal circumstances of everyone on board this particular boat, we do know that the majority were from Somalia and Eritrea, two of the top 10 sources of refugees in the world, according to the UNHCR. Both are countries with well documented human rights abuses.
Given this, it's reasonable to believe that a number of people on board were refugees, fleeing persecution and seeking safety in Europe where there are substantial and settled Somali and Eritrean communities.
JUST WATCHED Dozens dead in Italian boat accident Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Dozens dead in Italian boat accident 01:10
Yet there's been considerable head scratching in the media about why people would put themselves at such risk. Why would you get on an overcrowded, potentially unseaworthy vessel and risk your life to make it to Lampedusa?
For refugees, the answer is simple -- what they're leaving behind is much, much worse. Somalia and Eritrea's human rights abuses are well documented. Sexual violence and torture are commonplace. For refugees, staying at home -- or 'going back to where they came from' -- is not an option. Difficult though it may be for us to comprehend, for refugees, paying smugglers and boarding these boats is a rational decision.
The problem is compounded by the lack of safe, legal routes into Europe. The Refugee Convention -- a legal framework which defines who refugees are, their rights and the legal obligations of countries -- recognizes that people fleeing for their lives may have to resort to illegal entry. This drives refugees to take even greater risks to escape.
European countries have a legal obligation to provide protection under the Refugee Convention but during the last decade the continent's borders have become heavily securitized, with millions of pounds invested in Frontex, the agency established by the EU to strengthen Europe's borders and protect the continent against unwanted illegal migrants.
These measures should not apply to individuals escaping war and persecution -- the theoretical beneficiaries of legally sanctioned protection and compassion -- but refugees are often forced to resort to the same irregular channels to leave their country of origin and travel towards safety.
Europe's formidable migration control apparatus does not sufficiently differentiate between individuals who may be in need of international protection and other migrants.
In the absence of safe, legal ways to reach European territories, refugees are forced into dangerous and abusive situations, and often obliged to embrace the perils of life-threatening journeys and the unscrupulous services of smugglers.
Boarding an overcrowded boat bound for Italy would possibly have been the last stage in a long and dangerous journey for many of those on that voyage. Some of them possibly didn't even know where they were headed.
European governments must work in solidarity to ensure people fleeing human rights violations and persecution are given entry. When people are in need of our help, we must live up to our international obligations and offer it. Only then can we be sure we are doing all we can to prevent more deaths.
We must keep a door to safety open for refugees and develop ways of identifying those with protection needs among the broader flow of migrants. As yesterday's events have shown, it's a matter of life and death. |
The City of San Francisco sought an injunction Wednesday against President Donald Trump’s executive order to block federal grants to “sanctuary cities,” complaining the move could be devastating to the city’s bottom line.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, City Attorney Dennis Herrera asked a federal judge to freeze the order until a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality is resolved.
If “defendants strip all federal funds from San Francisco, the result will be ‘catastrophic,’” Herrera wrote in seeking an injunction in U.S. District Court, the Chronicle reports. “Under this cloud of uncertainty and budgetary sword of Damocles, San Francisco must adopt an annual budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2017.”
San Francisco’s budget is just under $10 billion, and it remains unclear what impact the President’s order will have. The Chronicle quotes Hererra stating it could be anywhere from a “couple hundred thousand dollars to $2 billion.”
While it remains unclear if the city can sue at all, this is not the first attempt to stop President Trump’s executive order in a California courtroom. In February, a similar request for an injunction brought by Santa Clara County officials was also filed in U.S. District Court of San Francisco, in which Trump’s executive order was labelled “extortion.”
San Francisco Mayor Lee, worried that his city will suffer if cuts are drastic, was strident when he doubled down on San Francisco’s controversial sanctuary policy in January after a lawsuit brought by the family of Kate Steinle — murdered by a felon who was also a previously deported illegal alien — was dismissed:
“San Francisco is a sanctuary city and will not waver in its commitment to protect the rights of all its residents,” Lee told local news channel KRON 4.
This unyielding stance could come at a high cost — and so far, no one appears to have asked San Francisco residents if they are prepared to suffer the fiscal consequences.
Tim Donnelly is a former California State Assemblyman, whose doing a book tour, speaking about how we can Make CA Great Again (#MCGA)!
Author, Patriot Not Politician: Win or Go Homeless
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.donnelly.12/
Twitter: @PatriotNotPol |
Emerging as a significant source of into capital markets, Employees Organisation (EPFO) is likely to pump in Rs 250-300 billion in equities in 2017-18 with Rs 57 billion already invested this year so far, says a report.
According to global brokerage Morgan Stanley, besides EPFO, the National Pension Scheme (NPS) is also among the sources for driving the domestic flow surge, which has been positive for the past 17 months.
"NPS' pension assets stood at $30 billion at the end of July. We estimate their equity assets to be at $3.5 billion," the report said.
The report noted that EPFO, which has raised its equity allocation to 15 per cent in the current fiscal from 10 per cent in 2016-17, is "likely to invest Rs 250-300 billion in equities in 2017-18 of which Rs 57 billion has been invested this year thus far".
In August, equity flows were positive for the 17th straight month.
Year-to-date, domestic have received equity inflows of $18.6 billion (tracking at $2.3 billion per month).
"By the end of the month, equity mutual fund assets under management (AUM) stood at USD 111 billion, and as a percentage of market cap rose to 5.3 per cent, its highest level since July 2000," Morgan Stanley said.
"Similarly, equity ETF assets rose to new highs of $8.4 billion. Year-to-date, ETF inflows stood at USD 2.6 billion (Rs 169 billion)," it added. |
Eli Broad addresses a crowd as Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Broad founding director Joanne Heyler look on. | Photo: Drew Tewksbury .
Amid scaffolding, construction workers, and a thin layer of concrete dust, the Broad contemporary art museum today opened its doors to journalists and cultural advisors to showcase the newest addition to downtown Los Angeles' pantheon of cultural institutions. The $140-million museum, set to open late in 2015 [updated], will showcase more than 2,000 art objects from the Broad Art Foundation and the personal collections of philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad. In addition, the site will become the headquarters to the Broad Art Foundation's lending library, which loans artwork to museums worldwide. According to Joanne Heyler, the founding director of the Broad and the chief curator of the Broad Art Foundation, the collections include more than 30 works by Jeff Koons, 120 images by Cindy Sherman, and 26 Andy Warhols. Works by German photographer Andreas Gursky as well as paintings by New York upstarts Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring also can be found in Broad's collections. Broad revealed today that general admission to the museum would be free and special exhibitions would charge a fee.
The core of the 120,000-square-foot building will be the solid three-floor base called "the vault," which will house the Broad archives. The third floor's 35,000-square-foot, exhibition space is expansive and airy; its ceiling soars 23 feet up, while being devoid of columns. The structure's exterior exhibits an interwoven lattice of 2,500 fiberglass reinforced concrete panels called "the veil," which Elizabeth Diller, of the museum's design architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, says creates an "elegant, light-filled room." The building, she says, makes a good neighbor to the sleek, opaque shapes of the adjacent Disney Hall. "The veil is coy. It is porous and brings in light."
Artbound ventured into the bones of the Broad for a behind-the-scenes look at the museum in progress.
Rendering Exterior of The Broad from 2nd Street and Grand Avenue | Image courtesy of The Broad and Diller Scofidio + Renfro .
Ceiling at The Broad | Photo: Drew Tewksbury .
Unfinished interior of the lobby | Photo: Drew Tewksbury .
Lobby view from the north entrance with interior view of the glazing and veil. | Image courtesy of The Broad and Diller Scofidio + Renfro .
Welders working on scaffolding in the lobby | Photo: Drew Tewksbury .
Interior Construction of the Broad | Photo: Drew Tewksbury .
Scaffolding and the Ceiling at the Broad | Photo: Drew Tewksbury .
Third-floor gallery entrance with escalator, circular glass elevator and stairwell rendering | Image courtesy of The Broad and Diller Scofidio + Renfro .
The future site of the 102-foot escalator | Photo: Drew Tewksbury .
The skeleton of a stairway at the Broad | Photo: Drew Tewksbury .
Dig this story? Sign up for our newsletter to get unique arts & culture stories and videos from across Southern California in your inbox. Also, follow Artbound on Facebook and Twitter. |
U.S. Rep. David Schweikert was the toast of protesters Wednesday at a meeting with his constituents in Mesa, and he didn't mind at all.
Dressed in tuxedos and top hats, members of Billionaires for Wealthcare piled out a sleek black Cadillac Escalade to "thank" Schweikert for supporting the wealthy and even attempted to give him a present during the meeting.
They ladled out the sarcasm by drinking sparking water out of wine glasses.
The seven protesters chanted such slogans as "hey, hey, ho, ho, keep the profits with the CEOs" and sang, "All we are saying is give greed a chance."
The protesters burst into the meeting while Mesa Mayor Scott Smith was speaking, shouted a few slogans and tried to give Schweikert a gift before they were ushered out by Mesa police.
But Schweikert seemed anything but upset at the protesters, who have visited him at other constituent meetings in Fountain Hills and elsewhere.
"It actually amuses me. You have to give them credit for trying to be funny," Schweikert said before he outlined problems with the national debt in a slide presentation.
"I think it's great. It helps me tell the story of how out of touch" the protesters are on the Medicare issue, he said.
Schweikert added that he believes the protesters represent the extreme liberal fringe and upset moderate Democrats who want an honest dialogue about Medicare funding.
But protester Barbara Njos said she joined the protesters to spotlight Schweikert's positions on Medicare and other issues.
"I care about the middle class. I think I might be losing middle-class status sometime soon," she said. "It's because I care about people." |
Hello, Tyrians!
As days grow shorter and darker, our friend Ho-Ho-Tron and I-
Correction: This-unit-has-been-designated-as-Replica-Ho-Ho-Tron-by-the-Consortium-to-cash-in-on-*BZZT*-continue-the-altruistic-work-of-my-predecessor.
Right. Can I call you Ho-Ho-Tron for short?
Affirmative.
Great. So, as I was saying, Ho-Ho-Tron and I would like to share some Wintersday activities that your favorite fansites have been preparing.
Is-that-my-cue?
Wintersday Window Decoration Contest
Take part in Wintersday revelry by entering the Wintersday Window Decoration Contest before January 20, 2015. Create and submit a Guild Wars 2 themed window stencil design of your own making to participating host fansites and get a chance to win one of five prize batches provided by ArenaNet:
First place will receive a Guild Wars 2 signed artbook, a signed Rytlock notebook, an exclusive Guild Wars 2 mousemat, a black Rytlock T-shirt, a Wintersday card, a Guild Wars 2 Griffon Mail Carrier, and a code for 400 gems.
Second place will win a Guild Wars 2 artbook, a Rytlock notebook, an exclusive Guild Wars 2 mousemat, a gray Guild Wars 2 T-shirt, a Wintersday card, and a Guild Wars 2 Griffon Mail Carrier.
Third place will get a Guild Wars 2 artbook, an exclusive Guild Wars 2 mousemat, a gray Guild Wars 2 T-shirt, a Wintersday card, and a Guild Wars 2 Griffon Mail Carrier.
Fourth prize includes a Wintersday card, a gray Guild Wars 2 T-shirt, and a Guild Wars 2 Griffon Mail Carrier.
Fifth place will be rewarded with a Wintersday card, a gray Guild Wars 2 T-shirt, and a Guild Wars 2 Griffon Mail Carrier.
Is-it-my-cue-yet? I-want-to-know-more.
In the spirit of community and the Wintersday celebration, a number of fansites will be hosting the Window Decoration Contest. To learn more about the rules and to enter, check out one of the participating fansites below. Five winners will be chosen by them from among all the entries received from the host fansites. Around January 23, 2015, the winners will be announced in a blog post on GuildWars2.com and on participating fansites.
English
French
German
Spanish
Zav’s Wintersday window stencils represent a good example of Guild Wars 2 themed designs you could make. What shape will you give yours?
Is-that-really-what-I-look-like?
Wintersday Twitter Giveaway
To celebrate the new year and make the Wintersday magic last a little bit longer, we will be organizing a Guild Wars 2 giveaway on Twitter from January 5 through January 9, 2015. We will be giving away one Griffon Mail Carrier every day to one of you. Remember the #GW2 and #Wintersday hashtags, you will need them!
What-is-a-hash-tag? GW2. Wintersday. Error: Incorrect-format. I-will-try-again.
To get a chance to be one of our lucky winners, you will need to: print, cut, and use Zav’s Wintersday stencils or create your own Guild Wars 2 stencils to decorate your windows. Tweet a picture of your window decoration to @GuildWars2 between January 5 and January 9 using the two hashtags mentioned before. We will randomly select one winner per day during that period.
#GW2 #Wintersday
Exactly! Thank you, Ho-Ho-Tron!
#GW2 #Wintersday Where-is-my-prize?
The, uh, contest hasn’t started yet. Anyway, good luck and Happy Wintersday to you all! Ho-Ho-Tron will catch up with you in 6 days as our Wintersday content goes live.
Stephanie Bourguet, French Communications Manager, and Replica Ho-Ho-Tron |
A one-off Ferrari has been uncovered rotting in a Japanese barn - and it's worth a staggering £1.5million.
The unique Ferrari Daytona was found in filthy condition after being left for 40 years.
SWNS:South West News Service 6 Ferrari Daytona was once the fastest car in the world with 174mph top speed
SWNS:South West News Service 6 This Daytona - found hidden in a Japanese barn - is expected to sell for £1.5m
But not only was it once the fastest car in the world, this legendary model is the only one ever made with an aluminium body.
The Daytona was capable of 174mph when it went on sale in 1969.
Around 1,200 standard Daytonas were built over a four-year period along with five competition cars for endurance racing.
Ferrari also commissioned just one street version of the Daytona with an aluminium body - and very few people are aware of its existence.
But it has now emerged after being left to gather dust and dirt in a lock-up in Japan.
The one-off Ferrari, once a bright red sports car, is a tired-looking classic in desperate need of an overhaul having been hidden since 1980 - but it is set to create a storm among collectors.
SWNS:South West News Service 6 Only a handful of collectors ever knew about its existence
Acclaimed Ferrari historian Marcel Massini flew out to Japan to inspect the car, where he confirmed its identity.
He said: "What a super scarce Daytona barn find, the only remaining aluminium-bodied production GTB/4, sold new to Luciano Conti, a close friend of Commendatore Enzo Ferrari."
The Daytona has now been shipped back to its birthplace, Maranello, Italy, where it will be sold at auction.
It is being sold without reserve, which means it could go for anything, but the auction house has given it an estimate of around £1.5 million (Euro 1.7m).
SWNS:South West News Service 6 Interior is in poor state after being left for 40 years
Whoever buys it is then left with a number of options - they can get it running but preserve its 'barn find' condition or restore it to concours condition.
And as a special, storied Ferrari it will be welcome at shows around the world.
RM Sotheby's described the Ferrari as "a unique car that no other collector can claim ownership to".
The auction house said: "This Daytona holds distinct ties to its competition brethren yet never turned a wheel in anger and was instead preserved for decades.
"Presented here in remarkable unrestored condition, having been domiciled for many years and never significantly refurbished, there is no better Daytona for the discerning connoisseur, as it offers limitless opportunities for enjoyment."
Under the bonnet of the Daytona is a 4.4-litre V12 engine which developed around 350bhp when it left the factory in 1969.
This would have given the sports car a 0-60mph time of 5.4 seconds and a top speed of 174mph .
The first owner, Italian publisher Luciano Conti, took delivery of the car in June 1969 and kept it for one year before selling to its second keeper who re-sold it one month later.
SWNS:South West News Service 6 Stunning car is the only Daytona with aluminium body
It was later sold to a Japanese buyer who sold it on to its current owner in 1980, who hid the car until earlier this year.
The "fabled" Ferrari, which has been driven just 22,500 miles in 48 years, was only known by a small number of collectors who tried and failed to buy it on a number of occasions.
SWNS:South West News Service 6 The car will require a hefty restoration job to bring it back to former glory |
Don't jump the gun now, but should Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) superstar and pop culture phenomenon, Ronda Rousey ,defend her women's Bantamweight strap against ex-boxing champion Holly Holm at UFC 193 tonight (Sat., Nov. 14, 2015) inside Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, mixed martial arts (MMA) fans might have even more to be excited about.
That's because UFC President Dana White claims if "Rowdy" takes out "The Preacher's Daughter" in Australia this weekend, she will "probably" be in for a meeting with perennial rival Cristiane "Cyborg" Justino in the near future (via MMAjunkie), pending a successful drop to 140 pounds first, of course.
It's not like we've grown accustomed to hearing said rumors of a clash between the two women's MMA giants -- they've gone back several years now.
A bout between the bitter enemies all hinges upon Cyborg's ability to make it down to the 135-pound barrier successfully, which she has started and stopped once before. However, a performance-enhancing drug (PED) free Cyborg now says she's ready to make the plunge down to bantamweight.
With the banter increasing between Rousey and the Brazilian bomber over the course of 2015, it's about time these women get it on, before one of them disappears
For good.
And Cyborg just started to put together her gameplan to dethrone Rousey.
For the complete UFC 193: "Rousey vs. Holm" fight card and results, including play-by-play updates, click here and here. |
QUETTA Pakistan (Reuters) - A man was killed and two policemen were wounded in an attack on Quetta airport in western Pakistan on Thursday night, officials said, but the attackers did not breach the perimeter.
The dead man was not immediately identified. He was killed near an airforce base that shares a runway with the civilian airport.
Local residents heard at least eight blasts and gunfire that continued for around half an hour. Helicopters buzzed overhead, they said.
Sarfraz Bugti, home minister in the provincial government of Baluchistan, confirmed an attack had taken place. He said rockets had been fired but did not land in the base.
Four bombs were defused near another air force base in Quetta called Khalid, he said. He did not say who had carried out the attack.
Pakistan has suffered several recent attacks on its airports.
In June, a Taliban attack killed 30 people at the airport in Karachi, the southern city home to 18 million people.
The same month, militants fired on a plane landing in Peshawar, a provincial capital in the northwest, killing one woman passenger and narrowly missing the pilot. Peshawar airport was also attacked in 2012, when nine people were killed.
In 2012, nine people were killed in an attack on an airforce base in the northern city of Kamra.
In recent days, the attention of Pakistani security agencies has been focused on two large anti-government protests that are due to reach the capital on Friday. |
Around 80 people formed a human chain to save a family caught in a riptide off a beach.
Roberta Ursrey and her husband rushed out into the ocean at Panama City Beach in Florida when they realized their sons had been swept out too far and were screaming on Saturday July 8.
Homeless man doused in water by rail staff is a convicted killer
She told News Herald: ‘They were screaming and crying that they were stuck. People were saying, “don’t go out there”.
‘I honestly thought I was going to lose my family that day. It was like, “oh God, this is how I’m going”.’
Ursrey swam out to save her boys, only to get stuck herself. She said there were around nine people in total who were caught up in the riptide. Her mother was among those trapped and suffered a heart attack.
The water was around 15-feet deep.
Jessica Simmons and her husband were having something to eat when they noticed a huge crowd of people on the beach pointing in one direction.
Almost all UK businesses are 'not ready' for no deal Brexit
She immediately assumed someone had spotted a shark.
Simmons saw the group in distress, grabbed a boogie board and swam out to try and save them.
Meanwhile, her husband started a human chain. It quickly grew to 80 people, stretching around 100 yards into the water.
Simmons said when she finally reached those in distress, she saw how exhausted they were.
Ursrey’s mother’s eyes were rolling in the back of her head and she told Simmons to leave her and save the rest.
Simmons and the 80-strong chain started pulling them back to shore one by one.
She said: ‘It was the most remarkable thing to see. These people who don’t even know each other and they trust each other that much to get them to safety.’
Ursrey’s nephew suffered a broken hand and her mother is recovering in hospital.
Ursrey says she is grateful to all those who helped save their lives. |
Drupal Gardens is hosted version of Content Management System Drupal that runs thousands of sites on web. But before we move further let’s take a looks at what Drupal is actually?
Drupal Introduction
Drupal was created in 2000 by Belgium computer science student named Dries Buytaert to help him in sharing information with his friend but with the passage of time people kept asking him for more and more feature, as he was unable to proceed with there demand so he released the software under GNU/ GPL General Public License in 2001 and renamed it Drupal which means a drop of water. Today many high profile site run on Drupal includes that of United States Government, The Canadian Rail Service and many others including MTV Europe. It is free software that can be downloaded from its official website and you are not alone to download it Drupal gets nearly three hundred thousand downloads per week. This is a sneak peak of what is Drupal.
What is Drupal Gardens
Drupal Gardens was introduced in Feb. 2010 that makes the benefits of Drupal accessible to a whole new group of people who don’t want to get into site management. DrupalGarden and Core Drupal are very similar, learning one can help you learn another.
Actually Drupal Gardens simplifies Drupal by taking care of most of its tedious tasks such as maintaining and running the software. There are lots new features in Drupal Gardens that you will not find in standard Drupal like the revolutionary theme builder that helps you create standard state of art themes for your Drupal sites. You can build sites for free at Drupal Gardens the only condition is, that you have to allow Drupal Gardens to run there ads on your site. Well the creators of Drupal Gardens have facilitated you with and option to get rid of these ads simply by paying monthly fee which vary according to the plan that you chose.
Why to go for Drupal Gardens
One question that might be moving here and there in your head is that why I should use Drupal Gardens where there are bunch of other better options like WordPress, LiveJournal etc available?
Basically Drupal Gardens is core Drupal with some modifications that make it easy for end user. It is hosted and maintained by a company name Acquia as a result you don’t need to maintain and host the site which basically stop many people from running there own Drupal site. But Acquia isn’t the only company that host and maintains Drupal there one another big name in business called Buzzer which is backed by Lullabot.
Benefits of Drupal Gardens
Some of the major benefits of using Drupal Gardens:-
1.First and foremost advantage is that you can host several site from one Drupal Gardens site.
2.It allows you to make your site accessible through custom domain;well this feature is available under paid listing for that you have view the price listing options.
Limitations of Drupal Gardens
With all such great things there are some limitations also. There are three basic limitations of Drupal Gardens and that are:-
1. You can’t import and existing site i.e. the website that is already built and hosted some where else can not be imported to Drupal Gardens. You have to build a site from ground level here; it’s best suited for newly building sites. But you can export a site from Drupal Gardens to any where else.
2. You can’t at add any module to Drupal Gardens you have to use what they offer you but what the offer is quite impressive.
3. You don’t have access to server so you can’t do the geeky things over there like increasing memory allocation for example in free version while in paid listing you get ample of space.
This is quite impressive tool as you can create a perfect website with it that full fills the qualifying criteria laid down for a website.
So just start your journey in the world of Drupal Gardens and explore its power. |
Let me start off by saying that I'm 16 and yes, I bought this for myself. So I don't actually play with this toy, I use it for display. I'll just say that the Dash toy itself is great. The mane colors are messed up, and some would argue that it doesn't look like Dash from the show, but she's very pretty. Her hair is super long and tends to curl, completely unlike Dash in the show, but if you really don't like it you can always cut it yourself and try to style it so it stays straight, which could be fun if you're into that kind of thing. The hair was pretty frizzy out of the box so I washed and conditioned it and it became very shiny.
Now let me talk about the accessories. Unless you're a little girl that actually wants to play with this and dress it up, they're useless. The hair clips are a little too big for the pony but could be used in real hair on a kid. The comb is ok. The shoes are hideous and stupid and barely stay on. The bracelet could be used as a ring for a kid. The only things I liked at all were the dress and the sunglasses. But unfortunately, they replaced the red on the dress with pink, and it covers up her cutie mark so I put it on a stuffed animal on a shelf instead of Dash. The sunglasses are also pink, so I took it upon myself to paint them dark blue and they look great on Dash, up on her head or over her eyes. They're the only accessory that I actually use. They can leave tiny dents on the side of her head though.
As far as being used as an actual toy, I think little Dash would hold up pretty well, as long as the kid wasn't too rough. I know I would have loved to have her as a little girl because she's so pretty. |
"Gavage" redirects here. For the medical procedure in general, see Feeding tube
Force-feeding is the practice of feeding a human or other animal against their will. The term "gavage" ( ) refers to supplying a nutritional substance by means of a small plastic feeding tube passed through the nose (nasogastric) or mouth (orogastric) into the stomach.
Of humans [ edit ]
In prisons [ edit ]
Some countries force-feed prisoners when they go on hunger strike. It has been prohibited since 1975 by the Declaration of Tokyo of the World Medical Association, provided that the prisoner is "capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment". The violation of this prohibition may be carried out in a manner that can be categorised as torture, as it may be extremely painful and result in severe bleeding and spreading of various diseases via the exchanged blood and mucus, especially when conducted with dirty equipment on a prison population.[2] Large feeding pipes are traditionally used on hunger striking prisoners[3] whereas thin pipes are preferred in hospitals.
United Kingdom [ edit ]
World Magazine, September 6, 1914 Clipping from, September 6, 1914
Suffragettes who had been imprisoned while campaigning for votes for women went on hunger strike and were force fed. This lasted until the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act of 1913, better known as the Cat and Mouse Act, whereby debilitated prisoners would be released, allowed to recover, and then re-arrested.) Rubber tubes were inserted through the mouth (only occasionally through the nose) and into the stomach, and food poured down; the suffragettes were held down by force while the instruments were inserted into their bodies, an experience which has been likened to rape.[4] In a smuggled letter, Sylvia Pankhurst described how the warders held her down and forced her mouth open with a steel gag. Her gums bled, and she vomited most of the liquid up afterwards.[5]
Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the Women's Social and Political Union, was horrified by the screams of women being force-fed in HM Prison Holloway. She wrote: "Holloway became a place of horror and torment. Sickening scenes of violence took place almost every hour of the day, as the doctors went from cell to cell performing their hideous office. …I shall never while I live forget the suffering I experienced during the days when those cries were ringing in my ears." When prison officials tried to enter her cell, Pankhurst, in order to avoid being force-fed, raised a clay jug over her head and announced: "If any of you dares so much as to take one step inside this cell I shall defend myself."[6]
In 1914, Frances Parker, another suffragette, was being force-fed by the rectum in the Perth prison:
Thursday morning, 16th July ... the three wardresses appeared again. One of them said that if I did not resist, she would send the others away and do what she had come to do as gently and as decently as possible. I consented. This was another attempt to feed me by the rectum, and was done in a cruel way, causing me great pain. She returned some time later and said she had ‘something else’ to do. I took it to be another attempt to feed me in the same way, but it proved to be a grosser and more indecent outrage, which could have been done for no other purpose than torture. It was followed by soreness, which lasted for several days.[7]
Djuna Barnes, the American journalist, agreed to submit to force-feeding for a 1914 New York World magazine article. Barnes wrote, "If I, play acting, felt my being burning with revolt at this brutal usurpation of my own functions, how they who actually suffered the ordeal in its acutest horror must have flamed at the violation of the sanctuaries of their spirits." She concluded, "I had shared the greatest experience of the bravest of my sex."[8]
The United Kingdom also used forcible feeding techniques against Irish Republicans during their struggle for independence. In 1917 Irish prisoner Thomas Ashe died as a result of complications from such a feeding while incarcerated at Dublin's Mountjoy Jail. The outrage of Ashe's death from the Irish public was so great that force feeding has never been used in Ireland since.[9]
United States [ edit ]
Ethel Byrne was the first female political prisoner in the United States to be subjected to force feeding [10] after she was jailed at Blackwell Island workhouse on January 22, 1917 for her activism in advocating for the legalization of birth control. She subsequently went on a hunger strike and refused to drink water for 185 hours. [11]
Guantanamo captives who will not comply with force-feeding have their arms, legs and head restrained in a feeding chair. They remain strapped in the chair until the nutrient is digested, to prevent induced vomiting.
Under United States jurisdiction, force-feeding is frequently used in the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, prompting in March 2006 an open letter by 250 doctors in The Lancet, warning that, in their opinion, the participation of any doctor is contrary to the rules of the World Medical Association.[12][3][13] Retired Major General Paul E. Vallely visited Guantanamo and reported on the process of force-feeding:[14]
They have to restrain the prisoners when they feed them because they attack the nurses. They spit in their faces. They're simply restrained for 20 minutes so they can be fed Ensure. They get their choice of four flavors of Ensure. It's put in a very unobtrusive feeding tube smaller than a normal straw and it's put in there for 20 minutes, so they get breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
In the 2009 case Lantz v. Coleman,[15] the Connecticut Superior Court authorized the state Department of Correction to force-feed a competent prisoner who had refused to eat voluntarily.[16] In 2009, terrorist Richard Reid, known as the "shoe bomber," was force-fed while on a hunger strike at the United States Penitentiary, Florence ADX, the federal supermax prison in Colorado.[17] Hundreds of force-feedings have been reported at ADX Florence.[18]
Forced feeding has also been used by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement against detained asylum seekers on hunger strike.[19] In February 2019, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed that such treatment of detainees could constitute a breach of the United Nations Convention against Torture.[19] The Associated Press quoted one 22-year old asylum seeker who alleged that "he was dragged from his cell three times a day and strapped down on a bed as a group of people poured liquid into tubes inserted into his nose."[19]
Soviet Union [ edit ]
Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky described how he was force-fed:
The feeding pipe was thick, thicker than my nostril, and would not go in. Blood came gushing out of my nose and tears down my cheeks, but they kept pushing until the cartilages cracked. I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I could not with the pipe in my throat. I could breathe neither in nor out at first; I wheezed like a drowning man — my lungs felt ready to burst. The doctor also seemed ready to burst into tears, but she kept shoving the pipe farther and farther down. Only when it reached my stomach could I resume breathing, carefully. Then she poured some slop through a funnel into the pipe that would choke me if it came back up. They held me down for another half-hour so that the liquid was absorbed by my stomach and could not be vomited back, and then began to pull the pipe out bit by bit.[20]
"The unfortunate patients had their mouth clamped shut, had a rubber tube inserted into their mouth or nostril. They keep on pressing it down until it reaches your esophagus. A china funnel is attached to the other end of the tube and a cabbage-like mixture poured down the tube and through to the stomach. This was an unhealthy practice, as the food might have gone into their lungs and caused pneumonia."[21]
United Nations War Crimes Tribunal [ edit ]
On December 6, 2006, the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague approved the use of force-feeding of Serbian politician Vojislav Šešelj. They decided it was not "torture, inhuman or degrading treatment if there is a medical necessity to do so... and if the manner in which the detainee is force-fed is not inhuman or degrading".[22]
Israel [ edit ]
In 2015, the Knesset passed a law allowing the force-feeding of prisoners in response to a hunger strike by a Palestinian detainee who had been held for months in administrative detention. Israel doctors refused to feed Mohammad Allan against his will, and he resumed eating after the Supreme Court temporarily released him.[23]
Other forms [ edit ]
Force-feeding of pernicious substances may be used as a form of torture and/or physical punishment. While in prison in northern Bosnia in 1996, some Serbian prisoners have described being forced to eat paper and soap.[24]
Sometimes it has been alleged that prisoners are forced to eat foods forbidden by their religion. The Washington Post has reported that Muslim prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison under the U.S.-led coalition described in sworn statements having been forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, both of which are strictly forbidden in Islam (see Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse).[25]
Of babies [ edit ]
"Gavage" method of infant feeding used in France, late 19th century
According to Infant feeding by artificial means: a scientific and practical treatise on the dietetics of infancy[26], a French system of feeding newborn or premature babies who could not suckle was known as gavage. Sadler dates its origin to 1874 and quotes Étienne Stéphane Tarnier, a pioneer perinatologist, describing the procedure. [27]
For girls before marriage [ edit ]
Force-feeding used to be practiced in the North Africa and still is in Mauritania. Fatness was considered a marriage asset in women; culturally, voluptuous figures were perceived as indicators of wealth. In this tradition, some girls are forced by their mothers or grandmothers to overeat, often accompanied by physical punishment (e.g., pressing a finger between two pieces of wood) should the girl not eat. The intended result is a rapid onset of obesity, and the practice may start at a young age and continue for years. This is still the tradition in the rather undernourished Sahel country Mauritania (where it is called leblouh), where it induces major health risks in the female population; some younger men no longer insist on voluptuous brides, but traditional beauty norms remain part of the culture.[28][29]
In slavery [ edit ]
Slaves who tried to commit suicide by starving themselves were force fed with a contraption called the speculum orum. This device forced the slave's mouth open in order to be fed.[30]
Of domestic animals [ edit ]
Force-feeding has been used to prepare animals for slaughter. In some cases, such as is the case with geese raised for foie gras and peking duck, it is still practiced today.
In farming [ edit ]
Force-feeding is also known as gavage, from a French word meaning "to gorge". This term specifically refers to force-feeding of ducks or geese in order to fatten their livers in the production of foie gras.
Force-feeding of birds is practiced mostly on geese or male Moulard ducks, a Muscovy/Pekin hybrid. Preparation for gavage usually begins four to five months before slaughter. For geese, after an initial free-range period and treatment to assist in esophagus dilation (eating grass, for example), the force-feeding commences. Gavage is performed two to four times a day for two to five weeks, depending on the size of the fowl, using a funnel attached to a slim metal or plastic feeding tube inserted into the bird's throat to deposit the food into the bird's crop (the storage area in the esophagus). A grain mash, usually maize mixed with fats and vitamin supplements, is the feed of choice. Waterfowl are suited to the tube method due to a non-existent gag reflex and an extremely flexible esophagus, unlike other fowl such as chickens. These migratory waterfowl are also said to be ideal for gavage because of their natural ability to gain large amounts of weight in short periods of time before cold seasons.
In modern Egypt, the practice of fattening geese and male Muscovy ducks by force-feeding[dubious – discuss] them various grains is present, mostly by individuals, unrelated to foie gras production, but for general consumption of those birds later. It is not widespread on commercial farms however. The term used for such a practice is "Tazgheet" تزغيط from the verb "Zaghghat" زغَط.
Shen Dzu is a similar practice of force-feeding pigs.
In scientific research [ edit ]
Gavage is used in some scientific studies such as those involving the rate of metabolism. It is practiced upon various laboratory animals, such as mice. Liquids such as medicines may be administered to the animals via a tube or syringe.[31]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
The Structures
Historical Origins of the Flint Hills Arched Cellars
These arch-roofed, stone structures present us with many questions. Who built them, and when? What were they used for? How were they constructed? The answers to these questions elude us. Because these structures were part of everyday life, many people who built them saw no need to write about them. Most settlers to the Kansas frontier, if they wrote memoirs at all, probably did not consider their cellars a subject to write about in detail. Despite this, there is evidence that can shed light on the origins of these mysterious structures.
At first glance, these buildings seem similar to other ancient stone structures or even megaliths found in other parts of the world. The chambered tombs and passage graves of the British Isles; Cairns and Souterraines of Scotland; Bee-Hive Huts of Ireland; Cairn structures from coastal Croatia, Greece and the islands of the Mediterranean; as well as the Fogous of Japan; share similar visual elements with the arched-roof cellars of Kansas.
Clockwise from top left: Portal Tomb in Orkney, Scotland; Beehive Hut in Ireland; Fogou (hermit house) in Japan; Souterrain in Scotland’s Isle of the Skye
This is probably coincidental. The arched-roof cellars of the Flint Hills are likely an independent innovation. While these buildings are visually similar, there is no evidence to link them directly. The presence of the arched roof is also unique, as most of the older structures from elsewhere in the world used flat slab roofs, and some were circular rather than rectangular in design. Although the visual similarity is striking, the people who created the arched-roof cellars of the Flint Hills were unaware of similar ancient stone structures from around the world.
Early Cellars in America
The history of early European colonization of New England presents one significant piece of the puzzle. English colonists arriving in the early seventeenth century experienced a more extreme climate. The temperatures in Chesapeake Bay could swing from 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler to as much as 20 degrees warmer than temperatures in Great Britain. Humidity in the colonies was also higher, especially in the south. This more extreme climate made food storage difficult.
To solve these problems, colonists learned methods of long term food storage from Native Americans, who had long devised ways of dealing with these issues in the American climate. The most significant of these methods was the underground storage pit or cellar house. By digging “subfloor pits,” also called “cooling pits,” under their houses, Chesapeake Bay colonists could keep root vegetables and other foodstuffs cool in the summer and warm during winter.(1)
Cellars existed in England, but were somewhat rare and not usually used for food preservation. A study comparing housing in East Anglia, England, with that of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, shows that from 1635 to 1749, only about 4 percent of houses in East Anglia included a cellar. From 1630 to 1660 in Massachusetts, 50 percent of the houses included cellars.(2) Cellars were more common in America, due to the extreme climate and Native American influence.
Although the concept of using cellars for food storage can be traced in this way, the arched-roof structures of the Flint Hills of Kansas are not necessarily a direct descendant of this tradition. Many of the European settlers to Kansas were not necessarily descendants of original New England colonists. Many came directly from of Europe and brought their own heritage, skills, and traditions. Some of the arched-roof cellar structures found throughout the Flint Hills are indeed underground cellars, but many others are free-standing, partially or fully above-ground buildings built into hillsides, embankments, or dirt mounds. The origins of these buildings are much less clear. Due to the lack of any mention of root cellars prior to 1609 (Gage) it seems possible that the Native American technology made it's way back to Europe and was incorporated into the homesteads of these other european cultures which in turn adapted their own building styles in their design. In the late eighteenth century, colonial American journals and advertisements begin to reference “root cellars,” “root houses,” or “Dutch cellars.” These descriptions indicate a type of free-standing structure similar to those found in the Flint Hills, with the exception of the arched-roof feature. Whether these eighteenth century cellar structures are connected to the cellars of the Chesapeake Bay colonies – and whether either type is related to the Flint Hills structures – is questionable.(3)
Arched Cellars in New England
These are two of only six arched root cellars of any type that James Gage was able to find in all of New England in 15 years researching the subject of root cellars. I’ve found well over 270 in 2 years in little more than 4 Kansas counties. New England cellars are rare and generally limited to wealthy land owners. Like most other dugouts and external cellars, they would have likely been built first and lived in while the land owners built a proper house.
Flint Hill Structures
J.O. Easterberg Dugout, Centre Township, Riley County. Who Built Them
In 1854, the United States Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This bill created the Kansas territory, opening it for settlement. At the time, friction between slave states and free states was incredibly high, and many Americans were preoccupied with the question of whether Kansas would permit slavery. The act left this decision up to a popular vote – settlers would move into the newly formed territory and vote on whether Kansas should allow slavery or remain free.
Settlers on both sides of the issue raced into Kansas to establish themselves and push for the creation of a state government of their preference. Violence broke out between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in a period of strife known as “Bleeding Kansas.” While many of these settlers attempted to build local government, they also built root cellars. Settlers from other parts of the world poured into Kansas, bringing their unique cultural traditions and skill sets to the prairie.
Germans and Swedes made up the largest groups of immigrants to the Kansas Flint Hills in the mid 1850's and 1860s. Welsh immigrants also moved into the area around the same time. All of these groups exhibited a high degree of masonry and stone-working skill as a part of their cultural heritage. Many of the original stone buildings and fences built by these settlers can still be seen today in areas within Wabaunsee, Geary, Riley, Pottawatomie and Chase Counties.(4)
Nature of the Terrain awaiting the Flint Hills Settler: Few Trees and a lot of Rock!
Davenport girls climbing on rocky out cropping, Wabaunsee County. This image illustrates the nature of the Flint Hills terrain. At the time of the areas settling there were very few trees but an abundance of rock at or near the surface. Many properties would have their own private quarry to draw building material from.
Settlers near Hinerville, Wabaunsee County soon after setting up camp on new claim. Image shows the nature of the landscape for theses early settelers. Notice the tent in the background. Families might live in such a temporary shelter while building something like a dugout cave or a log cabin to shelter them through the coming winter and in some cases many seasons to come
The vast, flat grassland encountered by these settlers lacked timber. Prairie fires, blazes set by American Indians, had rendered the Great Plains treeless. Tribes of native peoples had different reasons for using prairie fires, but most included controlled fires for communication and war. As a hunting aid, they influenced movement and migration patterns of bison through fire and smoke. Fires improved pasture quality, which also affected Bison movement. Hundreds of years of these practices had rendered the landscape virtually treeless at the time settlers arrived to the area.(5) The Flint Hills region in particular was short on lumber, but had a plentiful supply of stone near the surface.
Many of the German settlers to the area were Russian-Germans, German families that had immigrated to Russia in the past, and represented a blending of these two cultures. These Russian-Germans were primarily from the Volga region, near the Black Sea and the Ukraine. In the late nineteenth century, political changes in Russia, an economic downturn, and a series of famines led Russian-Germans to immigrate to the United States, concentrating particularly in North and South Dakota and Kansas.
The geography and climate of the Great Plains was similar to the Russian steppe, making Russian-German building techniques particularly applicable to Kansas. These settlers clung tightly to their traditional architecture styles and construction methods and tried to avoid American influences. The scarcity of timber in the region was true of their homeland as well, and they made use of a sun-dried brick-and-mortar technique known as Batsa. Their traditions, including extensive use of cellars, did not usually feature the arched-roof style, but instead used a gable roof.(6) However, some settlers did occasionally make use of arched-roof structures, such as the large cellars built by German immigrants to Cincinnati and St. Louis in the 1850s. These were primarily used as icehouses for brewing and storing beer.(7)
Multi-Purpose Structures
These arched-roof structures were able to serve multiple roles for homesteaders. Although most were built as root cellars or storm shelters, their first use, even in the New England Area (Cage), but especially in the sparsely populated frontier, might have been that of a dugout home. These structures would offer top-notch security for the settlers from the weather and make the wild swings in temperature tolerable. Kansas was then, as today, tornado alley so being able to have a refuge from extreme weather, a storm shelter, was paramount. These structures would often be built first and lived in for the first year or two while a generally modest home was erected. At that point the structure would go from a home, protecting the very lives of the settlers, to a shelter for their food stuffs through the changing seasons. This was especially the case among the Swedish and German settlers of the Flint Hills. It would always remain the storm shelter in times of need. Other functions these structures would have served ranged from that of spring houses, built to protect a spring on a settler’s property and to help provide water; a sistern to gather rain water; a brick kiln; and even a bread oven. These were truly important utilitarian structures/items for these early homesteaders.
Personal Stories
Much is still unknown about these structures, mostly because few records exist about their construction and use. To the average Kansas settler in the mid-nineteenth century, details about their cellar or storm shelter probably did not seem notable. However, we do have some sources that shed light on who built these structures and what they were used for. One very detailed story comes from Agnes McPeak, who was just a child in the late 1800s. She recalls that on her family’s property was,
"an arch cellar, the stones pigeoned holed or dove tailed as it was sometime called. It was built in 1894 by the same stone mason who built the strong stone wall of the cow lot. It still stands. . . . A wooden roof was built over the arch cellar (this is long gone). There was a small pipe for ventilation through the roof. This cellar was the storage place for our dairy products. It was also for vegetables, such as potatoes or apples or turnips. In summer it was very cool in this cellar. A large thick door, also a screen door was erected. There were three steps down to enter. The cellar was a refuge in severe electrical storms and high winds. Mother would light the lantern and she and we children would go hand in hand to the cellar and wait for the storm to abate."(8)
An anonymous journal from Clinton, Kansas from a woman born in 1909 demonstrates how prevalent these structures were by that time, noting, “We had a storm cave close to the house. . . . I don't know who first dug and built the cave or for what purpose. Caves were used both as storm shelters and as a place to store fruit and vegetables. Such caves are still prevalent in many places.”(9)
Dugout homes from other regions of the country:
This is a Nebraska Dugout made from Nebraska Brick, Basically a sod dugout. Likely a common type of dugout in much of Nebraska where soil tends to be deeper.
These are more images that show different forms of Dugouts around the country. Cellars also share this same diversity and seldom use the fully stone variation of the outdoor “cave”. I think these help illustrate the variety of forms these take and the way that form not only follows function, but is also determined in large part by what materials are available. Dugout Homes in other parts of Kansas:
This is generally what people expect to see when thinking of a dugout - nearly all the images I was able to find showed these types of structures to be located out in Western Kansas. Image thanks to Kansas State Historical Society.
The 1879 diary of Elam Bartholomew describes how many settlers used these structures. He writes,
"We found rather an odd but perhaps a very advisable practice in vogue among the citizens of the town which was that the principal part of the people had made little dugouts or caves near their homes that they might fly thither in case of the appearance of another tornado; we were told that many of the people, during the latter part of the season, would fly to their little dugouts whenever a little thunder shower came up."(10)
Newspapers from the period also demonstrate the widespread use of these structures as storm shelters. The May 22, 1896 issue of the Wichita Daily Eagle records a storm that spawned “Seven Cyclones at least,” and that many families and individuals “saved themselves by getting into caves.” These “caves” are likely these same arched-roof structures, as the article describes one family who endured the storm “in the cyclone cave and escaped without serious injury, although the cave was unroofed and some of the arch stones fell into the cellar.”(11)
Nearly a year later, in April 1897, the Eagle reported that another tornado had inspired the construction of over 1,000 storm caves in Oklahoma. The paper printed an article that described the “Best methods used in building the refuge from the whirling enemy of mankind – Above everything else they must be staunch and strong – Best location is to the southwest of the dwelling.”(12) Many of these structures are described as being fully underground. However, most of the Kansas structures are at least partially above ground.
The Flint Hills stone caves were used as far more than just storm shelters. They were useful for food storage, and also served as homes, sometimes temporary and sometimes long term. Theodore Weichselbaum, a settler to the Ogden area in 1856, recorded his experiences in 1908. He built underground cellars as breweries, but later repurposed them for grain storage and stables.(13) Some settlers used them as a smoke house for cooking, or even for bee-keeping.(14)
Strangely, there was very little to be found about the arched roof structures in the area of the Flint Hills (or anywhere else for that matter), although it seems clear that their purpose had similar origins as these more commonly documented forms of dugout structures. It seems likely this was in large part due to the time period various areas were settled. The sod houses depicted here were likely built later than the more permanent stone structures of the Flint Hills. More photographers and better photographic equipment were available when these dugouts were built and inhabited, so these are more commonly seen in photographs.
This photograph not only shows a pitched roof partial sod dugout, but also shows how many people might share a small space like this. This is seemingly the most common form that dugouts took in Kansas judging by the number of images I was able to find showing them. Image thanks to the Kansas State Historical Society.
This image illustrates the fact these structures were likely packed with people as well as belongings, and it makes me think that that people would have slept outside whenever possible. I imagine that the arched roof dugouts would have been similarly filled. Image thanks to the Kansas State Historical Society.
Several family histories from the Bluestem Prairie area describe the construction of these stone cellars and how many families lived in them until other more permanent homes could be built. The Carlson family lived in their dugout home for eight years until building a stone house. The Hanson family built a large home in 1880, but before then “they had lived in a dugout for several years where their oldest children were born.” The Pishney family had a similar experience. “Their home was a dugout which is now a cave on the Loren Smercheck farm.” The Bloomquist family also lived in their stone cellar. “They each dug caves to live in until a house could be built. The advantage of living in a cave was the temperature was the same winter or summer.” The Parker family purchased land and found that a previous occupant had already constructed “a cave with an arched limestone interior and a chimney in the far end made in the side of the hill.” (15 - Refer to the George Parker cave in the location list for images.)
One of the most detailed accounts comes from Mrs. Hattie E. Lee, who was born in 1868. She describes how her family used the original stone structure as other buildings were later erected around it in the 1880s. “The family never lived in the frame house; we used the first stone house and attic to live in. . . . The frame house was built over the dugout and the dugout was used as a cellar to store things away in. We still used the stone room for dining room and kitchen.” She describes the use of a stone storm shelter and cellar in 1902, saying, “In July, 1902, the children were playing out and Will ran in and said, ‘Oh, Mother get into the cave quick a bad storm is coming.’ I closed the house and we ran to the cave dug in the bank of the slough. . . . There was only a screen door on the cave – it was just a small place near the well to keep our cream and butter cool.” It is unclear whether this is the same structure from when she was young.
Along with sod construction, this type of structure seems to be the most common form of dugout home in Kansas. Image thanks to Kansas State Historical Society.
Francis Eugene Murphy is shown on the porch of his ranch house located in Haskel County east of Santa Fe KS Also visible at right are a storm cellar or fraid hole and a windmill Murphy owned 100 quartsecs. Did this "Fraid Hole" start off as a dugout home? Image thanks to Kansas State Historical Society.
Lee relates stories of many other settlers she encountered who also lived in these structures.
"Early in the spring of 1873 two Swedish-speaking families from Galesburg, Ill., came to Osage City . . . . The fathers, Magnus Lungren and John Sutherland . . . immediately built a one-room shack. In this roughly built but the two families lived together for several months [sic]. Towards fall Lungren made a cave on his farm. In this cave the young Lungren family lived for several years."
Other Swedish settlers had similar practices. Lee describes, “The Swedish-speaking settlers who came to Stotler in 1874 . . . . [such as] Swan Lundholm, Andrew Chelberg, and C. I. Johnson, all of whom built caves as their first Stotler homes.”(16)
Link to interviews regarding their many uses: Click Here
Evidence that these arched caves might have been used as a home:
Signs that the Flint Hills arched roof structures might have been used as dugouts during their tenure include having large windows in the back or sides, facing south or maybe any direction other than north, having a single entrance opening straight out to flat ground, remnants of household objects left in the structure, and most of all, stories passed down about them.
J.O. Easterberg Dugout, Center Township, Riley County. I just recently found this place and was amazed by what I found. It’s a kind of Holy Grail to me.
These images show another place I recently found that seems to further illustrate the fact that these were used as homes. From the outside it seems like many others, but on the inside it had some really special features which don’t fit the idea of a root cellar. An interior wall with a doorway separating it into two rooms and a really large back widow. Clearly this was also a space for people to live in. Why Stone Dugouts and Cellars?
This picture is the only picture of a dugout that seems to show one of these types of structures. It’s impossible to say with certainty that it is a native stone arched roof dugout, but I think it’s likely. This dugout was located somewhere between Manhattan and Wabaunsee, Kansas. Image thanks to the Kansas State Historic Society. - When researching the topic of root cellars or dugouts, etc., I was really astonished by the lack of any images of the particular type of structure that appears so often in our landscape. This image is the only one I found that seems to show the type of structure in question. For whatever purpose they were created, it seemed to me that they were surely important enough to have some research conducted and images recorded about their use as homes or even as common cellar. I did end up finding similar, but obviously visually and structurally differing structures throughout the country that did have some photographs and research available about them. I’m pretty certain that these arched structures had similar origins as these more commonly documented forms of dugout structures. I was told this was in large part due to the time period various areas were settled. The sod houses depicted in the previous images were likely built later than the more permanent stone structures of the Flint Hills. More photographers and better photographic equipment were available when those dugouts were built and inhabited, so those end up being more commonly seen in photographs.
Why would the Flint Hills structures be built of such permanent material? It doesn't seem likely that this was because the early settlers expected to live in the area for generations. It was about making the best use of their skills and resources, and the likelihood that the builders were potentially very forward thinking enough to know that the structures would have continued usefulness even after they stop living in them. Was it about permanence like the stone buildings at Kansas State University, or was it making the best of what resources and skills they had at their disposal? It seems much more likely that it was the latter. It seems doubtful that the settlers were thinking they wanted a structure that would last for millennia. It's likley most weren't confident they would be in the area for very long at all.
Landscape of the Flint Hills: Founding of Manhattan, Kansas
These images shot by Alexander Gardner around 1867 of Manhattan illustrate the lack of wood in the area. Stone, however, was plentiful!
This image shows Manhattan in 1883, 20 years after its settling and still so few trees. Just think about it now – Tree city USA
It truly is about the right combination of resources and the skill set of the pioneers – This image shows how the bed rock came right to the surface and how settlers wouldn’t have to dig far to find large rocks suitable for building. Also, just picking up stones off the surface of the prairie to use for building was like killing two birds with one stone. Clean off the pasture and gather building materials.
How were they built?
For quite a long time I was unsure of just how these stone structures would have been built. When I asked people about them who had one on their property or knew of them elsewhere, I seemed to get a similar story as to just how this might have happened. For instance, some claimed they were built over a mound of dirt. This seemed logical enough until I was set straight by a mason who told me that this would make no sense. Dirt would be subject to compaction and settling especially if it were wet. There was more than likely a scaffold or support system in place. Could someone have actually used the dirt method? What if the dirt was actually shaped from the existing compacted rocky soil on the spot and so it had already been compacted for centuries or millennia before the attempt to build over it? Some do seem irregular enough to think this might have possibly been the case.
The use of scaffolding was illustrated in a book by James Gage on the history of root cellars. The author sent me these two diagrams/blueprints that illustrate just how it was done. I’ve also recently spoken with a mason who is actually building one and has been using a form like these to do so.
August Brasche Root Cellar, Washington Township, Wabaunsee County. This image was taken of a recent project done by Luke Koch and his Masonry Company. It illustrates how the scaffold would have been covered with some form of paneling, which would have stayed in place until the final keystone was placed in position. I do wonder about the level of skill that each would-be mason brought to construction of a particular shelter. Did the home owners themselves build some of these structures without the help of a more skilled mason? Drawing from previous exposure (i.e., past experiences), they might have had certain insights regarding how to build a dugout that was most helpful especially in the early days when there might not have been a large pool of skilled masons to draw from. This might answer the question as to why there is such a diversity of stone work found throughout the structures. I’m sure that not too many could have been as skilled as Luke Koch the builder of the structure depicted here. It also was apparent after visiting this site that these projects would have been intense and could have taken a few months to complete. August Brasche Cellar Restoration by Koch Construction Specialties
I do think that some of these structures were built by much less skilled craftsmen than others. Possibly even some were built just from a memory of seeing a similar structure built in the builder's home country. As you look at the variety visible in the way their stones are laid out and how their stones were apparently quarried you can tell some were much more primitively built than others. I came to understand that it was likely that the settlers would trade their handiwork with each other and even at times, especially around Fort Riley, the government would contract skilled masons to go out and build robust arched caves in order to incentivize the homesteaders staying in the area. Many of these are made using huge, possibly machine-cut stone that is clearly jointed with mortar. Most of these I found in the McDowell Creek area south of Fort Riley. Further away, around Alma and other areas not near the fort, the use of the dry stack stone method is much more common. These methods used no mortar for jointing, but instead counted on friction and gravity to do the work. Later, many of these would have had mortar injected in between the rocks and even given a whitewash of lime plaster in order to avoid water seepage and mold.
The methods for constructing these buildings remain a mystery. While some of the stories above refer to the hiring of stonemasons, some settlers attempted to build the stone structures themselves. The Flint Hills area provided plentiful natural stone for building material. Some settlers, such as the Poole family, were able to quarry stone from their own land.(17) As one early Wabaunsee County homesteader recalled, “I got out stones for a cellar and had to haul them four miles. I dressed them myself and lay up the walls of the cellar and it is still standing. I built a house over it of native lumber.”(18)
Clearly these structures are versatile and stand as a testament to the ingenuity of the original settlers to the Flint Hills region of Kansas. They are an important part of the cultural heritage of the varying origins of those pioneers, and provide key insight into their lifestyles. Much is still unknown about these structures, and they continue to provide a sense of beauty and mystery about the past.
Wood form Vs. Dirt Form
The structure on the left shows clear signs of being built with wood form in place, as do many others. It features a very regular and smooth arch, as well as signs of the mortar squishing out at the bottom of the jointed stones. The dugout on the right, on the other hand, seems to show signs of the dirt mound method of building. Some do seem irregular enough that this might have been the case, although it’s still clear this would have been the exception and not the rule. After meeting with a local mason and going over some of my images he seemed pretty convinced that some really showed signs that they could have been built over a dirt mound. Not only do the structures with irregular arches seem unlikely to have been built over a rigid form, but also show excessive irregularity in sizing and coursing of the stone (especially around the bottom). This suggests that the builders were likely blind to the way the stones at the bottom of the spring walls would have looked and therefore might seem even more irregular.
This shows that the plaster or cement coating might have come many years after the original structure was built. The cement or plaster would have helped keep rodents, insects and mold causing moisture out of the space. Settlement and Division of the Land:
From an interview with Margy Stewart, local historian from the McDowell Creek area of the Flint Hills, “In the early years of the settling of the Flint Hills there were often many more people living in some of the now rural areas than there are today. It used to be that farmers bought or were awarded quarter, half, or full sections. Notably, a quarter was 40 acres, a half was 80 acres, and a full was 160 acres. So at some point you would have had much of these areas with a small homestead just over a hill or clearing from each other, one every 80 acres on average, often with 13 or more children in hopes that some would survive, often with a dugout. Often these smaller plots were quickly consolidated and were owned by single families. This made it so that many people found themselves needing to move on or to work the land for others. Then there is also the thought that the grass is always greener which would drive many homesteaders to cut their losses having decided that the terrain was too rugged, or maybe just heard of a better opportunity elsewhere. This would drive many more to leave these areas." Interestingly, nails were so rare at times to early pioneers and settlers that they might burn down their own home in order to reclaim the nails before moving on to the next settlement. This might help to explain why there can be so little found accompanying some of these stone chambers. That and the fact that many settlers might not have ever built more than a simple dwelling like these caves before dediciding to leave or simply selling the property for a profit. In the book “Ghost Towns of Kansas,” it describes the fact that there were over 5,000 communities around Kansas that went from boom-to-bust during the first 50-100 years of its life as a territory, and later as a state.
Footnotes:
(1) James E. Gage, Root Cellars in America: Their History, Design, and Construction 1609-1920 (Amesbury, MA: Powow River Books, 2009), 2-3; Donald W. Linebaugh, “All the Annoyances and Inconveniences of the Country: Environmental Factors in the Development of Outbuildings in the Colonial Chesapeake,” Winterthur Portfolio 29 (Spring, 1994), 3-5.
(2) Abbott Lowell Cummings, The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay 1625-1725 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 29.
(3) Gage, Root Cellars in America, 5-8.
(4) J. Neale Carman, “The Foreign Mark on Kansas,” Journal of the Central Mississippi Valley American Studies Association 2 (Fall, 1961), 66-79; Robert J. Hoard and Toni M. Prawl, “The Origins and Evolution of Rock Fences in Missouri,” Material Culture 30 (Spring 1998), 1-22; Joseph V. Hickey, “Welsh Cattlemen of the Kansas Flint Hills: Social and Ideological Dimensions of Cattle Entrepreneurship,” Agricultural History 63 (Autumn, 1989), 56-71.
(5) Julie Courtwright, Prairie Fire (Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2011), 29-48; James E. Sherow, The Grasslands of the United States: An Environmental History (Denver: ABC-CLIO 2007), 13-14.
(6) Alvar W. Carlson, “German-Russian Houses in Western North Dakota,” Pioneer America 13 (September 1981), 49-60; Lauren B. Sickels-Taves and Philip D. Allsopp, “Making a Mark in America: The Architectural Ingenuity of Germanic Settlers,” Material Culture 37 (Spring 2005), 85-106.
(7) Susan K. Appel, “Artificial Refrigeration and the Architecture of 19th-century American Breweries,” The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 16 (1990), 21-38.
(8) Agnes McPeak, Should it be Told? (Topeka, KS, 1984), 127.
(9) Milton Beach, Autobiography of a Common Man (Lawrence, KS: Kansas Collection, 199-?), Online book: http://www.kancoll.org/books/beach/clinton.htm [accessed November 13, 2013].
(10) “Diary of Elam Bartholomew,” Monday, September 29, 1879, Kansas State Historical Society, 271.
(11) “Coming in Crowds: Six Cyclones in a Bunch Pass Over Kay County,” Wichita Daily Eagle, May 22, 1896, 1.
(12) “All Digging Caves: Cyclone Cellars in Oklahoma and Their Construction,” Wichita Daily Eagle, April 11, 1897, 9.
(13) “Statement of Theodore Weichselbaum, of Ogden, Riley County, July 17, 1908,” Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society 11 (1910), 568.
(14) For the use of the arched-roofed stone structure as a smoke house, see Home Weekly, November 24, 1881, Page 4, Col 2; For bee-keeping, see “Cellars for Bees,” Saline County Journal, October 20, 1887, 3.
(15) Pioneers of the Bluestem Prairie: Kansas Counties, Clay, Geary, Marshall, Pottawatomie, Riley, Wabaunsee, Washington (Manhattan: KS: Riley County Genealogical Society, 1976).
(16) Raymond Millbrook, ed., “Mrs. Hattie E. Lee’s Story of Her Life in Western Kansas,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 22 (Summer, 1956), 114-137.
(17) Pioneers of the Bluestem Prairie.
(18) Haney, E. D., “The Experiences of a Homesteader in Kansas” Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society 17 (1928), 312. |
HOUSTON — General manager Trent Baalke expects the NFL to announce any discipline for 49ers linebacker Aldon Smith before Saturday at 1 p.m., at which time their 53-man roster must be set.
Smith would not count against that roster if he’s suspended for the start of the season, freeing up a spot for another player.
Smith met with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell three weeks ago, and while the league has not announced any discipline yet for the 49ers’ sack artist, Goodell may have tipped his hand a bit Thursday.
In Goodell’s letter to NFL owners outlining the league’s strengthened stance on domestic violence and sexual assault, he also wrote about other infractions involving weapons offenses and drunken driving. Earlier this summer, Smith pleaded no contest to three counts of illegal weapons possession and two counts of drunken driving.
From Goodell’s letter:
“In addition to focusing on domestic violence and sexual assault, we will continue to maintain strong policies regarding weapons offenses. We are similarly working to strengthen our response to impaired driving.
“We have sought — unsuccessfully — for several years to obtain the NFLPA’s agreement to more stringent discipline for DUI, including mandatory deactivation for the game immediately following an arrest and a minimum two-game suspension for a first violation of law. We will continue to press our position on this issue in the hope of securing the union’s agreement.”
Reading into that, Smith would face at least a two-game suspension for his Sept. 20 drunken driving arrest. Goodell, however, is also expected to factor in Smith’s five-game absence last season when he voluntarily checked into a substance-abuse treatment center.
The 49ers are in Houston for the exhibition finale Thursday against the Texans.
Last month, Smith was sentenced by a Santa Clara County judge to 11 days on a sheriff’s work crew, three years probation and 235 hours of community service.
Most suspensions for personal-conduct violations have ranged between one and eight games since Goodell became commissioner in 2006. Prior to Smith’s ruling, Goodell recently drew widespread criticism for suspending Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice only two games after a domestic-violence incident.
In Goodell’s letter to owners Thursday, he apologized for not taking a harsher stance with Rice:
“We allowed our standards to fall below where they should be and lost an important opportunity to emphasize our strong stance on a critical issue and the effective programs we have in place. My disciplinary decision led the public to question our sincerity, our commitment, and whether we understood the toll that domestic violence inflicts on so many families. I take responsibility both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn’t get it right. Simply put, we have to do better. And we will.”
Goodell then stated that players will face a six-game suspension the first time they violate the Personal Conduct Policy regarding assault, battery, domestic violence or sexual assault that involve physical force, “with consideration given to mitigating factors, as well as a longer suspension when circumstances warrant.”
“Among the circumstances that would merit a more severe penalty would be a prior incident before joining the NFL, or violence involving a weapon, choking, repeated striking, or when the act is committed against a pregnant woman or in the presence of a child. A second offense will result in banishment from the NFL; while an individual may petition for reinstatement after one year, there will be no presumption or assurance that the petition will be granted. These disciplinary standards will apply to all NFL personnel.”
Will Goodell’s new, hard-line stance impact Smith’s upcoming discipline?
Smith, at least, will have the NFL Players Association to help make sure he’s treated fairly. In response to Goodell’s letter, the NFLPA issued a statement that read in part: “As we do in all disciplinary matters, if we believe that players’ due process rights are infringed upon during the course of discipline, we will assert and defend our members’ rights.”
For more on the 49ers, see Cam Inman’s Hot Read blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/49ers. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/CamInman. |
What a strange place the UK is - when the most important thing Britons spend money on becomes even less affordable, it’s received as good news. Because that is what “confidence returns to the housing market” really means. Young people will have to wait even longer to get any house at all, never mind a decent house with a bit of garden. Yet further house price inflation is always sold as good economic news. When it comes to houses and planning this is just one manifestation of the disconnect between reality and perception.
From one point of view – old people like me who have paid off our mortgages – rising house prices may seem good news, although I could only profit from the extortionate capital gains I have “earned” over 40 years by moving somewhere else (I don’t want to). Relative to other prices, house prices have gone up five-fold since 1955. In less than 20 years the price of houses has doubled relative to incomes; since 1997 lower quartile house prices have increased 80% relative to lower quartile earnings – even despite the crash of 2007-09.
There is a housing crisis in England, writ large in London, and it is a crisis of supply. On average over the past four years fewer market houses have been built than at any time since World War II - even as far back as the Edwardian era of 1910. It is not that there is not the space. Contrary to popular perception (a survey by economist Kate Barker for her 2006 report on land use planning showed that most people think 50% of England is built over) less than 10% of England is developed. And of what is developed much less than half is “covered by concrete”. Parks and gardens cover more land than houses in towns and cities. Yet land is rationed and cities strangled with greenbelts.
Planners (and newspapers) assume demand for housing is driven by the numbers of households, but analysis shows that this has surprisingly little impact on demand. What has really increased the demand for houses is rising incomes: as people get richer, they try to buy more space and bigger gardens – the supply of which is exactly what greenbelts restrict.
As proposed by the original visionaries of town planning – most notably Ebenezer Howard – greenbelts would be an extensive ring of parkland surrounding towns in which citizens could walk their dogs, stroll with their children and exchange civilised gossip in the shade of handsome trees. What they have turned into is a combination of sacred cow and juggernaut: unstoppable in the damage they do to the housing market and beyond criticism in the popular media. They cover half again as much land as all towns and cities put together – about 15% of the surface of England - and have become a peculiarly English form of exclusionary zoning to keep unwashed urbanites corralled in their cities.
Of course parts of the greenbelts are real environmental and amenity treasures, such as the beautiful bits of rolling Hertfordshire, the Chilterns or the North Downs. Or rather, the beautiful bits to which there is public access. Such areas really need to be preserved against development. But almost all greenbelt land is privately owned, so the only access is if there are viable public rights of way.
Most privately owned Greenbelt land, however, is intensively farmed with limited rights of access and has no amenity value at all. Recent studies have shown that its value is captured only by those who own houses within it, and that intensively farmed land has a negative environmental value. Apart from its value for producing food (and much greater value for dodging inheritance tax) the UK National Ecosystem Assessment in 2011 found that intensively farmed land generates more environmental costs than benefits.
Yet whenever there is some public debate about reforming the planning system or building a few desperately needed houses on Greenbelt land, the bits we see on TV belong in some romanticised English Tourist Board poster. They are not representative of the reality of most greenbelt land.
So rather than building on school playing fields (can’t be done in my borough – they’ve all been built on already) or brownfield land such as on the Hoo Peninsula, where the largest concentration of Nightingales in the British Isles survive, there should be selective building on the least attractive and lowest amenity parts of greenbelts. Not only are they close to cities where people want to live but only a tiny fraction of their vast extent would solve the crisis of housing, housing land and housing affordability for generations to come. |
President Donald Trump wants to reinvigorate the domestic fossil fuel industry, which he says will create jobs, and to defend the move, which is categorically catastrophic for the planet, he has either denied human-induced climate change outright or at best, been non-committal in acknowledging. But irrespective of what the president, who is not a scientist, may say, the fact that burning fossil fuels is a major contributor to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere is undeniable, as evidenced by numerous scientific studies and climate data from across the world.
A study published Tuesday puts another nail in that coffin (not that it needed one) by predicting that if we exhaust all readily available fossil fuel resources and also fail to control the already existing concentration of greenhouse gases, the global warming caused as a consequence could make Earth warmer than it has been in the last 420 million years.
Read: Warming Temperatures Could Wipe Out Deep Ocean Life-Forms
Titled “Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years,” the open-access study was published in the journal Nature Communications. It is based on a compilation of data from over 1,200 studies that estimate the concentration of carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere for nearly the last half a billion years.
The study’s authors found that carbon dioxide concentration has fluctuated naturally — from as low as 200-400 ppm during cold periods to up to 3,000 ppm during the warm periods — a number of times during that period, but on multi-million year timescales. The current pace of climate change is “highly unusual,” according to a statement by the researchers. Currently at over 405 ppm, it is far higher than the 280 ppm less than 150 years ago in pre-industrial era.
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Photo: reuters/Ina Fassbender
Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are not the only contributing factors to a changing climate; the amount of sunlight received by Earth has a large role to play as well.
Dan Lunt from the University of Bristol, who co-authored the study, explained in the statement: “Due to nuclear reactions in stars, like our sun, over time they become brighter. This means that, although carbon dioxide concentrations were high hundreds of millions of years ago, the net warming effect of CO2 and sunlight was less. Our new CO2 compilation appears on average to have gradually declined over time by about 3-4 ppm per million years. This may not sound like much, but it is actually just about enough to cancel out the warming effect caused by the sun brightening through time, so in the long-term it appears the net effect of both was pretty much constant on average.”
This explains why our planet has had temperatures in the habitable range for hundreds of millions of years. But if we continue our use of fossil fuels, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration could reach about 2,000 ppm by 2250, a level last seen 200 million years ago.
Gavin Foster from University of Southampton, who was lead author of the study, said of the implications: “Because the sun was dimmer back then, the net climate forcing 200 million years ago was lower than we would experience in such a high CO2 future. So not only will the resultant climate change be faster than anything the Earth has seen for millions of years, the climate that will exist is likely to have no natural counterpart, as far as we can tell, in at least the last 420 million years.”
Dana Royer, from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, was also a co-author of the study.
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The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.
Each semester for a quarter-century, as I’ve geared up to teach one text or another by Arthur Danto, I’ve introduced him – as I did in my class on beauty on Thursday, Oct. 24 – as “our greatest living philosopher of art.” By the time we reconvened the next Monday, that statement was false; Danto died on the 25th at age 89, completing a transition from the idiosyncratic to the canonical.
I first read Danto’s work – specifically his classic work in aesthetics, “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace” – in the late 1980s, when I was a graduate student working in philosophy of art. It had a liberating effect, for a number of reasons. For one thing, aesthetics had long been a marginal sub-discipline in analytic philosophy, and seemed ready by then to peter out entirely. Serious philosophers wanted to talk about the semantics of modal logic or the structure of science rather than the disconcertingly elusive and passionate realm of the arts.
In that context, the existence of Danto seemed a bit miraculous. He was by then an eminent analytic philosopher who had already taken on many of the most difficult questions in the discipline. And not only had he been engaged in the visual arts as an artist, a critic, and a philosopher, he thought of aesthetics as a foundation that could shed light on all the other questions, including those in epistemology and the philosophy of science. Every time one of my professors or fellow students hinted that aesthetics wasn’t really serious, I’d wave that book around: literally, if I had a copy handy, which I usually did. I ran through a number of copies, wearing them out or giving them away as a form of proselytizing.
Photo
When he began publishing in the ’60s, Danto associated his own work in the most explicit way possible with analytic philosophy, writing books titled “Analytical Philosophy of Knowledge” and “Analytical Philosophy of Action.” But from the first, his work expanded the genre far beyond technical questions in logic and language. He wrote about Lao Tzu and Nietzsche, Proust and Borges, Duchamp and Warhol. And when he brought them into the contemporary philosophical discourse, he expanded the discipline to encompass or re-integrate them.
Art and philosophy, it seemed to me then, had gone their separate ways, and were conceived as opposing and incompatible cultural zones. Danto developed an ingenious (if not unproblematic) reconnection that was also a revival and transformation of all the traditional questions of philosophical aesthetics. Indeed, in his view, the avant-garde art of the period and analytic philosophy were not just compatible, they were made for each other. In developments like pop art and conceptualism, he asserted, art had become a form of philosophy, which is one thing he meant when he said that art was over. Whether this was exactly true or not, it mirrored his own development in its synthesis of the sensual and the intellectual.
For Danto not only wrote about art; he wrote with art. This is what really impressed (I want to say “transfigured”) me as a graduate student. As it turned out, I didn’t particularly agree with his philosophy. But I loved his writing inordinately and have often tried to emulate it. Among my first publications was an attack, written in an admiring simulation of Danto’s own style, on what I took to be the basic argument of “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace”; he thrilled me by sending me a letter, administering gracious correction. At the time, I was reading – under professorial obligation – figures such as Kant, Dewey and Wittgenstein, and whole pages full of logical symbols that constituted arguments in philosophy of language or truth theory. It seemed to be an assumption shared by professors and students alike that the suffering endured when reading philosophy was a measure of seriousness or even of truth, perhaps on the ground that nothing important can be achieved except through pain. Indeed, graduate school in philosophy – in the ’80s or in almost any era – could profitably be regarded as a series of object lessons in how not to write.
Danto thought of aesthetics as a foundation that could shed light on all other philosophical questions.
Danto’s own writing often shared the precision of the analytic philosophy with which he emphatically associated himself. Yet just as often (or more) it was wildly unpredictable and endlessly digressive. In either mode, Danto’s prose is delectable. What often sticks with me is not the argument or even the conclusion, but a hundred ingenious and erudite examples, excursions, flourishes; lovely turns of phrase, improvisations, jokes, flashes of unexpected illumination. His discussion of metaphor in “The Transfiguration,” for example, starts by remarking on how appropriate it is to speak of men as swine. Then it proceeds through dozens of useful amusements to a discussion of “Napoleon got up in empire robes,” from there to Nazi transvestites, and on after many more doozies to the insight of one of his students that “Juliet is the sun” does not entail that “Juliet is the body of hot gases at the center of the solar system.” Reading Arthur Danto at that moment, in that place, was an aesthetic – almost an erotic – pleasure.
And that’s what I most want us to hold on to: Danto’s proof that philosophy can be a lovely thing as well as a quest for truth, his demonstration of the identity of philosophy with art – not as a premise of his argument that art is at an end, but as actually enacted in his writing. In an autobiographical sketch written for “The Library of Living Philosophers,” Danto says that he abandoned his successful career as an abstract expressionist printmaker one day in 1963 when he was working on a woodcut and suddenly realized he’d rather be writing philosophy. After that, his art simply continued in another medium.
That sketch also describes his experiences growing up in Michigan, serving in Europe during World War II, as a rising intellectual figure at Columbia, as a man-about-town on the New York art scene, and as a mature master. It’s a remarkable story, set in the worlds of art and academic philosophy, featuring such intellectual and aesthetic and personal companions as Alberto Giacometti, Norwood Hanson, George Santayana, Chiang Yee, Ernest Nagel, Stanley Cavell, Red Grooms, Robert Motherwell and Ti-Grace Atkinson, among many others. For a philosopher, Danto led an extraordinarily cosmopolitan and cultivated life, and the philosophy he leaves us reflects that with remarkable accuracy.
I’m 55. As people of my generation have lost or will soon lose our parents, philosophers in my cohort are losing the living presence of the major figures of the period of our apprenticeship, the figures who gave rise to us and who had to be emulated or resisted or refuted for us to find our own voices. In the last 15 years or so, we’ve said goodbye to such emblems of an era as Richard Rorty, John Rawls, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-François Lyotard, Donald Davidson, W.V. Quine, Bernard Williams, Thomas Kuhn, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Robert Nozick and now Arthur Danto. I’m not sure my generation can yet claim figures of comparable accomplishment. It might be a good time to ask, as the late George Jones asked about the great country singers of that same generation, “Who’s gonna fill their shoes?”
Crispin Sartwell teaches in the art department at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. His most recent book is “Political Aesthetics.” |
Romanian authoritarian ruler Nicolae Ceauşescu infamously left a heavy mark on the capital city of Bucharest with a massive urban planning scheme known as the Centrul Civic. In the 1980s, the project displaced 40,000 people, demolished churches and monasteries in the way, and replaced it all with 8 square kilometers of communist-era concrete buildings and government complexes in the heart of what had been a historic city.
One of the new monuments, the 3.7 million square-foot Palace of the Parliament, is thought to be the largest administrative building in the world, and it anchors the Centrul Civic along a dramatic axis in much the same way that the U.S. Capitol does in Washington, D.C. To this day, the palace and the brutally rebuilt urban fabric around it remain “perhaps the most violent scar left by a totalitarian regime,” in the words of Bogdan Ilie and Dan Achim.
The two have built a depressingly dramatic web project illustrating the scale of this exercise in totalitarian urban planning when transposed onto other cities (hat tip to Google Maps Mania for directing us to it). Write Ilie and Achim of the Centrul Civic (the bold emphasis is theirs):
This project is our baggage, the people of Bucharest’s baggage, and the question that we started with was “What would happen if we were to take this baggage with us through the world?
Well, this is what it would look like in Washington:
And Toronto:
And Dallas:
The scale of the irreparable damage makes most regrettable American urban renewal schemes look modest in comparison. The web project, at portmanteau.ro, even calculates the share of local citizens that would be displaced in any city (based on local population density) by such a grandiose rewriting of the urban map. |
For those who saw it coming, the sight of a massive, 382-metre-long ship passing through Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait in May said a lot about Turkey’s plans to influence Europe’s access to new natural gas supplies.
The world’s largest vessel by displacement, Pioneering Spirit comes complete with offices, accommodation for 571 people and a €2.6 billion price tag. Earlier this summer it journeyed from the North Sea – where it lifted and removed an entire 24,500-tonne decommissioned oil platform, a record engineering feat – south and then east around the European continent, and through Istanbul.
The ship is today off Russia’s Black Sea coast, where it has begun work on the deep-sea section of the TurkStream project, a pipeline that will see Russian gas flow under the Black Sea and emerge in western Turkey 900 kilometres southwest. Around 15.75 billion cubic metres of gas are expected to be available to southern European countries every year, via Greece or Bulgaria, from late 2019. The twin pipeline will see a similar discharge of gas sold to Turkey.
At an estimated cost of €11.4 billion (though developers wouldn’t give an exact figure “for commercial reasons”), TurkStream may for Europe become an important new source of the energy its member states need in ever-increasing amounts.
Moving swiftly
The project also points to how swiftly events are moving in the region. Twelve months ago, Russia and Turkey were in the midst of a major diplomatic spat over the latter’s shooting down of a Russian jet on the Syrian border. Today, as is made most markedly obvious by the TurkStream project, Ankara and Moscow are forging ahead together.
As presidents Putin and Erdogan have buried the hatchet, Europe, however, remains at odds with Turkey over its deepening crackdown on opposition and independent groups fuelled by a botched military coup 12 months ago.
And despite a growing appetite for its energy, Brussels is also at political loggerheads with Russia over its military incursions into eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in March 2014. That the TurkStream pipeline runs less than 100km from Crimea is another slap in the face for Kiev, a strategic ally of Europe that is finding itself bypassed and increasingly isolated from the lucrative westward flow of gas. Ukraine is expected to lose billions of euro as a result of Russia’s rerouting of pipelines to its north and south.
Furthermore, Qatar’s falling-out with neighbouring Gulf states has the potential to threaten its supply route to customers in Europe, a state of play that may continue for months or even years. Should European countries eventually replace the Qatari supply with gas from TurkStream, its energy imports could lie increasingly in the hands of governments hostile to Brussels or its allies.
Heavily dependent
Despite Europe’s political grievances with Russia and Turkey, its member states are heavily dependent on Russian gas. Austria increased its consumption by almost 70 per cent last year and Italy by 41.5 per cent. The Nord Stream pipeline that runs from Vyborg in Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea supplies a third of the total amount of natural gas Germany consumes. A second pipeline, Nord Stream 2, is under construction despite EU and United States efforts to scupper it.
There were many in Europe who never envisioned TurkStream coming to pass. As recently as last year, officials in Brussels questioned whether Russia and Turkey, its chief sponsors, would follow through, claiming the pipeline was as much about Ankara and Moscow “signalling political messages” as delivering a project that could have major consequences for its member states.
Experts say that Europe did attempt to draw Turkey into its own sphere of influence in recent decades and years.
“The West encouraged Turkey to create an east-west energy corridor, and [TO PIPE GAS)]from Israel, northern Iraq and Cyprus that would break the Russian monopoly,” says Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. “What is different now with this massive TurkStream project is that Turkey-Russia relations have improved, and Turkey is drawn closer to Russia. Clearly energy is at the core of this.”
No reserves
Lignite coal aside, Turkey has almost no energy reserves of its own. In the first quarter of this year it imported almost €9 million worth of energy, a 39 per cent increase on the same period in 2016. Imports of gas from Russia rocketed 26 per cent in the first four months of 2017. China aside, no other country’s demand for foreign natural gas is greater than Turkey’s, and with a population closing in on 80 million, a dependable supply of natural gas – that today is mainly bought from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran – is essential to economic stability. The TurkStream project will help satiate that demand, and, fortuitously for Turkish consumers, it will do so at a heavily discounted price.
Observers say Turkey’s dependence on Russia is only likely to increase.
“Iran shuts off its supply to Turkey when domestic demand requires, so it is not a dependable source,” says analyst Aliriza. “And there is the Akkuyu nuclear reactor [in southern Turkey] that’s being built together with the Russians, which will be an additional Russia factor for Turkey. Going forward, Turkey will be more dependent on Russia.”
Strategic player
But with the pair on opposing sides of the war in Syria, Ankara is well aware that diversifying supplies is essential to maintaining its place as a strategic player in the region. The construction of the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline or TANAP, from Azerbaijan through Turkey and on to southern Europe, which is projected to open next year, is an attempt to help achieve that.
Geopolitics aside, the TurkStream pipeline is a significant feat of modern engineering. Gas will be pumped through 12-metre pipe sectionals made from carbon manganese steel used to prevent the massive water pressure – in places under the Black Sea more than 1.33 tonnes per square inch – from crushing or damaging the pipes.
“One of the challenges that we (and the Pioneering Spirit) will encounter are changes of water depth at the continental shelf break,” says Sander van Rootselaar, a spokesperson for TurkStream. “Techniques such as underwater bridges, cavern filling or peak shaving will be used to ensure a smooth passage along this stretch.” |
and some highlights:
Refutation of CryTek's Claims
Claim: CIG was only given permission to make "the game" with CryEngine, selling SQ42 standalone is in violation of this.
Defense: The GLA defines "the game" as both "'Space Citizen' and its related space fighter game 'Squadron 42'", with a passage allowing for name changes (Space Citizen > Star Citizen).
Additionally, this term does not apply to any games made without CryEngine, and CryEngine is no longer used.
Claim: CIG violated the GLA by switching from CryEngine to Lumberyard, they are only allowed to "exclusively" use CryEngine.
Defense: The GLA says they are given "exclusive rights to use CryEngine" and the right "to exclusively embed CryEngine in the game". The well-established meaning of this wording is that the right is given only to them (and those subcontracted within the terms), not that they are only allowed to use CryEngine.
Claim: CIG is no longer displaying CryTek copyright notices in game, in violation of the GLA.
Defense: This obligation only applies if CIG is using CryEngine, which they are not.
Claim: Ortwin was employed by CryTek prior to becoming CIG's attorney and co-founder so he had a conflict of interest when negotiating the contract.
Defense: Ortwin received a signed waiver from CryTek dismissing any conflict of interest.
Claim: Confidential source code was shown on Bugsmashers and disclosed to FaceWare in violation of the GLA.
Defense: No defense provided, though FaceWare was after the switch to Lumberyard.
Claim: CIG was required to provide any bugfixes they developed for CryEngine up until launch.
Defense: No defense provided.
Additional Statements
The GLA prohibits either party from seeking any damages from one another "except for intentional acts or omissions or gross negligent acts".
CIG, not RSI, is the signatory of the GLA, so CryTek committed a legal blunder by pursuing RSI rather than CIG in a number of claims.
CIG seeks to have the entire complaint dismissed with prejudice (barring any further related action) on the grounds that none of the complaints are sufficient. |
Telstra has denied it is considering ending a 17-season partnership with the National Rugby League as its naming-rights sponsor.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia reported the telco was on the verge of giving up its naming-rights sponsorship, which it has held since 2001, and would seek to stay on as only a minor sponsor.
Telstra has denied reports it wants to exit NRL sponsorship deal. Getty Images
But Telstra, which jointly owns pay TV operator Foxtel with News Corp, told The Australian Financial Review on Monday the reports were false and that it was in dialogue with the NRL regarding an extension to its current deal.
"Reports that Telstra is looking to not renew our NRL naming rights are untrue," a Telstra spokesperson said. "We are proud of what we have built with the NRL to date and are in negotiations to continue our partnership beyond 2017. We are unable to comment further as negotiations are ongoing."
An NRL spokesperson welcomed the Telstra statement, saying that while the rugby league governing body would not discuss ongoing sponsorship or broadcast rights negotiations, "Telstra is a long-term and valued partner and we naturally look forward to further discussions with them". |
Project Zomboid Epic Battle Mod Description: Spawn yourself an army of subordinates who are trained to follow your every move (literally!). They attack when you attack, aim where you aim, walk in the direction you walk. Use right click walk commands if you want to move without your subordinates following you.
Move your mouse over the area you wish to spawn a subordinate.
There are 3 ways to spawn them. Push End key to spawn a subordinate with a random gun. Delete key to spawn with a random Mele weapon. Or Press Page up and Page down keys to toggle through all available weapons and then press Insert key to spawn with selected weapon.
So Customize your ranks and then head into battle. If you create an epic battle. Record and post on youtube so we can all see it.
~Nolan
Off Topic: Feeling Bored? Try these games
The game of Stones
The game of Lights
Links:
Indiestone thread
Steam Workshop
Direct Download Link
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It’s no secret that public businesses can’t discriminate based on gender or sexual preference when hiring and firing employees… well, that’s apparently obvious to everyone except Donald Trump’s own Department of Justice.
In fact, the DOJ argued in front of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday that employers should be able to fire people simply because they are gay. Attorney Hashim Mooppan said employers “under Title VII are permitted to consider employees’ out-of-work sexual conduct.”
It’s also notable that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), another federal government agency, argued against the DOJ, saying gay employees were protected by Title VII. It’s not every day that you see two government agencies taking opposite stances in the courtrooms.
The most interesting thing about all this, though, is that the case doesn’t even involve the DOJ. They voluntarily joined the suit by filing a brief in support of the business, taking a stance against the plaintiff Donald Zarda.
The judges hammered Mooppan, the DOJ lawyer, with questions about why the department decided to weigh in, saying it was “a bit awkward” to have the federal government split on a key legal issue. One judge explicitly asked if the DOJ employment discrimination division had been consulted. “It’s not appropriate for me to comment,” Mooppan answered.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission decided in 2015 that Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination does protect gay employees. Under President Barack Obama, the Justice Department took no position on this question. But in late July, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ DOJ unexpectedly filed an amicus brief in Zarda arguing that Title VII does not protect gay people. The 2nd Circuit had not solicited its input, making the brief both puzzling and gratuitous. Its purpose only became apparent in September, when the DOJ filed a similarly uninvited brief asserting that bakers have a free speech right not to serve same-sex couples. Both anti-gay briefs were startlingly incoherent, seemingly the product of political pandering rather than legal reasoning.
Slate’s report called the judges’ scorning a “self-inflicted” wound by the DOJ, which joined the case unnecessarily and without being asked for input.
There is no telling how this case will play out in the end, but one thing is for certain: the federal judiciary didn’t accept the DOJ’s argument — or even its presence — with open arms. It seems like everyone involved knows that there’s an anti-gay subtext here: it isn’t about Zarda or his employer; it’s about empowering companies with the ability to discriminate at will.
It’s a move that will surely satisfy Trump’s evangelical Christian base, but one that won’t be looked upon kindly in the history books. Let’s hope the plan fails and we don’t see members of the LGBT community losing civil rights protections just so the government can appease a base full of bigots.
(Image via Shutterstock) |
The PARAMEDIC2 trial is looking at whether adrenaline is helpful or harmful in the treatment of cardiac arrest which occurs outside of hospital. Answering this question will help to improve future treatment of people who have a cardiac arrest.
Why is the trial needed?
Adrenaline was introduced as a treatment for cardiac arrest before clinical trials were common. Adrenaline has not been fully tested to find out if it is helpful or harmful for patients who have a cardiac arrest outside of hospital.
Many research studies suggest that, while adrenaline may restart the heart initially, it may lower overall survival rates and increase brain damage and there are real concerns in the clinical and research community that current practice may be harming patients. However, the evidence is not strong enough to change current practice.
Clinical trials help to work out whether treatments are safe and effective, and are a key part of advancing patient care.
The International Liaison Committee for Resuscitation (ILCOR) has called for a definitive clinical trial to assess the role of adrenaline. Read more about other support for the trial.
Where is the trial being conducted?
The trial is being delivered by the University of Warwick in partnership with Kingston and St George's University of London and the Welsh, West Midlands, North East, South Central and London Ambulance Services. These ambulance services have experience of carrying out research.
When will the trial take place?
The trial started in December 2014 and will continue to recruit for three years. Results will be available late 2018. For the latest information, and to find out whether the trial is active in your area, please visit the Trial Updates page.
Who will be included in the trial?
This trial will include patients who have a cardiac arrest outside of hospital, in areas served by participating ambulance services. People who are pregnant, are suffering anaphylaxis (a severe allergic reaction) or life threatening asthma or are under the age of 16 will not be included. |
Bombing shatters fragile Syria ceasefire
Updated
Fighting in Syria has marred the first day of a ceasefire over the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
The worst incident of violence was a bombing in the capital that killed five people and injured at least 30.
Fighting also continued in the town of Haram, and witnesses just across the border in Turkey reported hearing machine-gun fire and the sound of shelling.
Syrian state TV says several people were killed and dozens wounded by a car bomb in the capital, Damascus.
The bomb exploded near a temporary playground set up for the holiday period and children are among the casualties.
State television said the "terrorist car bomb" had killed five people and wounded 32, according to "preliminary figures".
Fighting erupted around Syria earlier as both sides violated the ceasefire brokered by international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.
Soldiers were targeted when a car bomb exploded near a military checkpoint in the southern city of Deraa.
Before the bomb attacks, the death toll had been lower than most days in Syria, but the violence undermines the UN-brokered ceasefire.
Activists reported no air strikes, but dozens of people were killed including 26 troops, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the bloodshed in the country.
The Syrian military said it had responded to attacks by insurgents on army positions, in line with its announcement on Thursday that it would cease military activity during the four-day holiday but reserved the right to react to rebel actions.
The heaviest fighting took place around an army base at Wadi al-Daif, near the Damascus-Aleppo highway, which rebels have been trying to seize from the army for two weeks.
We don't believe the ceasefire will work. The only Eid we can celebrate will be liberation." Rebel commander Basel Eissa
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nine soldiers were killed by rebel bombardment of the base, which completely destroyed one building, and four rebel fighters were killed in clashes around Wadi al-Daif.
Four people were killed by tank fire and snipers in Harasta, a town near Damascus, activists said.
Gunfire and explosions echoed over Douma, just east of the capital. Rockets killed one person in the besieged Khalidiya district of Homs.
Clashes erupted at a checkpoint near the Mahlab army barracks in Aleppo.
There was shooting at checkpoints near Tel Kelakh, on the Lebanese border, and clashes in the town itself.
Rebels in the northern town near the Turkish border said a sniper had killed one of their fighters early on Friday local time.
"We don't believe the ceasefire will work," rebel commander Basel Eissa said.
"There's no Eid for us rebels on the frontline. The only Eid we can celebrate will be liberation."
'Cautious'
Mr Brahimi's ceasefire appeal had won widespread international support, including from Russia, China and Iran, president Bashar al-Assad's main foreign allies.
The UN-Arab League envoy had hoped to build on the truce to calm a 19-month-old conflict that has killed an estimated 32,000 people and worsened instability in the Middle East.
Violence appeared to wane in some areas, but truce breaches by both sides swiftly marred Syrians' hopes of celebrating Eid al-Adha, the climax of the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, in peace.
"We are not celebrating Eid here," said a woman in a besieged Syrian town near the Turkish border.
"No one is in the mood to celebrate. Everyone is just glad they are alive."
Her husband said they and their five children had just returned to the town after nine days camped out on a farm with other families to escape clashes.
We are not celebrating Eid here. No one is in the mood to celebrate. Everyone is just glad they are alive. A Syrian woman in a town near the Turkish border
"We have no gifts for our children. We can't even make phone calls to our families," he said.
A commander from the rebel Free Syrian Army had said his fighters would honour the ceasefire but demanded Mr Assad meet opposition demands for the release of thousands of detainees.
Some Islamist militants, including the Nusra Front, rejected the truce. Many groups were sceptical that it would hold.
"We do not care about this truce. We are cautious," Abu Moaz, spokesman for Ansar al-Islam, whose units fight in and around Damascus, said.
"If the tanks are still there and the checkpoints are still there then what is the truce?"
'Painful disaster'
The imam of Mecca's Grand Mosque called on Arabs and Muslims to take "practical and urgent" steps to stop bloodshed in Syria.
The Syrian conflict has aggravated divisions in the Islamic world, with Shiite Iran supporting Assad, and US-allied Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar backing his foes.
"The world should bear responsibility for this prolonged and painful disaster (in Syria) and the responsibility is greater for the Arabs and Muslims who should call on each other to support the oppressed against the oppressor," Sheikh Saleh Mohammed al-Taleb told worshippers during Eid prayers.
For some in Syria, there was no respite from war, but by dusk the death toll was still significantly lower than in recent days, when often between 150 and 200 people have been killed.
The responsibility is greater for the Arabs and Muslims who should call on each other to support the oppressed against the oppressor Sheikh Saleh Mohammed al-Taleb
Mr Assad himself, who has vowed to defeat what he says are Islamist fighters backed by Syria's enemies abroad, was shown on state television attending Eid prayers at a Damascus mosque.
The prime minister, information minister and foreign minister, as well as the mufti, Syria's top Muslim official, were filmed praying alongside the 47-year-old president.
Mr Assad, smiling and apparently relaxed, shook hands and exchanged Eid greetings with other worshippers afterwards.
The war in Syria pits mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad, from the minority Alawite sect which is distantly related to Shiite Islam.
Mr Brahimi has warned that the conflict could suck in Sunni and Shiite powers across the Middle East.
His predecessor, former UN chief Kofi Annan, declared a ceasefire in Syria on April 12, but it soon became a dead letter, along with the rest of his six-point peace plan.
ABC/Reuters
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, syrian-arab-republic
First posted |
Lúthien Tinúviel (Y.T. 1200–Y.S. 503; died aged 3377) is a fictional character in the fantasy-world Middle-earth of the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. She is an elf, daughter of Thingol and Melian. She appears in The Silmarillion, the epic poem The Lay of Leithian, the Grey Annals section of The War of the Jewels, and in other texts in Tolkien's legendarium. Her story is told to Frodo by Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings.
Character overview [ edit ]
Lúthien is a Telerin (Sindarin) princess, the only child of Elu Thingol, king of Doriath, and his queen, Melian the Maia. Lúthien's romance with the mortal man Beren is one of the greatest stories of the Elder Days and was considered the "chief" of the Silmarillion tales by Tolkien himself. Her character is revered even at the end of the Third Age and honoured still by the likes of Aragorn and various other peoples of Middle-earth. The legacy that Lúthien left behind can be most clearly seen throughout the later ages in those who stem from her ancestry, including the Royal Family of Númenor, being the line of Elros of which Arathorn and his son Aragorn were descended, and Elrond Half-elven who was Lúthien's great-grandson. She is described as the Morning Star of the Elves and as the most beautiful daughter of Ilùvatar, a term meaning not only that she was the most beautiful of all her people at the height of their glory, but even that she was potentially the most beautiful creature ever existed in Middle Earth. In contrast, Lúthien's descendant Arwen is called Evenstar, the Evening Star of the Elves, meaning that her beauty reflects that of Lúthien Tinúviel. Lúthien is also first cousin once removed to Galadriel; as Galadriel's mother, Eärwen of Alqualondë, is the daughter of Thingol's brother.
Her skin was fair and her very long hair was very dark like shadows with eyes of grey, like all the elves. Whilst not remarked as particularly tall in original writings, her stature would have been tall as her father was Thingol Greycloak, a very tall Telerin elf, whilst her mother was an angelic spirit who took a bodily form to match her mate.
At the time in which Beren first sees Luthien she is dressed in blue. Later she encases herself in her own hair as she escapes from the tree house in which she has been imprisoned. She has many uncanny powers, including ability to cast sleep over others, to sing songs of enchantment and slumber, to change her form (to a vampire at one point) and that of her lover and use these shapes to enable efficient transport, as well as the power of healing and the power to cast off her body and go to the halls of the dead and plead for her lover to be returned.
Etymology [ edit ]
The name Lúthien appears to mean "daughter of flowers" in a Beleriandic dialect of Sindarin, but it can also be translated "blossom".[1] Tinúviel was a name given to her by Beren. It literally means "daughter of the starry twilight", which signifies "nightingale".
Internal biography [ edit ]
Background Information [ edit ]
Lúthien is half-elven royalty through her father Elu Thingol and half-divine (of the race of the Maiar) through her mother Melian the Maia. She was born in the year 4700 of the Years of the Trees according to the Grey Annals. But although this is given as her date of birth in the text, it is actually unknown exactly when she came into the world, meaning that this is an approximation. At her birth, the white flower niphredil is said to have bloomed for the first time in Doriath.
She fell in love with Beren, a Man of the House of Bëor. Their first meeting was in the forest of Neldoreth, which lay within the guarded realm of Doriath, hidden kingdom of Lúthien's father Elu Thingol and his Queen Melian. The kingdom was fenced by a barrier known as the Girdle of Melian which was formed by the power of Lúthien's Maia-mother and barred the entry of any save those granted access by the King and Queen. This meant that none except that privileged minority could find and even see the secret and hidden lands sheltered within. Their relationship was doomed from the beginning as Lúthien was not just the cherished only daughter of Thingol, the first and most powerful Elven-king in Beleriand, but also the daughter of a Maia, who had existed since before time and creation itself. Beren on the other hand, was a mortal man on the run from the Dark Lord Morgoth and an outlaw, without father and exiled from the land of his kin. Whilst Lúthien had lived for thousands of years in the world already, Beren was young even by human standards.
The Meeting of Beren and Lúthien [ edit ]
Anthriscus sylvestris growing by woods A member of the Apiaceae familygrowing by woods
Initially it was Beren who saw Lúthien dancing from afar under moonrise beside the Glades of Esgalduin in her father's forest. From the moment he saw her with his eyes he loved her, for she was the most beautiful of all Elves and Men, the fairest of all the Children of the World. Because of this he revealed himself in the shadows wishing to be near enough to Lúthien to touch her, but Daeron her companion, noticed Beren and believed him to be a wild animal. Thus he shouted for Lúthien to flee, but at first she stood there unmoving, as she had never experienced fear or pain in her life and was confused. Then she saw Beren's shadow and was disturbed, making her dash away quickly. But as she hid in the foliage Beren reached out and touched her arm. To this Lúthien ran away in shock, believing indeed it to be an animal stalking her in the woods. As a result, he was unable to voice his love for her, since a chain was on his limbs and he was so enchanted by her loveliness. So instead he longed for her in his heart calling her Tinúviel, an Elvish (Sindarin) name which means "Daughter of Twilight" signifying Nightingale and searched for her. Then after a period of watching her from afar, it happened that one day in summer when Lúthien was dancing on a green hill surrounded by hemlocks (the umbellifer family Apiaceae, not the tree genus Tsuga) [2] she started singing and the sheer beauty of her voice awakened Beren from his enchantment. Then he ran to her out of the shadows and again she turned and tried to escape in fright but he called to her crying "Tinúviel" since he did not know any other name for her, and when Lúthien gazed upon him for the first time she reciprocated his love and was thus chained with his curse and burdens. He kissed her on the lips, but she slipped away from him and he fell into a deep sleep of grief and bliss. But in his hour of despair, when he was groping to see the light of her countenance once more, she appeared before him, and in the Hidden Kingdom set her hand in his and cradled his head against her breast. From then on they met secretly and conducted a clandestine relationship, and none before or after were as happy as they were, walking through the woods together hand-in-hand.
The Quest of the Silmaril [ edit ]
However this joy did not last. Daeron, an elf and childhood friend of Lúthien, who was her partner in music and dance, espied her meetings with Beren and reported this to her father. This was not out of spite, but because he also loved Lúthien but his love was not reciprocated. Secondly he cared greatly for her, thinking that this mortal man would bring her into trouble, possibly even death. Furthermore, it was forbidden in Doriath for any Elf to have contact with mortal Men, let alone the King's beloved daughter, and never before had mortal and immortal fallen in love.
Though Melian warned her husband against it, Thingol was determined not to let Beren marry his daughter, and set a seemingly impossible task as the bride price: Beren had to bring him one of the Silmarils from Morgoth's Iron Crown. He did not kill him outright since he had promised Lúthien that he would spare his life, and because of his renown. Beren left Menegroth immediately and Lúthien remained grieving.
The Vision and Imprisonment of Lúthien [ edit ]
Afterwards Lúthien had a vision in which she saw Beren lying suffering in the hellish pits of the Lord of Wolves, and horror weighed upon her heart. She sought the counsel of her mother who told her that Beren was indeed captive in the dungeons of Sauron, the Dark Lord's evil Regent. Because of this Lúthien decided that she must risk her life to save him, and face Sauron herself. She asked her friend Daeron for help, who, thinking it was best for his beloved, betrayed her secret to Thingol. To keep her safe, the King had her locked and guarded high in the branches of the great beech tree of Doriath. Daeron was filled with remorse. Lúthien forgave him, and devised a plan to escape. From her mother, a Maia (angelic being), Lúthien inherited great magical power. She enchanted her long locks into a cloak that lulled her guards to sleep, and she ran out of her prison.
Lúthien's Captivity and the defeat of Sauron [ edit ]
On her way to rescue Beren, she was found by Huan, the Hound of Valinor, and taken to his master Celegorm and his brother Curufin. Celegorm, enamoured of her unmatched beauty and coveting her family's status, plotted to force her to marry him. Concealing his passion, he offered to help her quest, asking her to first follow him to Nargothrond. When she arrived, they held her hostage and forbade her to talk to anyone else. Huan took pity on her and, betraying his master, freed her. He was granted the power to speak only three times in his life, but he spoke to her on this occasion, and together they escaped from Nargothrond.
They came to Sauron's Isle, and Lúthien sang a call to Beren. He answered, thinking it was only a figment of his imagination. Sauron, also hearing her song, sought to catch her as a delectable prize for his master Morgoth. He sent wolf after wolf to slay Huan, but each time the hound killed them, even his most powerful werewolf Draugluin. Finally going himself, Sauron transformed into the most powerful of all werewolves. Huan flinched, but Lúthien smothered Sauron's lunge in the folds of her enchanted cloak, giving Huan an opening to grapple him. The two fought for long, with Sauron changing into different shapes, but Huan bested him. Finally Lúthien forced the defeated Sauron to surrender the keys of his tower, before he fled shamefaced in the shape of a vampire.
Lúthien destroyed the Tower and freed its prisoners. Finding Beren lying beside the dead body of Felagund, she thought him dead also. She fell down beside him in grief, but with the rising sun he awoke to find his lover, and they were reunited. They buried Finrod Felagund on his Isle. Huan returned to his master Celegorm, and the lovers walked the woods once more in joy.
Of Celegorm, Curufin and the dance of Lúthien before Morgoth [ edit ]
Beren, mindful of Luthien's high estate as an Elvish princess, pleaded with her to return to her father. Lúthien refused and confessed her undying love for Beren, but just before their embrace, there appeared Celegorm and Curufin, the Sons of Fëanor. Lúthien's escape from Nargothrond had led to the brothers' exile. Seeking revenge, the brothers fought Beren, and Huan again forsook his master and fought on the side of Lúthien. Finally Beren defeated and shamed them, though he spared their lives at Luthien's command. Beren stole one of their horses, but as they fled, Curufin aimed a shot of his bow at Lúthien. Beren jumped in front of the arrow and took the blow. Huan chased the brothers until they vanished and came back to aid Lúthien. By Lúthien's magic and love Beren was restored to life. As she slept, he gave her into the care of Huan and went in quest of Angband.
When Lúthien discovered Beren missing, she and Huan disguised themselves as Thuringwethil the vampire servant of Morgoth and Draugluin the Werewolf. She found Beren and joined his quest. Luthien as vampire and Beren as werewolf came to the gates of Angband and its sentinel the mighty werewolf Carcharoth. Lúthien, possessed by the ancient angelic power in her blood, forced him into a deep slumber. Together they reached the Throne of Morgoth, and here the Dark Lord saw through Lúthien's disguise. She declared herself and offered to sing for Morgoth, and, filled with an evil lust, he accepted. But in listening, he laid himself open to Luthien's enchantment, which glamoured Morgoth and his entire court into a deep sleep, sealed with her cloak over Morgoth's eyes. She awoke Beren, and he cut a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown using Angrist. However, as he tried for another Silmaril, his blade broke, struck Morgoth's cheek, and awakened him, though his whole army still slept. When Luthien and Beren fled as far as the gates, Carcharoth attacked them. Beren, wanting to protect the weakening Lúthien, thrust the Silmaril into the wolf's face, but the wolf bit off the hand and swallowed the Silmaril. The hound fled in terror, leaving Lúthien cradling a mortally wounded Beren in her arms, with the hosts of Angband on their heels. The Wolf's fangs were poisonous and so Lúthien sucked out the venom and with her failing power tried to restore him. But just when all hope seemed lost, the Eagles of Manwë snatched them into the sky away from the angry hordes. They had come at the summons of Huan, and they carried the two to safety in Doriath.
The Return to Doriath and the death of Beren [ edit ]
Here Lúthien waited by Beren's side and healed him. Then together they entered Doriath and stood before the throne of Lúthien's father. Beren told Thingol that the quest was, indeed, fulfilled, and that he held a Silmaril in his hand. When Thingol demanded to see it, Beren showed him his stump. When he heard their story he was amazed and thought Beren to be above all other mortal men. Because of this he allowed them to marry, and they did so before his throne that day. But at this time Carcharoth was ravaging all living beings on the borders of Doriath, in a crazed fit because of the burning jewel in his stomach. And so Beren, Thingol, Huan the Hound of Valinor, Mablung of the Heavyhand and Beleg Strongbow went out with other Elves to defeat the beast. In this Beren was assaulted by the wolf. Huan then leaped to his aid and killed the beast, but died soon after from mortal wounds, by his friend Beren's side. Then Beren was carried to Doriath where he died in Lúthien's arms, after she bade him to await her by the great sea in the afterlife.
Lúthien becomes mortal for Beren [ edit ]
In grief, Lúthien lay down and died as well, going to the Halls of Mandos, where the spirits of the dead await re-embodiment in Valinor (for Elves) and departure from the circles of the world entirely (for Men). There she sang a song of woe before the throne of Mandos Lord of the Dead, of the tribulations and suffering of both Elves and Men, the greatest ever sung, so touching that Mandos was moved to pity for the only time. As a result, he summoned Beren from the houses of the dead and Lúthien's spirit met his once again by the shores of the sea. Lúthien knew that this would be their final meeting, since Beren could not remain on the earth beyond his time and she was thus faced with the prospect of eternal widowhood. Mandos consulted with Manwë, King of Arda. Even Manwë could not change the fate of Men, and so he presented Lúthien with the only choice possible: to live in the immortal land of Valinor, where she could forget all her grief and enjoy eternal happiness along with her people and the Gods (Valar) but without Beren, or to return to the land of Middle-earth together with Beren as a mortal herself, accepting the Doom of Men and sharing in whatever unknown fate awaits them outside the Circles of the World. She chose this latter option. With this she accepted death, and although it was not the fate of her race, she relinquished everything for Beren and became a mortal woman.
Together in their new bodies they returned to Doriath and released the winter of Thingol, who had been in grieving ever since his daughter's death. But Melian could not look at first into her daughter's eyes, since she could see the doom of mortality written in them and she knew that Lúthien would be parted from her forever and leave the material world behind with Beren, when the time came for her to die. Melian on the other hand would exist forever until the end of Arda, as Lúthien should have if she had not become mortal for her husband. By nature she was still Elven, and was so in everything except eternal life, meaning that her child would still have immortal blood through her.
Return to Life, and Death [ edit ]
After returning to life, they dwelt together in Ossiriand as husband and wife until after the sack of Menegroth. They had a son, Dior, called Eluchíl — the Heir of Thingol.
Years later, Thingol received the Nauglamír from Húrin the Steadfast in payment for the fostering of Húrin's son Túrin, as well as for the care of Húrin's wife Morwen and daughter Niënor. Húrin had recovered the Nauglamír from the ruins of Nargothrond following the departure of Glaurung the dragon. Thingol decided to unite the greatest work of the Dwarves with the greatest work of the Elves, and recruited Dwarf smiths from the city of Nogrod to complete his plan. Thingol was murdered by the Dwarves after he insulted them, and a false tale told by the escaping Dwarves led to the sack of Menegroth. The Dwarves plundered Thingol's treasuries and took with them the Nauglamír. However, Beren and an army of Green Elves and Ents waylaid the returning Dwarf army (this was the only recorded event of the First Age in which the Ents actually took part). While the greater part of the treasure of Doriath fell into the river Ascar, Beren reclaimed the Nauglamír, and Beren and Lúthien kept the necklace and the great jewel until the end of their lives. It is said that the beauty of Lúthien combined with the splendour of the gem and necklace was to make her home of Tol Galen the fairest land ever to have existed east of Valinor, but that the Silmaril hastened Beren's and Lúthien's end, since Lúthien's beauty with the Silmaril around her neck was too bright for mortal lands to bear. Lúthien Tinúviel gave up her life along with her husband Beren in the fair, green land of Ossiriand where their son and grandchildren had been born. The Elves never recovered from her death, since she alone of the Quendi had left the world, the fairest and bravest of their race.
The Nauglamír was delivered to her son Dior Eluchíl. While Lúthien wore the necklace no one dared assail her, but when Dior took it up the Sons of Fëanor, motivated by their unholy oath, ransacked the kingdom of Doriath and slew Dior and his wife Nimloth.
Elrond the Half-elven and Arwen Evenstar are descendants of Lúthien, as is Aragorn a descendant of Elrond's brother Elros. According to legend, her line will never be broken.
Heraldic emblem [ edit ]
Tolkien's colour drawing of Lúthien's heraldic emblem features on the front cover of The Silmarillion's first edition.
Earlier versions [ edit ]
In the various versions of The Tale of Tinúviel, Tolkien's earliest form of his tale, as published in The Book of Lost Tales, her original name is Tinúviel (Lúthien was invented later). Beren is, in this earlier version, an Elf (specifically a Noldo, or Gnome), and Sauron has not yet emerged. In his place, they face Tevildo, the Prince of Cats, a monstrous cat who is the principal enemy of the Valinorean hound Huan. However Tolkien initially created the character of Beren as a mortal man before this in an even earlier but erased version of the tale.
The story is also told in an epic poem in The Lays of Beleriand, upon which most of the finer details of her life and relationship to Beren is extracted from in this article, since The Silmarillion provides only a generalization of the tale.
Inspirations [ edit ]
In a letter to his son Christopher, dated 11 July 1972, Tolkien requested the inscription below for his wife Edith's grave "for she was (and knew she was) my Lúthien."[3] He added, "I never called Edith Luthien — but she was the source of the story.... It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire where ... she was able to live with me for a while." In a footnote to this letter, Tolkien added "she knew the earliest form of the legend...also the poem eventually printed as Aragorn's song." Particularly affecting for Tolkien was Edith's conversion to the Catholic Church from the Church of England for his sake upon their marriage; this was a difficult decision for her that caused her much hardship, paralleling the difficulties and suffering of Lúthien from choosing mortality.
The name may be derived from the Old English word lufian, which means love. The Tale of Beren and Lúthien also shares an element with folktales such as the Welsh Culhwch and Olwen and others — namely, the disapproving parent who sets a seemingly impossible task (or tasks) for the suitor, which is then fulfilled.
The Tolkien grave [ edit ]
Edith and J.R.R. Tolkien lie in Wolvercote Cemetery (North Oxford). Their gravestone shows the association of Lúthien with Edith, and Tolkien himself with Beren. The stone reads:
Grave of J. R. R. Tolkien and Edith Tolkien
+
Edith Mary Tolkien
Lúthien
1889–1971
John Ronald
Reuel Tolkien
Beren
1892–1973 |
Some of his concerns were practical: “Am I still going to get bookings? Is the promoter still going to book me if I say, ‘Yeah, occasionally I have fellatio with a transsexual?’ ”
That question underscored not only the genre’s history of intolerance, but also the fundamental conundrum of hip-hop D.J.’s — they are omnipresent but largely anonymous. That’s true especially of Mister Cee, who for a time was a Zelig figure in New York hip-hop: the D.J. for Big Daddy Kane and an affiliate of the influential 1980s outfit the Juice Crew; the man who reworked the Notorious B.I.G.’s demo tape and helped get it in the hands of Sean Combs; a significant mixtape D.J. in the 1990s; and a steady presence at Hot 97, one of the most important rap stations in the country.
He is the station’s institutional memory and its living link to history, its one reliable purveyor of hip-hop classics. And he’s the D.J. who takes it upon himself to memorialize the dead. Listen to his mixes celebrating the life of Heavy D, or Big L, or as he did on Friday afternoon’s show, Tupac Shakur — they are things of erudition and love.
But even with that résumé, Mister Cee feared he could be replaced, that his scandal could become the thing that defined him, and in a flash, undo him.
“God forgives — I hope y’all do too,” he posted on his Instagram account after resigning.
A decade ago the conversation between Mister Cee and Mr. Darden would have been unthinkable. But there was Mr. Darden assuring Mister Cee, “There’s nothing wrong with being who you are,” and at one point encouraging him by exclaiming, “You’re free, Cee!”
Mr. Darden has emerged as a fascinating figure over the last year, a program director who has become something of a moral beacon. He has been a testy combatant in wars of words with personalities from Power 105.1 FM (WWPR), New York’s other hip-hop station; a peacemaker between Nicki Minaj and Peter Rosenberg, the on-air personality who publicly attacked her; and now the blocker clearing a path for Mister Cee’s acceptance. |
La Russa said: "I think that is real inaccurate. I don't have any idea what history he is talking about. Let him take care of the Yankees and I will manage the A's." Words, Then Action
Flash back to the fourth inning with Scott Brosius leading off against Perez. On a 2-0 count, Perez threw an inside fastball and La Russa and Willie Wilson howled. Wilson, who had a check-swing single in the third on a pitch that was inside and tight, had been chastising Perez with random expletives since that at-bat. Replays showed that the pitch to Wilson was not too inside and that Perez's pitch to Brosius was tight, but no beanball. La Russa's verbal target was Nokes.
"He was yelling at me," Nokes said. "He always does. He was saying, 'We'll show you what an inside pitch is.' "
Home plate umpire Al Clark told La Russa and Wilson to quiet down, but La Russa pointed at Perez and said the right-hander was the one who needed to be disciplined. Then Showalter rose to the top step of the dugout, looked at La Russa, tapped his hands on his chest in a challenging manner and yelled back. Showalter infuriated La Russa, who charged toward the Yankee manager. Asked how close the managers had come to physical contact, Showalter said, "The width of Al Clark." Translation: less than 48 inches.
"We're not going to back off from anybody," Showalter said. "We're not going to let people do some of the things that were done here."
It took a few minutes for the dozens of bodies to be separated and Danny Tartabull, Mel Hall and Steve Farr took turns trying to calm a very hot Showalter. Don Mattingly and La Russa also had a few words before both managers were ejected.
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The Yankees expressed satisfaction with Showalter's actions after the game, saying Oakland had intimidated them in the past and it was time to curtail the practice. The Athletics have won 31 of their last 42 games with the Yankees, including 16 in a row at one point.
"They have been successful in not only intimidating us, but a lot of other people," Mattingly said. "They have been known for not being afraid to hit you. You have to defend yourself in that situation."
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"You got to pitch inside against them," he added. "If you don't do it, they will kill you."
"That team has lots of big egos and it starts with the manager," Farr said. "I like what Buck did. We needed that."
Caught in a strange situation was Gallego, who was making his Yankee debut after spending six years with the Athletics. He did not know whom to grab, but he knows what to expect from his former club.
"They're a very intimidating team with their size and pitching," he said. "It is the way La Russa manages." A Gash for Showalter
Showalter ended up with a small, bloody gash on his forehead and said he had been blindsided.
The Yankees vowed to peruse the videotape and discover how Showalter had been bloodied. Pat Kelly, who was hit by pitches twice in a three-game series in Oakland last week, conceded, "There is a little bad blood going." And the coast-to-coast feud showed no signs of wilting.
"The film will show who hit Buck and it will be addressed," said Hall, echoing the sentiments of the Yankees, who gained additional respect for their rookie manager on a day when he would not back down. INSIDE PITCH
MIKE GALLEGO went from the disabled list to the leadoff spot Sunday. His debut was a successful one: He scored a run and drove in another. Meanwhile, ANDY STANKIEWICZ was placed on the disabled list with a tight hamstring.
Perhaps trying to dispel any thoughts that he is a fighter, Manager BUCK SHOWALTER removed a picture of BILLY MARTIN from his office before speaking to reporters after the game. |
Armed men, believed to be Russian servicemen, walk outside a Ukrainian military base in Perevalnoye, near the Crimean city of Simferopol, March 14, 2014. Vasily Fedosenko / Reuters The U.S. is not sharing with Ukraine information, analysis, and intercepts that signal a growing likelihood of a full-scale invasion by Russia, The Daily Beast reports, citing a senior U.S. intelligence official.
The intelligence, which could help Ukraine better position troops in an effort to defend its eastern cities, has reportedly been gathered by a network of American spies and intelligence officers.
There is a fear that by divulging American intelligence to Ukraine, Russia may learn of U.S. sources and methods.
Eli Lake, of The Daily Beast, reports:
In the case of Ukraine, the United States historically does not share much out of concern that the information provided to Kiev would make its way back to Moscow. Until February, Ukraine's military maintained close ties to Russia. The chances that its military is penetrated by Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU are high.
So far, events in the east of Ukraine have followed a similar pattern as in Crimea. Pro-Russian separatists have built barricades and seized buildings in three cities and demanded a referendum for independence from Kiev.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has accused Russian Special Forces of being behind the chaos. If this is the case, then Russia could already have put the wheels in motion for an offensive.
It is currently estimated that Russia has upwards of 80,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. |
CTV Winnipeg
Environment Canada still has severe weather watches in effect for southern Manitoba.
Earlier tornado warnings have been downgraded, with watches still in effect.
Just after 5 p.m., Environment Canada’s tornado watches turned into warnings for certain parts of Manitoba, with watches still in effect for other areas.
“A funnel cloud has been sighted just north of Hartney. The funnel may form into a tornado,” said the website.
Environment Canada meteorologists said that they are tracking a severe thunderstorm that is possibly producing a tornado.
They said there is possibility of damaging winds, large hail and intense rainfall.
Tornado warning in effect for:
• Mun. of Souris-Glenwood
• R.M. of Sifton incl. Oak Lake and Deleau
(Source: Environment Canada)
Environment Canada is warning people of a dangerous and potentially life-threatening situation as it issued severe thunderstorm and tornado watches for southern parts of the province.
“Conditions are favourable for the development of severe thunderstorms which may produce tornadoes,” said the website.
At 10:41 a.m. Wednesday issued watches advising people to be prepared for severe weather.
(Source: Environment Canada)
Environment Canada said for people to take cover immediately if threatening weather approaches.
“There is strong shear to the environment today with southeast winds at the surface and strong southwest winds aloft so rotation is likely with the storms that develop,” the website said. “The strongest shear is over southwest Manitoba so tornadoes are possible in that area especially when storms first develop.”
In the event of a tornado, Environment Canada advises people to go indoors to the lowest floor, away from outside walls and windows.
For updated watches and warnings as well as tips on what to do in the event of severe weather, head to Environment Canada’s website.
Environment Canada issued a tornado watch in effect for:
• City of Brandon
• Mun. of Glenboro-South Cypress incl. Treesbank
• Mun. of Norfolk Treherne
• Mun. of North Cypress-Langford incl. Neepawa and Carberry
• Mun. of North Norfolk incl. MacGregor Sydney and Austin
• Mun. of Oakland-Wawanesa incl. Carroll
• R.M. of Cornwallis west of Shilo incl. Chater
• R.M. of Elton incl. Forrest
• R.M. of Victoria incl. Holland and Cypress River |
Chinese, or more specifically Mandarin, is nowadays the most spoken language in the world with around 2 billion speakers. English on the other hand, is the third most spoken language with an estimate of between 300 – 400 million speakers. [1]
Even though both languages can be regarded as world languages, translations between the two seem to be much more difficult than expected. Especially, when considering the bloodcurdling examples, which we provided below.
Have you ever thought of having a glass of “Cock Light” or “Whiskey & Cock”? Maybe you should add a plate of “Sixi Roasted Husband” or “Meat Fried Cat Ear” to that order! Well, if these choices do not suit you, maybe you are in the wrong restaurant or maybe the translator of the menu card needs to take a language course.
Nevertheless, we have to acknowledge that we would not have laughed so hard, when the translators would have visited a language course. Therefore, please do not take language courses! Enjoy…
F*ck Vegetables!
“干菜” means dried vegetables and “类” means type. So as a whole, it should be the dried vegetables section. The translator was way too concerned about the Chinese character “干” which is also a slang for f***.” (Image credits: chinalert.com)
Beware of Safety
Image credits: Chris Radley
Whisky&Cock
Image credits: stefan
Hand Grenade
Image credits: imgur.com
No Discunt
Image credits: AtticDweller
Dumping
Image credits: sousveillance
Execution in Progress
Image credits: chinawhisper.com
One of Those Time Sex Things…
Image credits: keso
Poor Duck…
Image credits: offbeatchina.com
Reverse Psychology!
Image credits: chinawhisper.com
Please Do Not Disturb!
Image credits: imgur.com
Well…
Image Credits: Unknown
Hmmm… OK!
Image Credits: Unknown
Wang Had to Burn
Image credits: mursu909
Husband!
Image credits: MFinChina
Special Fresh Crap
Image credits: offbeatchina.com
No Shitting
Image credits: TrevinC
Don’t Be Edible
Image credits: dingadingdang
Evil Rubbish
Image credits: engrish.com
Cat Ear?!
Image credits: joshbateman
Potato the Crap
Image credits: Andy Stoll
Don’t Order the Greenstuffs!
Image credits: MFinChina
Deformed!
Image credits: megoizzy
Slip and Fall Down Carefully!
Image credits: tinypic.com
Good to know!
Image Credits: Unknown
Don’t Touch Yourself!
Image credits: offbeatchina.com
Racist Park
Image credits: offbeatchina.com
Grab Me Now!
Image credits: unknown
Beware of Missing Foot
Image credits: Chris Radley
Stupid Beans
Image credits: MFinChina
Cheap, Fast & Easy
Image credits: mstaken.com
You Are the Best!
Image credits: imgur.com
F*ck Goods!
Image Credits: Unknown
No Smoking The Bed!
Image Credits: Unknown
Crap Stick
Image credits: mtrank
Whatever
Image credits: AtticDweller
Unlike Put Your Shoes On My Face
Image credits: buzzfeed.com
Thanks to everyone!
Image Credits: Unknown
The Wild Germ Hates Soup
Image credits: David Feng
Examination
Image credits: imgur.com
Please Share with your friends and family: |
Jen Hoy’s 33rd minute goal lifted the Chicago Red Stars over the Houston Dash 1-0 Sunday at Benedictine University Stadium after a three-hour weather delay.
Hoy stretched to reach for a ball from 18 yards out and lobbed Dash goalkeeper Bianca Henninger, who was otherwise brilliant on the evening.
Melissa Tancredi made her NWSL and Chicago Red Stars debut when she entered the match for rookie Hayley Brock in the 60th minute. Tancredi, a Canadian international forward, missed all of 2013 and the beginning of this season to finish chiropractic school.
Julie Johnston came within inches of putting Chicago ahead in the 8th minute when she headed Vanessa DiBernardo’s free kick back toward the near post.
After Hoy’s goal, Brock nearly doubled Chicago’s lead with the final kick of the first half, but she was denied by the crossbar. Lori Chalupny hustled to keep the ball from crossing the endline for a goal kick, and whipped in a near-post ball that found Brock’s right foot for the redirect.
Chicago continued to pressure the Dash on the other side of halftime, but Henninger — filling in for the injured Erin McLeod — came up huge all night. The Dash ‘keeper raced 40 yards off her line in the 51st minute to slide-tackle the ball away from Chalupny and deny a 1-v-1 opportunity after Chalupny broke out on the counterattack.
Adriana Leon missed an empty net from a tough angle when she one-time a rebound from another Henninger save on Chalupny in the 59th minute, and she denied Hoy a second goal two minutes later in a 1-v-1 showdown. The 23-year-old former Santa Clara goalkeeper also denied Zakiya Bywaters with a kick-save in the 77th minute.
With the win, the Red Stars jumped from seventh to fifth place, leaving Houston tied with the Boston Breakers for the fewest number of points (3) in the league as the season approaches the quarter mark.
NOTES: Red Stars owner Arnim Whisler said during the broadcast that the team is expecting six players to join soon: a healthy Taryn Hemmings, new signings Abby Erceg and Emily Van Egmond, allocated forward Christen Press, midfielder Shannon Boxx (still coming back from pregnancy) and another international signing that will be revealed this week. |
While much of the country broiled under a heat wave in late July (and complained about it), the high temperatures and humidity were business as usual in Birmingham, Alabama.
Even at 6 a.m., when members of the Birmingham Track Club (BTC) get together for their long runs, midsummer temperatures are typically above 80 degrees, with the relative humidity 85 to 95 percent.
Luckily for the runners, the town of Birmingham is there to help with hydration and fuel.
Every Saturday morning, volunteers set up water coolers along the streets and trails of Birmingham to support local athletes. Locations are along the BTC’s long run route that week—usually every 2 to 3 miles on the route—but they are placed in well-trafficked areas so that runners who aren’t part of the BTC and cyclists can share in the support.
On any given summer weekend, as many as 20 water stops pop up around the city of 212,000.
Most volunteers setting them up are runners. But several businesses, churches, and homeowners set out coolers as well.
Some hydration stops are permanent fixtures in the town: “Jack’s Shell,” an old Shell gas station, leaves water out every day. The Trak Shak, a local running store, always keeps coolers of cold water outside its doors—as well as a keg of beer inside the shop, for athletes in need of something stronger.
And one particular home, recognizable for its purple paint, is renowned for the water cooler in the side yard. The home used to be owned by Norman Thomas, a former BTC president. When Thomas left Alabama, he sold his Birmingham house on Acton Avenue to its present owners, Rory and Elizabeth Ann Henderson, with a contingency: They had to continue putting out water for runners.
“We made a verbal agreement with Norman to keep water and cups in the yard,” Elizabeth Ann, 69, told Runner’s World in an interview at their home. “That was five years ago. Ever since, the Trak Shak has brought us ice each week, and I fill up the coolers.”
Every Saturday, Birmingham residents Rory and Elizabeth Ann Henderson set out water in their side yard. When they bought their home from the former Birmingham Track Club president, they agreed to continue helping hydrate runners. Hailey Middlebrook
“We’re usually sitting in the living room when the runners come by,” added Rory, 73. “It’s something like 5 in the morning, and they’re yakking away out there. We’ll drink our coffee and listen to them.”
From time to time, volunteers stock more than just water. Among the goodies: Gatorade, icy towels, and a few unexpected treats.
“I have really fond memories of one stop in particular,” said Joseph Dease, the co-director of BTC long runs. “It was around mile 15, and there were Golden Oreos inside the cooler. Best surprise ever.”
Monica Henley, who organizes weekly long runs with Dease, assigns water stops each week to volunteers, but she lets them choose what to stock. Runners’ favorites include chocolate, popsicles, cold baby wipes, fresh fruit, peanut butter M&Ms, candy hearts, and salted pretzels.
Drink offerings at water stops can get even wilder: Mountain Dew, mimosas, and even a sneaky flask of Fireball whiskey have been discovered on past long runs. (For the record, the BTC does not sanction alcohol.)
“There is an unnamed gentleman who may, or may not, put mimosas at certain water stops toward the end of our long runs,” said Alex Morrow, the current president of the 100-member BTC. “They are surprisingly good.”
Regardless of each runner’s preferred beverage, one water stop is unanimously favored: the next one on the route. And after each Saturday long run, runners express heartfelt thanks on BTC’s Facebook page.
“Started late this morning but got my 10 in. I could not have done it without the sweet few that put out the drinks! Thank you,” one woman posted on July 16.
Another runner commented, “Each water stop is critically important. I am always impressed by how well placed they are, based on the distance and difficulty of each run.”
Though Alabama may be best known for barbecue and beer, the running scene is gaining ground. Encouraging fitness among residents of Birmingham—a place that is not known for the health of its populace—was the founding goal of BTC. Since its birth in the 1970s, the club has developed beginner 5K programs, organized group runs, and started the popular Mercedes Marathon, which draws thousands of runners to Birmingham in February. The group welcomes runners of all ages and abilities, from newbies to college athletes.
“I only started running a year and a half ago,” said Dease, who turned 40 in June. “Even if you’ve never run in your life, the running community here has your back.”
Water is available for runners who know where to look. Jack's Shell, a Birmingham gas station, puts out four coolers each week. Hailey Middlebrook |
Check out the advanced-stats glossary here. Below, a unique review of last year's team, a unit-by-unit breakdown of this year's roster, the full 2016 schedule with win projections for each game, and more.
1. The indefatigable Bob Stoops
This was some significant change. The moves make sense, but the amount of change could backfire; the staff could struggle to gel, the defense could regress and the offense could find it doesn't quite have the right air raid personnel. OU isn't standing still. The new staff could press just enough new buttons to make OU an immediate Big 12 contender. Stoops' house could fall down around him quickly. If forced to make a prediction, I lean former.
The short version (Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports)
2016 projected wins: 9.6
Projected S&P+ ranking: 4 (1 in Big 12)
5-year recruiting ranking: 16 (2 in Big 12)
Biggest strength: The offensive backfield, with QB Baker Mayfield and RBs Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon, is one of the nation's best.
Biggest question mark: There's a lot to replace in the pass rush. Can Mike Stoops still dial up some pressure?
Biggest 2016 game: at TCU (Oct. 1). It's sandwiched between two marquee games (Ohio State, Texas), but it will decide the Big 12 favorite and might serve as a national title eliminator.
Summary: As long as Mayfield remains healthy, Oklahoma has as good a chance as anybody of finishing in the 2016 Playoff race. Where the Sooners have holes to fill, they have lots of options. But if Mayfield gets hurt ... 9.6: 4 (1 in Big 12): 16 (2 in Big 12): The offensive backfield, with QB Baker Mayfield and RBs Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon, is one of the nation's best.: There's a lot to replace in the pass rush. Can Mike Stoops still dial up some pressure?: at TCU (Oct. 1). It's sandwiched between two marquee games (Ohio State, Texas), but it will decide the Big 12 favorite and might serve as a national title eliminator.As long as Mayfield remains healthy, Oklahoma has as good a chance as anybody of finishing in the 2016 Playoff race. Where the Sooners have holes to fill, they have lots of options. But if Mayfield gets hurt ...
Remember last year, when the marriage between Oklahoma and head coach Stoops had finally gone stale? When the writing was on the wall? When it was time for a fresh start? When the Sooners were miles behind Baylor and TCU, the new dominant forces in the Big 12?
No? Me neither. Let's just all pretend the 2014-15 offseason did not occur. It's best for all parties.
When you stay in the same job for long enough, the narrative will change a few times. But for Stoops and his Sooners, it's an almost annual occurrence. They were back! after going 11-2 in 2013 with a Sugar Bowl win over Alabama. They were toast! after a disappointing 8-5 campaign in 2014. Now they're back! after another 11-win season and Playoff appearance.
The fluctuations have been particularly funny, considering how steady the product on the field has been. On paper, OU has been the most predictably good team this side of Tuscaloosa. The Sooners ranked between first and seventh in S&P+ every year from 2006-12, stumbled to 27th in 2013 (and got lucky to win 11 games), rebounded to 13th in 2014 (and got unlucky to lose five), and reasserted themselves as a top-five team last fall. They were on the right side of the bounces again but didn't play in many games close enough to be affected.
Not everything was perfect in Norman last year. The handling of Joe Mixon's arrest, suspension, and reinstatement was, among other things, too guarded -- by quarantining him from media for so long, they created a terribly awkward situation when he was mandated to show up for media day before the Orange Bowl.
On the field, though there were only two losses, both were demoralizing. In between a 20-point win over WVU and a 55-point win over Kansas State, the Sooners laid an egg in Dallas, falling behind Texas 14-0 in the first quarter and succumbing, 24-17. And while they shouldn't have been four-point favorites in the Orange Bowl, they were, which made Clemson's resounding victory seem like more than simply a loss to a better team.
Still, a year after shuffling his staff, Stoops is once again in charge of the most proven entity in the Big 12, a favorite to reach another Playoff and win a Big 12 title. He's won nine conference rings, engineered 10 top-10 finishes, and won at least 10 games in a season 13 times. He has survived advances from usurpers, and he is still the reigning king of the conference. You may knock the king down here and there, but he always gets back up.
Record: 11-2 | Adj. Record: 11-2 | Final F/+ Rk: 4 | Final S&P+ Rk: 4 Date Opponent Opp. F/+ Rk Score W-L Percentile
Performance Win
Expectancy vs. S&P+ Performance
vs. Vegas 5-Sep Akron 84 41-3 W 97% 100% +12.3 +6.5 12-Sep at Tennessee 18 31-24 W 85% 83% +6.9 +6.0 19-Sep Tulsa 95 52-38 W 84% 96% -12.4 -17.0 3-Oct West Virginia 31 44-24 W 97% 100% +18.0 +13.0 10-Oct vs. Texas 68 17-24 L 45% 37% -35.1 -24.5 17-Oct at Kansas State 81 55-0 W 99% 100% +52.9 +50.0 24-Oct Texas Tech 60 63-27 W 94% 100% +19.7 +22.0 31-Oct at Kansas 127 62-7 W 95% 100% +16.6 +15.0 7-Nov Iowa State 79 52-16 W 96% 100% +17.0 +10.5 14-Nov at Baylor 14 44-34 W 82% 67% +12.2 +12.5 21-Nov TCU 19 30-29 W 72% 52% -13.0 +1.0 28-Nov at Oklahoma State 40 58-23 W 95% 99% +29.5 +28.0 31-Dec vs. Clemson 2 17-37 L 41% 4% -18.2 -24.0
Category Offense Rk Defense Rk S&P+ 42.4 8 19.8 16 Points Per Game 43.5 4 22.0 28
2. Little left to chance
Oklahoma benefited from nearly three points per game in good turnovers luck, but that only matters much when you're playing in close games. Only three of OU's 13 contests were decided by one possession, and only five were decided by under 20 points.
OU was one of the more consistently excellent teams in the country. But the Sooners didn't go halfway. When they suffered a glitch, it was an all-caps-and-italics GLITCH.
Oklahoma in wins :
Avg. percentile performance: 91% (~top 12) | Avg. win expectancy: 91% | Yards per play: OU 7.2, Opp 4.6 (+2.6) | Avg. performance vs. S&P+ projection: +14.5 PPG
: Avg. percentile performance: 91% (~top 12) | Avg. win expectancy: 91% | Yards per play: OU 7.2, Opp 4.6 (+2.6) | Avg. performance vs. S&P+ projection: +14.5 PPG Oklahoma in losses:
Avg. percentile performance: 43% (~top 75) | Avg. win expectancy: 21% | Yards per play: Opp 5.6, OU 4.7 (-0.9) | Avg. performance vs. S&P+ projection: -26.7 PPG
S&P+ had a pretty good read on a lot of teams last year, but both S&P+ and Vegas were consistently underestimating the Sooners, either how good they would look or how bad.
Still, it was mostly good. And that should be the case again in 2016 ... as long as a certain star quarterback stays healthy.
Offense
Q1 Rk 43 1st Down Rk 10 Q2 Rk 5 2nd Down Rk 1 Q3 Rk 12 3rd Down Rk 43 Q4 Rk 37
Note: players in bold below are 2016 returnees. Players in italics are questionable with injury/suspension.
Player Ht, Wt 2016
Year Rivals 247 Comp. Comp Att Yards TD INT Comp
Rate Sacks Sack Rate Yards/
Att. Baker Mayfield 6'1, 212 Sr. 3 stars (5.6) 0.8385 269 395 3700 36 7 68.1% 39 9.0% 8.1 Trevor Knight 22 40 305 2 2 55.0% 2 4.8% 7.0 Cody Thomas 1 3 1 0 0 33.3% 0 0.0% 0.3 Connor McGinnis 6'4, 194 RSFr. 2 stars (5.4) 0.8111 Austin Kendall 6'1, 206 Fr. 4 stars (5.9) 0.9212
3. Wrap Baker in bubble wrap
Mayfield was everything OU fans could have possibly hoped for in 2015. He was far more consistent than Trevor Knight (2014's starter, who transferred to Texas A&M after the season), and his strengths were perfectly aligned with new offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley.
There were times when Riley's pass-first approach took too much focus from a running game that featured Samaje Perine and Mixon, plus the mobile Mayfield. But Mayfield still made it work. On first downs, he completed 77 percent of his passes (passer rating: 202.3) while Perine averaged 6.5 yards per carry and Mixon averaged 7.3. OU ranked fourth in the country on standard downs, and this mix was the primary reason why. Defenses had to mind the run, and Mayfield's quick decision-making and delivery meshed perfectly with a sideline-to-sideline passing attack.
Mayfield loses his go-to weapon, Sterling Shepard. But the run game should still be strong, and the receiving corps still has potential. I'm curious how much Shepard's absence will hurt on passing downs, but OU should still be adept at avoiding those because of the Perine-Mayfield mix.
And yes, this is all dependent on Mayfield staying healthy. Whereas Perine has Mixon backing him up, Mayfield has either true freshman Austin Kendall or redshirt freshman walk-on Connor McGinnis. Knight is gone, and third-stringer Cody Thomas quit football to focus on baseball.
Kendall held his own in spring ball and is well-regarded, but the potential dropoff from showman Mayfield to mistake-prone first-year guy is significant.
Running Back
Player Pos. Ht, Wt 2016
Year Rivals 247 Comp. Rushes Yards TD Yards/
Carry Hlt Yds/
Opp. Opp.
Rate Fumbles Fum.
Lost Samaje Perine RB 5'10, 234 Jr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9033 226 1349 16 6.0 6.3 40.3% 2 2 Joe Mixon RB 6'1, 226 So. 5 stars (6.1) 0.9898 113 753 7 6.7 7.0 45.1% 1 1 Baker Mayfield QB 6'1, 212 Sr. 3 stars (5.6) 0.8385 102 608 7 6.0 5.8 44.1% 4 0 Alex Ross RB 32 172 1 5.4 5.8 37.5% 2 2 Daniel Brooks RB 5'8, 184 Sr. 3 stars (5.6) NR 28 150 0 5.4 5.0 42.9% 0 0 Trevor Knight QB 14 81 1 5.8 2.7 57.1% 1 0 Dede Westbrook WR 6'0, 170 Sr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9025 5 17 0 3.4 8.2 40.0% 2 1 Rodney Anderson RB 6'0, 211 RSFr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9296 Abdul Adams RB 6'0, 205 Fr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.8912
4. Whole vs. sum of parts
When Oklahoma's offense struggled, the run game was the likely culprit. Against Tennessee, Texas, and Clemson -- OU's two losses and the closest thing to a third -- Perine and Mixon carried a combined 67 times for 238 yards, just 3.6 per carry.
They averaged 6.9 yards per carry in the other 10 games, but while the full-season numbers were good, this does suggest a smidge of concern. OU ranked only 28th in Rushing S&P+ and 58th in Rushing Success Rate+, not nearly what you would expect to see from a backfield that features such ridiculous talent.
Without Shepard and his otherworldly 63 percent success rate (he was the country's best possession receiver, only he also averaged 15 yards per catch), OU might need the run game to click a little bit better to avoid passing downs. Perhaps in anticipation of this, Stoops made efforts to shore up potential weaknesses up front.
The OU line was solid last year but must replace four players who combined for 33 of the 65 starts up front. Three starters return, but Stoops signed two JUCO transfers (Ashton Julious and Ben Powers); Powers finished the spring as the first-string right guard, and redshirt freshman Cody Ford finished as the top left guard. So in a way, OU's line is young and experienced at the same time. Hard to know what to expect. But it only has to be good for Perine and Mixon to do serious damage.
Receiving Corps
Player Pos. Ht, Wt 2016
Year Rivals 247 Comp. Targets Catches Yards Catch Rate Target
Rate Yds/
Target %SD Success
Rate IsoPPP Sterling Shepard WR 117 86 1288 73.5% 28.1% 11.0 62.4% 63.2% 1.65 Dede Westbrook WR 6'0, 170 Sr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9025 71 46 743 64.8% 17.1% 10.5 53.5% 54.9% 1.79 Durron Neal WR 64 44 559 68.8% 15.4% 8.7 76.6% 59.4% 1.41 Geno Lewis WR 6'1, 201 Sr. 4 stars (5.9) 0.9341 37 17 196 45.9% 9.4% 5.3 43.2% 35.1% 1.41 Joe Mixon RB 6'1, 226 So. 5 stars (6.1) 0.9898 33 28 356 84.8% 7.9% 10.8 69.7% 57.6% 1.72 Jarvis Baxter WR 5'11, 165 Sr. 3 stars (5.5) 0.8274 31 20 218 64.5% 7.5% 7.0 71.0% 58.1% 1.00 Mark Andrews TE 6'5, 244 So. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9387 28 19 318 67.9% 6.7% 11.4 46.4% 64.3% 1.89 Samaje Perine RB 5'10, 234 Jr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9033 18 15 107 83.3% 4.3% 5.9 55.6% 50.0% 0.97 Michiah Quick WR 5'11, 183 Jr. 4 stars (5.9) 0.9703 12 9 103 75.0% 2.9% 8.6 91.7% 41.7% 1.91 Jeffery Mead WR 6'5, 187 Jr. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8906 12 6 66 50.0% 2.9% 5.5 41.7% 41.7% 1.27 Dimitri Flowers FB 6'2, 252 Jr. 3 stars (5.6) 0.8321 8 8 130 100.0% 1.9% 16.3 75.0% 87.5% 1.88 Daniel Brooks RB 5'8, 184 Sr. 3 stars (5.6) NR 5 2 40 40.0% 1.2% 8.0 60.0% 40.0% 1.88 Grant Bothun WR 5'11, 193 Sr. NR NR 4 3 34 75.0% 1.0% 8.5 50.0% 75.0% 0.99 A.D. Miller WR 6'3, 189 So. 3 stars (5.6) 0.8525 3 2 16 66.7% 0.7% 5.3 33.3% 33.3% 1.40 Dahu Green WR 6'4, 201 So. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8656 3 0 0 0.0% 0.7% 0.0 66.7% 0.0% 0.00 Connor Knight TE 6'4, 248 Sr. NR NR 2 1 17 50.0% 0.5% 8.5 50.0% 50.0% 2.07 Dallis Todd WR 6'3, 190 So. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9127 2 1 9 50.0% 0.5% 4.5 50.0% 50.0% 0.82 Carson Meier FB 6'5, 245 So. 3 stars (5.5) 0.8517 Mykel Jones WR 6'0, 180 Fr. 4 stars (5.9) 0.9091
5. Life without your security blanket
If I hadn't watched OU play a lot last year, I would point out that, while Shepard was fantastic, per-target averages for players like Dede Westbrook, Michiah Quick, tight end Mark Andrews, and Mixon suggest that they'll be fine in his absence. Mayfield is enough of a play-maker to make things happen with this group, even if the second- and third-leading wideouts (Geno Lewis and Jarvis Baxter) weren't that effective.
But since I did watch the Sooners a lot, I'm a little concerned. He was capable of carrying a heavy load (at least six catches in eight games) and of burning defenses deep (at least 15 yards per catch in eight games). He was the best of all worlds for this type of passing game, and defenses had to mind him at all times.
That said, Westbrook was particularly strong. If he gets at least a little help, and if nothing comes of a recent trespassing charge, he should be a fine No. 1. But players like Lewis, Baxter, Quick, and sophomore A.D. Miller will need to raise their games. There's enough youth to assume some year-to-year improvement, but let's just say that just because you have a wonderful, scrambler-gambler play-maker at quarterback, you don't want him to be scrambling and gambling on every play.
Offensive Line
Player Pos. Ht, Wt 2016
Year Rivals 247 Comp. 2015 Starts Career Starts Honors/Notes Nila Kasitati RG 13 25 2015 1st All-Big 12 Ty Darlington C 12 26 Wuerffel Trophy winner,
2015 2nd All-Big 12 Orlando Brown LT 6'8, 357 So. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8731 13 13 Jonathan Alvarez C 6'3, 315 Jr. 2 stars (5.4) 0.7785 10 10 Dru Samia RT 6'4, 274 So. 4 stars (5.8) 0.8986 9 9 Derek Farniok LT 4 5 Josiah St. John RT 4 4 Erick Wren C 6'2, 317 Sr. NR NR 0 0 Jamal Danley RG 6'3, 323 Sr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.8686 0 0 Christian Daimler RT 6'7, 311 Jr. 3 stars (5.5) 0.8241 0 0 Alex Dalton C 6'3, 290 So. 4 stars (5.8) 0.8775 0 0 Quinn Mittermeier OL 6'5, 265 So. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8689 0 0 Bobby Evans LT 6'4, 299 RSFr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9229
Cody Ford LG 6'3, 317 RSFr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.8674
Ashton Julious LG 6'5, 354 Jr. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8706
Ben Powers RG 6'4, 320 So. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8647
Erik Swenson OL 6'7, 285 Fr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.8916
Johncarlo Valentin OL 6'4, 330 Fr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.8811
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Defense
Q1 Rk 4 1st Down Rk 5 Q2 Rk 18 2nd Down Rk 4 Q3 Rk 21 3rd Down Rk 15 Q4 Rk 24
6. Opponents knew to run (but most couldn't do it)
When Texas beat Oklahoma, in part by rushing 54 times for 332 yards (not including sacks and kneeldowns), everybody decided they had found the blueprint. And to be sure, in what is basically a 3-3-5 system, defensive coordinator Mike Stoops is willfully sacrificing size for speed. But that doesn't mean run defense was an actual weakness.
OU ranked 23rd in Rushing S&P+ -- a weakness compared to the pass defense, but still not something that drags you down too far. Tennessee's Jalen Hurd and Alvin Kamara rushed 28 times for just 113 yards (4.0); Baylor's Shock Linwood and Devin Chafin rushed 34 times for 152 yards (4.5). It wasn't until the Orange Bowl, when Clemson ran roughshod, that anyone else was really able to take advantage of this supposed weakness, and it took someone as awesome as Clemson's dual-threat Deshaun Watson.
OU was one of the nation's worst in short-yardage situations (which is where the size thing was particularly costly), but otherwise the speed to flow to the ball more than overcame a girth deficit.
This could be the case again, but OU will need some new linebackers. The line still appears stocked with talented guys like tackles Charles Walker and Matt Dimon (combined: 17 tackles for loss), but the Sooners have to replace five of their top six linebackers. Not only that, but those five combined for 37 tackles for loss, 12 sacks, and 11 passes defensed.
Defensive Line
Name Pos Ht, Wt 2016
Year Rivals 247 Comp. GP Tackles % of Team TFL Sacks Int PBU FF FR Charles Tapper DE 13 40.5 5.4% 10.0 7.0 0 3 4 1 Charles Walker DT 6'2, 299 Jr. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8656 12 30.5 4.0% 10.0 6.0 0 1 1 0 Matt Dimon DT 6'2, 265 Sr. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8984 13 25.0 3.3% 7.0 2.5 0 0 1 0 Jordan Wade DT 6'3, 311 Sr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9382 13 18.5 2.5% 2.0 1.0 0 1 0 0 Matthew Romar DT 6'0, 298 Jr. 3 stars (5.6) 0.8585 12 18.5 2.5% 1.5 1.0 0 0 0 0 D.J. Ward DE 6'2, 250 Jr. 4 stars (5.9) 0.9415 13 12.0 1.6% 1.0 1.0 0 0 0 1 Marquise Overton DT 6'1, 292 So. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9170 8 5.5 0.7% 2.0 2.0 0 0 0 0 Austin Roberts DE 6'6, 279 Sr. 3 stars (5.5) 0.8681 Neville Gallimore DT 6'3, 320 RSFr. 4 stars (5.9) 0.9615 Gabriel Campbell DE 6'6, 257 RSFr. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8700 Amani Bledsoe DE 6'5, 265 Fr. 4 stars (5.9) 0.9288
Linebackers
Name Pos Ht, Wt 2016
Year Rivals 247 Comp. GP Tackles % of Team TFL Sacks Int PBU FF FR Dominique Alexander ILB 13 78.5 10.4% 7.0 0.5 1 2 0 0 Jordan Evans ILB 6'2, 233 Sr. 3 stars (5.6) 0.8286 11 66.0 8.7% 5.0 1.0 0 4 1 1 Eric Striker OLB 13 54.0 7.2% 19.0 7.5 1 3 1 0 Frank Shannon ILB 12 38.5 5.1% 1.0 1.0 1 0 0 0 Devante Bond OLB 9 35.5 4.7% 7.0 3.0 0 2 1 0 P.L. Lindley LB 13 11.0 1.5% 3.0 0.5 0 1 0 0 Tay Evans ILB 6'2, 239 So. 3 stars (5.6) 0.8504 10 6.5 0.9% 0.0 0.0 0 0 0 0 Ruben Hunter LB 6'2, 222 Jr. NR NR 12 6.5 0.9% 0.0 0.0 0 0 0 0 Ogbonnia Okoronkwo OLB 6'2, 238 Jr. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8659 9 6.0 0.8% 1.0 1.0 0 0 0 0 Curtis Bolton ILB 6'0, 232 So. 3 stars (5.6) 0.8650 Ricky Deberry OLB 6'2, 250 RSFr. 4 stars (5.9) 0.9575 Arthur McGinnis ILB 6'1, 248 RSFr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.8686 Kapri Doucet OLB 6'2, 225 Jr. 2 stars (5.4) 0.8474 Emmanuel Beal OLB 6'2, 215 Jr. 2 stars (5.4) 0.8083 Caleb Kelly OLB 6'3, 225 Fr. 5 stars (6.1) 0.9836 Mark Jackson Jr. OLB 6'3, 235 Fr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9191
7. How much does the pass rush suffer?
In linebacker Eric Striker and end Charles Tapper, the Sooners must replace their two most dangerous pass rushers. Young ends D.J. Ward and Marquise Overton did some damage in limited opportunities; they could be ready to shine. But at linebacker, there are far more questions than answers. Junior Ogbonnia Okoronkwo and Tay Evans finished the spring on the first string; the two combined for 12.5 tackles and a single sack last year.
I'm more concerned about the pass rush than the run defense here. The line should hold up to run blocking about as well as it did lat year, and goodness knows there are plenty of blitz candidates -- Okoronkwo, blue-chip redshirt freshman Ricky DeBerry, JUCO transfers Kapri Doucet and Emmanuel Beal, etc. And if a blue-chipper like Caleb Kelly is ready to roll from Day 1, there will be a role. But if this defense regresses, it will be because a pass defense that was elite at all levels (pass rush, safety play, corner coverage) regressed a bit too much.
Secondary
Name Pos Ht, Wt 2016
Year Rivals 247 Comp. GP Tackles % of Team TFL Sacks Int PBU FF FR Ahmad Thomas FS 6'0, 199 Sr. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8668 13 62.0 8.2% 1.5 1.5 3 3 0 0 Steven Parker SS 6'1, 208 Jr. 4 stars (6.0) 0.9466 13 50.5 6.7% 4 1.5 0 4 0 0 Zack Sanchez CB 11 40.5 5.4% 3.5 0.5 7 7 0 0 Jordan Thomas CB 6'0, 187 Jr. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8706 12 40.0 5.3% 0 0 5 4 0 0 Dakota Austin CB 5'10, 159 Sr. 2 stars (5.4) 0.8322 11 24.0 3.2% 1 0 2 3 0 0 Hatari Byrd FS
12 21.5 2.8% 0 0 0 0 0 0 William Johnson NB 6'0, 185 Jr. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8687 11 12.5 1.7% 3 0 0 1 0 0 Marcus Green CB
8 8.0 1.1% 0 0 0 0 0 0 P.J. Mbanasor CB 6'1, 189 So. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9390 10 6.0 0.8% 0 0 0 1 0 0 Kahlil Haughton FS 6'1, 195 So. 4 stars (5.8) 0.8970 12 6.0 0.8% 0.5 0.5 0 0 0 0 Will Sunderland SS 6'2, 197 So. 4 stars (5.9) 0.9290 8 2.5 0.3% 0 0 0 0 0 0 Stanvon Taylor CB 5'11, 67 Sr. 4 stars (5.8) 0.9366 5 2.0 0.3% 0 0 0 0 0 0 Prentice McKinney S 6'1, 181 So. 4 stars (5.8) 0.8752 Jordan Parker CB 6'1, 170 Fr. 4 stars (5.9) 0.9283
Chanse Sylvie NB 5'11, 179 Fr. 3 stars (5.7) 0.8813
8. If the front holds, the back will too
It's strange not feeling too concerned about the pass defense when OU must replace an awesome, longtime play-maker in Zack Sanchez. But both junior Jordan Thomas and senior Dakota Austin both proved themselves to some degree, and at the least, players like sophomore P.J. Mbanasor and Stanvon Taylor have gotten their feet wet.
Plus, safety is loaded. That always helps. Ahmad Thomas and Steven Parker as proven as you need your safeties to be, William Johnson seems well-suited for nickel back (he had three TFLs in limited action), and sophomores like Kahlil Haughton, Will Sunderland, and Prentice McKinney come with quite a pedigree. OU might be even safer at safety than TCU is, and that's saying something.
There are questions to answer on this defense, but if Stoops can dial up a pass rush, it appears everything should operate similar to last year.
Special Teams
Punter Ht, Wt 2016
Year Punts Avg TB FC I20 FC/I20
Ratio Austin Seibert 5'10, 214 So. 57 42.0 2 30 20 87.7%
Kicker Ht, Wt 2016
Year Kickoffs Avg TB OOB TB% Nick Hodgson 102 63.5 52 0 51.0%
Place-Kicker Ht, Wt 2016
Year PAT FG
(0-39) Pct FG
(40+) Pct Austin Seibert 5'10, 214 So. 70-72 13-17 76.5% 5-6 83.3% Nick Hodgson 1-1 1-1 100.0% 0-0 N/A
Returner Pos. Ht, Wt 2016
Year Returns Avg. TD Alex Ross KR 30 21.5 0 Durron Neal KR 2 26.5 0 Sterling Shepard PR 19 7.8 0
Category Rk Special Teams S&P+ 20 Field Goal Efficiency 50 Punt Return Success Rate 95 Kick Return Success Rate 75 Punt Success Rate 1 Kickoff Success Rate 32
9. Seibert will be a huge weapon for years
Austin Seibert was about as well-touted as a kicker/punter can be in high school, and he lived up to as much hype as you can as a freshman. His place-kicking was a little bit scattershot (he missed four field goals under 40 yards), but he bombed in five longer field goals, and his punts were unreturnable. OU had the most efficient punting game in the country, and when you're winning both the efficiency battles and the special teams battle, you're tilting the field drastically in your favor. And the Sooners have three more years of Seibert.
Because of Seibert alone, OU's special teams unit should be a net positive. But losing Alex Ross and Shepard in the return game hurts. New return options are wanted.
2016 Schedule Date Opponent Proj. S&P+ Rk Proj. Margin Win Probability 3-Sep at Houston 53 14.1 79% 10-Sep UL-Monroe 125 41.9 99% 17-Sep Ohio State 14 9.1 70% 1-Oct at TCU 31 8.8 69% 8-Oct vs. Texas 34 12.8 77% 15-Oct Kansas State 67 23.4 91% 22-Oct at Texas Tech 43 11.9 75% 29-Oct Kansas 112 37.9 99% 3-Nov at Iowa State 71 17.2 84% 12-Nov Baylor 13 9.1 70% 19-Nov at West Virginia 33 9.3 70% 3-Dec Oklahoma State 23 12.9 77% Projected wins: 9.6
Five-Year F/+ Rk 41.1% (6) 2- and 5-Year Recruiting Rk 16 / 16 2015 TO Margin / Adj. TO Margin* 9 / 1.6 2015 TO Luck/Game +2.8 Returning Production (Off. / Def.) 69% (72%, 66%) 2015 Second-order wins (difference) 10.4 (0.6)
10. No seriously, keep Baker healthy
It feels dicey previewing a team that has depth issues at the most important position.
If Mayfield is healthy, OU is going to be awesome. The Sooners have maybe the best quarterback and two of the best running backs in the conference, and in the areas where new play-makers are needed -- pass rushing, pass catching -- there are quite a few options.
With Mayfield, OU is the safest bet to win the Big 12, even with a trip to Fort Worth on the docket (and sandwiched between Ohio State and Texas, no less).
Without Mayfield, though? With an only solid receiving corps and a freshman quarterback, plus a line that might only be decent? A team without Mayfield cedes control of the Big 12 to TCU, I think.
We'll see, huh? OU could be positioned to make another nice run to the postseason. And since we preview teams based on what they have (and not what they might not have), that makes OU a really damn good, top-10-caliber team and potential title contender.
As you see above, the Sooners are given at least a 69 percent chance of winning in each game they play (here's your reminder that S&P+ is not a fan of either TCU or Houston -- I'm personally viewing TCU as a tossup), and very few teams will have odds that consistently good. |
The Japanese government wants more women to participate in the workforce. In fact, following December 2014 elections, one the new government's slogans has become “Women Will Revitalize Japan (女性が輝く日本).”
While this may seem like a victory for gender equity in what has traditionally been a male-dominated society, many Japanese women are worried they are simply being asked to do more for less.
Just 65% of women aged 15 to 64 are employed in Japan, compared to nearly 85% of Japanese men. According to an August 2014 U.S. Congressional Research Service report that investigated Japan's gender gap:
In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2013, which measures and tracks gender-based disparities on a number of dimensions, such as labor force participation and compensation, Japan ranked 105th out of 135 countries, just below Cambodia and above Nigeria. In comparison, the United States ranked 23rd. Several low- and middle-income countries ranked above Japan, such as Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, China, India, Malaysia, and Russia. The only high-income countries ranked lower than Japan include South Korea and some countries in the Middle East.
In most OECD countries, the participation rate of university-educated women stood between 70% and 90% in 2013.
Besides the implication that Japan lags far behind its peers in terms of gender equity in the workplace and society in general, an ongoing demographic shift means Japan is running out of workers to support an ageing population.
Japan's total population is projected to shrink by around 30% by 2055 as the number of births falls to 40% of the 2005 level. The proportion of elderly doubles, and the working age population halves.
A 2010 Goldman Sachs report estimated that if women in Japan were employed at the same rate as men (about 80% of working age-men in Japan are employed, according to Goldman Sachs’ research) Japan's economic output would grow by up to 15%.
The Japanese government, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is making the promotion of women's empowerment (女性活躍推進, joseikatsuyakusuishin) and “womenomics” a priority to not only increase tax revenues, but also to spur consumer demand and ignite inflation.
More work, even less free time
But is there a genuine will to improve the status of women in the workplace?
In a recent column Kotaro Tamura, a former (male) member of Japan's national Diet and parliamentary secretary to Japanese Prime Minister Abe, writes in business magazine Mag2 News about the need to provide women with adequate childcare if they are to enter the workforce:
安倍政権の女性の社会進出の支援は素晴らしいが、「子育てしながらキャリアアップできる環境」を、日本は口だけでなく本当にそうなるように整備すべきだろう。家事支援がもっと簡単に受けられ、優れた幼児教育にふんだんにアクセスできるようにすべきではないか。
While the efforts of the Abe government to advance the role of women in society is wonderful, talk of creating an environment where women can raise children while pursuing a career has to end up being more than paying mere lip service to the issue. It has to become easier to get support for families, and provide easy access to quality childcare.
Japanese women, however, are not so sure that being asked to join the workforce is such a good thing.
The fear expressed by Japanese women is that on top of childcare, running a household and caring for aging parents, Japanese women will also be expected to work full-time.
Maiko Kissaka, a noted (female) designer and freelance columnist, writes:
安倍政権の成長戦略のひとつが「女性が輝く日本へ」です。首相官邸のホームページには「待機児童の解消」「職場復帰・再就職の支援」「女性役員・管理職の増加」の３つの政が掲げられていて、要するに「子供を産んだら保育所に預け、職場復帰して企業の幹部になったり起業する。」それが女性が輝く社会なんだそうです。
One of the Abe government's key strategies is based [on the slogan] “Women Will Revitalize Japan.” According to the prime minister's home page, to help women enter the workforce and revitalize Japan, waiting lists for preschool childcare will be eliminated, and there will be greater support for mothers wishing to return to work. There will be efforts to increase the number of women in management and leadership positions. So, women will give birth, place their children in daycare, and return to work, playing a greater role in the business world.
According to Kissaka, this may be unrealistic:
出産したら役員になれとかベンチャーしろと来ました。最近の輝く女性像は過労死寸前な気がします… …考えてみれば男性こそ昔から「仕事と家庭」の間で相当ミンチになってきたはずです。
So, we're being asked to leap into management after giving birth to start wheeling and dealing at the office. This entire “Women Will Revitalize Japan” movement may actually be a harbinger of karoshi (death by overwork) for the female half of the population… …If you think about it, until now men have always been ground up into mincemeat between work and the home.
For Japanese women, “womenomics” simply means more work and even less free time than they already have at present.
Others are asking if Japan even has enough quality work right now for woman who wish to enter the workforce.
In an online interview, researcher Daisuke Suzuki, author of the Japanese-language book “The Poorest Girls” (最貧困女子), says that one in three single women in Japan earn less than ¥1.14 million (US$9,000), below Japan's poverty threshold of ¥1.22 million (US$10,000).
One reason is because fewer than half of female high school graduates in Japan can obtain full-time work. As well, 80% of single mothers in Japan live in poverty.
Because of high female poverty rates in Japan, Suzuki and others say, a considerable amount of young woman must rely on the sex trade to earn a living (a Japanese-language documentary of the phenomenon can be viewed here).
‘Abe has no idea of women's backbreaking struggles’
Skepticism of the Abe government's push for womenomics, along with the slogan “Women Will Revitalize Japan” has erupted into the mainstream.
A recent feature story in the Mainichi newspaper reports on what a variety of glossy women's weekly tabloid-style magazines are actually saying about the Abe government's plans for women in Japan:
Glossy weeklies usually devoted to celebrity gossip and beauty tips have been standing out recently for their sharp criticism of the Abe government. What is the target of their wrath? The Abe government's core policies of revising Article 9 of the constitution, Abenomics, and empowering women. We take a look at the source of all this anger. - Mainichi Shimbun Digital Edition
Mainichi writer Yoshiaki Kobayashi starts off his article by examining three leading weekly magazines aimed primarily at Japanese women: Josei7 (女性セブン, “Women's Weekly”), Josei Jishin (女性自身, “Women's Own”) and Shukan Josei (週刊女性, “Weekly Woman”).
Kobayashi notes they carry a strong anti-Abe sentiment:
＜安倍さんは世界で“女性蔑視”だと思われている！＞＜安倍政権は女の涙ぐましい努力をわかっちゃいない＞ などと普段女性誌を読まないオジサン記者にはびっくりの率直さ。
For a middle-aged man who never reads women's glossy weeklies, headlines like “The whole world thinks Abe is a sexist pig!” and “Abe has no idea of women's backbreaking struggles” are totally surprising.
Kobayashi suggests that ever since the March 2011 “Triple Disaster” in Tohoku, when a massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident ravaged Japan's northeast coastline, there has been an upswell in criticism of the Japanese government.
But even if the government manages to win over the women of the nation, Japan's society itself must change.
As HR consultant Junko Tanaka tweets:
If we're really going to take “women's empowerment” seriously, we have to ditch the whole concept of a “rulebook” for handling female employees. Would you say the same thing about a male employee?
(Tanaka linked to this tweet): |
BYU reports an exceptionally low number of campus crimes every year, in a federally mandated campus safety report, and was most recently ranked the safest campus in the U.S. by Business Insider.
But the picture is incomplete because BYU and many other universities only report crimes committed on campus and at on-campus housing sites. Crimes involving students off campus or in off-campus student housing are not included.
The federal Clery Act, named after Jeanne Clery, who was raped and murdered in her college dorm at Lehigh University in 1986, mandates the annual report, overseen by the U.S. Department of Education.
The act requires colleges to report murder, manslaughter, sex offenses, robbery, assault, burglary, vehicle theft, larceny and arson committed in locations schools control.
Crimes included in this annual report are a combination of offenses reported to each college police department and other on-campus services, such as counseling and women’s services. Anything that goes unreported also goes unrecorded.
Cleary-reportable “index” crimes include murder, non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny (theft) and motor vehicle theft.
According to the national Crime in Utah Report, more than 2,900 forcible sex offenses were reported in 2013. Their most recent 2014 report indicates almost 88,000 index crimes were reported, which was a 5 percent decrease. However, rape increased by almost eight percent. Utah isn’t the only state to see such an increase.
BYU’s most recent security report lists 21 forcible sex offenses between 2013 and 2014, including one rape.
The Department of Education’s Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting defines reporting requirements and says colleges must include crimes that occur “on campus, public property within or immediately adjacent to the campus, and in or on non-campus buildings or property that your institution owns or controls.”
Third-party contracted housing can be considered a “non-campus” location the school controls, if its owners have a written agreement with an institution to provide student housing, according to the handbook.
The Daily Universe sent a copy of a BYU student housing contract to the U.S. Department of Education and asked whether contract language gives BYU “control” over off-campus housing.
“The contract that you attached to your email appears to establish a written agreement between BYU and a third party to provide student housing, thereby giving BYU control of the space specified in the agreement,” states the response from the Department of Education help desk.
However, BYU and many other schools interpret Clery reporting language differently.
“In determining whether to include crime statistics from certain properties in an annual security report, schools maintain some discretion, and two important considerations are ownership of property and control of the physical space,” said BYU attorney Sarah Campbell.
Campbell said “control” was not defined in the law, and one must analyze BYU’s “extent of control, reservation of space and right of access.” |
Whitney and Wolfgang Schaefer have been married for two years, and from the day they met, they talked about owning their own shops: she wanted a design shop, and he, a breakfast tavern. “The more we talked about it, the more our separate ideas took on an even more cohesive and unified vision,” says Wolfgang.
So after much debate, they realized life is too short and they left steady jobs at the Milwaukee Art Museum and Anodyne Coffee to follow their dreams.
They scoured the city for a over a year looking for commercial spaces. And it felt almost too good to be true when they happened upon the building they wanted with two distinct spaces, along with a living space upstairs in the neighborhood they coveted. The Schaefers moved from Riverwest to Brewer’s Hill and are thrilled to see the neighborhood continuing to develop, set in motion by stronghold Wolf Peach restaurant.
“It was pretty scary to take the leap, but only scary because it doesn’t seem like work most days. It tends to subside when you see the world around you accept your dream and make it a reality,” says
Whitney. “That first customer, that first great review, these things really help.”
After about a year and half of planning, rehabbing and stocking, Orange and Blue Co. (1809 N. Hubbard St.) opened in June. The lifestyle shop boasts a curated mix of vintage and modern goods and accessories. The ever-changing mix of pieces is meant to inspire others on how to live comfortably and make old things new. The shop also features local designers Directive, Tactile Craftworks, Fern and Nettle, and more. Whitney travels around the country and region to estate sales to select classic items that embody warmth and quality. Items like candles, Turkish pillow covers, wooden bowls, wicker furniture and ceramics are all popular with the steady stream of local foot traffic they’ve been enjoying.
The adjacent Uncle Wolfie’s Breakfast Tavern (Wolfgang’s vision) at the corner of Hubbard and Vine will open in spring/summer 2018. The restaurant will focus on breakfast and lunch only, with an emphasis on good coffee (Anodyne, of course) and simple, seasonal items that appeal to the whimsy of the chef.
The Schaefers also have a toddler in tow. They compare operating businesses to parenting – nurturing both projects together all for the greater good for their family and community.
“We got lucky: we are a great team, we work well together and have similar creative ideas and lifestyle views, yet we complement each other and bring out sides of the other that maybe weren’t completely cultivated on their own,” says Whitney. “Working together for the same goal is the best.” |
Image copyright PA Image caption A 50mph speed limit will remain in place while traffic management systems are tested
A £174m upgrade to turn the M3 into a "smart" motorway in Surrey and Hampshire has opened.
The 13.4-mile stretch between Farnborough and the M25 is now a four-lane carriageway after the main construction work was completed.
Motorists have faced years of disruption since work began in 2014.
Ongoing roadworks and some overnight restrictions will continue to affect motorists with speed limits in place as the system is tested.
Technology is being used to manage traffic flows with variable speed limits and use of the hard shoulder.
Speed limits will remain in place until later this month.
Image copyright Google Image caption Motorists have faced years of road works on the M3 during the widening work
The M3 passes through Chobham Common, an area of heathland in Surrey.
Before work began, the government said the M3 smart motorway would improve journey times by 15%, but the then Highways Agency raised concerns extra traffic would cause EU air quality rules to be broken.
In June 2014, a plan to impose a 60mph speed limit on that part of the M3 to cut air pollution was put on hold by the then Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin, with the Highways Agency asked to look at other ways of tackling pollution.
Maintenance work on the motorway is still to be completed, including the rebuilding of the Woodlands Lane bridge over the motorway near Windlesham, which will continue until later in the year, Highways England said.
Pranav Devale, project manager for Highways England, said: "This new stretch of smart motorway will tackle congestion and improve journey times for the 130,000 drivers who use it every day."
Extra benefits
Back in 2014, Highways England said the main project work would be completed by December 2016.
But James Wright of Highways England said: "The reason we are finishing construction now rather than last December is that, shortly after we started work and after a bit of local lobbying, we agreed to do a large amount of maintenance work at the same time as the smart motorway upgrade."
He said the extra work included fully resurfacing the road and replacing a bridge over it.
"This is extra work with extra benefits and we do not consider it a delay," he added. |
For the most of the referendum campaign, the picture painted by the polls has been one of relative stability. The results produced by a company in one month have often been much the same as those it had reported the previous month – and were often much the same as those that eventually appeared the next month. As our poll of polls illustrates, up to now the only period when there has been a consistent movement in one direction was during the winter of this year, when the Yes side added some four points or so to its tally.
Against that backdrop today’s poll from YouGov – for both The Sun and The Times – will come as both as a surprise and (for the No side at least) a shock. It puts Yes on 42%, up four points on YouGov’s previous reading just a fortnight ago (after the first leaders’ debate) and No on 48% (down 3). Once the Don’t Knows are excluded Yes are on 47%, up four points, by far and away a record Yes vote from a pollster that has hitherto tended to paint a relatively pessimistic picture for the Yes side.
Indeed, this is the second time in a row that YouGov have reported a record high Yes vote. In contrast, in its last poll but one, conducted as recently as the beginning of August, the company put Yes on just 39% (after Don’t Knows had been excluded), as indeed it did too in its poll before that, conducted at the back end of June. In short today’s poll suggests that Yes support has increased in a month by as much as eight points on what was a seemingly stable baseline.
At minimum today’s poll strengthens the impression already created by a number of recent polls that the No lead may have narrowed somewhat in recent weeks. Our poll of polls now stands at Yes 45%, No 55%, equalling the all-time high Yes vote previously recorded in the second half on April. However, whereas on that occasion the high Yes vote could be regarded as the result of the accidental predominance of polls from pollsters that always tended to paint a relatively optimistic picture for the Yes side, this time around that is less obviously the case.
Indeed we might remember that just three moths ago YouGov’s Peter Kellner was arguing that the estimated Yes vote in polls conducted by Survation was too high. Now YouGov put the Yes vote just as high as Survation do.
Of course, too much should never be read into one poll – and we still await a poll that actually puts the Yes side ahead. But there seems little doubt that this poll will electrify the campaign. The Yes side will now be able to argue with some conviction that they have gained momentum and can hope that they might yet secure a dramatic and historic victory. The No side, meanwhile, will be asking itself why it now apparently finds itself in a desperate last minute fight to keep Scotland in the Union.
Today’s poll offers some clues. As we have repeatedly emphasised, the issue that above all seems capable of persuading people to vote Yes or No is whether they think independence would be good or bad for Scotland’s economy. Up to and including its poll in June YouGov had never found more than 30% saying that Scotland would be economically better off under independence. Now, having risen to 32% in YouGov’s poll a fortnight ago, that figure now stands at 35%. At 44% the proportion who think Scotland would be worse off still outnumber the optimists, but they are fewer in number now than in any previous YouGov poll. It looks as though the Yes side has made some significant ground on the crucial economic debate in recent weeks.
Second, although unfortunately in this poll YouGov asked new questions about people’s attitudes towards the currency issue, and thus we cannot see whether attitudes have changed in the wake of Mr Salmond’s clarification of his stance in the second leaders’ debate, it certainly looks as though this issue is still not scoring for the No side in the way that it believed it would. It remains the case that most voters – including most No voters – would like an independent Scotland to keep the pound, while many voters (or Yes supporters at least) still believe that this is what would happen.
As many as 56% of all voters – including 54% of No voters – would like an independent Scotland to keep the pound as part of a monetary union with the rest of the UK. Meanwhile 67% believe that an independent Scotland would carry on using the pound, either as part of a monetary union (41%) or otherwise (26%). Amongst Yes voters that last figure stands at no less than 87% (including 67% who think there would still be a monetary union, but even just over half of No voters (54%) reckon Scotland would keep the pound. In short the No side’s claim that an independent Scotland would not be able to keep the pound is still widely disbelieved and goes against the grain of what many of their own supporters would want to happen in the event of a Yes vote.
Third, the Yes side appeared to have secured some traction in its recent claim that the NHS might suffer if Scotland were to remain in the Union. As many as 42% think the NHS will get worse if Scotland remains in the Union, while only 9% believe that it will get better. In contrast as many as 37% believe that the NHS would get better under independence, while only 29% believe it would be worse. Of course many of those who think the NHS will get worse if Scotland remains in the Union are existing Yes voters (while contrary to what the Yes side themselves have been claiming, fewer women than men supports its view about which option offers the brighter future for the NHS). But at least the Yes side have identified a supposed risk that at least their own supporters find credible – in sharp contrast to position in which the No side finds itself on the currency issue.
Fourth, the Yes side appear to have made particular progress amongst the less well-off C2DE social groups, at whom much of its campaigning has been targeted in recent weeks. Support for independence amongst such voters is up nine points on a month ago (after Don’t Knows are excluded) whereas amongst more affluent ABC1 voters the swing has been a more modest six points. Doubtless this helps explains why support for Yes amongst those who voted Labour in 2011 has increased over the same period from 18% to 30%, though in truth the former figure was always rather low as compared with the findings of most other polls.
Just one group of voters appear to have resisted the tide towards a higher Yes vote – older voters. Despite the particular importance of the NHS for such voters, at 31% support for Yes amongst the over 60s is actually slightly down (by two points) on a month ago. Indeed, but for the Yes side’s weakness amongst this group YouGov would be putting Yes in the lead. Will pensions now be one of the crucial battlegrounds in what promises to be a very keenly contested last two weeks? |
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Claire Bernish
February 8, 2016
(ANTIMEDIA) Buchanan, NY — Indian Point Energy Center, which sits roughly 30 miles from the heart of Manhattan in New York City, has been plagued with safety breaches and leaks, and has even been the subject of a deliberate cover-up since it began operations in the 1970s. A statement from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Saturday revealing “radioactive tritium-contaminated water leaked into groundwater” near the nuclear facility is hardly a surprise — though no less indicative that it may be time to shut down the aging plant.
“The company reported alarming levels of radioactivity at three monitoring wells, with one well’s radioactivity increasing nearly 65,000 percent,” Cuomo’s statement asserted.
Entergy, which operates the reactors known as Indian Point 2 and 3 at the Buchanan, New York, facility — Indian Point 1 ceased operations in 1974 after failing to meet expectations — claimed there was no immediate threat to public health because the contamination had not migrated off-site. Cuomo, however, wasn’t convinced. He ordered Department of Environmental Conservation Acting Commissioner Basil Seggos and Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and employ all necessary measures to conduct a thorough investigation and impact assessment to the environment — and of possible threats to public safety.
This latest leak simply adds to a list of many issues over the years — in 1979, alone, there were 14 “incidents” at Indian Point 2, and nine at Indian Point 3. But even cursory research reveals numerous leaks at the plant, including a “serious” 100,000 gallon leak in 1980, an 8,000 gallon leak in 1981, and a leak of an unspecified amount in 1995. Tritium-and nickel-63-tainted water leached into the groundwater supply in 2006. In 1982, Indian Point was the target of the first hearing in history by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to determine whether a nuclear plant should simply be closed down due to its safety record.
Obviously, the determination left the nuclear facility online, but residents in the area and a number of scientists have been convinced for decades that a major accident by human error, or natural causes, is a matter of when, not if. And from the day the plant went online to near future plans concerning the Algonquin Pipeline Project, Indian Point has always tempted fate.
Built in 1962, Indian Point 1 was the first nuclear plant designated for civilian use. It sits on the bank of the Hudson River, in an area called the Ramapo Fault Zone. Though the fault isn’t as infamous and well-known as the San Andreas, it still presents serious risks for the aging and mismanaged nuclear plant.
“A study by a group of prominent seismologists suggests that a pattern of active but subtle faults makes the risk of earthquakes to the New York City area substantially greater than formerly believed,” stated Columbia University’s Earth Institute in 2008. “Among other things, they say the controversial Indian Point nuclear power plants, 24 miles north of the city, sit astride the previously unidentified intersection of two active seismic zones.”
As Leonardo Seeber, coauthor of the study published in the Bulletin of Seismological Society of America, explained of a major quake near the plant, “The probability is not zero, and the damage could be great. It could be like something out of a Greek myth.” Lead author Lynn R. Sykes explained that geologic features, such as a sudden bend in the Hudson River which was previously unexplained, are in actuality indicative of the layout of the complex of faults in the area. According to the study:
“Indian Point is situated at the intersection of the two most striking linear features marking the seismicity and also in the midst of a large population that is at risk in case of an accident. This is clearly one of the least favorable sites in our study area from an earthquake hazard and risk perspective.”
While Entergy, which owns the facility, is presently attempting to re-license Indian Point 2 and 3, according to the Earth Institute, the New York Attorney General alerted an NRC panel in 2008 that “New data developed in the last 20 years disclose a substantially higher likelihood of significant earthquake activity in the vicinity of [Indian Point] that could exceed the earthquake design for the facility.” Entergy had not presented “new data on earthquakes past 1979.”
In 2011, the NRC rated nuclear plants across the country for their potential for core reactor damage, based on seismic risk. As MSNBC reported, Indian Point 3 topped the list, and its risk potential had increased 72 percent over previous rankings:
“The chance of an earthquake causing core damage at Indian Point 3 is estimated at 1 in 10,000 each year. Under NRC guidelines, that’s right on the verge of requiring ‘immediate concern requiring adequate protection’ of the public … The odds take into consideration two main factors: the chance for serious quake, and the strength of design of the plant.”
Victor Gilinsky, an energy consultant and former member of the NRC, penned an op-ed in the New York Times in December 2011 titled, “Indian Point: The Next Fukushima?” in which he stated, “A severe accident at Indian Point, whose two reactors [that remain in operation] opened in 1974 and 1976, is a remote but real possibility. We’ve had two severe accidents with large releases of radioactivity in the past. The Chernobyl accident was dismissed by Western countries on the grounds that it was the product of Soviet sloppiness and ‘couldn’t happen here.’ But the Fukushima accident involved reactors built to American designs.
“The essential characteristic of this technology is that the reactor’s uranium fuel — about 100 tons in a typical plant — melts quickly without cooling water. The containment structures surrounding the reactors — even the formidable-looking domes at Indian Point — were not designed to hold melted fuel because safety regulators 40 years ago considered a meltdown impossible.
“They were wrong, and now we know that radioactive material in the melted fuel can escape and contaminate a very large area for decades or more. It doesn’t make sense to allow such a threat to persist a half-hour’s drive from our nation’s largest city.”
[taboola]
Even if earthquake risk weren’t enough to make continuing operations at Indian Point sufficiently questionable, the Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) Project to install a high-pressure gas pipeline extension — running through the facility’s property — should be. Despite challenges to halt or redirect the project, which, according to Law360 was originally approved by both the NRC and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on January 28, 2016, the project received the green light. Though the details and controversy about the AIM extension are too lengthy to cover here, one brief description reported by Truthout in April 2015 explained the basics:
“Paul Blanch is a professional engineer with nearly five decades of experience in nuclear safety, engineering operations and federal regulatory requirements. He has security clearance for his work, and is a nuclear industry proponent. He has worked with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since its inception and with utility corporations across the United States, including Entergy.” In other words, as the Pontiac Tribune previously reported, Blanch is by all accounts an industry insider.
Blanch told Truthout, “I’ve had over 45 years of nuclear experience and [experience in] safety issues. I have never seen [a situation] that essentially puts 20 million residents at risk, plus the entire economics of the United States by making a large area surrounding Indian Point uninhabitable for generations. I’m not an alarmist and haven’t been known as an alarmist, but the possibility of [this] gas line interacting with [this] plant could easily cause a Fukushima type of release.”
Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have been actively critical of the AIM Pipeline extension through Indian Point property — for which a full-risk analysis has never been completed. Governor Cuomo is staunchly opposed to Entergy’s requests to the NRC to extend the two reactor’s operating licenses for an additional 20 years. So far, they’ve all run into brick walls.
Perhaps Cuomo’s call for an investigation over this latest radioactive leak from Indian Point Energy Center into the groundwater might produce results; but if past opposition can be an indicator, it’s not likely.
In the meantime, the safety of tens of millions of residents in and around the New York City metropolis remains in the hands — and at the whim — of an industry intent on pushing forward, no matter the potential costs.
This article (65,000% Rise in Radioactivity of Leak Is Tip of Iceberg for Nuclear Plant near NYC) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email [email protected].
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Punter Kluwe Muses On Life, The Universe And 'Sparkleponies'
Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities by Chris Kluwe Hardcover, 261 pages | purchase close overlay Buy Featured Book Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?
Most NFL punters spend the majority of their time focusing on one thing: kicking the ball, and kicking it well. But Chris Kluwe — the most successful punter the Minnesota Vikings ever had and now signed to Oakland — has a few other things on his mind. Like bad drivers, and the proper degree of pressure for a handshake. And more substantive issues, like gay marriage.
Last year, Kluwe wrote a bombastic letter to a Maryland state legislator, accusing him of bigotry after the congressman suggested that football players not express opinions about gay marriage. The language in the letter was so, shall we say, colorful, that it went viral.
Kluwe's thoughts on gay marriage, football and the universe are collected in a new book, Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies. He tells NPR's Rachel Martin that his writing style serves a purpose.
"One of the things I've found," he says, "is that if you make a logically constructed argument and then you throw in some very inventive swearing, they'll remember the swearing and then that triggers your point!"
Interview Highlights
On becoming an activist
"I never expected to be an activist, but when Minnesotans For Marriage Equality, when they approached me last year to help defeat the constitutional amendment in Minnesota, I looked it over and I said, 'Yeah, this is something worth doing.' I don't think we should enshrine discrimination into a state's constitution. There's no reason that we should be discriminating against people in the United States of America considering how many times we've fought this battle before. We've fought this with slavery, we've fought it with suffrage, and we've fought it with segregation, and it seems like every 50 to 60 years we keep having that same stupid war over people who want to control other peoples' lives versus those who just want to be free to live and to love other people."
On how he's received in the locker room
"That's the thing that I've always been very careful of, is that when I'm in the locker room, I'm there to play football, because that's what I'm being paid to do, and if guys want to talk to me, I'm more than happy to have a conversation, but I'm never gonna get in anyone's face, I'm never gonna try and preach and forcefully convert someone, because that's not what I'm there to do."
On being a football player
"Put me out of business. It's essentially the fact that as an individual, I can say as much as I want, I can write as much as I want, but until society as a whole decides that we want to value different things, then nothing is going to change, you know? I'm very good at what I do. I'm very good at playing football, and I will continue being very good at playing football until society decides that football is not something they're going to reward members for way over what they should be rewarded for, and at that point, I'll go find something else to do. Because I believe that if you spend the time, if you work hard, then you can achieve almost anything you want to do, and so, you know, I enjoy playing football, but there's also a lot of other things that I would enjoy doing." |
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The Barbeque Stove Bolt Special. Photos by Robin Adams, courtesy RM Auctions.
The rules of hot rodding have long been this: there are no rules. Perhaps no single car in hot rod history has embraced that belief better than the Barbeque Stove Bolt Special, a 1951 custom built with parts from 16 cars, two motorcycles and an airplane. Next week, this monument to ingenuity will cross the block in Phoenix as part of RM’s Arizona sale.
While it’s not uncommon to see Deuce Coupes sporting small-block Chevy engines, the Barbeque Stove Bolt Special goes much, much farther than this. In fact, it’s hard to identify the car by a single brand, or even by two brands. The frame started life under a 1927 Chevrolet, while much of the body (excluding the hand-built pickup bed) came from a 1921 Dodge touring car, except for the grille, which was pulled from a 1932 Ford. Power comes from a 1928 Chevrolet four-cylinder block, stuffed full of a 1932 Ford crankshaft, 1936 Pontiac connecting rods, a set of Jahns pistons and capped by a Harry Miller-modified 1930 Oldsmobile three-port head fitted with Buda diesel valves and Nash rocker arms. Carburetors are SUs, liberated from an unspecified Jaguar (or SS) model, while the dry-sump oiling system was engineered by the builders.
The builders, in this case, were James H. Hill and his father, Clark Hill, originally of Vallejo, California. Knowing that such radical modifications would tax the strength of the block, the Hills built up the block using 26 pounds of welding rod and six tanks of acetylene gas; to ensure even and complete cooling (and thus reduce the chances of warping), the hot, welded block was cured for four days in a charcoal bed in the family’s barbeque, and the custom’s name was born.
Following the car’s completion in 1951, it was campaigned on dry lakes in land speed record competition. The California-Nevada Timing Association clocked the Frankenrod at a speed of 84.4 MPH, which the Hills later assured Honk magazine (the predecessor to Car Craft) was due to its unfavorable 2.54:1 gearing. There’s no record of a higher top speed with reduced gearing, but the one-of-a-kind custom also proved its worth at the 1952 National Roadster Show at Oakland, where it captured a first prize for originality.
In 1955, the Hill family moved from California to Oregon, and the Barbeque Stove Bolt Special remained in their care until acquired by its current owner in 2014. It’s being offered with trophies from the California-Nevada Timing Association Speed Run and the Oakland Roadster Show, along with negatives documenting its dry lakes history. There are boxes of spare and NOS parts, too, including piston rings, a Jahns piston and an Olds three-port head. On the cosmetic side, there are two cans of still-liquid paint (complete with a 1950 date) along with the original top and side curtains.
The car’s current owner, who wishes to remain anonymous, came across the unique rod at the Portland Spring Automotive Swap Meet, where it was displayed for the first time since being put away in 1967. A deal was struck, and the car left the ownership of the Hill family for the first time since its construction. As its new owner explained to us, “The engineering and fabrication is absolutely remarkable; no one builds cars like this today. The Barbeque Stove Bolt Special is a very significant hot rod, with documented history and truly unique construction and engineering, at a time when nearly all others were simply flathead Ford-based.”
The owner admits that he hasn’t tried to start the car, although the engine turns over and the Barbeque Stove Bolt Special appears to have ample compression. The breakup of a relationship left him without a place to turn wrenches, along with financial burdens that necessitate its sale, a story that many collectors can relate to. Given the car’s documented history and creative engineering, RM is predicting a selling price between $80,000 and $100,000 when the car crosses the stage on Friday, January 16.
For additional information on the 2015 Phoenix sale, visit RMAuctions.com.
UPDATE (18.January): The Barbeque Stove Bolt Special sold for a price of $49,500. |
SALEM, Ore. -- A South Korean man flown to the U.S. 37 years ago and adopted by an American couple at age 3 has been ordered deported back to a country that is completely alien to him.
“It is heartbreaking news,” said Dae Joong (DJ) Yoon, executive director of the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium, who had been in contact with Adam Crapser. Crapser remains confined in an immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington, pending his deportation.
Crapser waived an appeal during the hearing Monday because he is desperate to get out of detention, his attorney, Lori Walls, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
He was so desperate that he was even willing to go to a country where he does not speak the language or know the culture.
“I’m sure he doesn’t have any idea what he can do in Korea,” Yoon said in a phone interview from his group’s offices in Annandale, Virginia.
Crapser’s plight mirrors those of thousands of others who were brought to the U.S. but whose adoptive parents didn’t secure green cards or U.S. citizenship for them. Yoon’s group says an estimated 35,000 intercountry adoptees lack U. S. citizenship. It is backing legislation in Congress to address that.
Yoon said arrangements are being made for Crapser to get documents to enable him to fly to South Korea.
Korean adoptee Adam Crapser poses with daughter, Christal, 1, in the family’s living room in Vancouver, Wash. on March 19, 2015. AP
Seven years after Crapser and his older sister were adopted, their parents abandoned them. The foster care system separated Crapser, 10 at the time, from his sister.
The boy was housed at several foster and group homes. When he was 12, he moved in with Thomas and Dolly Crapser, their biological son, two other adoptees and several foster children. There, he was physically abused, Crapser has said. In 1991, the couple was arrested on charges of physical child abuse, sexual abuse and rape. They denied the charges. Thomas Crapser’s sentence included 90 days in jail, and his wife’s three years of probation.
Federal immigration officials say they became aware of Crapser after he applied to renew his green card two years ago: his criminal convictions, ranging from burglary to assault, made him potentially deportable under immigration law. Crapser got into trouble with the law after he broke into his parents’ home -- it was, he said, to retrieve the Korean Bible and rubber shoes that came with him from the orphanage -- and later it was for stealing cars and assaulting a roommate.
“He will be deported as soon as Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes the necessary arrangements,” Walls said. “Adam, his family, and advocates are heartbroken at the outcome.” |
Professors at universities across the United States are mourning the death of tyrant Fidel Castro, who built a repressive regime that according Human Rights Watch robbed Cuban citizens of basic civil and political freedoms, jailed homosexuals, and punished all forms of dissent.
Many professors at universities across the United States have praised Castro for his efforts in combating colonialism, capitalism, and racism.
Erik Loomis, a professor of history at the University of Rhode Island, praised Castro as a champion of social justice, calling the dictator “a tremendously complex person who attempted to rebuild a society around ideas of justice while also refusing to allow democratic institutions to form.”
Loomis goes on to add that in his several decades at the helm of leadership in Cuba, Castro brought “outstanding medical care and education to his own people and the poor around the world while limiting the ability of educated people to use their skills at home.”
He called Castro, along with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara and communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, “an inspiration for billions of people around the world seeking freedom from colonial overlords.”
Like Loomis, 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders came under fire during the Democratic primaries for an interview he gave in 1985 in which he praised Castro for his efforts in bringing healthcare and education to Cuba.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=troNR_wd0HI
Althea Spencer Miller, an assistant professor at Drew University, praised Castro in a lengthy Facebook post in which she cited his efforts in bringing healthcare and education to the citizens of Cuba.
His complex life and politics were vilified here in the US. But for me as an anglophone Caribbean person, he represented the provision of educational opportunities through scholarships, health opportunities, and national, social, and cultural opportunities. Those opportunities were delivered without financial strings attached, did not increase the indebtedness of our countries, nor create political servility to his ideology… A complicated, contradictory human being has passed. Undoubtedly, he improved the lives of many actually forcing upon them the conditions for that improvement. There is much still to be done in Cuba but he took that country way beyond what it had been under the former tyranny.
A director at Human Rights Watch explains that Fidel Castro conducted a repressive that robbed citizens of civil and political rights: “As other countries in the region turned away from authoritarian rule, only Fidel Castro’s Cuba continued to repress virtually all civil and political rights,” said José Miguel Vivanco, a director at Human Rights Watch, a progressive human rights advocacy group. “Castro’s draconian rule and the harsh punishments he meted out to dissidents kept his repressive system rooted firmly in place for decades.”
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity for Breitbart. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at [email protected] |
George Sisti, CFP, is a certified financial planner practitioner and the founder of On Course Financial Planning, a fee-only Registered Investment Advisor firm. George graduated with a BS in Mathematics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1971. After graduation, he served 6 years as a pilot in the United States Air Force, based at McChord AFB, WA. In 2013 he retired after a 35-year career as a pilot for a legacy U.S. airline. George established On Course Financial Planning in 2004 to help families gain the peace of mind that comes from knowing that they will be able to retire at the time of their choosing and not have to worry about running out of money in retirement. He has been a member of the Financial Planning Association since 2004. He can be contacted through his website: oncoursefp.com
Harold Pollack
Wall Street and its representatives often make investing more complicated than necessary to give investors the idea that they are helpless on their own. University of Chicago professor Harold Pollack has gained acclaim recently for insisting that all the important financial advice you need can fit on one side of a 4x6 index card. When I first heard this, I thought, "How small did he print?" A picture of the index card reveals that Pollack provided nine pieces of advice, written in rather large print. Let's take a look at the professor's recommendations to see if they contain all the financial advice you need.
1. Max your 401(k) or equivalent employee contribution.
This is a good piece of general advice — once you've first paid off any high-interest consumer debt and accumulated an appropriate cash reserve. For workers with no 401(k) company match, it might be better to contribute to a Roth IRA or a traditional IRA.
2. Buy inexpensive, well-diversified mutual funds such as Vanguard's Target 20xx funds.
I'm not a big fan of target-date funds, and Vanguard's target-date funds contain just a few asset classes. But they're better than loaded, actively managed funds.
3. Never buy or sell an individual security. The person on the other side of the table knows more than you do about that stuff.
Maybe they do, and maybe they don't. But there's no doubt that owning individual securities is riskier than owning a well-diversified stock fund. Additionally, it's unlikely that you know something about a company that isn't already factored into its stock price.
4. Save 20% of your money.
5. Pay your credit-card balance in full every month.
6. Maximize tax-advantaged savings vehicles like Roth, SEP and 529 accounts.
This sounds a lot like No. 1, so I guess there are only eight things investors need to know.
7. Pay attention to fees. Avoid actively managed funds.
This sounds a lot like No. 2, so I guess there are only seven things investors need to know.
8. Make your financial advisor commit to a fiduciary standard.
Most people who provide financial advice are not required to act in a fiduciary capacity with their clients. They are not required to disclose conflicts of interest or recommend investments that are in their clients' best interests — only those that are "suitable/" If your financial advisor isn't acting in a fiduciary capacity with other clients, it's unlikely that you'll be treated differently.
9. Promote social-insurance programs to help people when things go wrong.
Apparently, the professor had only six pieces of financial advice to offer, but there was some space left on the index card. If we can't keep politics off the card, I'd replace his No. 9 with ...
9A. Vote for people who will let you keep more of your own money.
Pollack's list is fine as far as it goes, but it's hardly all-inclusive. Let's flip the card over and add a few more pieces of advice.
10. Make sure you have adequate amounts of umbrella, disability and life insurance — just in case.
11. Keep your estate-planning documents up to date.
Note to all collectors — your children don't want your stuff, they want their own stuff.
12. If you have to choose, make saving for your retirement a higher priority than saving for your kids' college.
13. Don't kid yourself. You probably know less about financial planning and investing than you realize.
14. There is no perfect portfolio — yours should emphasize simplicity and shun complexity.
Don't make the mistake of assuming that complex investments are somehow better than "plain vanilla" stock and bond mutual funds and ETFs.
15. You can only control the inputs to, not the performance of, your portfolio.
16. Successful investors focus on their goals and investment strategy, not on the stock market.
The long-term performance of your portfolio will be inversely proportional to how much you tinker with it. If you must peek, limit your stock market updates to Wednesdays and Fridays.
17. Your behavior as an investor will have a larger impact on your retirement lifestyle than the performance of your investments.
18. Your financial advisor should create a comprehensive and comprehensible financial plan that will keep you on course to your financial goals.
If you don't have a financial plan – you don't have a financial advisor.
19. Investing isn't about hitting home runs — singles and doubles will serve you well in the long run and help you avoid making big mistakes.
20. Before getting into more consumer debt to impress your friends and neighbors remember this — one third won't notice, one third won't be impressed, and one third will think you're a self-obsessed fool.
21. Maintain your optimism — the Perennial Pessimists have always been wrong, and there's no reason to believe that their track record will change anytime soon. |
Shuhei Yoshida Contributed $29 to Shenmue 3 Kickstarter, Says Suzuki is “Flexible” With Game Scope
It’s no secret by now that one of Sony’s big E3 “megatons” was the announcement of Shenmue 3’s Kickstarter drive for the PlayStation 4. With PlayStation LifeStyle scheduled to have a quick sit down with Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida at E3, we, of course, just had to ask about it.
In our quick video chat with Yoshida, we asked about using Kickstarter to gauge fan interest in games in the future once again. Yoshida gave Harmonix’s Amplitude as an example of how Sony is handling Kickstarter for games. In addition to that, he mentioned that Suzuki is “flexible” in terms of Shenmue 3’s scope, and that he himself contributed $29 to the game’s Kickstarter drive.
So, the Shenmue 3 (Kickstarter) is the same way (as Amplitude). You know, they are passionate fans – a larger number of fans than Amplitude was – but it takes more money to produce a new Shenmue than a new Amplitude. So, it’s not a SEGA project. SEGA owns the IP, but it’s Yu Suzuki-san studio’s project, and his company is a very small indie studio. So he was exploring how to make Shenmue 3 because he wanted to continue the story and there are lots of fans, like in the video, kept asking him “where’s Shenmue 3?” So SCEA third-party department was able to agree with Suzuki-san and SEGA, so if the Kickstarter campaign is successful, then we know SCE third-party group will support in many different ways, including some funding.So, in order to make the Kickstarter successful, we decided to put the announcement in the press conference, because lots of people watch it. And then, it’s now successful, so it’s happening. Suzuki-san, I think he’s being flexible in terms of the scope of the project. Depending on the funding, he will decide what will be Shenmue 3.That’s his message in the video – what game it will become depends on supporters – I supported it as well. I paid $29. [Laughs]
In related news, Yu Suzki confirmed that Sony and Shibuya Productions won’t see a “single cent” of the Kickstarter money the game has collected so far (now at over $3.6 million with 22 days left in its campaign).
Stay tuned to our short video chat with Yoshida set to be published tomorrow. |
Celebrations of the 1916 Easter Rising will include a memorial to the British who died trying to crush the rebellion in a bid to make events more inclusive.
As the full programme of commemoration was unveiled, the Government was again attacked by some opposition figures for misjudging the tone of how to mark the centenary.
Under the plans outlined at Collins Barracks by Taoiseach Enda Kenny and other ministers, all schools will receive a tricolour and copy of the proclamation in order to try and spark debate on how Ireland should evolve. Schools will hold “proclamation day” on March 15 next year to project forward the idea of what revolutionaries today would call for.
Events in eastern Europe and Africa at the time of the 1916 Rising will also be examined by schools to showcase Ireland’s modern multiculturalism.
A major parade through Dublin will culminate at the GPO on Easter Sunday as the key event of the celebrations, though events on the actual anniversary of the rebellion will also be held.
Though the Government has quietly rejected the offer for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth to send a close relative to the commendations in Dublin, a special ceremony will be held to remember the British casualties who lost their lives trying to put down the rebellion.
Both Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin have expressed concern at the scope of Government plans to mark the centenary and the two parties have outlined their own programme of events to run alongside the official plans.
With Mr Kenny insisting he is determined for the Coalition to run its full term, the commemorations could take place just before a general election in April 2016.
The anniversary will have seven strands which include: State ceremonials, historical reflection, promoting Irish as a living language; encompassing youth and imagination, cultural expression, community participation, and inclusion of the global diaspora.
There will also be special events to mark the role of women and to remember the children who died in the rebellion.
A number of legacy capital projects have also been announced with the Government also buying the national monument site at 14-17 Moore St where some of the last rebels held out.
The site was where the final council of war of the Rising leaders was held and the decision to surrender made.
Mr Kenny said that the centenary should be used as an opportunity to create national unity.
“There are some moments in history when a seed is sown and an old order changes forever. Easter 1916 was a moment when Irish nationalism joined forces with a revolutionary cultural and language movement to forge an irresistible campaign towards self determination.
“It is important that the Irish people have the opportunity to come together and celebrate and have pride in Ireland’s independence, and to honour those who gave their lives so that the dream of self-determination could become a reality.
“Ireland 2016 is a year of reflection and engagement for everyone on this island,” Mr Kenny said.
READ MORE: Rebels, not royalty, to take centre stage at 1916 Rising events
Read more of today’s news here |
Eleanor Hall reported this story on Tuesday, December 3, 2013 12:26:00
ELEANOR HALL: While the Federal Government focuses its climate policy energies on repealing the carbon tax, a book published today paints a terrifying picture of a world that's four degrees warmer and recommends a dramatic increase in Australia's carbon reduction target.*
The book's editor is Associate Professor of Environmental Policy at Melbourne University, Dr Peter Christoff.*
He says he will meet Australian politicians from all parties to stress the urgency of the problem.
He joined me from Melbourne this morning.
Professor Christoff, what do you say to those who say it's simply alarmist to be talking about four degrees of global warming, twice the level that world leaders have identified as dangerous, and are working to keep below.
PETER CHRISTOFF: Well, two years ago or four years ago, it would have been regarded as science fiction to think about a world heading in that direction. But frankly, given the pace of negotiations and the projections that are being made on current levels of emissions and also projected changes to those emissions, four degrees is pretty much about the centre figure that is being projected by the IPCC, the scientific body looking at climate change.
So four degrees unfortunately is now a very realistic prospect by the end of this century.
ELEANOR HALL: You say we should use the best available evidence. What does it tell us about the earliest possible date we'd be looking at a four degree warmer world?
PETER CHRISTOFF: Well a great deal depends on the rate at which emissions either increase or decline. If those emissions increase, then we're looking at four degrees being perhaps as early as 2070. If they decline, but not sufficiently, then we're looking at around the end of this century.
Of course that doesn't mean that that's when the warming stops. Warming would continue to occur for some time, for some centuries after that. But at this stage that's the projection that we're looking at.
ELEANOR HALL: The planet has warmed only about 0.8 of a degree since the industrial revolution. The latest IPCC report shows the pace of warming has actually stabilised in recent years. Isn't this just too extreme an analysis to be taken seriously?
PETER CHRISTOFF: Look, the stabilisation that has occurred at the moment is regarded by most climate scientists as temporary. These sort of projections that we are now looking at the moment are not alarmist at all. I think they're actually probably conservative under the circumstances. They don't factor in a number of other feedbacks which may occur as warming continues and as we move past certain tipping points.
ELEANOR HALL: So if this four degrees of warming or worse were to take place, which parts of the globe, which populations, would be most at risk?
PETER CHRISTOFF: You'd probably have to say that most parts of the globe would be at risk. That's four degrees of average warming, but there would be warming that is in excess of that as you move towards the polar regions in both hemispheres.
You've got to say that Australia as a country which has always had a fairly fragile environment, would be one of the continents and one of the countries most at risk. Certainly it's the most vulnerable of the industrialised countries.
But then you have continents like the Indian subcontinent and also China, which are very vulnerable because of their large populations who are extremely susceptible to changes in drought and therefore in food availability.
ELEANOR HALL: What is the most frightening aspect for you of a four degree warmer world?
PETER CHRISTOFF: Oh look, that's a terrible question to which one only has to give a terrible answer. There are a set of compounding problems that emerge when you start moving towards four degrees. You start to see a world in which there are substantial extinctions.
The oceans have become warmer, are becoming more acidic. So there's a very significant chance of the collapse of significant marine ecosystems like coral reefs, the Great Barrier Reef, for example, is probably doomed when you get to four degrees. There are very substantial problems with food availability planet-wide and in a country like Australia which used to be capable of producing a surplus of food, by four degrees, would probably be facing food security problems with a larger population, but also a hungrier population.
And then you have the issues of extreme weather events, floods, more intense storms, bushfires, all these things particularly in the Australian context, I think leave us with a shatteringly different sense of what Australian can and would be like.
ELEANOR HALL: The physical effects are one part of this. What could the changes in the resource availability then mean for security? Will it inevitably mean more wars?
PETER CHRISTOFF: The projections are at four degrees that you would have significant displacement of population. If you have mass hunger occurring, populations will move to try and find food. Most of those movements, and the projections go from 65 to 250 million people by the end of this century. Most of those movements are likely to occur with countries, but there would be also the prospect of people moving over their borders and looking for resources elsewhere.
And how the world begins to handle a problem of that magnitude I think is something that we can only begin to contemplate. One doesn't know whether it would lead to more conflict. It certainly would lead to problems. I don't think we can understand what a world that looks like the one that's being projected looks like or how we're going to react to it. It's beyond human experience.
ELEANOR HALL: This sounds like a doomsday scenario. Could humans adapt to a four degree warming of the planet?
PETER CHRISTOFF: Well, humans are an extraordinarily adaptable species but if you're looking at a population of seven billion people trying to adapt to a world in which there's less water and less food, one would have to say that the prospects for an adaptation that would leave life looking roughly like it does for many people at this point in time is virtually impossible.
So there are already billions of people living in poverty or in water-stressed and food-stressed circumstances. In a four degree world, their situation would only get extremely worse. And even in extremely wealthy countries like Australia, adaptation I think would be very, very difficult to countenance.
There would clearly be some form of adaptation, but it wouldn't be life as we understand it at this point in time.
ELEANOR HALL: You say that Australia could be one of the most vulnerable continents. Where do you expect to see the worst effects in Australia of a four degree warmer world?
PETER CHRISTOFF: There will be the extinctions of species. There'll be a very substantial impact on agricultural productivity. So the issues of food availability will change. We probably have the wealth and the resources to begin to deal with some of the issues of water availability and desalinisation plants and so on. Everyday life will be very substantially different. There are projections for example of what would happen to just average temperatures over time. So in Melbourne for example, we have something like nine or ten days over 35 degrees at the moment. By the time you get to 2070, that's about 26 days.
When you're looking at Alice Springs, the temperatures are 90 days over 35 degrees now, 180 by 2070. And then you get to places like Darwin, which would move from 11 days to 308. You end up with parts of Australia which are virtually unliveable. And the projections are for example, that while Alice Springs would resemble the Sudan, Darwin will resemble like no place on earth.
ELEANOR HALL: What action would you like to see from policy makers as a result of your book?*
PETER CHRISTOFF: The clearest thing that this report suggests is that our current settings, current targets, and our current policies are inadequate. So Australia's committed to reducing its emissions by five degrees. We need to look at a much more substantial target, around 35-40, even 45 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020.
ELEANOR HALL: To go from 5 per cent to 45 though, that's a massive increase. Do you really expect the current government to take something like that seriously?
PETER CHRISTOFF: Well clearly there's a huge gap between our current political settings and what the science is suggesting we need to do. But at the end of the day if you look at the economic, the social and environmental outcomes, there has to be a bit of a reality check and I think that nature is going to give us that.
ELEANOR HALL: A 45 per cent reduction, what would be the cost of bringing that about. I mean, British economist Nicholas Stern's analysis that it would cost 1 per cent of GDP globally is now well out of date, isn't it?
PETER CHRISTOFF: It is out of date. But it's not that far off what one could still expect at this point in time. We're talking about billions of dollars. But in terms of the amount of money that is currently spent within the budget on education or defence and so on, it certainly wouldn't be a dramatic tension for the budget to be reoriented towards dealing with this problem.
ELEANOR HALL: Peter Christoff, as we've been going through this conversation you're reeling off statistics that really are quite extraordinary. How worried are you that we could actually reach four degrees of warming?
PETER CHRISTOFF: Extremely worried. We haven't seen the sort of focus and we haven't seen the sort of effort that's required to avoid exceeding two degrees in international negotiations, nor in Australia for some time. And I think that under the circumstances, unless there is a change, I think that the likelihood is that we will head towards four degrees, or more precisely that in 10 or 20 years time we'll start to panic and start to really begin to move very, very quickly to reduce emissions. But under those circumstances it will much more expensive and probably much less effective set of policies that we put in place.
ELEANOR HALL: Professor Christoff, thanks very much for joining us.
PETER CHRISTOFF: Thanks Eleanor.
ELEANOR HALL: That's Melbourne University's Dr Peter Christoff. He's the editor of; Four Degrees of Global Warming: Australia in a Hot World.*
EDITOR’S NOTE: (5 December 2013): The original broadcast incorrectly identified the publication Four Degrees of Global Warming: Australia in a Hot World as a report. The transcript has been amended. |
The kids are so excited that school will be out for the summer, they don’t realize that it becomes some parents’ worst nightmares. Finding affordable fun for the kiddos is sometimes a challenge. Luckily, the Southside of Hampton Roads has more opportunities than you’d ever imagine. There is something for everyone waiting to be experienced.
*Writer’s note: There are many, many camps on the Southside, and this list is not meant to be exhaustive. If you know of a great camp, feel free to add the information to the comments. In addition, there are wonderful camps on the Peninsula and on the Eastern Shore; this article was only meant to cover those on the Southside. Happy camping!
Outdoorsy and Wild
Big Blue Sailing Academy
Join ODU Sailing for a camp that focuses on just that. Ages 10-16 are welcome.
Grubb Grove Horse Farm
Ages 7-14 can experience the farm life at this camp in Chesapeake.
Hunt Club Farm
This camp offers both full day camps for ages 6-12 and half day camps for ages 4-6.
Nauticus
Your kids can join Sail Nauticus for a very special camp. Children 10-15 can learn to sail and more at Knot Your Average Summer Camp.
The Barn Life
Kids will enjoy this farm in Pungo as they learn to ride horses at Horse Lovers Forever Summer Camp.
Triple R Ranch
This 370 acre working ranch in Chesapeake is a great way to experience the outdoors.
Virginia Aquarium
Dive into the knowledge of the ocean with many different weeks of themed camps.
Virginia Beach SPCA
Spots go quickly for this one, so register early. Kids get a behind-the-scene look at an animal shelter, enjoy field trips, and get hands-on learning experiences.
Virginia Zoo
Go on a summer safari with the Zoo. There are many weeks to choose from. Members receive a discount.
YMCA South Hampton Roads
The Y offers Camp Red Feather for those who want a more woodsy experience. On the grounds of Virginia Wesleyan (in the woods), your kids will have adventures in archery, climbing, fishing, boating, and more. Members can receive a discount on the price of camp.
Future Artists, Thespians, and Musicians
American Theater and the Virginia Stage Company
Theatre Camp: Tales from a Garbage Dump, meant for ages 9-14, is a cool collaboration. Scroll down on their page to read about this one.
Chrysler Museum of Art
The Chrysler Museum offers both a Museum Kids’ Camp for ages 7-10 and a Teen Hot Glass Camp at the Glass Studio for ages 13-17. Pay less if you become a member of the museum.
Crispus Attucks Cultural Center
Check out the Summer Arts Program for ages 6-18 by scrolling down on their page.
d’Art Center
Camp can get messy in a very creative way at the d’Art Center.
Generic Theater for Kids
Your child can be a part of Music Theater camp or Acting for Stage & TV/Movies.
Governor’s School for the Arts and the Virginia Stage Company
Join these two great organizations for summer fun on stage. This camp is meant for ages 12-15.
Hermitage Museum & Gardens
This beautiful place has both a Kids Summer Art Camp for those 6-10 years old and a Young Artists Summer Camp for those 11-14. You can get a discount on the price of the camp if you’re a member.
Hurrah Players
Your kids will have a blast with the Hurrah Players at Theatre Camp.
School of Rock
Both the Virginia Beach and Norfolk locations offer musical experiences for your mini rockers. A listing of the Virginia Beach camps can be found here, and information for the Norfolk camps can be found under the Upcoming Events section here.
Suffolk Center for the Cultural Arts
In partnership with Young Audiences of Virginia, the Suffolk Center will offer two weeks of camp: One Art Camp, one Theatre Camp.
All About Sports and Dance
Ballet Virginia
There is a six-week program, or week-by-week camps offered.
Dominion Soccer Academy
Check out the Boys and Girls Day Camp for ages 5-14. They also have a residential Jr./Sr. Elite Camp for older kids.
Happy Winds Kitesurfing
Hang ten, learn how to navigate the water, and more in Virginia Beach.
Marlin Soccer Academy
Let your kids grow their soccer skills at Virginia Wesleyan College.
Tidewater Gymnastics Academy
If your kid is into tumbling, trampolines, cheerleading, gymnastics, wrestling, etc., this is the camp for you.
YMCA South Hampton Roads
There are opportunities to tee off with Golf Camp. Members can receive a discount.
Yogaville
Let your kids Zen out a bit at Camp Yogaville. This is a week-long residential camp – so Zen for them, peace and quiet for you. Win-win.
Nonstop Intellectuals and Techies
Engineering for Kids
These camps take place in Chesapeake and range from robotics and engineering, to toys and more.
Military Aviation Museum
Grades 4-11 can learn about World War I and II era fighters, bombers, trainers, and seaplanes.
ODU
The Virginia Modeling Analysis & Simulation Center at ODU offers camps from robotics to game development and more.
Suffolk Center for the Cultural Arts
In partnership with Sylvan Learning, your child can be a part of a week-long S.T.E.A.M. Ahead Back to School Camp.
Little Bit of Everything
Armed Services YMCA
Located near JEB Little Creek, this camp is open to everyone and offers various activities.
Children’s Museum of Virginia
Who better to create a camp for kids 3-15 than the Children’s Museum?
Kroc Center
Camp Kroc offers many weeks of summer fun. Members of the Kroc Center receive a camp discount.
ODU Big Blue Summer Camp
Big Blue camp offers various themed, week-long camps through the summer. In some cases, you can even add on swim lessons. ODU Faculty / Staff receive a discount, but the camp is open to all.
Norfolk Collegiate
This private school offers many summer programs that everyone can be a part of. Check out the week-by-week schedule to see the different types of camps.
Saint Patrick Catholic School
Camps at this location vary greatly; check out their schedule at the above link.
Simon Family JCC
Camps are offered for children 16 months through 11th grade.
Tidewater Community College
TCC offers different camps depending on the campus.
Union Mission’s Camp Hope Haven
Camp Hope Haven, founded in 1961, is a free week long overnight Christian summer camp program for children 8-12 years old and a teen camp for teens 13-15 (mostly from the inner city). The camp offers horseback riding, swimming, arts & crafts, bible study, a wilderness trail and other fun-filled activities. The six week program runs from June – August 5th.
YMCA South Hampton Roads
The Y offers many choices for camps in the summer. You can find a day camp at many local facilities at the link above. Members of the Y receive a discount.
Young Chefs Academy
If your kid loves to cook, check out the interesting themed weeks at Camp-Can-I-Cook.
Thank you to the generous sponsor of this post, Rose & Womble.
Rose & Womble Realty Co. was born and bred in Hampton Roads – our owners live and work here in the Seven Cities. We are a family-owned and operated business – with multiple generations working at all levels, from agents to managers.The leadership within the company is LOCAL – not out of state – but right here in Hampton Roads.
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Fair State Brewing Cooperative provides some of the best sour and mixed-culture craft beers in this market. That is not opinion, it is a fact. This Saturday, January 28th, they will be releasing 3 different bottles of beers with tartness, fruit, and acidity that will make your palate as happy as a beagle after someone spilled the Chex Mix.
Bricoleur #4
This is a dry-hopped mixed culture beer that clocks in at a very easy 4.9% ABV. There are aromas and flavors of apricot, lime, and citrus. This is a beautiful cloudy beer that looks a lot like orange juice.
There is a bit of tartness at the beginning that transitions to sweetness and then ends on a dry note . As you sip this beer, it has the elements of a sweet grapefruit. Just when you think it is going to transition into pithy bitterness, it veers right into a nice dryness. The acidity in this beer is slight and along with the crisp effervescence of this beer, it is pleasantly refreshing.
This beer is a mix of 20% barrel-aged beer and 80% mixed-culture kettle saison. The result is an approachable and addicting beer that would be a wonderful introduction into this type of beer for even the most reticent drinker. This will be available in a 750ml bottle for $14.00.
U-Pick
This beer is the result of a bunch of people picking 280 lbs of raspberries, hence the name, U-Pick. A beautiful vibrant red color; this beer turns an empty tulip glass into a work of art. The aroma is full of raspberry aroma. The flavor is has a nice amount of tartness. The tartness then jump starts your salivary glands into working overtime. This is definitely a beer to try if you like a fruity and tart flavor in your beer. 750ml bottles of this will be available for $17.00 on Saturday.
Raspberry Roselle
Fair State took their Roselle, a hibiscus sour, and loaded it up with the perfect amount of raspberries. This beer won the best beer of the night at last year’s Friday session of Winterfest. This beer is ab solutely tremendous. The balance between the raspberry, tartness, acidity and mouthfeel is spot-on in this beer. You can get a 750ml bottle of this impressive beer for only $12.00 at the Bottle Drop! That is easily one of the best values for a beer in town!
All three of these beers are fantastic examples of why sours are really going to be popular moving forward. Fair State does a great job of using their sour beer catalog as an inventive way to showcase ingredients. Whether it’s Bricoleur #4 showcasing Hallertau in dry-hopped glory or raspberries in the U-Pick and Raspberry Roselle, these beers will resonate with sour zealots and first-time sour drinkers alike.
A word of advice if you are trying these beers for the first time; give each beer two sips before making a judgement. Your palate will take the first sip to calibrate and acclimate to the beer. Then, it will be ready to fully grasp and analyze the flavors and aromas in the second sip.
If you like articles like this and do any online shopping, consider using our Amazon Affiliate link below. It doesn’t cost you any extra and we get a small percentage of what you spend to help keep the blog going. Prost! |
LOUISVILLE, KY—Saying that she had been using birth control pills since she was a teenager, 30-year-old Claudia Spencer told reporters Friday that she was now thinking about switching to an entirely new set of debilitating side effects. “I’ve been having painful cramps from the pill for more than a decade, so I’m thinking there might be an option out there that gives me excruciating migraines instead,” said Spencer, adding that she planned to consult with her doctor because she had heard that NuvaRing might work well at shrinking her libido and making her vomit. “I could also try an IUD, but I’m not sure it’d be worth it if I have to give up the depression I’m already experiencing from the pill just for the risk of a uterine perforation. In the end, I guess it’s just important that I go with the unbearable side effects that are right for me.” Spencer went on to say that while she liked her current anti-anxiety medication, she hoped adjusting her dosage might help completely destroy her ability to sleep.
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel on Wednesday launched a program to provide shuttle service for Gazans who need to travel to the US Consulate in Jerusalem — an operation that could ease one of the many restrictions it places on Palestinians who want to exit the blockaded territory.
Israel allows only a small number of Gazans to travel through Israel, mostly for medical care or other humanitarian grounds. It cites security considerations for the tight restrictions.
In recent months, it has barred Gazans from entering Israel for visa interviews at the US Consulate after some applicants fled into hiding in Israel or the West Bank to seek work. The restrictions have prevented several hundred people from applying at the consulate for visas to travel or study in the US.
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About 100 Palestinians were allowed Wednesday to cross into Israel and board two buses bound for Jerusalem. They were accompanied by officials from the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee, an office that coordinates cross-border movement with the Israelis.
Ahmed Ouda, who went to the interview with his wife and teenage son, came home disappointed. Hoping to visit his brother, a US citizen who lives in California, Ouda said the entire family, including younger children who remained behind in Gaza, were turned down for visas after his interview.
“We spent 12 hours, mostly without access to water and services, and we were rejected at the end,” he said. “It’s an exhausting process; thank God my young children did not need to come and experience it.”
Mohammed al-Maqadma, spokesman for the civil affairs committee, said Israel is expected to run similar shuttles in the future, though no schedule has been set.
“It could be two days a month, one day every two months,” he said. “I think this is part of the Israeli policies that we don’t know their goals.”
Wednesday’s pilot program suffered a setback on its first day, however, with the apparent disappearance of two Gazans. Travelers on the shuttle said one man fled into a taxi at the border crossing, while a second person did not return on the bus. The travelers requested anonymity, fearing trouble with Israeli authorities.
COGAT, the Israeli defense agency that coordinates cross-border movement, said Wednesday’s shuttle came after months of work with both the American Consulate and Palestinian officials. It said the program, meant to balance the needs of Palestinian civilians with Israeli security concerns, would continue.
“In the near future, additional shuttles will be scheduled on dates to be determined by the American Consulate in coordination” with Israel, it said.
Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza after the Hamas terror group seized control of the territory from the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. Both countries say the blockade is needed to prevent the flow of terrorists and weapons across Gaza’s borders.
But the Hamas takeover and the closure have had a devastating impact on Gaza’s economy, and tens of thousands of Gazans remain unable to travel abroad for jobs, family visits and study opportunities. Those who need visas to travel to the US make up a tiny fraction of all travelers stuck inside Gaza.
A US State Department official said, “We seek to facilitate travel to the United States for all legitimate and bona fide travelers, including residents of Gaza.” The official, speaking on condition of anonymity under department regulations, referred questions about exit permits to Israel.
The State Department requires people to schedule visa appointments online. The website advises Gazans to schedule an appointment over 60 days in advance to allow time to apply for a permit from Israel. It says the shuttle will take applicants directly to the consulate for their interviews.
The application process is arduous, requiring an Israeli security check and sometimes an interview with Israeli security agents. Israel says the checks are needed because Hamas tries to exploit the system to smuggle cash or goods across the border.
The new system is a far cry from a previous arrangement in which Israel granted Gazans full one-day permits, allowing them to go on their own. People would take advantage of the coveted permit to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, but in some cases, they went into hiding while searching for work. Gaza’s unemployment rate is well over 40 percent.
The new mechanism will strain the liaison committee staff who will accompany the interviewees back and forth, according to al-Maqadma. Over 400 applicants are still waiting for their permits to be cleared. |
Recently obtained footage from a surveillance camera inside Cook County Jail shows a burly guard repeatedly punching and kicking a prisoner in the head, even after the prisoner is knocked to the ground and curls up on the floor.
But nearly three years after the incident, the officer, Branden Norise, is still on the job, with a taxpayer-funded salary of $57,000 a year.
And he was never charged with a crime even though his boss, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, referred the case to Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez and his office said a crime was likely committed by Norise.
As Mayor Rahm Emanuel grapples with police shootings and other excessive force issues in the Chicago Police Department – and Alvarez prepares to leave office after losing an election in which her opponents painted her as a do-nothing on prosecuting cops for misconduct – the Better Government Association decided to examine alleged brutality by jail employees during Dart’s tenure.
Among the findings:
The sheriff’s office, led by Dart for nearly a decade, fielded 1,094 excessive force complaints against jail employees from late 2008 through 2015, the most recent period where figures were readily available, according to interviews, and records obtained under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.
The vast majority of those cases were dismissed because of a lack of evidence or the force was deemed acceptable, according to the sheriff’s office. But more than 140 jail employees in 99 of the 1,094 cases were found to have used excessive force or committed other misconduct. In at least 46 cases, guards were hit with suspensions of a day to a month.
Dart sought the dismissal of jail employees in 35 cases during the same seven-year time frame but so far only four officers have been terminated, while two ended up resigning. In recent years, 17 cases were referred to state and federal prosecutors, and six employees were hit with criminal charges related to excessive force.
Sheriff Tom Dart. Sun-Times file photo
Dart’s office referred Norise’s case to Alvarez for prosecution, but her office chose not to charge Norise because the “video showed that the detainee was the initial aggressor and that he punched the officer twice before the officer struck back,” Sally Daly, an Alvarez spokeswoman said via email.
The man beaten by Norise, Randall Brown, said the guard should have, at a minimum, been fired. “He did it to me,” Brown said in an interview. “He’s going to do it to somebody else.”
Dart spokeswoman Cara Smith said that’s what her agency tried to do – but was overruled by the Merit Board, Dart’s handpicked commission that rules on disciplinary matters involving sheriff’s employees and can reject Dart’s recommendations.
The incident between Brown and Norise occurred July 4, 2013, in a jail unit where new detainees are processed. Norise testified before the Merit Board that Brown was one of about 20 inmates inside a bullpen where medication was being dispensed.
Brown, who was in the jail on a misdemeanor drug charge that was later dropped, had his arms tucked inside his khaki jail uniform and apparently ignored Norise’s orders to take them out and sit down.
When Norise tried to remove him from the bullpen, the guard claims Brown resisted. The two scuffled and the video – with no accompanying audio – shows Norise hitting and kicking Brown even after he’s knocked to the ground and is lying face down on the floor.
Norise told the Merit Board he kept going because he didn’t “feel he had control” of Brown.
But a supervisor in the sheriff’s office told the Merit Board Norise punched and kicked Brown “approximately 5 to 7 additional times that were not warranted,” according to paperwork that, like the video, was obtained from the sheriff’s office.
Brown says he suffered minor injuries.
The sheriff’s department referred the case to Alvarez’s office because “we believed at the time and continue to believe [Norise’s] conduct was criminal,” says Smith.
Dart’s internal affairs unit sustained the excessive force allegation Dec. 31, 2013, and Norise was placed on unpaid leave. Dart wanted Norise stripped of his job, a recommendation that requires the Merit Board’s approval.
In January 2015, the Merit Board cleared Norise of wrongdoing, finding his actions didn’t violate department rules. He stands to collect an estimated $117,000 in back pay, according to interviews and records.
Dart filed an appeal in Cook County Circuit Court. A judge ruled against him last October, and Dart is contesting that decision.
Norise recently went back to work at the jail. Smith says the department plans to move him to an assignment with “limited inmate contact.”
Norise, 41, joined the sheriff’s department in 2011. He didn’t return messages from the BGA.
Dennis Andrews, business agent for Teamsters Local 700, the union that represents rank-and-file jail guards, says the Merit Board did the right thing, and he blasted Dart for not defending his employees.
“He treats the officers like second-class citizens,” he says.
Smith says “we definitely feel like more officers should’ve been terminated” over the years. “We take the decision [to recommend termination] very seriously. It’s extremely concerning when the Merit Board doesn’t agree.”
Merit Board Chairman James Nally declined to comment.
There are approximately 2,400 cameras at Cook County Jail, which is one of the largest jails in the nation with more than 8,000 inmates at any given time, and more than 3,000 guards.
The cameras have helped improve conditions but the “jail is not as safe as it should be,” says Alan Mills, executive director of Uptown People’s Law Center, which has represented alleged victims of jail guard misconduct. |
Four men aged between 22 and 35 have been arrested in the Paris region for allegedly belonging to a jihadist network sending fighters to Syria, informed sources said Friday.
The arrests by investigators from France's intelligence agency DCRI took place on Tuesday and the presumed leader of the network is a 24-year-old man, according to sources close to the case.
At least two of the other men went to Syria to fight for the al-Nusra Front battling President Bashar al-Assad's regime. A woman was also arrested but released later.
Three of the men were born in France and one in Morocco.
An informed source said about 440 people from France were either currently fighting in Syria's civil war, planning to go and fight or had recently returned.
Half this number were there at present, about 10 had been killed and between 50 and 60 had returned, the source said.
Last Update: Sunday, 17 November 2013 KSA 23:27 - GMT 20:27 |
(SP) – In the wake of the news that the Oakland Raiders are officially moving to Las Vegas as early as the 2018 season, the California Parole Board quickly acted to make it clear that Raiders fans will not be allowed to travel to Nevada in order to attend games there.
“Before any Raiders fans get any ideas about crossing state lines to root on their team and conduct all sorts of crimes, we decided to come out today and nip that in the bud,” parole board spokesman Gerald Patino said. “Raiders fans have one more season of weekend release and then it’s back to prison to stay.”
The news that the Raiders are leaving town was met with disappointment by the current fans in Oakland, all of whom are convicted felons.
“I haven’t been this upset until I was first given 10 to 15 years for armed robbery,” said Robert Faulk. “Then, after the news broke, I briefly thought I might be able to escape to Nevada and maybe knock off a casino, but the parole board obviously isn’t going to cooperate on that. This really sucks.”
Oakland Police were notified by team officials this afternoon before the move was announced so they could prepare for the angry fan reaction.
“You don’t want 60,000 pissed off violent felons rampaging through the streets without giving the police a heads up,” said team owner Mark Davis. “No offense, of course. We’ve appreciated the support we’ve gotten all these years from the local crime community.”
But Oakland Police chief Randall Stern said there were no serious incidents.
“Most of them are currently incarcerated because their parole period were over or they’ve been picked up on new charges,” he said. “The offseason is pretty calm around here.” |
Bob Stiller: EZ Wider Maker, Green Mountain Coffee Roaster, Spiritual Seeker Along with Burt Rubin, Bob Stiller created a signature countercultural company, EW Wider, maker of extra wide cigarette papers that held an abundance of marijuana, a drug that made people silly. Today he sells a drug that makes them more productive. Having followed the Zeitgeist, he now seeks the Truth.
By Michael Gross
Interviewed via telephone from Vermont in fall, 1998.
MG: When were you born?
BS: In ’43. I grew up in Mount Vernon. And went away to school. My dad was from Germany and in 1918 or something like that, was an engineer on a ship and jumped ship when he got to New York. He was a tool and dye type of person and later had a manufacturing plant for tubular heating elements. I think he developed the first steam iron and did a whole bunch of stuff in that area, but was focused on designing weapons and was draft exempt because of the manufacture of war-related tools. He manufactured and helped design some guns during the war. He was an American success story; his manufacturing facility employed about a thousand people at one time. He went public with the company and it was sold to Teledyne in the early 60′s.
MG: Was your mom also German?
BS: She was from Poland, I believe. She was a beautician. She had her own salon in New York on 86th Street. She died when I was around 13. And I went away to boarding school for high school. I am the youngest. I have an older sister, 4 years older than I. I went away to military school. New York Military Academy, which seemed cool to me ’cause they had a lot of sports and a lot of facilities and stuff like that. I graduated in ’61. I went from there to Syracuse, to study engineering.
MG: Were you a good little soldier?
BS: I think I was pretty angry. I was rebellious and I was always doing things –you know, I was into pranks. I was not a great student. But I always got by.
MG: Were you angry because your mom had died and you were stuck in military school?
BS: Yeah, there was a lot of anger there that I didn’t realize. I’ve spent years in therapy understanding it all. My father remarried when Iwas in my second year there, and that year I got into a lot of trouble, and at one point they told me to pack my bags and I was out. I never equated that to my father getting remarried. But you look back at it, you say, but of course. And it’s interesting how so many of our behaviors are driven by things that we’re not conscious of. And when I was in college, I used to drink and party and I didn’t take things seriously. I was not focused or driven, I followed my peers and I wasn’t conscious of my rebelling but I would say in hindsight I was rebelling and was not focused on my life and what I wanted to do with it. I was I think pretty immature.
MG: Rebellion was surfacing in the culture. Did you admire Brando or James Dean or Elvis Presley?
BS: Well I did ride motorcycles in college for a while. I flunked out in ’63 and then I worked for my father. I went back in ’64 and they asked me to leave again. Which was sort of unfair, ’cause I did have a C average. I had like four B’s and two F’s but I didn’t take two of the finals. If I had taken them they would have given me D’s and they just didn’t like my attitude. One was an electrical engineering course and it was like program learning, they were trying to see how much we could absorb. And I didn’t think I was doing that well in it. The other course it was more of an attitude thing. I had gotten an A in it the semester before and I had just not gone to class and felt I knew it all. And then come exam time I, you know, didn’t.
MG: Some people had a sense of hopelessness, a feeling of we’re all going to die then-did you?
BS: Right. With the uncertainty of the future, not indulge in the present moment. I did feel that.
MG: What were you serious about? Or frivolous about?
BS: I’d play basketball, I drank a fair amount and just wasted time. I wasn’t driven to make a statement. I was more just doing nothing. I shouldn’t say doing nothing, but spinning my wheels. I ended up going out to Parsons College in Iowa in ’65. And graduated from there in ’68. But I wasn’t studying with the intent of building a foundation for a particular career.
MG: Were you affluent?
BS: Yes. Well, let’s put it this way. My father had that business, he sold it, he gave me, let’s say $100,000 bucks. I paid for my school, I paid for things myself for a number of years. I moved to New York, I ate at Lutece, Caravelle, all those restaurants. I had an apartment, I had some Picasso and Calders, I had nice stuff. And when I ran out of money, I went to work. I worked for a year delivering yachts, and then I got a job at Columbia University working in their comptroller’s office in ’68 or ’69.
MG: Back up a second. Did Kennedy’s assassination affect you?
BS: Not consciously. We all remember probably where we were when we heard it. I was working for my father then in the Bronx and I was walking back from lunch and somebody said, did you hear. It sends shivers down your spine, and you realize the vulnerability of people and that no one is immune from violence. It’s like, they’re going to get you wherever you are.
MG: The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Dylan, any of that affect you?
BS: I enjoyed Dylan–the Rolling Stones I liked too. But I didn’t know their lyrics, I didn’t look for meaning in that. It just sort of was.
MG: Did the war in Vietnam affect you?
BS: Well I was conscious of staying out of the military. I stayed in school.
MG: At Parsons, is the ferment in the larger world seeping in? Have you grown your hair long yet?
BS: Yeah, I certainly had my bell bottoms and I had long hair. I got a motorcycle. I liked the power, the freedom, the closeness to nature, the sense of the wind in your face. We had a huge party in school, like a Hell’s Angels party, everybody grew beards and rented bikes if they didn’t have one. But I don’t think I was a leader, it’s just your friends did it, you know, we used to go out and party. I think it was just not wanting to conform and be productive. It was very self-indulgent. It was definitely personal but there was a cultural pull and there was a cultural acceptance of my personal orientation.
MG: Did you get involved with drugs?
BS: Not really. I certainly smoked some dope in college. I didn’t do coke till later. I didn’t do acid. I never really got into acid or pills and all that stuff. I used to do nitrous oxide, I used to have tanks delivered after college, in New York. But in college it was more drinking and some pot. But not much.
MG: The year you move to New York, 1968, was one of the most dramatic years in American history. Did it get to you?…
BS: I wasn’t conscious of being deeply affected. It certainly helped my attitude of eat, drink and be merry, there is no purpose to things. But I was conservative in my ideals, I’ve always been an honest, straightforward person. I believe in doing good. I didn’t go out with a different woman every night. I was maybe more insecure in that area. I was lonely. I got into tennis then. I actually started playing a lot of tennis, come to think of it.
MG: You were living a fairly carefree life.
BS: Yes. But I was running out of money. I got the job at Columbia in ’69. And worked there for maybe 2 or 3 years.
MG: How did you get into the rolling paper business?
BS: I had known Burt Rubin. Burt was my father’s partner’s daughter’s husband. And he had come up with the idea of putting two papers together, coming up with a wider cigarette paper. It was a thought, a what if and why don’t we? And we looked into the feasibility of it and decided to go for it.
MG: Were you serious dopers?
BS: What’s a serious doper? Burt smoked a little bit more than me but I would certainly not classify him as a doper. I mean he was a metals trader. I had worked for my father. I have common sense and I’m persistent, if I focus on something, I will get there, sooner or later. And we thought it was interesting. We were not totally sure that it would be successful. Because it was so obvious we didn’t understand why somebody else hadn’t done it before. MG: What was the environment then? There was already Zigzag rolling paper, Bambu, American flags, dollar bill papers, made for smoking dope. A network of head shops, right?
BS: Correct. We knew there was a market out there. There is a tax paid on cigarette paper, a U.S. Tobacco and Firearms or whatever department tax, so we had checked the taxes that were being paid to try to get an estimate of the market. I think we had seen also an article about Paul Rapp, who did the flag and dollar bill papers.
MG: Where did you go to manufacture them?
BS: To Europe. We wrote several to various countries, to the cultural attaches, and tried to find companies in Europe that would do this. We also tried to find someone in the U.S., but everybody’s paper here was a flax-based paper. They were interested in paper that burned very quickly to keep tar and nicotine ratings down for cigarettes, where we needed a wood pulp or cellular-based paper that would burn slower. And that was only available in Europe. And there were also no real paper converters here. The equipment here was not right for inter-leafing paper for booklets. So we ended up going to Europe and the first company that we dealt with was in Spain, a cigarette company, cigars, they had plants in the Canary Islands. And I went over there and it turned out that they were manufacturing paper that was wider and then cutting it in half. The paper was manufactured 80 mm wide with a glue strip on each side and then they would cut it in the middle and end up with 40 mm wide each. And they were doing that because this paper was generally for tobacco. And tobacco is a longer leaf and you can roll a good cigarette with a shorter paper but marijuana was a much more smaller leaf and it was more difficult to roll with a narrower paper. So most of the paper was manufactured for cigarettes and didn’t have to be wider. And we got them to manufacture for us.
MG: How did you come up with the name?
BS: We brainstormed for days, and a girl that I was seeing at the time came up with it. Connie, she’s in Greenwich, Connecticut, these days. She said, “I got it, I got it,” and then she said “No.” And we said “What?” And she said “No, no, no, it would never work.” And we finally dragged it out of her and as soon as she said it, Easy Wider, we thought that was terrific. We wanted a name that was a double play.
MG: One imagines a Cheech and Chong scene, but that isn’t the way it happened?
BS: We were very focused and methodical. Certainly Burt used the product, I used the product. But I don’t think we were obsessive dopers. We wanted to get rich. Yes, we wanted to have the best paper and the best product, to provide value to the consumer. But we wanted to make money.
MG: What do you do next?
BS: We met with one of the head shop distributors. We got our first shipment in and then he started really squeezing us. He wasn’t moving the product and I think was trying to take advantage of the whole situation instead of really working with us. So we ended up seeking our own distribution and we actually had a bunch of people from TWA, airline attendants who were on strike and they were crossing off the printed line saying, “Distributed exclusively by·” with magic markers so we could sell them ourselves.
MG: Were they using the product?
BS: No, I think we were focused on getting the job done, not getting high. Burt quit his job as sales increased and could support people, I quit my job and we were importing, shipping, and sales just kept growing, and we hired more people. We couldn’t get enough production from Europe so we ended up deciding to do it ourselves. And we bought a number of inter-leafing machines and a packaging machine and then we bought bobbins of paper in Europe and did the converting over here. I think we had the best plant in the country as far as minimum waste percentages and productivity. Our offices were in New York. We had 1 floor, then 2 floors then we probably ended up with maybe 4 more floors. And then we moved our offices and we had 10,000 feet of office space. And then we had the plant in New Jersey which I think was about 30,000 foot which included a warehouse and a production facility. The production facility was environmentally controlled both from a temperature and humidity point of view because the paper was very fragile and difficult to work with–and the bobbins that came from Europe actually had to rest for a month or 2 before we could use them. The molecular structure just had to realign itself. So we would have them sit in this atmospherically controlled room for 3 weeks before we would use them. I mean it sounds so weird, but we tried using the paper sooner and it just wouldn’t run right.
We did a study analyzing maybe 40 or 50 variables that we thought could affect the production process. And we went about seeing the effect of varying each one of those on the manufacturing process. We used to switch operators to see if it was the operator’s skill in making the adjustments on the machine, or it was actually the machine itself that was producing at a better rate. The knives had to be sharpened a particular way and aligned a particular way. It was about 4,000, 5,000 feet of paper on a bobbin. The paper would be produced in Europe on a 10-foot roll and then they would re-wind that to these bobbins that would be maybe 80 mm wide. And they would apply the glue during that slitting and rewinding process.
We looked at different glues. At one time actually we played around with flavored glues, flavored paper, strawberry, banana, and stuff so that people had a better taste in their mouth. One of the things we realized was that the paper was a little bit too wide and we started doing a little bit narrower width. I think that was one of the first things that we changed and went to a 1-1/2 size paper. And then we went to Joker which was another brand, and another paper called Roach. I think we also were the first ones to develop really innovative packaging. We really approached this from a business point of view. For a tobacco retailer, the space around the register is very limited, so we asked, how can we get our product there without taking up counter space and interfering with anybody else? And we came up with gravity feed dispensers, a little carousel-type rack that held four gravity dispensers with different products–like a double wide, a size and a half, and a Joker paper.
MG: In the mid-70′s you begin to expand the business?
BS: Right. Burt and I went to Europe together visiting other manufacturers, trying to get more production, and we visited Job company in Paris, and they were very inquisitive, like, how is it going and would you do anything differently if you did it again and it was very strange questioning. So we said well, if we had it to do all over again, we would make the paper wider yet, you know, it was still too narrow was. And of course we were then looking to make it less wide–
MG: –so you told them that to keep them out of your turf?
BS: Well we didn’t know what they were doing but it was none of their business-and they were saying they couldn’t produce for us. And they couldn’t produce that type of paper. And two months later, they came out with a paper that was 10 mm wider than ours. And we cracked up.
MG: What was the milieu like? Were there head shop trade shows? Was there a group of people who all knew each other?
BS: There was head shop trade shows but if we had limited ourselves to head shops we would have been nowhere. So we went to the tobacco and candy distributors. Actually we had trouble [getting into those outlets]. They were a little resistant to carrying them. Everybody knew what they were for. Because of resistance to the product, we developed a box with tobacco in it–E-Z-Wider tobacco, to legitimize the papers. And as soon as we got acceptance, we forgot about the tobacco. When we sold the company in ’80, we were selling I believe over 90 million booklets a year. Which was enough paper to stretch from New York to California and back twice in one month.
MG: Did the political climate affect your business?
BS: Well, there was a lot of resistance to some of our ads. We had a little trouble getting into some of the straighter magazines. I think we wanted to advertise in Psychology Today for some reason, I don’t know why. And they wouldn’t take it, and we were outraged that they would take liquor advertising and not papers.
MG: I remember your ads. They were every good.
BS: We had ads that positioned the paper against cookies and milk. And also with stereos. We had a race car that we used to race in the formula V, we sponsored Howdy Holmes who later was the rookie of the year at Indy. When they were going around the track everybody would hold up their lighters or matches. The races were a really big party scene.
MG: Aside from resistance from strait-laced magazines, did you encounter other resistance to what you were doing?
BS: We actually got kicked out of 7-11. We were in there for a couple years and then they decided that even though they were making millions on our product, they didn’t like the association.
MG: You end up with something like a 25 percent market share, don’t you?
BS: I would say we were there maybe in the late 70′s. Yeah, we were still growing.
MG: Were you aware of trends in drug use? Was that the sort of thing you kept tabs on?
BS: Not really. I mean we were aware of trends but not from a market size point of view. We felt the market was you know pretty substantial and were focused at capturing our share. We weren’t working statistics or research from the people point of view, we were working the research from who’s our competitors and what are the volumes.
MG: Did you have competitors who screwed up their business because they were fucked up on dope?
BS: I’m sure yes but those would be smaller head shop people. Anybody that we were really aware of, had to be substantial. The people that were like that didn’t make it. You know the people that stayed with their drugs aren’t here today. You explored it and you moved on. And most people that stayed, you know, didn’t make it.
MG: Do you…regret your involvement in the drug culture of the 70′s?
BS: I have no regrets. I mean we give it our best shot at the time. And I would certainly do things differently perhaps but I did what I did, you know, and that’s where I’m at.
MG: What made you sell the company…?
BS: We had some problems getting along. We wanted to do different things and go different directions and we ended up auctioning the company off to the highest bidder. We had differences of opinion that we didn’t have the skill set to resolve.
MG: You sell the company just as Ronald Reagan is about to become president.
BS: Right. Let’s say the spiritual guides were guiding us along. I would say it was time to get out and we happened to get out at the right time. It was destiny–or luck. Synchronicity. I actually wanted to retain the business. We auctioned the company off to the highest bidder and I thought I would have the most money. I was able to raise a couple million,a nd I thought I would be able to buy it. But Burt brought Rizla in, and they were able to get tax-free money and used that to buy the company.
MG: You end up splitting $6.2 million. That’s a lot of money.
BS: It was a lot more money then, yeah. I took about a year off but I was looking for something to do. And I wanted to do a consumable product. I was not much of a coffee drinker at the time and one day I had some really great coffee. There was a couple that had just opened a shop up in Vermont. I had a ski house up here. And this coffee was great, a different product from what coffee normally was–really good fresh-roasted coffee. And I knew that there was a huge market for this because people just didn’t know what great coffee could taste like.
MG: So you formed Green Mountain Coffee Roasters then? Talk about synchronicity! It was the dawn of the Yuppie era, the coffee achievers. Were you aware the culture had shifted and you were surfing the crest of the wave?
BS: I just saw that great coffee had a huge market potential. We bought coffee from around the world. Roasted it and you know packaged it. But I lost millions of dollars in the starting of this company. We didn’t do as well as I thought. It was expensive setting the plant up. It’s a process type of manufacturing where you don’t buy a small machine and then when you get a little bigger you buy a bigger machine. You know, it processes a great quantity at one time and that’s costly. We also had 12 retail shops but we’ve gotten rid of those. We also have mail order.
MG: Do you end up in financial trouble?
BS: In the first 2 years? It was borderline.
MG: Did you feelcoffee was becoming the new drug? Was something cultural going on with coffee?
BS: I think it’s an experience, I don’t think it’s a drug. I think it’s a fascinating product because it is spiritual in a sense because coffee can be energizing but at the same time it’s very relaxing and contemplative.
MG: Is there a relationship between the substance and the times?
BS: It just fits the experience that people are looking for. You sort of ritualize anything that you really enjoy. And I’ve enjoyed growing the organization. Our organization is very environmentally and socially involved. We have relationships with some farms directly where we have helped educate them on sustainable growing practices. We work the supply chain, we minimize our packaging, we’ve always donated money to a lot of causes, from building playgrounds to sponsoring seminars on skill development. We always took care of our people, we’ve always had that orientation that you do well, you treat people well and you provide a great product and value and you’ll always be successful. You know, if you just do good, it comes back to you.
MG: What’s the source of that impulse? You’ve pursued spirtuality, taken seminars with Deepak Chopra. Is that it?
BS: I think maybe I’m less ego driven. I think there’s more of a ‘how can I help?’ orientation, more of a connection to our universality than like a what’s in it for me attitude.
MG: What was the turning point?
BS: Well, after Deepak, I started meditating daily and I’m much more in touch with my spirit and your spirit, he says this, is the domain of your awareness of your universality. I’ve always had that orientation. We’ve been donating to the rain forest and Conservation International for like 10 years. We just developed a coffee that is certified environmentally friendly, not only organic but–see, coffee is a great buffer crop to a lot of the rain forests, it gives people in the community work where they can sustain themselves and it’s one of the least destructive to the environment. Banana crops, they throw the stalks into the rivers, sugar cane, they burn, a lot of other crops are more destructive so coffee is one of the best crops to buffer areas that are in danger of extinction, where they’re really focusing on biodiversity.
MG: I’m having a little trouble reconciling the guy who made EZ Wider with who you are now.
BS: It’s just an evolution. I enjoy helping people grow and making things work. I try to be at one with everything, to live my life in that zone of spiritual awareness, being aware of the present moment and how things in the moment guide me along.
MG: One of the things that’s been said about the baby boom is that it is a very spiritual generation, but that it will come to that very late in life. That it will become a mentoring generation in its dotage, that as elders we’ll be very concerned with morality and spirituality. Do you feel that’s true?
BS: Well, I try to expose people to it. I’m not saying it’s the right answer for everyone. But I think it’s great that people might have the opportunity to experience some of this and then embrace it or reject it, having known a little of what it’s about. I’m not maybe good enough at this to explain it but the world and life is a total system. At the quantum level everything is just energy and information. So that there is no matter in a sense, it’s waves, it’s vibrations. And our nervous system gives us an awareness of things and we experience things in a total flow of universality. It’s like something is guiding how things evolve out of a total universal consciousness. And things change over time through a universal awareness of things. It’s like when great discoveries have happened historically they might have been discovered at the same time in different parts of the world. How did that happen? Well it’s because these people are tapping into this universal knowledge of things. Sometimes the information is there in front of us for hundreds of years and then all of a sudden we see it. And it’s like we are evolving as a society to the tune of something that we’re not aware of. |
Glioblastoma-initiating cells play crucial roles in the origin, growth, and recurrence of glioblastoma multiforme. The elimination of glioblastoma-initiating cells is believed to be a key strategy for achieving long-term survival of glioblastoma patients due to the highly resistant property of glioblastoma-initiating cells to temozolomide. Resveratrol, a naturally occurring polyphenol, has been widely studied as a promising candidate for cancer prevention and treatment. Whether resveratrol could enhance the sensitivity of glioblastoma-initiating cells to temozolomide therapy has not yet been reported. Here, using patient-derived glioblastoma-initiating cell lines, we found that resveratrol sensitized glioblastoma-initiating cells to temozolomide both in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, we showed that resveratrol enhanced glioblastoma-initiating cells to temozolomide-induced apoptosis through DNA double-stranded breaks/pATM/pATR/p53 pathway activation, and promoted glioblastoma-initiating cell differentiation involving p-STAT3 inactivation. Our results propose that temozolomide and resveratrol combination strategy may be effective in the management of glioblastoma patients, particularly for those patients who have been present with a high abundance of glioblastoma-initiating cells in their tumors and show slight responsiveness to temozolomide. |
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was not subjected to a lengthy in-person background interview with the head of Sen. John McCain's vice presidential vetting team until last Wednesday in Arizona, the day before McCain asked her to be his running mate, and she did not disclose the fact that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant until that meeting, two knowledgeable McCain officials acknowledged Tuesday.
Palin was one of two finalists in the vice presidential sweepstakes who were interviewed last week by former White House counsel Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., just days before McCain introduced her to the nation as his choice. The other finalist was Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. One of the officials said Culvahouse was chasing down last-minute information about Pawlenty at the request of the campaign as late as last Thursday, the day McCain offered the job to Palin and she accepted. |
Sharp rise in cycling deaths and injuries on Welsh roads from 2013 to 2014
The number of cyclists seriously injured or killed on roads in Wales rose by 38 per cent from 2013 to 2014, according to figures released by Road Safety Wales.
According to the Welsh government statistics, there were 100 cyclists killed or seriously injured in Wales during 2013 and 138 in 2014.
Ten years ago, the annual average for cyclists killed or injured on Welsh roads was 70 (2004-2008), a rise of 98 per cent.
The number of casualties attributed to those in a car have fallen 28 per cent in the past 10 years. There has also been a drop in the number of children injured on Welsh roads, with no fatalities in 2014.
The dramatic rise in cycling casualties has been attributed to the general increase in people using a bike in Wales, with increases in those cycling for leisure and as a method for getting to work.
Pedal cyclists killed or seriously injured on Welsh roads
Source: Road Safety Wales, Police recorded road casualties in Wales, 2014
Year Pedal cyclists All road users 2004-08 average 70 1406 2013 100 1144 2014 138 1263 % change from 2004-08 to 2014 98 -10
Video: Cycling air bag helmet put to the test |
Is Turkey going to be another ‘illiberal democracy’? “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy” was the title of Fareed Zakaria’s much debated 1997 Foreign Affairs essay. Long before the Arab Spring, Zakaria was alarmed by the prospect of rising nominal democracies that did not have the politics and culture of liberalism, especially in the “Islamic world.” He claimed: “In many parts of that world, such as Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, and some of the Gulf States, were elections to be held tomorrow, the resulting regimes would almost certainly be more illiberal than the ones now in place.”
The so-called Arab Spring has proved what he said, especially in Egypt. Nevertheless, it is not only the Arab Spring and the Islamic world in general that poses a challenge for the future of liberal democracy.
After the end of the Cold War, we also witnessed another paradox: The rise of undemocratic economic liberalism. The rise of Chinese capitalism is the best known example, along with the small countries of “economic miracles” like Singapore and Dubai. Besides, the rise of Russian economic and political power has also shown us that the textbook case of “capitalist liberal democracy” is becoming mostly irrelevant. The idea that the dominance of capitalism throughout the world would also foster the rise of liberal-democratic politics and culture was pure delusion. On the one hand, the rise of economic liberalism has nothing to do with the rise of democracy and liberal politics, while on the other the rise of democratic procedures does not always lead to the rise of liberal politics of rights and freedoms.
At the beginning of the 2000s, Turkey was considered to be almost a test case of a non-Western democracy and was promoted as “a model country.” This was especially so for Muslim countries, as ex-Islamists had come to power through democratic elections and managed to realize a smooth transition from authoritarian secular modernity to a conservative but democratic one, while also realizing amazing economic growth.
Nevertheless, it seems that the so-called conservative democrats of Turkey increasingly lost their enthusiasm for democratization, after they managed to get total political power and started to dream of unchallenged political and economic power, both domestically and internationally. Recently, Prime Minister Erdoğan shocked many by stating his willingness to join non-Western alliances like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), rather than the EU. In fact, it is only surprising in the sense that Turkey is one of the key members of Western alliances such as NATO. Otherwise, he sounds genuine in terms of his understanding of politics when he states that “we have more in common with the members of the SCO in terms of values.”
The political values that the present government cherishes are very much like the absolutism of Putin’s Russia, as well as the model of economic growth at the expense of democratic rights and freedoms in China. The issue is not the rise of “Islamic conservative” values, but rather the rise of the values of authoritarian capitalist countries. Islamic conservatism is an important factor, but only so long as it serves to repress the democratic and liberal cultures of rights and freedoms.
Finally, more than any other example, it is Turkey that proves the point of the end of the grand delusions of post-modern social and political theory - being not only a rising capitalist economy and declining democracy, but also being a Muslim country with a failed attempt at democratization. Turkey is therefore going to be a very good example showing the irrelevance of the thesis of “market economy as political liberator” on the one hand, as well as the paradoxes of hip sociological theories such as “non-Western modernities,” “life as politics,” and “Islamic democracy” on the other hand. |
All games look and play great on Xbox One X. But select Xbox One X Enhanced titles are optimized to take full advantage of the world’s most powerful console. Xbox One X unleashes 6 teraflops of graphical processing power, making games perform better than they ever have. Maximize game performance with the speed of 12GB GDDR5 graphics memory, and see every frame with 326 GB/sec memory bandwidth.
Xbox One X – Description
Price: $499.99
Enjoy 4K Ultra Blu-ray and 4K video streaming
Play 100+ console exclusives, 300+ Xbox 360 games
Rely on fast, stable, dedicated Xbox Live servers
Experience premium Dolby Atmos and DTS:X audio
Works with all your games and accessories
Games play better with 6 teraflops
Stream and record clips in 4K resolution at 60FPS
See every frame with 326 GB/sec memory bandwidth
Relish 40% more power than any other console
Xbox One X Enhanced Titles – Update Available Now (see the official list at Xbox.com)
This list will be updated regularly as each respective publisher’s/title’s specific Xbox One X enhancements are available
(Last Update: February 22, 2019) |
When "The Big Lebowski" was released 16 years ago, it received somewhat mixed reviews and was a box-office disappointment. But the comedy, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, has risen in critics' estimation over the years and has developed a cult following.
March 6 is the anniversary of the 1998 film's release. Fans celebrate it as "The Day of the Dude," in honor of the easygoing philosophy of the movie's protagonist, played by Jeff Bridges. Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski is a single, unemployed slacker who likes weed, White Russians and bowling.
Enthusiasts mark the day with such things as bowling tournaments, discussions of Dude philosophy, costume and trivia contests and White Russians.
If the "Day of the Dude" sneaked up on you this year and you didn't quite get your costume worked out, you'll get another chance in April. Lebowski Fest Los Angeles happens April 25-26. For more information, go to https://lebowskifest.com.
The word at the center of all this, "dude," may come from "duddies," the Scottish word for clothes. In the late 19th century, extremely well-dressed city slickers or dandies were called dudes. When some of those Easterners came out to the newly tamed Wild West to enjoy a sort of artificial cowboy experience, the ranches that hosted them became known as dude ranches. The word's use probably accelerated with the rise of the West Coast surfing culture in the 1960s, by then meaning simply another guy, and it began to occur in movies and music with increasing frequency.
The word that was originally a reference to clothes may have attained a new level in the sartorial splendor of Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski, where it now abides. In modern slang usage it can apply to all genders.
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Americans for Prosperity is sending absentee ballots to Democrats in at least two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions to return the paperwork after the election date. The fliers, obtained by POLITICO, ask solidly Democratic voters to return ballots for the Aug. 9 election to the city clerk "before Aug. 11." A Democrat on the ground in Wisconsin said the fliers were discovered to be hitting doors in District 2 and District 10 over the weekend. "These are people who are our 1's in the voterfile who we already knew. They ain't AFP members, that's for damn sure," the source said.
The main event in Wisconsin, when six Republican state senators face recall general elections, takes place on August 9. However, Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity is sending Democrats in some of those districts absentee ballots with instructions to return them by August 11. Politico has the story of blatant vote suppression
A "1" in a voterfile is someone who a campaign considers a lock to vote for their side. So, Americans for Prosperity is intentionally giving hardcore Democratic voters bad election information in an attempt to trick them into not voting.
Disgusting, to say the least. Sign up at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin's website to make phone calls to get voters accurate election information. You have to create an account to take part, but you can volunteer no matter where you live.
Update: A couple of the voters who received the mailings have filed complaints against Americans for Prosperity to the Government Accountability Board. From a We Are Wisconsin press release over email:
Today, voters in Senate Districts 2 and 10 who received the mailers filed complaints with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, alleging serious violations of Wisconsin election law. The mailing asks solidly-Democratic voters to return the absentee ballots for the August 9 recall election “before Aug. 11” – the appropriate return date for an August 16th election. Charles E. Shultz of Hudson is a self-described card-carrying Democrat who received the flyer appealing to him as “a member of Americans for Prosperity who lives in a district where one of the eight senate recall elections are taking place.” As Shultz alleged in his complaint: “I believe I was targeted by this Republican group because I am a Democrat and a senior citizen.”
Don't forget to sign up at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin's website to help get out the vote. |
Under Activist Pressure, Portland Agrees To End All Corporate Investments
Above Photo: An activist calls for divestment at a Portland City Council meeting last week. The council’s decision to divest from all corporations was a victory for activists organized along intersectional lines. (Photo: Doug Yarrow)
In a sweeping move that follows a wave of divestment activism in Portland, Oregon, and across the country, the Portland City Council voted last week to pull all of the city’s investments in corporate bonds and securities.
The decision was a major victory for a broad coalition of activists who have pushed for the city to end its investments in corporations that have questionable records on the environment and human rights, including ties to the Dakota Access pipeline, the private prison industry and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
“As their decision stands now, it’s permanent.… We can rest assured in Portland that our money won’t be funding prisons, pipelines and the occupation of Palestine,” said Amanda Aguilar Shank, an organizer with the racial justice group Enlace, in an interview with Truthout.
Portland’s City Council had originally considered adding Caterpillar, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and six other companies identified by a volunteer committee on socially responsible investing to a so-called “Do Not Buy” list, but the council was unable to come to an agreement on which companies to blacklist from the city’s investment portfolio. Instead, in December, they voted to place a temporary halt on all new corporate investments until permanent decisions could be made.
After activists organized rallies and packed council meetings with hours of testimony, the council agreed last week to end corporate investments altogether.
Hyung Nam, a Portland public school teacher and former member of the Socially Responsible Investments Committee (SRIC) behind the proposed “Do Not Buy” list, said the vote was a victory for “human rights and climate justice.”
“[City Council] heard overwhelmingly from thousands of Portlanders by phone, email, petition and direct testimony that we can’t invest in the worst of the worst corporations, especially Wells Fargo, Caterpillar, Walmart, Nestle, Amazon, Chevron, ExxonMobil, etc.,” Nam said in a statement.
Members of the Raging Grannies, an activist group, testify in harmony at a Portland City Council meeting last week. (Photo: Doug Yarrow)
About a third of Portland’s $1.7 billion investment portfolio rests in corporate bonds and securities, including with Wells Fargo and Caterpillar, two companies currently targeted by divestment activists nationwide, according to reports. Portland will let its corporate bonds expire over the next three years instead of returning to haggle over a “Do Not Buy” list every time the city undertakes annual, state-mandated reviews of its investment policy.
Activists Find Common Ground in Divestment
Shank said Enlace and its allies started the divestment push in Portland four years ago with a focus on Wells Fargo, which finances major private prison companies that build and maintain prisons and immigration jails. Mass incarceration has taken a heavy toll on communities of color, making companies who profit from it targets for immigrants’ rights and racial justice groups.
The campaign in Portland against Wells Fargo gained momentum last September after a scandal erupted over 2 million unauthorized customer accounts created by employees under intense pressure to meet unrealistic sales goals. The scandal and resulting investigations prompted several major cities to stop doing business with bank, while Seattle made its decision to divest from Wells Fargo in part to protest the Dakota Access pipeline.
In addition to immigrants’ rights and racial justice activists, opponents of the Israeli occupation of Palestine were also pushing for divestment. Local inter-faith anti-occupation groups wanted the city to divest from Caterpillar for providing armored bulldozers used by the Israeli military. In its main report to the council, SRIC found that Caterpillar’s bulldozers were used to carry out violations of United Nations agreements “involving attacks on civilians.”
Then the resistance at Standing Rock to the Dakota Access pipeline captured the world’s attention and prompted international calls for divestment from banks financing the pipeline — including JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Activists also discovered that Caterpillar had contracted to help build the pipeline as well as President Trump’s proposed wall on the southern border.
Soon, Native activists were returning to Portland from the protest camps in North Dakota and joining local divestment campaigners in their effort to pull taxpayer dollars from the city’s investments in Wells Fargo, Caterpillar and other companies. It was this broad coalition of intersecting causes that finally pressured Portland to abandon corporate investments altogether.
“It became such a multi-issue push, with so many reasons to divest from every corporation,” Shank said.
Solidarity and Tenacity Pay Off
The council agreed to end corporate investments on a narrow 3-2 vote, rejecting a compromise proposal put forward by the city’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, that activists said lacked teeth and transparency. At least one member of the council indicated that he supported ending all corporate investments because the divestment issue — and the determined activists behind it — took up too much of the council’s time and needed to be resolved once and for all.
“To be honest, what it shows is that we moved them,” Shank said. “They did not want to do this, and we made it impossible for them not to do it.”
Top city officials were resistant to the idea of divestment. Along with City Treasurer Jennifer Cooperman, Wheeler warned that the city could lose around $4.5 million in revenue over the next year by switching from corporate bonds to lower-performing bonds, according to local reports. That money could be used for affordable housing and other initiatives, the mayor said.
Mayor Wheeler also suggested that instead of divesting from companies, the city could have a bigger impact on corporate behavior as an investor. Other critics pointed out that divestment has a much stronger impact in the media when cities single out a bad actor for a specific issue, as several cities did last year with Wells Fargo after the false accounts scandal.
However, Shank said Portland’s decision shows the power of coalition building in the Trump era and presents a challenge to the entire system, instead of just one corporation or another.
“I also feel like the way that, as a movement, we’ve come together to target the concept of making profit off of corporations: It challenges capitalism, it challenges the way our economy is working,” Shank said. “And I am very proud to be part of that challenge at a time when we are up against an ideology, you know, the Trump ideology, that says the government should serve corporations.”
As for the prospect of losing revenue due to divestment, Shank said Portland’s City Council is already considering a proposal to create a municipal bank that would allow the city to reinvest locally and with increased input from residents, instead of seeking returns from corporations that may actually be causing harm to Portland’s communities in the long run.
Shank added that activists in other cities should take note of the victory in Portland, which does not always live up to its progressive reputation, especially when it comes to issues such as police violence that have particular impacts on people of color. The divestment campaigns in Portland won because they chose to organize together along intersectional lines.
“What we need to be doing now is something that is broader and bolder and puts forward another vision of how our cities can function,” Shank said. |
boost 1.56 - a short overview
published at 07.08.2014 20:47 by Jens Weller
So, finally, we see a new release from boost. Boost 1.56 took a bit longer then most of us would have expected. The change to git and with it the modularization is the reason behind this. Both are very important milestones for boost. There are two new libraries and four new modules.
One of the expectations seems to be, that with boost modularization the dependencies get less, which they will. An overview gives this dependency report from June. Yet, the work on the modularization has just started. The libraries assert, core, lexical_cast and throw_exception have been moved to their own modules. For the end user nothing has changed, the boost 1.56 archive has the same layout like the releases before.
Boost 1.56 also brings two new libraries:
boost::align
boost::align is a C++11 std::align library written for boost. Its main purpose is to make align available to non C++11 projects powered by boost. Also the library seems to provide functionality which is not yet in the standard, such as an align_alloc.
boost::type_index
Similar to boost::align, boost::type_index provides the functionality of std::type_index from C++11 to boost. It also can be seen as a replacement, as for example it does not require RTTI. The library is a platform independent replacement for std::type_index/typeid. A first impression gives the example page.
Changes
A lot of work has been done in boost during the release of 1.55 and this release. So there are a lot of bug fixes, some even include breaking changes or ABIs.
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How to be Single and Grimsby star flirts with controversy as she makes reference to awards race row and inclusion of transgender titles
Baftas 2016: 10 things we learned Read more
Rebel Wilson, the Australian actor famed for her roles in Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids, has poked fun at the diversity controversies dominating this year’s awards season.
Speaking on stage at this year’s Baftas, Wilson – shortly to be seen in How to be Single and in Sacha Baron Cohen’s Grimsby – said she had been “been practicing my transgender face” in the hope of securing an award in coming years.
“I’ve never been invited to the Oscars,” continued Wilson, “because as we know they are racists.” She went on to praise Bafta’s drive to increase its mix of voters. “That’s what we all like to see in life, isn’t it?” she said. “Diverse members.”
Wilson, who was presenting the best supporting supporting actor prize, flirted with Idris Elba, saying that he made her nervous. “I’m programmed to want chocolate on Valentine’s Day.” |
Between 2000 and the second quarter of 2015, the share of income generated by corporations that went to workers’ wages (instead of going to capital incomes like profits) declined from 82.3 percent to 75.5 percent, as the figure shows. This 6.8 percentage-point decline in labor’s share of corporate income might not seem like a lot, but if labor’s share had not fallen this much, employees in the corporate sector would have $535 billion more in their paychecks today. If this amount was spread over the entire labor force (not just corporate sector employees) this would translate into a $3,770 raise for each worker.
Economic Snapshot The decline in labor’s share of corporate income since 2000 means $535 billion less for workers : Share of corporate-sector income received by workers over recent business cycles, 1979–2015 Labor share Jan-1979 79.0% Apr-1979 79.5% Jul-1979 80.2% Oct-1979 80.8% Jan-1980 81.2% Apr-1980 82.7% Jul-1980 81.9% Oct-1980 80.6% Jan-1981 80.3% Apr-1981 80.4% Jul-1981 79.6% Oct-1981 80.5% Jan-1982 81.6% Apr-1982 81.0% Jul-1982 81.0% Oct-1982 81.4% Jan-1983 81.0% Apr-1983 79.9% Jul-1983 79.4% Oct-1983 79.1% Jan-1984 77.8% Apr-1984 78.0% Jul-1984 78.5% Oct-1984 78.3% Jan-1985 78.4% Apr-1985 78.6% Jul-1985 78.2% Oct-1985 79.6% Jan-1986 79.9% Apr-1986 80.8% Jul-1986 81.5% Oct-1986 81.8% Jan-1987 81.7% Apr-1987 80.9% Jul-1987 80.4% Oct-1987 80.9% Jan-1988 80.9% Apr-1988 80.9% Jul-1988 80.8% Oct-1988 80.2% Jan-1989 80.6% Apr-1989 80.9% Jul-1989 80.9% Oct-1989 81.9% Jan-1990 81.8% Apr-1990 81.6% Jul-1990 82.7% Oct-1990 83.1% Jan-1991 82.2% Apr-1991 82.5% Jul-1991 82.8% Oct-1991 83.3% Jan-1992 83.0% Apr-1992 83.1% Jul-1992 83.6% Oct-1992 83.0% Jan-1993 83.5% Apr-1993 82.7% Jul-1993 82.7% Oct-1993 81.4% Jan-1994 81.4% Apr-1994 81.3% Jul-1994 80.6% Oct-1994 80.3% Jan-1995 80.6% Apr-1995 80.4% Jul-1995 79.5% Oct-1995 79.7% Jan-1996 79.1% Apr-1996 79.1% Jul-1996 79.2% Oct-1996 79.3% Jan-1997 79.0% Apr-1997 78.9% Jul-1997 78.3% Oct-1997 78.5% Jan-1998 79.9% Apr-1998 79.9% Jul-1998 79.8% Oct-1998 80.4% Jan-1999 80.3% Apr-1999 80.6% Jul-1999 81.0% Oct-1999 81.4% Jan-2000 81.8% Apr-2000 81.9% Jul-2000 82.4% Oct-2000 83.1% Jan-2001 83.1% Apr-2001 82.8% Jul-2001 83.0% Oct-2001 84.0% Jan-2002 82.0% Apr-2002 81.8% Jul-2002 81.8% Oct-2002 80.9% Jan-2003 80.3% Apr-2003 80.1% Jul-2003 79.8% Oct-2003 79.9% Jan-2004 78.8% Apr-2004 78.7% Jul-2004 78.6% Oct-2004 78.5% Jan-2005 77.0% Apr-2005 76.9% Jul-2005 77.2% Oct-2005 76.0% Jan-2006 75.5% Apr-2006 75.4% Jul-2006 74.7% Oct-2006 76.1% Jan-2007 77.3% Apr-2007 76.9% Jul-2007 78.3% Oct-2007 79.4% Jan-2008 79.8% Apr-2008 79.7% Jul-2008 80.1% Oct-2008 83.7% Jan-2009 79.8% Apr-2009 79.4% Jul-2009 78.4% Oct-2009 77.4% Jan-2010 76.4% Apr-2010 76.7% Jul-2010 74.9% Oct-2010 74.9% Jan-2011 77.1% Apr-2011 76.0% Jul-2011 76.0% Oct-2011 74.2% Jan-2012 74.6% Apr-2012 74.2% Jul-2012 73.9% Oct-2012 74.6% Jan-2013 74.3% Apr-2013 74.3% Jul-2013 74.7% Oct-2013 74.6% Jan-2014 76.4% Apr-2014 75.0% Jul-2014 74.1% Oct-2014 75.0% Jan-2015 75.7% Apr-2015 75.5% Chart Data Download data The data below can be saved or copied directly into Excel. The data underlying the figure. Note: Shaded areas denote recessions. Federal Reserve banks' corporate profits were netted out in the calculation of labor share. Source: EPI analysis of Bureau of Economic Analysis National Income and Product Accounts (Tables 1.14 and 6.16D) Share on Facebook Tweet this chart Embed Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website. Download image
As Lawrence Mishel and I discuss in our recent paper, the largest wedge driving the growing gap between economy-wide productivity and typical workers’ pay is rising inequality. Part of this increase in inequality is the shift in national income from labor compensation to capital incomes. Since 2000, this decline in labor’s share of income has become a significant contributor to the inequality wedge. The figure shows labor’s share of corporate sector income. Because all income in the corporate sector is either classified as labor compensation or capital incomes (profits plus net interest), this makes it a sensible first place to look for this labor-to-capital shift. |
With the Bears planning to move Kyle Long back to right guard, there are a multitude of options for center and left guard even after the team said goodbye to Matt Slauson on Sunday.
There are four primary candidates for the two starting positions, and if anything is clear it's that the Bears have raised the stakes for center Hroniss Grasu, the team's third-round pick last year. Grasu started eight games as a rookie, but no position on the roster has more challengers.
Free-agent additions Ted Larsen and Manny Ramirez both have experience playing guard and center and second-round draft pick Cody Whitehair played all over the line at Kansas State. By selecting Whitehair in the second round, the team made it clear he's expected to start.
The question is where? Chances are the Bears will have Whitehair work at guard and center starting with rookie minicamp next weekend. Some have wondered if he could play tackle, but his 32 3/8-inch arms are considered short for that position. I polled a group of seven general managers, college scouting directors and offensive line coaches and asked with all factors equal where would they prefer Whitehair. Five said guard and two said center, citing his intelligence and strong makeup. One front-office guy said his team nearly drafted Whitehair about 20 picks before the Bears.
Offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains and line coach Dave Magazu will have options, although things won't begin to take shape until training camp when linemen can put full pads on. The Bears in no way signaled they were giving up on Grasu when they signed Larsen and Ramirez and drafted Whitehair.
General manager Ryan Pace showed he will not hesitate to move on from free-agent mistakes, releasing safety Antrel Rolle after paying him $4.9 million last season. It's one thing to cut a 33-year-old veteran with no guaranteed money left in his contract and it's another to replace a third-round pick after one season. The Bears aren't doing that with Grasu, but they have options and have pledged the best five linemen will play. While Larsen, Ramirez and Whitehair have the versatility to play all three inside positions, Grasu is strictly a center. Players often make big strides entering their second year and Grasu will have the chance to show he's better and can play with more strength after being overpowered too often in 2015.
The statistics in the eight games Grasu started last season and the other eight games that were split between Slauson and Will Montgomery are similar with one glaring difference. I tallied the stats for Jay Cutler's 15 starts, (excluding the dud of a performance in Seattle in Week 3 when Jimmy Clausen was at quarterback) and what jumps out is the Bears averaged 4.22 yards per carry with Slauson and Montgomery at center. With Grasu, they averaged 3.77, nearly a half-yard less.
If the Bears had a high level of confidence in Grasu, they wouldn't have made three additions even while removing Slauson from the equation. When the season opens Sept. 11 in Houston, left tackle Charles Leno could be the only starter in a position he played for the team last season.
Another significant question on the line is who will compete to be the swing tackle. Pace mentioned Nick Becton, 26, who was an undrafted free agent out of Virginia Tech in 2013 and spent part of 2014 with Pace in New Orleans. Becton is athletic and has good size and length at 6-foot-5 with 35 1/2-inch arms. But the Bears are likely in the market for a veteran option.
Two other positions stick out as spots the Bears are surely monitoring for veteran help. They lack experience at cornerback beyond projected starters Kyle Fuller and Tracy Porter. Sherrick McManis was tried last season in the nickel before undrafted free agent Bryce Callahan took over. Fourth-round pick Deiondre' Hall will be in the mix, but if the team could find an option similar to Porter, who was signed last June, that would be intriguing.
Despite the signings of undrafted free agents Ben Braunecker and Joe Sommers, tight end figures to be a position the team is exploring. Zach Miller, Rob Housler and Khari Lee all have experience, but the only other player on the roster is Gannon Sinclair, who spent all of last season on the practice squad.
[email protected]
Twitter @BradBiggs |
South Africa
Republiek van Suid-Afrika - Republic of South Africa - IRiphabliki yeSewula Afrika - IRiphabliki yaseMzantsi Afrika - IRiphabliki yaseNingizimu Afrika - Rephaboliki ya Afrika-Borwa - Rephaboliki ya Afrika Borwa - Rephaboliki ya Aforika Borwa - IRiphabhulikhi yeNingizimu Afrika - Riphabubliki ya Afurika Tshipembe - Riphabliki ra Afrika Dzonga
National symbols
Administrative division
South Africa has a complicate history of local government. The country was created in 1910 from several English colonies, some of whom were previously independent Boer countries. In the 1970s several regions were made 'independent' as Bantustans or Homelands, but not recognised by any other country. In 1994 they were again incorporated into South Africa.
The former colonies were made into provinces, which were further divided into municipalities. In 1994 a large reform took place, with new provinces as well as a new local government structure.
At present South Africa has 9 provinces, which are in turn divided into 52 districts: 8 metropolitan and 44 district municipalities. The district municipalities are further subdivided into 226 local municipalities. The metropolitan municipalities, which govern the largest urban agglomerations, perform the functions of both district and local municipalities.
Heraldry
The former colonies, the bantustans and all provinces have used arms, as did many (former) cities and municipalities :
Other heraldry:
Tribal authorities Molefe Tribal Authority
Heraldic collector's items |
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Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
The New York Knicks don't grade out particularly well in the team-success facet, but they're appealing for the three other categories, plus one notable wild card: home.
Green was born and raised in New York, and he heads back East every summer to host a skills camp. The Knicks should try to keep him from leaving.
According to HoopsHype, the Knicks have $36 million to work with this offseason in an attempt to build around Carmelo Anthony. Plus, no matter which prospect New York selects at No. 4 in the 2015 NBA draft, that shouldn't change Green's expected value to the roster.
Langston Galloway emerged as the starting point guard—even if only in the short term—but he's not a long-distance threat. Theoretically, Tim Hardaway Jr.'s biggest contribution is his shooting range, but he posted a meager 34.2 percent clip.
The Knicks don't need to merely bolster their three-point arsenal. No, they have to find the first functional weapon, and Green would immediately bring spacing to a team that failed to understand that concept last year.
New York scored a league-worst 91.9 points per game last season. The Knicks desperately need Green to come home, and the franchise has the money to reward him handsomely for his efforts. |
Why this change was necessary
Like I've previously stated in an earlier blog post, the Hashtag system is broken; at least for services as big and active as Instagram. They are not very efficient at doing their jobs (searching for images nor helping people in discovering your images). Also, with their recent editing feature of allowing users to edit their Instagram captions, Instagram has most certainly seen a huge increase in people adding (spamming) hashtags to all their images like crazy - old and new.
By changing the way hashtag searches display and archive images in relation to their hashtags, they have now made the recency of when the image was posted the emphasis over the time of when the hashtag was applied to it.
Although there are obvious pros and cons to this change, I do feel like they are overall positive. It means that spammers and people abusing hashtags will no longer be as effective in doing so. Instagrammers' will also have to be more thoughtful about what hashtags are important and specific to their images as you only really get one change at this (when you post the image).
Brands and popular accounts alike who use hashtags to run competitions will benefit the most from the change. No longer can people tag all their old photos and have them count as "entries" to these competitions. This will encourage / force Instagrammers to create new images and content for Instagram competitions if they want their images to appear anywhere near the top. |
Indonesian minimarts will no longer be able to sell alcoholic beverages following a new government regulation that takes full effect in April.
The regulation, signed by Indonesia’s trade minister, Rachmat Gobel, on January 16, bans the small retail chains from selling Class A liquor, which contains less than five percent alcohol. This includes beverages such as beer, low-alcohol wine, and shandy. Previously, such restrictions were applied mostly to alcoholic beverages with over five percent of alcohol.
According to The Jakarta Post, the regulation was made in consideration of the “protection of morals and culture in society.” The new Indonesian government under President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has taken a tough line against social ills like drugs and alcohol, as evidenced from its stance on the recent execution of drug traffickers (as The Diplomat reported previously).
Elaborating on this point to local media last week, Rachmat said that the government had received growing complaints from the public about the availability of alcohol in their communities, especially from minimarket outlets. These minimarkets, he said, raised moral concerns because they had spread around densely populated residential areas – including near schools and around places of worship – and were lax about selling alcohol to underage customers.
“It is not good for the younger generation. The government takes the position that it will not allow these products to be sold in minimarkets to protect future generations,” Rachmat told Bisnis.com.
Public drinking is technically forbidden in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, but in practice enforcement is often spotty. Indonesia tends to allow local governments to regulate sales, partly in order to accommodate non-Muslims as well as foreigners.
Though the regulation has already been approved, the government is allowing a three-month period for vendors to act on it and hence it will only take full effect starting April 16. Knowledge of the new policy is still quite sparse, with four of the five minimarts The Straits Times spoke to recently not even aware of its existence.
Nonetheless, officials are already beginning to take steps to enforce the ban. Over the weekend, Indonesian media reported that Rachmat had said that his Twitter account, @RachmatGobel, is now open to receive reports on minimarts that violate the policy. Rachmat also said that if the mimimarts violate the ban three times, they will have their trade permits pulled.
Tutum Rahanta, vice-chairman of the Indonesian Retail Association, warned that the regulation may affect critical economic sectors like tourism. According to the association, in certain tourist destinations in Indonesia minimarkets can account for up to 20 percent of beer distribution
“Retail businessmen rely on the sale of alcoholic beverages to accommodate foreign tourists’ needs,” Rahanta said.
He urged the government to instead leave such decisions to local governments so they can regulate the sale of liquor in their own areas.
The crackdown on alcohol may also increase the circulation of so-called “bootleg liquor,” which has been growing over the past few years and has raised concerns among drug activists. Rudhy Wedhasmara, coordinator of the non-profit group East Java Action that treats alcohol addicts, told The Jakarta Post that over a hundred regulations passed by local governments since 2013 have been unable to stem deaths due to the drinking of “bootleg liquor,” which number around 18,000 a year.
“The upward trend in bootleg liquor sales is in line with the increasing number of victims who have died drinking it,” Rudhy said.
But Rachmat has said that a blanket nationwide ban is easier to enforce and remains convinced that it will not affect tourism. Interestingly, he referenced the case of Singapore, which is contemplating its own alcohol ban, as a way to justify what Indonesia is doing.
“Singapore, a country that draws many tourists, can issue a ban, and we are still left behind, even though we are also concerned about the same problems linked to drinking,” The Straits Times quoted Rachmat as saying.
The Diplomat reported on Singapore’s proposed ban here. |
Neymar’s move to PSG from Barcelona will make him the first player in 85 years to more than double the previous transfer record. An already inflated environment will feel the consequences
Bernabé Ferreyra, according to his River Plate team-mate José Manuel ‘El Charro’ Moreno, never used to let his status as the world’s most expensive player bother him. “Bernabé earned as much money as he wanted but he was not concerned with keeping it,” he said. “He gave other people a lot of money, without asking for anything in return. When he shook your hand, you could be sure that you had a friend for the rest of your life.”
But 85 years since the Argentinian striker moved from Club Atlético Tigre to the club nicknamed ‘Los Millonarios’ for £23,000, Ferreyra has finally lost his record. Neymar’s impending move to Paris Saint-Germain in a £198m transfer from Barcelona not only makes the Brazilian the latest name to join the list that began in 1893 when Willie Groves became the first £100 player after joining Aston Villa from West Bromwich Albion. The 25-year-old also becomes the first player since Ferreyra – who went on to score an incredible 187 goals in 185 appearances for River before retiring at the age of 29 – to more than double the existing transfer record.
PSG’s attempt to buy out Neymar’s Barcelona contract is rejected by La Liga Read more
Even to those who have become used to the spiralling costs of the market in recent years, the numbers are incredible. Whereas Ferreyra’s fee in 1932 – the first time a non-British player had broken the record – was 110% more than the £10,890 Arsenal had paid Bolton four years previously for David Jack, Neymar will cost a whopping 138% more than the £89m Juventus received from Manchester United for Paul Pogba last summer. To put that into context, the closest any player had come to beating Ferreyra was Johan Cruyff, who moved to Barcelona for £922,000 in 1973, eclipsing the £500,000 Juventus invested in Pietro Anastasi five years previously. Diego Maradona also came close on two occasions when he moved to Barcelona in 1982 and then to Napoli in 1984, although since then only Cristiano Ronaldo in 2009 (£80m to Real Madrid, beating Zinedine Zidane’s £46.6m in 2001) has got near.
Quick guide A history of highest football transfer fees Show Hide £1,000: Alf Common, 1905 The English striker joins Middlesbrough from Sunderland in the first four‑figure transfer fee for a player. £10,890: David Jack, 1928 The English striker joins Middlesbrough from Sunderland in the first five‑figure transfer fee for a player. £23,000: Bernabé Ferreyra, 1932 The Argentinian became the first non-British player to break the world record, joining River Plate from Tigre. £152,000 Luis Suárez Miramontes, 1961 The Spanish midfielder’s move from Barcelona to Internazionale is the first six-figure transfer deal. £1.2m: Giuseppe Savoldi, 1975 The Italian striker, who made only four international appearances, joined Napoli from Bologna in the first £1m-plus deal. £3m: Diego Maradona, 1982 The record was twice broken for Maradona, with his move from Boca Juniors to Barça and his £5m switch to Napoli in 1984. £15m: Alan Shearer, 1996 The Premier League showed its emerging financial muscle when the England striker, a star at Euro 96, joined Newcastle from Blackburn. £21.5m: Denilson, 1998 The Brazilian winger’s move from São Paulo to Real Betis was an eye opener, but Denilson never fully built on his youthful talent. £37m: Luis Figo, 2000 The Portugal playmaker’s acrimonious move from Barcelona to Real Madrid kickstarted the galáctico era in earnest. £80m: Cristiano Ronaldo, 2009 Real cemented their position as the game’s biggest spenders when they prised the Portuguese from Manchester United. £89m: Paul Pogba, 2016 The Frenchman overtook Gareth Bale as the world’s most expensive player in rejoining Manchester United from Juventus. £198m: Neymar, 2017 The Brazilian’s huge release clause means PSG have to dwarf all previous transfer records to get their man.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether Neymar’s record will last as long as Ferrerya’s. In 1949, Derby’s purchase of Johnny Morris from Manchester United for £24,000 finally ended his reign as the world’s most expensive player, a 17-year run that has yet to be beaten. Even after a record-breaking summer that had seen Premier League clubs already spend £650m on players – the fourth highest figure in history – by mid-July, it would still take something to overtake Neymar in the foreseeable future.
The inevitable consequence of the domino effect in the market means that a few deals may come close in the coming weeks though. An already inflated environment that has seen Kyle Walker and then Benjamin Mendy become the most expensive defender in history following their moves to Manchester City from Tottenham and Monaco respectively is redefining the parameters of the modern transfer.
Now, with nearly £200m burning a hole in their pockets and under pressure from their supporters, Barcelona will go in search of a high-profile replacement, with Atlético Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann the latest name to be linked. They are also understood to have held talks with representatives of Ousmane Dembélé, the young France forward who performed a tribute to Neymar after clashing with a Borussia Dortmund team-mate in training over the weekend. Both would usually command fees in or around the £100m mark, yet the cost of players has never been more relative.
Neymar to PSG: how money and Messi led to the sale of the century | Sid Lowe Read more
Barça’s pursuit of Philippe Coutinho from Liverpool, who were considering paying £70m for Naby Keïta despite the midfielder having played only one season for RB Leipzig in the Bundesliga, is a case in point. Reports of an improved £89m bid for the Brazilian this week have been denied by Liverpool, with Jürgen Klopp once more reiterating that his playmaker was not for sale. In the current market, and with the player having signed a new five-year contract in January, they could justifiably hold out for a fee way in excess of £100m.
But the landscape has changed and player power will always be victorious in the end. Neymar is believed to have been convinced of the need to leave Barcelona by his father, who coincidentally stands to make a slice of around £35m from seeing his son make history.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Borussia Dortmund’s Ousmane Dembélé is among the players coveted by Barcelona and the asking price will increase on the back of Neymar’s deal. Photograph: Zhizhao Wu/Getty Images
Kylian Mbappé, the 18-year-old Monaco prodigy who has been chased by some of Europe’s biggest clubs this summer including Real Madrid, also happens to be advised by his father in a game that has become dominated by so-called super-agents. With Barça, who would love nothing better than to snatch the signing of the hottest prospect in world football from under their bitter rivals’ noses, having made contact in the last few days after Mbappé reportedly decided he wants to leave the French champions, they both have some big choices to make in the coming weeks.
Ferreyra certainly would not have known what to make of it all. |
The OnePlus 5T is one of our favorite phones at AP. It's a fantastic value, improving on its predecessor without costing a whole lot more. But there is still one unfortunate disadvantage to using one. Like OnePlus' older phones, it doesn't support the correct DRM level for HD playback on services such as Netflix. But OnePlus has promised us that this will be corrected in the future for the OnePlus 5 and 5T.
We first learned about the DRM deficiency a bit over two weeks ago (when I got mine and checked the DRM level), and we immediately reached out to OnePlus for more information. We got a quick comment from the company just yesterday. Initially, we were hoping to wait for some additional information, but since The Verge reported on the subject earlier today, we've decided to post what we have now and update this story with more details as we get them.
DRM data reported by DRM Info on the OnePlus 5T (left), and OnePlus 3 (right).
For the unfamiliar, Netflix makes use of Google's Widevine DRM to play content. Previously, OnePlus' devices were only certified for the "L3" security level, which blocked them from playing back content at higher resolutions. Higher certifications require more secure implementations for content processing and control—ostensibly to protect the copyright holder—and Level 1 requires that all of these operations happen in a so-called "Trusted Execution Environment," (or TEE) which isn't implemented on the OnePlus 5 or 5T.
To be clear, this isn't a OnePlus-exclusive problem. Other devices at similar prices, such as ZTE's Axon 7, don't support anything beyond Level 3 either. This also isn't a new issue for OnePlus, as every phone the company has ever made has only had a Level 3 security level in Widevine. In comparison, though, most flagship devices support Google's Widevine DRM at Level 1, which does allow for HD playback.
For comparison, the same DRM data reported on an OG Pixel XL with an "L1" security level.
We were told both yesterday and today by a representative from the company that "We will be adding L1 support to the OP5T and OP5," which would enable the devices to play HD content from sources such as Netflix. So far there's no word yet for either a schedule or when it comes to other devices such as the OnePlus 3 or 3T. At this point, the company's older phones probably aren't included in these plans. But if we receive confirmation of that, we'll update this article.
Even if the older devices don't see any update to their DRM level, fixing this unfortunate omission on the OnePlus 5T corrects the only potential drawback the phone has in my eyes. The fact that the company is now willing to institute community-requested changes like this is also a great sign for the future and a positive thing in itself. Let's hope OnePlus keeps it up. |
The success in the business is solely dependent on the strategy and minds of the management working behind it. For a sustainable and highly profitable growth in the business, it is imperative that the business houses works with discipline and dedication and bring out a strategy to begin with the business endeavors and keep on reviewing the strategy once in each quarter of the business.
Once you have successfully carved out the strategy, you must put it through the following 10 pointer test. Even the big corporate houses have confessed that their strategy does not pass more than 3 of the pointers. Thus, evaluate the health of your business strategy with the help of following pointers:
1. Is Your Strategy Competitive Enough to Take on the Market?
In order to ascertain success with the business strategy, it is imperative for you to perform a thorough market / industry analysis of the same. Your strategy must have a differentiating factor, which will put your business house right out side the league and give you the edge.
2. Is the Competitive Advantage Still Feasible and Sustainable?
Is the competitive advantage that you have gained is sustainable enough? Are you placed uniquely in the minds of the customers? Can your competitors easily include your unique features in their strategies or is it something unique and limited to your organization?
3. Is Your Strategy Out Rightly Focused?
While developing the strategy for the business house, it is necessary to remain focused and not be swayed with the decision making. Thus clearly define and organize the strategy of the business house and make sure that it is concentrating on the narrowest level of the target audience.
4. Can You Out Smart the Trends With Your Strategy?
While developing the strategy for the business house, one sure has to pay attention to the current trends in the market, but in the words of Peter Drucker, a good strategy is not what keeps a track of the trends but is expansive enough to confound within itself all the predicted shifts and changes in the trends. More often than not, the changes in the trends are so slow and gradual, that the untimely response to the same may cause losses in terms of money and resources.
5. Is Your Data Apt and Meaningful Enough?
The data that a business form utilizes for the purpose of developing the strategies and taking decisions could be quite confusing and over whelming. It is required that the data you use is reliable and provides with meaningful insights on the scenario. Also, make sure that you don’t only see the figures, but the customer’s experiences behind it, which will empower you to come up with sound strategies.
6. Are Commitments and Trade Offs, a Part of Your Strategy?
Be clear that hedging is not a part of making the strategy. A good strategy requires commitments and convictions.
7. Is Your Strategy Strong Enough to Cushion in the Uncertain?
This point calls for a detailed SWOT analysis. Acknowledge your strength, ascertain your weaknesses, explore the opportunities and be wary of the threats. Your strategy must be based on your strong points, at the same time should be strong enough to cushion in the worst predicted scenarios.
8. Are you Being Biased Towards While Making Strategy?
Don’t get swayed by any factor while formulating the strategy, instead work towards the process with serenity and equanimity.
9. Do You Get the Full Support of the Leadership Team?
In any organization, there are a few believers and a few non believers. What an effective execution of the strategy requires is the enthusiasm and diligence of the believers. Make sure the leaders of the organization are believers and fix up the non believers.
10. Do You Have an Operational Plan Ready Out of the Strategy?
Any good strategy requires a working plan of action. Clearly define the goals and the ways to get there. Take the budgetary decisions and allocate the resources in order to turn the strategy into reality. |
Democrats may be spending themselves (and the country) into oblivion, but some Republicans are not doing much better. The fiscal irresponsibility is pervasive, appearing not only in the party’s national leadership, but also among state legislators. prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" / Oh, sure. Republicans have put up a good front recently, objecting strenuously to the flood of spending by Democratic lawmakers. Some of their horror is doubtless genuine. Spending during Obama/Pelosi/Reid’s (as yet short) reign has increased at unprecedented levels. The nation is facing record spending and deficits—and OPR have only just begun. But it is easy for Republicans to take a purely partisan stance against Democratic spending. If they want to regain the trust of voters, they must do more. They must demonstrate their ability (and willingness) to do better. They must not only reverse recent Democratic excesses, but they must also reverse their own recent excesses. Unfortunately, it does not seem that many in the current Republican leadership have the will to take such a stand. Consider the fact that Republican National Chairman Michael Steele has spent twice as much as his predecessors, as recently reported by Politico. It would be one thing if he were spending all that money on campaign ads and get-out-the-vote efforts. But he’s not. He’s paying for limousines, world-class caterers, private airplanes—even an annual RNC meeting in Hawaii. The exodus of Republican donors during his tenure emphasizes the recklessness of his spending—and the irresponsibility of anyone in Republican leadership who is not taking action against such lack of discipline. Why should voters trust leaders like Steele with federal tax dollars when these leaders are so thoughtless with private donations? But the problem does not stop with a few spendthrift national leaders. This fiscal irresponsibility extends even to conservative states like Texas. Naturally, the election year has prompted some Republican officials to make big, splashy, headline-grabbing displays of fiscal conservatism. Well, terrific, but these same officials also made many terrible, fiscally irresponsible decisions earlier, during non-election years. Voters are thus being asked to take a leap of faith: Trust that the conservative, election-year version of these officials remain. Hope that the big government, spendthrift version of these officials will not return after the election. In general, Texas has received much praise for being fiscally conservative, but let’s face it. Texas is being graded on a curve against states like California, New York, and New Jersey. Without the curve, Texas would not be earning an “A” from conservative economists. Maybe it would get a “C.” Texas legislators have changed the tax code in irresponsible ways . Moreover, state spending has exploded. As this chart shows, more than $320 billion in taxpayer funds could have (and should have) been saved if Texas had spent its dollars more responsibly in the years since 1990. As the chart also shows, the problem has been getting worse in recent years—despite the fact that allegedly conservative Republicans are in charge of state government. Many Republican lawmakers started out with good intentions. They meant to be small government. Maybe they were for a while. But too many have become jaded by too many years in Washington or Austin. They are not as effective as they once were. And they certainly have not proven that they can reverse the irresponsible spending spree, started by Republicans during the George W. Bush years and rashly escalated during Barack Obama’s administration. Some discontent voters and media commentators have noted the broken state of both political parties and have advocated a third party solution. An official Tea Party has some appeal, especially to fiscal conservatives, but its advocates should not forget the typical outcome of third party races, at least at the presidential level. Historically speaking, such attempts to circumvent the two-party system have been unsuccessful. The presidential election of 1912 demonstrates the difficulties that even a very popular third party candidate will face. The election that year was a three-way race among incumbent William H. Taft (Republican Party), Woodrow Wilson (Democrat Party), and former President Teddy Roosevelt (Bull Moose Party). The third-party candidate, Roosevelt, was immensely popular and soundly defeated Taft at the polls. But his entry into the campaign badly split the Republican vote. Neither man could overtake Wilson. Although Roosevelt and Taft earned a combined 7.6 million popular votes to Wilson’s 6.2 million popular votes, they won only a combined 96 electoral votes. Wilson won the White House in an electoral landslide (435 electoral votes). The strength of America’s two-party system can be frustrating, but for reasons this author has discussed elsewhere , it also provides the country with many advantages that should not be dismissed too quickly. For both philosophical and practical reasons, tea party activists should think twice before they attempt a “fix” that includes abandoning the two major political parties in favor of a new party. They would probably serve their cause best by working within the existing parties. The weaknesses of the Democratic Party have been the subject of much commentary lately, but the Republican Party is equally in need of revitalization. Both parties need young, fresh new leaders to take our nation forward. There are definite exceptions, but most incumbents have been in elected office for too long. They have lost perspective. They do not remember what it is like to live under the laws and taxes that they have enacted. With primaries quickly approaching, it is time to send them a reminder. |
How the dotnet CLI tooling runs your code
Just over a week ago the official 1.0 release of .NET Core was announced, the release includes:
the .NET Core runtime, libraries and tools and the ASP.NET Core libraries.
However alongside a completely new, revamped, xplat version of the .NET runtime, the development experience has been changed, with the dotnet based tooling now available (Note: the tooling itself is currently still in preview and it’s expected to be RTM later this year)
So you can now write:
dotnet new dotnet restore dotnet run
and at the end you’ll get the following output:
Hello World!
It’s the dotnet CLI (Command Line Interface) tooling that is the focus of this post and more specifically how it actually runs your code, although if you want a tl;dr version see this tweet from @citizenmatt:
Traditional way of running .NET executables
As a brief reminder, .NET executables can’t be run directly (they’re just IL, not machine code), therefore the Windows OS has always needed to do a few tricks to execute them, from CLR via C#:
After Windows has examined the EXE file’s header to determine whether to create a 32-bit process, a 64-bit process, or a WoW64 process, Windows loads the x86, x64, or IA64 version of MSCorEE.dll into the process’s address space. … Then, the process’ primary thread calls a method defined inside MSCorEE.dll. This method initializes the CLR, loads the EXE assembly, and then calls its entry point method (Main). At this point, the managed application is up and running.
New way of running .NET executables
dotnet run
So how do things work now that we have the new CoreCLR and the CLI tooling? Firstly to understand what is going on under-the-hood, we need to set a few environment variables ( COREHOST_TRACE and DOTNET_CLI_CAPTURE_TIMING ) so that we get a more verbose output:
Here, amongst all the pretty ASCII-art, we can see that dotnet run actually executes the following cmd:
dotnet exec --additionalprobingpath C:\Users\matt\.nuget\packages c:\dotnet\bin\Debug
etcoreapp1.0\myapp.dll
Note: this is what happens when running a Console Application. The CLI tooling supports other scenarios, such as self-hosted web sites, which work differently.
dotnet exec and corehost
Up-to this point everything was happening within managed code, however once dotnet exec is called we jump over to unmanaged code within the corehost application. In addition several other .dlls are loaded, the last of which is the CoreCLR runtime itself (click to go to the main source file for each module):
The main task that the corehost application performs is to calculate and locate all the dlls needed to run the application, along with their dependencies. The full output is available, but in summary it processes:
There are so many individual files because the CoreCLR operates on a “pay-for-play” model, from Motivation Behind .NET Core:
By factoring the CoreFX libraries and allowing individual applications to pull in only those parts of CoreFX they require (a so-called “pay-for-play” model), server-based applications built with ASP.NET 5 can minimize their dependencies.
Finally, once all the housekeeping is done control is handed off to corehost , but not before the following properties are set to control the execution of the CoreCLR itself:
TRUSTED_PLATFORM_ASSEMBLIES = Paths to 235 .dlls (99 managed, 136 native), from C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\1.0.0-rc2-3002702
= APP_PATHS = c:\dotnet\bin\Debug
etcoreapp1.0
= APP_NI_PATHS = c:\dotnet\bin\Debug
etcoreapp1.0
= NATIVE_DLL_SEARCH_DIRECTORIES = C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\1.0.0-rc2-3002702 c:\dotnet\bin\Debug
etcoreapp1.0
= PLATFORM_RESOURCE_ROOTS = c:\dotnet\bin\Debug
etcoreapp1.0 C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\1.0.0-rc2-3002702
= AppDomainCompatSwitch = UseLatestBehaviorWhenTFMNotSpecified
= APP_CONTEXT_BASE_DIRECTORY = c:\dotnet\bin\Debug
etcoreapp1.0
= APP_CONTEXT_DEPS_FILES = c:\dotnet\bin\Debug
etcoreapp1.0\dotnet.deps.json C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\1.0.0-rc2-3002702\Microsoft.NETCore.App.deps.json
= FX_DEPS_FILE = C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\1.0.0-rc2-3002702\Microsoft.NETCore.App.deps.json
=
Note: You can also run your app by invoking corehost.exe directly with the following command:
corehost.exe C:\dotnet\bin\Debug
etcoreapp1.0\myapp.dll
Executing a .NET Assembly
At last we get to the point at which the .NET dll/assembly is loaded and executed, via the code shown below, taken from unixinterface.cpp:
hr = host -> SetStartupFlags ( startupFlags ); IfFailRet ( hr ); hr = host -> Start (); IfFailRet ( hr ); hr = host -> CreateAppDomainWithManager ( appDomainFriendlyNameW , // Flags: // APPDOMAIN_ENABLE_PLATFORM_SPECIFIC_APPS // - By default CoreCLR only allows platform neutral assembly to be run. To allow // assemblies marked as platform specific, include this flag // // APPDOMAIN_ENABLE_PINVOKE_AND_CLASSIC_COMINTEROP // - Allows sandboxed applications to make P/Invoke calls and use COM interop // // APPDOMAIN_SECURITY_SANDBOXED // - Enables sandboxing. If not set, the app is considered full trust // // APPDOMAIN_IGNORE_UNHANDLED_EXCEPTION // - Prevents the application from being torn down if a managed exception is unhandled // APPDOMAIN_ENABLE_PLATFORM_SPECIFIC_APPS | APPDOMAIN_ENABLE_PINVOKE_AND_CLASSIC_COMINTEROP | APPDOMAIN_DISABLE_TRANSPARENCY_ENFORCEMENT , NULL , // Name of the assembly that contains the AppDomainManager implementation NULL , // The AppDomainManager implementation type name propertyCount , propertyKeysW , propertyValuesW , ( DWORD * ) domainId );
This is making use of the ICLRRuntimeHost Interface, which is part of the COM based hosting API for the CLR. Despite the file name, it is actually from the Windows version of the CLI tooling. In the xplat world of the CoreCLR the hosting API that was originally written for Unix has been replicated across all the platforms so that a common interface is available for any tools that want to use it, see the following GitHub issues for more information:
And that’s it, your .NET code is now running, simple really!!
Additional information: |
Recently, regulators around the globe issued a flurry of warnings about the risks of investing in an ICO.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
On the November 1st, 2017, the SEC warned celebrities of “anti-touting” laws for promoting investments without disclosing benefits they receive.
“These endorsements may be unlawful if they do not disclose the nature, source, and amount of any compensation paid, directly or indirectly, by the company in exchange for the endorsement,” said the statement.
It follows endorsements by William Shatner, Paris Hilton and others of several ICO’s. The SEC warned investors not to base their investment decision based on celebrity endorsements, as the ICO may be paying or rewarding endorsers.
The SEC statement follows their July ruling that coins, or tokens, for sale as part of ICO offering are a type of security and would be subject to regulation by the US agency.
Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA)
The CSA reached a similar decision in August and are now actively working with ICO creators, who can approach the cross-province securities agency for regulatory guidance.
Some provincial securities administrators are taking the lead in promoting the credible development of the blockchain economy. The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) created a “safe space” for blockchain startups with its OSC LaunchPad program.
European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA)
ESMA issued two statements regarding ICO’s on November 13th, 2017, one concerning risks for investors, and a second for firms involved in ICO’s. They believe investors may be unaware of the high risk involved with ICO investments. Further, the ESMA is concerned firms may launch ICO’s without EU legislative compliance.
For investors, ESMA warns that ICO’s are a very speculative form of investment where investors could lose everything. Coin, or token, prices are volatile and may have limited longevity. ICO’s also attract fraud and money laundering, and could fall out of the scope of EU regulation. If they fall out of the scope of EU legislation, investors won’t have legal protection.
Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) – Germany
Germany’s finance regulator BaFin said on November 9th, 2017, that investors should be aware of the “numerous risks” of ICO’s. As well, they note this new trend is “attracting fraudsters,” and there is risk of losing all funds invested.
“Due to the lack of legal requirements and transparency rules, the consumer is left on their own when it comes to verifying the identity, reputability and credit standing of the token provider and understanding and assessing the investment on offer,” said the statement.
BaFin issued a further release on November 15th, 2017, defining ICO’s and their specific risks comprehensively. They warn that stock corporation law does not apply to ICO’s, meaning tokens are not required to carry any membership information rights, control rights or voting rights.
They go on to say ICO’s need to obtain authorization from BaFin. These tokens will be treated financial instruments, and will be dealt with on a case by case basis.
Netherlands Authority for Financial Markets (AFM)
Dutch securities regulator, AFM, issued a warning against ICOs on November 13th, 2017. However, they see potential for blockchain in financial services, so comments are more reserved than other authorities.
This potential does not stop them from voicing concern, stating, “the risk of scams, combined with the hype around ICOs… is a dangerous cocktail.”
They also outlined the risks they are explicitly concerned about, including price manipulation and lack of transparency.
Financial Services Agency (FSA) – Japan
Japan’s FSA issued a statement on October 27th, 2017, stressing the high risks associated with digital tokens issued as part of an ICO process for corporate funding.
Their concerns included price volatility and fraud. They further noted the need for ICO’s to fall within either the Payment Services Act, the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, or both.
“There are possibilities that the projects in the paper are not implemented, or the goods and services planned are not offered in reality,” FSA Japan said in their statement.
They refer to whitepapers that accompany ICO offerings and state that investors purchase tokens at their own risk.
In other pan-Asian blockchain relations, both China and South Korea have banned ICO’s outright.
Should investors avoid all ICO opportunities?
There are many hundreds of ICO’s, some receiving millions of dollars in investment. It isn’t just amateur investors supporting ICO’s, either. There are many confident, successful investors seeking to reap a return as the projects come to fruition.
Ethereum’s ICO in 2014 raised $18 million in capital and rewarded investors with ownership of a digital coin which is gaining momentum in the digital currency market. Not all ICO’s, though, have demonstrated such success or return.
The key to ICO investing is to be aware and able to tolerate the potential for risk. Investors should thoroughly assess any ICO, its founders, technology, and the likelihood of success of its final product or service.
As well, investors should be aware of digital currency markets, as coins from ICOs are investible.
Image credit: bluediamondgallery.com
Buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and other cryptocurrencies on Coinsquare.
Buy Digital Currencies on Coinsquare |
By By Can Tran Jan 12, 2013 in Politics Spring City - Councilman Neil Sorensen of Spring City, Utah has proposed a requirement that all households in town have a firearm and be able to use it effectively. In the case of Spring City, a small town in Utah, a Councilman by the name of Neil Sorensen has proposed this idea: make sure Also, it has approved funding for concealed firearms training for the faculty and staff at the town's local elementary school. Sorensen's saying that by doing so will send a message to criminals. However, school administrators don't feel the same way as Sorensen. According to them, it's more dangerous if you have more guns. One Councilman said that it was too much to require all households to have a gun. The report mentions of an elderly couple that was killed at Mouth Pleasant which is near Spring City. They were killed on New Year's Eve of 2011. However, Sorensen didn't stop at the requirement of households. He called for the town to pay for In response to what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, people are coming up with their own ideas on how to prevent further gun violence let alone future mass shootings. Due to the circumstances of Sandy Hook, it more than reignited the talks of gun control. It brought to light once again an issue that divides a nation. One such idea that gun rights proponents have is to arm the teachers and other adults working at the school.In the case of Spring City, a small town in Utah, a Councilman by the name of Neil Sorensen has proposed this idea: make sure every household in town has a gun; to be more specific, Sorensen proposes that the head of each household. Sorensen proposes that the head of each household is required to have a gun and be able to use it. It is reported that the two of Spring City has the population of about 1,000. However, the council brushed off the idea of making Sorensen's idea a requirement. However, it agreed that Sorensen's proposal would be a “recommendation.”Also, it has approved funding for concealed firearms training for the faculty and staff at the town's local elementary school. Sorensen's saying that by doing so will send a message to criminals. However, school administrators don't feel the same way as Sorensen. According to them, it's more dangerous if you have more guns. One Councilman said that it was too much to require all households to have a gun. The report mentions of an elderly couple that was killed at Mouth Pleasant which is near Spring City. They were killed on New Year's Eve of 2011.However, Sorensen didn't stop at the requirement of households. He called for the town to pay for concealed-carry permit courses for those that work at the town's elementary school. According to research, as reported by the International Business Times, over 300 households in Spring City already have firearms. In this case, Sorensen's proposal is a bit redundant. However, the proposal is to encourage residents to get training in the use of firearms according to Sorensen. In terms of firearms training for teachers, school officials are being encouraged not to attend those courses. More about Utah, Neil Sorensen, Gun control, gun control legislation, gun control debate More news from Utah Neil Sorensen Gun control gun control legislat... gun control debate gun control laws gun control bill us gun control Gun safety Gun rights gun rights debate sandy hook sandy hook shooting sandy hook massacre |
Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pointed to a questioner during an off-camera briefing at the White House on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders banned cameras and live audio broadcasts from Tuesday's media briefing, so The Fix has annotated a transcript of the session, since it could not be seen on TV.
We'll continue the practice whenever White House spokesmen go off camera. To view an annotation, click on the yellow, highlighted text.
MS. SANDERS: Good afternoon. Before I get into the issues of today and take your questions, I first want to take a minute to acknowledge the 16 servicemen and women who lost their lives yesterday in a crash of a Marine Corps transport plane in Mississippi. As of now, the investigation into the details of the crash is still ongoing, but as the President said this morning, this is a truly heartbreaking incident. The thoughts and prayers of the entire administration are with the friends and families of the Marines who died in this tragic accident.
Yesterday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a report showing that half of the insurers who initially offered plans on the Obamacare exchanges have already fled the markets. I know that similar reports and announcements like these are coming out literally every day, but each of these announcements further reveal the failure of Obamacare.
For the millions of American families and individuals caught in the fallout of Obamacare’s collapse, these reports come as no surprise. They have been suffering the consequences of this failed law firsthand for far too long, and it’s time for Senate Republicans to step up and fulfill the promise they made to those Americans by repealing and replacing it.
Tomorrow, the Vice President will meet with another group of companies and individuals who have been harmed by Obamacare in Kentucky, continuing the nationwide travel he’s been doing throughout this entire repeal and replace process.
The President is determined to sign a bill that restores choice to the American people as soon as possible. Of course, while Republicans are working around the clock — and as Senator McConnell just announced, well into August — to address some of our biggest legislative priorities, and as Marc and I both told you yesterday, Democrats are looking to set a record for pointless and dangerous obstruction.
I know Marc went through some of the numbers with you yesterday but there are just a few that I find truly astounding and would like to reiterate. While more than 90 percent of the previous administration’s nominations were confirmed by a simple voice vote, Democrats in the Senate have allowed only approximately 10 percent of President Trump’s nominees to be voted on in that way.
As I mentioned, we’re coming up on the August recess of President Trump’s first term, by which point the Senate has confirmed 69 percent of President Obama’s nominations. Less than a month out from that same point, the Senate has confirmed only approximately 23 percent of President Trump’s nominees.
These numbers show the Democrats’ true colors. They're willing to play political games with the safety and security of the American economy and the American people, rather than work with this administration to solve the serious problems our nation faces. It’s shameful that they are shirking the responsibility of the American people to put them in office to carry out — to protect and promote our nation and its citizens. It’s well past time that Senate Democrats stop this unprecedented obstruction.
And with that, I will take your questions. Kevin.
Q Thanks, Sarah. At what point did the President discuss with Donald Trump, Jr. that meeting? Have you had a chance to get a sense of what he feels about this entire story as it continues to unfold? What’s your sense on that? And then a follow-up?
MS. SANDERS: I’ve got a quick statement that I will read from the President: “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency.”
And beyond that, I’m going to have to refer everything on this matter to Don Jr.’s counsel and outside counsel, and won’t have anything else to add beyond that today.
Q That's your words, at the end?
MS. SANDERS: Yeah, the end, I’m sorry.
Q And if I could follow up really quickly about the accident. How soon afterward did the President learn about what happened? What was the ticktock, in terms of that? Did he get immediate word or did it sort of go through a certain chain of events?
MS. SANDERS: I’m not sure on the exact process. I’ll have to check. I know he was aware of the situation, briefed on the situation, and continued to get updates on it. But I don’t know the exact ticktock so I’ll have to circle back with you on that, Kevin.
Jill.
Q Sarah, given these emails, you had somebody who was identified as a Russian government lawyer; Don Jr. agreeing to meet with him, being told in those emails that the Russian government was trying to help the President win the election. Do you stand by a statement you made yesterday when you said that “Our position is that no one within the Trump campaign colluded in order to influence the election”?
MS. SANDERS: I do. And again, I don’t have — beyond the statements yesterday and what I read today, I don’t have anything else to add, Jill.
Q And when was the last time the two of them spoke, Don Jr. and the President?
MS. SANDERS: I’m sorry?
Q Do you know the last time the President spoke with Don Jr.?
MS. SANDERS: I don’t.
Matthew.
Q Thanks. So the White House hasn’t disputed any of the following, which is that the President’s son, campaign chairman, and son-in-law had this meeting with the express purpose of receiving damaging information about Hillary Clinton and with knowledge of the Russian government supporting Trump’s campaign. How is that not collusion?
MS. SANDERS: Once again, I know you guys are going to get tired of it today — and not to sound like a broken record — but on all questions related to this matter, I would refer you to Don Jr.’s counsel and outside counsel.
Q But you’re not disputing any of the facts?
MS. SANDERS: I’m simply referring you to people that can answer that question, Matthew.
Alex.
Q Sarah, in January the President said that nobody in his campaign had been in touch with the Russians, and the White House stood by that statement. Was the President misled or was he not truthful?
MS. SANDERS: Once again, to repeat myself, I'm going to refer you to the outside counsel, and I don’t have anything else to add.
Q Sarah, can we ask you, why weren’t you interested in answering the question yesterday, and why the President is not answering the questions himself either through you or directly today? What changed between yesterday and today?
MS. SANDERS: Look, the President gave a statement on the matter, which I read to you. And like I've said, I don’t have anything else to add beyond that.
Q Is the President still of a mind that he would like the investigation under the special counsel and committees on Capitol Hill to work as expeditiously as possible, and he wants to cooperate, and wants his family members and his top aides here at the White House to cooperate?
MS. SANDERS: Absolutely. That's never changed since day one. We'd love to get this matter closed and focus on the big priorities of the American people.
Q So, Sarah, let me follow up. So by not answering the questions directly himself, or through you, is that in his mind expediting the investigation or is it blocking the investigation?
MS. SANDERS: I'm not going to get into the back-and-forth on that.
Maggie.
Q Sarah, when the White House says there was no collusion, what does the White House mean? What is the definition of collusion?
MS. SANDERS: Again, I've said all that we're going to say on that matter. And anything further, you guys are going to have to reach out to outside counsel.
April.
Q Sarah, the words “collusion” have been used, other words have been used, “obstruction of justice.” They're saying now that's not even half of it. It could be treason or perjury. What does the White House have to say? There are new terms brought into this; new serious — more serious terms brought into this.
MS. SANDERS: I don’t know how many times we'll have to address this.
Q I'm not asking about Don Jr. I'm asking about these words being brought into this equation that you want — this White House wants this whole investigation to be gone. There are new words now brought in.
MS. SANDERS: I think those new words are ridiculous.
Zeke.
Q Thanks, Sarah. I have two questions for you. First, asking specifically about actions taken by White House staff in the last 72 hours —
MS. SANDERS: I'm sorry, White House what?
Q By White House staff recently, to something that should not require you deferring to special counsel. Can you talk about who inside the White House has been involved in your response on this? Has the President been kept in the loop, the Chief of Staff and others in the administration? Are you looking into potential communications by others on the White House staff in regards to this matter or similar matters?
MS. SANDERS: All of the appropriate parties have been part of that conversation and part of that discussion.
Q Jared Kushner has apparently forwarded this same email. Is he still — is his security clearance still valid right now?
MS. SANDERS: As always, we've never discussed the security clearances.
Q And, Sarah, just one more. Yesterday you said you'd check back to us on the status of how the President views the U.S.-Russia relationship. So can you update us? Is Russia a friend or foe?
MS. SANDERS: Again, I haven’t had a chance to have that direct conversation. I've been a little preoccupied with other things, but I certainly will check on that, Zeke.
Major.
Q A policy question on Afghanistan and then something about the statement you just read. So has the President, through H.R. McMaster, notified the Pentagon that he is reasserting the cap of 3,900 additional troops to Afghanistan? Initially, it was reported that he had given the Pentagon, General Mattis, authority to increase the troop numbers in accordance with the strategy. It's now subsequently been reported that memos from H.R. McMaster said it's now limited at 3,900 and no more troops, regardless of the strategy. Can you tell us if that's true?
MS. SANDERS: I'm not aware of that specific memo, but I will check into the details of that and circle back.
Q Can you tell us how seriously the President considered the idea of using private contractors to augment U.S. personnel on the ground in Afghanistan as opposed to U.S. military personnel?
MS. SANDERS: I know that we feel it's important to get input from all perspectives, and all of the right people were part of that process throughout, in any conversation. Look, we've used contractors extensively over the last 16 years. Currently, there are tens of thousands of contractors that are bravely serving alongside a lot of the U.S. military and coalition forces. And we're finalizing the review fully of the Afghanistan policy, and it only makes sense to consult those leaders in the field, as well. And that's simply just part of the review process.
Q When you say the right people, does that include Erik Prince?
MS. SANDERS: I'm sorry, I meant from our inside, internally — all of the right people would be part of that process in terms of national security team.
Q Can you confirm if Erik Prince part of the conversations about the contract?
MS. SANDERS: I can't but — I cannot at this time, but I'll check and let you know.
Q All right. And on the President's statement — because you can talk about that, I would assume, since you read it to us — what transparency is the President applauding?
MS. SANDERS: I believe the willingness on behalf of everyone within the administration or anything beyond that —
Q But it's about Don Jr., right?
MS. SANDERS: I'm sorry. On any —
Q The statement is about Don Jr.
MS. SANDERS: I know. I'm trying to finish my sentence, Major. And anyone beyond that that might be asked questions, the willingness to do so and to be fully transparent and open and answer any questions through the correct process, whether that is through the special counsel or anything beyond that.
Peter.
Q Sarah, is the President aware, as he speaks about the transparency of his son, that he only released those emails after being informed that the New York Times was about to publish them?
MS. SANDERS: I'm not sure, Peter. I'd have to check.
Q Let me ask you more broadly about what we spoke about yesterday on the topic of appropriateness in terms of campaigns. Explain to Americans, who are asking this question today, why it's appropriate for a presidential campaign to accept a meeting with a Russian national after being promised high-level and sensitive information presented as part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump. Explain to Americans why that would be appropriate.
MS. SANDERS: Again, I'm not going to get into the details of anything surrounding this, and would refer you to Don Jr.'s outside counsel.
Q Do you stand by your statement that it was —
MS. SANDERS: I stand — as I mentioned earlier, I stand by everything I said yesterday.
Steven.
Q The Vice President, through his spokesman, said today that Mr. Pence is not focused on stories about the campaign, particularly stories about the time before he joined the ticket. That's been taken by many people in this town to suggest that there is a distance between the President and the Vice President on this. Is there such a distance?
MS. SANDERS: Not at all. There's absolutely no distance between the President and the Vice President.
Q Do you know if the President has spoken to the Vice President about this?
MS. SANDERS: I don't know if they've spoken directly about this, but I know they've spoken today.
Q One more question. There are lots of people who would like to know why this briefing was off-camera today. Do you have a rationale for it?
MS. SANDERS: As we've said many times before, I believe Sean stated back in December, we're always looking at different approaches and different ways to communicate the President's message and talk about the agenda. This is one of the many ways we choose to do that.
Justin.
Q I'm going to take two bites out of this apple as well. The first is with the stock market.
MS. SANDERS: Let's not break precedent.
Q The stock market sharply declined today on the release of the emails by Don Jr. And so I'm wondering if you're concerned that these revelations are going to impact the U.S. economy and if you want to offer any assurances to investors that see this news and they're obviously responding.
MS. SANDERS: Look, the President, as he has been, not just since assuming office but throughout the campaign, is focused on doing everything he can to strengthen and grow our economy, and that certainly hasn't changed today nor will it at any point that he's President, Justin.
Q And then, to go back to the statement that you read, the President says that he applauds Don Jr.'s transparency. I'm wondering if you guys would (inaudible) now that he's disclosed any other meetings that happened between Russian nationals and members of the Trump campaign toward that transparency.
MS. SANDERS: There's nothing that I'm aware of at this time.
Q Yesterday, you compared the meeting to Hillary Clinton's campaign coordination with Ukraine. Do you feel like coordinating with any — all countries in the world are pretty much the same? That there's no difference between Ukraine or Russia or any other country?
MS. SANDERS: I think it would depend on the nature. I mean, I can't speak about theoretical or hypothetical situations?
Q Okay. Well, just take Ukraine and Russia. Do you feel that they're equivalent?
MS. SANDERS: In what way? They're very different countries. I'm not going to put them on an equivalent playing field across the board on any matter that could possibly come up.
Q Do you consider them both allies, partners of the United States, or adversaries? I mean, in what way are they similar? Because you compared them yesterday.
MS. SANDERS: I was talking about the process, not the two countries. I was talking about the process that had been gone through by both sides. And that's all — the point I was making.
Q Okay, but I thought you were saying if it was okay for Hillary to coordinate with Ukraine, then it should be okay — or to meet with Ukraine about possible information that might be relevant on the campaign, it would be equally okay to meet with Russians about information they may have.
MS. SANDERS: I was talking about simply the process and nothing beyond that.
Q You still think it was okay — put aside the issue of collusion. Is it appropriate to meet with Russians about information they might have during that campaign?
MS. SANDERS: As I said earlier, I stand by the comments I made yesterday.
Q Thanks, Sarah. Two quick questions for you. Have you spoken with the President in the past 24 hours?
MS. SANDERS: Yes.
Q What was his general reaction to story? Without getting into an official White House response to some of the questions earlier, did you speak with him about this story?
MS. SANDERS: I think that the President is, I would say, frustrated with the process of the fact that this continues to be an issue. And he would love for us to be focused on things, like Justin mentioned, the economy, on health care, on tax reform, on infrastructure. And that's the place that his mind is, and that's what he'd like to be discussing.
John Gizzi.
Q Thank you, Sarah. I have two questions as well. Senator Rubio said this morning that the entire matter involving Donald Trump, Jr. is, and I quote, “Mueller territory.” In other words, it should be left solely up to the special prosecutor. What’s the White House reaction to that?
MS. SANDERS: Again, I would refer you to the outside special counsel, and I think that’s something that they could work on together.
Q So you have no reaction to what Senator Rubio said?
MS. SANDERS: No I don’t, John.
Q My other question is about personnel. The President has — and you pointed this out yesterday in the form you handed out — numerous judicial vacancies to fill, including four on the controversial 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In an effort to speed this up, will the administration waive the blue slip process from senators or the opinion of the American Bar Association?
MS. SANDERS: I don’t know if those conversations have taken place about whether or not to waive that if it were to expedite, but I’ll be happy to check into it for you.
Olivier.
Q Thanks. I have three, but I’ll try to be quick.
MS. SANDERS: Three?
Q Secretary Mattis said a month ago that you guys would be rolling out the new Afghanistan strategy by mid-July. Does that still hold?
MS. SANDERS: I know that the plan is to roll that out after there’s been a full review process. I don’t have anything beyond that at this point. I know they’d like to do that soon.
Q Okay. Be that as it may, what role does the President see for himself in terms of explaining the strategy to the American people? Does he plan a prime time address, does he plan a press conference, does he plan a national tour? How implicated do you think he will be in selling the new strategy to the public?
MS. SANDERS: I think those things will be determined once the new strategy is finalized.
Q Last one. Whose decision was it to provide relatively limited answers today to the Don Jr. question? Is it a lawyer, or did White House Counsel instruct you not to do this? Is it a communications decision? Who made that decision?
MS. SANDERS: As I told Zeke earlier, all the appropriate parties were part of the conversation and that decision was made internally.
Jordan.
Q Thanks, Sarah. The administration missed its deadline to make a decision on steel tariffs. Can you give us an update on where that decision stands? Can we expect a decision this week?
MS. SANDERS: The report and any recommendations within that report are going through normal interagency review process, and as soon as that’s completed that will be released. Hopefully in short order.
Q Sarah, is there a reason that the deadline wasn’t met?
MS. SANDERS: It was a self-imposed deadline and they’re working to get it through the final review process as quickly as possible.
John.
Q Thanks a lot, Sarah. In the conversation that you had with the President, did he give an indication to you that these stories that we see come out day after day, in the New York Times specifically, are in any way self-inflicted? After all, it’s the meeting that Don Jr. had with this Russian lawyer that has precipitated all of this.
MS. SANDERS: No. And I think the President has made it pretty clear his position on this entire process.
Q When you have that conversation with the President, do you ask him — just so you can speak with us and inform us — do you say, what was the nature, from your understanding, Mr. President, about the conversation your son and these other two individuals had with this Russian lawyer?
MS. SANDERS: I didn’t have that type of conversation. The conversations I have — the goal is to get information that I can best communicate to you guys, whether it’s on health care or infrastructure or tax reform or any other matter. The way those conversations play out are going to vary from topic to topic.
Go ahead. Yes, ma’am.
Q On sanctions, I wanted to ask: Is the White House suggesting or asking for new language to insert kind of a tweak to give the President the waivers — the national security waivers — that you’re seeking? Or is the White House wanting to see the bill canceled all together and killed all together?
MS. SANDERS: As I said yesterday, the President is committed to maintaining the existing sanctions against Russia until Moscow reverses the aggressive actions against Ukraine that triggered the sanctions. And President Trump reaffirmed this position at the G-20 last Friday. But this is more about foreign policy and having the flexibility to negotiate with other countries, and this includes working with allies and partners to present a united front to common foes. And we remain committed to working with Congress on those issues.
Q Thank you.
Q She called on — can you call on me next, Sarah?
MS. SANDERS: Sure.
Q Thank you.
Q With Mosul now in Iraqi hands, does the President have a strategy for the future of Iraq or U.S. involvement in Iraq?
MS. SANDERS: You know, those are continued conversations. And as we have announcements on it, we’ll let you guys know.
Q Thanks, Sarah.
Q I’m going to take this one.
MS. SANDERS: I promised I’d come to him.
Q Is President Trump now aware of the Russian government effort to influence the campaign in his favor?
MS. SANDERS: I’m sorry?
Q Is the President now aware of the Russian government effort to influence the campaign in his favor?
MS. SANDERS: Again, I’m not going to answer any questions on that matter.
Q And a follow-up on that. Yesterday, you were asked when the President learned of the Donald Jr. meeting, and your response was, “I believe in the last couple of days is my understanding.” Is there any reason that we should think that answer would change today? Have you learned anything new that would change your response there?
MS. SANDERS: No I haven’t. Thanks, guys, so much. |
I have a confession. I’ve been trying to hide this little secret, but it is coming to the point where you will figure it out, so I’m going to spill the beans…
Raise your hand if you guessed I was pregnant? You know like everyone else I know in life and stalk in fake internet life? That’s always the first thing people assume when I say I have a secret. You see, I’m an old married lady now who posts obnoxious pictures of her 4 legged kids all over the internet, so everyone seems to think it’s the “next step”. Sorry to disappoint (I’m not pregnant). In fact, my secret is pretty lame.
I haven’t been eating dessert. That’s the whole secret. (See? Tolda ya I was lame.) You see, this whole going on 2+ months of no running has been doing me no favors, and I’ve gotten to a, um, less than ideal place with my weight. Nothing crazy, but nothing I wish to continue. So I’m trying to be pretty diligent about my eating, and kick my sugar addiction to the curb. This means I only got one tiny bite of these soft, gooey, sweet and drool-worthy blondies. Life is hard sometimes, friends.
I had to take just the tiiiiiniest bite to make sure they were good, and so I could tell you all about them, and holy cow, they are beyoonnnnd good. I used my favorite graham cracker crust, topped it with smooth and creamy white chocolate blondie, then topped the whole thing with browned marshmallows for my favorite white chocolate and marshmallow lover.
So things might get a little dinner and savory heavy over here until I am back to double digit long runs that burn off all the cookies, but I promise to test a few more sweet bites like this one, so that you guys can still get your health(ier) dessert fill. 🙂
S’mores Blondies
yield 16
For the crust:
8 oz old fashioned graham crackers
3 tbsp coconut oil, melted
For the blondies:
5.5 oz white chocolate, melted and cooled
1/2 cup nonfat vanilla yogurt
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs + 1 egg white
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cups white whole wheat flour
2 cups mini marshmallows for topping
Directions: |
Anthem has been in production at BioWare for over 3 years
Chris Stead 20 July 2017 NEWS
It turns out BioWare’s new IP Anthem has been in development since at least 2014, reveals general manager Casey Hudson.
For Mass Effect fans jaded by BioWare’s decidedly "meh" fourth entry in the series, Mass Effect: Andromeda, the reveal that Casey Hudson has returned to the company is great news. He was project director on the much revered original trilogy, but left in 2014 to take a break from development. Ultimately, he ended up at Microsoft to work on their upcoming augmented reality peripheral HoloLens but has since returned home to the studio he first joined in 1998.
Casey Hudson’s arrival coincides with the departure of Aaryn Flynn, the previous general manager and also a studio veteran, having served for 17 years. Hudson published a blog post revealing his joy at returning to the company he helped turn into one of the most powerful names in the industry. He also spoke of Flynn, and looking deeper into that dialogue, we discover a small revelation about the studio’s upcoming new IP Anthem.
Anthem, a jet-pack powered, sci-fi, action RPG, was announced at E3 2017 and while not too much is known, it looks impressive. In fact, it looks like the kind of project the team would have been more engaged with over the choice of churning out a fourth Mass Effect title.
In Hudson’s post, he mentions “Aaryn and I have worked together from the earliest days of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic to setting the foundation for Anthem.” And then later again, “When I look at the stunning progress Aaryn and the team has made with Anthem…”
Both these comments would suggest that Hudson was working on Anthem before his departure from the studio almost three years ago to the day. This would seemingly confirm that development of the title has been in the works for at least three years, and if we were to draw the bow longer, it’s not a stretch to think it was the project the Mass Effect 3 team turned to in 2013 following the completion of that game’s DLC.
It’s no surprise that a game of the scale of Anthem would have been in development this long, but given the mixed reactions to Mass Effect: Andromeda, it does raise valid concerns that the team’s attention wasn’t where it needed to be. While I personally put a lot of the blame for Mass Effect: Andromeda’s unpolished feel on the move from Unreal Engine to Frostbite, I do now wonder if BioWare underestimated the difficulty of that task. Perhaps it had too many bodies focused on the parallel development of Anthem, leaving Mass Effect: Andromeda to slide? We do know that the team axed plans to do an open-universe No Man’s Sky experience for the game.
It’s all speculation of course, but ultimately it’s warming to know Hudson will be on hand to nurse Anthem through its final year of development. Anthem hits PS4, Xbox One and PC in 2018.
Need your sci-fi fix? Chris Stead and Nicholas Abdilla have released Adam Exitus, an Australian-made graphic novel, on iTunes and Amazon. |
News Homosexuality
Doug Mainwaring
JACKSON, Mississippi, December 8, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – The Mississippi Supreme Court heard arguments last week about whether a boy born to a lesbian couple should be legally considered the biological son of his mother's female partner.
Because of the nature of the child’s conception and the relationship of the adults in his life, the story is complicated.
The two women who were “married” chose to have a child that would be conceived in one of them via anonymous sperm donation.
The boy is now six years old. His mother’s “ex-spouse,” who helped raise the child from birth, sought to be recognized as a biological parent when the two women divorced.
“Kimberly Strickland Day, was impregnated through assisted reproduction technology whereby donor sperm was combined with her harvested egg and the embryo surgically implanted,” reports the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger. “The couple separated in 2013, and their divorce was finalized last year. A Mississippi court granted the first same-sex divorce in 2015.”
Christina ‘Chris’ Strickland, the ex-"spouse" with no biological ties to the child, wants to be listed as the legal parent of 6-year-old Zayden Strickland in order to share equal custody with Day, the biological parent.
The original lower court case revolved around Strickland’s request to not only be recognized as the boy’s parent, but to have his birth certificate altered to include her name as a “mother.”
After the child’s birth, neither Strickland nor Day took legal action to have the sperm donor's rights terminated. If those rights had been terminated, Strickland could have filed the paperwork to become the child’s adoptive parent. It seems that Strickland was satisfied during the tenure of the “marriage” to be viewed as a presumptive parent, with no actual legal parental rights secured.
The judge gave Day legal and physical custody of both children, while Strickland has only visitation rights.
Judge John Grant, who presided over that case, denied Christina Strickland’s request to be recognized as a parent of the child.
His ruling was unambiguous: “The court finds two women cannot conceive a child together.”
“The court doesn’t find its opinion to be a discriminatory statement, but a biological fact,” continued Judge Grant. “The natural father may never come into court. He may never be known and probably won’t be, but he is still a father; and that is a right that our Supreme Court has recognized for many, many years.”
Redefining parenthood
Strickland has now appealed Grant’s decision to the Mississippi Supreme Court.
“This case is not an equal protection case or a presumption of marriage case. It is an assisted reproduction case,” said Day's attorney, Prentiss Grant. “The main question here is simple: whether a couple, same-sex or opposite-sex, who conceives and has a child through assisted reproduction technology using donor sperm, donor egg, or a surrogate mother should be required to follow existing law and terminate the parental rights of the donor or surrogate. The answer is a resounding yes.”
Tyler O’Neil of PJ Media commented that a case such as this in an attempt by LGBT groups to redefine the “meaning of parenthood.”
“In attempting to change this law, LGBT groups are redefining the meaning of parenthood itself, rejecting a vision tied to the biological reality that children are conceived by a father's sperm and a mother's egg,” wrote O’Neil.
O’Neil asserts that the national LGBT rights group, Lambda Legal, which is providing legal counsel for Strickland, “attempted to hide this by reframing the argument.”
“The court ruled that Chris was not a legal parent to the child born during her marriage because the anonymous sperm donor's rights as a father supersede Chris' rights as his second parent,” O’Neil wrote.
“This statement captured the change in a nutshell: Lambda Legal wants Mississippi to strike down the gendered terms ‘mother’ and ‘father,’ replacing them with the idea of rights given to a ‘second parent,’” continued O’Neil. “This is a logical extension of removing the gender of two people in the same-sex marriage debate, but while many people are attracted to members of the same sex, no children are naturally conceived by a woman and a woman.”
LGBT groups want the state’s highest court to deny the validity of the lower court’s finding, that “two women cannot conceive a child together,” and that this is not “a discriminatory statement, but a biological fact.”
As Strickland, Day and their attorneys wait for the Mississippi Supreme Court’s Decision, the definition of parenthood hangs in the balance.
SCOTUS’s 2015 Obergefell decision made redefining parenthood possible
This Mississippi case is just one example of cases popping up on court dockets around the country, forcing jurists to plow new ground due to newly created hybrid legal personal relationships based on same-sex marriage and other newly-found gender identity “rights.”
In June, the United States Supreme Court ruled that “spouses” of the same gender should be allowed to appear on children’s birth certificates.
The court’s decision was predicated on the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges case that legalized same-sex “marriage” across the country.
Because same-sex “marriage” is now the law of the land, the court reasoned that states must “provide same-sex couples ‘the constellation of benefits that the States have linked to marriage.’” In particular, since the Obergefell ruling specifically identified birth and death certificates as two of those rights, states can no longer deny same-sex couples any rights related to birth certificates that are granted to opposite-sex couples. |
Changes to the NIH website, as tracked by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative.
A unit of the National Institutes of Health has removed references to climate “change” from its website, deletions that one environmental group criticizes as “cleansing” but an NIH official describes as minor.
The revisions occurred on the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences site. A headline that read “Climate Change and Human Health,” for example, was altered to “Climate and Human Health.” A menu title that read “Climate Change and Children's Health” in June now appears as “Climate and Children's Health.” Links to a fact sheet on “Climate Change and Human Health” also were removed.
“The cleansing continues,” said David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But they’re not going to be able to erase the science, or the truth, by scrubbing websites.”
The changes were revealed in a report by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a group of nonprofits and academics who monitor what they call “potential threats” to federal policy and scientific research on energy and the environment.
But Christine Flowers, the NIEHS director of communications, downplayed the changes Wednesday. She said she made them as she added and moved information on the site over a period of months.
“It’s a minor change to a title page,” Flowers said of one headline alteration, “but the information we provide remains the same. In fact, it’s been expanded.”
The phrase “climate change” still can be found several times in the text below the headline that now reads “Climate and Human Health.” Also still available is a “Climate Change and Human Health Literature Portal.”
Similar word changes have been made on Interior Department, Transportation Department and Environmental Protection Agency website pages that mentioned climate change. Scientists inside and outside the government have questioned the motivations because of top Trump administration officials' doubts about how much human activity influences global warming.
In some cases, though, career staffers may have been responsible for the new wording on sites in an effort to avoid administration scrutiny on hot-button issues. The EPA’s Climate Ready Water Utilities site was renamed before President Trump took office — to “Creating Resilient Water Utilities.”
The Trump administration has recently removed Obama-era webpages and tucked public information in hard-to-navigate databases. Here's a few of the changes that have been made, so far. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
In April, the EPA took down several website pages that contained detailed climate data and scientific information. That action, on the eve of a large demonstration in Washington about protecting the environment, included removal of a Web page explaining climate change that had been on the site for nearly two decades.
The NIEHS, one of 27 institutes and centers that comprise the NIH, focuses on the environment's impact on health. Most of NIH, the nation's premier biomedical research campus, is in Bethesda, Md., but the NIEHS is in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Read more:
Don’t call it ‘climate change’: How the government is rebranding in the age of Trump
On climate change, Scott Pruitt causes an uproar — and contradicts the EPA’s own website |
How one reports the news is more important than the actual content, with many readers only scanning headlines before moving on to the sports or entertainment pages. An article by Yeganeh Torbati of Reuters that appeared on July 1st caught my eye, “Iran threatens Israel; new EU sanctions take force.” The tale of how Iran has threatened to destroy Israel has been told often enough even though there is no evidence that any Iranian leader has actually said such a thing in quite that way. In this case, the full text of the article states that “Iran…threatened to wipe Israel ‘off the face of the earth’ if the Jewish state attacked it…” The key qualifier is, of course, the “if” clause. The actual statement (in translation) attributed to Revolutionary Guards General Amir Ali Hajizadeh was provided later in the article: ”If they take any action, they will hand us an excuse to wipe them off the face of the earth.” Iran is clearly talking about retaliation for a military attack by Israel which has been its line consistently, not a preemptive or unilateral attack by its own forces. In any event, Hajizadeh does not have the authority to order the use of Iranian armed forces, a decision that must come from the country’s civilian leadership.
The article also goes on to state “Israel says it could attack Iran if diplomacy fails to force Tehran to abandon its nuclear aims. The United States also says military force is on the table as a last resort…” If anything the threat would appear to be coming from Tel Aviv and Washington. I will not delve deeply into the oft repeated observation that Iran has no nuclear weapons and, both CIA and Mossad agree, has not yet decided to acquire any. And Israel, with Washington’s concurrence, keeps moving the goal post backwards in terms of what Iran must be required to do. Israel, which has an estimated 200 “secret” nukes and the means to deliver them on target, is now insisting that Iran have no enriched nuclear stockpile whatsoever lest what they do have be diverted and further enriched to produce a weapon. The US and its P5+1 negotiators have demanded that Iran basically concede on all points while themselves refusing to offer any incentives for Iranian compliance. That is not the way diplomacy works and it is hardly a negotiation. There has been no proposal to begin the lifting of some sanctions if Iran offers concessions, for example.
It is probably fair to say that President Barack Obama genuinely does not desire a war with Iran, but he and his administration are creating conditions in which a war is the only possible outcome. Mitt Romney, for his part, has virtually promised military action, saying that he will follow the Israeli lead. He will be on his way to Israel in three weeks to talk things over with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. |
moge Profile Blog Joined January 2011 United States 124 Posts Last Edited: 2012-01-16 14:20:39 #1
Note: View past episodes in this series
HomeStory Cup IV
These week we look at HomeStory Cup IV. HSC, as we all know, took place in Take's apartment and brought together an amazing array of players, casters and 50k+ viewers for this 4 day long tournament.
I am going to spend this video focusing on 4 very practical takeaways as well as one over-arching thought. I wanted to dive in and try and find that one thing, that 'indefinable it' that made HSC so awesome. Was it the great players? Was it the fun atmosphere set by the crew and casters? What made HSC succeed?
To me, HSC is the independent film of eSports. It is Cliff Burton's garage band. HSC represents what can be done if you embrace your weaknesses; knowing who you are helps you know who you are not. eSports, it seems, is in a one-up-manship mentality right now: big budgets, big venues, big prize-pools. This could easily lead those that don't have access to those things thinking they cannot compete and, to a degree, they are right. Instead of competing on a level that you cannot hope to succeed in you should do what HSC did and win by non-competition. Don't play by there standards. Embrace what you are not and success on new ground.
In this video I discuss the above topic at length and then go into 4 real-world, practical, actionable tips to help every streamer and streaming event raise their production value. I discuss set dressing, product placement, the evil that is sunlight and lighting your webcams.
I close out this video by talking about the future of eSports tournaments; does HSC represent a shift if scale? Is the home-grown HSC the future of eSports? What can we learn and what are the take-aways of HSC IV? Tune in and find out!
GG,
Jason
Note: View past episodes in this series by clicking here HomeStory Cup IVThese week we look at HomeStory Cup IV. HSC, as we all know, took place in Take's apartment and brought together an amazing array of players, casters and 50k+ viewers for this 4 day long tournament.I am going to spend this video focusing on 4 very practical takeaways as well as one over-arching thought. I wanted to dive in and try and find that one thing, that 'indefinable it' that made HSC so awesome. Was it the great players? Was it the fun atmosphere set by the crew and casters? What made HSC succeed?To me, HSC is the independent film of eSports. It is Cliff Burton's garage band. HSC represents what can be done if you embrace your weaknesses; knowing who you are helps you know who you are not. eSports, it seems, is in a one-up-manship mentality right now: big budgets, big venues, big prize-pools. This could easily lead those that don't have access to those things thinking they cannot compete and, to a degree, they are right. Instead of competing on a level that you cannot hope to succeed in you should do what HSC did and win by non-competition. Don't play by there standards. Embrace what you are not and success on new ground.In this video I discuss the above topic at length and then go into 4 real-world, practical, actionable tips to help every streamer and streaming event raise their production value. I discuss set dressing, product placement, the evil that is sunlight and lighting your webcams.I close out this video by talking about the future of eSports tournaments; does HSC represent a shift if scale? Is the home-grown HSC the future of eSports? What can we learn and what are the take-aways of HSC IV? Tune in and find out!GG,Jason gentle lover of esports - Product Manager for http://iHearteSports.com
flyersa Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 141 Posts #2 I really enjoyed watching this Video. HSC IV had a amazing Crew. It is also very nice for all other events that you give some insight into production related stuff.
I am also pretty sure that some of your ideas to make things smoother for the production will be considered for the next homestory cup. CEO of reGame.tv and co-founder of Berlin eSports e.V.
Finrod1 Profile Joined December 2010 Germany 3739 Posts #3 Great video. Love those reviews. I espacially thought their "little" videos: were amazing. Really really good production. were amazing. Really really good production.
d9mmdi Profile Blog Joined April 2011 Germany 179 Posts #4 if somebody can post the video of the production crew in takes bedroom i would really like to see who these people are.
loved episode number 6, always good to see jasons enthusiam and all the professional praise for hsc4 =D
it really was the one perfect tournament =D You gotta step over dead bodies - Momma Plott
mike1 Profile Joined January 2011 Germany 155 Posts #5 ahh and btw carmac trolled you...the picture shows dimaga not carmac :D i really like your blogsahh and btw carmac trolled you...the picture shows dimaga not carmac :D
Antoine Profile Blog Joined May 2010 United States 7344 Posts #6 #1 lunchtime watching material imoimo Moderator Flash Sea Action Snow Midas | TheStC Ret Tyler MC | RIP 우정호
mbr2321 Profile Blog Joined November 2010 United States 924 Posts #7 This is really cool-- should be spotlit imo-- great stuff :D
A couple things though-- I don't like the 4 bars across the bottom of the screen-- seems really cluttered. It was also a little weird to see you drinking Gin on camera-- maybe it would be endearing if I saw all the episodes up to this, but this is the first video of watched of yours, and it was off-putting. ~~Treating eSports as a social science since 2011~~ Credo: "The system is never wrong"-- Day9 Daily #400 Part 3
LadyBee Profile Joined August 2009 Germany 97 Posts #8
Also, ah the little details. Now that you've mentioned them you bet we'll have an extra eye on them next time around.
I agree this should be highlighted, so much insight and information from a professional deserves a spot on the front page. You should definitely continue the series, it's awesome. Thank you so much for this video. It's so great to get direct feedback from a pro. As a part of the production crew I have to say we really had a blast at HSC IV, and it's awesome to see that it transferred so well to you as a viewer. So much love. :DAlso, ah the little details.Now that you've mentioned them you bet we'll have an extra eye on them next time around.I agree this should be highlighted, so much insight and information from a professional deserves a spot on the front page. You should definitely continue the series, it's awesome.
Dusty Profile Blog Joined December 2010 United States 1984 Posts #9 I like your videos a lot twitch.tv/loldusty | ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) | #betamaleasshole | #freerp4life | #americanwhitepig
imJealous Profile Joined July 2010 United States 1364 Posts #10 On January 17 2012 00:44 mike1 wrote:
i really like your blogs ahh and btw carmac trolled you...the picture shows dimaga not carmac :D i really like your blogsahh and btw carmac trolled you...the picture shows dimaga not carmac :D
I think you have things backwards there bud I think you have things backwards there bud ... In life very little goes right. "Right" meaning the way one expected and the way one wanted it. One has no right to want or expect anything.
itsjustatank Profile Blog Joined November 2010 Korea (South) 9021 Posts #11 Really informative video, thanks a lot for making these Photographer "im a fucking big fat dirty whale" -EternaLEnVy
Masq Profile Blog Joined March 2009 Canada 1707 Posts #12
Never heard of neutral density gels before, learn something new every day Cool video man.Never heard of neutral density gels before, learn something new every day
MVTaylor Profile Blog Joined October 2011 United Kingdom 2827 Posts #13 These really are amazing videos and even though I have no real interest in the subject still find them great to listen to!
If I was a tournament organiser I'd definitely get you involved in some sort of consultancy role if possible @followMVT
portland Profile Blog Joined July 2011 United States 27 Posts #14 I love this guys content, he deserves more praise and attention. perp scerp
StarStruck Profile Joined April 2010 24047 Posts #15 Jason,
You are always on top of things. Not much left to say. ._.
Netsky Profile Joined October 2010 Australia 1155 Posts #16 The way he goes on tangents and little rants reminds me of Day9 talking about something. I really like these reviewsThe way he goes on tangents and little rants reminds me of Day9 talking about something.
Netsky Profile Joined October 2010 Australia 1155 Posts #17 On January 17 2012 00:44 mike1 wrote:
i really like your blogs ahh and btw carmac trolled you...the picture shows dimaga not carmac :D i really like your blogsahh and btw carmac trolled you...the picture shows dimaga not carmac :D
The guy knows, you can see the little annotation. It's a reverse troll-troll (?!) The guy knows, you can see the little annotation. It's a reverse troll-troll (?!)
Serimek Profile Joined August 2011 France 2048 Posts #18 I enjoy so much your vlogs. Very nice content. SC2 is the best game to watch.
Gonzo103 Profile Joined July 2011 Germany 219 Posts #19 really really nice vlog. Like how carefull he was with his 4 points of improvement...(scared to be Trolled by community?)
marcesr Profile Joined June 2008 Germany 1369 Posts #20 This community is full with awesome people, great content once again!
Can someone make sure the TakeTV Crew watches this?! Maybe there are some useful ideas for them.
1 2 3 Next All |
Mitt Romney and Barack Obama took the stage Wednesday night at the 2012 election cycle's first presidential debate, and they made it clear beforehand: libertarian candidate Gary Johnson ain't invited.
In response, Johnson actually filed an antitrust lawsuit charging the RNC and DNC with conspiring in restraint of trade to exclude the consideration of third-party candidates in these nationally televised exchanges. No one knows what will come of the lawsuit, and I'm still not sure whether to laugh at the Libertarian Party or laugh with them.
The antitrust suit is ... an interesting decision. Either way, here are the top five reasons Gary Johnson should be allowed to participate because of, you know, equality and stuff.
1. George Washington warned us about restrictive political parties in his Farewell Address. "I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State," said Washington. "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension ... is itself a frightful despotism." In other words, he was afraid that political parties would turn into vengeful monsters seeking to suppress competition rather than welcome new ideas. I'm sure Republicans want to hide Johnson's glowing gubernatorial record, and, likewise, I'm sure Democrats want to stop Johnson from telling liberal voters about Obama's medical marijuana raids, undocumented immigrant deportations, and huge corporate fundraisers.
2. Johnson will be electable when people are given the opportunity to understand his stances. Third-party candidates don't poll well unless they're given a chance to debate. For instance, the Libertarian Party candidate and Independent candidate received a combined total of only 0.96 percent in 2008. In 2004, the number was even lower at 0.70 percent. So, it's really no coincidence that only successful third-party bid in modern times came when the candidate was allowed to participate in the presidential debates. Ross Perot took the stage with Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush and defined his campaign as one that came "from the people." He received 18.9 percent of the popular vote, a record theretofore unheard of (with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt).
3. Johnson has plenty of political leadership experience. He was the sitting governor of New Mexico, a state that covers an area larger than the entire country of Italy. His record includes vetoing 47 percent of legislation introduced throughout his first six months in office and leaving taxpayers a $1 billion surplus. If Romney's four years as governor qualify him for president, why won't Johnson's eight years as governor get him into a debate?
4. Voters are losing faith in the two-party system. Both the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee were caught this year rigging the results of voice votes that hadn't yet been taken. It's not a smart time for either party to play off this election as 'the left vs. the right.' We're beginning to feel a little like the election is really about 'the government vs. the people.' Philips Electronics already dropped its sponsorship of the upcoming debates after deciding to distance itself from these "partisan politics." Are voters next? |
Local Alt-Right Activist Joey Gibson Says He Quit His Job After Antifa Pressure
Joey Gibson speaking at a pro-Trump rally he organized in Vancouver in April. Doug Brown
Earlier this week, the group Rose City Antifa began an online campaign to claim Joey Gibson's job. It apparently worked.
Gibson is best known as the Vancouver-based alt-right vlogger who organizes events like the June 4 "free speech rally" in downtown Portland (and another this evening, be sure to follow Doug Brown on Twitter). But until today he was also a broker with the company Summa North Real Estate.
This evening, while prepping for a rally he's called near the Waterfront Blues Festival, Gibson told reporters he'd left his job because of coordinated pressure from leftist activists.
Joey Gibson (“patriot prayer”) said he left his job toady because antifa harrasssing colleagues. Flips houses. Said he’s optimistic…
— doug brown (@dougbrown8) July 1, 2017
That's reflected in Summa's website, which has removed reference to Gibson's employment that was visible earlier this week. You can still see a cached version of the page here.
Rose City Antifa called its supporters to arms on Tuesday, advocating that people "jam" Summa's phone lines with requests that Gibson be let go. Here's the post:
PHONE JAM!!!! Joey Gibson is the primary organizer for the spree of Alt Right rallies attended by white supremacists, Nazis, and bigots across the Pacific Northwest. His job as a real estate broker affords him a flexible schedule and ample income, so that he can devote the majority of his time to putting on these hate fests. Each of these events has caused a spike of bigoted aggression in Portland. So far those incidents have included two murders, a racist intimidation campaign at an elementary school, bomb threats to a local community gathering of people of color, and an attempt to assault LBGTQ people at Pride. This must end. Summa North has the ability to stop enabling this activity by refusing to do business with a violent Jim Jones wannabee. Please take a moment to contact them and tell them what you think:
The message was circulated on sites such as pugetsoundanarchists.org and redneckrevolt.org.
Rose City Antifa promptly cheered the news about Gibson's employment this afternoon, though in the group's telling of events he was fired.
Breaking: Per a Summa North rep, Joey Gibson has been fired! Good job Summa North for swift and decisive action against this bigot!
— Always Antifascist (@RoseCityAntifa) June 30, 2017
Gibson has become an ever-more-visible presence in Portland's recently tense political landscape. At first running sparsely attended Donald Trump rallies in Vancouver, Gibson's Patriot Prayer group has gotten more ambitious. It led a right-wing march in Montavilla in late April—an event where accused MAX murderer Jeremy Christian showed up to bellow racial slurs.
And Gibson set Portland's leadership on edge earlier this month, when his group got permits from the federal government to hold a "free speech rally" at downtown's Terry Schrunk Plaza featuring prominent alt-right figures from around the country. That event, on the heels of the racially charged TriMet killings, drew hefty counterdemonstrations on all sides but was largely devoid of violence.
The following week, when Gibson's group participated in a "March Against Sharia" in Seattle, skirmishes broke out in the streets. That event was initially planned in Portland, but organizers moved it under pressure from city officials. |
11.11pm BST
We're going to wrap up our live blog coverage of developments in Boston. Here's a summary of where things stand:
• The FBI released photos and videos of two suspects in the marathon bombings, to be found in posts just prior to this summary. The bureau asked for the public's help in identifying and locating the two men pictured, designated as "suspect 1" in a dark cap and "suspect 2" in a white cap. The bureau encouraged anyone with possible information about the suspects to call 1-800-CALL-FBI, 800-225-5334, or to visit the web site bostonmarathontips.fbi.gov. No detail is too small, DesLauriers said.
• The significant development in the case was announced just 74 hours after the attack. DesLauriers said the FBI had initially fingered one person of interest and then, through a diligent process of cross-checking, picked out a second man. He said the FBI is working with partner agencies around the world in the case. Video released by the bureau shows the two men walking one behind the other on a sidewalk. DesLauriers said only the images provided by the FBI should be used in attempts to identify the suspects.
• DesLauriers said the public does not face any current threat, but he also warned that the two men should be considered "armed and dangerous" and that no one should approach them or attempt to apprehend them.
• The seeming breakthrough came on a day when the president and first lady attended an interfaith service at Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross, where the president delivered a rousing speech thanking the city for its example of courage and expressing his faith in its comeback. Addressing the culprits, Obama said, "We will find you. We will hold you accountable. But more than that our fidelity to our own way of life, to a free and open society, will only be stronger."
• The president visited bombing victims at Massachusetts General Hospital, where 11 patients were still admitted, 5 were in serious condition, and 6 were in fair condition. The Boston Globe has updated its list of victims of the marathon bombings. Thirty-eight victims are currently listed, with name, age, hometown, nature of injury and source of information. Additional victims still being treated at hospital are not yet listed.
• The New York Post, one of the nation's largest publications by circulation if not reputation, refused to make a retraction or apologize for covering its front page Thursday with a picture of two teenagers the paper called "BAG MEN." The teens in the picture were indeed carrying bags. However they are not and never were suspects in the Boston case. |
While traditional sports only grudgingly accept technological augmentation, the 2016 Cybathlon, a kind of hybrid between the XPRIZE and Olympics, embraces it with both robotic arms. Disabled competitors (or pilots) will compete using assistance devices like powered exoskeletons, robotic prostheses, and brain-control interfaces.
We’ve chronicled the continuous evolution of such technologies over the years, but they’re still largely out of reach for most folks.
The University of Switzerland’s Robert Riener and the Swiss National Competence Center of Research in Robotics are organizing the event in Zurich to push assistive technologies closer to mainstream use.
Each winning team will receive two awards: one goes to the pilot, the other to the maker of their device. And while competitors will be vetted to insure they don’t have a physical advantage, technological advantages are welcome.
“There will be as few technical constraints as possible, in order to encourage the device providers to develop novel and powerful solutions.”
The tech on display will include arm and leg prostheses, brain-control interfaces, functional electrical stimulation, powered exoskeletons, and powered wheelchairs. Pilots may be paraplegic, quadriplegic, even locked-in. The brain-control interface competition, for example, features a video game—controlled entirely by thought.
How’s that possible?
In a famous example, a quadriplegic patient, Cathy Hutchinson, used a BrainGate2 neural implant to control a robotic arm with her mind. Other methods using (electroencephalogram) EEG caps sense electrical patterns in the brain to less-invasively achieve similar results (like in this recent thought-controlled music player).
At Cybathlon, parathletes will use exoskeletons, like those by Ekso Bionics, to navigate obstacle courses. Others will use functional electrical stimulation of nerves in paralyzed limbs to compete in a bike race. Arm amputees will use robotic prosthetics to navigate a wire course as quickly and nimbly as possible without touching the wire.
Robotic prosthetics (arm and leg), like those from the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Case Western Reserve University, use computers to recognize electrical patterns in muscles and nerves and allow patients to control bionic limbs with thoughts alone. Some are even beginning to send rudimentary sensory touch information back to the brain.
The Cybathlon wouldn’t be possible without these technologies, but perhaps it wouldn’t be quite as urgent if they weren’t still confined to labs and clinical trials. The hope is the Cybathlon can add another incentive to speed things along.
Over the years we’ve learned that incentivized competition can accelerate progress. The Ansari XPRIZE, for example, resulted in the first private suborbital space flight, proving space was no longer the sole domain of governments.
Scaled Composites won the $10 million competition with SpaceShipOne. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic subsequently purchased the spaceplane, refined it into SpaceShipTwo, and aims to begin launching space tourists this year.
Meanwhile, another private space firm, SpaceX, is slashing launch costs, resupplying the International Space Station, and working on reusable rockets. A few San Francisco scrappy space startups are even building tiny satellites in garages.
The 2004 Darpa Grand Challenge for self-driving cars similarly sparked a movement. No vehicle finished the course that year, but subsequent competitions realized better results.
Google announced its self-driving car program in 2010, and its fleet of robot cars surpassed 300,000 miles in 2012. Today, cars are increasingly autonomous and more, with greater capability, are in the pipeline from a slew of major carmakers.
The Cybathlon’s prosthetic limbs, brain-control interfaces, and cutting-edge exoskeletons have the potential to radically empower folks with disabilities—maybe a little healthy competition will bring such assistive tech closer faster.
Image Credit: Cybathlon/YouTube |
A Home Network Solution
In today’s world, it is almost becoming a requirement to have a networked home. More and more appliances, televisions, gaming consoles, cable and satellite boxes, and even thermostats are requiring access to your home network. And while many of these items can currently use your wireless network, not all can. So what’s a home owner to do for the items that need a faster and more reliable Ethernet connection but don’t have the home wired for it? My suggestion, buy a D-Link PowerLine HD Network Starter Kit.
According to D-Link’s website:
The D-Link® PowerLine HD Ethernet Adapter (DHP-302) and Starter Kit (DHP-303) take advantage of your home’s existing electrical wiring to create or extend a network. Turn every power outlet into a possible network connection to connect computers, digital media players, and game consoles throughout your home.
This sounds like a great and affordable ($139) solution for any home. No doubt that this is much cheaper than trying to run CAT5 cable all throughout your house. And if you are worried about speed, the website lists the speed at up to 200Mbps which is much faster than any cable or DSL service I know of.
So if you’re in need of a home network solution, save yourself the hassle and the expense of wiring your own home and instead check out D-Link’s Powerline HD Network Starter kit. |
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Courts in Berlin and Hamburg upheld bans on online transportation service Uber on Friday, saying the company did not comply with German laws on the carriage of passengers.
An illustration picture shows the logo of car-sharing service app Uber on a smartphone next to the picture of an official German taxi sign in Frankfurt, September 15, 2014. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
U.S. start-up Uber had appealed against the bans in Germany, the latest front in its global battle to win regulatory approval in the face of stiff opposition from taxi services under threat from Uber’s business model.
Uber said it had not yet decided whether to appeal against Friday’s rulings by administrative courts in Berlin and Hamburg, which said Uber’s drivers lacked the commercial licenses to charge passengers for rides.
“Uber is reviewing the court documents in detail before commenting on today’s decision but will continue to comply with German law,” said a spokesman for Uber, which was recently valued at $18 billion.
He declined to say whether Uber would continue to operate services in the two cities pending any appeal.
Uber has been shadowed by skirmishes with taxi operators and local authorities in many cities where it operates, starting in its home base of San Francisco. It is active in 43 countries and has pulled out of only one city: Vancouver, Canada.
The Berlin and Hamburg rulings go against a previous reprieve given to Uber by a Frankfurt court, which ruled last week there were no grounds for a temporary injunction against its services.
The disparate decisions underline ambivalence in Germany about how to deal with challenges from U.S. technology firms ranging from Google to Amazon to Uber.
The German Economy Ministry said last week the country needed to make room for new, digital business models alongside existing businesses, and called for a hard look at laws governing transport and competition.
The Berlin court said on Friday there was no way of telling whether private drivers using the UberPop mobile phone app, which connects them to potential passengers, were fit to take on the special responsibility of carrying passengers.
It said the Uber Black service, which allows users to summon limousines using an app, did not meet the legal requirement for taxis to return to their service center and so fell between regulations for taxi and rental car services.
“The ban serves to protect the existence of taxi services, their ability to function, in which there is an important public interest,” it said in a statement.
The Hamburg court rejected Uber’s arguments that the ban violated Uber’s professional freedom or European freedom to offer services. |
By Cory A. Booker and Raymond Lesniak
The time has come for the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor to be dissolved. For more than 60 years, the Waterfront Commission has collected taxes from port businesses, led criminal investigations, and dictated hiring practices at the Port of New York and New Jersey. This bi-state Commission was established in 1953 as a temporary agency at a time when the mob ruled the waterfront and immediate steps were needed to rein in rampant crime and restore order. Decades later, New Jersey’s port industry is still paying millions of dollars in extra taxes each year to fund a redundant agency that was designed for a different era. No other port in America has a Waterfront Commission. Our concerns, which are echoed by labor and business leaders alike, are about the relevance, necessity, and cost of the Waterfront Commission.
This issue is important because the Port of New York and New Jersey is an incredible hub of economic activity that plays a major role in the regional and national economy. The port provides 143,000 direct jobs and nearly a quarter million indirect jobs. Today more than 80 percent of the cargo transported to and from the port travels through New Jersey. This gateway is responsible for creating $14.5 billion in personal income and more than $20 billion in business income for New Jersey. Both of us have spent years working with labor, industry, and surrounding communities to ensure the port continues to create jobs and grow our state’s economy, and we are committed to ensuring its continued success.
While initially serving an essential purpose in cracking down on rampant organized criminal activity at the port, the Waterfront Commission today is a duplicative layer of law enforcement. There is no need for a redundant governmental entity that is imposing undue costs on Port businesses. In order to combat criminal activity at the port, there are any number of law enforcement entities that could better perform this work and save port businesses millions of dollars in extra taxes every year including the New Jersey state police, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Coast Guard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police, and numerous local police departments.
In addition to its law enforcement function, the Waterfront Commission in recent years has made an effort to secure job opportunities at the port for minorities and for residents from communities near the port. However, in the past, the Waterfront Commission has actually stood in the way of progressive hiring practices. Time and time again the commission eliminated job candidates from neighboring communities based on criminal records for minor nonviolent offenses. These practices often made it harder for minority communities to access jobs. While we recognize improvements in recent years, the Waterfront Commission retains discretion over this process. There is little assurance that under future leadership the commission would not return to the discriminatory practices that were common just a few years ago, and this is another reason why the Commission should be dissolved. It also does not make sense that we would charge an investigatory, bi-state law enforcement entity with responsibility for ensuring equitable access to port jobs. When the Commission is dissolved this work should be reassigned to another, more appropriately equipped, agency for vigorous enforcement.
Our mission is to improve New Jersey’s global competitiveness, protect the economic security of New Jersey families, and ensure low income and minority communities have access to port jobs. While the Waterfront Commission once served an important purpose, it has become a redundant level of bureaucracy that imposes unnecessary taxes on an important job creator in our state. We believe the time has come for this temporary agency to be dissolved.
Cory A. Booker (D-NJ) is a U.S. senator and Raymond Lesniak is a Democratic state senator from Union County. |
In April, the pop musician Lorde gave an interview to the New York Times where she talked about a meeting with famed song writer Max Martin. The genius who helped create Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” and Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space”, referred to Lorde’s song Green Light as “incorrect songwriting”. He saw its early key change, weird melodics and the lack of drums until the chorus kicks in, as improper. “It wasn’t an insult, just a statement of fact,” said Lorde. “It’s a strange piece of music.”
Weirdly, as soon as I read the fascinating little snippet of song craft theory, I thought of Sonic the Hedgehog. The legendary platformer, in which a spiky creature sprints furiously through a series of multi-levelled environments is incorrect game design. It shouldn’t work. It’s wrong.
If you take a classic platform game design, such as Super Mario Bros – the player is always given the chance to read the level: to look ahead and assess every new piece of scenery or patrolling enemy. Then you get a series of neatly placed hazards that present discrete challenges.
In his excellent book on game design, A Theory of Fun, Raph Koster, says the essence of good game design is teaching – a well constructed level slowly introduces you to its themes, and shows you how to beat them. Learn, test, master.
Sonic doesn’t do this – all it establishes at the beginning is that speed is important. In a single playthrough, you only ever get a passing feel for the levels; you miss vast areas – all the rules are broken. As in Green Light, the melody and the maths are wrong; new players always find it hard to read the screen, because it’s not working like a good game.
To reach the more reward-intensive upper levels, you need to master the exact distances and timings between launch pads and obstacles, but it’s impossible to garner this information on a first run-through because the speed of the game – its main appeal – hides everything from you. In Sonic, you must learn through repetition rather than observation. This is confounding for a lot of people – just like the opening verse of Green Light, which holds the drums back for ages, and even then layers them deep beneath the piano.
Even the influences behind Sonic are incorrect. Designer Naoto Ohshima, who sketched all the zones out by hand, was influenced by pinball table design, filling each stage with flippers and bumpers to project Sonic in new directions like a ball-bearing. But pinball doesn’t work like video games.
In pinball you understand that you never really have full control over the protagonist (the ball), you are attempting to influence its speed and direction through secondary inputs, through deft touches. But video games are all about control. Players want to inhabit the avatar, ideally with a symbiotic relationship. Sonic even mocks this whole idea, by having the lead character tap his feet impatiently when the player dares to stop for a few seconds. Sonic tells you you are not really in control.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest In Sonic The Hedgehog the levels aren’t designed to be seen or even understood in one playthrough; a maverick approach to platform gaming design. Photograph: Sega
Lorde says about the making of her Melodrama album that she and her engineers laboured over every sound, every sample. It was a technical endeavour; they explored the negative space between notes, they manipulated song elements to discordant and disorientating effect. Sonic the Hedgehog is built around effects too; it is entirely inspired by programmer Yuji Naka’s revolutionary coding, which teased incredibly fast sprite manipulation out of the Mega Drive processor. Sonic is more about Naka’s ability than yours.
Sonic the Hedgehog punishes the player by manipulating their sense of momentum, by frustrating them into unexpected starts and stops. It is awful to be stuck at the base of a ramp in Sonic, unable to jump your way out, having to wait for the character to accelerate; trying to read the angles so that you spin out of a rut rather than straight back into it.You’re always fighting the system. The maths feels wrong, or at least it feels like the maths is against you.
Sonic is incorrect game design and yet, like Green Light, it’s a masterpiece. As Lorde sings, you want to just let go, but you can’t – you’re not really free. Yet sometimes in Sonic, when you get better, or through sheer luck, things take off, every jump is right, every loop-the-loop is perfect, and you’re in the flow, sailing above the game’s strange structure. Like the bridge in a brilliant pop song, it’s an exhilarating rush. It’s incorrect, but holy crap, when it works, it works.
Since the New York Times article, Lorde has suggested Max Martin’s comments were about her song Royals not Green Light, though interviewer Jonah Weiner is adamant they relate to the newer song. Sonic the Hedgehog remains a weird game. |
Moo-ve to Higher Ground- The Tsunami Sirens of Cannon Beach Oregon
When staring at a grave threat, be funny about it.
Chuck Perino Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 25, 2014
The City of Cannon Beach takes a unique and smart practice in their approach to conducting tsunami warning tests. Through a system of tsunami sirens with voice messaging capability (known as the COmmunity Warning System or COWS), instead of the piercing alarm of a standard siren, the community conducts tests of the system with the sound of cows mooing. In an actual tsunami emergency, the Cannon Beach sirens emit a standard non-bovine alarm to alert residents and visitors to seek high ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E52UHuPsytY
The City of Cannon Beach is a popular tourist destination, with a large population at risk within the tsunami inundation area. Depending on the time of year, the population at risk can increase dramatically with tourists and vacationers.
As a result of damages in the community from the tsunami generated by the 1964 Alaskan earthquake and the increased scientific studies and public education on tsunami threats that followed, Cannon Beach installed tsunami warning sirens in 1986. Refinements of the system have led to the COWS sirens and the unique “mooing” test protocol in place today. The “mooing” of the test alarm is a nod to the dairy heritage and cheese industry on the northern Oregon Coast. The city’s unique tsunami warning and evacuation program has won the community the Western States Seismic Policy Commission Award of Excellence . The city’s proactive tsunami planning has also made Cannon Beach the first community in Oregon to be designated as “Tsunami-Ready” by the National Weather Service.
The COWS tsunami siren tests are a smart practice because by using the “moo” alarm for tests of the system, it lessens the “cry wolf” syndrome which happens when frequent false alarms occur, making the public dismissive of warning systems. As indicated in Dennis Mileti’s presentation on public warnings: “When an actual disaster event occurs, the individual response contradicts what had been drilled and practiced. An example of this would be when a fire alarm is constantly sounded; the individual will turn it off and deactivate the alarm instead of leaving the building.” additional studies have been done that confirm this syndrome through the study of psychological effects of behavior as a result of false alarms. Research suggests that “a single false alarm reduces the fear reaction to the next threat by close to fifty percent.”
By having a distinct and whimsical test tone to their sirens, Cannon Beach has implemented a system that distinguishes a test from an actual need for evacuation. Based on the sociological and psychological studies cited above, the system testing practice that the Cannon Beach COWS sirens use circumvents the “cry wolf” syndrome and the unique siren tone lessens the identified sociological/psychological effects caused by frequent testing.
The Cannon Beach sirens also have a less measurable, but positive effect on local tourism. Visitors have mentioned hearing the test for the first time and inquiring about it from locals. Some of these visitors may be getting information on tsunami preparedness for the first time. The oddity of a city playing loud cow mooing sounds through sirens each month is also likely to increase word of mouth tourism promotion of the city. This phenomenon was mentioned by the Western States Seismic Policy Commission: “There have even been instances of people calling from out of town to find when a test will occur so they can come to hear it”.
The “mooing” is a non-threatening and audibly quirky approach that clearly indicates it is not an actual event. As a side benefit, the “mooing” is a source of identification and pride for Cannon Beach, and the monthly tests of the system have become an “event” that serves as a tourism initiator for the city.
When you face a serious danger, sometimes the best solution is just to laugh and work with it. It is the Oregon way. |
Image caption Apple has made a success of its iPod line of portable music players
Apple has embarked on a legal battle over the right to use the word "pod".
The row has come about because of a projector called Video Pod currently being developed by start-up Sector Labs.
When the dispute first began, Apple said Sector Labs' use of the word might cause confusion among customers.
The legal claim to the name will be played out via documents the two companies will file in a US court over the next month.
Apple has filed an 873-page briefing paper to the court laying out its claim to exclusive use of the name. Sector Labs is due to file its paper arguments in early October. The documents will be sent to the US patents office which will judge their claims.
Ana Christian, Sector Labs' lawyer, told Wired.com that the fight was about more than just the right to use "pod".
"What I'm hoping to do with this case is to really reach a lot broader an audience and make it so entrepreneurs and small businesses can use the English language as they see fit in branding their products," she told the magazine.
The row between the two firms began in 2009 when news about Sector Labs' video projector emerged.
Sector Labs is one among many tech firms that Apple has taken on because they have used the word "pod" in product names. |
Today the European Court of Human Rights ruled that religious beliefs may not justify opposing the rights of same-sex couples. British laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation were upheld.
The Strasbourg court examined four cases brought by Christians, including two who argued their beliefs allowed them to refuse a service to same-sex couples.
In the first case, Lillian Ladele was a civil registrar in London. She was dismissed because she refused officiating at civil partnership ceremonies for same-sex couples after it became legal in 2005. She claimed she was discriminated because of her faith.
The Court ruled there had been no discrimination, and that British courts—who upheld her dismissal—had struck the right balance between her right to freedom of religion, and same-sex couples’ right not to be discriminated.
In the second case, Gary McFarlane was a counsellor providing psycho-sexual therapy to couples. He was dismissed for refusing to work with same-sex couples, arguing this was incompatible with his beliefs. The Court ruled unanimously that there had been no violation of his right to freedom of belief.
Commenting this landmark ruling, Sophie in ‘t Veld MEP, Vice-President of the European Parliament’s LGBT Intergroup, said: “With this ruling, the court has established that freedom of religion is an individual right. It is emphatically not a collective right to discriminate against LGBT people, women, or people of another faith or life stance.”
“Religious freedom is no ground for exemption from the law. The court showed conclusively that the principle of equality and equal treatment cannot be circumvented with a simple reference to religion.”
Michael Cashman MEP, Co-President of the LGBT Intergroup, added: “British law rightly protect LGBT people from discrimination, and there is no exemption for religious believers. Religion and belief are deeply private and personal, and should never be used to diminish the rights of others.”
The ruling may be appealed within three months.
Read more:
Image credits: Flickr/Marcella Bona |
Australian Officials Pushing For Data Retention Had No Idea What A VPN Is
from the government-follies dept
Brandis: Well, what we'll be able... what the security agencies want to know... to be retained... is the... is the electronic address of the website that the web user is visiting.
Host: So it does tell you the website.
Brandis: Well... well... it tells you the address of the website.
Host: That's the website, isn't it? It tells you what website you've been to.
Brandis: Well, when... when you visit a website you... you know, people browse from one thing to the next and... and... that browsing history won't be retained or... or... or... there won't be any capacity to access that.
Host: Excuse my confusion here, but if you are retaining the web address, you are retaining the website, aren't you?
Brandis: Well... the... every website has an electronic address, right?
Host: And that's recorded.
Brandis: And... um... whether there's a connection... when a connection is made between one computer terminal and a web address, that fact and the time of the connection, and the duration of the connection, is what we mean by metadata, in that context.
Host: But... that is... telling you... where... I've been on the web.
Brandis: Well, it... it... it... it... it... it... it records what web... what at... what electronic web address has been accessed.
Host: I don't see the difference between that and what website I've visited.
Brandis: Well, when you go to a website, commonly, you will go from one web page to another, from one link to another to another, within that website. That's not what we're interested in.
Host: Okay. So the overarching... if I go to... SkyNews website, it'll tell that, but not necessarily the links within that that I go to?
Brandis: Yes.
The other one that's causing a fair bit of grief is a metadata retention plan, the equivalent of what your NSA does. We don't have metadata retention at the moment and the agencies have been saying, "Oh, well we should have it. You can't use it if you haven't got it," sort of thing. But I spoke to one of the ministers last week about this because he does know what "metadata" means—he knows quite a lot about the Internet and how it works—He said to me people who are asking for this data, people who are thinking this is a good idea, actually have no idea what they're asking for. They don't know what they're going to do with it. They don't know what the implications of requiring it are. They haven't really thought this through.
He gave them a demonstration on a VPN [virtual private network] and said, "By my IP address, tell me what you can find out about me now." And they had no idea there was such a thing as a VPN. It indicates to me that these people are not well-informed enough to make these kinds of decisions. As it stands, it may be that the government may only require the Internet companies to store the IP address of the originating Internet use, so they'll know what computer you're from and what IP you're working from, which is not a lot different from keeping a record of the phone you're calling from. So if that's the case, it's probably not going to pose too much alarm. He's a minister and he knows what he's talking about. But he's surrounded by people who don't know what they're talking about who think that they need something more. We don't know yet where this will end up. It does have the potential to be very dangerous.
If you haven't yet, you really should watch the video we pointed to recently of Australian Attorney General George Brandis trying to explain his internet data retention plan when it's clear he has no idea how the internet works. It's the one where he's asked if it will track the web pages you visit, and Brandis vehemently insists that it will not, but that ittrack the web addresses you visit. Some people have said that perhaps he meant it won't record the actual content on the pages, but just the URL (which might matter if it's dynamic pages), but later in the conversation, he also implies (almost clearly incorrectly) that he means it will just track the top level domains, not the full URLs. Here's a reminder snippet:While it's a bit of a third hand story, Reason recently did an interview with Australian Senator David Leyonhjelm (who is against data retention, and describes himself as libertarian). Towards the end of the interview, he discusses data retention and tells a very troubling story about how those pushing for data retention had no idea what a VPN is. The story involves a much more knowledgeable government official -- which Gizmodo Australia suspects is Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull -- demonstrating a VPN and leaving them all dumbfounded:Now, the story does not make it entirely clear about who he's talking about. It could be read to be Brandis or his staff that didn't know about VPNs. Or, much more troubling, it could be read to be the intelligence community -- though I find that hard to believe. Either way, however, it does suggest a sort of blind adherence to the "collect it all" philosophy of intelligence gathering, without any real understanding of the issues or consequences.
Filed Under: australia, data retention, david leyonhjelm, george brandis, malcolm turnbull, metadata, vpn |
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