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OAKLAND (KRON) -- Oakland police arrested three people on Saturday night at a protest over the deadly police shooting in Charlotte, North Carolina, police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said.
The three are accused of vandalism and obstruction of a peace officer, Watson said. The protest was held in the wake of Tuesday's police shooting of Keith Scott, a black man sitting in his car and whose family has said was unarmed and acting non-aggressive, according to reports from CNN.
One person was cited for carrying a dangerous weapon at the Oakland protest. No injuries had been reported at 11:30 p.m.
The protest began with a group of 15 demonstrators gathering at Latham Square Plaza, in the 1500 block of Broadway, police said.
The group grew to about 150 protesters over the course of the evening as police officers facilitated a march to 10th Street and Broadway.
Vehicle and pedestrian traffic in the area had returned to normal by 10:45 p.m., police said.
Bay City News contributed to this report. |
Significant parts of an Islamic school's proposal for a masterplanned hub in Brisbane's south-west has been rejected by the Brisbane City Council, with the site restricted to educational purposes.
The Australian International Islamic College (AIIC) at Durack lodged a development application, with the council in February 2015 proposing a childcare centre, mosque, a multi-storey residential building, medical centre and aged care facility be built on the school's site at 724 Blunder Road.
A proposed Islamic hub at Durack has received conditional approval from Brisbane City Council. Credit:Michelle Smith
On Thursday afternoon the council issued conditional approval, which did not allow the proposed residential building, aged care or shops on the school grounds.
The council permitted boarding facilities for students who lived outside of Brisbane, similar to facilities at many other independent schools, but said no to non-educational residential buildings. |
Roll out your modelling clay so it's very thin, and glue it on the trunk as shown. Each edge is covered, and two in the middle. I also used the edge of a credit card to pinch the bands where the trunk lid would open and shut. It's okay if it looks a little rough - these trunks are old and beaten up.
Glue these on and let it set. When you're letting it dry, prop the trunk up on something thin so that the clay bands won't flatten out before they dry.
Next, mix together paint to make a tan colour and paint the bands. I used scotch tape to make sure I didn't accidentally paint the maroon part of the trunk. Let that all dry.
Lastly, take your keyhole pieces (or aluminium foil) and glue those on as the hinges and front clasps. I turned one sideway in the middle and added a tiny finishing nail to look like the lock. |
The Great Math Mystery
PBS Airdate: April 15, 2015
NARRATOR: We live in an age of astonishing advances: engineers can land a car-sized rover on Mars, physicists probe the essence of all matter, while we communicate wirelessly on a vast worldwide network. But underlying all of these modern wonders is something deep and mysteriously powerful.
It's been called the language of the universe, and perhaps it's civilization's greatest achievement. Its name? Mathematics.
But where does math come from? And why, in science, does it work so well?
MARIO LIVIO (Author, Is God a Mathematician?): Albert Einstein wondered, “How is it possible that mathematics does so well in explaining the universe as we see it?”
NARRATOR: Is mathematics even human?
ELIZABETH BRANNON (Duke University, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience): There doesn't really seem to be an upper limit to the numerical abilities of animals.
NARRATOR: And is it the key to the cosmos?
MAX TEGMARK (Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Author, Our Mathematical Universe): Our physical world doesn't just have some mathematical properties; it has only mathematical properties.
NARRATOR: The Great Math Mystery, next, on NOVA!
Human beings have always looked at nature and searched for patterns. Eons ago we gazed at the stars and discovered patterns we call constellations, even coming to believe they might control our destiny.
We've watched the days turn to night and back to day, and seasons, as they come and go, and called that pattern “time.” We see symmetrical patterns in the human body and the tiger's stripes, and build those patterns into what we create, from art to our cities.
But what do patterns tell us? Why should the spiral shape of the nautilus shell be so similar to the spiral of a galaxy or the spiral found in a sliced open head of cabbage?
When scientists seek to understand the patterns of our world, they often turn to a powerful tool: mathematics. They quantify their observations and use mathematical techniques to examine them, hoping to discover the underlying causes of nature's rhythms and regularities.
And it's worked, revealing the secrets behind the elliptical orbits of the planets to the electromagnetic waves that connect our cell phones. Mathematics has even guided the way, leading us right down to the sub-atomic building blocks of matter, which raises the question, “Why does it work at all? Is there an inherent mathematical nature to reality? Or is mathematics all in our heads?”
Mario Livio is an astrophysicist who wrestles with these questions. He's fascinated by the deep and often mysterious connection between mathematics and the world.
MARIO LIVIO: If you look at nature, there are numbers all around us. You know, look at flowers, for example. So there are many flowers that have three petals like this or five like this. Some of them may have 34 or 55. These numbers occur very often.
NARRATOR: These may sound like random numbers, but they're all part of what is known as the “Fibonacci sequence,” a series of numbers developed by a 13th century mathematician.
MARIO LIVIO: You start with the numbers one and one, and from that point on you keep adding up the last two numbers. So one plus one is two, now one plus two is three, two plus three is five, three plus five is eight, and you keep going like this.
NARRATOR: Today, hundreds of years later, this seemingly arbitrary progression of numbers fascinates many who see in it clues to everything from human beauty to the stock market. While most of those claims remain unproven, it is curious how evolution seems to favor these numbers.
MARIO LIVIO: And as it turns out, this sequence appears quite frequently in nature.
NARRATOR: Fibonacci numbers show up in petal counts, especially of daisies, but that's just a start.
CHRISTOPHE GOLÉ (Smith College): Statistically, the Fibonacci numbers do appear a lot in botany. For instance, if you look at the bottom of a pine cone, you will see, often, spirals in their scales. You end up counting those spirals, you'll usually find a Fibonacci number, and then you will count the spirals going in the other direction and you will find an adjacent Fibonacci number.
NARRATOR: The same is true of the seeds on a sunflower head: two sets of spirals, and if you count the spirals in each direction, both are Fibonacci numbers.
While there are some theories explaining the Fibonacci botany connection, it still raises some intriguing questions.
CHRISTOPHE GOLÉ (Smith College): So do plants know math? The short answer to that is, “No.” They don't need to know math. In a very simple, geometric way, they set up a little machine that creates the Fibonacci sequence in many cases.
NARRATOR: The mysterious connections between the physical world and mathematics run deep. We all know the number Pi from geometry—the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter—and that its decimal digits go on forever without a repeating pattern. As of 2013 it had been calculated out to 12.1 trillion digits, but somehow Pi is a whole lot more.
MARIO LIVIO: Pi appears in a whole host of other phenomena, which have, at least on the face of it, nothing to do with circles or anything. In particular, it appears in probability theory quite a bit.
Suppose I take this needle and… So, the length of the needle is equal to the distance between two lines on this piece of paper. And suppose I drop this needle, now, on the paper.
NARRATOR: Sometimes, when you drop the needle, it will cut a line, and sometimes it drops between the lines. It turns out, the probability that the needle lands so it cuts a line is exactly two over Pi, or about 64 percent.
MARIO LIVIO: Now, what that means is that, in principle, I could drop this needle millions of times. I could count the times when it crosses a line and when it doesn't cross a line, and I could actually even calculate Pi. Even though there are no circles here, no diameters of a circle, nothing like that. It's really amazing.
NARRATOR: Since Pi relates a round object—a circle—with a straight one—its diameter—it can show up in the strangest of places. Some see it in the meandering path of rivers. A river's actual length, as it winds its way from its source to its mouth, compared to the direct distance, on average seems to be about Pi.
Models for just about anything involving waves will have Pi in them. Like those for light and sound: Pi tells us which colors should appear in a rainbow and how middle C should sound on a piano.
Pi shows up in apples, in the way cells grow into spherical shapes, or in the brightness of a supernova.
One writer has suggested it's like seeing Pi on a series of mountain peaks, poking out of a fog-shrouded valley. We know there's a way they're all connected, but it's not always obvious how.
Pi is but one example of a vast interconnected web of mathematics that seems to reveal an often hidden and deep order to our world.
Physicist Max Tegmark from M.I.T. thinks he knows why. He sees similarities between our world and that of a computer game.
MAX TEGMARK: If I were a character in a computer game that were so advanced that I were actually conscious, and I started exploring my video game world, it would actually feel to me like it was made of real solid objects made of physical stuff.
Yet, if I started studying as the curious physicist that I am, the properties of this stuff, the equations by which things move and the equations that gives stuff its properties, I would discover, eventually, that all these properties were mathematical: the mathematical properties that the programmer had actually put into the software that describes everything.
NARRATOR: The laws of physics in a game, like how an object floats, bounces or crashes, are only mathematical rules created by a programmer. Ultimately the entire “universe” of a computer game is just numbers and equations.
MAX TEGMARK: That's exactly what I perceive in this reality, too, as a physicist, that the closer I look at things that seem non-mathematical, like my arm, here, and my hand, the more mathematical it turns out to be. Could it be that our world also then is really just as mathematical as the computer game reality?
NARRATOR: To Max, the software world of a game isn't that different from the physical world we live in. He thinks that mathematics works so well to describe reality because, ultimately, mathematics is all that it is. There's nothing else.
MAX TEGMARK: Many of my physics colleagues will say that mathematics describes our physical reality, at least in some approximate sense. I go further and argue that it actually is our physical reality, because I'm arguing that our physical world doesn't just have some mathematical properties, but it has only mathematical properties.
NARRATOR: Our physical reality is a bit like a digital photograph, according to Max. The photo looks like the pond but as we move in closer, and closer, we can see it is really a field of pixels each represented by three numbers that specify the amount of red, green and blue.
While the universe is vast in its size and complexity, requiring an unbelievably large collection of numbers to describe it, Max sees its underlying mathematical structure as surprisingly simple.
It's just 32 numbers, constants, like the masses of elementary particles, along with a handful of mathematical equations, the fundamental laws of physics. And it all fits on a wall, though there are still some questions.
MAX TEGMARK: But even though we don't know what exactly is going to go here, I am really confident that what will go here will be mathematical equations, that everything is ultimately mathematical.
NARRATOR: Max Tegmark's Matrix-like view—that mathematics doesn't just describe reality but is its essence—may sound radical, but it has deep roots in history, going back to ancient Greece, to the time of the philosopher and mystic Pythagoras.
Stories say he explored the affinity between mathematics and music, a relationship that resonates, to this day, in the work of Esperanza Spalding, an acclaimed jazz musician, who's studied music theory and sees its parallel in mathematics.
ESPERANZA SPALDING (Jazz Musician): I love the experience of math, but the part that I enjoy about math, I get to experience through music, too. At the beginning, you're studying all the little equations, but you get to have this very visceral relationship with the product of those equations, which is sound and music and harmony and dissonance and all that good stuff. So, I'm much better at music than at math, but I love math with a passion. They're both just as much work. They're both you have to study your … off, your head off, study your head off.
NARRATOR: The Ancient Greeks found three relationships between notes especially pleasing. Now we call them an octave, a fifth, and a fourth.
ESPERANZA SPALDING: An octave is easy to remember because it's the first two notes of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” La, la. That's an octave. “Somewhere.”
A fifth sounds like this: la, la. Or the first two notes of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
And a fourth sounds like… You can think of it as the first two notes of “Here Comes the Bride.”
NARRATOR: In the sixth century B.C.E., the Greek philosopher Pythagoras is said to have discovered that those beautiful musical relationships were also beautiful mathematical relationships by measuring the lengths of the vibrating strings.
In an octave, the string lengths create a ratio of two to one. In a fifth, the ratio is three to two. And in a fourth, it is four to three.
ESPERANZA SPALDING: Seeing a common pattern throughout sound, that could be a big eye-opener of saying, “Well, if this exists in sound, and if it's true universally through all sounds, this ratio could exist universally everywhere, right? And doesn't it?”
NARRATOR: Pythagoreans worshipped the idea of numbers. The fact that simple ratios produced harmonious sounds was proof of a hidden order in the natural world. And that order was made of numbers,…
…a profound insight that mathematicians and scientists continue to explore to this day.
In fact, there are plenty of other physical phenomena that follow simple ratios, from the two-to-one ratio of hydrogen atoms to oxygen atoms in water, to the number of times the moon orbits the earth, compared to its own rotation, one-to-one, or that Mercury rotates exactly three times when it orbits the sun twice, a three-to-two ratio.
In ancient Greece, Pythagoras and his followers had a profound effect on another Greek philosopher, Plato, whose ideas also resonate to this day, especially among mathematicians.
Plato believed that geometry and mathematics exist in their own ideal world.
MARIO LIVIO: So when we draw a circle on a piece of paper, this is not the real circle. The real circle is in that world, and this is just an approximation of that real circle, and the same with all other shapes. And Plato liked very much these five solids, the platonic solids we call them today. And he assigned each one of them to one of the elements that formed the world as he saw it.
NARRATOR: The stable cube was Earth; the tetrahedron, with its pointy corners was fire; the mobile-looking octahedron, Plato thought of as air; and the twenty-sided icosahedron was water; and finally, the dodecahedron, this was the thing that signified the cosmos as a whole.
So Plato's mathematical forms were the ideal version of the world around us, and they existed in their own realm. And however bizarre that may sound, that mathematics exists in its own world, shaping the world we see. It's an idea that, to this day, many mathematicians and scientists can relate to, the sense they have when they're doing math that they're just uncovering something that's already out there.
MARIA CHUDNOVSKY (Columbia University): I feel quite strongly that mathematics is discovered in my work as a mathematician. It always feels to me there is a thing out there, and I'm kind of trying to find it and understand it and touch it.
S. JAMES “JIM” GATES, JR. (University of Maryland): As someone who actually has had the pleasure of making new mathematics, it feels like there's something there before you get to it.
DUSA McDUFF (Barnard College/Columbia University): If I have to choose, I think it's more discovered than invented, because I…there is a reality to what we study in mathematics. When we do good mathematics, we're discovering something about the way our minds work in interaction with the world.
MARIA CHUDNOVSKY: Well, I know that, because that's what I do. I come to my office, I sit down in front of my whiteboard, and I try and understand that thing that's, that's out there. And every now and then, I'm discovering a new bit of it. That's exactly what it feels like.
NARRATOR: To many mathematicians, it feels like math is discovered rather than invented. But is that just a feeling? Could it be that mathematics is purely a product of the human brain?
Meet Shyam, a bona fide math whiz.
MICHAEL O'BOYLE (Texas Tech University): 800 on the S.A.T. Math.
That's pretty good. And you took it when you were how old?
SHYAM NARAYANAN: Eleven.
MICHAEL O'BOYLE: Eleven! Wow, that's, like, a perfect score.
NARRATOR: Where does Shyam's math genius come from?
It turns out, we can pinpoint it, and it's all in his head.
Using f.M.R.I., scientists can scan Shyam's brain as he answers math questions, to see which parts of the brain receive more blood, a sign they are hard at work.
F.M.R.I. OPERATOR: All right, Shyam, we'll start about now. Okay, buddy?
NARRATOR: In images of Shyam's brain, the parietal lobes glow an especially bright crimson.
MICHAEL O'BOYLE: He is relying on parietal areas to determine these mathematical relationships. That's characteristic of lots of math-gifted types.
NARRATOR: In tests similar to Shyam's, kids who exhibit high math performance have five to six times more neuron activation than average kids in these brain regions.
But is that the result of teaching, and intense practice, or are the foundations of math built into our brains?
Scientists are looking for the answer here, at the Duke University Lemur Center, a 70-acre sanctuary in North Carolina, the largest one for rare and endangered lemurs, in the world.
Like all primates, lemurs are related to humans through a common ancestor that lived as many as 65-million years ago. Scientists believe lemurs share many characteristics with those earliest primates, making them a window, though a blurry one, into our ancient past.
LIZ BRANNON: Got a choice here, Teres. Come on up.
NARRATOR: Duke professor Liz Brannon investigates how well lemurs, like Teres here, can compare quantities.
LIZ BRANNON: Many different animals choose larger food quantities, so what is Teres doing? What are all of these different animals doing when they compare two quantities?
Well, clearly he's not using verbal labels, he's not using symbols. We need to figure out whether they can really use number, pure number, as a cue.
NARRATOR: To test how well Teres can distinguish quantities, he's been taught a touch screen computer game. The red square starts a round. If he touches it, two squares appear, containing different numbers of objects. He's been trained that if he chooses the box with the fewest number, he'll get a reward, a sugar pellet.
A wrong answer? [Buzzer sounds.]
LIZ BRANNON: We have to do a lot to ensure that they're really attending to number and not something else.
NARRATOR: To make sure the test animal is reacting to the number of objects and not some other cue, Liz varies the objects' size, color and shape.
She has conducted thousands of trials and shown that lemurs and rhesus monkeys can learn to pick the right answer.
LIZ BRANNON: Teres obviously doesn't have language, and he doesn't have any symbols for number. So, is he counting, is he doing what a human child does when they recite the numbers, one, two, three? No. And yet, what he seems to be attending to is the very abstract essence of what a number is.
NARRATOR: Lemurs and rhesus monkeys aren't alone in having this primitive number sense. Rats, pigeons, fish, raccoons, insects, horses and elephants all show sensitivity to quantity.
And so do human infants. At her lab on the Duke campus, Liz has tested babies that were only six months old. They'll look longer at a screen with a changing number of objects, as long as the change is obvious enough to capture their attention.
Liz has also tested college students, asking them not to count but to respond as quickly as they could to a touch screen test comparing quantities. The results? About the same as lemurs and rhesus monkeys.
LIZ BRANNON: In fact, there are humans who aren't as good as our monkeys, and others that are far better, so there's a lot of variability in human performance, but, in general, it looks very similar to a monkey.
Even without any mathematical education, even without learning any number words or symbols, we would still have, all of us, as humans, a primitive number sense.
That fundamental ability to perceive number seems to be a very important foundation, and without it, it's very questionable as to whether we could ever appreciate symbolic mathematics.
NARRATOR: The building blocks of mathematics may be preprogrammed into our brains, part of the basic toolkit for survival, like our ability to recognize patterns and shapes or our sense of time. From that point of view, on this foundation, we've erected one of the greatest inventions of human culture: mathematics. But the mystery remains. If it is “all in our heads,” why has math been so effective?
Through science, technology and engineering, it's transformed the planet, even allowing us to go into the beyond. As in the work here, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California.
MISSION CONTROL 1: Roger, copy mission.
MISSION CONTROL 2: Coming up on entry.
NARRATOR: In 2012, they landed a car-sized rover,…
MISSION CONTROL 2: Descending at about point-75 meters per second, as expected.
NARRATOR: …on Mars.
MISSION CONTROL 2: Touchdown confirmed. We're safe on Mars.
NARRATOR: Adam Steltzner was the lead engineer on the team that designed the landing system. Their work depended on a groundbreaking discovery, from the Renaissance, that turned mathematics into the language of science: the law of falling bodies.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle taught that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. An idea that, on the surface, makes sense, even this surface: the Mars yard, where they test the rovers at J.P.L.
ADAM STELTZNER (Jet Propulsion Laboratory): So Aristotle reasoned that the rate at which things would fall was proportional to their weight, which seems reasonable.
NARRATOR: In fact, so reasonable, the view held for nearly 2,000 years, until challenged in the late 1500s by Italian mathematician, Galileo Galilei.
ADAM STELTZNER: Legend has it that Galileo dropped two different weight cannon balls from the leaning tower of Pisa.
Well, we're not in Pisa, we don't have cannon balls, but we do have a bowling ball and a bouncy ball. Let's weigh them.
First, we weigh the bowling ball. It weighs 15 pounds. And the bouncy ball, it weighs hardly anything.
Let's drop them.
NARRATOR: According to Aristotle, the bowling ball should fall over 15 times faster than the bouncy ball.
ADAM STELTZNER: Well, they seem to fall at the same rate. This isn't that high though. Maybe we should drop them from higher.
So, Ed is 20 feet in the air up there. Let's see if the balls fall at the same rate.
Ready? Three, two, one, drop!
Galileo was right. Aristotle, you lose.
NARRATOR: Dropping feathers and hammers is misleading, thanks to air resistance.
DAVID R. SCOTT (NASA Footage): Well, in my left hand I have a feather, in my right hand, a hammer.
NARRATOR: A fact demonstrated on the Moon, where there is no air, in 1971, during the Apollo 15 mission.
DAVID R. SCOTT (NASA Footage): And I'll drop the two of them here.
How about that? Mr. Galileo was correct.
NARRATOR: So, while counterintuitive, if you take the air out of the equation, everything falls at the same rate, even Aristotle.
But what really interested Galileo was that an object dropped at one height didn't take twice as long to drop from twice as high. It accelerated.
But how do you measure that? Everything is happening so fast.
Galileo came up with an ingenious solution. He built a ramp, an inclined plane, to slow the falling motion down so he could measure it.
ADAM STELTZNER: So we're going to use this ramp to find the relationship between distance and time.
For time, I'll use an arbitrary unit, a Galileo, one Galileo.
NARRATOR: The length of the ramp that the ball rolls during one Galileo becomes one unit of distance.
ADAM STELTZNER: So, we've gone one unit of distance in one unit of time. Now, let's try it for a two-count. One Galileo, two Galileo.
NARRATOR: In two units of time, the ball has rolled four units of distance.
ADAM STELTZNER: Now let's see how far it goes in three Galileos. One Galileo, two Galileo, three Galileo.
NARRATOR: In three units of time, the ball has gone nine units of distance.
ADAM STELTZNER: So, there it is. There's a mathematical relationship here, between time and distance.
NARRATOR: Galileo's inspired use of a ramp had shown falling objects follow mathematical laws. The distance the ball traveled is directly proportional to the square of the time.
ADAM STELTZNER: That mathematical relationship that Galileo observed is a mathematical expression of the physics of our universe.
NARRATOR: Galileo's centuries-old mathematical observation about falling objects remains just as valid today.
ADAM STELTZNER: It's the same mathematical expression that we can use to understand how things might fall here on Earth, roll down a ramp. It's even a relationship that we used to land the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars.
That's the power of mathematics.
NARRATOR: Galileo's insight was profound. Mathematics could be used as a tool to uncover and discover the hidden rules of our world. He later wrote, “The universe is written in the language of mathematics.”
JANNA LEVIN (Barnard College/Columbia University): Math is really the language in which we understand the universe. We don't know why it's the case that the laws of physics and the universe follows mathematical models, but it does seem to be the case.
NARRATOR: While Galileo turned mathematical equations into laws of science, it was another man, born the same year Galileo died, who took that to new heights that crossed the heavens.
His name was Isaac Newton. He worked here, at Trinity College, in Cambridge, England.
SIMON SCHAFFER (University of Cambridge): Newton cultivated the reputation of being a solitary genius, and here, in the bowling green of Trinity College, it was said that he would walk meditatively up and down the paths, absentmindedly drawing mathematical diagrams in the gravel. And the fellows were instructed, or so it was said, not to disturb him, not to clear up the gravel after he'd passed, in case they inadvertently wiped out some major scientific or mathematical discovery.
NARRATOR: In 1687, Newton published a book that would become a landmark in the history of science. Today it is known simply as The Principia. In it, Newton gathered observations from around the world, and used mathematics to explain them, for instance, that of a comet seen widely in the fall of 1680.
SIMON SCHAFFER: He gathers data worldwide in order to construct the comet's path. So for November the 19th, he begins with an observation made in Cambridge, in England, at 4:30 a.m., by a certain young person, and then, at 5:00 in the morning, at Boston, in New England. So what Newton does is to accumulate numbers made by observers spread right across the globe, in order to construct an unprecedentedly accurate calculation of how this great comet moved through the sky.
NARRATOR: Newton's groundbreaking insight was that the force that sent the comet hurtling around the sun was the same force that brought cannon balls back to Earth. It was the force behind Galileo's law of falling bodies, and it even held the planets in their orbits.
He called the force “gravity,” and described it precisely, in a surprisingly simple equation that explains how two masses attract each other, whether here on Earth or in the heavens above.
SIMON SCHAFFER: What's so impressive and so dramatic is that a single mathematical law would allow you to move throughout the universe.
NARRATOR: Today, we can even witness it at work beyond the Milky Way.
JENNIFER WISEMAN (NASA): This is a picture of two galaxies that are actually being drawn together in a merger.
MARIO LIVIO: This is how galaxies build themselves.
JENNIFER WISEMAN: Right.
NARRATOR: Mario Livio is on the team working with the images from the Hubble Space Telescope.
For decades, scientists have used Hubble to gaze far beyond our solar system, even beyond the stars of our galaxy. It's shown us the distant gas clouds of nebulae and vast numbers of galaxies wheeling in the heavens, billions of light years away. And what those images show is that throughout the visible universe, as far as the telescope can see, the law of gravity still applies.
MARIO LIVIO: You know, Newton wrote these laws of gravity and of motion based on things happening on Earth and the planets in the solar system and so on, but these same laws, these very same laws apply to all these distant galaxies, and, you know, shape them. And everything about them, how they form, how they move, is controlled by those same mathematical laws.
NARRATOR: Some of the world's greatest minds have been amazed by the way that math permeates the universe.
MARIO LIVIO: Albert Einstein, he wondered. He said, “How is it possible that mathematics,” which is, he thought, a product of human thought, “does so well in explaining the universe as we see it?” And Nobel laureate in physics, Eugene Wigner, coined this phrase, “The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.” He said the fact that mathematics can really describe the universe so well, in particular physical laws, is a gift that we neither understand nor deserve.
NARRATOR: In physics, examples of that “unreasonable effectiveness” abound. When, nearly 200 years ago, the planet Uranus was seen to go off track, scientists trusted the math and calculated it was being pulled by another unseen planet, and so, they discovered Neptune.
Mathematics had accurately predicted a previously unknown planet.
SAVAS DIMOPOULOS (Stanford University): If you formulate a question properly, mathematics gives you the answer.
It's like having a servant that is far more capable than you are. So you tell it, “Do this,” and if you say it nicely, then it'll do it. And it will carry you all the way to the truth, to the final answer.
NARRATOR: Evidence of the amazing predictive power of mathematics can be found all around us: television, radio, your cell phone, satellites, the baby monitor, Wi-Fi, your garage door opener, G.P.S., and yes, even, maybe, your T.V.'s remote, all of these use invisible waves of energy to communicate.
And no one even knew they existed until the work of James Maxwell, a Scottish mathematical physicist.
In the 1860s, he published a set of equations that explained how electricity and magnetism were related, how each could generate the other. The equations also made a startling prediction: together, electricity and magnetism could produce waves of energy that would travel through space at the speed of light: electro-magnetic waves.
ROGER PENROSE (University of Oxford): Maxwell's theory gave us these radio waves, x-rays, these things which were simply not known about at all. So, the theory had a scope, which was extraordinary.
NARRATOR: Almost immediately people set out to find the waves predicted by Maxwell's equations. What must have seemed the least promising attempt to harness them is made here, in northern Italy, in the attic of a family home, by 20-year-old Guglielmo Marconi.
His process starts with a series of sparks. The burst of electricity creates a momentary magnetic field, which, in turn, generates a momentary electric field, which creates another magnetic field. The energy cycles between the two, propagating an electro-magnetic wave.
Marconi gets his system to work inside, but then he scales up. Over a few weeks, he builds a big antenna beside the house to amplify the waves coming from his spark generator. Then he asks his brother and an assistant to carry a receiver across the estate to the far side of a nearby hill. They also have a shotgun, which they will fire if they manage to pick up the signal.
And it works.
The signal has been detected even though the receiver is now hidden behind a hill. At over a mile, it is the farthest transmission to date.
In fewer than 10 years, Marconi will be sending radio signals across the Atlantic. In fact, when the Titanic sinks, in 1912, he'll be personally credited with saving many lives, because his onboard equipment allowed the distress signal to be transmitted.
Thanks to the predictions of Maxwell's equations, Marconi could harness a hidden part of our world, ushering in the era of wireless communication.
Since Maxwell and Marconi, evidence of the predictive power of mathematics has only grown, especially in the world of physics.
A hundred years ago, we barely knew atoms existed. It took experiments to reveal their components: the electron, the proton and the neutron. But when physicists wanted to go deeper, mathematics began to lead the way, ultimately revealing a zoo of elementary particles, discoveries that continue, to this day, here at CERN, the European organization for nuclear research, in Geneva, Switzerland.
These days, they're most famous for their Large Hadron Collider, a circular particle accelerator about 17-miles-around, built deep underground.
This 10-billion-dollar project, decades in the making, had a well-publicized goal, the search for one of the most fundamental building blocks of the universe: a subatomic particle, mathematically predicted to exist nearly 50 years earlier by Robert Brout and François Englert, working in Belgium, and Peter Higgs in Scotland.
MAX TEGMARK: Peter Higgs sat down with the most advanced physics equations we had and calculated and calculated, and made this audacious prediction, and if we built the most sophisticated machine humans have ever built, and used it to smash particles together near the speed of light in a certain way, that we would then discover a new particle, if this math was really accurate.
NARRATOR: The discovery of the Higgs particle, would be proof of the Higgs field, a cosmic molasses that gives the stuff of our world mass, what we usually experience as weight.
Without mass, everything would travel at the speed of light and would never combine to form atoms. That makes the Higgs field such a fundamental part of physics that the Higgs particle gained the nickname the “God particle.”
In 2012, experiments at CERN confirmed the existence of the Higgs particle, making the work of Peter Higgs and his colleagues, decades earlier, one of the greatest predictions ever made.
MAX TEGMARK: And we built it, and it worked. And he got a free trip to Stockholm.
Here, you have mathematical theories, which make very definitive predictions about the possible existence of some fundamental particles of nature, and, believe it or not, they make these huge experiments and they actually discover the particles that have been predicted mathematically. I mean this is just amazing to me.
ANDREW LANKFORD (University of California, Irvine): Why does this work? How can mathematics be so powerful? Is mathematics, you know, a truth of nature, or does it have something to do with the way that we, as humans, perceive nature? To me this is just a fascinating puzzle. I don't know the answer.
NARRATOR: In physics, mathematics has had a long string of successes.
But is it really “unreasonably effective?” Not everyone thinks so.
STEPHEN WOLFRAM (Chief Executive Officer, Wolfram Research): I think it's an illusion. Because I think what has happened is that people have chosen to build physics, for example, using the mathematics that has been practiced, has developed historically, and then they're looking at everything, they are choosing to study things amenable to study using the mathematics that happens to have arisen. But actually there is a whole vast ocean of other things that are really quite inaccessible to those methods.
NARRATOR: With the success of mathematical models in physics, it's easy to overlook where they don't work that well, like in weather forecasting.
There's a reason meteorologists predict the weather for the coming week but not much further out than that. In a longer forecast, small errors grow into big ones. Daily weather is just too complex and chaotic for precise modeling. And it's not alone. So is the behavior of water boiling on a stove, or the stock market, or the interaction of neurons in the brain, much of human psychology and parts of biology.
DEREK ABBOTT (The University of Adelaide): Biological systems, economic systems, it gets very difficult to model those systems with math. We have extreme difficulty with that. So I do not see math as “unreasonably effective.” I see it as reasonably ineffective.
NARRATOR: Perhaps no one is as keenly aware of the power and limitations of mathematics, as those who use it to design and make things: engineers. In their work, the elegance of math meets the messiness of reality, and practicality rules the day.
ADAM STELTZNER: Mathematics, and perhaps mathematicians, deal in the domain of the absolute, and engineers live in the domain of the approximate. We are fundamentally interested in the practical. And so, frequently, we make approximations, we cut corners. We omit terms and equations to get things that are simple enough to suit our purposes and to meet our needs.
NARRATOR: Many of our greatest engineering achievements were built using mathematical shortcuts, simplified equations that approximate an answer, trading some precision for practicality.
And for engineers “approximate” is close enough, close enough to take you to Mars.
ADAM STELTZNER: For us engineers, we don't get paid to do things right, we get paid to do things just right enough.
NARRATOR: Many physicists see an uncanny accuracy in the way mathematics can reveal the secrets of the universe, making it seem to be an inherent part of nature.
Meanwhile, engineers, in practice, have to sacrifice the precision of mathematics to keep it useful, making it seem more like an imperfect tool of our own invention.
So which is mathematics? A discovered part of the universe or a very human invention?
Maybe it's both.
MARIO LIVIO: What I think about mathematics is that it's an intricate combination of inventions and discoveries. So, for example, take something like the natural numbers, one, two, three, four, five, etc., I think what happened was that people were looking at many things, for example, and seeing that there are two eyes, you know, two breasts, two hands, you know, and so on. And after some time they abstracted from all of that the number two.
NARRATOR: According to Mario, “two” became an invented concept, as did all the other natural numbers, but then people discovered that these numbers have all kinds of intricate relationships. Those were discoveries.
MARIO LIVIO: We invented the concept but then discovered the relations among the different concepts.
NARRATOR: So is this the answer? That math is both invented and discovered?
JIM GATES: This is one of those questions where it's both. Yes, it feels like it's already there, but yes it's something that comes out of our deep creative nature as human beings.
NARRATOR: We may have some idea to how all this works, but not the complete answer. In the end, it remains The Great Math Mystery! |
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ISR Issue 59, MayJune 2008 Lenin’s return THE FOLLOWING three presentations were delivered at a panel discussion entitled Lenin’s Return?, held at the Left Forum in New York City on March 15, 2008. HELEN SCOTT is associate professor of English literature at the University of Vermont in Burlington, and is the editor of The Essential Rosa Luxemburg (Haymarket Books, 2008). PAUL LeBLANC is professor of history at La Roche College in Pittsburgh, and is author of Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (Humanities Press, 1993). LARS LIH, an independent scholar, is author of Lenin Rediscovered (Haymarket Books, 2008). The panel was sponsored by WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society. The flier posted for the event posed the following questions: What is the relationship of Lenin to the larger Marxist tradition? What is the relationship of Lenin’s ideas to the struggle for socialism, democracy, and freedom? What is the relationship of Lenin to the realities of our own time? Does Lenin still matter? By PAUL LeBLANC ABOUT FORTY years ago, an aging relative of mine gave me an old handbill printed in red ink, issued by District 2 of the Workers’ Party, which proclaimed LENIN LIVES! It urged us to “Come En Masse” to Madison Square Garden to a Sunday afternoon event chaired by Ben Gitlow (a central leader of U.S. communism who later devolved into a professional anti-communist). The event included the 400-voice Freiheit Chorus, a 100-piece symphony orchestra, and speeches from William Z. Foster, C. E. Ruthenberg, Moissaye Olgin, and Jack Stachel—for an admission fee of fifty cents (a significant sum for a worker in 1925). The bottom of the handbill proclaimed: LONG LIVE LENINISM! 1 Of course, Lenin lived and died long ago, so one could ask why we should bother with him in our very different world. Partial answers include the fact that poverty, oppression, and exploitation; the unequal structure of wealth and power in our society and in our world; imperialism and military violence—that are all part of the capitalism which he analyzed and struggled against so forcefully—continue to afflict us. This does not mean that Lenin is right about everything, of course—but it does suggest that his ideas may have relevance for those developing an understanding of our history and our time. Consider three recent films. The poignant German comedy Goodbye Lenin! (2003) reflects on the beautiful, tarnished, murderously corrupted, deadeningly bureaucratized dreams of the communism that proved so utterly unsustainable throughout Eastern Europe. We see a monstrous statue of Lenin being carried away, through the air, by a helicopter, as a stunned female communist-idealist (herself close to premature death) watches with uncomprehending wonder. The edgy thriller Syriana (2005) shows us ruthless machinations of communism’s triumphant and relentlessly profiteering adversary. The capitalist-driven empire “takes out” a progressive radical-nationalist of an oil-rich country, perpetuating the global exploitation and misery of millions which—in turn, thanks to the absence of revolutionary alternatives—generates suicidal fundamentalist violence. Fast forward to the year 2027 portrayed in Children of Men (2007): in the absence of a socialist alternative (protest movements for global justice were not enough), the world has begun its downward slide into barbarism, a vast cemetery, with the final enclave of “civilization” standing as increasingly authoritarian and exclusionary. Its inhumanity infects many who struggle against it—but images of Lenin appear, in the midst of religious icons, in an obscure, nurturing haven of those who hope and reach for humanity’s future. But many would argue that, surely, the images of Lenin as nurturing hope are misplaced. Even many on the left agree with liberals who quote conservatives who assure us that Lenin and his revolutionary communist perspectives were inhumane and authoritarian. There is, however, a growing accumulation of scholarly and creative-intellectual work that is challenging this anti-Lenin conception. One example is a recent book of essays, Lenin Reloaded, in which an impressive set of twenty-first century intellectuals argue that, “Lenin Lives!” I want to read a brief excerpt from one contribution to that volume, by Frederic Jameson. Beginning with an account from Leon Trotsky’s 1932 diary of a dream conversation with Lenin, Jameson goes on to describe Lenin’s formidable writings as coming from a man who is unaware that he is dead. Here’s the quote: He does not know that the immense social experiment he single-handedly brought into being (and which we call Soviet Communism) has come to an end. He remains full of energy, although dead, and the vituperation expended on him by the living—that he was the originator of Stalinist terror, that he was an aggressive personality full of hatred, an authoritarian in love with power and totalitarianism, even (worst of all) the rediscoverer of the market in his [New Economic Policy]…—none of those insults manage to confer a death, or even a second death, on him. How is it, how can it be, that he still thinks he is alive? 2 It seems to me that such scholarship and intellectual broodings reflect something that is happening in the larger social and political reality. In the post-9/11 world, dominant ideologies are being undermined by political and social crises, crises that are generating insurgent forces that may be ready to see a new relevance in Lenin. Varieties of conservatism, reformism, anarchism, and fundamentalism (secular as well as religious) have been tried, continue to be tried, and yet the times in which we live seem to grow more terrible. That seems unlikely to change, regardless of which Democrat or Republican becomes president of the United States later this year. What masses of people are experiencing, feeling, and thinking today gives recent Lenin-influenced works a growing resonance, and so they may find a greater “market” than previously has been the case. With the appearance of such scholarship, reflected in today’s panel, we may be on the eve of a Lenin revival. I want to conclude first by giving a sense of the scope of Lenin’s political thought, then highlighting a couple of its aspects that have special resonance in our time, and finally by adding a word of caution. 3 Lenin’s starting point is a belief in the necessary interconnection of socialist theory and practice with the working class and the labor movement. The working class—those whose living depends on selling their ability to work for a paycheck, those whose labor provides the basis for human society—is increasingly becoming the majority of the world’s people. Workers are certainly the great majority of those in advanced capitalist countries such as the United States. This class cannot adequately defend its actual interests and overcome its oppression, in Lenin’s view, without embracing the goal of socialism—an economic system in which the economy is socially owned and democratically controlled in order to meet the needs of all people. Inseparable from this is a basic understanding of the working class as it is, which involves a grasp of the great diversity and unevenness of working-class experience and consciousness. This calls for the development of a practical revolutionary approach seeking to connect, in serious ways, with the various sectors and layers of the working class. It involves the understanding that different approaches and goals are required to reach and engage one or another worker, or group or sector or layer of workers. This means thoughtfully utilizing various forms of educational and agitational literature, and developing different kinds of speeches and discussions, in order to connect the varieties of working-class experience, and, most important, to help initiate or support various kinds of practical struggles. The more “advanced” or vanguard layers of the working class must be rallied not to narrow and limited goals (in the spirit of “pure and simple trade unionism”), but to an expansive sense of solidarity and common cause that has the potential for drawing the class as a whole into the struggle for its collective interests. This fundamental orientation is the basis for most of what Lenin has to say. It is the basis of other key perspectives that one can find in his voluminous writings: • An understanding of the necessity of working-class political independence in political and social struggles, and the need for its supremacy (or hegemony) if such struggles are to triumph;
• A coherent conception of organization that is practical, democratic, and revolutionary;
• The development of the united front tactic, in which diverse political forces can work together for common goals, but in a manner allowing socialist organizations to advance effective revolutionary perspectives;
• An intellectual and practical seriousness (and lack of dogmatism or sectarianism) in utilizing Marxist theory;
• A profound analysis of imperialism and nationalism;
• A vibrantly revolutionary internationalist approach. Lenin stressed the necessity for active socialist and working-class support for struggles of all who suffer oppression. “Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected,” Lenin emphasized. This includes issues of freedom of speech and expression, cultural freedom, the rights of religious minorities, the rights of racial and ethnic groups, the rights of women, of soldiers, of students, of peasants. Their oppression must be seen by the worker as coming from (according to Lenin) “those same dark forces that are oppressing and crushing him at every step of his life.” A revolutionary must be a “tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of people it affects.” 4 The “Leninism” of Lenin also involves an approach of integrating reform struggles with revolutionary strategy and, combined with this, a remarkable understanding of the manner in which democratic struggles flow into socialist revolution. At the heart of Lenin’s orientation was a “democratic imperative” interweaving (as he put it) “the revolutionary struggle against capitalism with a revolutionary program and revolutionary tactics relative to all democratic demands: a republic, a militia, officials elected by the people, equal rights for women, self-determination of nations, etc.… Basing ourselves on democracy as it already exists, exposing its incompleteness under capitalism, we advocate the overthrow of capitalism, expropriation of the bourgeoisie as a necessary basis both for the abolition of the poverty of the masses and for a complete and manifold realization of all democratic forms.” 5 Of course, the bourgeoisie—the capitalists, those who own the big businesses, the multinational corporations exploiting our planet—have immense power and want to prevent the possibility that there might be rule by the people over the economy. Their power can only be challenged and overcome through systematic and sustained education, agitation, and organization on the part of the working-class majority. But this cannot and will not be accomplished unless revolutionaries are organized to work together. Developing an organization of revolutionaries is essential to Leninism. But here I want to end with a word of caution. We need to be clear on the profound difference between “the Leninism of Lenin” and the immediate possibilities that we face in a context that is, in some ways, qualitatively different from his. Lenin’s Bolshevik organization was part of a broad global working-class formation, part of a developing labor movement, and part of an evolving labor-radical subculture that embraced masses of people. Much experience of the U.S. Left demonstrates that an effort to create such an organization outside of such a context all too often degenerates into the construction of a political sect, with well-meaning activists penned up in a world of their own, separate and apart from the working class. The development of a broad, numerically significant layer and subculture of socially conscious people who are part of the working class is essential for creating the kind revolutionary party that Lenin helped build. The accumulation of a significant percentage of activists who are part of that layer is the precondition for such a party. This can’t simply be proclaimed by a handful of would-be Leninists. 6 It seems to me, for reasons suggested at the beginning of this presentation, that these and related issues will be the focus of much thought and discussion among activists in the coming period. And I see this panel as part of that process. NOTES 1 Portions of this presentation are drawn from my article “Lenin’s Return,” WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Volume 10, Number 3, September 2007, 273–85, and also from my introduction to the forthcoming Lenin: Selected Writings on Revolution, Democracy, and Socialism (London: Pluto Press, 2008). For a vivid sense of early U.S. communism, see Bryan Palmer, James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007), as well as Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism, Report of a Participant (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1961).
2 Frederic Jameson, “Lenin and Revisionism,” in Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis, and Slavoj Zizek, eds., Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 60.
3 The following paragraphs are grounded in material presented in three of my books: Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1993), From Marx to Gramsci: A Reader in Revolutionary Marxist Politics (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1996), and Marx, Lenin and the Revolutionary Experience: Studies of Communism and Radicalism in the Age of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2006).
4 Lenin, What Is to Be Done?, V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 154, 156. Also see Lars Lih’s outstanding work Lenin Rediscovered: “What Is to Be Done?” in Context (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006 and Haymarket Books, 2008).
5 Lenin, “The revolutionary proletariat and the right of nations to self-determination,” excerpted in From Marx to Gramsci, 205–8.
6 This is discussed in the conclusion of my introduction to Lenin: Writings on Revolution, Democracy, and Socialism, and in Chapter 7 of Marx, Lenin and the Revolutionary Experience. Much of Lenin’s own work, from What Is To Be Done? to Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, also addresses this question. Similar points can be found in N. K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin (New York: International Publishers, 1970) and Gregory Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party from the Beginnings to February 1917, A Popular Outline (London: New Park, 1973). Lenin and Luxemburg By HELEN SCOTT IN A 1961 introduction to two of her essays, Bertram Wolfe argues that Rosa Luxemburg opposed Lenin “till the end” of her life: A democratic worshiper of “spontaneity,” she rejected Lenin’s “authoritarian centralism,” blamed him for splitting the international, and predicted that his “penchant for personal dictatorship” would pave the way for Stalinism and fascism. 1 Although Wolfe’s propaganda piece is a particularly crude version, the basic components of his polemic have become received common sense. Sexist condescension is customary: Wolfe tells us that Luxemburg was driven by emotion more than politics (she had a “longing to conquer in storm and passion”), that her body was “slight and weak,” and that she had “large, expressive...beautiful eyes.” 2 This motif of the “kinder, gentler revolutionary” persists: it can be seen, for example, in Jonathan Rabb’s recent novel Rosa. In the course of the narrative, which turns the circumstances surrounding Luxemburg’s death into a murder mystery, the detective “finds” the real woman behind the communist, through reading her poetry collections and journal, and talking with her lover, Leo Jogiches. 3 But sexism is only one aspect of the “good socialist/bad socialist” opposition that is projected on to Luxemburg and Lenin. For example, a recent Retort book, Afflicted Powers, calls Rosa Luxemburg an inspiration and her Juniusbrochure an exemplary indictment of “war in relation to the capitalist state.” 4 Lenin, however, serves only as a negative example: The Leninist vanguard party is “a militant, secretive, unicellular band of brothers...the deepest and most destructive illusion of the Left;” 5 and far from offering an alternative, it is, like al-Qaeda, in its “narrowness and secretiveness and merciless instrumentalism” an understandable but disastrous response to the challenges of history. 6 Such accusations rest on a wildly false version of Lenin, and obscure what the two had in common: they were the figureheads of social democracy’s international Left, sharing an enduring faith in working-class self-emancipation, a commitment to revolution, an understanding of socialists as the tribune of the oppressed, and were principled opponents to imperialism and war. They were frequently allied in the struggle against reformism; they collaborated in Finland after the defeat of the 1905 revolution; they co-authored the antiwar amendment at the Stuttgart congress of 1907; and they famously denounced the Second International’s betrayal in 1914, when the vast majority of parties abandoned international working-class solidarity to support the war efforts of their respective nations. There were significant disagreements between them, perhaps most stubbornly over the question of how socialists should relate to struggles for national liberation. (And without taking up this question, it is worth pointing out that Lenin was the one championing democratic rights here.) But the organizational question is at the heart of most attempts to pit them against one another. The received wisdom is that Luxemburg opposed Lenin’s project of building a centralized vanguard organization, and that she saw this project as antithetical to the spontaneous revolutionary activity of the working class. The first thing to note is that Lenin and Luxemburg both spent their lives building socialist organizations. This obvious point bares reiteration because “worship of spontaneity” implies that she was against organization per se. Whereas, in the words of her main biographer, Paul Frölich: “Luxemburg was in agreement with Lenin that the revolutionary party had to be the vanguard of the working class, that it had to be centralistically organized, and that the will of its majority could be carried out by means of strict discipline in its activities.” 7 Lenin and Luxemburg, along with the entire Second International, looked to Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD)—based on the 1891 Erfurt Program’s dual commitment to the minimum program (the project of winning reforms under capitalism) and the maximum program (socialist revolution)—as the model through which to achieve socialism. Since the repeal of the anti-socialist laws, German social democracy had functioned in public using all the institutions of bourgeois democracy. In Russia, where no such political freedoms existed, socialists faced the challenge of maintaining an organization rooted in the working class under the constant threat of arrest and deportation. Debates within the Russian party about how best to do this provide the backdrop for Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, written before and after the 1903 dispute between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks over the definition of membership. Luxemburg’s polemic against him in 1904, “Organizational questions of Russian social democracy,” is the ubiquitous source for anti-Leninists: it was even renamed, long after the author’s death, “Leninism or Marxism?” In this essay she asserts that Lenin’s “ultra-centralism” is based, “1) on the blind subordination of all party organs in the smallest detail of their activity to a central power which, alone, thinks, plans, and decides for all; and 2) the sharp separation of the organized kernel of the party from the surrounding revolutionary milieu.” 8 Luxemburg’s straw-man version of Lenin’s party bears no resemblance to anything he actually advocated. Lars Lih and Paul LeBlanc have separately taken up both what is false in this essay’s portrayal of Lenin and in the standard accounts of it. There is no evidence that Luxemburg had in fact even read What Is to Be Done?, and she doesn’t engage with the actual content of One Step Forward. Lih suggests that she relied on secondary accounts supplied by his critics; Certainly Lenin responded to her essay by showing point by point how she misrepresents him. 9 These otherwise uncharacteristic omissions make sense when we consider that Luxemburg’s argument against centralization was shaped more by the German than the Russian context. The SPD was a broad church organization, within which coexisted the revolutionary Left, the reformist right wing, and the center which formally sanctioned but actually tolerated the latter. As Carl Shorske elaborates in his detailed history of its foundation and development, the SPD over two decades developed a massive bureaucracy of paid functionaries oriented on parliament and increasingly hostile to radical change. 10 Luxemburg’s role was that of revolutionary critic of reformism and bureaucratization. When she writes “social democratic organizational form cannot be based on blind obedience and on the mechanical subordination of the party militants to some centralized power,” she is protesting a tendency in her own organization rather than anything in Lenin’s account. Indeed many of her formulations are very close to Lenin’s: Social Democratic centralism...can be nothing but the imperative summation of the will of the enlightened and fighting vanguard of the working class as opposed to its individual groups and members. This is, so to speak, a “self-centralism” of the leading stratum of the proletariat; it is the rule of the majority within its own party organization. 11 Compare this definition provided by Luxemburg with Paul LeBlanc’s crystallization of the model presented by Lenin in What Is to Be Done?: “a serious ‘organization of real revolutionaries,’ a ‘body of comrades in which complete, mutual confidence prevails’ and in which all ‘have a lively sense of their responsibility.’” 12 The revolution of 1905 brought Lenin and Luxemburg together personally and politically. Luxemburg crossed the border at great risk in order to participate, and largely supported Lenin and the Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks. In the course of the uprising their views “came so close that there hardly seemed to be any difference between them,” in the words of Frölich. After the defeat of the revolution, Luxemburg joined Lenin in Finland and they established a close and enduring alliance based on great mutual respect. Luxemburg’s The Mass Strike draws out the lessons of the 1905 revolution for the German working class movement, and contains moving and inspiring descriptions of the wave of strikes and protests that shook tsarism. She says of the St. Petersburg uprising that it, awoke class feeling and class consciousness in millions upon millions as if by an electric shock...the proletarian mass, counted by millions, quite suddenly and sharply came to realize how intolerable was that social and economic existence which they had patiently endured for decades in the chains of capitalism. Thereupon, there began a spontaneous general shaking of and tugging at these chains. 13 She witnessed revolutionary action accomplish more in a flash than could be achieved in a lifetime of trade union and parliamentary activity. In the same way, Lenin said of bloody Sunday that, “‘the revolutionary education of the proletariat made more progress in one day than it could have made in months and years of drab, humdrum, wretched existence.’” 14 Far from fetishizing spontaneity, Luxemburg’s focus, like Lenin’s, is constantly on the interaction between the spontaneous and the conscious: “If...the direction of the mass strike...is a matter of the revolutionary period itself, the directing of the mass strike becomes...the duty of Social Democracy and its leading organs...the Social Democrats are called upon to assume political leadership in the midst of the revolutionary period.” 15 When she depicts leadership as a block on mass self-activity, her target again is not the revolutionary vanguard but the bureaucratic centralism of the trade unions and parliamentarians. In 1913 she wrote: Leaders who hang back will certainly be pushed aside by the storming masses. However, just to sit back and wait calmly for this gratifying result as a sure indication that ‘the time is ripe’ may be all right for a lonely philosopher, but for the political leadership of a revolutionary party it would be a sign of poverty, of moral bankruptcy. The task of Social Democracy and its leaders is not to be dragged along by events, but to be consciously ahead of them, to have an overall view of the trend of events, to shorten the period of development by conscious action, and to accelerate its progress. 16 This is strikingly close to Lenin in What Is to Be Done?: (using Lars Lih’s translation that replaces “spontaneous” with the Russian word, “stikhiinyi”) But isn’t this the role of Social Democracy—to be a “spirit” that does not merely brood above the stikhiinyi movement but lifts up this movement to “its program”? Its role is certainly not to drag along in the tail of the movement: this is useless for the movement in the best case and extremely harmful in the worst case. 17 Both figures warned against opportunism and sectarianism, the dual perils of any socialist formation: either abandoning principles to adapt to prevailing consciousness, or developing shibboleths that prevent contact with radicalizing workers. They agreed that revolutionaries had to be where the masses are but to lead rather than follow, and they also for a long time agreed that the open democracy of the SPD constituted the ideal means to achieve this. But that model had to be adapted in Russia, where socialist activity was illegal and so necessitated constant vigilance against police infiltration and repression. Luxemburg faced the same conditions in the country of her birth, Poland: she was one of a small nucleus of revolutionaries who, despite their geographic dispersal, led the underground Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania. According to Max Shachtman, even the Menshevik Theodore Dan held that “the Polish social-democracy of the time shared in its essentials the organizational principles of Lenin.” 18 However, her biographer J.P. Nettl notes that Luxemburg “[did] not concern herself with organizational matters at all,” especially after 1901, even while she continued to provide political guidance to the Polish party. 19 Lenin, on the other hand, decisively “concerned himself” with the practical as well as the political details of a socialist organization able to assure effective democracy while mitigating against infiltration and arrest: methodically building a cadre of experienced members based on a shared commitment to a revolutionary program, and who were able to win leadership within specific workplaces. Georg Lukács captures the essence of the model in a short book written soon after Lenin’s death: [T]he strictest selection of party members according to clarity of class-consciousness and unconditional devotion to the cause of the revolution must be combined with their equal ability to merge themselves totally in the lives of the struggling and suffering masses. All efforts to fulfill the first of these demands without its corollary are bound, even where groups of good revolutionaries are concerned, to be paralyzed by sectarianism. 20 Having effectively operated as a faction for a decade, after the decisive split in 1912 the Bolsheviks proved able to weather these twin perils of opportunism and sectarianism; they forged a serious working-class organization that in turn endured the shock of the First World War and the collapse of the Second International, and went on to lead the revolution in 1917. In Germany, Luxemburg and other revolutionaries remained dispersed within the broad membership of the SPD not only through 1914, but even after the right wing of the party forced a split in 1917, when they stayed in the expelled opposition. When the SPD leadership succumbed to opportunism, historian of the German Revolution Pierre Broué writes, “German revolutionaries found themselves completely atomized. They were, moreover, to learn to their cost that, in a party which they still regarded as being theirs, they would be subjected to repression which reinforced that of the state and the police.” 21 Lacking a clear political program, seasoned cadre, and centralized organizational apparatus, the German leftists were effectively isolated from the broader working class, despite a substantial following. In January 1919, in the face of the brutal crushing of the Berlin uprising, Luxemburg wrote in the paper Die Rote Fahne: “If the cause of the Revolution is to advance, if the victory of the proletariat, of socialism, is to be anything but a dream, the revolutionary workers must set up leading organizations able to guide and to utilize the combative energy of the masses.” 22 In other words, Germany needed a party akin to the Bolsheviks in Russia. When they launched the German Communist Party at the end of 1918, Lenin hailed Luxemburg and her comrades as “world-known and world-famous leaders...[and] staunch working-class champions.” 23 Luxemburg was murdered before she could complete her life’s task, but in one of her final major works, the Russian Revolution, she wrote: Whatever a party could offer of courage, revolutionary far-sightedness and consistency in an historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and the other comrades have given in good measure. All the revolutionary honor and capacity which western Social-Democracy lacked was represented by the Bolsheviks. Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian revolution; it was also the salvation of the honor of international socialism. 24 It is a travesty that these revolutionary allies have been cast as opponents, and it is indicative of how those opposed to far-reaching social change appropriate history for their own uses. A reassessment of that history is a crucial part of the continuing struggle against the wars, inequities, and crises of global capitalism in our own time. NOTES 1 Bertram D. Wolfe, Introduction to The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism? By Rosa Luxemburg (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), 23 and 1.
2 Ibid, 2.
3 Jonathan Rabb, Rosa: A Novel (New York: Three Rivers, 2005).
4 Iain Boal, T. J. Clark, Joseph Matthews, Michael Watts, Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (London: Verso, 2005), xii.
5 Ibid, 7.
6 Ibid, 172–73.
7 Paul Frölich, Rosa Luxemburg: Ideas in Action, trans. Joanna Hoornweg (London: Pluto, 1972), 98.
8 Rosa Luxemburg, “Organizational questions of Russian social democracy,” (1904) trans. Dick Howard, in Dick Howard, ed., Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxemburg (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 283–306, 290.
9 Paul LeBlanc, “Luxemburg and Lenin on organization,” in Rosa Luxemburg: Reflections and Writings (Amherst NY: Humanity Books, 1999); Lars Lih, Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Lenin, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Reply to Rosa Luxemburg,” Collected Works Vol. 7 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 472–83. “She raises bogeys,” wrote Lenin of Luxemburg, “without informing herself of the actual issues in the controversy. She puts in my mouth commonplaces, general principles and conceptions, absolute truths, and tries to pass over the relative truths, pertaining to perfectly definite facts, with which alone I operate,” (475).
10 Carl E. Schorske, German Social Democracy, 1905–1917: The Development of the Great Schism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955).
11 Luxemburg, “Organizational questions,” 290.
12 Paul LeBlanc, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (New Jersey: Humanity Press, 1990), 54.
13 Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party, and the Trade Unions (1906, trans. Patrick Lavin 1925) in Helen Scott, ed., The Essential Rosa Luxemburg (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2008), 111–81, 129.
14 Quoted in LeBlanc, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, 113.
15 Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, 149.
16 Quoted in Frölich, 154.
17 Lenin, What Is to Be Done? (1902) in Lih, Lenin Rediscovered, 721.
18 Max Shachtman, “Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg,” http://www.marxists.org/archive/shactma/1938/03/len-lux.htm
19 J.P. Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg Volume I (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 264–65.
20 Georg Lukács, Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought (1924), trans. Nicholas Jacobs (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974), 34.
21 Pierre Broué, The German Revolution: 191–1923 (1971), trans. John Archer (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006), 49.
22 Quoted in Broué, 253.
23 Ibid, 225.
24 Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution (1922), in Mary-Alice Waters, ed., Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (New York: Pathfinder, 1970), 365–99, 375. Lenin and Kautsky: The final chapter
By LARS T. LIH TODAY I would like to bring to your attention the results of some recent research I have carried out on the topic of Lenin’s relation to Karl Kautsky in the last decade of Lenin’s life, that is, from 1914 to 1924. I will first explain the question I wanted to answer, then describe the way I set out to answer it, and finally summarize the answer I came up with. Who was Karl Kautsky? From Engels’ death in 1895 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he was the most influential Marxist theorist in the world. He was not the official theoretician of the Second International or even the German Social Democratic Party, and he often took a critical or even oppositional attitude to official decisions. He was rather the spokesman of the German party’s Marxist wing and the most influential voice of the party “radicals” until around 1910, when a split developed among the radicals. What was Lenin’s attitude toward Kautsky? Up to 1909, it was extremely admiring and intense. 1 From 1910 to 1914, Lenin’s attitude became much more wary. After 1914, when Kautsky took a centrist position on the war and refused to split with the majority leadership, Lenin’s attitude became extremely negative, and remained so until the end. The question arises, how did Lenin after 1914 regard his own earlier admiration for Kautsky? When you change your mind radically about some person or thing, you enter into a period of cognitive dissonance between your present beliefs and your earlier beliefs. There are two different ways to reduce the tension that arises from having two very divergent opinions about the same object. In the case before us, Lenin could decide: a. Kautsky has changed, that is: Kautsky is now acting a way totally different from the way he acted before. In other words, Kautsky is a renegade. b. I have changed, that is: I, Lenin, now realize that I was wrong, that my earlier admiration was a mistake. In other words, the scale has fallen from Lenin’s eyes. These are the two possibilities. Which description of Lenin’s post-1914 attitude is supported by the evidence? Before telling you, I would like to respond to two questions that might have occurred to you. Why is this issue of any interest? Why isn’t the answer obvious? Why is this issue of any interest?
The main reason for seeking to resolve this issue is that Lenin’s post-1914 attitude toward Kautsky throws some needed light on the larger question of Lenin’s relation to earlier Marxism and to the Second International. Was Lenin an original Marxist theorist who broke with the earlier orthodoxy represented by “Kautskyism”? Or (a somewhat different question) did he ever present himself as such? More specifically, is there a profound gulf between the “mechanistic,” “passive,” and “fatalist” Marxism of Kautsky and the dialectical, activist, revolutionary Marxism of Lenin? The existence of such a gulf is a central assertion of a very influential school of thought that goes back at least to Georg Lukács in 1924. 2 Adherents of this line of thought have criticized my recent study of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?, and I confess this criticism was one motive for undertaking the necessary research. My book shows the very strong connections between Lenin’s outlook in 1894–1904 and Kautsky’s authoritative statements (connections which go way beyond the Kautsky citation in What Is to Be Done? so often discussed). Critics who see a gulf between Kautsky and Lenin claim that Lenin’s outlook had already started to diverge fundamentally from “Kautskyism” by 1902. Faced with the abundant evidence that, before the war, Lenin himself insisted on the complete compatibility of his outlook and that of Kautsky, they argue that the break between them was an “unconscious” or “semi-conscious” one. In other words, the break existed, but Lenin himself was not yet aware of it. I responded by posing a dilemma: if this divergence actually existed, either Lenin (one of Kautsky’s most diligent readers) did not understand what he was reading, or Lenin did not understand his own thought. 3 Several critics responded somewhat as follows: “Look, we all know that Lenin broke decisively with Kautsky in 1914 and we all know that this break led to a root-and-branch rejection of Kautskyism in general. So why is Lih making such heavy weather about the alleged logical difficulties of the earlier situation, when the paths of the two men began to diverge even though Lenin was not yet fully aware of the fact? Lih’s exclusive focus on this earlier period has caused him to ‘bend the stick’ too far in his emphasis on the similarity of the two men’s outlook. By overlooking the later break, he fundamentally distorts the Lenin-Kautsky relationship.” 4 These critics are justified in challenging me on this point, since I said nothing in my book about Lenin’s later relation to Kautsky. It remains to be seen whether I can meet this challenge. Why isn’t the answer obvious?
But why is special research needed to dig out the evidence on this question? Lenin’s post-1914 corpus is easily available. Besides, a quick look at the material seems to decide the question, for three reasons: a. Lenin wrote a lot about Kautsky after 1914. One whole book, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, is specifically devoted to Kautsky-bashing, with the effect, I am told, that some on the hereditary Left grew up thinking Kautsky’s first name was Renegade. Almost all of what Lenin has to say on the subject is an obsessively negative attack on “the most outstanding authority in the Second International, [who] has revealed himself as a first-class hypocrite and a virtuoso in the art of prostituting Marxism.” 5 b. Lenin denounces not only Kautsky, but something he calls “Kautskyism.” For example, in 1920 he writes, “It is therefore no accident that, throughout the world, Kautskyists [kautskiantsy] are in practical political terms now united with extreme opportunists (through the Second or the yellow International) and with bourgeois governments (through coalition bourgeois governments with participation by socialists).” 6 c. In State and Revolution (1917), Lenin specifically criticizes some prewar writings by Kautsky that he, Lenin, had previously admired greatly (Social Revolution of 1902 and Road to Power of 1909). For most readers, these observations settle the question. Nevertheless, for a variety of reasons, all three observations, while true, are misleading: a. If we sift out, from the general mass of Lenin’s post-1914 references to Kautsky, the ones that specifically mention Kautsky’s prewar writings, a very different picture emerges. b. Lenin’s post-1914 coinage “Kautskyism” has a very specific meaning. It does not mean “the system of thought or outlook associated with Kautsky”—that is, it does not refer to an “ism” (the Russian term is kautskianstvo). It means something like: “the waffling and compromising typified by Kautsky’s conduct after the outbreak of war.” The label could therefore be applied to many people who did not share Kautsky’s views (for example, Trotsky!). 7 Thus Lenin’s condemnation of “Kautskyism” does not tell us anything about his attitude toward Kautsky’s prewar thought. For example, immediately before the sentence condemning “Kautskyism” that I have just quoted, Lenin says: “In the case of Kautsky and those like him, views like this are a complete renunciation precisely of those revolutionary foundations of Marxism that this writer defended for decades, and, among other subjects, especially in the struggle with socialist opportunism.” 8 c. The discussion of Kautsky in State and Revolution also contains many strong statements that show Lenin’s continued appreciation of the very writings he criticizes. 9 In any event, the writing of State and Revolution in 1917 causes no appreciable blip in the flow of positive references to Kautsky’s prewar writings. How well Kautsky wrote, when he was still a Marxist!
To answer the question of interest to us—what was Lenin’s postwar attitude to Kautsky’s prewar writings?—I created the “Kautsky-as-Marxist database,” which seeks to include every citation that reveals Lenin’s attitude toward anything Kautsky wrote, said or did, up to and including 1909. The reason 1909 was chosen as a cutoff date is that Lenin himself made it very explicit that Kautsky’s book Road to Power, published in that year, was his last solid production as a Marxist. 10 The database also includes material on various topics that provide relevant context for the questions that concern us. With these topics, the aim is to be accurately representative rather than comprehensive. 11 The central conclusions that arise out of this material are: a. There is a lot of material that fits our requirements. Lenin spoke on the matter many times across the whole period. Most items are just passing remarks, but there are more extensive and revealing discussions in 1914, 1917, and 1920. 12 Furthermore, Lenin’s discussions are most often based on a recent re-reading of the Kautsky material in question. The topic was obviously quite important to Lenin. b. Almost all the references are positive. The central trope used by Lenin is: how well Kautsky wrote back in the old days, when he was still a Marxist. Merely the fact that he labels the Kautsky-of-yore as a Marxist is a strong compliment when compared to what Lenin was calling the contemporary Kautsky. It is abundantly clear that Lenin thinks Kautsky back then was not just a Marxist, but an excellent one. To give the flavor of Lenin’s remarks, I have chosen representative citations, one from each year from 1914 to 1920: 1914: Lenin gives a detailed exposition of the main arguments of Kautsky’s Road to Power (1909) and comments: “This book, written by the most authoritative writer of the Second International, contains the most complete exposition of the tasks of our times.… This is what German Social Democracy was—or rather, promised to be. This is the Social Democracy that one could and had to respect.” 13 1915: In an article written in 1915, Kautsky had referred to his own earlier article from 1904. In this article from 1904, Kautsky asserted (in Lenin’s paraphrase): “‘democratic Russia’ will set afire the aspirations of the nations in the east of Europe for freedom.” Lenin says that this original premise is “indisputable,” although the conclusions that Kautsky draws in 1915 from this true premise are indefensible. 14 1916: Lenin’s group within European socialism during the war was called “Left Zimmerwald” (after a conference held in that town). Lenin brought out the continuity between the ideas of this group and Kautsky: “All of us Left Zimmerwaldians are convinced of what Kautsky also, for example, was convinced of prior to his turnaround in 1914 from Marxism to the defense of chauvinism, namely, that socialist revolution is entirely possible in the very nearest future, ‘any day now,’ as the same Kautsky once expressed it.” 15 1917: In 1917, only days before the outbreak of the revolution in Russia, Lenin gave a lecture to a Swiss audience about the Russian revolution of 1905, in which he made the following statement: “The higher rose the waves of the movement [in 1905], all the more did the reaction arm itself against the revolution with ever greater energy and decisiveness. The case of the Russian revolution of 1905 confirmed what K. Kautsky wrote in 1902 in his book Social Revolution (by the way, he was then still a revolutionary Marxist, and not a defender of social-patriots and opportunists, as at present). He wrote the following: ‘The coming revolution…is less similar to a sudden rising against the government than to a drawn-out civil war.’ And that’s how it happened! Undoubtedly, that’s the way it will be in the coming European revolution!” 16 1918: “All that Kautsky the Marxist wrote in Agrarian Question in 1899 on the issue of the means at the disposal of the proletarian state for the gradual transition of small-scale peasants to socialism—all this is forgotten by the renegade Kautsky in 1918.” 17 1919: When trying to convince an audience of revolutionary Bolsheviks at the Eighth Party Congress of the necessity of a shift in peasant policy, Lenin found it helpful to invoke Kautsky as an authority. He prefaced his remarks by referring to “Kautsky’s book about the agrarian question, written back in the time when Kautsky correctly set forth the teachings of Marx and was acknowledged to be the undisputed authority in this area.” 18 1920: In Left-Wing Communism, Lenin introduces an extensive passage from Kautsky with these words: “In the days long past, so long ago, when Kautsky was still a Marxist and not a renegade, he approached this question as a historian and foresaw the possibility of the coming of a situation in which the revolutionary nature of the Russian proletariat would become a model for Western Europe. This was in 1902, when Kautsky wrote an article for the revolutionary Iskra entitled ‘Slavs and Revolution.’” After giving the passage, Lenin exclaims: “How well Karl Kautsky wrote eighteen years ago!” 19 Let me end with a description of Kautsky-as-Marxist based entirely on Lenin’s pronouncements after 1914. All I have removed is the angry irony of “and look at him now!”: Karl Kautsky was an outstanding Marxist who was the most authoritative theoretician of the Second International and a teacher to a generation of Marxists. His popularization of Das Kapital has canonic status. He was one of the first to refute opportunism in detail (although he hesitated somewhat before launching his attack) and continued to fight energetically against it, asserting that a split would be necessary if opportunism ever became the official tendency of the German party. Marxists of Lenin’s generation learned a dialectical approach to tactics from him. Only vis-à-vis the state do we observe a tendency to restrict himself to general truths and to evade a concrete discussion. Kautsky was also a reliable guide to the revolutionary developments of the early twentieth century. His magisterial work on the agrarian question is still valid. He correctly diagnosed the national problem (as opposed to Rosa Luxemburg). He insisted that Western Europe was ripe for socialist revolution, and foretold the connection between war and revolution. Kautsky had a special relation to Russia and to Bolshevism. On the one hand, he himself took great interest in Russian developments, and endorsed the basic Bolshevik view of the 1905 revolution. On the other hand, the Russian revolutionary workers read him eagerly and his writings had greater influence in Russia than anywhere else. This enthusiastic interest in the “latest word” of European Marxism is one of the main reasons for Bolshevism’s later revolutionary prowess. I emphasize that the description I have just given of Kautsky is Lenin’s post-1914 view of him, as shown by references throughout the period. c. Many writers argue that there is a major breakthrough or turning point in Lenin’s thought after 1914. The database shows that Lenin himself adopted a rhetorical stance of aggressive unoriginality. Again and again, he asks his readers to listen to what Kautsky—and not only him, but all respected Marxist writers and politicians—were saying before 1914, and to see how shamefully they failed to live up to their own words and actions. 20 Lenin presents himself as remaining staunch for the old truths, as keeping his head when all about him were losing theirs. This means that the dilemma that I set out for those who see an “unconscious” divergence between Lenin and Kautsky in 1902 still stands. Those who stress the fundamental nature of Lenin’s break with the Second International—those who believe that after 1914 Lenin rejected earlier Marxist orthodoxy root and branch—will have to deal with the fact that Lenin himself strongly disagreed. 21 d. Finally, the most surprising and exciting implication of the database is that ideas that Lenin explicitly associates with Kautsky continue to inform Lenin’s whole definition of the revolutionary situation in which he found himself. We find ourselves confronting the following paradoxical and hard-to-credit conclusion: not only did Lenin fail to repudiate the many ideas he shared with Kautsky, but in many ways these ideas actually became more important to him after 1914. In this talk, I can only point to this possibility, which for many will be literally unbelievable. Yet statements such as the following typical one are hard to interpret otherwise. In January 1915, Lenin wrote the following: It was none other than Kautsky himself, in a whole series of articles and in his book Road to Power (which came out in 1909), who described with the fullest possible definiteness the basic traits of the approaching third epoch and who pointed out its radical distinctiveness from the second (yesterday’s) epoch. He acknowledged the change in immediate tasks, and, along with this, a change in the conditions and forms of the struggle of contemporary democracy—a change that flows out of the shift in objective historical circumstances. 22 I began my talk with the question: did Lenin solve his inevitable cognitive dissonance by seeing the post-1914 Kautsky as a renegade (Kautsky changed) or by admitting that the scales fell from his own eyes (Lenin changed). The answer given to us by the database is unambiguous: Lenin felt that Kautsky had changed, not himself. He saw no reason to abandon the outlook he had shared with Kautsky just at the time when, in his eyes, events had justified it completely. In this short talk, I can only scratch the surface of the database and its implications. The citations I have collected are no doubt more suggestive than conclusive. I look forward to discussion and debate on the implications of this material and on the larger questions of Lenin’s relation to his Marxist forebears. NOTES 1 Two books that go beyond the observation that Lenin admired Kautsky and examine the content of this relationship are Lars T. Lih, Lenin Rediscovered (Brill 2006), especially for the decade 1894–1904, and Moira Donald, Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists,1900–1924 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), especially for the decade 1904–14.
2 Georg Lukács, Lenin: A Study on the Unity of his Thought (Cambridge, MS: MIT Press, 1971), written in 1924 immediately after Lenin’s death. An excellent recent statement of this line of thought is John Molyneux, Marxism and the Party (London: Pluto Press, 1978).
3 Lih, Lenin Rediscovered, 25.
4 This criticism surfaces in a number of responses that will be published in an upcoming issue of Historical Materialism. John Molyneux’s response, which states this argument very well, can be found on http://johnmolyneux.blogspot.com, November 10, 2006.
5 Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (PSS) (Moscow, 1958–65), 26:263.
6 Lenin, PSS 27:306-7. Foreword to French and German editions of Imperialism.
7 Lenin, PSS 26:323-4.
8 Lenin, PSS 27:306-7.
9 See also Lenin’s 1917 statement about Kautsky’s Social Revolution quoted below.
10 For example, in 1916 Lenin writes: “We ask the reader not to forget that Kautsky up to 1909, up to his excellent book Road to Power, was a foe of opportunism, to whose defense he turned only in 1910–11, and completely decisively only in 1914–16,” (PSS 25:259).
11 The database will be sent to anyone who requests it; my contact address is [email protected]
12 For more extended discussions, see the 1914 article “Dead chauvinism and living socialism,” State and Revolution (1917) and Left-Wing Communism (1920).
13 Lenin, PSS 26:98:105
14 Lenin, PSS 26:239-40.
15 Lenin, PSS 30:51.
16 Lenin, PSS 30:323. Lenin had just re-read Kautsky’s Social Revolution as part of the research that later resulted in State and Revolution. Despite the critical remarks about this book in State and Revolution, Lenin obviously still greatly admired many of its arguments.
17 Lenin, PSS 37:325, 327.
18 Lenin, PSS 38:193-4.
19 Lenin, PSS 41:4-5. After the summer of 1920, there are very few references to Kautsky, either positive or negative.
20 For example, in 1915, after stating his concept of a revolutionary situation, Lenin comments: “Such are the Marxist views on revolution, views that have been developed many, many times [and] have been accepted as indisputable by all Marxists …” (Lenin, PSS, 26:219).
21 This statement is to be qualified only in the following way: starting in 1919, Lenin began to emphasize the surprises and unexpected turns that world history had in store. A principal reason for this shift was the delay in the international revolution. But the stance of aggressive unoriginality is still evident in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, written in late 1918.
22 Lenin, PSS, 26:143-44 (first published in 1917). |
20 January, 2016
What?
Swift 2 brought with itself protocol extensions. Before this, a protocol was an abstract contract to which structs and classes could confirm. With Swift 2, a protocol can also have code in it. This brings a whole new level of abstraction to Swift and in this article I’m going to show you how we leverage it’s power at Aftonbladet.
Defining a news article
Let’s start to define a news article using protocols. We want an article to have the following properties:
Title
An optional image
Text
A list of tags (such as “politics” and “sport”)
A URL (that points to the article on the web)
So let’s define these in separate protocols:
protocol WithTitle{ var title: String {get} } protocol PossiblyWithImage{ var image: UIImage? {get} } protocol WithText{ var text: String {get} } protocol WithTags{ var tags: [String] {get} } protocol WithUrl{ var url: NSURL {get} }
Then we are going to define an immutable article that conforms to these protocols:
struct Article : WithTitle, PossiblyWithImage, WithText, WithTags, WithUrl{ let title: String let image: UIImage? let text: String let tags: [String] let url: NSURL }
We can then of course initialize an article like so:
guard let url = NSURL(string: "http://goo.gl/qFvFlv") else {return} let article = Article(title: "Zlatan om mötet: Alla har förstått", image: nil, text: "Article text", tags: ["sport", "zlatan"], url: url)
Defining a Spotlight indexable item
The goal for us here is to allow an object of type Article to be able to be indexed in Spotlight on an iOS device, so that the user can just search for an article using its title or text, right on their “desktop” on their iOS device. Let’s define a protocol for a Spotlight indexable item:
protocol SpotlightIndexable{ var spotlightTitle: String {get} var spotlightDescription: String {get} var spotlightKeywords: [String] {get} var spotlightImageData: NSData? {get} var spotlightUrl: NSURL {get} func index() }
This protocol defines what a Spotlight indexable item requires. A title, description, keywords and possibly an image represented as data (NSData).
Now, how do we go about making our Article object indexable? We could just go and make Article conform to SpotlightIndexable but then we have to define the properties that SpotlightIndexable requires. If we had to make more objects conform to SpotlightIndexable, then we have to define the same properties over and over again. That won’t work very well and is a pain. So how do we solve this?
Making a protocol require other protocols
We know that for an article to be indexed in Spotlight, we have to make it conform to SpotlightIndexable protocol but we don’t want to define those properties that are in this protocol manually. Instead, what we want is for SpotlightIndexable to be able to read those properties from any object that conforms to it. This is a shift in our way of thinking. Now a protocol will require any object that conforms to it, to conform to a series of other protocols. Look at this new SpotlightIndexable protocol:
Sprotocol SpotlightIndexable : WithTitle, PossiblyWithImage, WithText, WithUrl{ var spotlightTitle: String {get} var spotlightDescription: String {get} var spotlightKeywords: [String] {get} var spotlightImageData: NSData? {get} var spotlightUrl: NSURL {get} func index() }
Now our SpotlightIndexable protocol requires any type that conforms to it, to also conform to WithTitle, PossiblyWithImage, WithText and WithUrl. Does this sound similar to any other types that we defined earlier? Yes, the Article type!
Extending our SpotlightIndexable protocol with code
What we need to do now is to translate the protocols that SpotlightIndexable requires (such as WithText), to the properties that it requires.
extension String{ var words: [String]{ return characters.split{$0 == " "} .map{String($0)}.map{$0 .stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet(NSCharacterSet .punctuationCharacterSet())} } } func + (lhs: [T], rhs: [T]) -> [T]{ var array = [T]() array.appendContentsOf(lhs) array.appendContentsOf(rhs) return array } extension SpotlightIndexable{ var spotlightTitle: String{ return title } var spotlightDescription: String{ return text } var spotlightKeywords: [String]{ return title.words + text.words } var spotlightImageData: NSData?{ guard let image = image else {return nil} return UIImagePNGRepresentation(image) } var spotlightUrl: NSURL{ return url } func index(){ //Code this } }
Putting it together and final words
Now that we have our SpotlightIndexable protocol and protocol extension, we can simply make our Article struct conform to it to make the article spotlight indexable:
struct Article : WithTitle, PossiblyWithImage, WithText, WithTags, WithUrl, SpotlightIndexable{ let title: String let image: UIImage? let text: String let tags: [String] let url: NSURL }
That was it really. The Article struct doesn’t have to implement anything related to SpotlightIndexable since the code resides in the protocol itself which on its own looks at Article to make sure it conforms to a series of protocol such as WithTitle and WithText.
I think protocols and protocol extensions are a welcome addition to Swift and they enable a level of abstraction unheard of.
/Vandad — glhf |
In this upcoming DLC campaign for DCS World, Apache600 has found a unique way of putting a square peg in a round hole with The Museum Relic story…
Let me start out by saying – I hate the MiG-15bis module. Well, I thought I hated the MiG-15 module. (Feel free to substitute F-86 wherever “MiG-15” appears in this article.) I’m a bit of a techno-geek, button pushing type of simmer, so the WWII and Korea era DLC didn’t really appeal to me. Well, color me stupid because thanks to Apache600’s soon to be released DLC campaign, I was forced into hopping into the MiG-15 to wring out his campaign, and ended up falling in love with these early model jets. Though generally outclassed over the DCS World battlefield, when they are put in the right roles, they are a blast to fly and modeled to perfection. So how did I end up transitioning from an uninformed MiG hater to an unabashed MiG lover? Well, the story pulled me in….
The Museum Relic
The Museum Relic is a campaign for either the MiG-15 or F-86 that allows the player to take over as a pilot flying a museum aircraft that has been fully restored to combat functionality. In your role, you will be flying for the fictional nations of either Matova or Obristan. For my preview, I choose the MiG-15 campaign flying for the glory of Matova. The six-page briefing gives a nice back-story on how I came to restore the MiG-15, the history of the two nations, and how the outbreak of hostilities occurred. Over the course of a protracted war, supplies and inventories for both sides were drawn down, eventually leading to the desperate move to bring the museum pieces out of storage and into the battle. To my great surprise, this story actually works out pretty well for several reasons that I’ll get into below. The campaign, consisting of over twenty missions, weaves a well told story with action in your little MiG-15 (or F-86) to genuinely immerse you into the war that Apache600 has created for you. I found myself anticipating each subsequent mission, wondering where my path would end up.
The missions
When Apache600 initially contacted me about taking a look at The Museum Relic, I was a bit skeptical. While I get that the WWII and Korea era aircraft are fun to fly, and certainly interesting to enthusiasts of that era, they are not exactly my cup o’ tea as it were. After reading the campaign briefing, and taking a look at the meticulously crafted mission briefings, my curiosity rose. Apache600 is, in real life, a professional airline pilot, with aviation knowledge that percolates down into his mission creation skills. You will find some very nice scenarios that will challenge your navigation, basic flying skills, advanced flying skills (weather, radios, and navigation aids), and emergency procedures. All of those things get folded into a combat environment that strikes just the right balance of MiG-15/F-86 capabilities that challenge you, but don’t overwhelm you. You will find offensive and defensive roles that will pit you against enemies of varying skill levels and equipment, but you won’t come up against impossible odds. Nor will you be asked to do something truly ridiculous.
As the campaign unfolds, the personalization of the campaign will make you feel like a vital cog in a larger set of gears that is your country’s war effort. The mission briefings are very well done and typically include around seven custom briefing pages that outline the continuation of the story, your mission goals, maps, intel photos, and mission specific flight plan cards with parameters such as headings, altitudes, speeds, and COM/NAV frequencies. The briefings are great, but they aren’t perfect in the early release version we were given. There are just a smattering of typos, the most egregious of which is the constant reference to the MiG as the Mig (no capitalization of the G). Not a deal breaker by any means, and in the broader scheme of things, the quality of the briefs and mission construction trumps the very occasional typo.
The missions themselves are of quality construction. The story builds upon itself and I was impressed at both the continuity of the story, as well as the flow of the entire campaign. It is hard to describe without giving details or ruining surprises, but I feel the tempo of the campaign increases in a logical and attainable way. For both experienced and new MiG-15/F-86 drivers, there is plenty of challenge without being frustratingly overwhelmed. Types of missions include a wide spectrum of escort, intercept, ground attack, and specialty missions that are attainable in these older technology aircraft.
Of particular satisfaction are the great pains the author extended to make the campaign world alive with traffic and ground objects that really help immerse yourself in the mission and the wider campaign. Airfields are nicely populated and nearly every mission has support flights that are part of your package that make you feel that you are put to use in the perfect role that is challenging, but not impossible. Thus, other flights in your package may include Su-25Ts that are tasked with SAM suppression and you would be wise to pay attention to their radio messages to slot yourself into the action where appropriate. Radio traffic is good and moves the story along, and there are some very nice dramatic moments where messages come over the radio that will get your heart rate going. In my opinion, the “corniness quotient” of most of the radio traffic is quite low, and you won’t find yourself rolling your eyes very much, and instead will appreciate the messages for their contribution to gameplay.
Gameplay
If you are new to the MiG-15 or F-86 (as I was), you’ll be relieved to know that you can figure out the engine start up procedure and weapons within just a few minutes of watching some instructive YouTube videos. A cold and dark start in the MiG-15 only takes about sixty seconds after some practice, and weapons initialization is just a matter of pressing a few buttons and flipping a couple switches. That is the beauty of flying these aircraft in a campaign setting – so much of the focus is on flying and fighting, and less on weapons management. The missions include very good aids to help you get eyes on target including colored smoke, and the repeated reference to geographic locations that really get your head in the game. The continuity of the campaign is exceptionally well done in that respect – you get to know your Area of Operations, and there is a very clever use of static objects that allude to the path you will follow. For instance, landing at your base to see a pair of Tupolev Tu-22s on the ramp is a good indication that they will feature in a future mission. The references to target areas you have visited on prior missions gives a nice continuity and familiarity with the campaign region that gives you a leg up on understanding what is going on. It is so subtly done that you might not appreciate it if you weren’t looking for it.
Approachable, but not easy
I’m a huge fan of the campaign’s mission structures and diversity, and even though I’m a neophyte MiG-15 pilot, I feel that the gameplay aspects strike just the right difficulty level. I will admit though, that I’m a terrible bomber and gunner in the MiG-15 (owing to my newness to the module) so I did turn on a couple of user aids on some missions due to my inexperience. The nice thing about most of the missions is that they don’t have you going after the entire opposition as if Chuck Norris has been given the keys to an old fighter. The campaign phases move incrementally and the missions make sense as they link together, and provide for a good flow of the story. Coming into the MiG-15, I did have to familiarize myself with the communications radio and how to convert frequencies to enter into the COM radio rotary, as well as how to tune and track the NDB signals that are used for many of the missions. The MiG-15 is very much a hands on the stick airplane, so familiarity with the cockpit is a good idea, but it comes quickly once you dive in.
Mission goals are briefed at the outset, but can change as the mission evolves, so pay attention to the radio. There were many tense, edge of your seat moments that I’d love to tell you about, but can’t lest I ruin the surprise. In a nod toward the play testing that must have occurred, I’ll say that the triggers and custom scenarios that you will encounter worked 100% of the time for me, which is pretty incredible. It appears that the triggers are set with enough leeway that you don’t have to fly so precisely that it kills your immersion because you are so locked on flying the flightplan to 100% accuracy – so I commend the author for finding the perfect balance. Matching up MiG-15/F-86 performance with more modern units had to be a challenge, and it is done very well in this campaign.
Conclusion
I think The Museum Relic is one of the best examples I’ve seen to date of how to integrate platforms that don’t seem to quite fit into the current DCS World environment into a believable scenario. It very much feels like you are participating in a movie, but not one that seems completely outside the bounds of what might be possible. The author struck a very nice balance of gameplay difficulty with the capabilities of the MiG-15/F-86. As of publication of this article, the campaign has been submitted to Eagle Dynamics and is the process of being integrated as DLC. No price point was available at this time.
Chris “BeachAV8R” Frishmuth |
Every DJ has one.
A night when everything that can possibly go wrong does - and it does so in spectacular fashion. Returning again, Clash brings you DJ Disasters, featuring some of the most respected figures in the dance world reminiscing about those moments when it all went badly wrong.
Feed Me has many names. Born Jon Gooch, the producer also works under the name Spor, while his more left field electronic output carries the banner Seventh Stitch. To the world at large, though, Jon Gooch will always be Feed Me. An overwhelming presence on the EDM scene, new album 'Calamari Tuesday' launches the producer's new imprint Sotto Voce in some style.
Flying around the world - often at a moment's notice - Feed Me has been lucky enough to live a life most can only dream of. However it can sometimes descend into a nightmare, as Jon Gooch reveals his own DJ Disaster...
- - -
When I was asked to write this I was apprehensive at the potential for being comprehensively outclassed by hedonistic tales of high flying DJ rockstar behaviour, but upon researching previous contributions to this column which surmounted to 'I lost my music but then I found it' and 'I almost missed a gig but then I didn't' I don't really feel concerned any more.
At a festival a couple of years ago after being cleared from the stage for spitting drink at some people and riding on someone's back I became creative and found a reasonably large fire extinguisher in the hanger housing it. Using a hole in the stage floor my friend crept underneath, whilst I walked unarmed past the guard and into the centre, whereby he passed the extinguisher up to me. I directed the funnel at Datsik who was playing at the time, and emptied the extinguisher all over him, then spun around until it ran out.
What I assumed to be a CO2 extinguisher was in fact a chemical powder extinguisher which made everyone in the vicinity choke and fall down blind. Datisk vomited. I fell down unable to breathe. Through the impenetrable white fog I heard security screaming to get me, so I barrel rolled off the stage and hid under a generator outside. I saw people coming out coughing. The music stopped for a bit but it was OK in the end. I remember some quite short organiser trying to fight me but then calming down in return for a show as Spor. I paid for the damaged equipment as far as I know.
I broke my foot playing with a ball with KTN and some friends at Encore Beach club. I sat in the sun with it in a champagne bucket of ice for a while, but I had to do a long string of shows and airports from a wheelchair which was inconvenient. Gin has a strong anaesthetic effect on me though, and it looked great, sort of like one of those purplish potatoes.
At another festival in Vegas our transport girl was fired for allowing us to ride on the roof of her golf cart. I think she was upset, a little uncalled for. I got overexcited later after downing a beer with friends and threw it at a floodlight. There wasn't anyone around but some irate staff insisted I'd hurled it at them and I had to go home. Police removed me from the festival and I ended up in a taxi back to downtown with a very nice tourist couple from Dubai.
Also in Vegas, Skrillex very kindly surprised me with new flights so I could stay out for my birthday and his show. I was literally boarding my flight home so I turned around and came back to a festival then Encore. Me and Joe Nero found ourselves unable to open someones champagne on the stage but I solved it by smashing the top off the bottle on the edge of a table. It worked but I lacerated my finger quite badly. Then I think Joe threw Jager over some people as the night disintegrated and I was removed. All my luggage stayed open under the decks all night and was still there the next day covered in confetti. Some still falls out my suitcase now and again.
I got viral meningitis earlier this year midway through my live tour after a cold. I was very lucky in that I was treated by an amazing team of doctors who worked with us to make sure I didn't miss any shows. After a spinal tap and some high speed antivirals, antibiotics and pain killers I was able to temporarily check myself out and play my Denver show. I was kept in for a couple of days after that then did two each in SF and LA that weekend. Aside from dislocating my thumb I'd say Meningitis is the most uncomfortable sensation I've experienced.
Flux once tried to make a sandwich on my hotel room ceiling by throwing my rider all over it then trying to stick bread to what stayed up. An awful mess. I've done some fantastic jobs of rehanging paintings to cover holes in hotel walls also. They remain undiscovered. Being and living Feed Me has been a case of my life accelerating and becoming overstimulating to the point where a lot of these sorts of things have happened to me pretty consistently. I have mixed feelings when it comes to my personal responsibility; events want rockstars but ones that sit quietly backstage and behave even when fed limitless free alcohol. I suppose I've learnt my pseudonym really is an extension of my own (self) destructiveness, and I don't pretend to be perfect or always hugely stable. I can say that I enjoy every minute though and I'm hugely grateful. Onwards down the rabbit hole.
PS.
It's possible to dent a motorhome from over 10 metres away with a large tin of chopped pineapple. The only thing better in a microwave than a jumbo glowstick is a streetlamp bulb. I am proficient in operating 4 types of scissor lift under the influence, even at full extension. Coating a tiled floor in pina colada mix results in a surface entirely impossible to walk on. It takes an average of three throws to successfully hide a banana on top of a suspended strip light. There is usually a way to get onto the roof without setting off the alarm.
- - -
'Calamari Tuesday' is out now - purchase link. |
Technology is changing our world. In this digital revolution, Anything present on the Internet can be considered as a proof or evidence (if found correct).
On May 4, Use of Whatsapp and Email had been allowed in Judicial Proceedings of Honorable Delhi High Court. Whatsapp is popular cross-platform messenger application for smartphones used to send and receive text, audio, video messages. Whatsapp has a few
On May 6 An appeal had been filed by an old man in the Rohini Civil Court (India) to restrict his son and his daughter-in-law, her parents, and friends from entering his property. The court asked him to send a notice to all personnel involved in such heinous crime. In reply, He told the court that It will take time and it is strong possibility that all the members including his son and daughter-in-law will enter into his home forcefully before the notice can be served.
Therefore, Honorable Court suggests him to serve the notice via WhatsApp. He does the same.
After that On May 8, the man submitted coloured photocopies of WhatsApp chat showing blue ticks to the Honourable Court. The Honourable Court said that the served notice was read by his son, daughter-in-law and other members via Whatsapp and they certainly have knowledge of summons and hearing today.
After these proceedings, The Honorable Court Ordered the defendant restrained from trespassing the plaintiff property till the next date of hearing.
Whatsapp blue tick feature was introduced in November 2014 and it is good to see that technology not only solves our day to day problems but also helps us to save from such heinous crimes.
Source: Indian Express. |
According to TMZ, Chester Bennington's autopsy shows that he had alcohol in his system at the time of his death. The toxicology results also reveal that the LINKIN PARK singer's blood tested "presumptive positive" for MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, based on ELISA, an antibody-based test. However, according to USA Today, a mass-spectrometer test, which is used to find specific drugs and quantify the exact amounts found, failed to detect the drug in the urine sample, where drugs remain for a longer period of time. Therefore, the ultimate conclusion was Chester was not under the influence of drugs when he died. Authorities found a prescription bottle of Zolpidem, which is used to treat insomnia, on his dresser. There was also a pint glass of Corona, which was less than half full, and an empty bottle of Stella Artois.
Chester's wife Talinda told the police that Bennington had been prescribed anti-depressants in the past, but had not taken them for more than a year.
Dr. Christopher Rogers, deputy medical examiner at the Los Angeles Coroner's Office, wrote in the report that "autopsy findings are characteristic of suicidal hanging. There was a history of suicidal ideation."
Bennington died on July 20 after committing suicide at the age of 41. He had been open with the press and public about his struggles with depression, drugs and alcohol, which landed him in rehab twice around 2006.
Nani Cholakians, an investigator with the Coroner's Office, deputy medical examiner at the Los Angeles Coroner's Office, wrote in the report that Chester was found "hanging with a ligature around his neck. The ligature was a black leather belt with a metal buckle engraved with 'Hugo Boss.' The belt was looped around [Chester's] neck, then through the buckle, before extending up towards the door frame. The belt passed between the top edge of a door and the door frame. The buckle was at the posterior of [Chester's] neck.
"On a dresser in the room was a prescription for Zolpidem 10mg containing one tablet broken in half. It was filled on 06/29/2017. Also on this dresser was a one-pint glass bottle of Corona, less than half full.
"On the counter of an attached bathroom was an empty glass bottle of Stella Artois, two bottle caps (Stella and Corona), two pairs of glasses, a wallet and a towel."
The full report can be found at this location.
LINKIN PARK paid tribute to Bennington on October 27 with an emotional three-hour show that featured numerous guests joining the band onstage at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
Among the artists who performed with the band throughout the show were BUSH's Gavin Rossdale, Jonathan Davis of KORN, Alanis Morissette, the instrumental members of NO DOUBT, Oli Sykes of BRING ME THE HORIZON, BLINK-182, M. Shadows and Synyster Gates of AVENGED SEVENFOLD and many more. |
Editor's note: Jeffrey Miron is senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in the economics department at Harvard University. He is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of "Libertarianism, from A to Z." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) -- Following the liberal footsteps of Colorado and Washington, Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia passed ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana this month. Florida's medical marijuana law failed, but only because as a constitutional amendment it needed 60% support; 58% voted in favor of it.
In 2016, another five to 10 states will likely consider legalization -- possibly Arizona, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. It's not surprising. Opinion polls show that marijuana legalization now commands majority support across the country.
Do these developments mean that full legalization is inevitable?
Not necessarily, but one would hope so. Marijuana legalization is a policy no-brainer. Any society that professes to value liberty should leave adults free to consume marijuana.
Moreover, the evidence from states and countries that have decriminalized or medicalized marijuana suggests that policy plays a modest role in limiting use. And while marijuana can harm the user or others when consumed inappropriately, the same applies to many legal goods such as alcohol, tobacco, excessive eating or driving a car.
Recent evidence from Colorado confirms that marijuana's legal status has minimal impact on marijuana use or the harms allegedly caused by use. Since commercialization of medical marijuana in 2009, and since legalization in 2012, marijuana use, crime, traffic accidents, education and health outcomes have all followed their pre-existing trends rather than increasing or decreasing after policy liberalized.
The strong claims made by legalization critics are not borne out in the data. Likewise, some strong claims by legalization advocates -- e.g., that marijuana tourism would be a major boom to the economy -- have also not materialized.
The main impact of Colorado's legalization has been that marijuana users can now purchase and use with less worry about harsh legal ramifications.
Yet despite the compelling case for legalization, and progress toward legalization at the state level, ultimate success is not assured.
Federal law still prohibits marijuana, and existing jurisprudence (Gonzales v. Raich 2005) holds that federal law trumps state law when it comes to marijuana prohibition. So far, the federal government has mostly taken a hands-off approach to state medicalizations and legalizations, but in January 2017, the country will have a new president. That person could order the attorney general to enforce federal prohibition regardless of state law.
Whether that will happen is hard to forecast.
If more states legalize marijuana and public opinion continues its support, Washington may hesitate to push back. But federal prohibition creates problems even if enforcement is nominal: Marijuana business cannot easily use standard financial institutions and transactions technologies such as credit cards; physicians may still hesitate to prescribe marijuana; and medical researchers will still face difficulty in studying marijuana.
To realize the full potential of legalization, therefore, federal law must change. The best approach is to remove marijuana from the list of drugs regulated by the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the federal law that governs prohibition.
Standard regulatory and tax policies would still apply to legalized marijuana, and states would probably adopt marijuana-specific regulations similar to those for alcohol (e.g., minimum purchase ages). State and federal governments might also impose "sin taxes," as for alcohol. But otherwise marijuana would be just another commodity, as it was before the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.
A more cautious approach would have Congress reschedule marijuana under the CSA.
Currently, marijuana is in Schedule I, which is reserved for drugs such as heroin and LSD that, according to the CSA, have "a high potential for abuse ... no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States ... [and] a lack of accepted safety for use." Hardly anyone believes these conditions apply to marijuana.
If marijuana were in Schedule II, which states it as "a high potential for abuse ... [but a] currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States," doctors could legally prescribe it under federal law, as with other Schedule II drugs such as cocaine, methadone and morphine.
Given the broad range of conditions for which marijuana may be useful, including muscle spasms caused by multiple sclerosis, nausea from cancer chemotherapy, poor appetite and weight loss caused by chronic illness such as HIV, chronic pain, stress, seizure disorders and Crohn's disease, doctors would have wide reign to prescribe, making marijuana all but legal as occurs under the broadest state medical marijuana laws, such as California and Colorado.
Medical science would also face fewer regulatory hurdles to marijuana research. This "medicalization" approach, while perhaps politically more feasible than full legalization, has serious drawbacks.
Federal authorities such as the Drug Enforcement Administration could interfere with marijuana prescribing -- as sometimes occurs with opiate prescribing. Taxing medical marijuana may be harder than taxing recreational marijuana. And the medical approach risks a charge of hypocrisy, since it is backdoor legalization. But medicalization is still better than full prohibition, since it eliminates the black market.
For 77 years, the United States has outlawed marijuana, with tragic repercussions and unintended consequences. The public and their state governments are on track to rectify this terrible policy. Here's hoping Congress catches up.
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Open letter to federal scum a guest May 20th, 2014 22,378 Never a guest22,378Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 7.49 KB I just emailed this to the federal government and bcc'd 200 or so people: Subject: "An open letter to members of the New Jersey District Court, FBI, and DOJ consisting of an invoice for services rendered." To the Honorable Susan D. Wigenton, US Attorney Paul J. Fishman, Assistant US Attorney Zach Intrater, and FBI Special Agent Christian Schorle, "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?" -Shakespeare It has long been one of the fundamental pillars of our system of law that when one commits a crime against another, they are made to give restitution to their victims. I have, over the course of 3 years, been made the victim of a criminal conspiracy by those in the federal government. This was a conspiracy of sedition and treason, perpetrated with violence by a limited number of federal agents to deprive me of my constitutional rights to a fair trial and unlawfully put me in prison. This is not a hallucination on my part. These claims were in fact verified by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals when they vacated the false judgement against me imposed by the court of Judge Susan D. Wigenton. Perhaps you haven't read the opinion of the appeals court exposing all of you as liars and seditionists yet. If so, here you go: https://www.eff.org/files/2014/04/11/weev.pdf On January 18th, 2011 I was kidnapped at gunpoint by the US Marshals from Fayetteville, Arkansas, the town where I was born, based off a criminal complaint based on complete falsehoods written by FBI Special Agent Christian Schorle. The complaint alleged I had broken into AT&T's servers (I hadn't, as confirmed by the appeals court which verified no evidence was presented that any of my accesses bypassed security restrictions) and that New Jersey was the jurisdiction because AT&T was headquartered there. In actuality, AT&T was headquartered at the time in Houston, Texas. This sort of blatant falsehood is verifiable by a simple Google search. Thus I was taken from Arkansas, the nicest place I ever lived, and brought to Newark, New Jersey, a place worse than any of the many third world countries I have visited. I was held under bail conditions where the government refused to allow me to work in my industry, told me where I could live (I was not allowed to return to my birthplace of Arkansas where I lived at no expense, and instead forced to pay rent in New Jersey), and was subject to the indignity and expense of regular mandatory travel to the Newark courthouse to urinate in front of a federal employee. I was told where I could travel, and where and how I could sleep. My time and life was completely monopolized by the federal government during this period, again based off false statements from a lying piece of shit in the federal government. I then spent a swath of the next years struggling to find an attorney because the overworked federal defender I was given told me to plea to false charges because even if I was innocent there was no way I'd win. I then struggled to get this attorney enough resources to fight the case while he was struggling to keep the lights in his office on. Going to trial two years later, the United States Attorneys and FBI repeatedly perjured themselves in order to wrongfully convict me. FBI Special Agent Phillip Frigm claimed that the manufactured evidence was "secured" by MD5 signatures. This was factually wrong and perjurously asserted as true under oath-- MD5 signatures do not work in the manner he implied. Assistant US Attorney Michael Martinez claimed that I committed a crime because my use of the Internet was "not like going to ESPN and checking my favorite sports team's scores", and Assistant US Attorney Zach Intrater claimed that I had committed a crime because I automated web requests with a script. This, of course, ignores the fact that the vast majority of web requests are programmatic and automated-- total API requests and automated GET per year are approaching the quadrillions. Lie after lie after lie stacked up in open court on behalf of the agents of the government. If there was any integrity left in the justice system there would be special prosecutors appointed to charge you with the perjuries you committed. Orchestrating this circus was the judge, Susan D. Wigenton, who not only ignored my constitutional right to a trial in a reasonable location but blatantly allowed manufactured evidence and perjury on the part of FBI and DOJ employees in her courtroom. The rights I have enumerated in the Constitution (and, in some cases, even The Declaration) were violated with near completion. At sentencing, I made the following statement to Judge Wigenton: "I don’t come here today to ask for forgiveness. I’m here to tell this court, if it has any foresight at all, that it should be thinking about what it can do to make amends to me for the harm and the violence that has been inflicted upon my life." It is time, now that the fraud and violence committed against me has been exposed by the appeals process, to begin making amends to me for the harm her court has done. My current market-determined hourly rate is 1 Bitcoin an hour. I was taken from my childhood home at gunpoint on January 18th, 2011, and I was not allowed to freely exercise my liberties as a citizen until April 11th, 2014. That's 1179 days that you used my time that I am now billing you for (I gave you a discount by not including the last day). I am owed 28,296 Bitcoins. I do not accept United States dollars, as it is the preferred currency of criminal organizations such as the FBI, DOJ, ATF, and Federal Reserve and I do not assist criminal racketeering enterprises. Know that all this wealth will be directed towards a good and charitable cause. I am building a series of memorial groves for the greatest patriots of our generation: Timothy McVeigh, Andrew Stack, and Marvin Heemeyer. You see, In the "Special Housing Unit", which is Bureau of Prisons codespeak for "solitary confinement" and "torture", I had enough time to think about the current state of federal government. The federal government has declared war on We the People. I am but the latest casualty of the unjust and seditious war being waged against honest Americans and defenders of the Constitution. At Waco the FBI directed the murder of 76 men, women, and children. At Ruby Ridge the FBI murdered both a 14-year-old boy and a woman cradling her infant child. All federal agents are, in fact, murderous thugs and seditious terrorists. Sedition is the charge for crimes which undermine the Constitution with violence. I can assure you that violence was used against me, and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has already verified that the case against me undermined the Constitution. 28,296 Bitcoins. This is my invoice. It will only come once. As government criminality continues to be exposed on a daily basis, there is an urgent question which our government must answer: by what civil and peaceful means can those of us harmed by government perjury, fraud, and violence be compensated for the losses we have experienced? My Bitcoin address: 1JTeYcsx37XTq5NRgjepAHDqaLHTZUL88a Now the government's answer, or lack of it, will be permanently preserved in the Bitcoin block chain as a matter of public record. PAY ME MY MONEY, YOU LYING SUBHUMAN GARBAGE. You also should resign from your posts, as you've shown yourselves to be collective disgraces to rule of law and enemies of the United States Constitution. Those of us who actually love this country should take your places.
RAW Paste Data
I just emailed this to the federal government and bcc'd 200 or so people: Subject: "An open letter to members of the New Jersey District Court, FBI, and DOJ consisting of an invoice for services rendered." To the Honorable Susan D. Wigenton, US Attorney Paul J. Fishman, Assistant US Attorney Zach Intrater, and FBI Special Agent Christian Schorle, "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?" -Shakespeare It has long been one of the fundamental pillars of our system of law that when one commits a crime against another, they are made to give restitution to their victims. I have, over the course of 3 years, been made the victim of a criminal conspiracy by those in the federal government. This was a conspiracy of sedition and treason, perpetrated with violence by a limited number of federal agents to deprive me of my constitutional rights to a fair trial and unlawfully put me in prison. This is not a hallucination on my part. These claims were in fact verified by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals when they vacated the false judgement against me imposed by the court of Judge Susan D. Wigenton. Perhaps you haven't read the opinion of the appeals court exposing all of you as liars and seditionists yet. If so, here you go: https://www.eff.org/files/2014/04/11/weev.pdf On January 18th, 2011 I was kidnapped at gunpoint by the US Marshals from Fayetteville, Arkansas, the town where I was born, based off a criminal complaint based on complete falsehoods written by FBI Special Agent Christian Schorle. The complaint alleged I had broken into AT&T's servers (I hadn't, as confirmed by the appeals court which verified no evidence was presented that any of my accesses bypassed security restrictions) and that New Jersey was the jurisdiction because AT&T was headquartered there. In actuality, AT&T was headquartered at the time in Houston, Texas. This sort of blatant falsehood is verifiable by a simple Google search. Thus I was taken from Arkansas, the nicest place I ever lived, and brought to Newark, New Jersey, a place worse than any of the many third world countries I have visited. I was held under bail conditions where the government refused to allow me to work in my industry, told me where I could live (I was not allowed to return to my birthplace of Arkansas where I lived at no expense, and instead forced to pay rent in New Jersey), and was subject to the indignity and expense of regular mandatory travel to the Newark courthouse to urinate in front of a federal employee. I was told where I could travel, and where and how I could sleep. My time and life was completely monopolized by the federal government during this period, again based off false statements from a lying piece of shit in the federal government. I then spent a swath of the next years struggling to find an attorney because the overworked federal defender I was given told me to plea to false charges because even if I was innocent there was no way I'd win. I then struggled to get this attorney enough resources to fight the case while he was struggling to keep the lights in his office on. Going to trial two years later, the United States Attorneys and FBI repeatedly perjured themselves in order to wrongfully convict me. FBI Special Agent Phillip Frigm claimed that the manufactured evidence was "secured" by MD5 signatures. This was factually wrong and perjurously asserted as true under oath-- MD5 signatures do not work in the manner he implied. Assistant US Attorney Michael Martinez claimed that I committed a crime because my use of the Internet was "not like going to ESPN and checking my favorite sports team's scores", and Assistant US Attorney Zach Intrater claimed that I had committed a crime because I automated web requests with a script. This, of course, ignores the fact that the vast majority of web requests are programmatic and automated-- total API requests and automated GET per year are approaching the quadrillions. Lie after lie after lie stacked up in open court on behalf of the agents of the government. If there was any integrity left in the justice system there would be special prosecutors appointed to charge you with the perjuries you committed. Orchestrating this circus was the judge, Susan D. Wigenton, who not only ignored my constitutional right to a trial in a reasonable location but blatantly allowed manufactured evidence and perjury on the part of FBI and DOJ employees in her courtroom. The rights I have enumerated in the Constitution (and, in some cases, even The Declaration) were violated with near completion. At sentencing, I made the following statement to Judge Wigenton: "I don’t come here today to ask for forgiveness. I’m here to tell this court, if it has any foresight at all, that it should be thinking about what it can do to make amends to me for the harm and the violence that has been inflicted upon my life." It is time, now that the fraud and violence committed against me has been exposed by the appeals process, to begin making amends to me for the harm her court has done. My current market-determined hourly rate is 1 Bitcoin an hour. I was taken from my childhood home at gunpoint on January 18th, 2011, and I was not allowed to freely exercise my liberties as a citizen until April 11th, 2014. That's 1179 days that you used my time that I am now billing you for (I gave you a discount by not including the last day). I am owed 28,296 Bitcoins. I do not accept United States dollars, as it is the preferred currency of criminal organizations such as the FBI, DOJ, ATF, and Federal Reserve and I do not assist criminal racketeering enterprises. Know that all this wealth will be directed towards a good and charitable cause. I am building a series of memorial groves for the greatest patriots of our generation: Timothy McVeigh, Andrew Stack, and Marvin Heemeyer. You see, In the "Special Housing Unit", which is Bureau of Prisons codespeak for "solitary confinement" and "torture", I had enough time to think about the current state of federal government. The federal government has declared war on We the People. I am but the latest casualty of the unjust and seditious war being waged against honest Americans and defenders of the Constitution. At Waco the FBI directed the murder of 76 men, women, and children. At Ruby Ridge the FBI murdered both a 14-year-old boy and a woman cradling her infant child. All federal agents are, in fact, murderous thugs and seditious terrorists. Sedition is the charge for crimes which undermine the Constitution with violence. I can assure you that violence was used against me, and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has already verified that the case against me undermined the Constitution. 28,296 Bitcoins. This is my invoice. It will only come once. As government criminality continues to be exposed on a daily basis, there is an urgent question which our government must answer: by what civil and peaceful means can those of us harmed by government perjury, fraud, and violence be compensated for the losses we have experienced? My Bitcoin address: 1JTeYcsx37XTq5NRgjepAHDqaLHTZUL88a Now the government's answer, or lack of it, will be permanently preserved in the Bitcoin block chain as a matter of public record. PAY ME MY MONEY, YOU LYING SUBHUMAN GARBAGE. You also should resign from your posts, as you've shown yourselves to be collective disgraces to rule of law and enemies of the United States Constitution. Those of us who actually love this country should take your places. |
Matt Cassels' research shows children often have a closer relationship with their pet than their siblings.
It is really surprising that these children not only turn to their pets for support when faced with adversity, but that they do so even more than they turn to their siblings. This is even though they know their pets don't actually understand what they are saying.
Matt Cassels had at least 10 pets when he was growing up and yet it had never occurred to him to think about how important his relationships with them were. Until he came to Cambridge and started working on a rich data set from the Toddlers Up Project led by Professor Claire Hughes at the Centre for Family Research.
This 10-year longitudinal study of children's social and emotional development included a section on children's relationships with their pets, as well as a broad range of other data from the children, their parents, teachers, and siblings.
Matt was looking for a research topic for his MPhil in Social and Developmental Psychology. He says: "The data on pet relationships stood out as it had never occurred to me to consider looking at pet relationships although I had studied children's other relationships for some time and even though my own experience of pets while I was growing up was so important."
Research on pet relationships has been going on for some time, but few studies have used the same tool to compare children's relationships with pets with their other relationships or have focused on how the quality of pet relationships affects outcomes for children.
Matt decided that was what he wanted to focus on. What he found surprised him. He had thought strong pet relationships would make for happier children, but the truth was more complex.
Instead he discovered that children who had suffered adversity in their lives, such as a bereavement, divorce, instability and illness or were from disadvantaged backgrounds, were more likely to have a stronger relationship with their pets than their peers, although they did less well academically and suffered more mental health problems.
Matt says this may be because they come from backgrounds that predispose them to such problems. Despite this, the study showed children with stronger relationships with their pets had a higher level of prosocial behaviour -- such as helping, sharing, and co-operating -- than their peers. The study also demonstrated that these children, particularly girls and those whose pet was a dog, were more likely to confide in their pets than in their siblings.
Matt says: "It is really surprising that these children not only turn to their pets for support when faced with adversity, but that they do so even more than they turn to their siblings. This is even though they know their pets don't actually understand what they are saying. "
Asked why the research might show girls talk and argue with their pets more than boys when previous less detailed research tends to suggest it is boys who have a better relationship with their pets, Matt adds: "They may feel that their pets are not judging them and since pets don't appear to have their own problems they just listen. Even confiding in a journal can be therapeutic, but pets may be even better since they can be empathetic."
Matt's research was based mostly on data collected when the children, 88 of whom had pets at the time, were 12 years old, 10 years after they had begun participating in this study. The children, their parents, siblings, and teachers all provided information on prosocial behaviour, emotional wellbeing, academic ability, and children's relationship with their pet. Matt measured this information against how much children confided in their pet, how much they argued with their pet, what satisfaction they got out of their relationship with their pet, and how often they did things with their pet each day.
To do so he used a new pet attachment scale adapted from an established and psychometrically validated measure of human attachment. His results supported the validity of using the tool and of considering human-animal relationships in similar terms to human-human relationships. "I had to first prove that it was valid to talk about child pet relationships in the same way we talk about sibling relationships and that we were not indulging in anthropomorphism. My research found the tool was better than those that have previously been available so the possibilities for future research in this area are exciting."
Matt, who is now doing a PhD in the Psychiatry Department with the support of a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, has written two papers on his research, which are currently under review for publication. He says there is a lot more that could be done with the Toddlers Up data, for instance, looking at the impact of pet deaths on children.
"Pets are relatable and ubiquitous," he says. "In the US and England pets are more common in families with young children than resident fathers and yet we don't quantify how important they are to us." |
Houston Mayor Parker marries longtime gay partner
Houston Mayor Annise Parker, right, and Kathy Hubbard get married in Palm Springs, Calif. (Photo11: Richard Hartog via City of Houston)
Houston Mayor Annise Parker, the first openly gay mayor of a major city, married her longtime partner, Kathy Hubbard, on Thursday.
Parker, who was recently sworn in to a third term, and Hubbard have been together for 23 years. The couple got married in Palm Springs, Calif., where same-sex marriage is legal.
"This is a very happy day for us," Parker said in a statement released by the city. "We have had to wait a very long time to formalize our commitment to each other. Kathy has been by my side for more than two decades, helping to raise a family, nurture my political career and all of the other ups and down and life events that come with a committed relationship."
Parker had said she and Hubbard would not marry until their marriage was legal in the state of Texas. Parker posted her new marital status on Twitter.
The mayor announced in late November that the city would begin offering health and life insurance benefits to spouses of all legally married city employees regardless of their sexual orientation, according to the Houston Chronicle.
The city's statement on the couple's wedding states Hubbard has other insurance options available to her and will not participate in Houston's new policy on health insurance benefits for legally married city workers.
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I am privileged to now be the wife of the woman I have loved for more than 2 decades. I couldn't be happier. We said our vows today.-A — Annise Parker (@anniseparker) January 17, 2014
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1dXDZ8O |
A new report by BookStats finds that trade (consumer) ebook revenue in the U.S. was roughly flat between 2012 and 2013, even as the number of ebooks sold rose by 10.1 percent to an estimated 512.70 million.
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With more ebooks being sold, the seemingly contradictory 0.7 percent drop in revenue suggests they’re being sold at lower prices.
BookStats also estimates that book publishers now make more revenue from online sales (of both print and digital books) than from brick-and-mortar stores, with $7.54 billion coming from online sales and $7.12 billion coming from physical stores in 2013.
What about self-published ebooks? BookStats includes “any self-published book registered with a US commercial book identifier number (an ISBN)” in “the extrapolation and methodology of the report” but ebooks without ISBN numbers — which includes many self-published Kindle books — can’t be tracked. BookStats also cautions that “the report only captures publishers’ net revenues, not retailer/consumer sales.”
BookStats, which is a joint project between the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group, collects data from more than 1,600 publishers to create its estimates. The BookStats “trade” (or consumer) category includes adult fiction and nonfiction, children’s/YA and religious books. Full reports can be ordered here.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock/Enzode Bernardo
This post was updated Thursday afternoon with some information about self-published ebooks, and I also changed the headline to better reflect the fact that the chart focuses on U.S. publishers’ ebook revenues, not on the size of the ebook market as a whole. |
The Snap team is happy to announce the release of version 0.13 of the Snap Framework. We would like to thank Edward Kmett who helped with some of the broad design ideas incorporated in this release.
The Heist API changed significantly in this release. If you are migrating an existing app to 0.13, check out the following diffs to see how the migration was done in some real packages.
Major Changes
The API for compiled Heist has now stabilized. The new API is much simpler than the old one. The old API had inconsistent use of n a , RuntimeSplice n a , and Promise a , which made it difficult to understand how things should be composed. Since those three things are different incarnations of roughly the same general idea, we were able to simplify the high-level API to just use RuntimeSplice n a everywhere.
The low level Heist API was moved to its own module. The high-level API referred to above is much simpler, but slightly restricted in its power. If you need to write compiled splices with special control flow, then you will need to import the low level API and work with promises directly.
Heist now has new syntax for writing splices. The old alist syntax made behavior unclear when the same splice name occurred more than once. Also, the actual syntax for alists is not incredibly clean either. The new syntax is defined in the Heist.SpliceAPI module and leverages do notation and a few infix operators to create elegant syntax for defining splices while at the same time making semantics more clear.
The snaplet testing API has been modified to allow you to choose an environment.
Bugfixes / minor improvements |
Lee Kwang Soo guested on 'Ji Suk Jin's 2 O'Clock Date' on October 11!
DJ Ji Suk Jin said on this day, "Lee Dong Hwi saw me on set and said that it really felt like he was looking at a celebrity," shamelessly complimenting himself. He then continued, "The director also said he was impressed with my acting." Lee Kwang Soo then said, "You're not believing all of that, are you?" causing laughter.
One listener then phoned in and asked Lee Kwang Soo, "Do you really fall in love immediately?" as that is his image on 'Running Man.' He insisted, "I really do fall in love fast. I sincerely loved all the female guests who came out on 'Running Man,'" causing more laughter.
Hearing this, Ji Suk Jin said, "That's why I prepared a surprise blind date today," and invited Announcer Jung Da Hee onto the radio show. Lee Kwang Soo was unable to hide his surprise and once again proved himself to be a hopeless romantic by asking her, "What do you think of me?" Oh, Lee Kwang Soo, you'll find love some day! |
Once again, it's been demonstrated that vulnerabilities in cellphone networks can be exploited to intercept one-time two-factor authentication tokens in text messages.
Specifically, the security shortcomings lie in the Signaling System 7 (SS7) protocol, which is used to by networks worldwide to talk to each other to route calls, and so on.
There are little or no safeguards in place on SS7 once you have access to a cell network operator's infrastructure. If you can reach the SS7 equipment – either as a corrupt insider or a hacker breaking in from the outside – you can reroute messages and calls as you please. Someone working for, or who has compromised, a telco in Morocco, for instance, can quietly hijack and receive texts destined for subscribers in America.
Infosec outfit Positive Technologies, based in Massachusetts, USA, obtained access to a telco's SS7 platform, with permission for research purposes, to this month demonstrate how to commandeer a victim's Bitcoin wallet. First, they obtained their would-be mark's Gmail address and cellphone number. They then requested a password reset for the webmail account, which involved sending a token to the cellphone number. Positive's team abused SS7 within the telco to intercept the authentication token and gain access to the Gmail inbox. From there, they were able to reset the password to the user's Coinbase wallet, log into that, and empty it of crypto-cash.
Minimum personal information about a victim – just their first name, last name, and phone number – was enough to get their email address from Google's find-a-person service and hack a test wallet in Coinbase.
Earlier this year, crooks exploited these aforementioned weaknesses in SS7 to log into victims' online bank accounts in Germany and drain them of funds. The cyber-robbers intercepted texts with login authentication codes sent to customers of Telefonica Germany before using the stolen information to carry out unauthorized transactions, as we previously reported.
Why are creepy SS7 cellphone spying flaws still unfixed after years, ask Congresscritters READ MORE
"Exploiting SS7-specific features is one of several existing ways to intercept SMS," said Dmitry Kurbatov, head of the telecommunications security department at Positive Technologies.
"Unfortunately, it is still impossible to opt out of using SMS for sending one-time passwords. It is the most universal and convenient two-factor authentication technology. All telecom operators should analyze vulnerabilities and systematically improve the subscriber security level."
Banks try to strike a balance between usability and security. Tokens in text messages are easy to receive and type in. For sensitive accounts, using a phone for authentication will be risky if SS7 hijacks increase. However, if the choice is phone authentication or no two-factor authentication at all, it's a good idea to use the phone for security reasons – or, even better, find a service that offers second-factor authentication from an app, key fob or other gizmo.
Ultimately, login token stealing, via SS7, is still rare. Most headaches with SMS tokens are caused by people getting locked out of their stuff, rather than having it all stolen.
"We should stop using SMS for 2FA, but also worth noting: for providers the biggest problem with 2FA is account lockouts, not bypasses," said Martijn Grooten, a security researcher and editor of industry journal Virus Bulletin. ® |
Photo: Flickr
Since the end of the Great Recession in 2009, incomes in America have, on average, gone up. But in 15 of the states in our country, all of those gains have gone to the top 1%.
It’s not hard to understand that if all of the income growth since the depths of the recession is going to the very richest sliver of the population, then that income growth hardly matters at all in the real world where the other 99% of us live. This is the stark reality of economic inequality in action. A new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute examines state-by-state income growth from the end of the recession in 2009 through 2013, and finds that in a large chunk of U.S. states, the bottom 99% of earners saw none of the income gains in that period
In these 15 states, the gains went completely to the rich:
Connecticut
Florida
Georgia
Louisiana
Maryland
Mississippi
Missouri
Nevada
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
South Carolina
Virginia
Washington
Wyoming
Even worse, in ten of those states—Wyoming, Nevada, Washington, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Florida, Missouri, Georgia, and South Carolina—incomes for the top 1% grew by double digits, while incomes for the bottom 99% actually went down.
This chart, also from EPI, puts the national situation in perspective:
The class war is real, friends. And 99% of you ain’t winning. |
The sustainability cost myth
NICK FLEMING, ECOS MAGAZINE 13 SEP 2011
Grocon's Pixel Building in Melbourne, the first carbon neutral office building in Australia, achieved the highest Green Star score ever awarded by the Green Building Council of Australia. Image: Courtesy Grocon
Leading organisations have been implementing sustainable practice for more than 20 years. Elsewhere, however, the perception that ‘sustainability costs more’ remains a real barrier to progress. Is this perception backed by evidence, and is it likely to endure?
It’s worth investigating what ‘sustainability costs more’ means. What’s the benchmark? Is ‘cost’ being interpreted in purely dollar terms, or is it time or effort? A growing body of evidence demonstrates that sustainable business practices, products and services deliver measurably superior results compared with business-as-usual practice.
Yet, we can all point to ‘sustainable’ goods and services that cost more than a comparable alternative. Organic fruit and vegetables carry a price premium, compact fluorescent light bulbs can be 10 times more expensive than their incandescent predecessors, and the retail price of renewable energy is up to 20 per cent higher than conventional (coal-fuelled) electricity. So, the short-term price of sustainability can be higher.
However, when considering costs holistically over a longer time frame, it’s not hard to see the avoided costs associated with more sustainable practice, such as improved health, reduced energy consumption and resilience to a changing climate. The price of conventionally produced goods and services typically fails to include the costs of pollution or resource depletion borne by society at large. These consequences are seen as market and public policy failures. As these failures are corrected through new regulations, policy and pricing measures – such as a carbon tax, waste disposal costs, or water ‘buy-back’ for the environment – sustainable options quickly become financially attractive.
Many organisations are already benefiting financially from sustainability initiatives. For example, take the United Kingdom-based shampoo manufacturer [brand name withheld] operating a marginal business. The company was saved by a resource efficiency consultant who identified they were overfilling all bottles, giving away a small amount of shampoo. When corrected, the company reduced raw material and energy inputs throughout their supply chain, and returned £1 million straight to the bottom line on an annual turnover of £16 million.
Cost benefits also accrue from running more sustainable buildings. The Green Building Council of Australia reports multiple benefits, including lower operating costs, greater tenant attraction, reduced vacancy periods, improved marketability and increased property values. The Council refers to an extensive United States study that confirms these conclusions, citing a total return on investment for ‘green’ commercial building developers of 6.6 per cent.1 Tenants then benefit from lower operating costs, better staff productivity and health, and organisational reputation.
Organisations that embrace sustainability are not performing strongly just because of efficiency savings. Rather, their savvy business leaders – who recognise the benefits of embracing sustainability – are already balancing short and long-term business goals, pursuing innovation, and ensuring sound corporate governance and risk management. A. T. Kearney demonstrated that such companies have significantly outperformed their peers during ‘normal’ economic times and during the global financial crisis.2 GE, for example, established their EcoImagination division in 2005. Dedicated to sustainable solutions – including wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicle charging stations and water purification technology – the division had outperforming sales of US$85 billion in 2010.3
In the infrastructure sector, whole-of-life cost savings are feasible. Take the example of a new, multi-billion dollar port for one of Australia’s big miners. The planning and design for the port replicated existing best practice. Yet, the facility still required large amounts of energy for handling iron ore, and materials for construction and maintenance; and, because the facility generated dust that impacted local towns, it required vast quantities of water each day for dust control. The facility also generated noise emissions and encroached on turtle breeding habitat. Through smart design, a solution was found that used ‘waste’ water and ‘just in time’ delivery to minimise onsite ore storage and double handling. This reduced energy use and noise, avoided habitat encroachment, and simplified the overall design, resulting in a lower capital and operating cost. The example illustrates a simple, important and repeatable truth; mitigating the impacts of poor design costs money, while smart design from the outset saves money.
Sustainable goods and services may cost a little more if viewed from narrow, short-term perspective. But, over the long term, sustainability is proven to be financially attractive. This equation continues to improve as community expectations and science underpins public policy and market reforms. Great returns on investment are now available to those organisations which embrace sustainability with an eye on market opportunities and smart, sustainable design.
Dr Nick Fleming is the Chief Sustainability Officer for Sinclair Knight Merz, leading the application of sustainability thinking in business operations and client services. Through his Sustainable Enterprise column, Nick provides insight into how businesses and organisations are effectively putting sustainability theory into practice.
1 Green Building Council of Australia (2008) The dollars and sense of green building.
2 AT Kearney (2009) Green winners – the performance of sustainability-focused companies during the financial crisis. 2nd Annual Green Marketing Forum.
3 GE (2010) EcoImagination Annual Report – Solutions for the World’s Toughest Challenges. |
He said he had agreed to the meeting at Trump Tower in New York because he was offered information that would be helpful to the campaign of his father, then the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
At the meeting, which also included the candidate's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, the Russian lawyer opened by saying she knew about Russians funding the Democratic National Committee and Clinton, the statement said.
Trump Jr. said that her comments during the meeting were "vague, ambiguous and made no sense" and that she then changed the subject to discuss a prohibition that the Russian government placed on the adoption of Russian children as retaliation for sanctions imposed by Congress in 2012.
Donald Jr. said that his father "knew nothing of the meeting or these events" and that the campaign had no further contact with the woman after the 20- to 30-minute session.
The president's son did not disclose the discussion when the meeting was first made public by the New York Times on Saturday and did so only on Sunday as the Times prepared to report that he had been offered information on Clinton at the session.
The revelations about the meeting come as federal prosecutors and congressional investigators explore whether the Trump campaign coordinated and encouraged Russian efforts to intervene in the election to hurt Clinton and elect Trump. Hackers began leaking emails stolen from the Democratic Party in July 2016, and U.S. intelligence agencies have said the effort was orchestrated by Russia to help elect Trump.
The meeting suggests that some Trump aides were in the market to collect negative information that could be used against Clinton — at the same time that U.S. government officials have concluded Russians were collecting such data.
Trump officials have vigorously denied they colluded with Russia in any way.
In his statement, Trump Jr. said he did not know the lawyer's name, Natalia Veselnitskaya, before attending the meeting at the request of an acquaintance. He said that after pleasantries were exchanged, the lawyer told him that "she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton."
"No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information," he said, saying he concluded that claims of helpful information for the campaign had been a "pretext" for setting up the meeting.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Trump's attorney, said Trump was unaware of the meeting and did not attend it.
Watch more!
President Trump's eldest son admitted on July 9 to meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign, after she promised him damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The revelation comes after months of the White House denying campaign contacts with Russians. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
Neither Manafort nor his spokesman responded to requests for comment Sunday evening. Attorneys for Kushner also did not respond to requests for comment Sunday. On Saturday, a Kushner attorney, Jamie Gorelick, said her client had previously revised required disclosure forms to note multiple meetings with foreign nationals, including the session in June with Veselnitskaya. "As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows," Gorelick said.
In his statement, Trump Jr. said he was approached about the meeting by an acquaintance he knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.
He did not name the acquaintance, but in an interview Sunday, Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who is friendly with Trump Jr., told The Washington Post that he had arranged the meeting at the request of a Russian client and had attended it along with Veselnitskaya.
Goldstone has been active with the Miss Universe pageant and works as a manager for Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star whose father is a wealthy Moscow developer who sponsored the pageant in the Russian capital in 2013.
Goldstone would not name the client. He said Veselnitskaya wanted to discuss ways that Trump could be helpful about the Russian government's adoption issue should he be elected president.
"Once she presented what she had to say, it was like, 'Can you keep an eye on it? Should [Trump] be in power, maybe that's a conversation that he may have in the future?' " Goldstone said.
In the Sunday interview, Goldstone did not describe the conversation about Clinton or indicate that he had told Trump Jr. that he could provide information helpful to the campaign. He did not respond to a second request for comment late Sunday. Likewise, a spokeswoman for Donald Trump Jr. did not respond when asked whether Goldstone was the acquaintance to whom the president's son was referring.
His role in the meeting has not been previously reported.
Veselnitskaya's client roll includes individuals and companies close to the Kremlin. She has for the past several years been a leading advocate around the world to fight Magnitsky Acts, sanctions intended to rebuke Russia for human rights abuses. The acts are named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died under mysterious circumstances in a Moscow prison in 2009 after exposing a corruption scandal.
She did not respond to requests for comment from The Post but told the Times in a statement that she had never acted on behalf of the Russian government and that the meeting included no discussion of the presidential campaign.
The meeting occurred during a period of intense focus on the Magnitsky sanctions. Four days after the Trump Tower session June 9, Veselnitskaya was in Washington attending a House Foreign Relations Committee hearing that discussed sanctions and other aspects of U.S.-Russia relations.
That evening, a film critical of the Magnitsky sanctions — and the story behind them — showed at the Newseum. On June 15, Veselnitskaya was featured on the Sputnik News website criticizing the sanctions and its leading advocate, William Browder, a financier working in Moscow who was barred from returning to Russia a decade ago amid concerns about corruption of the sort exposed by Magnitsky, the lawyer and auditor he had hired.
Browder led the lobbying for the Magnitsky Act's passage in 2012, a vote that infuriated Putin, leading the Russian leader to retaliate by halting American adoption of Russian children. The adoption issue is frequently used as a talking point by opponents of the Magnitsky Act, Browder said.
Rosalind Helderman is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2001.
Tom Hamburger is an investigative reporter on the national desk of The Washington Post. He has covered the White House, Congress and regulatory agencies, with a focus on money and politics.
Post Recommends |
Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank mentioned last May the possibility of attracting the NFL draft to Atlanta with New York no longer the standard location for the event.
Well, Blank's mind hasn't changed almost a year later with other cities such as Los Angeles and even Denver coming up as possible future draft destinations.
2016 NFL DRAFT Round 1: April 28, 8 p.m. ET
Rds. 2-3: April 29, 7 p.m. ET
Rds. 4-7: April 30, noon ET
Where: Auditorium Theatre, Chicago NFL draft home page » • 2016 NFL draft order »
• Todd McShay: Final mock »
• Mel Kiper Jr.: 'Grade A' Mock »
• Mel Kiper Jr.: Final mock »
• Todd McShay: Needs for each team
• Todd McShay's tier rankings
• Mel Kiper Jr.'s Big Board »
• Top prospects by position »
• NFL draft player rankings »
"Absolutely, we want to see it in Atlanta," Blank told ESPN.com. "We've told that to the NFL. But right now, we're competing for a Super Bowl. So, I think the league's view on that is that they probably are not going to spread the wealth, so they're not going to be holding the draft where the Super Bowl is going to be held as well.
"We're competing for the 2019, 2020, and 2021 Super Bowls, and the vote will be in May. So, we'll see how that comes out. But we definitely have made it clear that we'd like to be city that is considered for the draft in the future."
Blank said there will be no concerns about location if the NFL draft comes to Atlanta.
"We would hold it down at the World Congress Center next to the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium in some form or fashion," Blank said. "For all the reasons we would be the perfect site for a Super Bowl, we would be the perfect site for the draft. We've got 10,000 hotel rooms within a mile of the stadium, 1,000 restaurants, public transportation, and everything is walkable. There are other great public amenities in Atlanta as well.
"The same reasons why we think the Super Bowl would make sense in Atlanta, the draft would make a lot of sense in Atlanta," Blank said.
Host cities for the draft beyond this year are up in the air. "No locations have been determined beyond this year’s draft," NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said. "Multiple cities and teams have expressed interest in hosting future drafts. No decisions will be made until later this year."
This year's NFL draft on April 28-30 will be held in Chicago for the second consecutive year. According to a study by the Sports Industry Research Center at Temple University, the 2015 draft generated a total economic impact of $81.6 million for Chicago. The event generated 31,000 hotel nights from visitors, plus 5,600 hotel nights from NFL staff and sponsors. |
A logo of consumer goods group Henkel is pictured before its annual news conference in Duesseldorf March 8, 2012. REUTERS/Ina Fassbender
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German consumer products group Henkel (HNKG_p.DE) said on Friday it was buying U.S. laundry and home care company The Sun Products Corp from a fund of Vestar Capital Partners in a deal valued at $3.6 billion including debt.
The debt-financed acquisition will add laundry detergents All and Sun and fabric conditioner Snuggle to Henkel’s portfolio and make it the No. 2 laundry care maker in North America, behind Procter & Gamble (PG.N) and ahead of Church & Dwight (CHD.N).
“We believe that the opportunity for Henkel to leverage its innovation excellence on Sun brands is enormous, providing significant upside (on top of synergies) to margins,” Berenberg analysts said.
Shares in Henkel were 0.6 percent lower at 1045 GMT, making them the top performers on Germany's blue-chip DAX index .GDAXI, which was down 7.1 percent in response to Britain's vote to leave the European Union.
Adding Sun Products’ business, with annual sales of about 1.4 billion euros ($1.6 billion) in the United States and Canada, will raise the proportion of sales Henkel’s laundry and home care division generates in North America to about a third from 13 percent.
Assuming an operating margin of around 12 percent for Sun, Berenberg said it expected the acquisition to add about 6 percent to Henkel’s operating profit in 2017, which would rise to 17 percent by 2019 thanks to revenue synergies.
Baader Bank analyst Christian Weiz said he estimated the deal valued Sun Products at about 2.3 times sales, which he said seemed very attractive, affirming his “buy” recommendation on Henkel’s stock.
Sun Products has around 2,000 employees at two production sites and one research and development center in the United States.
Perella Weinberg Partners and Credit Suisse were financial advisors to Henkel, while Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP acted as legal advisor. The acquisition will be fully debt-financed and is underwritten by Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and BNP Paribas. |
The Three Tiers of Raw Denim: Entry, Mid, and End Level Jeans
All the available options in the world of raw denim makes for a vibrant and exciting subculture, but if you’re just starting out it can be a bit overwhelming. The fact that Pure Blue Japan and Japan Blue are drastically different companies is intimidating enough. If all three jeans pictured above look exactly the same to you despite the vast difference in price (Unbranded 201 $82, 3sixteen SL-100X $215, and Stevenson Overall Co. 727 $340), then we’re here to help!
In this post, we’d like to break down the many raw denim brands and models into three distinct categories of entry-level, mid-level, and end-level denim that each have their own price points and characteristics. We hope laying some of the groundwork will help you decide what the right pair for your interests and budget as well as get a better picture of what’s out there.
For the raw denim initiated out there, be aware that these are broad categories and that there are exceptions to every rule.
Entry Level (Sub $150)
Entry level represents your basic jeans. If you’ve never owned a pair of raw denim before and want to see what all the fuss is about, you should start here.
What you’ll find in this category is generally mid-weight 10oz.-15oz. (learn more about denim weights here) denim that’s sanforized and possibly selvedge. It’ll most likely be 100% cotton or a 2% stretch.
You’d be hard pressed to find a lot of color variation beyond your basic indigo and the denim will be quite uniform in texture and weave. Milling and construction was most likely done in a country other than Japan or the United States.
You can find a variety of slim, skinny, and straight fits, but not the larger heritage inspired ones. Details will be pretty basic outside of your standard buttons, rivets, and patch.
Our pick at this price point is the Unbranded 201, which is 88 bucks at Nordstrom (see the full review). Other good options include Levi’s 501 STF, United Stock Dry Goods Narrow, Gustin, Gap 1969 Selvedge, and Uniqlo Raw Selvedge.
All of these jeans are of a much higher quality than your standard mall fare and can earn some great fades, the price tag is just low enough though that you won’t be kicking yourself if you size them incorrectly or accidentally toss them in the dryer.
Mid Level ($150 – $275)
This middle tier is where things start to get interesting. Here you can start to see custom fabrics woven exclusively for the brands in question, lightweight (sub 10oz.) and heavyweight (16oz.+) denims, and a variety of colors, textures, and fiber blends. Some of it will be unsanforized, but most will still be pre-shrunk.
Fits in this level are going to be similar to those in the entry level with some more variations on skinny, slim, and straight. You can tune in more closely on the rise, leg opening, thigh size, etc. because there are more options available in this range.
Brands begin to have more character in this level as well, with specific detailing, stitch designs, and pocket linings defining each company’s specific take on the five (or six) pocket jean.
The vast majority of North American denim companies like Rogue Territory, 3sixteen, Baldwin, Left Field, Naked & Famous, and Tellason fall into this category. As do offerings from a couple of the more moderately priced Japanese brands like Japan Blue and Sugar Cane and European brands like Nudie and A.P.C..
Almost all of the jeans at this level will be produced in a first world country–most likely USA, Canada, or Japan–but often contract to a third party production company for cutting and sewing.
Some of our favorite jeans at this price point are the 3sixteen SL-100X, which is a minimalistic jean with an incredibly forgiving 14oz. selvedge indigo denim from Japan’s Kuroki Mills. It’s made in the USA and retails for $215. See the weaving process or pick up a pair at Self Edge.
If you’re looking for something skinnier and darker, try the Rogue Territory Stealth SK. The SK is also made in USA jean (Los Angeles, specifically) with a gradually tapered leg and a completely murdered out black/black sulphur dyed 15oz. Japanese selvedge denim. It retails for $240 at Rogue Territory.
End Level ($275+)
This is when you get to the creme de la creme of artisanal raw denim. The jeans at this level aren’t so much objectively “better” than the ones at the mid-level, they just have details and designs that you can’t find anywhere else. If you’ve got the itch, these are the only jeans that can scratch it.
Almost every single fabric used at this level is designed and produced exclusively for the company in question: Pure Blue Japan has their incredibly textured super slub, Iron Heart has their 21oz.-plus heavies, The Flat Head has their famously fast fading 3XXX denim, the list could go on. Most of the denim will be unsanforized, as that’s the original way denim was made and it arguably has more interesting fades.
Production also happens not only in the first world but almost exclusively in house. Most of the companies at this level are Japanese and have their own employees as well as a connection to a mill. This way the entire creation of the jean happens entirely within the company, with little to no outside contracting.
In the United States, End level denim often comes from One Man Brand operations like Roy Denim and WH Ranch Dungarees. Each of which only has a sole employee and owner that all of the designing, drafting, sewing, and promotion himself.
This is also where you’ll find particular heritage details like cinch-backs and crotch rivets or a particular type of pocket that was only made for six months in the 1890s.
A lot of new raw denim fans may be instantly turned off when they first see the jeans at this price level, and honestly, to most people they aren’t worth the money. It takes quite a bit of education and sophistication as a consumer to understand and appreciate just what makes these jeans so special (and so expensive), but that’s what puts them at the top of the pyramid.
You can easily search through every single jean that’s out there according to your preferred price, fit, color, and more with our handy tool, The Scout.
What are your favorite models and brands at each level of denim? How would you categorize all the options that are out there? |
“Flash orders may create a two-tiered market by allowing only selected participants to access information about the best available prices for listed securities,” she said during a meeting in Washington. Other modern market practices, she said, are similarly opaque.
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Fast-moving electronic exchanges have upended old-fashioned stock trading. Buyers and sellers no longer must interact on exchange floors and haggle over prices. Today, traders employ powerful computer programs to execute millions of orders a second and scan dozens of marketplaces simultaneously.
While anyone can gain access to flash orders for a fee, only very powerful computers can process and act on the information. In July, flash orders represented 2.8 percent of the roughly 9 billion shares of stocks traded in the United States.
According to Richard H. Repetto, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill who studies stock exchanges, the average trade is executed, or completed, in less than 10 milliseconds and often as fast as 5 milliseconds.
The proliferation of high-frequency trading has pushed up average daily volume on the nation’s stock exchanges by 164 percent since 2005. Proponents of the practice argue such trading enhances the liquidity and greases the wheels of the markets.
“High frequency trading has made the markets more efficient, and generally speaking, markets that are more efficient are better for all participants,” said Justin Schack, a vice president at Rosenblatt Securities.
Even so, Mr. Schack said he was pleased the S.E.C. was moving to ban flash orders, which he said tended to “benefit everyone except for the customer.”
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Direct Edge, an electronic exchange, has benefited the most from the use of flash orders, analysts said. But other electronic exchanges, including Nasdaq and BATS also jumped into the market, prodded by competitive pressures.
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Getting flashed an order offers traders a distinctive edge. When buy and sell orders come into an exchange, they are first flashed to those paying to see them for 30 milliseconds — 0.03 seconds — before they are available to everyone else. In the blink of an eye, the systems can detect patterns and get a jump on other investors. Before others even sees the order, high-frequency traders swoop in and then out.
The move to ban flash orders drew praise from some on Capitol Hill.
“This ban, as proposed, is pretty much water-tight and should not be weakened by the commission as the rule-making process goes forward,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. “This proposal will once and for all get rid of flash trading.”
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The parent of the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Euronext, which never adopted flash trades, trumpeted the proposal. “I think this was a practice that gave unfair access to information flow to a select group of brokers, disadvantaged customer orders and led to a two-tier market system,” said Larry Leibowitz, head of United States markets and global technology at NYSE Euronext.
The S.E.C. on Thursday also passed rules aimed at improving transparency at credit rating agencies and reducing conflicts of interest at the companies.
One rule will force certain investors to rely less on credit ratings and more on their own research. Another requires the agencies to disclose rating histories and requires them to share information about securities they have rated with competitors so they too can rate the securities.
“These are baby steps, clearly,” said Jerome S. Fons, an independent consultant and former managing director at Moody’s, one of the major ratings agencies. He said even greater public disclosure was needed from the agencies. |
Over the past few days, much ink has been spilled about Indonesia’s rhetoric on the South China Sea disputes as the United States finally conducted a freedom of navigation operation near China’s artificial islands there.
While paying attention to what the world’s fourth largest country thinks is important, observers would do well to look beyond the words of a few individual officials to get a sense for Indonesia’s South China Sea approach.
A case in point was the brouhaha over the comments of Luhut Pandjaitan, one of Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s top advisers. On Tuesday, according to Kyodo News, Pandjaitan said that Indonesia disagreed with the U.S. “power projection,” equating the move with ineffective wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To some, such comments make it seem like Indonesia’s South China Sea position is slightly anti-U.S. – perhaps even pro-Chinese – and that Jakarta may not view Chinese assertiveness there with much alarm. In fact, that could not be further from the truth.
Pandjaitan’s exact comments, which were given offhand in response to a few reporters, ought not to be viewed as an official articulation of Indonesia’s South China Sea policy, which I have detailed at length previously (See: “No, Indonesia’s South China Sea Approach Has Not Changed”). More generally, parsing comments by individual Indonesian officials makes for good headlines but is a bad way to assess policy change because of the diversity of views that can emerge even within a few weeks. Indeed, just last week, Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu made the news when he suggested in Beijing that that if regional countries can manage the South China Sea on their own, “there’s no need to involve other parties in resolving the dispute.”
A less hyperbolic and more authoritative and comprehensive version of Jakarta’s approach was what Jokowi himself said in prepared remarks at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, while on his inaugural trip to the United States. As fate would have it, Jokowi wound up speaking just hours after the FONOP had occurred. As I reported for The Diplomat, Jokowi said that while Indonesia was not a South China Sea claimant, the country has an interest in the preservation of regional peace and stability (See: “Indonesia Calls for South China Sea Restraint Amid US-China Tensions”). He implored all sides – not just the United States – to exercise restraint. He also said tensions in the area must be defused through peaceful means based on international law and that China and ASEAN should make progress on a binding code of conduct (CoC).
Though Jokowi did not explicitly mention the illegality of China’s nine-dash line claim or Beijing’s foot-dragging on the CoC, it was clear what he was referring to. Indeed, when asked how Indonesia would manage its relationship with China following his speech, Jokowi acknowledged that Beijing was an “important partner” but spent the second half of his response on the South China Sea issue, clearly indicating its importance even within the Sino-Indonesian relationship. He also directly specified ensuring freedom of navigation as one of the key areas of focus in the South China Sea.
Suggestions that Indonesia’s South China Sea position is slightly ‘pro-China’ and ‘anti-U.S.’ are vastly overstated. If one looks at what Indonesia is doing in the South China Sea, as opposed to what individual Indonesian officials are saying, Jakarta’s actions clearly indicate that such simplistic characterizations could not be further from the truth. In reality, in response to China’s growing assertiveness over the last few years – which has included bold intrusions into Jakarta’s waters – Indonesia has been building up its own capabilities and has pursued closer security ties with other countries including the United States. Under Jokowi, the South China Sea issue has arguably been even more of a focus given the administration’s prickliness on questions of sovereignty and territorial integrity (See: “The Trouble With Indonesia’s Foreign Policy Priorities Under Jokowi”).
Just last week, Indonesia’s legislature authorized a proposal to allocate money for earlier plans to strengthen a military base directed at the resource-rich Natuna Islands, which overlap with China’s nine-dash line. Officials have openly said the plan is motivated by growing tensions in the South China Sea (See: “Why Is Indonesia Building a New South China Sea Military Base?”). In addition to the U.S.-Indonesia defense agreements reached during Jokowi’s visit, maritime security has also featured prominently in engagements between Washington and Jakarta, including during Jokowi’s summit meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama (See: “Exclusive: US, Indonesia Eye New Defense Pacts for Jokowi Visit”). Meanwhile, while Indonesia has pursued closer economic ties with Beijing, military officials admit privately that defense relations remain limited due to lingering mistrust (See: “China and Indonesia Under Jokowi: Show Me The Money”).
To be fair, Pandjaitan’s remarks – though hyperbolic with the comparison between FONOPs and all-out wars – do reflect broader tendencies within Indonesian foreign policy that continue to inform the views of some today. Jakarta has traditionally viewed intervention by major powers with suspicion; it prefers not to take sides between major powers and instead focuses on preserving its own autonomy and exercising regional leadership. And while U.S.-Indonesia relations have been on the uptick, close observers of the relationship know that ties have long been strained by America’s ‘complex’ historical legacy there – as evidenced by its involvement in support for anti-communist rebellions in Indonesia in the 1950s – as well as recent U.S. wars in the Middle East, which are unpopular in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.
Pandjaitan may have meant for his South China Sea comments to reflect these general tendencies. His message might have been that Indonesia is neither opposed to U.S. preservation of freedom of navigation nor tolerant of Beijing’s growing assertiveness; Jakarta is merely concerned that U.S. FONOPs would risk exacerbating U.S.-China rivalry, thereby undermining regional stability and Indonesia’s national autonomy by forcing it to pick sides. Such a view is one shared by other regional states and reflects Indonesia’s preference to walk a careful balance between major powers. And we saw similar concerns even before Jokowi came to power. For instance, when Washington announced the rotational basing of 2,500 marines in Darwin, Australia back in 2011 as part of its “rebalance to Asia,” then-Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa declared that the move would create a “vicious cycle of tension and mistrust” between Washington and Beijing where Southeast Asian states may be forced to take sides.
But the broader point is this: while parsing the words of every Indonesian official in search of headlines or policy shifts, outside observers should not be fooled into thinking that these statements represent authoritative articulations of Indonesia’s current position or signal potential change. Rhetoric is often not reality. And actions do speak much louder than words when it comes to Indonesia’s South China Sea policy — if only they were heard. |
We in Alaska know only too well how a power outage can damage our heating systems in winter. That's why so many of us have generators. The long-term development of the fledgling film industry in our state is currently "frozen" and we need to ensure short-term concerns don't create permanent problems. We need to keep the "generators" running by not supporting Senate Bill 39, which completely eliminates incentives for filming by changing the "freeze" to a "kill."
The best book I read in film school was "Making Films Your Business" by Molly Gregory. Gregory said this process requires vision with a slow, steady build -- and we are getting there. We had to figure many things out along the way, such as how best to utilize the constraints and formulas of the ever-changing renditions of our film incentives; how to balance a star-driven system against regulated spending caps on talent; where to find the balance of local and national crew that would meet the budgetary sweet spot; and which types of stories are uniquely suited to work with these factors.
Sure, the carpetbaggers (reality shows) swept in immediately as they have in other states, but that was not all negative. They left a swath of sharply trained young people and far-reaching ripple effects of publicity for our tourism industry. In recent global travels, I found that reality shows have put Alaska on the map in every corner of the earth from rural Africa to Southeast Asia. It's no accident that so many states combine their tourism and film offices.
While feature films are large and splashy, they leave town in a matter of months at best, and while reality shows do provide training and exposure, we determined that the steadiest form of growth would come with the creation of unique Alaska television: Movies and series that would celebrate and bring light to cultures, landscapes and stories never told. The courting began in 2012 by bringing in producers from ABC, CBS, and smaller venues. They didn't all bite. Some stood in the cold, shivering, praising the view and their halibut lunches, but asking who would be driving them back to the airport. Eventually we worked our way through conferences and networks until we connected.
The five-year plan included starting with Lifetime-like movies, one based on local author Mary Wasche's book, "Escape to Alaska". If all worked smoothly with local crews and the incentives, next up was a television series set in northern Alaska called "Northland," also inspired by local Alaska authors. No one Outside had ever seen anything like it, and they were keenly interested. Our incentives would have made this production possible.
These projects would be a chance to honor our diversity, to develop the infrastructure needed to build an Alaskan film industry, to allow students currently studying film production at University of Alaska Fairbanks and Kenai Community College to actually move into decently paying jobs, and to keep as many as 100 people working nine months out of the year. And that is just one project.
Agents, publishers, writers and producers were all engaged in this machine as it moved forward. It took us a few years to understand how best to drive this industry, but we were ready with application in hand … when the program was frozen.
Let's take a moment to step back, breathe, evaluate these critical steps we are taking under duress and be satisfied to hold. Stand down. Please do not send us back to square one when we have worked so hard to make this program move forward. If we are to continue our good work on the international stage, we need to remain competitive. One of our projects was immediately moved to British Columbia when the incentives were frozen to become yet another Alaska story to be filmed elsewhere.
Many thanks for the tireless efforts of those fighting for this program. We have to remember these same creative, tenacious young people will be tending decisions about elder care and nursing homes for so many of today's decision-makers. When we vote to eliminate programs that nurture the creative souls among us -- whether in schools or the professional world -- it is our day-to-day lives that will pay in the end.
Mary Katzke is the executive director of Affinityfilms.org |
Mod Note: If you want to go argue about trans people and cissexism, argue on this thread.
I have recently been doing a lot of posts about femmephobia, i.e., the cultural fear, hatred and devaluation of femininity (i.e. weakness, vulnerability and various traits that attempt to appeal to the powerful, such as beauty and nurturance) in favor of masculinity (i.e. power). In the comments section I’ve noticed a couple of misconceptions which I would like to clear up.
Femmephobia Is Not The Only Gender-Based Oppression
I may have not made that as clear as it could have been in the original post, but I guess I thought that would be obvious. In addition to femmephobia, we have:
Gender role enforcement, the idea that men should be masculine and women feminine, and if they aren’t they should be shamed into being it or they are weird.
Misandry/misogyny, the idea that people of one gender are awful because they are of that gender.
Homophobia, the idea that two people of the same gender having sex is totally gross.
Cissexism, the idea that you are “really” whatever gender the doctor said you were when you were born, and your hormonal profile, bodily appearance, social gender and strongly-held beliefs on the matter make no difference.
Rape culture, the cluster of beliefs and attitudes that tend to make rape and sexual assault more common in Western culture than many other crimes are.
Add your own in the comments!
Now, sometimes these intersect with each other in interesting and exciting ways. For instance, cissexism and gender role enforcement interact with each other when trans people have to display stereotypical traits of their own gender in order to be allowed to change their body as they see fit. This doesn’t mean that the “root cause” of cissexism is gender role enforcement, or the root cause of gender role enforcement is cissexism; it means they play into each other and end up creating an even suckier situation than either could do individually.
The same thing is true with femmephobia. Homophobes think all people of the same gender having sex with each other is gross (homophobia); however, they tend to talk about how gay men having sex with each other is gross way more often than they talk about how lesbians having sex with each other is gross, because the gay men are becoming like women, and that is super-gross (femmephobia). Rape apologists think that men can’t be raped (rape culture), and when they are raped by being penetrated it means that they’re girly because only girls are penetrated, and when are raped by being enveloped it means they’re girls because real men enjoy any sex they happen to have (femmephobia). Femmephobia is not the cause of all gender-based oppressions; it is just a factor that plays into some of them.
Femmephobia Is Not Misogyny In Disguise
Femmephobia is not some super-secret feminist way of saying “all men’s oppresion is sekritly about women anyway.” Hatred of the feminine is not hatred of women. There are many women who are not feminine; there are many men who are feminine.
In fact, femmephobia disadvantages men far more than it disadvantages women. If women are too feminine, they get hit with femmephobia (a very conventionally attractive woman is generally considered to be a bitch and a moron); if women are too masculine, they get hit with gender role enforcement (my mom tells me it’s gross I don’t shave my armpits). However, the huge realm of behavior between too feminine and too masculine is available for women to pursue– you can put on makeup and fashionable clothing every morning or have short hair and wear blue jeans, and no one will criticize you.
However, if a man is feminine at all, he will get hit with both femmephobia and gender role enforcement. Like musical theater? Want to take care of your appearance and pay attention to your outfit? Need medical attention for a physical or, God forbid, mental problem? Well, you’d better be very comfortable in your gender identity, because large parts of the culture will be convinced you are somehow less of a man because of it, and being less of a man is clearly the worst thing you could possibly be ever. |
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority police officer acted appropriately when he fired pepper spray into a crowd of protesters attending a Movement for Black Lives national conference, according to the results of an internal investigation.
Officials on Tuesday released details of the weeks-long probe examining a July 26 incident where Sgt. Robert Schwab shot pepper spray at protesters at Euclid Avenue and East 24th Street. The officer acted after dozens of people surrounded police who detained an intoxicated teen found passed out on a bus.
Anthony Garofoli, RTA's executive director of internal audit, referred to the protesters as "rioters" when he presented the findings to RTA board members and media Tuesday morning.
Movement for Black Lives spokeswomen did not return requests for comment.
In addition to finding Schwab's use of pepper spray to be above board, the RTA concluded that its pepper spray policies are compliant with state and local laws and that its officers are properly trained.
"We found their training to be thorough and comprehensive," Garofoli said.
The incident began when police detained an intoxicated 14-year-old boy found passed out on a bus and sat him in a bus shelter.
A handful of activists attending the Movement For Black Lives conference across the street at Cleveland State University spotted the officers and tried to intervene.
Police planned to release the boy to a parent after having him medically cleared, which is normal procedure, according to the RTA.
The crowd swelled and officers placed the boy in the back of a police cruiser to take him from the scene.
Dozens of activists creates human roadblocks in front of and behind the car.
After multiple warnings to make room for the car to leave, Schwab fired pepper at the crowd. The activists blocking the road scattered.
"The officers exhausted every effort, using repeated verbal commands and lower levels of force," before using the pepper spray, according to the investigation report.
Paramedics cleared the boy at the scene. He was picked up by his mother about an hour after the incident began.
The crowd cheered, claiming a victory against police, and dispersed.
Garofoli said that although no arrests were made, some activists "engaged in serious criminal activity." He listed nine crimes officers witnessed at the scene including riot, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct and obstructing official business.
"This is pretty indicative of the actions of this group as they go from city to city," Garofoli said.
Christine Link, executive director of the ACLU of Ohio, said a third party should have investigated the incident.
"When an institution investigates itself, can we expect the outcome to be much different than this?" she asked.
Link has criticized RTA police for using pepper spray as a means of crowd control.
"Anyone who has viewed the videotape...can see that [pepper spray] was used inappropriately," Link said. "It should not be dispersed into a crowd...Use of force should not be used against groups of people."
Schwab will return to his regular duties Tuesday. He was placed on administrative duty during the investigation. |
The Miami Hurricanes failed royally when last they had this opportunity — a chance to finally hit the “Canes Are Back” jackpot and show the nation a five-time national championship football program was ready to be top-tier relevant again.
You remember. It was only three years ago, less a month. UM was 7-0 and ranked No. 7 in the nation. It was the short-lived pinnacle of the Canes’ falsely advertised new Golden Age. Coach Al Golden was so popular, right then, that frat boys wore white dress shirts and orange neckties to games, just like Al.
The Hurricanes were back!
Except, no they weren’t.
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A 41-14 loss to No. 3-ranked nemesis Florida State began a collapse of three consecutive defeats in which the crumbling Miami defense allowed 131 points. The orange neckties disappeared from the crowd. Golden (UM career epitaph: “But He Couldn’t Beat The Seminoles”) was fired not quite two years later.
Now here we are again.
But things are different now.
This time, after six losses in a row to the Seminoles, Miami is poised to finally win its Litmus test challenge and move a large step closer to “back.”
This time, the game is in Miami, Saturday night at 8 on ABC, not in Tallahassee like it was in ’13.
This time, unlike then, Miami is higher ranked in The Associated Press poll, 10th to FSU’s 23rd, and the betting favorite, albeit by a modest two or three points. (This also is the first time since 2010 UM has been higher-ranked than both the Noles and Florida Gators, itself a neat little milestone.)
This time, too, Miami has a better quarterback than it did then (Brad Kaaya instead of Stephen Morris), while FSU clearly does not (freshman Deondre Francois instead of Jamesis Winston in the midst of winning a Heisman Trophy).
This time, the Noles do not have the defensive talent to stop the Canes.
And this time — sorry, Al, but for the first time since FSU began its six-year mastery in this series — Miami has a coach, in Mark Richt, who has the heft of résumé and the talent to equal FSU coach Jimbo Fisher.
None of it guarantees Miami will win Saturday. But all of it gives The U a great chance to finally turn tables on its biggest rival.
I heard my pal Dan LeBatard say on his radio show Monday, “Even if Miami wins Saturday they still will have not beaten anybody. Florida State is not good.”
Nope. Wrong. Dan has nay-saying tendencies, but even taking that into account, Florida State is good, of course. The Seminoles might not be great, but they certainly are good — powered by the difference-making running back Dalvin Cook out of Miami Central. FSU didn’t go from being a preseason national-championship contender to being “not good” just because it lost to highly ranked Louisville and then saw a North Carolina kicker happen to hit a career-long 54-yard field goal as time expired Saturday. C’mon.
Following this past week’s 35-21 UM victory at Georgia Tech, FSU on deck will be the first of three consecutive ranked opponents Miami will face, followed by a trip to Notre Dame. A month from today, then, the Canes will have run a pretty rugged gauntlet that will either suggest proof they’re back or offer evidence of something less.
I’ll go this far. We hear the phrase “path to the presidency“ a lot these days. Well, Miami has a path to 12-0. It is not impossible, and it will grow in plausibility if the FSU hurdle is cleared.
Notice I am not touting a national-championship shot here, because UM’s presumptive roadblock in the ACC Championship Game, current No. 3-ranked Clemson, would be a clear favorite. So would 1-2 Alabama or Ohio State if UM somehow played up into the four-team College Football Playoff.
But Miami reaching the conference title game, and perhaps even doing so with a record unblemished, is, while obviously unlikely, not crazy to fathom. Consider: ESPN’s computerized Football Power Index currently projects the Hurricanes as a favorite to likely win all seven games that remain after the FSU meeting.
Yes, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Ain’t no crime. Dreaming is free. I know the proving is really just getting started for Miami, and that FSU will continue to be the nemesis the Canes can’t beat until the moment they prove they can.
This week feels much different, though, than the last time we were here, in 2013.
For the Hurricanes, it feels like the time is finally right. And right now. |
In 2005, amid a contentious battle between President George W. Bush and Congressional Democrats over the White House’s proposed reforms to Social Security, then-Sen. Barack Obama attacked Bush for ignoring the real looming entitlement crisis – the unfunded liabilities and rate of growth associated with Medicare.
RELATED: Wolf Blitzer Challenges Wasserman-Schultz Over Claims That Ryan Will ‘End Medicare As We Know It’
Appearing with fellow Illinois’ Sen. Dick Durbin, Obama went after Republicans for abdicating their responsibility to address the underfunded Medicare system.
“Though I think I’d add, and then I’ll turn it over to Dick, despite the President staking his domestic policy agenda in his second term on Social Security reform, the real crisis – in terms of funding – is not Social Security. It’s Medicare,” said Obama.
He described Medicare as “breaking down rapidly” and called it the impetus for a “fiscal crisis.” Obama wondered why President Bush seemed unwilling to tackle that looming crisis.
Fast-forward to 2012, with a conservative Medicare reform plan on the table championed by Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the Obama camping has released an ad which features Florida’s seniors attacking Ryan for attempting to reshape Medicare and depicting Obama as the program’s savior.
In July, Obama criticized Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for advocating reforms to Medicare that would communicate to seniors on the program that “you’re out of luck. You’re on your own.”
Watch Obama’s address below via Illinois Channel:
h/t Guy Benson
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Environment minister Greg Hunt says he hopes Japan does not undertake ‘so-called scientific whaling’ in the Southern Ocean this summer
The Australian government is examining its legal options after Japan opted to snub an international ruling that condemned its plan to resume whaling in Antarctic waters.
Japan accused of falsifying whaling data Read more
Last year, the International Court of Justice ruled Japan’s whaling program was not scientific research, as it claimed, and ordered it to revoke scientific permits for the cull.
But the Japanese government has now told the UN the court’s jurisdiction will not apply to any “research on, or conservation, management or exploitation of, living resources of the sea”.
The ICJ case, brought by Australia, appeared to curb Japan’s whaling ambitions but Tokyo unveiled a revised whaling plan, known as Newrep-A, earlier this year.
The new plan stipulates 333 minke whales will be killed each year between 2015 and 2027, about one-third of what it previously targeted.
An expert panel for the International Whaling Commission, which banned commercial whale slaughter in 1986 but exempted killing for scientific research, concluded Japan’s new plan had no basis in science.
Japan now appears set to unilaterally resume Antarctic whaling later this year, after suspending the practice in 2014.
Australia’s environment minister, Greg Hunt, said the government met Japanese counterparts to discuss the bypassing of the ICJ judgment.
“Australia has successfully brought action in the International Court of Justice to stop Japan’s whaling program,” Hunt said. “Japan has previously said it would abide by the ruling. We are taking legal advice on the implications of Japan’s actions.
Sea Shepherd anti-whaling ship Bob Barker refused entry to Faroe Islands Read more
“We are disappointed by Japan’s decision and we hope that Japan does not undertake so-called ‘scientific’ whaling this [southern] summer in the Southern Ocean.”
Hunt said Australia remained staunchly opposed to whaling and pointed to various scientific techniques, such as the removing of small amounts of live whale tissue for analysis, that negate the need to kill whales in order to study them.
The popularity of whale meat as food has declined sharply in Japan in recent years. But the practice remains culturally important to many Japanese and the meat of the cetaceans was presented to tourists at a major food festival that ended last week.
The Australian Marine Conservation Society said Japan’s snub of the ICJ was a “wake-up call” to other nations.
“Countries should not be allowed to pick and choose which bits of international law they are bound by,” said Darren Kindleysides, director of the conservation group. “This is a deeply cynical move showing utter contempt for the rule of international law.
“Japan’s Antarctic whaling has failed the test of international law, and the test of science, yet the hunt could resume within weeks. The Australian government must once again stand up to Japan.” |
Apple's Eddy Cue, right, was accused of leading the conspiracy to raise prices
After a trial and several settlements with other publishers, a federal judge has ruled that Apple conspired to raise the price of ebooks from major publishers, and a hearing for damages will be held later. Apple was originally accused of price fixing in 2012, along with five of the six major publishers. Several publishers quickly caved, and all had agreed to settlements by early 2013, leaving Apple the only company facing a trial. Now, Judge Denise Cote has found that "the Plaintiffs have shown not just by a preponderance of the evidence but through compelling direct and circumstantial evidence that Apple participated in and facilitated a horizontal price-fixing conspiracy."
The Department of Justice accused the companies of banding together to keep ebooks above Amazon's rock-bottom discounts and chip away at its Kindle-fueled runaway lead in the ebook market. To do so, they relied on an agency model, which allowed publishers — not retailers — to set prices. The case hinged not on the agency model directly, but on the allegation that Apple's Eddy Cue and others met with publishers and suggested they accept the model, then helped them coordinate pricing. By doing so, Apple could boost its market share, and publishers could avoid the dreaded $9.99 price point that Amazon offered. Cote agreed, saying that fear of Amazon had driven publishers to accept Apple's price-fixing deal.
"Without Apple's orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have succeeded as it did in the Spring of 2010."
In her ruling, Cote said that she found the Justice Department's case compelling. "The Plaintiffs have shown that the Publisher Defendants conspired with each other to eliminate retail price competition in order to raise e-book prices," she wrote, "and that Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy. Without Apple's orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have succeeded as it did in the Spring of 2010." Far from happening without collusion, the evidence showed "a clear portrait of a conscious commitment to cross a line and engage in illegal behavior."
Apple and publishers, she said, shared an "overarching interest" in cutting down Amazon's lead, and "Apple seized the moment and brilliantly played its hand. Through the vehicle of the Apple agency agreements, the prices in the nascent e-book industry shifted upward, in some cases 50 percent or more for an individual title." Simon & Schuster's Carol Reidy had records of Apple saying it "cannot tolerate a market where the product is sold significantly more cheaply elsewhere." And some of the most damning statements, Cote said, came all the way from the top of Apple.
"Compelling evidence of Apple's participation in the conspiracy came from the words uttered by Steve Jobs, Apple's founder, CEO, and visionary. Apple has struggled mightily to reinterpret Jobs's statements in a way that will eliminate their bite. Its efforts have proven fruitless." In one statement, Jobs told James Murdoch that Amazon's $9.99 sales were "eroding the value perception" of its products, and that Apple would be trying higher price points. This was confirmed at launch. "Jobs's purchase of an e-book for $14.99 at the Launch, and his explanation to a reporter that day that Amazon's $9.99 price for the same book would be irrelevant because soon all prices will "be the same" is further evidence that Apple understood and intended that Amazon's ability to set retail prices would soon be eliminated." Video of that quote, given to Walt Mossberg, can be seen above.
Jobs' statements, Cote said, "remain powerful evidence of conspiratorial knowledge and intent."
Apple's conspiracy apparently involved the Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster publishing groups; the only major publisher not included was Random House, which has now merged with Penguin. As part of their settlements, these companies were ordered to end agency pricing agreements for two years, and to stop "most favored nation" agreements that could guarantee Apple or others the lowest prices. Apple's damages have not yet been decided, but these restrictions on publishers will stop it from continuing with its previous model; individual states will also seek to fine Apple for its behavior.
Update: Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr has said the company, unsurprisingly, plans to appeal. "Apple did not conspire to fix ebook pricing and we will continue to fight against these false accusations," he said in a statement to The Verge. "When we introduced the iBookstore in 2010, we gave customers more choice, injecting much needed innovation and competition into the market, breaking Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. We've done nothing wrong and we will appeal the judge's decision."
The Department of Justice has also commented on the decision, calling it "a victory for millions of consumers who choose to read books electronically." |
Data points to unprecedented decline of two-thirds this year due to doubling of carbon tax and low gas price
The amount of electricity generated from UK coal power stations is on track to fall by two-thirds this year, a decline which analysts said was so steep and fast it was unprecedented globally.
Climate change thinktank Sandbag said the drop was due to a doubling in the price of a carbon tax and the lower price of gas. The group has written to the chancellor, Philip Hammond, urging him not to water down the carbon floor price in this month’s autumn statement, which the steel industry has been lobbying the government to do.
Using data up to the end of October from the Office for National Statistics and the national grid, the thinktank estimated coal generation would fall 66% by the year’s end. Coal generation fell 23% in both 2015 and 2014 on the year before, and 10% in 2013.
Energy industry sources said the forecast for 2016 appeared to be broadly in line with expectations.
This year has seen a series of record lows for coal after three major plants closed, including the last remaining coal plant in Scotland. For several days in May the country’s coal plants produced no power for the first time in more than a century, and output was so low that from April to September, solar panels generated more power.
“It’s on top of four years’ worth of falls,” said Dave Jones, an analyst at Sandbag. “That fall is completely unprecedented. Everyone’s talking about what they can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, people talk a few percentage points here or there, but 66% is completely unprecedented in any country ever.”
Jones said the price of a tonne of carbon doubling from £9 to £18 in 2015 under the carbon floor price scheme was the driving force making coal plants uneconomic. Gas, which has been cheaper this year, has largely filled the gap in recent months.
The government last year pledged to phase out coal power entirely by 2025 to help meet its climate change commitments, but is yet to issue a consultation on the move. Sandbag said the decline in coal had seen emissions from the fuel go from 22% of the UK’s total carbon footprint in 2012, to just 5% now.
Official statistics show emissions dropped 4% in 2015 due to a rapid decline in coal, and the fall will almost certainly be much greater this year.
“The carbon price support has driven a remarkable decarbonisation of UK electricity,” said Jones. “The UK is now on track for a coal phase-out before 2025, but the chancellor must maintain the carbon price support, or emissions will begin growing again.”
UK Steel confirmed it was lobbying the government to reduce the carbon floor price to bring down energy prices. |
We are raising proper geeks in our family, I'm delighted to report. My girls have requested birthday parties themed around hobbits , Firefly , and MLP . Oh yeah, I'm the luckiest geek mom alive. And this year, my youngest, Niamh, came through with another amazing birthday request: Doctor Who!
Actually, Niamh requested a Weeping Angels birthday party, because she LOVES the Weeping Angels. (Remember, this is the same odd little duck that requested a Gollum themed party for her 4th birthday; I had to convince her to do hobbits more generally.) The first time she ever saw the weeping angels, she turned to me and asked, "How do the weeping angels make friends? It would be hard for them to make friends." I love the way that kid thinks! But still, weeping angels as a 6 year old's birthday party theme probably not a good idea for most of her little classmates. Luckily, she liked the idea of a Doctor Who party, if I promised that the weeping angels would play some part, and I promised to make her a weeping angel costume for halloween. Deal, kid.
The first thing the guests saw when they walked through the doors to the backyard was the Dalek pinata. A hot pink dalek pinata, at that (Niamh's color request).
I had so much fun dressing up plain paper cups in bow ties and suspenders, ala the 11th Doctor . That TARDIS beside the cups is actually an ice bucket! I found it on Zulily just as I started planning the party.
11th doctor cups, complete with shirt buttons!
I had a ton of fun making the bunting for the party. Completely no sew, and representing the 10th and 11th doctors. I think it would make a fabulous Father's Day bunting, too!
Niamh helped me finger knit an absurdly long yarn garland as a nod to the old series, and the 4th doctor's ridiculously long scarf.
The life sized cutout of the 10th Doctor was loaned to us by my friend Liz (who also made all the fezes and Niamh's skirt for me! Yay, best friends!).
On a related note, my dog is NOT smart, and barked ferociously at the doctor every time he saw it in the living room for days. DAYS.
Amelia Pond's smiling apples, bananas (always take a banana to a party), and sunflowers made a beautiful centerpiece (and delicious party food).
Still fresh! (My secret is lemon juice, not time travel.)
Bow tie napkins! (Bow ties are cool.)
TARDIS napkins and plates! (And here's the tutorial and printables for doing it yourself!)
Fezes and bow ties for everyone! (Keys to the TARDIS, too.) I love how kids enthusiastically jump into any theme. There's a silly hat? I want it on my head! They totally get the Doctor.
Big sister loves any chance to dress up as her favorite Doctor, too.
And here's my birthday girl, my very own life-changing companion. Happy birthday, Niamh!
I'll have all the dessert table and party activity details coming up in posts tomorrow and Friday. |
On Monday, Mr. Obama, worried that such weapons could fall into the hands of extremists in the chaos that has engulfed parts of Syria, issued a direct threat to the Syrian government about the possibility of American military action if such unconventional weapons were moved or deployed.
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain added his voice to Mr. Obama’s warning on Thursday. A statement by his office at 10 Downing Street that was posted online said he and Mr. Obama had discussed the issue by telephone on Wednesday evening and that “both agreed that the use — or threat — of chemical weapons was completely unacceptable and would force them to revisit their approach so far.”
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The United States and other major Western nations supporting the opposition in Syria have repeatedly expressed reluctance to militarize the conflict further. But Mrs. Clinton has not ruled out the possibility of a partial no-fly zone, and on Thursday the French defense minister publicly backed that idea, suggesting air protection for rebel-held territory between Aleppo and the Turkish border.
“The idea of a no-fly over a particular part of Syria, as suggested by Hillary Clinton, should be examined,” the minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said in an interview on the France 24 international news channel.
In Syria on Thursday, opposition activists reported that government forces supported by tanks raided a suburb of Damascus in what appeared to be part of a widening military campaign in neighborhoods where the rebels are strong and the government is unable to assert full control.
The opposition accounts said loyalist forces were searching the suburb, known as Daraya, house to house even though rebel forces had apparently withdrawn. The Local Coordination Committees, an opposition network in Syria, said 15 people in Daraya were killed by rocket fire, including a mother and two children.
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By late morning, the group said 73 people had been killed, mainly in the suburbs of Damascus. That death accounting could not be independently verified.
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The difficulties of firsthand reporting in Syria were underscored by reports that Austin Tice, 31, a freelance reporter and photographer who has worked for The Washington Post, the McClatchy Company and Agence France-Presse, among others, had not been seen or heard from since mid-August. The Committee to Protect Journalists, an advocacy group in New York, said in a statement it was “deeply concerned.”
Mr. Tice, who served in the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan and was enrolled as a student in Georgetown Law School at the time he entered Syria, had often traveled with units of the Free Syrian Army, the main anti-Assad insurgent group, according to his profile on Flickr, the photo-sharing Web site.
In a telephone interview with his parents, Debra and Marc Allen Tice, from their home in Houston, they said they had been in regular contact with Mr. Tice via online chatting or Twitter posts until recently.
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“It’s hard not to worry about his safety,” the mother said. “We’d like to hear from him. That’s the main thing that we’re thinking. We cling to the possibility that he’s just in a location where communication is impossible.”
Both said they were grateful that both The Washington Post and McClatchy, which reported his disappearance on Thursday, had been very supportive of efforts to locate him.
“Twitter is already exploding, and it’s a huge blessing to us that there are so many people who are expressing care and good wishes, and it really means a lot to us,” Ms. Tice said.
They said that the State Department was also working to locate Mr. Tice through the American Interests Section at the embassy of the Czech Republic in Damascus.
Mr. Tice, who did tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan, had developed a following on Facebook and Twitter through his accounts of the Syrian insurgency.
“No, I don’t have a death wish,” Mr. Tice wrote on his Facebook page in July. “I have a life wish. So I’m living, in a place, at a time and with a people where life means more than anywhere I’ve ever been — because every single day people here lay down their own for the sake of others.”
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He wrote, “Coming here to Syria is the greatest thing I’ve ever done, and it’s the greatest feeling of my life.” |
Donald Trump has been called “America’s Silvio Berlusconi,” and the similarities between him and the former Italian prime minister are indeed striking—the hair jobs, the conspicuous womanizing, the media manipulation, the TV-pitchman-style demagoguery. But Berlusconi’s style didn’t really include playing on religious and ethic fears. That’s why I think the more apt—and worrisome—comparison is to Slobodan Milosevic.
Like Trump, the former Yugoslav president came to power by fanning ethno-nationalist sentiments whose strength surprised even him. In 1987, Milosevic, then a loyal Communist Party apparatchik, went to Kosovo to mediate a protest by minority Serbs against the province’s ethnic-Albanian-dominated government. The party at that time took a hard line against nationalist speech. But when the protesters complained of rough handling by the Kosovo police, Milosevic told them, “No one will ever dare beat you again!” A TV clip of that remark went, as we say now, viral. Overnight, Milosevic became a hero to Serbs throughout Yugoslavia for having defied what we would today call “political correctness.” He used that celebrity to take over the presidency of the Serbian Republic, to foment protests by restive Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia, and to provide those Serbs arms and ammunition.
During the years of carnage that followed—the ethnic cleansing, the rape camps, the 100,000 people killed—journalists and foreign leaders who met with Milosevic came away with impressions of the man remarkably similar to what many today say about Trump. He was brash and confident in public, but polite and conciliatory in private. He was obsessed with controlling and manipulating the press. He seemed not even to believe the nationalist rhetoric he spouted, but to be using it to gain and hold power. He trusted nobody but his family.
There are other parallels. We remember the breakup of Yugoslavia as driven by ethnic/religious divisions, but there was also a huge economic component. During most of the Cold War, Yugoslavia was a relatively prosperous country, but in the 1980s living standards plummeted thanks to austerity measures brought on by high foreign debts. Tensions grew between the industrialized, higher-income northern (Catholic) republics like Croatia and Slovenia, and the poorer farming- and mining-based republics like (Orthodox Christian) Serbia and Montenegro.
As a journalist covering Yugoslavia in 1995, I spent a fair amount of time with Serbs in both Bosnia and Serbia. I met plenty of educated professionals in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, who abhorred Milosevic, but many more working-class and rural Serbs who, in retrospect, remind me of Trump voters. They believed themselves to be the patriotic heart and soul of Yugoslavia but misunderstood and looked down upon. They would remind you that the Serbs fought with the Allies in World War II, while the Croats sided with Hitler. They’d argue that the government had minimized the economic and political power of Serbs, the largest group in the country, and granted special privileges to minorities, like Albanians and Croats. They’d complain that those minorities showed their gratitude by demanding more autonomy, and ultimately independence, for their regions; that this would render Serbs in those regions “minorities in their own country”; and that therefore Milosevic was right to support their armed uprisings. If you pointed out that the Serbs had started the fighting and that, because they controlled the heavy weaponry, they were doing most of the killing, they’d tell you—reflecting Milosevic’s official state-run media line—that that was just Western propaganda. If you sat with them watching images on CNN of Bosnian Muslim bodies being pulled from mass graves, as I did with a family in a provincial town in southern Serbia, they’d tell you CNN manipulated those images, and that the slaughter either hadn’t happened or, if it had, the Serbs weren’t responsible. The fact that their own economic situation was declining precipitously even as Milosevic’s business cronies, many of them outright criminals, were getting rich did not seem to dull their loyalty to his regime.
Milosevic was an opportunist. I doubt he planned to lay waste to his country and die in a cell in The Hague. He merely followed the logic of the ethno-nationalism he unleashed. So too with Trump. His plans are unclear, perhaps even to himself. But over the next four years, events will occur—a terrorist attack by radical Islamists, a left-wing protest in which police are killed, a takeover of federal lands by armed right-wingers—that will test him. Will he bend to the normal pressures of the office and act with lawful restraint, or in ways that feed his base and fuel more violence? I hope and expect the former. His words and actions during and after the campaign clearly imply the latter.
Fortunately, we don’t have to passively accept whatever Trump decides. As Barry Lynn, Anne Kim, and Phil Keisling argue in this issue’s cover package, Democrats have more ways to fight back in the short term and retake power in the long term than they might realize. Daniel Stid makes the case that even congressional Republicans have reason to resist if Trump steps over constitutional lines.
The United States in 2017 is not Yugoslavia in 1995. We have a longer, deeper experience with democracy and a more robust system of checks and balances. But the next four years will severely test that system. We must all do our part to make sure it doesn’t fail. |
Gather round, ye olds, and thrill to a tale of yore. Summer 2014, to be exact. The place? Vine (RIP). The hero? A Chicago teenager calling herself Peaches Monroee, who uploaded a video in which she described her eyebrows as "on fleek."
Yea verily, Peaches Monroee's neologism spread far and wide. Ariana Grande jumped on board, as did Kim Kardashian. Brands, not surprisingly, were next. And lo, when iHop and Taco Bell use a slang term, a Forever 21 crop top can't be far behind. Even rapper/flat-earther B.o.B got on the act, proclaiming himself “Fleekwood Mac” on his song “Fleek”. But to this day, despite enterprising companies cashing in on the phrase's "YOLO"-level popularity—"on fleek" hats have adorned multiple celebrity heads—its originator hasn't seen a cent.
Now, Peaches Monroee, whose real name is Kayla Lewis, hopes to change that. Last week she launched a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign in order to launch a cosmetics and hair-extension line, asking anyone who uses the phrase to chip in a few bucks. Good for her, right? But also, why didn't she get college scholarships like Chewbacca Mom, whose claim to fame boils down to laughing while wearing a plastic mask? Lewis's problem is part intellectual property law, part access to influence, and all systemic racial inequalities. However egalitarian the internet was supposed to be, creatives' ability to profit off their viral content seems to depend on their race.
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What's in a Meme
The internet may have started as a utopian dream, but becoming an engine of capitalism was just about inevitable. And starting around 2010—when Hot Topic stuck Rageguy on a T-shirt, much to 4chan's, well, rage—the meme-to-merch-to-money pipeline has been humming. Some of it has even benefited the meme creators themselves. "The people behind keyboard cat and Nyan Catdid a really good job of capitalizing on their intellectual property," says Kate Miltner, an internet researcher at the University of Southern California. "Grumpy cat wrote the textbook: There was the book, the movie, they even have grumppuccinos."
The windfall isn't confined to cats, either. Besides Chewbacca Mom, financial successes include Daniel Lara of "Damn, Daniel," who parlayed his Vine fame into a lifetime supply of Vans and an Ellen appearance. Or Danielle Bregoli, whose threat to a Dr. Phil audience—now meme-mortalized as "cash me outside, howbow dah?"—catapulted her to $30,000 paychecks for meet-and-greets.
Lewis' immediate barrier compensation is partially the way in which her work became a meme. "A phrase is a difficult thing to protect," says KJ Greene, a law professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law. "If you're wealthy and legally savvy, you might be able to trademark your catchphrase, like Paris Hilton did with 'that's hot.'" But that's still tricky to pull off: President Trump failed to trademark "You're fired."
But there is another thing that separates Lewis from the Lara's and Bregoli's and Hilton's as well: she's black. "I cannot name a person of color who has created something viral and capitalized off of it," says April Reign, managing editor of Broadway Black and originator of the annually-trending #OscarsSoWhite. And considering the amount of incredibly popular memes created by people of color—spanning from Kimberly Wilkin's (AKA Sweet Brown) "Ain't nobody got time for that" to Confused Mr. Krabs to the first Arthur-fist meme to "on fleek"—that's a significant omission.
When Remixing Verges on Whitewashing
Of course, ’twas ever thus. "Going back to the minstrel period, there is something about African-American culture that drives pop culture trends," says Greene. "But musicians from places like the South Bronx had no idea they were creating something that would be a phenomenon, and IP law struggles with things created by a community rather than an individual—it was hard to tell who created that blues riff or that beat."
To some, memes creators face a similar issue as blues musicians or early hip-hop pioneers. "Memes are remixed and often appropriated, so they mutate over time," says Sanjay Sharma, who teaches courses on new media and internet politics at Brunel University London. "Most folks who share a meme are oblivious to who originated it. People who claim Peaches shouldn't be compensated can trade on this kind of argument."
It's a fair point, but it also falls apart in the face of how white meme creators have capitalized on their proverbial 15 minutes. That points to a stark difference in the way creators of color are viewed. "What Peaches does, what Sweet Brown does, is always viewed as lower class, and an example of what all black people must be doing," says André Brock, who teaches race, ethnicity, and new media at the University of Michigan. "When white people do that online, it's promoted as their command of the digital space. Black people are never seen as enterprising."
The problem is especially glaring since many successful memes scoop their punchiness from black culture anyway. "The reason the 'cash me outside' girl is 'funny' is because she's a white female using a voice associated with black culture," says Catherine Knight Steele, who teaches race, gender, and media at the University of Maryland. "Sweet Brown isn’t funny in the same way—the humor is different. It's mockery. 'Cash me outside' almost feels like she’s in on the joke."
"It's very apparent that it's happening along racial lines," April Reign says of the meme monetization gap. "Are the IP lawyers and trademark people reaching out to people of color? Are publicists reaching out and saying, 'Hey let's get you on The Ellen Show?'" For now, it's clear that they are not.
And while somebody can argue that Ellen's audience (and booking agent) is way more likely to have seen "Damn, Daniel" or Chewbacca Mom on Facebook than Lewis on Vine, the excuse is getting a little tired. Even digital spaces that black culture fueled—like Vine—seem to forget about their creators of color when its time to go take things IRL and make some money. "There was an entire tour of kids who were popular on Vine, but I don’t remember seeing many black kids on that tour," Miltner says.
There may be hope; Kayla Lewis has managed to raise $11,000 in just 8 days of crowdfunding. (She's aiming for $100,000.) That's due not only to her tenacity, but to the internet at large. "Now you have receipts," Steele says, referring to the verifiable proof that Lewis coined the term. "Online content creation creates a way to trace something. And you can push back in the same medium used to steal from you."
Even better, Lewis isn't the only one. There's a growing force of people of color bent on getting their due for their digital creativity. "I’m in conversations now about what we can do for black content creators to make sure that they’re monetizing," Reign says. "The next step is to determine how to ensure people are recognized as the original creator of a work. Nobody envisioned the internet when they were writing intellectual property laws. I think there’s an opportunity now for lawyers to do something really important." Because getting just rewards for your efforts? Definitely on fleek. |
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It’s hard for a student to challenge an instructor’s syllabus, which includes their values and point-of-view. Academia has a long list of students who did so and found themselves cast as troublemakers or worse.
Are some of those waving Confederate flags in the faces of the president and his entourage former students who were too intimidated by authoritarian professors? Professors who insisted that the Confederacy was a fairy kingdom from the novels of Sir Walter Scott until the invasion of the damned Yankees? A land of Knights and Ladies and slaves, who just about had to be pried away from this languorous paradise upon Emancipation? This is not only a Southern fantasy.
I asked my daughter, Tennessee Reed, to write a book about her education from kindergarten until her graduation from Mills College with an MFA. She reports in her book, “Spell Albuquerque” (CounterPunch Books) that “Gone with the Wind” is used at the University of Berkeley at California as a guide to Reconstruction! This university, where I taught for thirty-five years, has a reputation for being a radical institution.
And what about the textbooks that perpetuated the myths that the Civil War was fought over the issue of States Rights, a concoction created by Thomas Jefferson, who was afraid that his slaves would be federalized and set free?
Would those students at Ole Miss be so warm toward the antebellum South and opposed to the disappearance of Mississippi’s state flag from campus if they were aware that Robert E. Lee kept a whipping post at his Arlington Home, or that his father, Henry Lee, when Governor of Virginia, hanged a pregnant black woman? Her crime? Retaliating against an Overseer who had struck her. Black women were preyed upon sexually and even subjected to painful experimentation, facts that any white co-ed flag waver should find repellent.
Or what about the Fort Pillow massacre of black soldiers, even after they had surrendered? An act that some called “the atrocity of the war,” but is only referred to as “controversial” by Winston Groom, a Confederate apologist, whose “Forrest Gump” is a Confederate reenactment. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who presided over the atrocity, was honored by some white citizens of Memphis with a big old statue.
Civil War popularizer Shelby Foote likened the Klan to the French Resistance and Broadway now tells us that Alexander Hamilton, a slave merchant, was an abolitionist. Another historian said that Andrew Jackson, who owned over one hundred slaves and mistreated them, was a rock star. He was reviewing a musical called “Bloody Bloody Andrew.”
Those Ole Miss students who are Dixie fans might dismiss such information as an exercise in “political correctness.” Parrot owners could do much to break the dialogue jam about race were they to teach their birds the phrase “political correctness.”
In January, the American Historical Association is meeting in Atlanta, where the premiere of “Gone With The Wind” took place. They could do much to improve the judgment of the Confederate flag wavers, by apologizing for the historians among their midst who have misled generations of students into believing that the Confederacy was some kind of noble experiment instead of a place where humans were considered private property. I would recommend that James Loewen, author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” be invited to deliver the keynote. |
BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff says that while the German government hasn’t blocked campaign appearances by Turkish politicians, that isn’t a “free pass” for the future.
Several German municipalities canceled rallies that Turkish ministers had planned to address in support of a referendum to give the Turkish president more powers. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Germany of “Nazi practices.”
The Dutch government has blocked appearances by Turkish ministers.
Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, told RBB Inforadio Monday: “So far, in the last 60 years of our history, we repeatedly refrained from such entry bans for countries such as, for example, the Soviet Union, China and others with whom we were in the Cold War.”
But he added: “This is not a free pass for the future.” |
A Sinn Féin TD says his party cannot be held responsible for the level of gangland crime.
Peadar Toibin says the level of gangland crime is a direct result of government cuts to gardaí, and not Sinn Féin's position on the Special Criminal Court.
The jobs spokesman for the party says he accepts the legality of the court, but his faith in its judgments is lowered by not having a jury.
And he says his party is being unfairly targeted when gangland strength is the government's fault.
While the editor-in-chief of Independent News and Media (INM) says journalists who have been warned they under threat from gangland criminals in Dublin are working from an undisclosed location, but will not change the way they are reporting.
The former colleague of murdered journalist Veronica Guerin says his memory of her death means they are taking the threats very seriously.
Stephen Rea says gardaí have advised INM that one of their journalists is subject to a serious threat, while a second journalist has been advised to increase security.
Mr Rea says the organisation will not identify the journalists in question.
INM has hired an outside security firm to increase their protection.
Rea told Newstalk Breakfast earlier reports on gangland crime are in the public interest.
INM journalist Veronica Guerin was murdered by Dublin criminals on June 26th, 1996.
The threats come as Dublin remains on heightened alert following two gangland killings in the past week.
Strongest condemnation
In a statement by Taoiseach Enda Kenny last night, he said:"On behalf of the Government and myself I deplore and condemn any threat made to any journalist in this jurisdiction".
"One of the pillars of a functioning democracy is freedom of speech and in any self respecting society, journalists must be afforded the freedom to go about their jobs without fear of reprisal".
"Those who engaged in the recent killings on our streets will be brought to justice and no resource will be spared in doing so".
"The journalists at whom these threats have been levelled have our full support as do all journalists bravely going about their daily duties."
Seamus Dooley of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) says the threats are worrying, but reporters will not be intimidated.
The NUJ are "gravely concerned", Mr Dooley said.
"Journalists and media organisations will not be intimidated by such threats, which have no place in a democratic society".
"Our immediate thoughts are with those under threat and their families. No journalists should be placed under threat for doing their job".
"We remind all journalists to remain vigilant and to be mindful of their personal safety. Employers and editorial managers must continue to support, training and guidance to staff and freelance journalists covering dangerous situations. INM has told me it is supporting those under threat and is mindful of their obligations," he added.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has condemned the threats, saying there can be no place in society for "threats to any journalists." |
Brandgos Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 14, 2017
When it comes to starting a business, choosing a great name for your new venture is an important first step towards creating a great and successful brand. But coming up with fresh ideas can sometimes be challenging, and it often feels like all the right names already used. To help you find that ideal moniker, we’ve put together this extensive list of business name generator tools to get your brand gets off on the right footing.
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6 Tips To Know How To Choose A Name For Your Business
Domainr
Domainr allows you to explore the entire domain name space beyond the obvious .com, .net, and .org, and discover new and exciting domain names.
NXdom
NXdom is a useful search engine for convenient short domain names. Its database includes millions of DNS events for expired and unused domain names. You can search by prefix and suffix, and sort the results by length, readability, and popularity.
GoSpaces
GoSpaces helps you get the perfect name for your plan or company. Just really put in a keyword associated with your business, and you’ll be set to get started.
It’s the perfect business name generator tool for getting the perfect name.
Business Name Generator
Business Name Generator is a free tool from Shopify that automatically mixes keyword with other words to generate a list of the available domain.
It’s the perfect tool if you’re looking for a little bit of creative inspiration and an available domain to match.
Bustaname
Bustaname lets you instantly search for available domain names by combining keyword synonyms and prefixes. Enter some keyword ideas and their tool searches combinations of available domain names. Also, you can add popular titles and suffixes like “ly,” “fly,” and so on.
Positively, this list of tools will help you create some ideas and help you in finding the perfect name for your corporation and brand. If you have any tools that you like and we may have dropped here, let us know in the comments.
Source: Brandgos Blog |
A Montgomery County judge has sentenced a man to life in prison after he was found guilty of drinking and driving a ninth time.Donald Middleton was arrested May 30, 2015 on a DWI charge. It was his ninth since 1980.Authorities say Middleton was trying to turn at a stop sign but didn't stay in his lane and struck another vehicle nearly head-on. After the wreck, he ran to a nearby convenience store and begged the clerk to hide him."He tried to flee, get away. He called some friends to come pick him up, and you could see that he was clearly intoxicated in the surveillance video at the gas station," Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Justin Fowles said.Fowles tells us Middleton pled guilty last month, on the day he was set to begin his trial. After three days of punishment testimony, Judge Kathleen Hamilton sentenced him to life in prison.The 16-year old he hit was Montgomery County Precinct Four Constable Rowdy Haden's son."As a father, you can imagine the outrage I had knowing this person should be in prison when they're out here traveling on our roads, running into a child and luckily not killing this child," Constable Haden says.Court documents show Middleton has been sentenced to prison for DWI before."He's been to the penitentiary four separate times before he committed this last one. The ninth DWI that we sought life," Fowles says.Fowles says they pushed for the maximum punishment and were pleased with the life sentence."To me there was no question that we needed to do everything that we could to ensure he wouldn't be on the roads driving with our friends, our families, our kids on the road putting everyone at risk," he said."For a habitual offender like this, he's proven that he cannot be rehabilitated. And he should spend the rest of his life in prison," Hayden adds.Perhaps the most unbelievable part of this is that after eight DWI convictions, Middleton still had a valid driver's license when he was arrested for number nine. |
"Stay low to the ground."
It is this simple statement that defines Jon Watts' Spiderman: Homecoming, and the film's genuine, loving adherence to this concept is what propels the film to the upper echelons of Marvel's Cinematic Universe. Breaking with the genre traditions of mass destruction, ill-defined villains, and action focused storytelling, Homecoming zeroes in on the street level struggles of a world in which larger than life personas do battles in the skies above while blue collar criminals struggle to survive and adolescent would-be heroes try to harmonize the responsibilities of childhood with the consequences of taking a stand against darkness.
In the aftermath of the first Avengers, Adrian Toomes builds a criminal empire fusing Chitari technology with human weaponry. Meanwhile, Peter Parker struggles to prove himself to Tony Stark, and his quest puts him into a life or death conflict that threatens to undo everything he's worked for. The screenplay (thankfully) skips the origin story and places the viewer right into the action. Parker is still in training mode, learning to master his Stark-made suit and how to balance his nocturnal crime fighting with the normality of everyday life. Everything is toned down, focusing on the breaths in between the apocalyptic showdowns of the previous films to present an organic world that is the byproduct of the Avenger's actions. This is symbolized in a hilarious chase scene in which the casualties are picket fences and backyard sleepovers, wonderfully contrasting the mega destruction that, until now has been essential, and it's punctuated with a perfectly placed homage. Homage is the key to Watts' vision, and while there are Easter eggs and cameos aplenty, everything is gently woven into Parker's crucible.
Tom Holland does a remarkable job accepting the webslinger's mantle. It takes some time getting used to the concept that Parker is not only flawed and vulnerable, he's a minor stepping into the deep end and Watts' is able to command Holland's innate talent to communicate all of these truths effortlessly. Michael Keaton gives a solid performance, presenting a lived in villain whose motives are understandable, despite his methods. Homecoming is so natural, it cannot be stated enough. The rest of the cast does great with their material, with Zendaya stealing every scene with smart quips that never overshadow the story being told. Even the Marvel fixtures Downey Jr. and Evans are perfectly placed, using their screen time to lift up the diverse, youthful ensemble rather than showboating, a testament to both their talent and Watt's gentle control of his craft. Marisa Tomei's Aunt May feels a bit wasted...until she steals the entire movie with a single line that will have even the most reserved viewer on their feet.
Salvatore Totino's cinematography keeps to the simple delights of city life and adolescent dreams. There's nothing overtly flashy, and yet, the entire world feels alive with possibilities. There are a handful of eye rolling moments of symbolism sprinkled throughout, but these are easily forgiven as everything spins perfectly towards the climax, which comes abruptly, despite the film's two hour plus running time. This is Homecoming's greatest strength. It takes its time, visually and conceptually, to develop the characters so that the audience buy in is unavoidable. While the stakes are admittedly low, you're having far too much fun to care.
I'm not fat, I'm cultivating mass
Coming soon to theaters, Spiderman: Homecoming is a triumph. A well-developed villain, lighthearted humor, and well-paced script combine to present the perfect remedy to pointless explosions and creative misfires that saturate the box office. While it fails to achieve the depth that is possible within the costumed hero genre, it perfectly flaunts an uncharacteristic ability to inspire laughter and hope. If you're burned out by spandex fatigue or a diehard three color disciple, this is the film you've been waiting for to break the monotony and remind you of the simple satisfaction of rooting for the good guy.
Use your Spidey-powers and share this review.
-Kyle Jonathan |
There is currently no cure for Alzheimer's disease Dementia could be slowed significantly by treatments which reset the body's natural clock, researchers have said. The Dutch team used brighter daytime lighting - with or without the drug melatonin - to improve patients' sleep, mood and cut aggressive behaviour. It concludes that these can slow deterioration by 5% - which a UK specialist said meant patients living in their own homes for months longer. The study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association. If someone could be kept at home for an extra six months, rather than placed in a care home, there are huge personal and social benefits
Dr Michael Hastings
MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, Cambridge The disruption to the body's circadian rhythm - the natural cycle that governs sleep and wakefulness - can be one of the most difficult of dementia symptoms for carers to cope with. It can mean that people with the illness can be asleep during the day, but fully awake for periods during the night. Other studies have suggested that the use of bright room lighting and melatonin can help adjust the "clock", and the researchers from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam managed to recruit 189 care home residents to take part in an unique trial. Six of the care homes taking part had lighting installed, and this was turned on between 9am and 6pm every day. Some of the patients, most of whom had some form of dementia, received melatonin, a naturally-occurring hormone, and their progress was then monitored for at least the next year. Those who had melatonin, but no extra lighting, had better sleep patterns, but tended to be more withdrawn and have a worse mood. However, patients having melatonin and bright light together managed to avoid these mood problems. Even having the light without melatonin slowed "cognitive deterioration" by 5% compared with those homes which did not install brighter lighting, and depressive symptoms fell by 19%. 'Spectacular' The study authors said that care homes should consider introducing the lights for their residents with dementia. Dr Michael Hastings, from the Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge, and himself a researcher into circadian rhythms and Alzheimer's disease, said the study results were "spectacular". "Although 5% may not sound like a huge amount, it compares well with treatments such as Aricept designed to slow the progression of the illness. "Over the course of Alzheimer's, it could represent six months, and you have to remember that the light therapy is completely non-invasive, and melatonin is a very gentle drug." He said that sleep disturbances were often the "final straw" for relatives trying to cope for people with dementia. "You can have a situation where someone is asleep for part of the day, then at 3am will be awake, wandering around the house, turning the gas on. Relatives can manage quite a few of the symptoms of mild or moderate dementia, but this can be too much. "It's a crunch issue, and if someone could be kept at home for an extra six months, rather than placed in a care home, there are huge personal and social benefits." He added that since circadian rhythm disruption was a feature of other neurological diseases, such as Huntington's and Parkinson's, there might also be an application for the therapy elsewhere.
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Donald J. Trump hosted “Saturday Night Live” this past weekend and gave interviews to at least four national television networks on Sunday. The result: an opportunity to reach millions of potential voters, without spending a dime.
In fact, while many of his Republican presidential rivals have poured money into the airwaves in search of such exposure, Mr. Trump has not spent any money at all on television advertising since he announced his candidacy in June. Yet he has remained at or near the top of most national and state polls for months.
“TV ads are necessary, they can be effective, but in terms of overall value, being the host of ‘Saturday Night Live’ is probably going to get you a lot more as a candidate than 20 ‘super PAC’ ads,” said Dave Levinthal, senior political reporter at the Center for Public Integrity.
Thirty-second television commercials were once signs of a confident, well-financed candidacy for the White House. Now they are seen as a last resort of struggling campaigns that have not mastered the art of attracting the free media coverage that has lifted the political fortunes of insurgent campaigns like those of Mr. Trump and Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who has surged to the top of the polls. |
A Dump Veolia Coalition graphic celebrates victory. St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee
Palestine solidarity activists in St. Louis, Missouri are celebrating victory after Veolia Water North America withdrew from a $250,000 contract to consult with the city’s water division.
Chicago-based Veolia Water North America is a subsidiary of the French municipal services multinational Veolia which has been a target of global protests and boycott calls because of its participation and profiteering in Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.
“Major victory”
Veolia’s withdrawal was the “dramatic conclusion” to a one-year activist effort to defeat the contract, the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) said in a 31 October statement.
The company’s pullout “was a major victory for a group called the Dump Veolia Coalition, which has protested the contract throughout the year,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch acknowledged.
PSC was in the forefront of the campaign and helped form the Dump Veolia Coalition.
As well as PSC, the Dump Veolia Coalition includes St. Louis Jewish Voice for Peace, Organization for Black Struggle, Missouri Muslims for Civic Engagement, US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Women’s Voices Raised for Social Justice and several environmental organizations such as Sierra Club, Eastern Missouri Group and Missouri Coalition for the Environment.
Elected representatives listened
“For more than three years, Veolia attempted to secure a contract with St. Louis, defying the will of the local community through aggressive lobbying, bullying, political interference, back-door deals and outright contempt for democratic involvement,” the Dump Veolia Coalition said in a 29 October statement.
“When public opposition denied Veolia the necessary votes to pass the contract through normal channels, the mayor attempted to circumvent the democratic checks and balances by claiming the contract did not need approval through traditional means and threatened to sue the city comptroller if she did not sign it.”
The coalition thanked city councillors “for listening to constituents’ concerns and standing up for transparency, accountability, democratic processes and the will of the people by introducing a resolution to remove funds allocated for Veolia in the city’s budget, the straw that finally broke the camel’s back, prompting Veolia to withdraw.”
“Not worth it”
In a statement announcing Veolia’s withdrawal, Mary Ellen Ponder, deputy chief of staff to St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, all but admitted the company had pulled out as a direct result of the stiff opposition:
Unfortunately, the passage of a year has had a greater impact than just lost time. Veolia Water, the firm that was legitimately selected per ordinance, to help improve the Water Division’s level of efficiency, has decided our business is not worth it. It is not worth the damage to their business. Veolia will not go forward with the contract they were legitimately awarded. Frankly, they can’t be blamed.
In another recent sign that Veolia is feeling the grassroots pressure, Alan Moldawer, executive vice-president of its subsidiary Veolia Transportation, US recently lashed out at the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions movement with a number of false accusations.
Moldawer was reacting to a campaign to exclude his company from a public transit contract in Sonoma County, California.
Election issue
PSC said that activists had successfully turned the Veolia contract into an election issue for the mayor earlier this year.
The video above shows the mayor during an election event as PSC members press him over Veolia’s abuses.
“While Mayor Slay handily won the mayoral election, the Dump Veolia campaign put his office and Veolia on the defensive and forced both to expend considerable political clout and resources,” PSC said in its statement.
Fruits of coalition work
PSC stresses that the victory in St. Louis was the result of working in a coalition that addressed local environmental and social justice concerns as well as Veolia’s appalling human rights record in Palestine.
Its statement details many of the milestones in its extraordinary campaign and concludes:
As the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee celebrates this victory over occupation profiteer Veolia, we wish to thank the many coalition partners and St. Louis citizens who supported the Dump Veolia campaign. While we came to this issue because of Palestine, we soon learned of the many troubling aspects of Veolia’s business practices including privatization of public resources, labor abuses, corruption, environmental degradation and interference in democratic processes. This is a huge win for BDS in North America and a triumph for the people of St. Louis. |
Alan Rusbridger's ordeal by home affairs select committee was a something of a triumph for the embattled Guardian editor. He seemed totally on top of the facts, challenges and responsibilities of the Snowden case, leaving the attack dogs of Westminster yapping vacuously. But hey! That's probably what you'd expect me to conclude – just as you'd expect, and get, a totally different Daily Mail verdict oozing bile – so put all that to one side for a moment and consider a few second-phase issues rapidly assuming primary importance.
One, for David Cameron, will be what happens when yet another long-running Scotland Yard investigation, this time embroiling dozens more officers charged with deciding whether the Guardian broke section 58A of the Terrorism Act, reaches fruition. Is there a technical case for prosecution and trial? That's not Downing Street's call, just as trying Clive Ponting over leaks about the Belgrano wasn't No 10's call almost three decades ago.
But remember that Ponting was acquitted, quite openly, because a jury thought he'd done the right thing (whatever government lawyers and foaming politicians said). Then think of the Guardian and the New York Times in the dock with Jon Snow trying to scramble aboard – and Barack Obama plus Angela Merkel joining a chorus of incredulity over British imbecility.
Those who actually watched Rusbridger defending his decisions in detail last Tuesday may have recalled the admirable Ponting. Those Tory MPs who were barely out of junior school at the Belgrano moment should look back and ponder. Who wants to appear drop-dead stupid when the court you longed for finally meets? Loving your country means knowing its history, too.
Phase Two also brings us back to Leveson, royal charters and rival press regulatory bodies. Rusbridger won't be taking the royal charter medicine (as he more or less told the select committee). Who wants a swarm of MPs pothering about patriotism and pulling your charter strings? The Guardian won't opt for that kind of punishment. But will it join the independent alternative as 90% of national publishers sign on the dotted line – and thus sit side by side with Mail high-ups who still hate the pieties of hacking? That's more problematic while the seething goes on. The FT, Indy and (most crucially) the Guardian still sit outside and ponder.
A wise Mail would can the vitriol and concentrate on persuading the Guardian to join Ipso too. Nothing, in purely practical terms now, could validate the new body better, or testify to its real independence. But is the Mail wise in perceiving the paths of necessary peace? Denunciation, denigration, destruction, yes: but consensus, persuasion… ? |
By now most fans know that HBO’s hit show “Game of Thrones” is based on an original book series by George R.R. Martin. What they might not realise is that fans of the books have amassed dozens and dozens of predictions and theories that cover a wide range of characters.
Martin began writing the saga titled “A Song of Ice and Fire” nearly two decades ago. This means that diehard fans of the novels have had more than enough time to come up with a range of theories about current characters and plots and where they all might be headed.
Some of these guesses seem close to the mark, like the widely accepted assumption about Jon Snow’s true parentage. Martin has also implied afan has correctly guessed his planned endingfor the entire series.
Other theories have more of a conspiracy feel to them — loosely connecting threads and unabashedly stretching the imagination. For example, the suggestion that Daario, the handsome sellsword Daenerys is currently having an affair with, is actually Benjen Stark — Ned Stark’s brother who went missing from the Night’s Watch.
But there is one theory that rises above all others in the realm of insanity (bordering on genius). We’re talking about the “Cleganebowl.”
It goes a little something like this:
Sandor “The Hound” Clegane is going to return to King’s Landing in order to fight his brother, Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane, to the death in a trial by combat for Cersei Lannister.
hbogo.com The Hound is a no-nonsense kind of guy
hbogo.com The Mountain trains for battle by killing arrested peasants. The whole shirtless-and-covered-in-blood look really works here.
This may sound a bit bizarre to those who have been following the show.
Wasn’t the Hound left for dead in season 4? And isn’t The Mountain lying under a sheet in some creepy guy’s laboratory? Even if they’re both alive, why should I care if they fight?
All this, and more, to come.
First let’s look at why this theory is relevant right now based on events taking place in season five.
A champion for the crown
In episode seven, we saw the High Sparrow (the leader of the Faith) arrest Cersei and throw her into a cell to await trial. We learned afterward she was imprisoned for her role in King Robert’s death as well as her incestual sexual habits with her brother Jaime.
hbogo.com Lancel and the High Sparrow look on as Cersei is dragged to a cell
Now, on the show so far, we have never seen a trial concluded in a purely judicial manner. Tyrion has twice stood accused of crimes, and both times he demanded a trial by combat. A trial by combat allows the defendant to select a “champion” to represent him in a fight to the death against the selected champion of the prosecution. The guilt of the defendant is determined by whether their champion wins or loses.
*Minor spoilers ahead now for show-only fans*
From the books, we know that Cersei will demand a trial by combat. And her champion? Well this is where it gets a bit complicated.
The Undead Mountain
Back in season four, we watched in horror as Oberyn Martell battled against Gregor Clegane (commonly known as The Mountain). Oberyn managed to stab The Mountain with a poisoned spear, but it wasn’t enough to win the fight. The Mountain crushed Oberyn’s head in with his bare hands, and won the trial by combat.
Since then, we have only had glimpses of The Mountain in what appeared to be various stages of experiments.
Here Qyburn examines the poisoned wound, and reassured Cersei that he had a plan to keep The Mountain alive.
When he was explaining to Cersei the gist of his plan, he warned her: “You should know. The process may change him, somewhat.”
Next, in season five episode three, we got a glimpse into Qyburn’s laboratory when Cersei asked him to send a letter. While there, Cersei asked “How’s your work coming along?” (referring to the Mountain’s “healing”).
Qyburn replied “Better than expected, but still a ways to go.”
Then we see a large shrouded figure in the background, and suddenly it writhes under the sheet.
So we know that The Mountain is still alive in some capacity.
In the written series, Cersei writes to Qyburn from her prison cell and tells him to appoint a new member of the Kingsguard — one that can serve as her champion. Qyburn presents a large knight named Ser Robert Strong.
It is extremely likely that Robert Strong is none other than the zombified version of The Mountain that Qyburn has been experimenting on. So, Cersei has her champion.
The Faith’s Champion
In order to understand why fans think Sandor “The Hound” Clegane will be named the Faith’s champion, we must explore a tangential theory known as “The Gravedigger.” YouTube user Alt Shift X made a popular visual explanation of the theory — you can watch the full video here.
The basics of this theory center around The Hound, and how in both the books and the show he is never actually seen dead. The last time we saw him on the show was in the season four finale, when Arya left him grievously wounded. This same scenario happens in the books, though the fight that leaves him injured is different.
Helen Sloan / HBO The Hound’s face is scarred from burns he sustained when his brother, the Mountain, shoved his face into a fire
In the books, Brienne of Tarth is wandering the country, looking for The Hound and (she hopes) Sansa or Arya. She goes to a place called the Quiet Isle, a sort of monastery for brothers of the Faith, and speaks to the Elder Brother.
This Elder Brother knows much about The Hound, and admits that he came across him while wounded and did his best to help him. Brienne then notices a very large man at the monastery who is digging graves. His head and face are nearly completely covered, but Brienne can tell he is limping from what could be a healing leg wound (the exact type that The Hound sustained). The Hound’s horse is at the Quiet Isle stables — another hint that The Hound is likely nearby. His horse is notorious for being uncontrollable by any other than The Hound himself.
Helen Sloan/HBO Arya left the Hound to die of brutal wounds, after refusing to mercy-kill him
Lastly, the Elder Brother is very vague when discussing The Hound’s supposed death. As Alt Shift X puts it, “The most he’ll say about Sandor Clegane is that he’s ‘at rest.’ So what the Elder Brothercould be getting at is that the hateful, violent part of Sandor Clegane,called the Hound, is metaphorically dead, leaving Sandor Clegane ‘at rest,’ and most importantly for us,literally alive.”
So the Gravedigger theory infers that not only is the Hound alive, but he has now been brought into the Faith and serves them as Sandor Clegane.
Cleganebowl and the hype that won’t die
These two separate incidences — zombie Mountain and grave digging Hound — have combined to give birth to the Cleganebowl theory.
It started in 2013, when a 4chan thread about “Game of Thrones” prompted a user to submit their theory.
The title for the theory likely was inspired by the2013 NFL Superbowlwhen coaches of the opposing teams also happened to be brothers: Jim and John Harbaugh. Football fans and sports announcers quickly nicknamed the game “The Harbowl.”
Since the Hound and the Mountain are brothers, and the theory assumes they will have an epic fight, Cleganebowl is the best fitting title. They share the same last name — Sandor and Gregor Clegane — and this trial by combat would basically be the equivalent of a Westerosi Superbowl.
This original 4Chan thread references the “Valonquar” prophecy which we explained more here. The gist of it is that Cersei went to a fortune teller when she was younger, and was told that she would be killed by “the valonqar.” That is a term that means “younger brother,” so the Cleganebowl theory postulates that the Hound is the younger brother in the scenario, and his victory will lead to Cersei’s execution.
Believers in the Cleganebowl are a unique brand of fans. The tagline that generally follows any online allusions to the involved characters is a simple: “GET HYPE.” An entire subreddit is dedicated to the converted believers, and this Google search history shows the spikes of interest over the years.
Cleaganebowl-subscribers have a flair for the unique. There is a group of YouTube videos that mash up footage from the show with glaring strobe-text and an intense hip-hop/dubstep/electronic music soundtrack. Here are some of the top viewed ones [Warning: NSFW language and loud music]
Please enable JavaScript to watch this video.
Please enable JavaScript to watch this video.
Cleganebowl is such a popular theory not just because of its outlandish fanbase, but also because it would actually be a really awesome scene to watch play out. The Hound and the Mountain are two of Westeros’ renowned fighters with a lot of anger to spare. They have an intense rivalry (remember it was the Mountain who disfigured the Hound’s face when they were children) that would make a fight to the death extremely ins tense.
Airhorns and Cleganebowl-hype-meters aside, there is sufficient evidence for the two main components of the theory. The Mountain could definitely be Ser Robert Strong, and will represent Cersei in her trial-by-combat. It is also likely that the Hound is alive and living on the Quiet Isle.
So far, season five has alluded heavily to the Mountain’s return. Whether the Hound resurfaces is another story, but those who believe it will happen will certainly wait with bated breath to see if this insane theory comes true.
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(CNN) -- The Queen of the Blues is dead.
Koko Taylor performs in Spain in 2005. Her last performance was in May of this year.
Koko Taylor, a West Tennessee sharecropper's daughter who went to Chicago, Illinois, with "35 cents and a box of Ritz Crackers" at 24 and wound up an award-winning blues legend, died Wednesday at her Chicago home at 80.
She died of complications from a May 19 surgery for gastrointestinal bleeding, her Web site reported.
Just days before the surgery, Taylor won her 29th Blues Music Award, picking up the trophy for Traditional Female Blues Artist Of the Year. She performed her signature song, "Wang Dang Doodle," at the ceremony.
Known for her powerful vocals, Taylor was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1997, won the Blues Foundation Lifetime Achievement Ward in 1999 and was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in 2004.
She also won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album in 1985 for her album "Queen of the Blues."
Don't Miss WGN: Inspired by 'Big Mama' Thornton
Taylor was born Cora Walton and picked up the nickname "Koko" because of her love of chocolate as a child. She also displayed a love of singing from an early age.
She and her future husband, the late Robert "Pops" Taylor, traveled to Chicago in 1952, where Pops Taylor worked for a packing company while Koko Taylor cleaned houses. By night, the two roamed Chicago's blues clubs, where Koko Taylor sat in with top bands and was soon a popular guest artist.
But it took 10 years for Koko Taylor to record on her own, after Willie Dixon got her signed to Chess Records and produced several singles, including "Wang Dang Doodle."
Taylor landed a permanent home with Alligator Records when Chess was sold in 1975.
Her final performance was the May 7 blues award show, but earlier in the year she performed at the Kennedy Center Honors program honoring actor Morgan Freeman.
Throughout her lengthy career, she shared the stage with nearly every blues performer imaginable, from Junior Wells and B.B. King to Taj Mahal and Muddy Waters. She was a strong influence to later performers, including Bonnie Raitt and Janis Joplin.
Survivors include Taylor's husband, Hays Harris, daughter Joyce Threatt, son-in-law Lee Threatt, grandchildren Lee Jr. and Wendy, and three great-grandchildren.
All About Blues Music |
James Stephen George Boggs (January 16, 1955 – January 22, 2017) was an American artist, best known for his hand-drawn depictions of banknotes.
Life [ edit ]
Boggs was born Stephen Litzner on January 16, 1955 in Woodbury, New Jersey.[2][3] He attended Brandon High School in Brandon, Florida, but was expelled in his junior year.[3]
Art career [ edit ]
Boggs began drawing currency in 1984, when a Chicago waitress accepted a drawing of a one-dollar bill in payment for his restaurant tab.[3][4]
His drawings of currency, depicting only a single side of the note,[5] came to be known as "Boggs notes".[6] Boggs notes were both art objects and part of a performance.[7] Boggs would exchange the notes only for their face value: when he drew a $100 bill, he exchanged it for $100 worth of goods. He then sold any change he received, the receipt, and sometimes the goods he purchased as his "artwork", typically to art dealers and collectors.[8] Boggs would tell a collector where he spent the note and the details of the transaction, but he did not sell the notes into the art market directly.[9] The buyer would then track down the person in possession of the note in order to purchase it.[8] Boggs noted that after the initial transaction the notes would be resold for much more than their face value,[10] with one Boggs note reportedly being resold for $420,000.[8][11]
One of his better-known works is a series of bills done for the Florida United Numismatists' annual convention.[12] Denominations from $1 to $50 (and perhaps higher) feature designs taken from the reverse sides of contemporary U.S. currency, modified slightly through the changing of captions (notably, "The United States of America" is changed to "Florida United Numismatists" and the denomination wording is occasionally replaced by the acronym "FUN") and visual details (the mirroring of Monticello on the $2, the Supreme Court building, as opposed to the U.S. Treasury, on the $10 and an alternate angle for the White House on the $20). They were printed in bright orange on one side and featured Boggs's autograph and thumbprint on the other.[13]
Other works of money art that he designed include the mural All the World's a Stage, roughly based on a Bank of England Series D £20 note and featuring Shakespearean themes, as well as banknote-sized creations that depict Boggs's ideas as to what U.S. currency should look like.[14] A $100 bill featuring Harriet Tubman is one known example.[15]
Boggs and his work are chronicled in Boggs: A Comedy of Values, by Lawrence Weschler, published by the University of Chicago Press.[16]
Legality and arrests [ edit ]
Police bust Boggs at the Young Unknowns Gallery, London, 1986
Boggs viewed his "transactions" as a type of performance art, but the authorities often viewed them with suspicion. Boggs aimed to have his audience question and investigate just what it is that makes "money" valuable in the first place. He steadfastly denied that he was a counterfeiter or forger, but rather maintained that a good-faith transaction between informed parties is certainly not fraud, even if the item transacted happens to resemble negotiable currency.
Boggs was first arrested for counterfeiting in England in 1986,[17] and was successfully defended by the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC & Mark Stephens and acquitted.[3][18] As detailed in Geoffrey Robertson's book The Justice Game, all Bank of England notes now carry a copyright message on the face as a direct result of Boggs's activities, the idea being that if they cannot secure a counterfeiting charge, then they can at least secure a copyright violation.[19]
He was arrested for a second time in Australia in 1989, acquitted and awarded the equivalent of US$20,000 in damages by the presiding judge.[3][20]
Boggs' home was raided three times between 1990 and 1992 by the United States Secret Service on suspicion of counterfeiting.[21] In the raids 1300 items were confiscated, although no legal case was brought against him.[4][22]
In September 2006, Boggs was arrested in Florida and charged with possession of methamphetamine, possession of drug paraphernalia, and carrying a concealed weapon. He failed to appear in court a few months later.[23]
Death [ edit ]
Boggs died on January 22, 2017 in Tampa at the age of 62.[1][24]
Museum collections [ edit ]
Boggs's works are held in numerous collections, including:
See also [ edit ]
Other money artists include |
I've got little trails of ants wandering through my house as is usual in rainy weather. I don't pay much attention to them. In fact I kind of like them. Most of the time I keep food well contained, but the other day I noticed ants had gotten into a box of cookies. I was in a cookie mood so I brushed the ants off and ate one of the cookies. When I told one of my friends I had done this she freaked. She is constantly battling ants and says they are filthy and carry appalling diseases. I'll avoid eating food that ants have touched if a noted authority says I should. I appreciate any insight you can provide.
Doug replies:
I have the same ants in my house (Argentine ants). Let’s put it this way: the types and numbers of bacteria on an ant aren’t significantly different from those in the air in your home–the same air that’s in contact with your cookies all day long. In fact, if there’s any difference, the ants will be cleaner, as any tendency they may have to accumulate contaminants on their feet while walking is countered by three important factors, which you can point out to your friend:
Ants groom themselves more than almost any other type of animal known. In this respect their feet are second in importance only to their antennae, which are immaculate. The physical structure of ants’ feet, and the nature of the lipid layer covering their exoskeleton, makes them a poor site for bacterial retention even if they didn’t groom themselves so well. The chemical secretions in ants’ saliva and external glands are loaded with some remarkable antimicrobial agents–ants, after all, are assaulted by infectious agents in the environment just as we are (possibly more so when they live underground). They’ve had millions more years than primates to develop the body chemistry to make their bodies and nests as close to sterile as can be conceived–imagine if human sweat were composed of Lysol and penicillin.
We’d be lucky if we were as sterile and disease-free as an ant. Ants almost never get sick compared to humans. You introduce far deadlier microbes into your body simply by using two unwashed fingers to touch your cookies than would a million ants. Houseflies may visit biohazards such as carcasses or feces and go from one such place to another without grooming in between. Not ants. Whatever is on an ant’s feet as it walks across a cookie is pretty much whatever it picked up within a six-inch radius of that cookie, so unless you store your cookies in the same cabinet as your medical waste and other biohazards, have no fear of what ants are carrying.
If your friend were truly worried about filth, and tried to meet or exceed the standards set by ants, she’d have to wear surgical gloves for the rest of her life, and pass every piece of food she ever ate over an open flame to sterilize it. In other words, it’s probably not the filth that bothers her, it’s the bugs.
Send questions to Cecil via [email protected].
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STAFF REPORTS ARE WRITTEN BY THE STRAIGHT DOPE SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD, CECIL'S ONLINE AUXILIARY. THOUGH THE SDSAB DOES ITS BEST, THESE COLUMNS ARE EDITED BY ED ZOTTI, NOT CECIL, SO ACCURACYWISE YOU'D BETTER KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED. |
Image copyright AFP Image caption Oracle said it would challenge the decision to award damages
Electronics firm Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has been awarded $3bn (£2.26bn) in damages in a legal dispute with software giant Oracle.
The row came about because Oracle reneged on a contractual agreement to continue making software that ran on high-end Itanium chips.
The court battle over the contract was settled in 2012 but the damages HPE was due have only now been set.
Oracle said it would appeal against the court's decision.
Split business
HP was split into two in 2015 with HPE taking over the running of its servers and services business.
In court, HPE argued that although the 2012 legal judgement meant Oracle had resumed making software for the powerful chips, its business had suffered harm. It argued that Oracle took the decision in 2011 to stop supporting Itanium in a bid to get customers to move to hardware made by Sun - a hardware firm owned by Oracle.
Oracle said that its decision in 2011 was driven by a realisation that Itanium was coming to the end of its life. It also argued that the contract it signed never obliged it to keep producing software in perpetuity.
Intel stopped making Itanium chips in late 2012 and many companies that used servers built around them have now moved to more powerful processors.
The jury in the case agreed with HPE and said it was due compensation for lost sales caused by Oracle's actions.
Oracle said its appeal would seek to overturn the original decision that it breached the contract and to get the damages dismissed.
The damages decision comes a month after Oracle lost a court case against Google that centred on the Java programming language. Oracle sought $9bn (£6.8bn) damages in that case. |
AN ARREST warrant has been issued for actress Rose McGowan for felony possession of a controlled substance.
The charges relate to a January 20 incident at Washington Dulles International Airport after McGowan left behind personal belongings on a United Airlines flight. A police investigation found the items tested positive for narcotics.
The warrant was obtained by The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Police Department on February 1 and McGowan is now wanted for possession of a controlled substance.
The Associated Press reported police have attempted to contact McGowan for a court appearance in Loudoun County, Virginia.
McGowan has been leading the charge against disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and his alleged history of sexual misconduct. This month, the star revealed she was assaulted by Weinstein in the 1990s and the claim has exposed Weinstein’s years of abuse.
It prompted a string of Hollywood actors to come forward with similar allegations.
This week, in her first public comments since accusing Weinstein of rape, McGowan said she has been “silenced for 20 years” but won’t remain quiet about sexual assault and harassment.
McGowan, delivering opening remarks at The Women’s Convention in Detroit, thanked the audience “for giving me wings during this very difficult time.”
“The triggering has been insane — the monster’s face everywhere, my nightmare,” she said. “I have been silenced for 20 years. I have been slut-shamed, I have been harassed, I have been maligned, and you know what? I am just like you. What happened to me behind the scenes happens to all of us in this society. It cannot stand and will not stand.” |
During an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday, Camille Paglia destroyed Democrats, the media and journalists for their collusion and bias against Republicans and President Trump.
“It’s obscene,” Pagilia said. “It’s outrageous, OK? It shows that the Democrats are nothing now but words and fantasy and hallucination and Hollywood. There’s no journalism left. What’s happened to The New York Times? What’s happened to the major networks? It’s an outrage.”
Paglia called what she said the Democratic Party had done to journalism “absolutely grotesque” and warned it would take decades to recover.
“I’m a professor of media studies, in addition to a professor of humanities, OK?” she continued. “And I think it’s absolutely grotesque the way my party has destroyed journalism. Right now, it is going to take decades to recover from this atrocity that’s going on where the news media have turned themselves over to the most childish fraternity, kind of buffoonish behavior.”
One prime example circulating is this photo from Tuesday night as CNN announced the winner of the Georgia special election: Republican Karen Handel.
In her latest interview with the Weekly Standard, she speaks out on the 2016 election: “First of all, I must make my political affiliations crystal clear. I am a registered Democrat who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary and for Jill Stein in the general election. Since last Fall, I’ve had my eye on Kamala Harris, the new senator from California, and I hope to vote for her in the next presidential primary.”
She addresses the fairness of the election and the attacks on Trump as a sexist.
“…Donald Trump won the nomination fair and square against a host of serious, experienced opponents who simply failed to connect with a majority of GOP primary voters. However, there were too many unknowns about Trump, who had never held elective office and whose randy history in the shadowy demimonde of casinos and beauty pageants laid him open to a cascade of feverish accusations and innuendos from the ever-churning gnomes of the cash-propelled Clinton propaganda machine. In actuality, the sexism allegations about Trump were relatively few and minor, compared to the long list of lurid claims about the predatory Bill Clinton.”
Who is to blame for losing the 2016 race?
“…My position continues to be that Hillary, with her supercilious, Marie Antoinette-style entitlement, was a disastrously wrong candidate for 2016 and that she secured the nomination only through overt chicanery by the Democratic National Committee, assisted by a corrupt national media who, for over a year, imposed a virtual blackout on potential primary rivals.”
“…In an abject failure of leadership that may be one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the modern Democratic party, Chuck Schumer, who had risen to become the Senate Democratic leader after the retirement of Harry Reid, asserted absolutely no moral authority as the party spun out of control in a nationwide orgy of rage and spite. Nor were there statesmanlike words of caution and restraint from two seasoned politicians whom I have admired for decades and believe should have run for president long ago—Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. How do Democrats imagine they can ever expand their electoral support if they go on and on in this self-destructive way, impugning half the nation as vile racists and homophobes?”
On Trump’s performance as President:
“The initial conundrum was: could he shift from being the slashing, caustic ex-reality show star of the campaign to a more measured, presidential persona? Perhaps to the dismay of his die hard critics, Trump did indeed make that transition at the Capitol on inauguration morning, when he appeared grave and focused, palpably conveying a sense of the awesome burdens of the highest office. As for his particular actions as president, I am no fan of executive orders, which usurp congressional prerogatives and which I was already denouncing when Obama was constantly signing them (with very little protest, one might add, from the mainstream media).
“…I fail to see the “chaos” in the White House that the mainstream media (as well as conservative Never Trumpers) keep harping on—or rather, I see no more chaos than was abundantly present during the first six months of both the Clinton and Obama administrations. Trump seems to be methodically trying to fulfill his campaign promises, notably regarding the economy and deregulation—the approaches to which will always be contested in our two-party system. His progress has thus far been in stops and starts, partly because of the passivity, and sometimes petulance, of the mundane GOP leadership.
“There seems to be a huge conceptual gap between Trump and his most implacable critics on the left. Many highly educated, upper-middle-class Democrats regard themselves as exemplars of “compassion” (which they have elevated into a supreme political principle) and yet they routinely assail Trump voters as ignorant, callous hate-mongers. These elite Democrats occupy an amorphous meta-realm of subjective emotion, theoretical abstractions, and refined language. But Trump is by trade a builder who deals in the tangible, obdurate, objective world of physical materials, geometry, and construction projects, where communication often reverts to the brusque, coarse, high-impact level of pre-modern working-class life, whose daily locus was the barnyard. It’s no accident that bourgeois Victorians of the industrial era tried to purge ‘barnyard language’ out of English.
“Last week, that conceptual gap was on prominent display, as the media, consumed with their preposterous Russian fantasies, were fixated on former FBI director James Comey’s maudlin testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. (Comey is an effete charlatan who should have been fired within 48 hours of either Hillary or Trump taking office.) Meanwhile, Trump was going about his business. The following morning, he made remarks at the Department of Transportation about ‘regulatory relief,’ excerpts of which I happened to hear on my car radio that afternoon. His words about iron, aluminum, and steel seemed to cut like a knife through the airwaves. I later found the entire text on the White House website.” |
By Bob Beckel - August 18, 2009
"It will be tough to make some of these changes if doctors feel like they're looking over their shoulders for fear of lawsuits... some doctors may feel the need to order more tests and treatments to avoid being legally vulnerable." (President Obama, American Medical Association June 2009).
"Anyone who denies there is a crisis in medical malpractice is probably a trial lawyer."
(Barack Obama 1996 Illinois State Senate race).
"I'm not advocating caps on malpractice awards." (President Obama, AMA convention June 2009).
The first two statements are right on Mr. President, reconsidering the third may well save healthcare reform.
It won't be easy. We Democrats have benefited mightily from the trial lawyers support and vice versa, but its time for these boys and girls to put some skin in the healthcare reform game and accept caps on pain and suffering malpractice awards. Why? Because Democrats advocating medical tort reform will fundamentally change the healthcare reform debate and in the process may save universal healthcare legislation.
Universal healthcare has been our fight for 50 years. It is ingrained in our DNA and we are close. There are no guarantees, but Democrats offering tort reform will confound the Republicans, take away one of their most potent arguments, and put us back on the offensive. If that means throwing some trial lawyers under the bus, so be it.
Why haven't we talked about tort reform during this entire debate? Because we haven't wanted to bite one of the biggest hands that feed us. That substantial and legitimate disagreement over the effects of medical malpractice awards on health care costs is another. And there is our child-like fear the trail lawyers will abandon us.
On that last point let me be brutally pragmatic. The trial lawyers won't abandon us because they have nowhere else to go. As a trail lawyer friend admitted to me, "I hate to lose medical malpractice, but there's a whole lot of suing to do out there that has nothing to do with doctors". And that's the point. We're not talking about massive tort reform. We're not taking tobacco and asbestos of the table. We're talking a cap on punitive damages.
And what's the payoff for holding our collective noses and accepting caps? For years Republicans have repeatedly stated that tort reform will generate tens of billions in healthcare savings every year. In fact, the Republicans have presented authoritative reports and gone on the record hundreds of times insisting that the savings approach $100 billion A YEAR! Let's accept their numbers.
Now the vaunted CBO and GAO won't score the savings anywhere near that number. (Both argue that so many states have enacted different tort reform laws that an assessment of savings is not possible). But the CBO has reviewed the few credible reports that do exist and concluded, "A number of those studies have found that state level tort reforms have decreased the number of lawsuits filed, lowered the value of claims and damage awards... thereby reducing general insurance premiums. Indeed premiums fell by 40% for some commercial policies". (CBO Report June 2004)
Then there is the restriction to accessible healthcare resulting from malpractice lawsuits. A GAO report in August 2003 concluded, "Actions taken by healthcare providers in response to malpractice pressure have contributed to localized healthcare access problems....pregnant women in rural central Mississippi (for example) travel 65 miles to locate obstetric wards to deliver because family practitioners at local hospitals faced with rising malpractice insurance premiums stopped providing obstetric services."
Since those states that have enacted tort reform have such disparate caps on pain and suffering malpractice lawyers "venue" shop for states with higher caps and more plaintive-friendly juries. The attractiveness of class action suits, which can result in millions of dollars (30 to 40% of the award goes to lawyers), often result in pitifully small payments to the injured parties.
Let's be clear, there are thousands of legitimate malpractice cases where doctors and hospitals cause terrible damages. National standards for medical malpractice would mandate full payment for economic damages a cap of $250000 in punitive damages would be a reasonable award in most of these cases. Where the cap is insufficient in particularly egregious cases a "Health Court" could hear appeals and make awards above the cap from a compensation fund provided by the healthcare industry.
A similar proposal is favored by former Democratic Senator Tom Daschle who stays in close contact with the White House and said recently, "If doctors subscribe to best practices, and we have that transparency, the next step is to give them (doctors) safe harbor and immunity from lawsuits..." One gets the feeling that President Obama, despite his comments to the AMA, may be thinking along similar lines. A recent New York Times story reported that Obama is working behind the scenes to protect doctors from malpractice lawsuits. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Org) has said that Obama has "touched on this issue (medical tort reform) at a number of meetings."
It is also widely circulated (but yet to be confirmed) that then State Senator Obama supported non economic caps on medical lawsuits while in the Illinois State Senate and in 2005 as a US Senator he supported the Class Action Fairness Act vigorously opposed by the trial attorneys and by liberal Senators led by Senator Ted Kennedy. From this evidence, it is reasonable to assume that the president's opposition to caps before the AMA may not be set in concrete.
Nor should it be. Even if the CBO refuses to put a savings on national caps for punitive damages, we have those Republican studies confirming savings of 30 to 100 BILLION dollars per year. As a Democrat, I'm glad to accept these figures and stipulate that they are accurate. Combined with proposed savings in Medicare and Medicaid, taxing high end insurance plans, and savings promised from the pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, the GOP savings from tort reform would provide for revenue neutral universal coverage over ten years and contribute to a downward curve in out year health costs.
And despite the CBO reluctance (dare I say courage) to score tort reform savings one irrefutable fact remains; between 1997 and 2007 medical tort costs (including insurance premiums) have risen from $15 billion to $30 billion a year. That fact alone should insure that yearly savings in the billions from medical tort reform would pass the credibility test.
Politically, I am convinced that by adding tort reform to healthcare legislation will instantaneously change the debate; take a major weapon to defeat healthcare reform from the GOP arsenal; bring huge numbers of doctors and healthcare providers to the reformers side, and in one stroke rekindle the momentum for reform before the summer of "death panels" soured the public support for singularly the most important legislation Democrats have enacted since the civil rights laws.
Tort reform may not be a magic bullet, but coming from the Democrats the Republicans will be forced off message fast and reform forces can get back on the offensive. Is it worth the price of angering the trail lawyers to perhaps achieve universal coverage for 47 million citizens? You bet it is. |
Please tell me that I am not the only girl who leaves her keys in the door. Or loses her car in parking lots. Or drops her wallet on the sidewalk. Distracted is my middle name, but committing all three of those mistakes over the past few weeks is a personal record.
I suppose I have to tell you the stories now, don’t I? I’ll start with the best one. A couple of weeks ago, I took Cookie outside before dragging myself to bed. I was exhausted—apparently so exhausted that I left my keys in my door when I shut it behind me. Dumb, right? The next morning, I woke up and searched around for my keys. I couldn’t find them in any of the normal spots. It finally occurred to me to check the door. Aha! Keys. Relief.
Then I walked down the front steps, looked over to my left, and saw my car. My car was parked in front of the fire hydrant with a white ticket flapping underneath the window wiper. That’s not where I parked my car, you guys. I walked over to my car with trepidation and peered through the windows.
Everything inside my car seemed to be in order. Not a serial killer in sight. I got in and noticed that the seat had been scooted back a few inches. All I know about the thief (borrower?) is that he’s a few inches taller than me, drives a manual transmission and has an iPhone, apparently, since he took my cord with him. That leaves a lot of suspects.
I’m still wondering what that stranger did in my car. Maybe he just wanted to cruise around the neighborhood. Maybe he ran out of beer and decided to drive over to the gas station. Maybe he intended to steal it, but quickly realized that stealing my beat-up car was a waste of time and brought it back. Maybe he dropped off some drugs. Let’s hope not. I just wish he’d dropped off the stuff in my trunk at Goodwill while he was at it.
The other stories aren’t so exciting. I was thirty minutes late to Bev‘s baby shower (she’s having twins!) because I lost my car on The Plaza. Then my wallet fell out of my grandmother’s little black purse in between Sur la Table and the corner. Thankfully, a good samaritan found the wallet and brought it to customer service, which is what I would have done for him. All said and done, I’ve really lucked out in all of these situations. I have a sixty dollar ticket to pay but that’s not the worst that could have happened.
Sometimes I wish I had someone around to catch my silly mistakes in real time. I make a lot of them. I do have you all, though. You let me know when I list garlic twice in a recipe, or when there’s a little too much pumpkin in my pancakes. You leave feedback for me in the comments section and tweet/instagram/email me photos of the recipes you’ve made at home, which makes me super happy. Even if I don’t respond right away, know that I’m listening and glad you’re here.
This recipe, for example, was inspired by a convincing comment left on my sweet potato fries recipe. Carla said, “These are wonderful and are even more unbelievable with THAI SPICY PEANUT SAUCE. Sorry to yell, but these two things were born for each other. Ketchup, honey, mayo based sauces do not do them justice.”
She sounded like she was onto something, so I grabbed a bottle of San-J Thai peanut sauce at the store and roasted up to sweet potato fries. She was indeed onto something. I did my best to recreate San-J’s version based on the ingredient list and made it a full meal by adding jasmine rice, red bell pepper, cilantro and chives. Thanks, Carla! |
A female Roma inmate at the Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre was raped by a detention officer and groped by one of his colleagues, a court heard today.
The victim, who was awaiting deportation after committing a crime, was told she would be transferred to a prison if she complained, a jury was told.
Syed Hussain, 34, of Bedford, denies raping and sexually assaulting the woman in 2012.
His colleague Bodrul Islam, 30, also of Bedford, denies misconduct in a public office in 2012 by kissing and sexually touching the same woman.
Syed Hussain, 34, of Bedford, denies raping and sexually assaulting the woman at Yarl's Wood in 2012. His colleague Bodrul Islam, 30, also of Bedford, denies misconduct in a public office in 2012 by kissing and sexually touching the same woman
Luton Crown Court heard that the 23 year old Roma woman was in Yarl's Wood as she challenged plans to deport her back to Eastern Europe.
Prosecutor Christopher Donnellan QC said she was in a 'vulnerable' position when she arrived at the centre and, as she fought to stay in the UK, was 'reluctant to rock the boat' when the offences began.
In an outline of the case against the Hussain and Islam, Mr Donnellan told the jury: 'Each defendant took advantage of a female detainee who was in their charge. She was not a free person.'
He said the prosecution's case was that she was at a 'disadvantage' while she was held at the centre and for that reason was vulnerable.
'In many ways this case is about the abuse of power,' said the prosecutor, who went on: 'Detainees have to comply with the rules of the detention centre.'
The prosecutor said the men were employed by Serco who, at the time, ran the centre north of Clapham in Bedfordshire on behalf of the Home Office.
Each held a public office, said Mr Donnellan, and were in a position of trust and accountable to the public as to the way they carried out their duties.
The prosecutor said: 'Each took advantage of a detainee in a sexual way to a different degree.'
Mr Donnellan said Mr Hussain had groomed the victim by flirting with her soon after she arrived at Yarl's Wood.
He said when Mr Hussain had begun committing offences on the woman, which included touching her and getting her to perform a sex act on him.
The victim was told she would be transferred from Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire (pictured) to a prison if she complained, a jury was told
With the second defendant, Mr Islam, the prosecutor said it was a 'different relationship.'
'She thought he was single and he seemed caring and she thought she was in a relationship with him,' he said
As a result, said Mr Donnellan, she agreed to kissing and sexual touching between them, including a sex act on him.
The jury was told Mr Islam was not charged with any sexual offence, but his behaviour amounted to misconduct in a public office.
Continuing his outline of the case against the men, Mr Donnellan said the victim, who is now 28 and who can't be named, had come to the UK as a child and had been born to a Roma family.
Her family arrived in the country in 2000 and in 2006 they were given leave to remain in the UK, said the prosecutor.
But in 2010 the victim, who by then was 21, was convicted of an offence for which she was sent to prison.
While behind bars, the court was told the woman was served with a notice that she was to be deported and, at the end of her sentence, was transferred from the prison to Yarl's Wood in the summer of 2012 'to await removal from the UK.'
'You will hear she was vulnerable because she had issues with her own state which included a history of self harming,' said Mr Donnellan.
The jury was told Mr Hussain's grooming of the woman began with flirting and flattery and hugs and kisses.
'He asked her how long it was since she had had sex,' said Mr Donnelan, and persuaded her to engage in sexual activity.
The prosecutor said that on two occasions when he had sexually assaulted the woman and carried out the rape of the woman, he knew she was not consenting.
The sexual assault had involved him taking her into a room and touching her intimately before performing a sex act in front of her.
Mr Donnellan said the rape offence occurred on November 29 2012 when Mr Hussain took the woman into a photo studio at the centre where detainees could have pictures taken of themselves and then send them to loved ones, friends and relatives.
There, it's alleged he wanted to know why she was seeing his colleague, Mr Islam, who he said was 'chubby.'
He is then alleged to have kissed her before dropping his trousers and forcing the woman to perform a sex act on him.
Mr Donnellan said 'She was coerced. She was down on the ground, on her knees in front of him. She didn't agree, she submitted. She had no choice, we say.'
The court heard that when the woman first made a complaint on December 1 2012 she only named Mr Hussain and didn't refer to what had been going on with Mr Islam.'
It was made to a female officer at the centre, said Mr Donnellan, and he went on 'She warned her if she complained she would go back to prison.'
The court heard, the woman did pursue her complaint, but still only naming Mr Hussain.
However, on seeing Mr Islam's reaction to the news that she had reported his colleague, she realised their relationship wasn't what she thought it was and she told the authorities at the centre 'what he had been doing.'
An investigation was launched by Serco and, in late 2013, Bedfordshire Police interviewed the woman for the first time.
Mr Donnellan said the defendants were interviewed by the police until 2014.
The jury was told there had been a trial of the men in 2016 but 'because of illness' it didn't get very far.
The trial continues. |
California, Texas, Florida, and even New York. The Zika epidemic has arrived on US shores. And the virus is already wreaking havoc on the lives on pregnant women.
This summer, several babies born in the US have been diagnosed with Zika-related microcephaly and one of them has died because of it. While we’re able to identify women and babies who test positive for the virus, there’s no definitive way to know whether these infants will have the developmental problems related to Zika.
Because this is the first Zika outbreak of this magnitude, much is still unknown about virus, its transmission, and the way it affects our bodies. The disease has been connected with serious pregnancy complications, including a higher risk of miscarriage and stillbirth, and neonatal conditions, such as microcephaly and other serious neurological and developmental conditions. It is believed that the risk of microcephaly may be in babies whose mothers contracted Zika in the first trimester of pregnancy, although mothers who contracted the virus during the third trimester gave birth to babies with normal-sized brains but were still born with cerebral damage.
The latest guidelines recommend testing for pregnant women who live in an area where Zika is endemic (which in the US is still limited) or women who have traveled to an infected area in the months prior to the pregnancy, even if they don’t present symptoms of Zika. Testing is also recommended for asymptomatic pregnant women whose partner has traveled to, or lives in, areas of active Zika transmission.
Robert Segal, a cardiologist and the founder of LabFinder, explained that a few commercially available tests have received a temporary Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), but the FDA has yet to provide permanent approval, as well as specific guidelines for use.
The tests, Segal said, are at risk of giving false positive and false negative results—though he notes there are more false positives than false negatives—so sometimes one test isn’t be enough to give a final diagnosis. Women who have been exposed to the virus and show symptoms of Zika infection can take a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test to look for the presence of Zika’s genetic material in the patient. This test is administered within the first two weeks of the onset of flu-like symptoms or a rash. After that window, another test is recommended that looks for signs of residual or previous infection and immune system response to Zika. If this test comes back positive, the CDC recommends performing a further antibody test to confirm the diagnosis.
If a woman has tested positive, the current recommendation is to wait at least eight weeks before becoming pregnant, and six months if her partner has tested positive for Zika. Yet it may be hard to determine exactly when a woman contracted Zika, if her infection was asymptomatic (which, Segal notes, happens in up to 80% cases). Doctors believe that a woman who tests negative weeks after exposure should be outside of the window of concern.
But what if a woman who is already pregnant tests positive?
The likelihood that a pregnancy would be affected, resulting in miscarriage or stillbirth, or that the baby would present a serious abnormality, is uncertain. Research has found the chances of developing microencephaly may be up to 13%, but the data set is still so small that nothing should be taken as definitive. For comparison, this is a slightly higher likelihood than whether a 49-year-old woman carrying a fetus will develop Down Syndrome.
Currently, it’s not possible to determine whether a fetus will have birth defects or lifelong problems because of Zika even at a more advanced stage of pregnancy, which makes it especially hard for women to contemplate terminating a pregnancy.
Clark Johnson, an assistant professor of maternal fetal medicine at Johns Hopkins University and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, says the recommendation for pregnant women who test positive for Zika is to increase the number of ultrasounds during gestation. In pregnancies that aren’t particularly risky, a woman usually undergoes two to five scans, the latest of which is around the 20th week. In the case of Zika, as well as other high-risk conditions, the recommendation is an ultrasound every four to six weeks, which is the time it takes for any significant fetal change to occur.
The scan, Johnson said, would look for anomalies in the shape and size of the head, which becomes visible around the 16th week or at times the 14th. Another warning sign may be an unusual deposit of calcium in the brain area. However, while it’s the best (and only) tool to diagnose Zika-related birth defects, Johnson said that “we don’t know that the ultrasound is perfectly diagnostic.” A woman can also test her amniotic fluid for Zika (a test usually performed around week 14 to 16) but that won’t necessarily give hard evidence on whether the fetus will have serious damage or not.
Similarly, it’s impossible to rule out conditions that are not visible. Some infants may have delayed development of the brain, which could happen in months after birth, or other problems that have been linked to Zika, such as trouble swallowing or moving. There could also be, Johnson said, babies with “normally sized heads but lower IQs” as a consequence of the infection—another thing that current diagnostics wouldn’t be able to reveal before birth.
As research on Zika progresses, improved testing will likely be able to deliver earlier and more accurate diagnoses. More data will help in understanding the likelihood of serious conditions for babies of Zika-positive women. This will put women in a better position to make informed decisions about pregnancies affected by the virus. |
Swansea have tabled a £2million offer for PSV Eindhoven right back Santiago Arias.
The Colombia international is wanted by manager Paul Clement as he looks to bolster his squad ahead of next week's transfer deadline.
The 25-year-old defender has 32 international caps and moved to Europe and Sporting Lisbon from his homeland in 2011.
Santiago Arias is the subject of a £2million offer from Swansea who want to bolster their squad
He was moved on by the Portuguese club's secondary side before joining PSV in 2013.
Arias found a home in the Eredivise and has made more than one hundred appearances for Eindhoven.
Swansea are looking to bolster their squad before the transfer window closes and reinvest the £45m received from Everton for Gylfi Sigurdsson.
The right-back is a Colombia international with 32 appearances for his country
Paul Clement's side picked up a solitary point to far from their opening two matches in the Premier League.
A 0-0 draw at Southampton was followed by a thumping home defeat against Manchester United and many have tipped the Welsh side to struggle this season. |
The retired judge presiding over a disciplinary hearing for a senior Toronto police officer charged in relation to G20 “kettling” incidents can no longer continue with the tribunal. Former Ontario Superior Court justice Peter Grossi has a medical issue that prevents him from continuing, the hearing at police headquarters was told Friday.
Supt. David (Mark) Fenton faces five charges of unlawful arrest and discreditable conduct for his involvement in ordering mass arrests and kettling of protesters at the June 2010 G20 summit. The hearing's presiding officer has quit because of medical issues. ( Toronto Star )
The disciplinary hearing, which began Wednesday, is for Supt. David (Mark) Fenton, who faces five charges of unlawful arrest and discreditable conduct for his involvement in ordering mass arrests and kettling of protesters at the June 2010 G20 summit in Toronto. Hearing officer Supt. Debra Preston said she learned about Grossi’s medical issue, which she would not describe, five minutes before the Friday session was to start. Police will look at other options over the weekend, said Preston. “Hopefully we’re able to continue with this hearing as scheduled,” she said, adding the chief’s office will be reaching out to other retired justices for a replacement.
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It is unclear if the proceedings will be delayed or what will happen to evidence presented to Grossi on Wednesday and Thursday, said Preston. Fenton is most senior officer charged in relation to G20 events. The only other senior officer charged, Insp. Gary Meissner, is now retired. Fenton was the incident commander who ordered the mass arrests and kettling over the G20 weekend. Kettling is a controversial police crowd-control tactic that involves officers corralling a group of people by boxing them into an area, controlling whether or not they can leave. During the first two days of the hearing, witnesses for the prosecution gave evidence regarding their interactions with police at The Esplanade on Saturday, June 26, 2010.
One man spoke about watching lines of police in riot gear close in on protesters and bystanders. Another said he was detained for 23 hours after police arrested him. TVO journalist Steve Paikin, who was at The Esplanade as a reporter, told the hearing he’s never seen so much riot gear or a police presence at a protest.
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“I had not seen a demonstration like this before,” said Paikin, speaking to reporters outside the hearing. “You had people soaking wet from the rain, sitting in the street, not being a threat to anybody, who suddenly were kettled up and arrested.” The hearing had been scheduled to take six weeks. If Fenton is found guilty of misconduct, the hearing officer who replaces Grossi will be responsible for finding him guilty or not guilty of misconduct under the Police Services Act. If the verdict is guilty, a subsequent penalty hearing will be held. Lawyers for the complainants said the case could be precedent-setting if it results in a guilty verdict for the high-ranking officer. With a file from The Canadian Press |
SINGAPORE - The National University of Singapore (NUS) has been given 120 days to implement mandatory personal data protection training for all student leaders, after a data breach of some 143 student volunteers at one of its residential colleges came to light.
The Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC), in its grounds of decision issued on Wednesday (April 26), has directed that such training should include how to collect and handle students' personal information for student events, such as orientation camps.
It is believed to be the PDPC's first data protection enforcement case involving a local university, since the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) came into force in July 2014.
The commission found that a URL link for a Google Sheets spreadsheet, started by students from NUS College of Alice and Peter Tan, had disclosed personal data of students without authorisation.
The spreadsheet was created for the college's freshmen orientation camp in 2016, which was led by student leaders.
It contained the full names, mobile numbers, matriculation numbers, shirt sizes, dietary preferences, dates of birth, dormitory room numbers and email addresses of the student volunteers tasked to help run the camp.
Although the spreadsheet was first shared among selected students, via the "share with specific people" function on Google Sheets, it was later circulated beyond the original group some time in May 2016.
It was found that an unknown party had changed the setting on the spreadsheet to "share using a link".
As a result, any user with the URL link will have access to the spreadsheet and the personal data in it, possibly exposing such information to those beyond the university, wrote PDPC deputy commissioner Yeong Zee Kin.
The PDPC launched investigations after a complaint was made by an NUS student for the breach under Section 24 of the PDPA.
The section states that an organisation must take reasonable security arrangements to prevent unauthorised access, collection, use and disclosure of personal data in its possession.
Although NUS had general guidelines in place, it did not have any formalised training to equip students with "the mindset, knowledge, skills and tools to protect personal data," wrote Mr Yeong.
The university first conducted classroom training in 2014 for selected students and in 2015, e-training on the PDPA was made available on a student portal.
However, this was not compulsory and none of the student leaders in the camp had gone through the e-training prior to the event.
In response to media queries, an NUS spokesman said that it will be developing an e-training module on personal data protection, which will be in line with the PDPC's directives.
"Once the module is developed, all NUS students, including student leaders, will take the module," the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, all student leaders involved in freshman orientation activites in 2017 will be required to undergo online basic training developed by the PDPC.
Additional training materials will be provided to all student leaders, while face-to-face briefing sessions will be conducted for all freshmen orientation chairmen and data protection officers.
"The university will make every effort to ensure that this does not happen again," the spokesman added. |
Football enthusiast Lewis Clarke (@FGRLewisClarke) gives us all some insight into the most exciting young prospects developing in the Championship this season.
Goalkeeper – CHRISTIAN WALTON (Brighton & Hove Albion)
The Brighton goalkeeper is rated very highly at the club, culminating in Walton putting pen to paper on a new 4 year deal at the start of the season. First team opportunities have been few and far between with the much more experienced David Stockdale currently between the posts, however the 19 year old did earn a start in the 2-0 League Cup defeat to Tottenham. The Truro born keeper has represented England at U19 and U20 level – making 4 appearances for each.
“Christian has a bright future ahead, with the right application and hard work, he can be a key player at the club. In the next couple of years I’m sure he will try his best to establish himself as the Seagulls’ No. 1.” – Sammy Hyypia
Defender – JOSEPH GOMEZ (Charlton Athletic)
SHORTLISTED FOR CHAMPIONSHIP APPRENTICE OF THE YEAR ’15
At only 17 years of age, Joseph Gomez is making a big impression at Charlton. By 15 he had earned his U18 debut and has so far gone on to make 15 appearances for Charlton’s first team, gaining many plaudits for his strong defensive displays. The Addicks defender is also a fixture in the England youth set up, having featured 22 times for England U16-U19.
Gomez was recently named on the short list for the ‘Championship Apprentice of the Year’, alongside Leeds’ Lewis Cook and Millwall’s Fred Onyedinma. He is a strong physical centre half, who can also play right-back, and reads the game very well. He certainly has the attributes to be a future England star.
Midfielder – LEWIS COOK (Leeds United)
SHORTLISTED FOR CHAMPIONSHIP APPRENTICE OF THE YEAR ’15
Cook is an energetic midfielder that has quite figuratively burst onto the scene at Elland Road, earning 36 appearances this season at 18 years of age and already considered one of the first names on the team sheet. In his central midfield role alongside Luke Murphy Cook has provided that steel that Leeds have lacked recently, leading to interest from several clubs in the Premier League.
Manager Neil Redfearn described the 18 year-old as “the best academy player” he’s ever seen. He commented further: “you forget he’s 18 but what an immense talent he is.”
Redfearn and Leeds will certainly try to keep on to their star man for as long as possible but he could soon make the jump up to the Premier League and he may be an England regular in years to come.
Midfielder – PATRICK ROBERTS (Fulham FC)
Roberts is a very promising player who can play as a second striker but prefers to ply his trade on the right wing. At the age of 18, the speedy winger has made 26 appearances for England’s youth setup, notching a respectable tally of 12 goals. Kingston-Upon-Thames born Roberts has also already played for Fulham 18 times but is yet to score, having deputised in March 2014 against Man City.
Ex-Fulham boss Felix Magath said at the time: “We have an extraordinary talent in Patrick Roberts, he certainly is one for the future. The hierarchy at Fulham have very high hopes of Roberts and they hope he will fulfil his potential.”
Striker – ZACH CLOUGH (Bolton Wanderers)
Clough has made a massive impact on his first professional season in football. Having made his debut just 2 months ago in January he already possesses a goalscoring record that speaks for itself. With 5 goals in 8 games for Wanderers, Clough’s goal to game ratio is pretty impressive.
At 5ft 7in he isn’t the tallest of players but does possess tricky skills and a speedy turn of foot, alongside clinical finishing in front of goal. He is hardworking and ranks highly in the books of manager Neil Lennon, who on many occasions has heralded him as a very special player. At the age of 20 Clough is one of the ‘older’ players in this article but he is no doubt one of the most promising English players coming up the ranks.
Check out this unstoppable free-kick against Wolves in Clough’s senior league debut that left keeper Carl Ikeme rooted to the spot. If that wasn’t enough he went on to bag another just minutes later!
Striker – BRADLEY FEWSTER (Middlesbrough)
This last choice may come as a surprise to a few people as I have left out names like Teddy Bishop, Mason Bennett, Alex Mowatt but I regard Fewster as a very talented and up and coming player. Fewster hasn’t yet made his league debut for Boro but he has featured twice in the League Cup, scoring once. He’s looked lively and a real team player.
Middlesbrough-born Fewster has 16 caps for England youth teams, scoring 13 times. That is a very impressive record, netting against strong defences such as Germany and Belgium. The 19-year-old has been ever present in the Boro U21’s this season and in no time; I expect him to break into Boro’s first team and perhaps secure an England U21 spot.
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The Ashley Madison hack attack scandal has had everyone speaking about cheating and affairs this week. We speak to relationship and sex columnist Dorothy Black about what you should do if you're having an affair. Watch. WATCH
Pretoria - If you are an Afrikaner and have ever wondered whether one of your ancestors was born of an illicit liaison, you can rest assured that your lineage is probably intact.
New research into 23 common Afrikaans surnames has found that the incidence of "false fatherhoods" was lower than 1% over the last 300 years, according to a report by Radio Sonder Grendse.
This means that Afrikaner women very rarely committed adultery, or passed off the children born out of those affairs as their husbands'.
Professor Jaco Greeff and Christoff Erasmus from the University of Pretoria published their findings in May.
They were assisted by a team of genealogists to find living descendants of these 23 families and 199 volunteers participated in the study.
The study looked at the Y chromosomes, which only men have, as a large part of the Y chromosome is not mixed with a mother's DNA, and are transferred from father to son like surnames.
They looked at 1 273 conceptions over the 300 years.
Of all the tests conducted, they found only 11 cases where a Y chromosome did not fit the specific gene.
Greeff says that nowadays the "fruit" of illegitimate relationships can be easily concealed thanks to contraceptives.
He says their findings were surprisingly low, compared to other data, especially from Europe.
"Why are women so faithful? People wonder whether the explicit prohibition of adultery in the 10 commandments may be the main driving force behind Afrikaner women's faithfulness," they write in their report on the findings.
"It is also possible that people are not as horny as our sensation-driven society would suggest.
"Although this data confirms married women's chastity, it does not say a lot about men's. At least the research shows that Afrikaners can trust their genealogical heritage."
Previous research by Greeff however does highlight one incident of adultery that fundamentally changed how the lineage of the country's Bothas is seen.
In 1683, Maria Kickers and Jan Cornelitz got married in Cape Town. She claimed her husband was impotent and had had a long term relationship with Frederik Botha, who fathered some of her children. She also had an affair with Ferdinandus Appel.
All her children went under the name Botha, however, the research showed that at least 38 000 of the more than 76 000 living Bothas actually descended from Appel.
These "Bothas" that descended from Appel included the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa Louis Botha and apartheid era prime minister and later president PW Botha. |
A Battle between bluemon and the opponentstarted!
Tier:
Rule:
Rule:
Rule:
Rule:
Start of turn 1
Fire Blast
It's not very effective...
Start of turn 2
Toxic Spikes
Poison spikes were scattered all around the feet of The opponent's team!
Start of turn 3
Toxic Spikes
Poison spikes were scattered all around the feet of The opponent's team!
Start of turn 4
Thunderbolt
Bluemon’s Chansey is paralyzed! It may be unable to move!
Start of turn 5
Blissey was poisoned!
Blissey is hurt by poison!
Start of turn 6
Meteor Mash
It's not very effective...
Start of turn 7
Fire Blast
It's not very effective...
Start of turn 8
Thunder Wave
Rotom-W is paralyzed! It may be unable to move!
Start of turn 9
Psychic
Thunderbolt
It's super effective!
Start of turn 10
The opponent’s Rotom-W is paralyzed! It can't move!
Start of turn 11
Seismic Toss
Pain Split
The battlers shared their pain!
Start of turn 12
Start of turn 13
Start of turn 14
The opponent’s Rotom-W is paralyzed! It can't move!
Start of turn 15
Softboiled
Bluemon’s Chansey regained health!
The opponent’s Rotom-W is paralyzed! It can't move!
WifiUnratedSleep ClauseFreeze ClauseSelf-KO ClauseFirst of all, Let me talk about my team. This is an OU version of a UU team I made a while ago. The core defense partners of Chansey-Tangrowth-Slowbro just RAPED UU, so I decided to move this up a notch intp OU. As you can see from my team, there are NO 5th generation pokemon. The highly used Ferrothorn? Not here. Tangrowth took his spot. The bulky water jellicent? No way. Tentacruel and Slowbro rapes its jelly. Although they are all pokeon from previous gen, I am using them with the new stuff they got this gen. I am going to explain further about my team:Metagross: The lead, and utility physical attacker. I considered many attackers for this role, but metagross is surely the best fit for the role. It is almost always the lead, and serves as sort of an anti-lead. People expect stealth rock, but I just attack straight away, and can decimate almost every lead. This guy has the new air ballon, a super nice gift from 5th gen.Chansey: The special wall. You guys know what this thing got. Eviolite. Now with superior bulk than blissey, this thing is broken in UU. (that’s why im playing OU with my UU team with some new OU pokemon) This guy is the cleric and the status spreader.Tentacruel: The best pokemon ever. This guy is a utility pokemon capable of doing anything. He sets up toxic spikes up for me, which is crucial in stalling out attackers with my core walls (tangrowth and slowbro). He also rapid spins, and can beat EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE GHOSTS. Jellicent? No problem. Jellicent 20HKO’s with shadow ball, and I can acid spray the other jelly to DEATH. This thing got acid spray in 5th gen. He can take down the jellicent-ferrothorn walls because of his unique ability that kills ferrothorn’s leech seed.Tangrowth & Slowbro: The best defense cores ever. Just switching between these two pokemon can stall out EVERYTHING because of Regenerator. No explanation necessary. They are my check to any physical attacker bar heracross. (can 2HKO both of us).Flareon: YES. You read that right. Flareon. Flareon. Flareon. I don’t have to say anything about THIS guy other than the fact that he is a sweeper. He also has rock smash as his coverage move. That’s all im telling you. You’ll see his powers….. heheThe Opponents Team:So I take a look at his team, and I don’t see anything special. No weather, no heracross, so its all good. I’ll just start off with my usual lead. I also notice that he doesn’t have any rapid spinners or any posion types, which is good news for my tentacruel and his spikes of poison.bluemon sent out Metagross!The opponent sent out Heatran!bluemon called Metagross back!bluemon sent out Tentacruel!The opponent’s Heatran usedBluemon’s Tentacruel lost 19% of its health!Bluemon’s Tentacruel restored a little HP using its Black Sludge!(100)(87) vs(100)Oh, Tentacruel, you beast. The jellyfish takes the fire blast like a champ. I think he is either going to switch into something that can take a water move, or use earth power. An earth power does less than half to my tentacruel, so I will just keep on toxic spiking.The opponent called Heatran back!The opponent sent out Blissey!Bluemon’s Tentacruel usedBluemon’s Tentacruel restored a little HP using its Black Sludge!(93) vs(100)(100)He is afraid of the water move, and decides to switch into his special wall. Blissey isn’t going to be that great this match because she is greatly hindered by toxic spikes on the field, unless she carries aromatherapy. I am glad she switched out to blissy, since I get free leftover recovery and a free layer of toxic spikes.The opponent called Blissey back!The opponent sent out Rotom-W!Bluemon’s Tentacruel usedBluemon’s Tentacruel restored a little HP using its Black Sludge!(99) vs(100)(100)My two layers of toxic spikes is COMPLETE. I see that the opponent has switched into his Rotom-W. This pokemon isn’t really a problem for the team unless it carries SPECS. The one sure thing that can take the obvious thunderbolt is my chansey. Go tank that shot, chansey.bluemon called Tentacruel back!bluemon sent out Chansey!The opponent’s Rotom-W usedBluemon’s Chansey lost 10% of its health!(99)(90) vs(100)Wow. It takes 10 percent. What a beast. The hax was really unnecessary, and I think this is a bulky set since the damage output is so low. I think he is going to switch to either Blissey or his ferrothorn. If he switched to his blissey, I wouldn’t be able to do anything to him except seismic toss, and he wouldn’t be able to do anything to me. In this case, I would be safe switching into metagross, my physical attacker. If he switched to ferrothorrn, I could still send out metagross, bait leech seed or some entry hazards, and then switch into tentacruel, which can deplete ferrothrn’s energy via liquid ooze and spin away rocks and spikes. Metagross it is.The opponent called Rotom-W back!The opponent sent out Blissey!bluemon called Chansey back!bluemon sent out Metagross!(90)(100) vs(100)(94)Perfect Prediction. I can now force blissey out with my 150 BP Meteor Smash. At this point I do not what comes into take the meteor mash since I will either 1) get rid of heatran’s ballon or 2) bait ferrothorn’s leech seed and then move to tentacruel. So I move onto attacking with meteor mash.The opponent called Blissey back!The opponent sent out Heatran!Bluemon’s Metagross usedThe opponent’s Heatran lost 45 HP! (13% of its health)bluemon called Metagross back!bluemon sent out Slowbro!The opponent’s Heatran usedBluemon’s Slowbro lost 29% of its health!Bluemon’s Slowbro restored a little HP using its Leftovers!(100)(77) vs(87)That did more than I expected. Oh well, that’s what I get for only investing in defense. I do not think he is going to switch in, and I suspect that he is either going to switch into his ferrothoen, or his rotom-w (more likely) to OHKO me with thunderbolt. I decide to use thunderwave because any pokemon switching into slowbro will be either levitating or will be steel types.The opponent called Heatran back!The opponent sent out Rotom-W!Bluemon’s Slowbro usedBluemon’s Slowbro restored a little HP using its Leftovers!(83) vs(87)(100)Another correct prediction. Bam. Now that it is paralysized, I decide to stall until parahax kicks in. I think I can survive a bulky rotom’s thunderbolt, so I use psychic to weaken the rotom. This wasn’t that great of a move, but as long as I survive, hey, free 33% health.Bluemon’s Slowbro usedThe opponent’s Rotom-W lost 87 HP! (28% of its health)Rotom-W usedBluemon’s Slowbro lost 69% of its health!Bluemon’s Slowbro restored a little HP using its Leftovers!The opponent’s Rotom-W restored a little HP using its Leftovers!(20) vs(78)Not bad. I still took a lot from thunderbolt, but I can regenerate off the health. I am glad I weakened rotom, since it will be helpful with the sweep of…. May I say it?.... flareon. HAHAHA. You are laughing now, but watch it be the MVP. (foreshadowing) lol. So I predict that he is going to go for another thunderbolt, so I switch to chansey.bluemon called Slowbro back!bluemon sent out Chansey!The opponent’s Rotom-W restored a little HP using its Leftovers!(20+33 regen)(90) vs(84)Well, well, parahax strikes. I am going to go for an attack move since I really don’t see any better options right now. Seismic toss, free 100 hp off. Go.Bluemon’s Chansey usedThe opponent’s Rotom-W lost 100 HP! (32% of its health)The opponent’s Rotom-W used(55)(100)Oomph. Pain split hurt like an ass. Rotom gained back precious health while I am down to half health. At this point, I am thinking about softboiling, but that is pointless since only terakion can do real damage here. I have to look at it from his point of view. He has the option to stay in and attack (which isn’t going to do much) so he will likely switch to something LIKE terakion. Or terakion himself. So I decide to switch to slowbro, which can wall terakion ALL DAY and ALL WEEK, and also can regenerate some more health on the way.bluemon called Chansey back!bluemon sent out Slowbro!The opponent called Rotom-W back!The opponent sent out Heatran!Bluemon’s Slowbro restored a little HP using its Leftovers!(55)(59) vs(100)(87)Heatran is really a weird choice. But he can 2hko me with earth power, or hidden power grass (which he might have), so I am going to switch out, regenerate some health, and switch to my metagross, which can take both earth power (im floating lol) and hidden power grass.The opponent called Heatran back!The opponent sent out Rotom-W!bluemon called Slowbro back!bluemon sent out Metagross!(59+33 regen)(100) vs(87)(100)Another double switch. This time, I am not at a great position. I am guessing he feared a water move from my slowbro and switched to his water resist. All my attacks from metagross will do literally nothing to rotom, so I am going to switch to chansey.bluemon called Metagross back!bluemon sent out Chansey!(100)(55) vs(100)Well that turn was not productive at all. I think its either going to attack or switch, with on both cases will do nothing. Free softboiled? I think so.Bluemon’s Chansey used(100) vs(100)Another free turn. I am starting to feel bad about these parahaxes. I think my opponent is pretty frustrated, so I think he is going to either switch to his terakion, or gliscor. In both situations, I think tentacruel can handle it pretty well. I can also switch to slowbro, but my opponent can overpredict me and switch to heatran, which tentacruel walls. So tenty it is. |
The teenager who killed four people in a drunk-driving incident escaped jail for a second time and was sent to a rehabilitation center. His defense used the ‘affluenza’ strategy, insisting his privileged upbringing made the teen reckless.
‘Affluenza’, commonly viewed as selfish, immature behavior caused by a consumerist upbringing, is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as an official illness or diagnosis. The term – a portmanteau of ‘affluence’ and’ influenza’ – was coined in the 1970s and once again garnered attention in the mid-noughties, with psychologist Oliver James releasing a book on the subject.
At the first hearings held in December, sixteen-year-old Ethan Couch’s defense called in a psychologist as a witness. The psychologist testified that Couch’s parents used him as a weapon against each other and that the teen’s emotional age was close to 12.
“He never learned that sometimes you don’t get your way,” psychologist Gary Miller claimed at that stage. “He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle.”
Miller added: “The teen never learned to say that you’re sorry if you hurt someone… If you hurt someone you sent him money.”
The accident which took place on June 15 last year took the lives of four people. Couch’s blood alcohol limit was later found to have been three times the legal amount for driving. He had seven passengers in his Ford F-30, and was speeding when he killed pedestrians Shelby Boyles, who was 21, her mother Hollie Boyles, 52, alongside Brian Jennings, 43, and 24-year-old Breanna Mitchell.
Two 15-year-olds were flung from the car in addition to the four pedestrians who were killed, and sustained serious injuries, according to the prosecution. One suffered a brain injury and can no longer move or speak, while the other suffered broken bones and internal injuries.
In December, when Couch pled guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced by Texas District Judge Jean Boyd for the four deaths, he was given 10 years' probation, ordered to get therapy, and to go into rehab for a combination of substance abuse and behavior problems – to be paid for by his parents.
Couch was not sentenced in December in connection with the two who were wounded. Prosecutors were pushing for a similar 20-year prison sentence. Critics denounced the ruling as symptomatic of an inherently flawed legal system that treats the poor and the rich very differently.
The hearing on Wednesday in Fort Worth, which was closed to the general public and press alike, ended in the evening.
Prosecutors said that the teen should be sent to prison. However, Boyd declined to issue a separate verdict on the two intoxication assault charges. The judge instead decreed that Couch should be sent to a secure rehabilitation facility. The parents had previously offered to spend $450,000 a year on the California-based treatment.
During his probation, he is banned from both driving and drinking alcohol.
Critics of the verdict, however, say the outcome was just an example of a justice system that treats the rich and the poor differently.
“If he did not have the money to pay for defense attorneys or treatment, it all might have worked out differently,” said Eric Boyles, husband and father to two of the deceased, according to Reuters.
In January, following the public outrage over Couch’s first verdict, lawmakers in California introduced a bill that would prevent future attorneys from defending their clients with the now-infamous “affluenza” strategy. California Assemblyman Mike Gatto noticed there was nothing in his state which would prevent a similar defense being presented, telling the Los Angeles Times the law addresses “the notion that an affluent or overly permissive upbringing prevents a defendant from fully understanding the consequences of criminal actions.” |
At a July 23 statewide meeting, the union-backed Oregon Working Families Party (OWFP) decided to field its own candidate to challenge Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden: Shanti Lewallen, a longshore worker with International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 8 who’s now also an attorney representing workers in wage theft and discrimination cases. OWFP usually grants or withholds endorsement of major party candidates, but it chose to challenge Wyden because of his support for fast-tracking trade agreements like the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Thanks to a vigorous voter registration drive, the party will still have a ballot line for Lewallen to run on. State law requires third parties to have at least 10,825 registered voters by Aug. 10 to run in November. OWFP dropped below that when thousands switched to Democrat to vote for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders for president, but OWFP’s canvass and online efforts brought many back in after the primary.
[CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Lewallen as a “former” longshore worker. He continues to work in the trade.] |
Tyrell Wellick, a man with many sides. And after last week's episode of Mr. Robot, we feel like we've learned about a whole new facet of Tyrell we've never seen before. To celebrate this beloved character, embodied so perfectly by actor Martin Wallström, we put together this collection of GIFs for every occasion!
Confident Tyrell
Feeling: Calm, collected, confident, corporate
Affectionate Tyrell
Feeling: Loving, considerate, kind, gentle
Sarcastic Tyrell
Feeling: Mocking, haughty
Disciplined Tyrell
Feeling: Masochistic, disappointed
Inappopriate Tyrell
Feeling: Invasive, conniving, creepy
Exploitative Tyrell
Feeling: Sexual, aggressive
Murderous Tyrell
Feeling: Completely insane
Stressed Tyrell
Feeling: Anxious, thirsty
Bossy Tyrell
Feeling: Malicious, spiteful, presidential
Desperate Tyrell
Feeling: Nervous, pleading
Audacious Tyrell
Feeling: God-like, invincible, deranged
Devastated Tyrell
Feeling: Sad, regretful, remorseful
Relieved Tyrell
Feeling: Grateful, devoted, #blessed
Inspired Tyrell
Feeling: Deluded, unhinged
Terrified Tyrell
Feeling: Trapped, hopeless, busted
Cool Tyrell
Feeling: Happy, centered, free
Finally find out what Tyrell's been up to in the most recent episode of Mr. Robot, "eps3.2_legacy.so," now streaming on USANetwork.com and in the USA app! |
Echo Fox LCS Week 4 Preview
By Stephen Thompson
Echo Fox (1-5) will face TSM (6-0) and Apex (3-3) in Week 4 of the NA LCS Summer Split this weekend. Echo Fox will try to bounce back from a disappointing two-week stretch in which the team got swept by NRG, Team Liquid, Immortals, and CLG.
TSM
Echo Fox will play against the undefeated TSM on Saturday at 3 p.m. TSM is the only remaining undefeated team in the NA LCS and owns wins over C9, CLG, Team Liquid, Apex, NRG, and Immortals. TSM is led by its mid-laner, Bjergsen who boasts a 6.8 KDA this split and is third in the league in CS per minute at 9.1. He’s the 2014 and 2015 NA LCS Spring Split MVP as well as the 2014 NA LCS Summer Playoffs MVP where he led TSM to a championship title.
Bjergsen and Froggen, two of the three premier Danish mid-laners in North America, have met on several occasions with the last one coming in Week 7 of the 2016 NA LCS Spring Split. TSM won the match after giving up First Blood, and Bjergsen carried TSM to victory over Echo Fox with a 5/0/6 performance.
Beyond Bjergsen, TSM still has proven players in Doublelift (ADC), Svenskeren (Jungle), and Hauntzer (Top), who can play at an elite level. TSM retained four of the five starters from the Spring Split and added the young Biofrost (Support) to replace YellOwStaR.
TSM’s undefeated start to the Summer Split is in large part due to Bjergsen’s play, but the shot-calling and overall team play have also been solid. Bjergsen and company rarely find themselves down in gold early in the game and can usually place a stranglehold on teams, snowballing to victory.
Something to note for this upcoming match is that Doublelift has only played one game on any champion not named Lucian this Summer Split. TSM stuck with Lucian last week after a slight nerf in patch 6.11. The games this weekend will likely be played on patch 6.12, which gave buffs to Corki and other AD items. It will be interesting to see if Lucian will merit a ban or pick in the eyes of Echo Fox come Saturday.
Apex
Apex has been somewhat a surprise in the eyes of many with a .500 record after Week 3 of the Summer Split. Echo Fox will match up against Apex at 6 p.m. on Sunday for the first meeting between the two organizations.
Apex’s roster features Ray (Top), ShrimP (Jungle), Keane (Mid), Apollo (ADC), and Xpecial (Support). Apex, like Echo Fox, did a boot camp in Korea before starting the NA LCS Summer Split. Apex is also led by its mid-laner, Keane. Keane is only second to Bjergsen in KDA this split among all mid-laners at 4.9. Keane is also sixth overall among all players in CS per minute at 8.8.
Apex has some surprising stat-stuffers as well. Xpecial boasts a 79.6% kill participation, so warding and knowing where he’s at will be a key for Echo Fox in the matchup on Sunday. Another key will be keeping Apollo and Ray in check. Ray is second among top-laners in total kills at 58, while Apollo is fourth among ADCs at 52.
Apex is also very hard to plan a pick/ban strategy for because it has brought non-traditional champions to the rift. Ray is not opposed to playing carry top-laners like assassin Jarvan IV and Fizz. The only major consistency among the champions played is Apollo’s Caitlyn, who he’s brought to the Rift 11 times.
Apex has had its fair share of struggle over the past two weeks in which the team went 1-3 with the only win coming over last-place team Phoenix1. Apex will face Team Liquid on Friday before facing Echo Fox on Sunday.
Come back to echofox.gg around 3 p.m. on Saturday and 6 p.m. Sunday to watch Echo Fox’s games this weekend (all times are PST). |
*Today’s blog post is written by Ankit of AlienAdv.
Traveling on a budget and having a passion for diving quite often, unfortunately, means a backpacker must constantly balance both. Even though diving in Southeast Asia is relatively cheap many of the best locations are not. This is why somewhere along my travels I added free-diving to my certifications and not only did I save a heck of a lot of money but I am now able to dive in places that were previously inaccessible due to lack of diving facilities (My first experience was in Puerto Galera – a haven for backpacking and diving cheap). In my articles, I hope to inspire you to visit a few of my favorite locations and give you a little insight into what you can expect in each location. In this installment, I will share my experiences in Indonesia and hopefully inspire you to dive in this wonderful country.
Diving Indonesia
Indonesia has a lot going for it but is rarely discussed among divers, I find this strange. The nation boasts one of the longest coast lines in the world and the waters along those coasts are home to 20% of the world’s coral reefs. With thousands of beaches, beautiful people, amazing food, and bountiful natural attractions Indonesia has always been at the top of my personal “Must See” list.
Within Southeast Asia there is a large area referred to as the “Coral Triangle” which is home to the majority of reefs on Earth. Indonesia is considered to be the western corner of this triangle. Places like Raja Ampat and the Togian Islands offer astounding biodiversity and leave divers with magnificent memories.
Tip: Although diving in Indonesia and most of Southeast Asia is extremely good year-round the best time to visit is between May and September during the dry season.
Raja Ampat
Situated to the northwest of Papua, Raja Ampat is by far the most popular dive location in all of Indonesia. At times it can be quite busy and it is general agreed among divers that the best way to see this location is the use of a live-aboard dive vessel. As far as a diving trip goes liveaboards are typically the most expensive route, but in this instance I can say that the expense is well worth it. Most of the popular dive spots are located away from the resorts so a dive boat is required anyway and with a live-aboard you can wake up, put your gear on, and drop in on an exquisite coral reef in minutes. From friendly staff to great food the live-aboard diving in Raja Ampat is a great experience. You will likely never dive in clearer waters or see as many different species in one place.
One of the best features of Raja Ampat are the home-stays available in many of the villages. Of course there are several dive resorts and Eco-resorts dotting the coast line but staying with a local family is by far a much better choice. Aside from the benefit of the cultural experience and friendly people, the local dining is miles better than the more expensive alternatives available in resorts. It’s a lesson I learned a long time ago traveling in Europe; if you want to find the best food in a place you are unfamiliar with just follow the locals.
In addition to diving there are plenty of places to go trekking and kayaking. Renting a kayak is fairly cheap and there are tons of little waterways and coastline to explore. I rented a small kayak last season and spent two days paddling in and out of mangroves and camping on the beach. Of all the places I’ve been in Southeast Asia Indonesia has provided me with the highest feeling of a return to nature. And for bird lovers the Red Bird of Paradise is an amazing sight. Simply put this is an absolute must-see location for any diver or adventurer!
Togian Islands
Now I’m all about adventure, I love going places that are off the beaten path or along the traditional tourist routes, and these islands are exactly that. With all of the gorgeous diving here I am often amazed that there are only three resorts in the area. When you dive in the Togian Islands you truly feel like an explorer adventuring in an uncharted world. After diving for a week along the coasts of these breathtaking islands I never once saw another group of divers, simply amazing given how great the diving is.
There are so many colorful fish, coral heads, and even the occasional sea turtle to share the current with. On two dives I was even lucky enough to watch a couple sharks visiting a colony of cleaner shrimp. Very cool! If you have an underwater camera you want to pack it for this trip, trust me. I spent so much time taking photos of fans and soft corals that I’m still going through them a year later, roughly fifty thousand of them.
Unfortunately, there are few options for accommodations here and I recommend booking into one of the resorts. The pricing is quite reasonable especially when you take into account the incredible disposition of the locals, the astounding diving, lush nature, and the feel of exclusivity. If you are like me and want to dive in untouched pieces of paradise you simply must go to the Togian Islands.
Bunaken Island
Located in Northern Sulawesi, Bunaken Island is home to the Bunaken Marine Park. This area is one of the most popular dive locations in all of Indonesia and once you’ve visited you understand why. With nearly transparent waters, tons of coral species, sharks, turtles, thousands of different fish, and incredible wall dives it is truly a life altering experience to dive in Bunaken Marine Park. As Southeast Asian diving goes this spot is a close contender for my top spot and certainly sits in the top five. White-tips and black-tips can be seen quite often and the number of turtles will amaze you. If you’re especially lucky you might even see the nearly extinct Dugong. Though I never saw one while diving there are saltwater crocodiles here as well. If you’ve never seen one of these giants before I have to tell you they are spectacular creatures. Seriously, when you see them on TV or online you simply cannot appreciate how enormous they really are.
There are other great activities available on and around Bunaken Island. Chartered boats will take you whale and dolphin watching. Awesome! There are tons of secluded hiking areas and trails but often you have to ask a local for help finding them. Don’t worry the locals are extremely friendly and they love to show off the beauty of their island. If you do go hiking a local guide is by far the best option, without one you will probably miss out on some breathtaking sites.
The only downside to visiting Bunaken Marine Park is the $3.60 per day fee for visiting the park but if you want to spend a lot of time diving here, trust me you will, you can pay about $12 for a full year pass.
Again, like many places in Southeast Asia, dive resorts are your best bet for accommodations. You can find local places to stay, but it will take some leg work on your part.
Conclusions
Diving in Southeast Asia is by far and away some of the best diving in the world and if you are clever about your planning it can be some of the least expensive diving as well. Indonesia is a far less frequented destination but boasts some of the best diving there is. Although not mentioned in this series there are a million other non-dive related reasons to visit Indonesia as well, the Komodo Islands and the temples of Bali for example. But as far as diving and adventure go Indonesia has a lot to offer at reasonable prices. When you start planning your ultimate Southeast Asian adventure please remember to add Indonesia to your list.
This post was originally published in |
Dalit History Month
Dalit History Month is a participatory radical history project. Our goal is to share the contributions to history from Dalits around the world. We are a parallel model of scholarship to academic institutions that study Dalits without Dalits in collaborative or lead roles of research. We believe in the power of our stories to change the savarna narrative of our experience as one solely of atrocity into one that is of our own making. Our story may have begun in violence but we continue forward by emphasizing our assertion and resistance. Join the conversation at #Dalithistorymonth on facebook, twitter, and your communities.
FaXian's Writings Provide Evidence of Widespread Untouchability Beginning of 5th century CE : FaXian, was a Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled by foot all the way from China to India, visiting many sacred Buddhist sites in what are now Xinjiang, China, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and between 399 and 412 to acquire Buddhist scriptures. His journey is described in his important travelogue, A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Xian of his Travels in India and Ceylon in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline. In his travelogues writes: "The candalas are called sinners. They live isolated from the rest of society, and when the enter a city, they must sound an alarm by striking a piece of wood to warn everyone of their presence and enable the citizens to avoid running into them. The candalas, fishermen, and hunters are the only sellers of animal flesh." These writings confirm that between the origin of the Chaturvarnya (The Four Caste System ) and the time of Fa Hsien's travels and Buddhism, Untouchability had originated and established itself within the subcontinental religion and culture as the fifth group that lay deeply repressed and firmly outside the system. ( Japanese Studies on South Asia, Caste System, Untouchability and the depressed, 1997)
Ekalavya 400BCE-4CE: Eklavaya. The story of Ekalavaya is known to most Dalits. This is the story of an Adivasi warrior-archer whose aim is so sure that the famous Savarna hero of the epic Mahabharata, Arjuna feels that he is unable to duplicate such a feat. Arjuna is so threatened by Ekalavaya that he involves his archery teacher Drona into a treacherous plot.This is the story of Ekalavaya detailed below exactly as it appears in Wendy Doniger's book: The Hindus : "Drona was the Pandava’s archery tutor, and Arjuna was his star pupil. One day a boy named Eklavaya, the son of a tribal Nishada chieftain, came to them. When Drona who knew dharma, refused to accept the son of a Nishada as a pupil, Ekalavaya touched his head to Drona’s feet, went out into the jungle and made a clay image of Drona, to which he paid the respect due to a teacher. He practiced intensely and became a great archer. One day the Pandavas went out hunting with their dog. The dog wandered off, came upon Ekalavaya, and stood their barking at him until the Nishada shot seven arrows almost simultaneously into the dog’s mouth. The dog went whimpering back to the Pandavas, who were amazed and went to find the man who had accomplished this feat. They found him and asked him who he was, and he told them that he was Nishada Ekalavaya, a pupil of Drona’s.They went home, but Arjuna kept thinking about Ekalavaya, and one day he asked Drona why he had a pupil, the son of a Nishada, who was even better archer than he, Arjuna. Drona then resolved to do something about this. He took Arjuna with him to see Ekalavaya, and when he found him, he said to Ekalavaya, “If you are my pupil, pay me my fee right now”. Ekalavaya, delighted said, “Command me, my Guru. There is nothing I will not give my Guru”. Drona replied “Give me your right thumb”. When Ekalavaya heard this terrible speech from Drona he kept his promise. He cut off his thumb and gave it to Drona and after that when the Nishada shot an arrow his fingers were not as quick as before. Arjuna was greatly relieved." Dalit literature however, frequently uses the motif of Ekalavaya as someone who betrayed himself and others. Shashikant Hingonekar has written: " If you had kept your thumb History would have happened somewhat differently But you gave your thumb and history also became theirs. Ekalavaya, since that day they have not even given you a glance. Forgive me, Ekalavaya, I won't be fooled now by their sweet words. My thumb will never be broken"
Anti-caste struggle by Basaveshwara One of the first historical anti-caste movements in Karnataka was initiated by Basaveshwara in 12th century A.D. It is also popularly known as the Veerasaiva movement. According to Kancha Illaih the movement led by Basaveshwara entirely changed the philosophical discourse. Caste system and untouchability were the two institutions that the Veerashaiva movement tried to dismantle. Patriarchy, caste and the brahmanic religion as an intertwined system of domination and subjugation was examined closely, and methodically dismissed and replaced with a just system. Led by Basavanna, a new social order based on equality between genders and castes, in both words and deeds was being established. Anubhava Manatapa at Kalyan, played host to the intellectual, spiritual and metaphysical dialectics between diverse people drawn to this radical movement. For a period like that wherein caste system and untouchability were intrinsic Basaveshwara’s movement can be viewed as one of the radical anti-caste movements in the history of Karnataka. The movement not only focussed on caste but also on gender. Basavanna strongly criticised caste system and untouchability. In order to disassociate from his caste he refrained from wearing the sacred thread which is a symbol of caste superiority. The egalitarian principles propagated by him primarily attracted untouchable communities. Many of them belonged to the backward communities like barbers, Sudras who were particularly kept out from the ritualistic discourse by the Brahmins. Like Buddhism the movement was against Brahminism. The philosophy of Basavanna questioned the authority of the priestly castes. The Vachanas (poems) composed during this period raised many questions regarding caste, untouchability, Brahminism etc. Unlike Sanskrit that was unfamiliar to large number of people, Vachanas were composed in comprehensible Kannada. The composition of Vachanas is an epoch in Kannada literature. The Vachanas composed incorporated various aspects of society. Many of the Vachanas strongly condemned caste and untouchability. Through Vacahanas he emphasised the significance the equality and human dignity particularly for those from the downtrodden sections. The Vachanas disapproved the insincerity and hypocrisy of the Brahmins. For instance in one of his Vachanas he says that “if I say I am a Brahmin, Lord Kudala Sangamadeva laughs aloud” Though the movement is mentioned has Veerashaiva movement, it is important to note that Basavanna did not attempt to create a separate caste, instead it was the ‘linga deeksha’ (offering Linga) that was provided to untouchables as a way to include them in the ‘Anubhava Mantapa’ (The hall of spiritual experience.)’ Anubhava Mantapa was a democratic platform created for social discussions and progressive activities. Basavanna recognised the fundamental problem behind the existence of caste and untouchability. The Anubhava Mantapa was a collective attempt that included notable individuals like Akkamahadevi, Allama Prabhu and saints like Channiah and Kakkaih from the untouchable caste. One of the radical steps taken by Basavanna was that he organised an inter-caste marriage between an untouchable groom and a Brahmin bride. In the history of social reform movement the inter-caste marriage organised by Basavanna remains as a remarkable achievement. The adversity against the movement was too hostile that it resulted in political chaos in the Kingdom of Kalayan. The movement led by Basavanna remains subsided in the mainstream social reform movement. However, it is one the commendable movement that revolutionized the twelfth century social order. One can equate the Vachana movement to the Bhakti movement in fact consider it as the very first Bhakti movement of Karnataka, due to its association with the spiritual sphere and it contribution to the literature. However, this particular movement stands different in comparison to the other Bhakti movements. The time period of the movement was such that the very attempt to initiate such a moment was remarkable. The impact of the movement on the society was not alone social but also political. He advocated a political philosophy of representation of the voiceless. At present the followers of Basavanna claim themselves to be Lingayats and form one of the dominant castes in Karnataka. With time, the movement initiated by Basavanna has diverted from its original purpose, the main idea of anti-caste and anti-Brahminism has vanished. Nevertheless it continues to be the foundation of the social reform movements in South India. Basavannas teachings remain as one of the progressive thoughts in the history of reform movements.
Saint Nandanar The Tamil Periya Puranam, the great epic is a Tamil poetic account depicting the legendary lives of the sixty-three Nayanars, the canonical Tamil poets compiled during the 12th century. One poem refers to the story of Nandanar, a Pulaiyar, an untouchable. It is said that he used to supply leather for drum and straps, strings for lutes, and various instruments for the worship of God. He was known for his deep devotion to Siva and was longing to visit the Nataraja temple of Chidambaram but feared that his low birth would serve a hindrance to his temple entry . He post-poned his visit daily and for this reason he is also known as Tirrunalaipovvar (“He who will go tomorrow”). One day he gathered enough courage and started out for Chidambaram, and on reaching was overwhelmed by both happiness and despair outside the high wall of the temple. He wasn’t allowed in because of his Caste. On hearing his wails it is written that God himself appeared before the priests and commanded them to light a fire and lead Nandanar into the inner sanctum of the temple. Many Dalits have criticized Nandanar because spiritually he never dared to go beyond the worship of stone idols and for his what is seen as meek begging before Brahmins. However, some see this as an act of courage, since for most Dalits of that time, entering a temple could mean instant murder by the upper castes. He also won for his people – the freedom to sing. Even if he only sang of his pain as a Dalit and his longing for God, still for the first time a Dalit voice was heard of popularly. Nandanar, by the sublime sweetness of his Tamil, compelled Indian society and Indian literature to accept the entrance of a great singer.
Birthdate of Guru Ravidass Ravidass (also Ravidas, Raidas, Rohidas and Ruhidas in eastern India) was a North Indian Guru mystic of the bhakti movement from Ramanandi Sampradaya and one of the direct disciples of Ramananda. He was active in the 15th century CE. Venerated in the region of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh as well as Maharashtra, his devotional songs and verses made a lasting impact upon the bhakti movement. He is often given the honorific Bhagat or Sant. He was a socio-religious reformer, a thinker, a theosophist, a humanist, a poet, a traveller, a pacifist and a spiritual figure.
Vithoba Sant Chokhamela - Bhakthi Movements Vithoba Sant Chokhamela was a Marathi poet and a leading figure of the Bhatki Movement. He lived in Mangalvedha near Pandharpur in Maharashtra with his wife Soyara and son Karmamela sometime in the 14th century.
Sant Soyarabai Sant Soyarabai was woman saint of the Bhakti tradition. She belonged to Mahar caste in 14th century Maharashtra, India. She followed her husband Chokhamela who was also a popular saint. She has written vast literature but now only about 62 are known. In her Abhang she mentions herself as Chokha’s Mahari and accuses god for forgetting Untouchables and making life bad. Her most simple lines concern the simple food she gives the god. Her poems describe her devotion towards god and voice against untouchability. As an Untouchable saint she says “The body only can be impure or polluted, but the soul is ever clean, pure knowledge. The body is born unclean and so how can anybody claim to be pure in body? The body is full of pollution. But the pollution of the body remains in the body. The soul is untouched by it.” Annually she travelled at Pandharpur for pilgrimage with her husband. They were harassed by orthodox Brahmins but they never lost faith and peace of mind.
Sant Karamamela Sant Karamamela was a fourteenth-century poet saint from Maharashtra. He was a son of Chokhamela and Soyarabai who belonged Mahar caste. In his Abhangs he accused God for forgetting and how his life was made miserable as a low caste.He rebelled against varna system.There is at least one Buddhist tradition interested in Karamamela, who was a strong and bitter voice, not suffering his social status with content. Kramamela and his family followed the Bhakti movement. Their Abhangs comments on that time, on the way to meditate and God's loves for his devotee. These poems resonate with current Dalit poetry, describing criticism of society and beliefs of religion, disbelief in pure doctrine and pollution, and protest for survival. The abhangs of Karmamela show more bitterness than those of his father Chokamela. You made us low caste. Why don’t you face that fact, Great Lord? Our whole life, leftover food to eat. you should be ashamed of this. You have eaten in our home. How can you deny it? Cokha’s Kamamela asks: Why did you give me life? Are we happy when we’re with you? O Cloud-Dark One, you don't’ know! The low place is our lot, King of Gods! We never get the good sweet food. Its a shameful life here for us, Its a festival bliss for you and misery written on you. Cokha’s Karmamela asks, O God, why is this our fate? (#3-4) ( Maharashtra Government Publication of Tukaram, 1973)
Sant Kabir Das Saint Kabir Das is widely acknowledged as one of the great personality of the Bhakti movement in North India. He is one of the medieval Indian saints of Bhakti and Sufi movement. Saint Kabir’s life was centered around Kashi, also called Banaras (Varanasi). His caste was that of Julaha and from his sayings his caste’s heriditary occupation of weaving. "Pothi Padh Padh Kar Jag Mua, Pandit Bhayo Na Koye Dhai Aakhar Prem Ke, Jo Padhe so Pandit Hoye [By Reading Holy books , none became anymore wise. One who reads the word of Love, only becomes wise]" In fifteenth century, Benaras was the seat of Brahmin orthodoxy andtheir learning center. Brahmins had strong hold on all the spheres of life in this city. Thus Kabir belonging to a low caste of Julaha had to go through immense tough time of preaching his idealogy. Kabir and his followers would gather at one place in the city and meditate. Brahmins ridiculed him for preaching to prostitutes and other low castes. Kabirsatirically denounced Brahmins and thus won hearts of people around him. Kabir through his couplets not only reformed the mindset of common villagers and low caste people but give them self confidence to question Brahmins. Pandit, look in your hear for knowledgeTell me where untouchabilitycame from, since you believe in it.Mix red juice, white juice and air-a body bakes in a bodyAs soon as the eight lotuses are ready, it comes into the world, Then what is untouchable?Eighty -four hundred thousand vesselsdecay into dust, while the potter keeps slapping clay on the wheel, and with a touch cuts each one of.We eat by touching, we wash by touching, from touch the world was borm.So who’s untouched. Asks Kabir.Only he who has no taint of Maya (#41 Sabda of Bijak; translations by Linda Hess and Shukdev Singh) (Buddhism in India, Challenging Brahmanism and Caste, Gail Omvedt, 2003)
RIGVEDA: Religiously Sanctioning CASTE 1500 – 1100 BCE. Rigveda, 19th hymn of 10th mandala - the Purusha Suktha. The theory of the origin of the universe. " When (the gods) divided Purusha, into how many parts did they cut him up? What was his mouth? What arms (had he)? What (two objects) are said (to have been) his thighs and feet. The Brahmana was his mouth, the Rajanya was made his arms; the being called the Vaishya, he was his thighs; the Shudra sprang from his feet.". This is held to be the sanctioning of Chaturvarnya (The Four Caste System) and a strengthening by declaration of religious divinity, the existing social order. This writing begins the millennia long history of Brahminical oppression and establishes the claim that caste originated with the origin of mankind and was attributable by birth. Source and Translation: Who were the Shudras, Dr. B.R.Ambedkar
WHAT IS CASTE ? The word “Caste” itself stems from the Spanish and Portuguese “casta”, which means “race, lineage, or breed”. It was applied by white colonials during the 17th century C.E. to refer to the system of social codification they witnessed existing in South Asia. The native terms for Caste are often “varna (Caste group)” and “jati (Caste)”. Each Caste group encompasses within it several individual Castes varying in cultural and social practices, and who are limited from structural power by their placement within the pyramid. Caste apartheid is the system of religiously codified exclusion that was established in Hindu scripture. Hindu origin myths state that different people were created from different parts of God Brahma’s body and were to be ranked hierarchically according to ritual status, purity, and occupation. By this system, everyone at birth, is ranked with a Caste. Crucially, Caste is inherited from the family one is born into and is unalterable throughout that person’s life. There are four main Caste groups. Those at the very top are Brahmins, who have traditionally been priests, scriptural knowledge-keepers and legislators. Below them in status are the Kshatriyas, who were kings and warriors. They are followed by Vaishyas, or the merchant classes. People in these three Caste groups are often referred to as the “upper” Castes. Those at the bottom of the Caste hierarchy are Shudras or traditional peasants. Many Shudras are also termed “Oppressed Castes”. Outside the 4-Caste group structure are people considered lower than the lowest of Castes. They go by the term Dalit (meaning “broken” but “resilient”), formerly known as “untouchables” and the Adivasis, or the indigenous peoples of South Asia. Together these Caste-oppressed groups continue to experience profound injustices including socioeconomic inequalities, usurpation of their land, rights, and brutal violence. The Caste one belongs to can determine your perceived level of ritual purity or pollution and goes on to determine the outcomes of your whole life - from where one can live and die, to what one can eat, what one’s occupation can be, and even who one can marry. The “Untouchables” in particular, are embroiled in a system of Caste apartheid even today. Their experience is made up of segregated ghettos, banned from places of worship, and denied access to schools and other public amenities including water and roads. This entire system is enforced by violence and maintained by one of the oldest, most persistent cultures of impunity throughout South Asia, most notably in India, where despite the contemporary illegality of the system, it has persisted and thrived for 2,500 years.
Sant Tukaram Sant Tukaram was born Tukaram Bolhoba Ambile was born in the years around 1608 and lived most of his life in Dehu, a town close to Pune in Mahārāshtra, India. Kumar, Munshi, Kincaid and Parasanisa, consider him to be of the Kunbi Maratha or agricultural tillage caste or vaani. He wrote poems of fierce social criticism. One of his Abhangs has the beginning: "Good you made me a Kunbi, Otherwise I might have died an arrogant hypocrite", and is an attack on Brahmin hypocrisy. An emerging Dalit critique argues that Vithoba was seen as a Bodhisattva and Sant Tukaram saw him as one. Sant Tukaram has explored the traditions of meditation although this is not a Varkari (Vithoba-worshipping) tradition. His life and writings are intensely debated. (Buddhism in India, Challenging Brahmanism and Caste, Gail Omvedt, 2003)
Birth of Guru Ghasidas Guru Ghasidas was born on 18 December 1756 and died at the age of eighty in 1836. He was born in village Girodhpuri 130 kms from Raipur of Chhattisgarh in an untouchable family. Ghasidas was born in a socio-political milieu of misrule, loot and plunder. The Marath the local had started behaving as Kings. Ghasidas underwent the exploitative bitter experiences specific to untouchable communities in the hindu caste-ridden society. From an early age, he started rejecting social inequity and to understand the problems faced by his community and to find solutions, he traveled extensively in that part of India which presently Chhattisgarh state of India. He advocated equal rights for all the untouchable communities. Ghasidas was unlettered like his fellow untouchables. He deeply resented the harsh treatment to his brotherhood, and continued searching for solutions but was unable to find the right answer. In search of the right path he decided to go to Jaganath Puri and on his way at Sarangarh (presently in Chhattisgarh) he attained true knowledge. It is said that he announced Satnam and returned to Giordh.On his return, he stopped working as a farm worker and became engrossed in meditation. After spending six months in Sonakhan forests doing meditation, Ghasidas returned and formulated path-breading principles of a new egalitarian social order. The Satnam Panth (sect) is said to be based on these principles formulated by Ghasidas. They were honest, industrious and have formed a brotherhood calling themselves Satnamis. Satnam means good name by good work Guru Ghasidas through Satnamin principles initiated a socio-religious order, which rejected the premier position of Brahmins and completely demolished the exploitative and hierarchical caste system. This new order was a challenge to the brahminical social order and it treated all human beings as socially equal. According to Satnam Panth, truth is God and there is only one God, which is Nirgun (formless) and Anant (infinite). Ghasidas realised the link between dominance of Brahmins and idol worship and therefore Satnam rejects any form of idol worship. Interestingly, Ghasidas had a holistic vision and felt that systemic reforms to remove social injustice and inequality would remain inadequate and incomplete without reforming the individuals. This underlying principle led to prohibition of liquor for the followers of Satnam Panth. Guru Ghasidas also formulated some principles, which clearly reflect his love for animals and his desire to put an end to cruelty towards animals. It is against the principles of Satnam to use cows for agriculture, to plough the fields after midday and consume non-vegetarian food. Several myths have been built around the legend of Guru Ghasidas in Chhattisgarh. These myths and beliefs attribute supernatural powers to him and stories like his ability to revive the dead, as he did with his wife and son after their death, are widely heard. However the key point is that Guru Ghasidas has been accepted as a visionary social reformer and the high number of Satnam followers is a testimony to this fact. According to the 1901 census there were around 4,00,000 people adhering to the principles of Satnam Panth. The first martyr from Chhattisgarh in the Indian war of Independence of 1857. Veer Narayan Singh, was also deeply influenced by the teachings of Guru Ghasidas. The satnami tradition also lives on in the form of a vast collection of panthi songs, commonly sung by groups during street procession. Many panthi songs vividly described Guru Ghasidas' life. Guru Ghasidas University is a Central University in Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh that was inaugurated on 16 June 1983. A reserve forest named as ‘Sanjay Reserve’ was in undivided Madhya Pradesh. After Madhya Pradesh was divided in 2000, a large part of the then Sanjay National Park went to Chhattisgarh. Chhattisgarh government renamed this forest area, with an area of 1440 km2 falling under its jurisdiction, as Guru Ghasidas National Park in Koirya and Surguja districts.
Baba Tilka Manjhi Baba Tilka Manjhi (or Jabra paharia was the first Adivasi (SANTHAL) leader who took up arms against the British in the 1784, around 100 years before Mangal Pandey. He organized the Adivasis to form the liberation group to fight against the resource grabbing and exploitation.
Early Report on the Art of Leather-Making Leather work is often deemed a Dalit profession because it requires intimate contact with cows, cow flesh and cow hide. It is often seen as a job that is"dirty" or full of pollution by Brahminical points of view. Much like the other aspects of Dalit life, the art of leather work often goes uncelebrated. A 19th century colonial report on the intricacy and skill required in the art of the leather work of Madigas is presented here as follows: "Leather is tanned here by a class of people esteemed of very low caste and called Madigaru. To dress the rawhides of sheep or goats, the Madigaru in the first place wash them clean, and then rub each with a fourth part of a kind of soft paste, made of 6 Dudas weight of milky juice of the Yecuda (Asclepias gigantean), and about 6 Dudus weight (2 456/1000 ounces) of salt (muriate of soda), and twelve Dudus weight of Ragy Sanguty, or pudding of the Cynosurus coracanus (o), with a sufficient quantity of water. The paste is rubbed on the hairy side, and the skins are then exposed for three days to the sun, after which they are washed with water, beating them well on a stone, as is usual in this country. This takes off the hair. Then powder 2 Seers (1 213/1000 lb.) Arulay Myrobalens, and put them and one skin into a pot with 3 or 4 Seers measure of hot water, where it is to remain for three days. The skin is then to be washed and dried. This tanned skin is dyed black as follows: take of old iron, and of the dross of iron forges, each a handful; of plantain and lime skins, each five or six; put them into a pot with some Ragy kanji, or decoction of Ragy, and let them stand for eight days. Then rub the liquor on the skins, which immediately become black. These skins may be dyed red by the following process: Take of ungarbled Lac 2 Dudus weight (about 13 drams), of Suja cara, or fine soda, 1 Dudu weight, and of Lodu bark 2 Dudus weight. Having taken the sticks from the Lac, and powdered the soda and bark boil them all together in a Seer of water (68 5/8 cubical inches) for 1½ hour. Rub the skin, after it has been freed from the hair as before mentioned, with this decoction; and then put it into the pot with the Myrobalens and water for three days. This is a good colour, and for many purposes the skins are well dressed." (Francis Buchanan 1807. A journey from Madras through the countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar)
Shri Hari Chand Thakur Shri Hari Chand Thakur was a great social reformer born in NamaSudra Community in Bengal. Harichand received little formal education. After completing his initial schooling in a pathshala, he attended school for only a few months. He then started spending his time with shepherds and cowboys and roamed with them from one place to another. He started changing from this time. He was loved by all of his friends for his physical beauty, naivete, love for music and philanthropic attitude. He could also sing bhajan (devotional songs). He cultivated the Matua Sect (The Matua community primarily consists of Dalits (mainly Namasudra). The Matua believe that male and female are equal. They discourage early marriage. Widow remarriage is allowed. They refer to their religious teachers as ‘gonsai;’ both men and women can be gonsai.They follow the teachings of Shri Hari chand and Gurchand Thakur) whose principles were: (1) No necessity of entering the temples of higher castes for the purpose of worship, (2) Discarding Brahmin priest for any ceremony, (3) Worship on Shri Hari, (4) Not to worship idols and not to visit pilgrimage centres of Hindus and (5) Maintain good moral conduct and lead an ideal family life. The sect became popular in East Bengal (now a part of Bangladesh) and he led the untouchability movement called the Chandal movement in India.
The Battle of Bhima Koregaon The Battle of Koregaon took place on January 1, 1818, at the banks of the river Bhima in Koregaon, northwest of Pune, India. There a small force of 500 Mahar soldiers of the 2nd Battalion 1st Regiment of the Bombay Native Light Infantry in the British Army fought valiantly against the most brutal Indian state of that times – The Brahmin Peshwa rulers of Pune, Maharashtra. For Mahar soldiers, this was a battle for their self-respect, dignity, and against the supremacy of Manusmriti as the Peshwa rulers oppressed the Mahars, making them hang a pot around their neck to spit and tie a broom around their waist to sweep away their 'impure' footsteps. These 500 Mahar soldiers defeated the Peshwa army of more than 30,000 in just one day. Their victory against such a mighty force is unparallelled in all of Indian history.
Jyotirao Phule Jyotirao Govindrao Phule was born in Satara district of Maharastra state in India in a family belonging to Mali caste [shudra varna of Hindu religion] perceived to be inferior. His father, Govindrao, was a vegetable vendor. His mother died when he was nine months old. He was married at the age of 12 to Savirti Bai. His intelligence was recognised by a Muslim and a Christian neighbor, who persuaded his father to allow Jyotirao to attend the local Scottish Mission’s High School, which he completed in 1847. In 1848, he along with his wife started a school for girls in Pune– the first ever formal school for girls in India. In 1873, Jyotiba Phule formed the Satya Shodhak Samaj (Society of Seekers of Truth). The purpose of the organization was to liberate the people of lower-strata from the suppression of the ortodox. Mahatma Phule was publicly conferred the title of Mahatma on 11 May 1888. He was termed as “Martin Luther King of India” by his biographer Dhananjay Keer. Phule was one of the three spiritual mentors of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the Father of Indian Constitution.
Jhalkaribai Jhalkaribai (November 22, 1830 – 1858) was the legendary Dalit woman warrior who played an important role in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 during the battle of Jhansi. She was a soldier in the women's army of Queen Laxmibai of Jhansi. Born into a poor Dalit family, she started her career as an ordinary soldier in Laxmibai's army, but rose to a position of advising the queen in vital decisions. During the rebellion, at the height of the battle of fort of Jhansi, she disguised herself as the queen and fought on the front to let the queen escape safely out of the fort.
Savitribai Phule Savitribai Phule was a great feminist social reformer of her time. She fought against the totalitarianism of caste and other social evils in India. She was born in Naigaon in Sattarra district. She played an equal partner to Mahatma Jyotibai Phule in declaring war against and Brahminism. Though she was formerly uneducated, she was motivated by Jyotibai to study. Later she became the first female teacher of India in the school she started with her husband. She was a poet and wrote a poem in her collection of poems : Kavya Phule in 1854. " Title: Go, Get education. Go, Get Education Be self-reliant, be industrious Work, gather wisdom and riches, All gets lost without knowledge We become animal without wisdom, Sit idle no more, go, get education End misery of the oppressed and forsaken, You’ve got a golden chance to learn So learn and break the chains of caste. Throw away the Brahman’s scriptures fast. – Poem by Savitribai Phule (More poems at Poems by Savitribai Phule). Apart from setting up the first ever school for women in India, Savitribai started a women's association called Mahila Seva Mandal as early as 1852. The association worked for raising women's consciousness about their human rights and other social issues. Being a woman, she easily recognised the double downtroddenness of most women as she saw the gender question in relation to caste and brahmanic patriarchy. She engaged herself at various levels to address women-specific problems. She campaigned against victimisation of widows. She advocated and encouraged widow remarriage. She canvassed against infanticide of'illegitimate' children. She opened a home to rehabilitate such children. Her own home became a sanctuary for deserted women and orphaned children. She went on to organise a successful barbers' strike against the prevailing practice of shaving of widows' heads. She did all this taking grave personal risks. Many of these misogynistic practices have now receded in the background. But in her time, they tormented and destroyed countless women. Maligned, humiliated, and attacked for challenging the anti-women practices, Savitribai's struggle encouraged and inspired a whole generation of outstanding campaigners for gender justice in Maharashtra — Dr Anandi Bai Gopal Joshi, Pandita Ramabai, Tarabai Shinde, Ramabai Ranade, and many others have been inspired by her efforts. A unique spiritual vision sustained and animated Savitribai's life and struggle. A deeply devout and compassionate person, she drew inspiration and strength from the benevolence of a higher power. Her belief in a higher power, however, led her to wage a war against discriminatory brahmanic gods. She despised caste-obsessed brahmanic religion and its rituals, but she was a great admirer of many moral and ennobling tenets of other religions. At the heart of her religiosity were compassion and a sacred morality that bound the individual with society.
K. Ayothidhasar (editor of Oru Paisa Tamilan) Born in Chennai Iyothee Thass or Pandit C. Ayodhya Dasa (Tamil: அயோத்தி தாசர்) (May 20, 1845 – 1914) was a practitioner of Siddha medicine who is regarded as a pioneer of the Dravidian Movement. He also founded the Punchmar Mahajana Sabha in 1891 along with Rettaimalai Srinivasan.
Rev Rathnam John Adi Dravidar from Madras thousand lights area. Completed School Education. He wanted to belong to a more egalitarian religion like Christianity and get out of Hinduism. Baptized in 1877. Started a Magazine named Dravidar Pandian 1885 to publish cases if atrocities and grievances of the Depressed Classes. Estabished a Model School in 1886 in Thousand Lights area in Madras (https://books.google.com/books?id=Wx218EFVU8MC&pg=PA317&lpg=PA317&dq=Rev+ratnam+john+dalit&source=bl&ots=8x5v7WVl5e&sig=Nfc--r50p9zW4GyZt2jtE4wpnXU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YVv-VMm9D8mcyASdyoFI&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Rev%20ratnam%20john%20dalit&f=false)
First Infanticide Prohibition Home Started by Savitribai Phule There were a large number of widows in the Pune City and the nearby villages, including adolescents and young girls. These widows were boycotted publicly and with meger financial support they were clandestine subjects to sexual exploitation. They happened to be pregnant due to lack of contraceptives or other measures. So they had to be victimized for the reason for which they had not been responsible. Women had to lose their life due to unhealthy ways of abortion. Many newborns were been killed after delivery by widows to avoid social ostracism. Many a times they had to leave their home. On 28 January 1853: Savitribai started a shelter for such women – infanticide prohibition home – the first of its kind in India. In this shelter widows could give birth to their children and leave them there. Sixty six women gave birth to their children in that shelter up to 1873.This was a great historical work that Savitribai did at that time – in the dark ages. Later on this shelter started working as a hospital. Savitribai did not remain as one who served to widows but she went further in this regard. She adopted a child from a Brahmin widow (Kashibai) and thereby gave a message to the progressive people of the society. This adopted child was named Yashwant Rao who later became a doctor.
UdaDevi- Dalit Virangani The dalit women heroes of the 1857 Rebellion have become symbols of dalit assertion and pride. Such a legendary character who is claimed to have played a significant role in 1857 Rebellion alongside BegumHazrat Mahal of Lucknow and who has become the icon of the Pasi community, but whose aura encompasses all the Dalit castes, is Udadevi. There British forces met desperate resistance of rebels who fortified the position. In the sanguineous battle that followed, over 2,000 rebels and many soldiers lost their lives in hand-to-hand combat. After the British overran Sikandarbag, an officer noted that many of the British casualties had bullet wounds indicating steep, downward trajectory. Suspecting that a sniper remained hidden in the pipal tree, British officers fired at the tree and dislodged a rebel who fell to the ground with a thud, dead. Further investigation revealed that the rebel was, infact, a low-caste woman named Udadevi Pasi, who had donned men’s clothing to participate in the uprising. Uda Devi is said to have been born in the village Ujriaon of Lucknow, and was married to Makka Pasi. She became an associate of Begum Hazrat Mahal, and formed a women’s army with herself as the commander. Her husband became a martyr in the battle at Chinhat and Uda decided to take revenge. When the British attacked Sikandar Bagh in Lucknow under Campbell, he was faced with an army of Dalit women: At this point Uda Devi is said to have climbed over a pipal tree and shot dead, according to some accounts 32 and some 36, With constant evocation, these names have inscribed in popular Dalit memories. Every year near the statue of Uda Devi at Sikandar Bagh on 16 November, the stated day of her martyrdom.
Satyashodhak Samaj Established Satyashodhak Samaj is a religion established by Jyotirao Phule on on this day. This was started as a group whose main aim was to liberate the social shudra and untouchable castes from exploitation and oppression. The tenets of this idealogy were as follows. 1.The Satyashodhak Samaj is founded by some wise Shudra men to the Shudra people from long sustained slavery executed by Brahmans such as Bhats, Joshi priests and others. 2. The Satyashodhak Samaj aimed to spread education among the Shudras to make them aware of their rights and to get them out of influence of the sacred books that were made by the Brahmans for their own survival. 3.The ideology of Satyashodhak Samaj, based on Phule's ideological frame work which urged to unite all Shudra, Ati- Shudra masses, Satyashodhak ideology rejected all kinds of Brahman domination and exploitation on the basis of religion and all religious sources of inequality. This was the most radical content of the Satya Shodhak ideology, which was the heart of non-Brahman movement'. 4. Revolting against Brahmanical culture, Satyashodhak ideology dreamed to establish ideal society based on some principles as follows: 5. Faith on one God (creator) 6. Rejection of any kind of intermediary between God and Man. 7. Rejection of caste system and the basic four folded Varna division of society and believing on that man's supremacy is determined by his qualities and not by his caste or.8. Faith on equality, freedom and brotherhood. (Caste, Conflict, and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India By Rosalind O'Hanlon)
Vaikom Satyagraha Vaikom Satyagraha (1924–25) was a satyagraha (movement) in Travancore, India (now part of Kerala) against untouchability in Hindu society. The movement was centered at the Shiva temple at Vaikom, near Kottayam.The Satyagraha aimed at securing freedom of movement for all sections of society through the public roads leading to the Sri Mahadevar Temple at Vaikom. The 85th anniversary of the Satyagraha was celebrated on the 26th of November 2010. The temple entry movement was started in Travancore by Mr.T.K. Madhavan who pressed the matter before the 15th session of the Sree Moolam Popular Assembly on 1919 and his efforts culminated in the legal success of Vaikom Satyagraha which opened the Vaikom temple roads to untouchables in 1925.' Five years after the Vaikom Satyagraha there was no organised attempt for the removal of temple entry problem. It was in 1931 that the issue of temple entry to unapproachable castes was revived in Kerala by Sri.K. Kelappan under the auspices of Kerala Congress Committee. http://www.modernrationalist.com/2010/december/page08.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaikom_Satyagraha
First Priestless Marriage by Savitribai Phule The first marriage without a priest was arranged by Savitribai Phule under the aegis of Satyshodhak Samaj (The Truth Seekers Society). This was an important event against the Brahmin Social Order. The first report of the Samaj proudly notes that Savitribai was the inspiration behind this revolutionary initiative of a constructive revolt to reject centuries old religious traditions. The marriage of Radha, daughter of Savitribai’s friend Baju Bai Gyanoba Nimbankar and activist Sitram Jabaji Aalhat was the first Satyashodhakí marriage. Savitribai herself bore all the expenses on this historic occasion. The Satyashodhak marriage required the bridegroom to take an oath of giving education and equal rights to women. Savitribai had made Radha stay in the Phule household even before the marriage took place – which was another revolutionary step during those times.(Source: Book Savitri bai Phule First Memorial Lecture 2008 – Dr. T Sundaraman, National Council of Education Research and Training)
Birthdate of Chatrapati Shahu Maharaj Chatrapati Shahu Maharaj implemented one of the most early affirmative action policies (Provided 50% Reservation in his state, on 26 July 1902) Revolutionary Legal Reforms.On July 26, 1902,Shahu Maharaj declared reservations in the Kolhapur state for all the people who were for generations banned from education, that is, all people who are not brahmans, Parsis, Shenvis and Prabhus, the advanced castes who were already in education and other fields. He appealed for caste-free India and abolition of untouchability. Pioneer of Student Hostel Movement for Bahujan Samaj. De-recognized Brahmanical supremacy and Religious bureaucracy of Brahmins. Greatest supporter and sympathizer of Dr. Ambedkar movement. The Pillar of Social Democracy.
Birsa Munda - Jai Adivasi! “Our land is blowing away as the dust blows away in the storm”-Dharti Aba Birsa Munda Birsa Munda (1875–1900) was a tribal leader and a folk hero, belonging to the Munda tribe who was behind the Millenarian movement that rose in the tribal belt of modern day Bihar, and Jharkhand during the British Raj, in the late 19th century making him an important figure in the history of the Indian independence movement.Birsa was born at Bamba in a suburb of Ranchi (Bihar) on Thursday 15 November 1875. He was named after the day of his birth according to the Munda custom. Mundas called him Dharati Aba, the father of the earth. He advised people to not to obey the magistrates and the landlords and to boycott the ‘beth begari sytem’. He spoke against unlawful land acquisition and tried to unite his people against the diabolic exploitative triad of zamindars, foreigner and traders.The Mundas were galvanized into martial fury and carried out their revolts with great courage and determination. The results were, however, the same whenever the tribal fought the mighty British: they were crushed. Birsa was captured, released and finally recaptured after his forces suffered a terrible crushing by the British army in 1900. With his death, the Birsa movement slipped into oblivion but he had succeeded in giving them a solidarity which was missing before. Though Birsa was dead but his purpose was not defeated. Just after the movement, the Government passed the Commutation Act of 1897 and then it was decided to start survey and settlement in 1901. The Mundari Khuntkatti right was recognized and finally the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act (Act-VI of 1908) came into being. Birsa Munda – the great Dharati Aba shines as the first tribal martyr who fought for the independence of the country.
Babaji Palwankar Shivram Babaji Palwankar Shivram was an Indian cricketer who was one of the most successful Dalit players for the Hindus cricket team in the Bombay Quadrangular competition. He was the brother of cricketer and social leader Palwankar Baloo and Palwankar Vithal, who became the first Dalit to captain the Hindus team.
Birthdate of Kisan Faguji Bansod Kisan Faguji Bansod was born on 18th Feb 1879 at village Mohapa near Nagpur in Maharashtra. He belonged to Mahar caste. He passed teacher training but turned to social service. In order to organize the dalits, he founded the Sanmarg Bodhak Asprushya Samaj at Nagpur in 1901, which became popular throughout the Vidarbha region. He started the journal NIrashrit Hind Nagarik in 1910; Vital Vidhvansak in 1913; Majur Patrika in 1918; and Chokha Mela during 1931 - 36. He started one press at Pachpawali, Nagpur in 1910. His wife Tulsibai Bansod assisted him in the press work. He wrote a book in marathi named Shri Sant Chokhamela Charitra in the year 1942. He wrote two plays named Chokhamela and Satyashodhak Jalsa. He composed many poems, which aimed to inspire dalits to protest against traditionalism. He died of cancer at the age of 67, on 10 October 1946, in Nagpur.
Birthdate of M.C. Rajah Rao Bahadur Mylai Chinna Thambi Pillai Rajah and was a Dalit politician, social and political activist from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.He entered politics after graduation and was the leader of Dalits in the Justice party. However, he quit the party in 1923 over the party's treatment of Dalits and allied with B. R. Ambedkar before separating. Rajah died in 1943. In his heyday, Rajah was considered to be a person equal in stature to Ambedkar. Rajah along with Ambedkar and Rettamalai Srinivasan represented the Dalits at the Second Round Table Conference in London.
Mangu Ran Muggowal Born in Punjab in 1886, Muggowal, like other members of the Ghadar Party, immigrated to the U.S. for economic reasons and became involved in the freedom struggle following a realization of racism and discrimination in the foreign land. Members of the Ghadar Party believed their sufferings were the result of slavery back home and resolved to fight against imperialism. A person like Muggowal endured double discrimination for being a person of colour and a Dalit. Being born in a so called low caste “untouchable” family, he began facing caste-based discrimination during childhood. He faced segregation at school and suffered physical abuse for defying caste laws. Thankfully, the Ghadar Party believed in secularism and kept religion and politics apart, yet he faced such prejudice even in the U.S. Muggowal not only worked for the Ghadar newsletter but also went to Java to help in collecting and sending arms to India. He escaped near death sentence at the hands of the British allies. Thinking that he had died, his family remarried his widow to his brother. On coming back to India he was disillusioned by the continued oppression of the Dalits, who were considered untouchables by the orthodox Hindus and Sikhs. He was partly upset with the popular leaders of the freedom struggle who failed to address the issue of casteism. He resigned from the Ghadar Party in order to mobilize Dalits against systemic caste-based discrimination and eventually launched the Ad-Dharmi movement in Punjab. He believed that without bringing social revolution first it was impossible to bring real freedom in India. The Ghadar Party assured him full support in his struggle against caste oppression. But since his movement was in conflict with the interest of the freedom struggle, his cause was not dear to the popular leadership of India. Rather, Muggowal was branded as a tool of the British Empire that was playing a divide and rule game to prolong its rule in India. Whereas the British Empire was happy to give concessions to the Dalits, leaders like Muggowal felt deceived by the mainstream nationalist leaders of India. Despite such differences, it goes to the credit of Muggowal that he did not support a religion-based partition of India in 1947. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggowal#Story_of_Mangu_Ram_Muggowal_.28Jan_14.2C_1886-April_22.2C_1980.29"
Birthdate of Sahodaran Ayyappan Sahodaran Ayyappan (21 August 1889 – 6 March 1968) was a social reformer, thinker, journalist, and politician of Kerala, India. He was one of the outspoken followers of Sree Narayana Guru.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar While to the most of the country and the world, Dr. B. R Ambedkar is known as the architect of the Indian constitution, a social reformer, and an eminent jurist; his contribution as an economist, as an advocate of women’s rights; as a writer, an educationist, and a philosopher is also equally important. In this capacity he is not only a Dalit icon but a true revolutionary and is recognized as a founding father of independent India. Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born at the 14th child of his family on April 14th, 1891 into Mahar family. Discovered by a Maharaja Sayaji Rao he received a full scholarship and went on to study at the Elphinstone College, Mumbai in 1908. From there he was one of the first Indian to study abroad and he went to the United States to pursue economics at the Columbia University. Later, he became a professor of political economy at the Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics. In 1920, he went to London to get his Bar-at-Law at Gray's Inn for Law. On 8 June, 1927, he was awarded a Doctorate by the University of Columbia. From 1920 to 1930, he also published a series of newspapers namely Mook Nayak (The Silent Hero), Bahishkrit Bharat (Exiled India), Samata (equality), and Janata (People) Upon his return to India he faced vicious caste discrimination with top employers refusing to hiring him. Thus began Dr. Ambedkar’s relentless struggle for equality for Dalits. He had a multi-pronged strategy: First eradicate illiteracy, then focus on the economic upliftment while also using non-violent struggle against visible symbols of casteism, like denial of entry into temples and drawing water from public wells and tanks. He later added to this strategy the powerful call for Dalits to leave Hinduism for Buddhism. Leading to one of the largest mass conversion in world in Nagpur where over 600,000 Dalits joined Him in becoming Buddhist. His focus on Dalit Liberation often put him at odds with Gandhi and it was due to Ambedkar that Gandhi eventually shifted his draconian position on caste. Ambedkar’s leadership in the idependence movement ensured Dalits were at the table in the crucial Round Table conferences that led to the formation of the Indian State. While disappoined at the refusal of separate Indian electorates, it was his advocacy that led to the reservation system that helped provide affirmative action to Dalits and Adivasis in government and public institutions. In the wake of his legacy this post is a call to read and learn more from this Dalit Giant. He leaves behind a rich treasury of speeches and almost forty books that are still relevant today. In fact his seminal text Annihilation of Caste is available for free everywhere around the world. In his honor we leave you with his exhortation to educate, agitate, and organize. And of course the Dalit salutation which is a honorary reference back to him
Gurram Jashuva Gurram Jashuva (or G Joshua) : Dalit poet and writer from Andhra Pradesh, Jashuva initially worked as primary school teacher. He then worked as Telugu producer in All India Radio, Madras between 1946-1960. His work "Gabbilam" is best known. It is an interpretation of Kalidasa's Megha Sandesam. But it is not a yaksha using the cloud as a messenger to convey his longing to his loved one, instead, it is a hunger and poverty stricken individual requesting a bat visiting him from a nearby Siva temple, to convey his prayers to God. He muses at the irony of his situation, where a bat is allowed inside a temple but not a human being! He cautions the bat to convey his message to Siva as it hangs from the roof close to his ear, at a time when the priest is not around.
Birthdate of Jagannathan Shivashanmugam Pillai Jagannathan Shivashanmugam Pillai (February 24, 1901 – February 17, 1975) was an Indian politician of the Indian National Congress. In 1938, he became the first Dalit mayor of Madras. He also served as the first speaker of the Madras Legislative Assembly since India's independence. Shivashanmugam died on February 17, 1975 at the age of 73.
Birthdate of Babu L.N. Hardas Hardas Laxmanrao Nagrale, (1904–1939), popularly known as Babu L.N. Hardas was a Dalit leader and social reformer in India. He was an ardent follower of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and was pioneer of the practice of exchanging the greeting Jai Bhim amongst the Dalits. He was also a prominent labour leader in the Central Province and was the general secretary of the Independent Labour Party in the province. Babu Hardas born in a Mahar family at Kamthi on January 6, 1904. His father , Laxmanrao Nagrale, was a clerk in the Railway Department. Babu Hardas passed his matriculation from Patwardhan High School, Nagpur. He also studied Sanskrit from Swami Brahmanand of Arya Samaj at Nagpur. Consistent with the social customs of that time, he married at a very early age of 16 with Sahubai in 1920. His life was full of events as he worked to create social awareness in his brethren for all of his life. Babu Hardas started his social activities pretty early in his life. At the age of 17, he started a weekly Maharatha from Nagpur with a view of spreading social awareness in the Dalits. He tried to organize the Mahar community by founding the Mahar Samaj organization in 1922. He also formed one Mahar Samaj Pathak, a voluntary corps group, to organize the disorganized Mahar youth to protect the Dalits against the atrocities. He opened a Mahila Ashram in order to imparting training to Dalit women in daily activities. Also, in order to avoid exploitation of beedi workers, he started the beedi work on cooperative basis, which became very successful in the area.Babu Hardas as a strong opponent of irrational and superstitious customs of the society. He strongly opposed to the sub-caste barriers amongst the depressed classes. He arranged community dinners and invited to all people of depressed classes divided in various sub-castes. Such community dinners were arranged each year on the death anniversary of Sant Chokhamela, a great 14th-century saint from Mahar community. He was against idol worship. He organized a meeting of his brethren in 1927 at Ramtek under the presidency of Kisan Faguji Bansod. At this meeting, Babu Hardas exhorted his people to start idol worship at the temple of Ramtek and stop bathing in the dirty Ambada tank there. However, he sent a group of his followers under the leadership of Shankar Mukunda Bele to participate in the Kalaram Temple Entry Satyagraha led by Dr. Ambedkar on March 2, 1930. He argued that this was against inequality and not to worship idols. Babu Hardas was also a strong advocate of education to Dalits. He himself had completed matriculation, which was a rare thing for the Dalits in those days. He started night schools at Kamthi in 1927 at the behest of the Mahar community. There were 86 boys and 22 girls learning in his school at a time. He also started one Sant Chokhamela Library at Kamthi around the same time. At a very early age of 35, he fell sick with tuberculosis and died of tuberculosis on January 12, 1939.
Birthdate of Mahapran Jogendernath Mandal Mahapran Jogendernath Mandal was the leader of Scheduled Caste communities in Bengal, born in an untouchable Namasudra family. He was the son of Ramdayal Mandal and Sandhyadebi. He passed his B.A examination in 1932 from B.M College located in Barisal then he joined Calcutta Law College and passed the Law examination in 1934. He was the member of Bengal Legislative Assembly 1937 from the Bakarganj North-East General Rural Constituency. Subsequently, he developed political connections with Dr Ambedkar and also entered into a political alliance with the Muslim League. Jogendranath was appointed as the Minister for Co-operative Credit and Rural Indebtedness. In the meantime, he founded the Bengal branch of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation (AISCF). He joined Suhrawardy Ministry as the Law, Pull Worker and Construction of House Minister in 1946. Towards the end of 1946, Jogendranath almost single-handed ensured the election of Dr Ambedkar from Bengal to the Constituent Assembly. On the eve of the partition of India Jogendranath Mandal supported Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Sarat Chandra Bose and others for a United Bengal. With Mountbatten’s announcement of the partition plan on 3 June 1947, however, he lent support for Pakistan. He was one of the central and leading Founding Fathers of modern state of Pakistan.
ANNAI MEENAMBAL SIVARAJ Annai Meenambal Sivaraj as born to Mr. V.G. Vasudevapillai and Meenakshi. Annai's father was famous among the Adi-Dravida Leaders, who became the first elected person to the corporation of Madras from the aboriginal community. For a long time he was a member to the assembly of Tamilnadu. Annai is known to be India's first Dalit woman leader. She was the first woman president of South India Scheduled Class Federation. She gave the title “PERIYAR” to E.V.RAMASWAMY at the Schedule Caste Federation Women’s Conference held at Madras, in 1944. She also presided over the All India Schedule Castes Federation Women’s conference held at Bombay, on May 6th, 1945 where she gave a powerful speech advocating for the role of education. She exhorted the women audience to actively take part in the social upliftment of the community, educate their children, and struggle to liberate themselves from untouchability, casteism and oppression.
Jagjivan Ram (Babuji) Jagjivan Ram (5 April 1908 – 6 July 1986), known popularly as Babuji, was an Indian independence activist and politician from Bihar. He belonged to the Chamar caste and was a leader of the Dalit (Untouchable) community. He was instrumental in foundation of the All-India Depressed Classes League, an organisation dedicated to attaining equality for untouchables, in 1935 and was elected to Bihar Legislative Assembly in 1937, when he also organised a rural labour movement. In 1946, he became the youngest minister in Jawaharlal Nehru's interim government, the first cabinet of India as a Labour Minister and also a member of Constituent Assembly of India, where he ensured that social justice was enshrined in the Constitution. He went on serve as a minister for more than forty years as a member of Indian National Congress (INC). Most importantly, he was the Defence Minister of India during the Indo-Pak war of 1971, which resulted in the formation of Bangladesh. He also made great contributions to the Green Revolution in India and modernising Indian agriculture during his two tenures as Union Agriculture Minister, especially during the 1974 drought when he was asked to hold the additional portfolio to tide over the food crisis. Though he supported Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the Emergency (1975–77), he left Congress in 1977 and joined the Janata Party alliance, along with his Congress for Democracy. He later served as the Deputy Prime Minister of India (1977–79), then in 1980, he formed Congress.
DAKSHAYANI VELAYUDHAN. Dakshayani Velayudhan was an Indian parliamentarian and leader of the Depressed Classes. Belonging to the Pulaya community, she was among the first generation of people to be educated from the community. She holds several distinctions including becoming the first woman from her community to wear an upper cloth, the first Dalit woman graduate in India, a science graduate, a member of the Cochin Legislative Council and of being the only Dalit woman member of the Constituent Assembly of India. Dakshayani was born in the Mulavukad village of the Kanayannur taluka of Ernakulam district in 1912. She completed her B.A. in 1935 and went on to complete her teachers' training course from the Madras University three years later. Her studies were supported by scholarships from the government of the Cochin State. From 1935 to 1945 she worked as a teacher at the Government High Schools in Trichur and Tripunithura. Dakshayani belonged to the Pulaya community and was the younger sister of the social reformer and legislator K. P. Vallon. She was also related to K R Narayanan who later became the President of India. In 1945 Dakshayani was nominated to the Cochin Legislative Council by the government of the State. She was elected to the Constituent Assembly of India by the Council in 1946. From 1946-1952 she served as a member of the Constituent Assembly and the Provisional Parliament of India. In Parliament she took special interest in the matters of education especially that of the Scheduled Castes. Although a Gandhian, Dakshayani sided with B R Ambedkar on many issues relating to the Scheduled Castes during the Constituent Assembly debates. She agreed with Ambedkar giving up the demand for separate electorates arguing instead for 'moral safeguards' and the immediate removal of their social disabilities.
Death of Subedar Major Ramji Maloji Sakpal Death of Subedar Major Ramji Maloji Sakpal, father of Dr. Ambedkar
First Adi-Andhra Mahajana Sabha In the 1920s and 1930s, militant Dalits were thoroughly rejecting both the “Panchama”(The Fifth, referring to their position outside the caste system) and the “Harijan” (Children of God) identities and organizing themselves all over the south by the non-Aryan themes of the Dravidian movement. They began to identify themselves as the “original sons of the soil” as Adi-Dravidians, Adi-Andhras and Adi-Karnatakas. The swell of these movements led to the pivotal First Adi-Andhra Mahajana Sabha launching Dravidian and Anti-caste movements that continued on until the 1930’s.
The Adi Movements 1920's-1930's: Many Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi activists of the 1920s, organizing as non-Brahmans and Dalits, were drawn to an anti-caste, anti-Brahman, even anti-Hindu ideology akin to the philosophy that Phule had formulated. Few outside of Maharashtra had heard of Phule, yet these movements were so pervasive that it is clear these themes struck a deep mass resonance everywhere. During this time, the Non-Brahman movements in Maharastra and Tamil Nadu, as well as the Dalit movements arising in places as distant as Punjab and Karnataka, all began to argue in terms of the Aryan conquest and Brahman exploitation through religion. Even the names of most of the Dalit movements - Adi-Dharm in Punjab, Adi-Hindu in U.P. and Hyderabad, Adi-Dravida, Adi-Andhra and Adi-Karnataka in South India - indicated a common claim to being original inhabitants.
Ambedkar Started the Mooknayak Newspaper Chatrapati Shahuji Maharaj had donated Rs 2500 as seed money to start Mooknayak (Leader of the Dumb). This Marathi weekly paper championed the causes of the depressed classes. Shri Nandra Bhatkar was the editor, later Shri Dyander Gholap was the editor. Dr. Ambedkar wrote in the first issue of this paper dated 31 January 1920 the following: “The hindu society is like a tower of many stories. It has neither a ladder nor a door to go out. And therefore there is no way to interchange stories. Those who are born on a particular storey die in that storey. Even if the lowest storey person is worthy deserving to be promoted to upper storey he cannot move to that level. And if the person in the upper storey is most unworthy and undeserving still he cannot be pushed down…. A Society which believes that God exists even in inanimate things, also says that people who are a part of that very society should not be touched! http://drambedkarbooks.com/category/today-in-dalit-history/
Rajamani Devi Rajamani Devi was an early Dalit woman leader who emerged from the Mala community during the Adi movements in Andhra. She became the Joint Secretary of the Schedule Caste Federation, Hyderabad on 16th July 1944. She was latered named the President of the Women Section of SCF. She won a seat to the Hyderabad Legislative Asembly on the SCF ticket at the first general elections held in 1952.
First All India Conference of the Depressed Classes The First All India Conference of the Depressed Classes was held at Nagpur on 30-31 May and 1 June 1920. It was Presided over by Chatrapati Shahuji Maharaj, and Dr. Ambedkar was among the main speaker in the conference. The conference was attended by delegates from all over India.
Annabhau Sathe Annabhau Sathe was born on 1 August 1920 in the village of Wategaon near Sangli in a family belonging to the a Dalit Mang community. Annabhau Sathe was denied education due to his caste. His brother Shankarbhau recounts in his biography of Sathe, titled "Majhe Bhau Annabhau", that the family members worked as laborers at the site of Kalyan tunnel when it was being constructed. Despite lack of formal education, Sathe wrote in Marathi 35 novels, one among which was Fakira (1959). Fakira, which is currently in its 19th edition, received a state government award in 1961. There are 15 collections of Sathe's short stories. A large number of his short stories have been translated into many Indian and as many as 27 non-Indian languages. Besides novels and short stories, Sathe wrote a play - a travelogue on Russia, 12 screenplays, and 10 ballads --Marathi. To generate social awareness, he organized stage performances of powade and tamasha, ethnic dances chiefly performed by women, which are popular in rural Maharashtra. He produced 14 tamasha shows. In the late 1940s, the then Home Minister of the Bombay state government Morarji Desai had banned tamasha shows, but Sathe courageously defied the ban by renaming them as lokanatya. People in Maharashtra conferred the epithet lok shahir on Sathe.On the issue of a postage stamp of Anna Bhau Sathe at Chembur, Mumbai minister Pramod Mahajan called Anna as a saint of Maharashtra. |
Season five of "Mad Men" will premiere in March, 2012, months after the usual start date of previous seasons. That seemingly drastic change, however, doesn't come close to the time shift series creator Matthew Weiner has in mind for the finale.
Weiner, the Emmy-winning brain behind the 60s-set New York advertising drama, recently sat down with Grantland.com to talk about both his personal journey and the one the show has taken from fledgling first season on AMC to cable powerhouse. Following intense negotiations with the network, Weiner agreed to create three more seasons of the Jon Hamm-starring hit, which would see a series finale come at the end of the seventh season. That last episode, he said, would provide more than just a retrospective on the show's history.
"I do know how the whole show ends," he told the site. "It came to me in the middle of last season. I always felt like it would be the experience of human life. And human life has a destination. It doesn't mean Don's gonna die. What I'm looking for, and how I hope to end the show, is like ... It's 2011. Don Draper would be 84 right now. I want to leave the show in a place where you have an idea of what it meant and how it's related to you."
To see Don Draper, still working and trying to sell digital ad space, based on laser-targeted focus group and audience segmentation, would truly be a sight to behold. Of course, one gets the feeling that Weiner is more interested in looking at how the Jon Hamm-portrayed character would have handled the coming decades and changes in his life, not technological changes in his industry.
But it's not just Don's arc that concerns Weiner; both the seventh season expiration date, as well as the setting he intends for it, are also opportunities for him to reflect on the job he did with the show, as well as go out on his own terms. Just like one certain little band out of Liverpool did over forty years ago.
"It's a very tall order, but I always talk about 'Abbey Road,'" he said, referring of course to the final album The Beatles recorded together (though "Let It Be" would be released after "Abbey Road"). What's the song at the end of Abbey Road? It's called 'The End.' There is a culmination of an experience of people working at their highest level."
Given that the series won its fourth straight Best Drama Emmy, Weiner certainly is on pace to end on top.
For more, click over to Grantland.
PHOTOS: |
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Terrell Davis, a guy who knows a little something about playing running back in the NFL, went on the air saying that Matt Forte is the most underrated running back in the NFL. Is he right?
The statistics back up Davis’ claim. Forte finished the 2013 season ranked second in rushing yards, third in receptions among running backs, and third in yards from scrimmage. Yet Forte wasn’t selected to either the first or second All-Pro teams. Should Forte have qualified for either of those teams? Probably. The stats and tape indicate that Forte isn’t the most underrated running back just because of his running ability, but, rather, he’s one of the league’s best all-around performers. In other words, he’s one of the most versatile players in the league.
Running
Rushing stats: 1,339 yards, 4.6 yards per carry, 9 touchdowns
The play above demonstrates Forte’s ability to make defenders miss on the second and third level. The hole that Chicago’s offensive line opens up for Forte is massive, and guarantees that he will gain at least 10 yards or so. But, what Forte does so brilliantly on this play, is make two defensive backs miss after gaining those 10 yards. Aided by a Brandon Marshall block, Forte quickly jump-cuts to the left, causing one Washington defender to fall to the ground and the other to completely stop his momentum and enter chase mode. But Forte’s speed is too much for the safety and he cruises into the end zone.
Now, the play below is another example of a huge hole created by the right side of Chicago’s offensive line. Once hitting the hole, Forte is able to shake off a would-be tackler, using his left hand to balance and keep himself from falling down. From there, Forte’s speed takes over and he isn’t pushed out of bounds until the five yard line.
Catching
Receiving stats: 74 catches, 594 yards, 8 yards per reception, 3 touchdowns
What truly makes Forte special is his ability to be an important factor in the passing game. Forte only finished behind Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery in terms of receptions for the Bears. Not only can the Bears bring him out of the backfield — as they do in the play above — but they can also line him up on the line of scrimmage like a typical receiver. This often leads to a mismatch against a linebacker.
Blocking
According to Pro Football Focus, Forte was used as a blocker 145 times last season. He surrendered 17 quarterback disruptions, seven of which occurred during a three game span. The play below is an example of some pretty terrible pass blocking which results in Jay Cutler getting crunched.
While 17 quarterback disruptions is pretty dreadful, the 145 times the Bears used him as a blocker last season is a more telling statistic. Because Forte is an adequate enough blocker to be used in passing situations, it allows Marc Trestman to leave Forte on the field in pretty much all scenarios. While many teams like to bring in a different running back in long-yardage and passing situations, the Bears typically leave Forte in. This proves to be incredibly valuable, simply because the defense can’t be sure if the Bears are going to run or throw the ball with Forte in, and because he gives Cutler another reliable target.
Essentially, this allows the Bears to lineup in shotgun situations — normally a passing formation — and still run the football against less defenders in the box. Take a look at the play below, taken from the Bears’ week 17 matchup against Green Bay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc3_QB8vGjw&t=0m33s
The Bears are in a third and goal scenario from the four yard line. Lined up in shotgun, the Bears bring Forte out of the backfield as a pass catcher and Cutler finds him for the touchdown. Later in the game, the Bears, near the goaline again and lined up in shotgun, would hand the ball off to Forte. Both plays resulted in six points, both came out of the shotgun, and both came in similar scenarios. The beauty of this is that it allows Cutler the ability to read the defense and choose to either execute a passing play or a running play. It’s a win-win situation for the Bears and it’s a situation that is only made possible by Forte’s versatility.
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Schedule-
5:30-6:30 pm- Sam will play a musical leadup playlist of artists that inspired or have been inspired by Kraftwerk, including David Bowie, LCD Soundsystem, Daft Punk, Can, Brian Eno, and more! Free Sam-made Lemonade and Dark Matter Coffee coffee is available to attendees. It's also BYOB.
6:35 pm- Sam gives presentation on Trans-Europe Express, detailing its recording process and lyrical content
6:45 pm- Sam drops the needle on Trans-Europe Express
Classic Album Sundays, the most popular and respected classic album listening event in the world, is setting up shop in Chicago to expose your ears to a spiritually-charged musical experience like no other. Saturday Audio Exchange, CHIRP Radio, Dark Matter Coffee, and event organizer Sam Willett will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of Kraftwerk's genre-defining, electronic time capsule, Trans-Europe Express, by listening to it in its entirety on vinyl.
It was this outward-looking Germany that stimulated Trans-Europe Express. Named after TEE, the Trans Europ Express luxury railway service that connected 130 European cities, Kraftwerk’s sixth studio album embraced a European identity rather than a specific German identity. The divisive and xenophobic Nazi worldview would have haunted baby-boomers Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider, so one can understand why they would want to aspire toward neighbourly relations and inclusivity.
Saturday Audio Exchange, a well-renowned Chicago independent music dealer, will be providing a custom-curated hi-fi audio system to make this experience come to life on vinyl. In attending the event, you will listen to the album as if you are watching a movie- no phones, no distractions, and complete focus on the beauty engrained in Trans-Europe Express. Take a look at the sound equipment Classic Album Sundays typically uses at their events here.
When the event starts, a vinyl-exclusive playlist, including artists that influenced and have been influenced by Kraftwerk will be played. Attendees should take this warm up time to take a look around Saturday, visit with our event partners, socialize with new and old friends, and drink beverages. When we have a full house, we will give attendees a ten-minute warning to use the bathroom and make any phone calls before the album starts. Then, Sam will introduce the album drop the needle. From there, your mind should be completely involved with the album and prepared for a musical adventure. |
Okay … I hear you. It’s time for the next entry in my Architectural Graphics series and due to overwhelming feedback, it’s apparently time to talk about line weights. Despite my efforts, I can’t ignore this topic any longer – and I only made it two posts before caving into the pressure.
But where to start? Getting your line weights correct is 37% science, 59% art, and 22% personal preference … unless you work in my office and my preference will eventually become your preference.
Part of the reason I was hoping to hold off on the topic of architectural line weights was that people are asking me insanely specific questions … AND these folks work in AutoCAD or Vectorworks or Revit or ArchiCad … and on and on. I consider myself extremely proficient in AutoCAD, know just a tiny bit about Revit, and I’ve never used any of the other software platforms. So how do I answer these insanely specific questions? By ignoring them. Instead, I am going to elevate this conversation a bit and talk about something other than your digital pen settings, so if that’s the only thing you came looking for, prepare to be sorely disappointed.
I am fairly consistent with my use of line weight, and it doesn’t really matter if I am sketching or working digitally. I typically work with 3 line weights when sketching (because I’m not completely crazy) and 5 when I am drafting digitally. They are:
Sketching:
Profile – basically I’m tracing the perimeter of the components
Light – just about everything else
Poché – hatching and/or shading
Digital:
Profile – very heavy, typically the profile of the drawing container or the ground plane
Heavy – the perimeter of individual component items, things I am cutting through, or whenever adjacent planes are fairly far apart
Medium – usually reserved for delineating masses or opening in walls (think of a cased opening in an interior elevation)
Light – detail lines that would otherwise turn into a big blob of ink when printed
Hatching – you’ll be able to see that hatching plays a major role in all of my drawings
See? That’s not so bad, and with just a teensy amount of additional effort, the improved line weight will have a significant impact on the clarity of your drawings.
The irony of this sketch … it isn’t very good (look at how I wrote “medium”, it’s like I forgot how to spell it halfway through) but I thought that I should come up with something that might quickly explain the whole heavy-medium-light line weight decision-making process. If you were in my office sitting next to me, I would sketch up something like this elevation to walk you through my logic when I choose my line weights. Everything is related to the distance between adjacent surfaces, so let’s focus in on the cased door opening right in the middle. I am going to say that the surface of the wall is our 0″ plane. the outer line of the casing sits in front of the wall, but only by a very small amount (3/4″ typically.) As a result of this tiny distance, this outer line of the casing is drawn with a light line weight. Moving in you have the cased opening – and the inferred space beyond (as far as you know) is set at an infinite distance – but we know it’s something between a few feet and a bunch of feet (just not infinity). As a result, this inner line is drawn with a medium line weight. That’s because I have reserved the heavy line weight for the perimeter outline of the room.
Finally, you have the poché or very light line weight. Since I tend to be a fan of material specific hatches, I don’t want my drawing, which is composed of several lines very close together) to turn into one big fat dark line. As a result, most of my hatches are the lightest pen weight on my drawings. This is also the pen weight I choose when I have a line that delineates either a material change or a seam in the material that is in the same plane. For example, take a look at the vertical joint between the cased opening and the floor base trim. Technically these are in the same plane but I want the line that indicates how they are to meet to be apparent – so I use the lightest pen weight setting.
This process of using line weights is expressed in all of my drawings – even my sketches. However, I don’t carry around 5 different pens just to articulate such refined nuances in a drawing that is typically quite unrefined … so I tend to use just three pens. I think it is fairly obvious when I use each pen but a quick scan of my sketches will reveal that the thought-process is typically the same as when I draft digitally.
The sketch above was created when I was in Santo Domingo doing some charitable architectural work (and performing surgery) and even when taking site measurements, I use different pens for their line weights. I helps me understand the depth of feild better when I don’t have the luxury of just popping back over to the job site.
And then you have these sorts of sketches – detail sketches that are more for thought clarity than construction. Most of these sketches are created using a single pen and then I’ll go back over it with a heavier pen to create a profile line. I started doing this a long time ago just as a way to make my drawings look a bit more “architectural,” but looking back on them years after they were created, I can see a consistent thought process at work.
But let’s move on to architectural drawings that I prepared using AutoCAD.
This is one of the elevation drawings I prepared for the ‘Movie Theater’ playhouse I designed back in 2015. Again, now that you know what to look for, you can see that the ground plane line is the heaviest (profile), the perimeter of the playhouse is the next heaviest (heavy), the interior geometry line where there is some amount of distance between adjacent planes is medium, assembly lines are light (look at the trim joint lines or the lines at the roof – these would all turn into a single dark blob of a line if the pen weight wasn’t light), and finally the hatches are shown with the lightest pen weight.
Can you see the same techniques at work? You can also see the framing joint lines where the vertical 2x members sit on top of the sill plate – they are in the same plane so I want the line to be distinguishable, but just barely.
Now we move onto current drawings … that were created in Revit. A few years ago, back before I worked here, all the interior elevations were drawn with the same line weight. I didn’t think that the drawings were particularly easy to read, they didn’t convey any sense of priority, and didn’t help the contractor focus on what was important in each drawing. These new interior elevations are light years better, but we still have some work to do. In my office, everyone seems to have fully grasped the concept of profile, heavy, light and hatch … but the medium level lines are missing. If you look at the drawing above on the right, just to the right of the mirror, there is a wall that should be delineated with a medium weight line. This bathroom is in the shape of an ‘L’ and the mirror is actually 24″ further back than the adjacent wall … do you see it now?
Most people who either create or read drawings for a living would be skilled enough to actually notice that the room jogs just by comparing these two elevations. My point is that with the correct line weight, you wouldn’t need to compare the two elevations to come to this conclusion.
Use those pen weights!
PS – for those you you who just can’t stand it, my AutoCAD pen settings are:
Profile – 0.53
Heavy – 0.4
Medium – 0.3
Light – 0.15
Hatching – 0.09 |
Vitalik Buterin
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Sr. MemberActivity: 331Merit: 330 Mastercoin suggestion: Contracts for Difference November 04, 2013, 04:42:26 PM #1 Currently, Mastercoin has a feature in the works of encoding bets on the blockchain. For example, A and B can make a bet with each other where A and B can both put 5 MSC into a pool such that all 10 MSC will go to A if eToro Inc says that the value of gold in USD exceeds 1300 at the end of Oct 31, otherwise the 10 MSC will go to B. One interesting use case of on-blockchain bets that this mechanism does not adequately address, however, is hedging. Suppose that Joe, an average business owner, wants to use Mastercoin to take advantage of its financial features, but is too scared about the price volatility of MSC. He has 50 MSC in the system, but wants to have his currency exposure entirely in USD. Say 1 MSC = 40 USD now for simplicity. With bets, the one strategy that Joe has is to make staggered bets at every dollar - bet $50 that MSC will be below 39 USD, $50 that MSC will be below 38 USD, and so forth, and the same up to some threshold. For every dollar MSC falls, Joe would lose 50 USD, but he would also win one additional bet and thus gain 50 USD back; the exact opposite would happen if the value of MSC goes up by some number of dollars.
Contracts for difference are a much easier way of doing this. Essentially, Joe and Speculator Sam both put 10 MSC into a pool where, on Oct 31, the pool would pay Joe 10 MSC + 1.25 MSC for every USD that the value of MSC drops. Thus, if the value of MSC in USD drops to $39, Joe loses 50 USD from the value of MSC dropping, but he would also gain 1.25 MSC ~= 50 USD from the contract for difference. If MSC goes up to 41 USD, the opposite would happen. Obviously, if MSC goes up or down by a large enough ratio the contract would reach a point where either Joe or Sam is entitled to the entire 20 MSC (in our example, at $32 or $48). At this point, the CFD would automatically force-liquidate, giving the correct party all of the funds, at which point the loser would be required to make a new CFD if they want to return to the same level of exposure.
This would replicate much of the functionality of self-issued currencies; I think the two models could exist side by side and we'll see which model becomes more popular. Argumentum ad lunam: the fallacy that because Bitcoin's price is rising really fast the currency must be a speculative bubble and/or Ponzi scheme.
I HATE TABLES I HATE TABLES I HA(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ TABLES I HATE TABLES I HATE TABLES Advertised sites are not endorsed by the Bitcoin Forum. They may be unsafe, untrustworthy, or illegal in your jurisdiction. Advertise here.
ripper234
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Ron Gross
LegendaryActivity: 1274Merit: 1000Ron Gross Re: Mastercoin suggestion: Contracts for Difference November 04, 2013, 10:25:28 PM #2 Quote from: Vitalik Buterin on November 04, 2013, 04:42:26 PM Currently, Mastercoin has a feature in the works of encoding bets on the blockchain. For example, A and B can make a bet with each other where A and B can both put 5 MSC into a pool such that all 10 MSC will go to A if eToro Inc says that the value of gold in USD exceeds 1300 at the end of Oct 31, otherwise the 10 MSC will go to B. One interesting use case of on-blockchain bets that this mechanism does not adequately address, however, is hedging. Suppose that Joe, an average business owner, wants to use Mastercoin to take advantage of its financial features, but is too scared about the price volatility of MSC. He has 50 MSC in the system, but wants to have his currency exposure entirely in USD. Say 1 MSC = 40 USD now for simplicity. With bets, the one strategy that Joe has is to make staggered bets at every dollar - bet $50 that MSC will be below 39 USD, $50 that MSC will be below 38 USD, and so forth, and the same up to some threshold. For every dollar MSC falls, Joe would lose 50 USD, but he would also win one additional bet and thus gain 50 USD back; the exact opposite would happen if the value of MSC goes up by some number of dollars.
Contracts for difference are a much easier way of doing this. Essentially, Joe and Speculator Sam both put 10 MSC into a pool where, on Oct 31, the pool would pay Joe 10 MSC + 1.25 MSC for every USD that the value of MSC drops. Thus, if the value of MSC in USD drops to $39, Joe loses 50 USD from the value of MSC dropping, but he would also gain 1.25 MSC ~= 50 USD from the contract for difference. If MSC goes up to 41 USD, the opposite would happen. Obviously, if MSC goes up or down by a large enough ratio the contract would reach a point where either Joe or Sam is entitled to the entire 20 MSC (in our example, at $32 or $48). At this point, the CFD would automatically force-liquidate, giving the correct party all of the funds, at which point the loser would be required to make a new CFD if they want to return to the same level of exposure.
This would replicate much of the functionality of self-issued currencies; I think the two models could exist side by side and we'll see which model becomes more popular.
Terrific idea Vitalik. This is powerful stuff - even if the Backed Currencies feature of Mastercoin completely fails (it's a super experimental feature), CFDs can totally make up for it in being a vehicle for people to directly invest in currencies, with the only risk they're exposing themselves to is the risk that the feed generator (eToro in this case) is lying ... but without any risk to the underlying assets.
Recommend Reading:
A CFD is always a contract between two parties - one of them is going long on a particular asset (USD in Vitalik's example), and the other one is going short on the same asset. The mastercoin blockchain serves as the mediator and makes sure each party has sufficient funds committed.
You could have several CFDs for the same asset pairs - there would be bids and asks, with varying margins (discount/overcharge over the real price of a USD). At any time there would be both bids and asks (parties desiring short and long positions on an asset). It is highly beneficial for market players to maintain correct positions on a CFD marketplace, because it's essentially free money - you can decide your own margin, which will be enough to cover any potential risk you encounter. So, with a large enough market, a new party desiring to buy or sell a CFD will always find a counterparty with a relatively low margin.
I believe this is The Missing Link - a surefire way to implement any kind of asset on mastercoin, in a way that requires the minimum amount of trust (just in the price feed - maybe in the future we'll be able to distribute that away as well). Backed Currencies were our previous route to achieving this goal, and they might still work, but CFDs will definitely work (we'll implement both of course). Terrific idea Vitalik. This is powerful stuff - even if the Backed Currencies feature of Mastercoin completely fails (it's a super experimental feature), CFDs can totally make up for it in being a vehicle for people to directly invest in currencies, with the only risk they're exposing themselves to is the risk that the feed generator (eToro in this case) is lying ... but without any risk to the underlying assets.Recommend Reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_for_difference A CFD is always a contract between two parties - one of them is going long on a particular asset (USD in Vitalik's example), and the other one is going short on the same asset. The mastercoin blockchain serves as the mediator and makes sure each party has sufficient funds committed.You could have several CFDs for the same asset pairs - there would be bids and asks, with varying margins (discount/overcharge over the real price of a USD). At any time there would be both bids and asks (parties desiring short and long positions on an asset). It is highly beneficial for market players to maintain correct positions on a CFD marketplace, because it's essentially free money - you can decide your own margin, which will be enough to cover any potential risk you encounter. So, with a large enough market, a new party desiring to buy or sell a CFD will always find a counterparty with a relatively low margin.I believe this is The Missing Link - a surefire way to implement any kind of asset on mastercoin, in a way that requires the minimum amount of trust (just in the price feed - maybe in the future we'll be able to distribute that away as well). Backed Currencies were our previous route to achieving this goal, and they might still work, but CFDs will definitely work (we'll implement both of course).
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LegendaryActivity: 1274Merit: 1000Ron Gross Re: Mastercoin suggestion: Contracts for Difference November 04, 2013, 10:38:43 PM #4 Quote from: dacoinminster on November 04, 2013, 10:34:54 PM Heck yes. Doing CFDs as a MasterCoin feature is a fantastic idea. The user experience is (probably) not as simple as it would be for escrow-backed currencies, but unlike those currencies, there isn't any doubt about whether this would work, or for how long.
BTW you could even have meta features based on it: I could basically entrust a certain amount of mastercoins to "any CFD that meets certain criterias". This way, even if the duration of the contract runs out, and my counterparty can withdraw their funds ... my CFD will automatically pop up to find the next counterparty, and I won't have to manually find another one. BTW you could even have meta features based on it: I could basically entrust a certain amount of mastercoins to "any CFD that meets certain criterias". This way, even if the duration of the contract runs out, and my counterparty can withdraw their funds ... my CFD will automatically pop up to find the next counterparty, and I won't have to manually find another one.
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LegendaryActivity: 1274Merit: 1000Ron Gross Re: Mastercoin suggestion: Contracts for Difference November 04, 2013, 10:51:09 PM #6 Quote from: dacoinminster on November 04, 2013, 10:47:58 PM Quote from: ripper234 on November 04, 2013, 10:38:43 PM BTW you could even have meta features based on it: I could basically entrust a certain amount of mastercoins to "any CFD that meets certain criterias". This way, even if the duration of the contract runs out, and my counterparty can withdraw their funds ... my CFD will automatically pop up to find the next counterparty, and I won't have to manually find another one.
So, if somebody maxes out one CFD, they automatically switch to another one with equivalent terms?
Whoa. Mind blown.
Of course, you can't be sure that there will always be a counter-party available for a given set of terms, but still, that failure scenario is very easy to understand.
So, if somebody maxes out one CFD, they automatically switch to another one with equivalent terms?Whoa. Mind blown.Of course, you can't be sure that there will always be a counter-party available for a given set of terms, but still, that failure scenario is very easy to understand.
Well, there will be a lot of incentive for people to offer CFDs at competitive rates.
So if I see that over time the margin for CFDs is always in the 0-1% range, if I buy a meta-CFD with a margin of 2%, it will always find a match (of course it will not cost me 2%, but rather the best the market can offer up to 2%). Well, there will be a lot of incentive for people to offer CFDs at competitive rates.So if I see that over time the margin for CFDs is always in the 0-1% range, if I buy a meta-CFD with a margin of 2%, it will always find a match (of course it will not cost me 2%, but rather the best the market can offer up to 2%).
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Hero MemberActivity: 714Merit: 500 Re: Mastercoin suggestion: Contracts for Difference November 04, 2013, 11:14:19 PM
Last edit: November 04, 2013, 11:39:43 PM by Luckybit #7 Quote from: ripper234 on November 04, 2013, 10:38:43 PM Quote from: dacoinminster on November 04, 2013, 10:34:54 PM Heck yes. Doing CFDs as a MasterCoin feature is a fantastic idea. The user experience is (probably) not as simple as it would be for escrow-backed currencies, but unlike those currencies, there isn't any doubt about whether this would work, or for how long.
BTW you could even have meta features based on it: I could basically entrust a certain amount of mastercoins to "any CFD that meets certain criterias". This way, even if the duration of the contract runs out, and my counterparty can withdraw their funds ... my CFD will automatically pop up to find the next counterparty, and I won't have to manually find another one.
BTW you could even have meta features based on it: I could basically entrust a certain amount of mastercoins to "any CFD that meets certain criterias". This way, even if the duration of the contract runs out, and my counterparty can withdraw their funds ... my CFD will automatically pop up to find the next counterparty, and I won't have to manually find another one.
These are some excellent ideas. Mastercoin could very well trigger a financial singularity and that is why I'm invested.
What is a list of features we could build on top of CFDs?
The feature you mention about any CFD which meets certain criteria, reminds me of something Mike Hearn was talking about with contracts. I endorse that idea, care to explore it further?
Dacoinminster you might want to take a look at this.
Sahai-Waters CPE ABE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD4L7xDNCmA#t=1311
http://eprint.iacr.org/2008/290.pdf
These are some excellent ideas. Mastercoin could very well trigger a financial singularity and that is why I'm invested.What is a list of features we could build on top of CFDs?The feature you mention about any CFD which meets certain criteria, reminds me of something Mike Hearn was talking about with contracts. I endorse that idea, care to explore it further?Dacoinminster you might want to take a look at this.
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LegendaryActivity: 1274Merit: 1000Ron Gross Re: Mastercoin suggestion: Contracts for Difference November 04, 2013, 11:25:37 PM #8
Vitalik and me just put the idea out there, the next step would be to formalize it.
FYI, my top priority task right now is putting Willett's whitepaper in a format that's easy to fork on github.
Once that's done we can start specifying such features more precisely on top of the whitepaper itself. All in due time. Too many features, too little timeVitalik and me just put the idea out there, the next step would be to formalize it.FYI, my top priority task right now is putting Willett's whitepaper in a format that's easy to fork on github.Once that's done we can start specifying such features more precisely on top of the whitepaper itself.
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Sr. MemberActivity: 331Merit: 330 Re: Mastercoin suggestion: Contracts for Difference November 05, 2013, 05:43:52 AM #9
1. CREATE_CFD_OFFER(privkey, price_ticker, deadline, baseline, upside, downside, ratio)
Creates an offer to make a contract for difference, in which address(privkey) would receive UPSIDE - (PRICE - BASELINE) * RATIO at DEADLINE, where PRICE is the value of PRICE_TICKER at DEADLINE. Sends a payment of UPSIDE to a protocol-managed escrow, awaiting someone to accept the offer.
2. CANCEL_CFD_OFFER(offer_txid)
Self explanatory
3. MATCH_CFD_OFFER(privkey, offer_txid)
Accepts a given offer, and sends a payment of DOWNSIDE to a protocol-managed escrow.
Example:
Joe has 50 MSC (where 1 MSC is currently 40 USD), and wants to create an escrow with Speculator Sam to balance out his exposure against the USD. Joe makes the transaction:
CREATE_CFD_OFFER(Joe's privkey, eToro-USD, Nov 31 23:59, 40, 10, 10, 1.25)
This moves 10 MSC from Joe to the escrow. Speculator Sam matches the escrow.
Case 1: MSC drops to 38 USD by Nov 31.
Joe receives 10 - (38 - 40) * 1.25 = 12.5 MSC from the escrow fund, and Sam receives 7.5 MSC. Joe lost 100 USD from the MSC price going down, but gains 2.5 * 38 = 95 USD, essentially cancelling out the downside.
Note that he does have a tiny quadratic loss, but I think it's okay to leave that in there since it's relatively small; if it does become a problem we can always change the formula to UPSIDE - (PRICE - BASELINE) * RATIO / PRICE * BASELINE to account for this.
Case 2: MSC goes up to 43 USD by Nov 31.
Joe receives 10 - (43 - 40) * 1.25 = 6.25 MSC, and Sam gets the other 13.75 MSC.
Case 3: MSC drops to 32 USD on Nov 20.
The escrow fund triggers a liquidation, giving Sam 10 - (32 - 40) * 1.25 = 0 MSC, and Joe the full 20 MSC. Joe now needs a new CFD, just in case MSC keeps dropping.
Case 4: MSC goes up to 48 USD on Nov 12.
I'm sure you can figure it out for yourself
The idea is that on top of this the GUI designers would build a good interface, perhaps segregating CFDs by leverage and duration and even limiting to specific ones to promote standardization. It would essentially work like Bitfinex or any other leveraged trading exchange. Meni also made an argument that this mechanism would require people willing to speculate on MSC at 2x leverage; if this becomes problematic, the market will self-correct and put CFDs at a premium in the 2x leverage speculator's favor, at least until some people arbitrage away the difference by taking half their money into fiat and half into 2x leveraged CFDs. Here's some formalization:1. CREATE_CFD_OFFER(privkey, price_ticker, deadline, baseline, upside, downside, ratio)Creates an offer to make a contract for difference, in which address(privkey) would receive UPSIDE - (PRICE - BASELINE) * RATIO at DEADLINE, where PRICE is the value of PRICE_TICKER at DEADLINE. Sends a payment of UPSIDE to a protocol-managed escrow, awaiting someone to accept the offer.2. CANCEL_CFD_OFFER(offer_txid)Self explanatory3. MATCH_CFD_OFFER(privkey, offer_txid)Accepts a given offer, and sends a payment of DOWNSIDE to a protocol-managed escrow.Example:Joe has 50 MSC (where 1 MSC is currently 40 USD), and wants to create an escrow with Speculator Sam to balance out his exposure against the USD. Joe makes the transaction:CREATE_CFD_OFFER(Joe's privkey, eToro-USD, Nov 31 23:59, 40, 10, 10, 1.25)This moves 10 MSC from Joe to the escrow. Speculator Sam matches the escrow.Case 1: MSC drops to 38 USD by Nov 31.Joe receives 10 - (38 - 40) * 1.25 = 12.5 MSC from the escrow fund, and Sam receives 7.5 MSC. Joe lost 100 USD from the MSC price going down, but gains 2.5 * 38 = 95 USD, essentially cancelling out the downside.Note that he does have a tiny quadratic loss, but I think it's okay to leave that in there since it's relatively small; if it does become a problem we can always change the formula to UPSIDE - (PRICE - BASELINE) * RATIO / PRICE * BASELINE to account for this.Case 2: MSC goes up to 43 USD by Nov 31.Joe receives 10 - (43 - 40) * 1.25 = 6.25 MSC, and Sam gets the other 13.75 MSC.Case 3: MSC drops to 32 USD on Nov 20.The escrow fund triggers a liquidation, giving Sam 10 - (32 - 40) * 1.25 = 0 MSC, and Joe the full 20 MSC. Joe now needs a new CFD, just in case MSC keeps dropping.Case 4: MSC goes up to 48 USD on Nov 12.I'm sure you can figure it out for yourselfThe idea is that on top of this the GUI designers would build a good interface, perhaps segregating CFDs by leverage and duration and even limiting to specific ones to promote standardization. It would essentially work like Bitfinex or any other leveraged trading exchange. Meni also made an argument that this mechanism would require people willing to speculate on MSC at 2x leverage; if this becomes problematic, the market will self-correct and put CFDs at a premium in the 2x leverage speculator's favor, at least until some people arbitrage away the difference by taking half their money into fiat and half into 2x leveraged CFDs. Argumentum ad lunam: the fallacy that because Bitcoin's price is rising really fast the currency must be a speculative bubble and/or Ponzi scheme.
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LegendaryActivity: 2198Merit: 1002 Re: Mastercoin suggestion: Contracts for Difference November 09, 2013, 12:13:10 AM
Last edit: November 09, 2013, 12:29:06 AM by markm #15 I think that back when we discussed longcoins and shortcoins ideas it turned out that it is possible to not need a data feed.
Basically at any moment when either party saw a price somewhere that made them prefer that price, they could escape the longcoin/shortcoin position to cash in wherever it was that they thought would for them be a better deal.
It thus needed no oracles aka data feeds, since it is no one else's business but your own why it is that you exercised, or even whether you were in fact going to actually be able to get the better deal that had lured you into exercising.
Why should anyone but you need to know how much you are going to go sell something for elsewhere? If in fact you do know of some obscure marketplace where you can get a better price than others who only know of some well known markets not the lucrative markets you know of isn't it in your best interest not to reveal what price the asset is worth on some market somewhere but simply to close your position and go make your sale without telling everyone "oh by the way, right now gold is going for $XXXX.XX over at such and such a place" ?
I do not recall offhand the details of the setup that allowed people this freedom from third party claims about what things are worth, but isn't it in general better in a supposedly free market to be able to decide for yourself whether exercising or not is profitable for you, taking into account what prices you with your possibly extraordinary contacts and knowledge of markets can get, than to let some third party dictate how much your stuff is worth based on some oracle or market or feed that they themselves happen to prefer to use for making their own decisions as to what the current value of things is to them?
In the context of whether something is worth a meatspace dollar or not for example, if you yourself happen to find a buyer who is willing to pay a meatspace dollar for something shouldn't that be sufficient, shouldn't you be able to just sell the thing to that buyer for a dollar without having to reveal to the people you are doing long and short stuff with that you do know of an opportunity to get a dollar and maybe even reveal to them who what where you (or maybe anyone in general who knew of the opportunity) could go get a dollar at this particular moment?
Basically such a system even allows both the long position person and the short position person to totally dis-agree about the current value of a thing, while allowing both of them the freedom to go cash in at the value they believe they can get for it, whether or not the other party could get that same amount for it or not.
This could even go to totally personal opportunities, "oh my uncle will give me a hundred bucks for this first dollar I ever earned by trading, so I don't care that you believe it is only worth a dollar I am going to sell it for a hundred dollars too bad for you your uncle isn't so generous" type situations. When you want out of the position you get out, no one need know how much you got or hoped to get for the stuff you backed out of / withdrew from the long/short situation. No need for an oracle or feed telling everyone "by the way so and so's uncle will buy one for a hundred right now" etc.
The end result though was like a contract for difference except both parties got what they could get for a thing without any need to know what the other party or a third party arbiter/oracle/feed claimed a thing was worth.
(You sell your stuff where you think best for you, other chap sells his where he thinks best for him.)
It thus seemed like a pretty good setup, but I think the reason it never got pursued was that it had no leverage into it, and back when we were discussign it everyone was all about leverage, they wanted basically what the teenager's site that had died with everyone's funds was providing, an ability to bet small to win huge on changes in prices e.g. of bitcoins compared to dollars or dollars compared to bitcoins etc.
The longcoin/shortcoin approach I think basically needed collateral, so in those days with that audience all of whom wanted something for nothing without collateral it was anathema.
-MarkM-
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Colour-blind racial ideology associated with racism, both online and offline
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Washington, April 22 (ANI): Colour-blind racial ideology is linked to racism, both online and offline, according to a new American research.
Brendesha Tynes, a professor of educational psychology and of African American studies at University of Illinois, conducted the study which analysed the associations between responses to racial theme party images on social networking sites and a colour-blind racial ideology.
Tynes found that white students and those who rated highly in colour-blind racial attitudes were more likely not to be offended by images from racially themed parties at which attendees dressed and acted as caricatures of racial stereotypes (for instance, photos of students dressed in blackface make-up attending a "gangsta party" to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day).
Tynes said: "People who reported higher racial color-blind attitudes were more likely to be white, and more likely to condone or not be bothered by racial-theme party images.
"In fact, some even encouraged the photos by adding comments of heir own such as 'Where's the Colt 45?' or 'Party like a rock tar.' "
For the study, Tynes showed 217 ethnically diverse college students images from racially themed parties and prompted them to respond as if they were writing on a friend's Facebook or MySpace page.
Tynes said: "Since so much of campus life is moving online, we tried to mimic the online social network environment as much as we could.
"What we saw were people's responses almost in real time."
Fifty-eight percent of African-Americans were unequivocally bothered by the images, compared with only 21 percent of whites.
Forty-one percent were in the bothered-ambivalent group, and 24 percent were in the not bothered-ambivalent group.
In the written response portion of the study, the responses ranged from approval and nonchalance ("OMG!! I can't believe you guys would think of that!!! Horrible ... but kinda funny not gonna lie") to mild opprobrium and outrage ("This is obscenely offensive").
The students were also quizzed about their attitudes toward racial privilege, institutional discrimination and racial issues.
Those who scored higher on the measure were more likely to hold colour-blind racial attitudes, and were more likely to be ambivalent or not bothered by the race party photos.
Respondents low in racial colour-blindness were much more vocal in expressing their displeasure and opposition to these images, and would even go so far as to "de-friend" someone over posting those images, Tynes pointed out.
She said: "If you subscribe to a colour-blind racial ideology, you don't think that race or racism exists, or that it should exist.
"You are more likely to think that people who talk about race and racism are the ones who perpetuate it. You think that racial problems are just isolated incidents and that people need to get over it and move on. You're also not very likely to support affirmative action, and probably have a lower multi-cultural competence."
Tynes added: "I wanted to see whether colour-blind racial attitudes played a role in condoning images.
"What we found is that the color-blind ideal commonly socialized and valued among whites may actually be detrimental to race relations on college campuses."
Tynes' research also revealed an incongruence of reactions among white students that she's dubbed "Facebook face."
Tynes said: "To their friends, they would express mild approval of the party photos or just not discuss race.
"But in private, in a reaction that they thought their friends wouldn't see, some students would let us know that they thought the image was racist or that it angered them. We think that it's because whites have been socialized not to talk about race." (ANI) |
In a new Wall Street Journal piece former BP scientist and DOE Undersecretary of Science Steven Koonin delivers a paradoxical case for climate change inaction. Koonin mis-states a number of scientific details, and ultimately lures readers toward the conclusion that climate change isn’t an urgent problem. His choice of emphasis doesn’t hold up when confronted with all of the available evidence.
[We will be on travel from September 23-28 so comment moderation is likely to be even slower than usual — apologies in advance.]
[UPDATED September 21 with statements by scientists Michael Mann, Michael MacCracken, and Howard Frumkin, added below.]
The following is a guest post by Climate Nexus:
On eve of climate march, WSJ publishes call to wait and do nothing
In a new Wall Street Journal piece (Climate Science Is Not Settled, September 19) former BP scientist and DOE Undersecretary of Science Steven Koonin delivers a paradoxical case for climate change inaction. In a testament to just how strong the science is, he acknowledges the basic facts that humans are causing harmful warming, never flat-out stating that action isn’t needed. But Koonin mis-states a number of scientific details, and ultimately lures readers toward the conclusion that climate change isn’t an urgent problem. His choice of emphasis doesn’t hold up when confronted with all of the available evidence.
We know that humans have warmed the climate
Future projections run from bad to worse
Uncertainty is a central concern of climate science, far from being covered up
The IPCC is transparent and clear on uncertainty
Reducing emissions is practical, achievable, and necessary now – and the status quo poses huge risks
We know that humans have warmed the climate. Koonin is clear on this point, saying there’s “no hoax” and “little doubt” that humans are influencing the climate. But he subtly understates the amount of human influence, by saying that it is “comparable” to natural influences. This implies that human and natural influences are equal, but the IPCC states that their best estimate is that all recent warming is due to human activity. Like all of Koonin’s points here, this is a common delayer argument that simply does not stand up to even the mildest scrutiny.
The only uncertainty in climate projections concerns the difference between harmful warming and catastrophic warming. Koonin manages to conduct a lengthy discussion of uncertainty without giving any clue as to what range of outcomes the “unsettled science” encompasses. He doesn’t mention that the potential range runs from bad to worse. Climate change is already harming us through extreme weather, health, and other impacts. Without concerted emissions reductions, even the best-case future warming scenario escalates these harms, while the worst case poses grave threats to all humans. Models are designed for long-term projections: asking them to predict short-term variability is like confusing a calendar and a clock. Through Koonin’s choice of emphasis, he encourages the reader to jump to the inaccurate conclusion that warming might end up being negligible, but never actually states this because the science doesn’t support it.
Scientific uncertainty has not been covered up. Koonin implies that he is raising issues which otherwise would be relegated to “hushed sidebar conversations at academic conferences.” But (to use the example of one of the largest and most influential scientific conferences) at last year’s AGU meeting one of the six primary lecture series specifically focused on the difficulties of characterizing uncertainty. Scientists have been working closely on this, yet even with an intimate knowledge of climate uncertainties, the overall warming trend could not be clearer and they overwhelmingly support action now.
The IPCC treats uncertainty appropriately. Koonin complains that the IPCC summaries do not feature his questions, but this is entirely appropriate. The purpose of a summary is to provide a readable overview of what we DO know about the climate system, not to provide an accounting of every gap and thorny detail. As Koonin acknowledges, the underlying IPCC chapters discuss uncertainties and questions in detail. The summaries conclude that action now would be cheaper, safer, and more effective than delay, not because they pretend uncertainty doesn’t exist, but because that is where the balance of evidence rests.
Reducing emissions is practical, achievable, and necessary now. One recent report found that in the next 15 years, the world will need to spend $90 trillion on infrastructure upgrades regardless of whether we pursue a low-carbon pathway. Investing in low-carbon technology would add less than 5% to this cost, and would deliver a cascade of other savings in the form of health co-benefits and averted climate impacts. Another MIT study found that the health benefits from a variety of policies could deliver a tenfold return on the investment.
As a reliable anchor of denial and delay, it’s notable that the Wall Street Journal published a piece that essentially acknowledges the reality of global warming and the huge risks it poses to national and global stability. On the topic of action, Koonin states, “Society’s choices in the years ahead will necessarily be based on uncertain knowledge of future climates. That uncertainty need not be an excuse for inaction.” But unsurprisingly for the WSJ, he then completely overwhelms this very accurate statement by giving a one-sided presentation of the science, and emphasizing the uncertainties and costs of action throughout the piece.
This paradoxical approach encourages a dangerous “do-nothing” attitude, employing self-defeating platitudes like “the climate is always changing” and (paraphrasing) “we mustn’t suppress scientific debate.” Both are technically true, but neither is relevant to the current situation. We need climate action for a safe future. Many observed changes and impacts are outpacing projections, and the risks of the worse-case scenarios are too much for society to bear.
Climate scientists respond:
Dr. Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State:
Koonin mentions that this climate is always changing. This is a standard line in the WSJ because it sounds reasonable at first blush, but of course it conveys a deep falsehood. The fact is that the actual peer-reviewed scientific research shows that (a) the rate of warming over the past century is unprecedented as far back as the 20,000 years paleoclimate scientists are able to extend the record and (b) that warming can ONLY be explained by human influences.
Indeed, it is the RATE of warming that presents such risk to human civilization and our environment. There is no doubt that there were geological periods that were warmer than today due to long-term changes in greenhouse gas concentrations driven by natural factors like plate tectonics. But consider the early Cretaceous 100 million years ago when CO2 concentrations were even higher than today, and there were dinosaurs roaming the ice-free poles. Over the last 100 million years, nature slowly buried all of that additional CO2 beneath Earth’s surface in the form of fossil fuels. We are now unburying that carbon a *MILLION* times faster than it was buried, leading to unprecedented rates of increase in greenhouse concentrations and resulting climate changes. To claim that this is just part of a natural cycle is to be either deeply naive or disingenuous.
Dr. Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Policy at the Climate Institute:
Of the many points to be made, here are a few:
Koonin’s analysis totally fails to consider the significant risk of very serious impacts on marine life of ocean acidification from the rising CO2 concentration. Impacts are already affecting those growing oysters and other shelled organisms in the Pacific Northwest, and coral atolls around the world are at risk over coming decades—and that is pure chemistry totally independent of climate models.
Koonin’s point that the climate has changed so much in the past is actually one of the key reasons to be worried about human-induced climate change. Were the past climate stable even as the various natural forcings were changing, then there would be less reason for concern that human-induced forcings could change the climate. But reality is that past natural forcings caused significant changes in the climate—and now human activities are leading to forcings that are comparable to or even larger than natural ones in the past. In addition, the forcings being created will change climate more rapidly than have natural factors, making this unprecedented except for the catastrophic changes that have followed the impacts of large asteroids. Thus, contrary to Koonin’s assertion that past climate change suggests a policy of caution, a more appropriate conclusion would be that insights gained from past climate change should be leading to much more aggressive policy action than is now underway.
Yes, there is lots more to be learned, but the basic physics of the climate change issue have been clear since the 1960s when the President’s Science Advisory Council sent their report to President Johnson and Congress in 1965. Except for refrigerants of various types, human activities are adding increasing amounts of carbon dioxide (and other substances) to the atmosphere that are amplifying the natural warming effect of these substances in the atmosphere—it is not that we are not familiar with the substances we are adding to the atmosphere and have dealt with for decades. That these gases will cause warming has been recognized since the mid-19th century and adding more will surely cause more warming. Certainly, there are more questions to be investigated and resolved, and they do affect how best to adapt and other policies—but they do not alter at all the fundamental reality that human activities have become the primary driver of changes in climate, overwhelming the cycling changes in solar radiation and being much longer lasting than the occasional volcanic eruptions.
On sea level rise, Koonin’s comments are again mistaken and misleading. The present rate of sea level rise is well above the rate for the first half of the 20th century. The relatively stable climate that has allowed civilization to expand over the last several thousand years has kept sea level quite constant—you can still visit the coast of Sicily and find the remains of salt flats constructed in ancient times. That climate change can cause sea level to change is a key lesson from past changes in the climate that Koonin fails to mention. Since the peak of the last glacial cycle, sea level rose about 20 meters for each one degree Celsius increase in global average temperature (equivalent to a sea level rise of about 30 feet per degree Fahrenheit!!) While it took centuries or more for the full effect to be felt in the past when natural forcings were changing slowly, the adjustment will likely be much more rapid with the faster increase in forcing due to human activities. While the rate of rise will likely decrease slowly with warming because there is less ice on land to be melted, there are still about 75 meters (near 250 feet) of potential sea level rise in the ice tied up in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which have been experiencing accelerated loss of mass.
Dr. Howard Frumkin, M.D., Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Washington:
From a health perspective, there are two very important points to be made: about the tail risks involved, and about the concept of “no regrets.”
Tail risks: Koonin states that it is crucial to know just how changes in climate will play out, suggesting that unless we know for sure we shouldn’t do anything big. In practical terms, if our goal is to protect people then that’s not the crucial question. It’s more important to ask “What worst-case outcomes might be expected (even if they’re unlikely) and how can we reduce that risk?” This is what economists call tail risk—but it’s not just an economic issue. If you come to my emergency room with high fever, stiff neck, and photophobia, I’m going to treat you for meningitis even before the diagnosis is confirmed, because the downside risk of not acting is enormous—you could die. Koonin would instead have us dither about the details of the diagnostic test.
“No regrets” policy: Koonin supports certain policies, such as those encouraging efficiency, research and development, even in the face of uncertainty. That’s very sensible. But when he goes on to say that “climate strategies beyond such ‘no regrets’ efforts carry costs, risks and questions of effectiveness…” things become muddied. “No regrets” is not a clear and simple attribute of climate strategies. We’re learning that many more interventions are cost-effective than opponents would have us believe, especially when we consider externalities and do full-benefit accounting (including health benefits.) And we need to ask “Whose regrets”? What is “no regrets” for most of us might still be regrettable for an influential few (such as the coal industry); there are important questions of fairness embedded in Koonin’s approach of only endorsing “no regrets” solutions.
* * *
See also: BP/DOE’s Koonin: Anthropogenic Global Warming is Real, Important, and Must Be Addressed |
Photo Credit: Joshua L. Jones/file Campus carry protesters at the Arch.
In spite of ongoing opposition in Athens, Gov. Nathan Deal has signed HB 280, this year's version of the "campus carry" legislation he vetoed last year.
Deal's veto statement last year included a full-throated defense of gun-free campuses, citing founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, who banned guns at the University of Virginia, and the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who ruled in District of Columbia vs. Heller that banning guns in schools and on government property is not unconstitutional.
Deal also cited several specific objections in 2016, and addressing those apparently was enough to convince him to sign HB 280 in spite of his general objections to HB 859.
Like HB 859, HB 280 carves out exceptions for fraternity and sorority houses, dorms and athletic events. Other exceptions added to HB 280 include daycares, classrooms where dual-enrollment high school students are attending class, faculty offices and rooms where disciplinary hearings are conducted. There's some ambiguity, however, about the bill's language.
The law, which takes effect July 21, applies to concealed-carry permit holders.
Here's Deal's full statement:
It is altogether appropriate that weapons not be allowed in sensitive areas on college campuses, and I appreciate the thoughtful consideration given by the General Assembly in expanding these excluded areas within a college campus in this year’s bill,” said Deal. “While HB 280 addresses the rights and restrictions relating to weapons carry license holderson a college campus, it in effect may have greater significance for students who are going to or coming from a campus. Unfortunately, in parts of the state, the path to higher education travels through dangerous territory. At the present time, assailants can, and do, target these students knowing full well that their victims are not permitted to carry protection, even those who are weapons carry license holders, because they are either going to or coming from a campus where no weapons are allowed. In recent years, we’ve witnessed college students fall victim to violent attacks in or while traveling to libraries and academic buildings, and while traveling to and from their homes to class. As this legislation is more narrowly tailored as to exclude areas on a college campus, I’ve signed HB 280.
Deal signed the bill in spite of opposition from the University System of Georgia, every public college and university president in the state and every campus police department.
Likewise, House Republicans just passed a health care bill in spite of opposition from not only Democrats, but conservative think tanks, hospitals, doctors and the AARP—pretty much everyone except the president and 217 GOP congressment.
If you are shot on campus, your health insurance may or may not cover it—if you still have any. Athens Rep. Jody Hice, along with other House Republicans, helped the latest version of Trumpcare the American Health Care Act across the finish line.
Here's what Hice had to say for himself:
Hardworking Americans can no longer bear the high cost of health care in our country, and the time for relief is now. The AHCA promotes policies that will lower health care premiums, stabilize the insurance markets, improve the quality of care, and increase consumer choice, while continuing to provide affordable coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. The AHCA is not perfect, but repairing the damage of Obamacare, lowering costs, and protecting people with pre-existing conditions is critical to the future of this country, and this legislation is a strong first step. The latest amendment, which dedicates an additional $8 billion to reduce costs for patients with pre-existing conditions, strengthens that commitment. Today’s passage of the AHCA is only the beginning of a long legislative process to fully repeal Obamacare and its harmful policies, which have proven to be disastrous for our health care system. I am proud to be at the forefront of this fight and follow through on the promises we've made to the American people.
Remember, though, that this is a very bad bill that does the opposite of what Hice and others say it does. |
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FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- Ingrid Latorre was expecting to be interviewed Tuesday, but it was not expected to be in Fort Collins.
A rally was planned at Denver International Airport for Latorre's flight to Peru, but early Tuesday, she elected to go into sanctuary after hearing the cries from her children.
"We don't want to separate," Latorre said. "I decided to go back to my country, but my son told me he don't want to go back to Peru."
Now Latorre and her children are calling Foothills Unitarian Church in Fort Collins home.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement discourages agents from making immigration-related arrests inside churches.
On Tuesday night, ICE called Latorre a fugitive, saying her criminal record of forged documents as well as being "illegally present" in the U.S. for 15 years makes her a priority for removal.
Latorre's story has attracted international attention. In May, she left a Denver church after living in sanctuary.
At that point, ICE gave her a brief stay of removal so she could fight her legal case.
But after losing in court and being denied a pardon from Gov. John Hickenlooper, Latorre said her only choice was sanctuary. |
Leicester city council is set to launch the Greyfriars Townscape Heritage Initiative tomorrow (Wednesday 13 May), which aims to improve the historic ‘Greyfriars’ area of the city centre.
Over the course of the next five years, the initiative will help at least 20 of the most historically important buildings in the area, to the south of Leicester Cathedral, be regenerated and restored to their former splendour.
Leicester council have put £450,000 into the scheme, with the rest being made up of funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
The ‘Greyfriars’ area of the city is situated within the Castle Ward, and is centred around Friar Lane – where the body of Richard III was found (click on the image below to see the full area in detail):
The target areas for the council’s new initiative include: New Street, Millstone Lane, Friar Lane, Wycliffe Street and parts of St Martins and Peacock Lane.
Business/property owners in the Greyfriars area will be encouraged to apply for funding to help restore and repair building fronts, lost architectural features such as original windows, fencing and decorative masonry, or to simply bring empty space back into use.
The main stated aims of the Greyfriars Townscape Heritage Initiative are to:
Make the historic core of the city more legible.
Make the area more attractive and inviting to occupiers and visitors.
Stimulate economic growth by making the historic core more inviting for commercial investors and residential use.
Increase understanding and help people value Leicester’s historic development, particularly the area of Leicester’s old town.
Increase greater participation and understanding in conserving Leicester’s historic environment.
Improve the local heritage skills sector through training in related skills .
Speaking ahead of the launch, newly re-elected City Mayor Peter Soulsby said:
“The Greyfriars area is one of the city’s architectural and historical treasures. “The generous support from the Heritage Lottery Fund will help us restore important examples of the city’s built heritage and invest in making the area more attractive to visitors. “This launch event is a great example of how we can encourage people to enjoy this fascinating part of the city centre and discover its hidden history for themselves.”
The initiative will be fully launched during an event tomorrow hosted in an old factory courtyard on Millstone Lane – just past The Boot Room restaurant.
Also expected during the event is confirmation on what will replace the recently demolished New Walk Centre.
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It's nice to have your packages delivered to you via methods other than the post office.
Midway through a DotA game that I was winning, I got a knock at the door. Thinking it may be my neighbour knocking and asking for something to borrow, I opened the door to find someone, holding a small box.
"Hi, are you [Liru]?" "Yeah..." "Here you go. It's a package from reddit." "Ah, thanks."
Quickly running back to my room to finish my game of DotA (sorry, Asian delivery boy, if I seemed like I was in a rush to get back to what I was doing; I kinda was!), I looked at the box afterwards. It immediately showed that my giftee was awesome: a picture of House Lannister's lion from the ASOIAF series, with "The Lannisters send their regards" written underneath, and a "Lannisters do not pay stamp taxes" "stamp" in the corner.
Inside, I found a handwritten note expressing interest in ASOIAF and Breaking Bad and praising a fellow fan for their taste. (Can you guess who? Me! I'm that fan! :D) Along with the note came a t-shirt that says "I play keyboard for the INTERNET" in a cool design, some blue "Heisenberg candy", and a set of Portal coasters. All awesome presents from an awesome giftee! |
An Arizona Republican lawmaker is pushing a bill that would allow the state to ignore any federal order it deems to be unconstitutional, the Arizona Republic reported.
“If you torture the Constitution enough, you will get it to say anything. And that’s what we have today,” said state Rep. Mark Finchem (R).
Finchem’s proposal, House Bill 2024, would give the state the power to refuse to allocate any resources in support of presidential executive orders, Supreme Court decisions or federal policies that went into effect without congressional approval.
However, it does not specify how the state would determine whether any decision by the high court or executive order would be “is not in pursuance of the Constitution.”
Finchem, a former police officer, said that his bill did not come in response to President Barack Obama’s executive order tightening background checks on gun sales, but that he still opposed it.
“I think all of us who are responsible gun owners, responsible self-defense folks, want to see a safe world,” he said. “But bad guys don’t give a flying rip where they’re going to get guns from. They’ll steal them. They’ll buy them out of the trunk of a car.”
He was even more critical of the high court, telling the Arizona Capitol Times that he did not consider its decisions to be case law.
“The court can pass an opinion all day long,” he said. “But until that opinion goes back to Congress and becomes an enactment, and is signed into law, a statute, by the president, it’s not operable.”
Finchem cited the court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage as one example, arguing that the government should not be involved in marriage at all.
“If the federal government wants to issue a gay marriage license, they’re free to do that,” Finchem said. “But it’s not a state license.”
The representative’s Facebook page contains posts suggesting support for Ammon Bundy and the militant group that seized a federal building in Harvey County, Oregon, as well as disparaging not only Obama, but the Black Lives Matter movement, as seen below. |
Welcome back to our three-part series on touchscreen technology. Last time, Florence Ion walked you through the technology's past, from the invention of the first touchscreens in the 1960s all the way up through the mid-2000s. During this period, different versions of the technology appeared in everything from PCs to early cell phones to personal digital assistants like Apple's Newton and the Palm Pilot. But all of these gadgets proved to be little more than a tease, a prelude to the main event. In this second part in our series, we'll be talking about touchscreens in the here-and-now.
When you think about touchscreens today, you probably think about smartphones and tablets, and for good reason. The 2007 introduction of the iPhone kicked off a transformation that turned a couple of niche products—smartphones and tablets—into billion-dollar industries. The current fierce competition from software like Android and Windows Phone (as well as hardware makers like Samsung and a host of others) means that new products are being introduced at a frantic pace.
The screens themselves are just one of the driving forces that makes these devices possible (and successful). Ever-smaller, ever-faster chips allow a phone to do things only a heavy-duty desktop could do just a decade or so ago, something we've discussed in detail elsewhere. The software that powers these devices is more important, though. Where older tablets and PDAs required a stylus or interaction with a cramped physical keyboard or trackball to use, mobile software has adapted to be better suited to humans' native pointing device—the larger, clumsier, but much more convenient finger.
The foundation: capacitive multitouch
Most successful touch devices in the last five or so years have had one thing in common: a capacitive touchscreen capable of detecting multiple inputs at once. In this way, interacting with a brand-new phone like Samsung's Galaxy S 4 is the same as interacting with the original 2007-model iPhone. The list of differences between the two is otherwise about as long as your arm, but the two are built upon that same foundation.
We discussed some early capacitive touchscreens in our last piece, but the modern capacitive touchscreen as used in your phone or tablet is a bit different in its construction. It is composed of several layers: on the top, you've got a layer of plastic or glass meant to cover up the rest of the assembly. This layer is normally made out of something thin and scratch-resistant, like Corning's Gorilla Glass, to help your phone survive a ride in your pocket with your keys and come out unscathed. Underneath this is a capacitive layer that conducts a very small amount of electricity, which is layered on top of another, thinner layer of glass. Underneath all of this is the LCD panel itself. When your finger, a natural electrical conductor, touches the screen, it interferes with the capacitive layer's electrical field. That data is passed to a controller chip that registers the location (and, often, pressure) of the touch and tells the operating system to respond accordingly.
This arrangement by itself can only accurately detect one touch point at a time—try to touch the screen in two different locations and the controller will interpret the location of the touch incorrectly or not at all. To register multiple distinct touch points, the capacitive layer needs to include two separate layers—one using "transmitter" electrodes and one using "receiver" electrodes. These lines of electrodes run perpendicular to each other and form a grid over the device's screen. When your finger touches the screen, it interferes with the electric signal between the transmitter and receiver electrodes.
Because of the grid arrangement, the controller can accurately place more than one touch input at once—most phones and tablets today support between two and ten simultaneous points of contact at a time. The multitouch surfaces of the screens allow for more complex gestures like pinching to zoom or rotating an image. Navigating through a mobile operating system is something we take for granted now, but it isn't possible without the screen's ability to recognize multiple simultaneous touches.
These basic building blocks are still at the foundation of smartphones, tablets, and touch-enabled PCs now, but the technology has evolved and improved steadily since the first modern smartphones were introduced. Special screen coatings, sometimes called "oleophobic" (or, literally, afraid of oil), have been added to the top glass layer to help screens resist fingerprints and smudges. These even make the smudges that do blight your screen a bit easier to wipe off. Corning has released two new updates to its original Gorilla Glass concept that have made the glass layer thinner while increasing its scratch-resistance. Finally, "in-cell" technology has embedded the capacitive touch layer in the LCD itself, further reducing the overall thickness and complexity of the screens.
None of these changes have been as fundamentally important as the original multipoint capacitive touchscreen, but they've enabled thinner, lighter phones with more room for batteries and other internal components. |
The unique response of the Horn of Africa region to Yemeni refugees could offer lessons to countries and regions dealing with similar influxes elsewhere.
Escalating internal fighting and Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen have led to an estimated 21.4 million people – more than 80% of its population – being in need of humanitarian protection or assistance.
More than one million people have been forced from their homes. Of these, approximately 100,000, both Yemenis and foreign nationals, have fled to seek safety elsewhere. The majority – about 70,000 – have crossed the Gulf of Aden, seeking refuge in countries such as Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Djibouti.
Access to territory and protection has been swift for Yemeni refugees arriving in the Horn of Africa. This provides a lesson in hospitality that would be well heeded elsewhere.
Unique reversal of roles
Yemeni displacement to the Horn of Africa is in some respects unique. Africa is a continent familiar with large-scale refugee crises. However, it is uncommon for those seeking protection in the region to arrive from elsewhere.
With the possible exception of South Africa – which receives a small number of applications for asylum from persons outside the continent – those seeking refuge in African states tend to come from within the region itself.
What is even more striking is that the countries of asylum themselves – including Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia – are among the chief refugee-producing countries in the region. Prior to the outbreak of conflict, Yemen was itself host to some 250,000 refugees, mainly from Somalia.
The Horn of Africa is a region beset with poverty and insecurity. So how has it responded to this influx of refugees from outside? The Yemeni crisis provides a unique perspective on refugee protection in a region where refugee policies and practices have largely not been analysed.
The protection afforded to Yemenis arriving on African shores is far from perfect. However, several features of the African response would be worth highlighting to those in charge of refugee reception and protection elsewhere.
Sound foundation for generosity
The legal framework for refugee protection in Africa is one of the most advanced in the world.
The vast majority of African states are party to the 1951 Refugee Convention. In addition, Africa’s 1969 Organisation of African Unity Convention provides even more generous protections to those displaced from their homes.
The African Refugee Convention has been widely praised for its liberal approach to protection. It expands the definition of a refugee, broadens the principle of non-refoulement and endorses the principles of voluntary repatriation and international burden-sharing.
Implementation of the African Refugee Convention has been far from comprehensive. A lack of resources, legal capacity and political will continue to severely undermine protection in many parts of the region. Nevertheless, the convention’s humanitarian spirit reflects the often inclusive and welcoming approach of African states in times of crisis.
The Horn of Africa response to Yemeni refugees has been open, even welcoming, when compared with the reception of refugees elsewhere.
Access to territory has not been an issue. Horn of Africa countries have kept their borders open to those arriving across the Gulf. A representative of the government of Somaliland, himself hosting two refugee families, has expressed sympathy and messages of welcome for Yemeni refugees.
This reception of refugees stands in stark contrast to the blatantly defensive response to migration of some European governments.
Pragmatic approach
Regions such as Europe have crafted specific and detailed mechanisms for dealing with refugee protection in situations of mass influx. In contrast, African states by and large have adopted a more pragmatic approach. Recognising the need for protection, many African states simply confer refugee status on a group basis to all those fleeing the affected zone.
Rather than closing their borders until a regional agreement on protection can be found, the governments of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan have all granted prima facie refugee status to Yemeni asylum seekers. This facilitates quick registration and the provision of assistance to those arriving with nothing.
Reuters/Srdjan Zivulovic
Role of customary norms
State-based laws and policies are only one aspect of African regional responses to displaced persons in need. In practice, customary norms of hospitality and the generous responses of host communities may have even more of an impact on refugees’ safety.
A large proportion of Yemenis displaced to the Horn of Africa are living with local communities, relying on their generosity and hospitality to survive. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, acknowledged this in a recent address:
In a world where more than two-thirds of all refugees are Muslim, it is important to recognise that there is nothing in the 1951 Convention that is not already present in ancient Islamic traditions and legal texts.
Lesson for the world
Displacement crises in Africa are generally considered less newsworthy than those in Europe. But they are no less devastating. In some cases, they provide an opportunity to reflect on how we might better manage such crises at the regional level.
Protection for Yemeni refugees arriving in the Horn of Africa is far from exemplary. Profound challenges remain. The lack of safe legal avenues means that the vast majority of those fleeing conflict in Yemen face perilous journeys.
Once they arrive, instability within many host countries means security is far from guaranteed. The lack of appropriate reception arrangements and a fear of removal or detention mean many refugees do not access formal protection channels. The shortfall of funding for protection and assistance in the region remains chronic. In countries where humanitarian resources are stretched beyond their limits, the regional response to the Yemen crisis remains only one-fifth funded.
Despite this complex and challenging protection environment, the response of many African states has been swift, generous and practical. The sense of solidarity expressed by governments and local communities stands in stark contrast to the responses to refugee crises being witnessed elsewhere.
Perhaps it is time to recognise Africa not just as a source of refugees but also as a (tentative) champion of principles of humanity and hospitality. These are principles frequently lacking when those forced to flee their homes and lives come looking for protection. |
KBR workers in Iraq stole weapons and art, senators told Former workers accuse employees of improper activity, including the stealing of weapons, artwork and gold
Allegations fly at KBR hearing
Linda Warren, former employee of KBR, shows the flag she brought back from Iraq during testimony on Capitol Hill on Monday. Warren said many of her colleagues stole numerous items while doing reconstruction work in Iraq. less Linda Warren, former employee of KBR, shows the flag she brought back from Iraq during testimony on Capitol Hill on Monday. Warren said many of her colleagues stole numerous items while doing reconstruction ... more Photo: SUSAN WALSH, ASSOCIATED PRESS Photo: SUSAN WALSH, ASSOCIATED PRESS Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close KBR workers in Iraq stole weapons and art, senators told 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
WASHINGTON — KBR employees working in Iraq stole weapons, artwork and even gold to make spurs for cowboy boots, two former company workers told Senate Democrats on Monday.
Appearing before a Democrats-only panel looking into allegations of contracting abuses in Iraq, the witnesses accused their former co-workers of widespread improper activity.
KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said the company would not comment at length because the claims are part of ongoing lawsuits.
"The witnesses who testified today raised claims that KBR has previously addressed. The government has reviewed the claims and refused to join lawsuits asserting them," Browne said.
Linda Warren, a 50-year-old Abilene woman who worked as a laundry foreman and recreation director for the Houston-based contracting giant in Iraq, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee Monday that some of her American colleagues doing construction work in Iraqi palaces and municipal buildings took woodcarvings, tapestries and crystal "and even melted down gold to make spurs for cowboy boots."
Her allegations could not be independently verified.
Warren leveled her allegations in early 2004 after being reprimanded by a supervisor for giving water to Iraqi workers laboring in a sweltering laundry building when their own water supply was undrinkable.
Warren said the supervisor reminded her she had signed a confidentiality agreement and then threatened her by suggesting an American woman "wouldn't last very long on the streets of Baghdad."
That evening, with company managers present, she called KBR's ethics hot line in Houston to report her allegations. She eventually was escorted out of Baghdad by company security after KBR officials intercepted a threatening e-mail, Warren said.
Frank Cassaday, a former KBR ice plant operator, told lawmakers that a KBR foreman tried to take military equipment, including two rocket launchers, detonators and ammunition.
When he confronted the foreman, Cassaday said, "he told me to mind my own business."
Cassaday then told the camp manager. A military investigation confirmed his allegations, Cassaday said, but he did not elaborate on how the matter was resolved.
A third worker, Barry Halley, a former security manager for CAPE Environmental Management, alleged that after raising complaints with CAPE management, he was held in a room for several days by private security guards.
Les Flynn, Atlanta-based CAPE's chief operating officer, said that while some of Halley's allegations Monday were new, the company's insurance company had investigated his allegations.
"It appears they were found to be untrue," Flynn said.
The witnesses appeared at the Democratic Policy Committee's 13th hearing on contracting activities in Iraq. While Congress has had some bipartisan hearings regarding KBR, many of the allegations have come from this series of Democrats-only sessions.
Congressional investigations of KBR's activities in Iraq are almost invariably colored by politics, in no small part because Vice President Dick Cheney once headed KBR's former parent company, Halliburton Co.
Two weeks ago, the U.S. Army Sustainment Command reaffirmed its selection of KBR to participate in the 10-year logistical support contract valued at up to $150 billion.
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CaTa613 ,
I LOVE THIS APP!! I have a suggestion tho…
This app is great! As a die-hard Hamilton fan, I’m loving everything about it. Entering the lottery from this app is easy and the Ham Cam filters and stickers are fun to use! Now I can keep up with Hamilton related news and buy merchandise easier and more than ever before. Thank you for launching it!!
My only suggestion is about the trivia. I love the trivia so much and I even learned cool new things about the show I know and love. It’s even fun to test my knowledge. But you know how you get stars and streak bonuses for correct answers? I feel like these elements have no purpose. So my suggestion is that maybe when you have a certain amount of stars or a certain streak bonus, you can spend these items on things. For example, maybe a discount on your next piece of Hamilton merchandise for 700 stars. Maybe you could even make a game where users can create an avatar and use it around a virtual 18th century Manhattan and you could use those stars and streak bonuses in the game! If that might be a little too hard to do then at least find a purpose for the stars. That would make this app better than before. Thank you, and I enjoy this app so much!!
Developer Response ,
Thanks for the feedback!
Stay tuned, we have some awesome stuff coming in the next few versions ;) |
The Pentagon released a statement that the United States notified Russian forces in Syria in advance of the 59 Tomahawk-cruise-missile barrage against Shayrat Airfield...
The Pentagon released a statement that the United States notified Russian forces in Syria in advance of the 59 Tomahawk-cruise-missile barrage against Shayrat Airfield on Thursday night. Likewise, National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster said at a press conference: “[T]here was an effort to minimize … risk to third-country nationals … I think you [can] read [the] Russians from that.”
We suspect the “effort”—in addition to weaponeering and carefully selecting targets—amounted to diplomacy.
U.S. diplomacy probably consisted of front channels through the State Department and possible back channels to warn the Russians and indicate that the strike was limited to a punitive attack on a legitimate military target from which Bashar Al Assad’s chemical weapons attacks had been launched.
No Russians were killed in the attack. The lack of a Russian military response to the strike suggests Moscow’s tacit acquiescence to the limited strike, even though this is not reflected in Russian rhetoric.
Naturally, the Russians have joined with Syria and Iran to publicly condemn the attacks as illegal American aggression against a sovereign state. They have a point, although some Russian military theorists have argued that cruise missiles may “attack the critically important ground-based facilities of the adversary, without violating, until a certain moment, its national sovereignty strikes [when] launched far from borders.”
In addition, Russian strategic messaging is painting the Tomahawk strike as aiding Al Qaida and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria by destroying an airfield the Syrian Air Force and Russian forces used in counter-terrorism strikes in Homs and Idlib Provinces.
Vladimir Putin on April 5, 2017. Kremlin photo
The Russians also canceled a memorandum of understanding signed in 2015 on airspace deconfliction over Syria, proclaimed an intent to bolster Syrian air defenses, called in the U.S. defense attaché in Moscow and dispatched the guided missile frigate Admiral Grigorovich to the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
The Admiral Grigorovich is armed with Russia’s equivalent—although some may disagree—of the Tomahawk, the Kalibr NK cruise missile, which Moscow has deployed against targets in Syria since 2015.
At the time of the strike on Shayrat, Russia had advanced S-300 and S-400 air defense systems in Latakia and Tartus, and the Syrian regime has its own robust Russian-built integrated air defense system [IADS]. Although these systems have an advertised capability to counter cruise missile strikes, there is no reporting today of any IADS response. Why?
The Times of Israel offers two plausible answers: “The Russian S-400 air defense battery — considered one of the best in the world — apparently did not strike down a single US missile, either because it couldn’t or because the Russian military opted not to intervene.”
As the second largest arms supplier (after the United States), perhaps the Russians were loath to risk Tomahawks leaking past the Russian systems and thereby harming future sales. Off-axis shots are difficult and Tomahawks are extremely formidable weapons. However, it is unlikely that one of the most advanced SAM systems in the world would be unable to shoot down at least one of the Tomahawks, which fly subsonically.
The more logical and likely explanation is that the Russians chose not to escalate the situation. Although Moscow and Damascus recently signed a 49-year lease that provides for the expansion of Russia’s naval facilities at Tartus, where it has had a naval base since 1971, Russia and Syria do not have mutual defense treaty like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Moreover, while Russia has longstanding ties to Syria, would Russia be willing to have open hostilities with the United States over Syria?
Maybe the message got through to Moscow that this was a limited strike. If Russian leaders are not interested in escalating conflict with the United States over this attack, in the short term we would not expect anything more than what Russian leaders have already done.
The harsh rhetoric plays well with the Russian domestic audience and reassures Moscow’s allies that it is a committed and reliable partner. In fact, the more limited nature of the Tomahawk strike—when there were other escalatory options—shows Russia’s deterrent value and in no way diminishes Moscow’s role in the region.
S-300 missiles guard Russia’s air base in Syria’s Latakia province. Russian Ministry of Defense photo
If diplomacy has worked, we may still expect Moscow to bolster the Syrian regime over the longer term by boosting air defenses—as it has promised to do and has done in the past—and introducing more strike weapons, such as cruise and ballistic missiles, artillery and multiple rocket launcher systems, such as the formidable TOS-1A “heavy flamethrower.”
Regardless of U.S.-Russian ties and Syrian complications, Moscow may continue to forge closer ties with Tehran and sell it advanced weapons—like the recent delivery of S-300s.
If diplomacy has failed, Russia has a range of options to escalate in a variety of geopolitical friction zones.
For example, Russia could use its air defense systems and range of anti-ship weapons to create a denied area in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea along the approaches to strategic waterways such as the Bosphorus. It could escalate tensions in eastern Ukraine, cause trouble in the Black Sea or the Baltics, launch direct cyberattacks against the West or reignite frozen conflicts.
Or, more worryingly, it could do a combination of nefarious activities.
There is also the possibility that Syria, Iran or another party may act, and push the United States or Russia in an unintended direction that leads to escalation. There is plenty of precedent here.
One example—a little more than a month before the Moscow summit of May 1972, the Soviet-backed North Vietnamese military launched a massive offensive into American-backed South Vietnam.
President Richard Nixon saw the offensive as an impediment to improving U.S.-Soviet relations and asked his advisor, Alexander Haig: “How can you possibly go to the Soviet Union and toast to Brezhnev and Kosygin and sign a SALT agreement in the Great Hall of St. Peter when Russian tanks and guns are kicking the hell out of our allies in Vietnam?”
In the end, after some strong Soviet rhetorical condemnations of Nixon’s massive bombing and mine campaign that was launched in response to the offensive, the two sides agreed to disagree on Vietnam but proceed on improving superpower relations.
Great powers can use diplomacy—and back channels are an ideal tool—to find a modus vivendi, a way to agree to disagree in some areas. Hopefully, Moscow and Washington can agree to disagree rhetorically while pragmatically avoiding escalation.
At least as of this writing, that appears to be the case.
Richard Moss, Suzanne Freeman and Ryan Vest are affiliate faculty members of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. The thoughts and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the U.S. government, the U.S. Department of the Navy or the Naval War College. |
PSNI officers claim £15,000 compensation from Belfast car theft victim BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A Belfast woman whose car was stolen and rammed by a PSNI patrol has hit out at the system which led to two officers claiming £15,000 from her personal insurance. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/psni-officers-claim-15000-compensation-from-belfast-car-theft-victim-29756163.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article29757127.ece/80d5d/AUTOCROP/h342/dest_web2.jpg
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A Belfast woman whose car was stolen and rammed by a PSNI patrol has hit out at the system which led to two officers claiming £15,000 from her personal insurance.
Victoria Grierson said victims are being penalised unfairly as she criticised how her family's insurance company also had to pay for damage wreaked by two burglars on her neighbours' properties.
The mother-of-two's ordeal began in November last year when she, her partner and their sons were asleep in bed when their home was burgled.
The two men responsible stole tens of thousands of pounds worth of goods – including the family's BMW X3 and a Mini One – which were both written off after being recklessly driven off by the perpetrators. The vehicles had to be rammed by a PSNI patrol to bring them to a stop.
Ms Grierson's case has highlighted how the insurance system can see the victims of crime being punished for circumstances completely outside their control.
After the burglary ordeal, she said she was stunned to receive a solicitor's letter advising her that two PSNI officers were making personal injuries claims off her car insurance at £7,500 each.
Read more
Cops make personal injury claim against Northern Ireland man held at knifepoint in car theft
On top of the £15,000 paid out by their insurance company, a further £10,000 was also paid out to neighbours whose properties were damaged when the thieves went on the rampage in the cars.
Victoria and her partner's car insurance premiums have now rocketed by around £300 each per year – and all because of the actions of criminals while they was sleeping in their beds.
Thomas Bacon (23), of Florenceville Drive in Belfast, appeared at Downpatrick Crown Court on Tuesday charged with burglary, theft, possession of a handgun without a certificate, possession of a firearm in suspicious circumstances, aggravated vehicle taking, driving while disqualified, using a motor vehicle without insurance and failing to provide a specimen.
Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Victoria said she was left "confused and upset" by the payouts.
"It's been a tough year for us; the whole burglary has been a nightmare," she said.
"When I received a civil bill from a solicitor in Newtownards, giving two names care of a police station, it was saying they were claiming £7,500 each. I was totally confused and upset.
"This was two months after the burglary and we hadn't even been to court yet.
"They (the police) had rammed my car while I was sleeping in bed and I am the one penalised.
"But I do have to say the officers dealing with the case all year have been fantastic keeping us updated every step off the process and have been really supportive to our family." SDLP Justice spokesman Alban Maginness raised similar cases at the Stormont Justice committee earlier this year when two victims of car crime approached him about being sued by the PSNI.
Mr Maginness told the Belfast Telegraph the "nightmare" scenarios described by victims seem very unfair.
"There was no satisfaction from the police and the Policing Board in relation to this issue," he said.
"The police do have the legal right to sue, albeit the person they are suing is the victim.
"Whilst I understand the law it seems to me to be outrageous that a victim of crime is further victimised by police officers seeking compensation and further to that, on foot of that, have to pay additional premiums in relation to renewal of car insurance."
A PSNI spokesman told the Belfast Telegraph it does not hold any information in relation to police officers making a compensation claim against the owner of a stolen vehicle.
"Each incident would very much depend on the individual circumstances, therefore this would be a private matter between the individual officer, like any other citizen, and the insurance company involved."
When Bacon appeared in court earlier this week, he was handed down various concurrent sentences and fines for nine different charges.
The total sentence was six years, three in custody and three on licence.
A second suspect was never identified or brought to justice.
In 2010 Bacon was jailed for four years for his part in taking a stolen Volkswagen Polo on a 'joyride' from Newtownabbey to west Belfast. His driving on the wrong side of the road caused a taxi to crash.
At the time, Judge Gemma Loughran said Bacon – who has more than 60 convictions dating back to when he was just 14 – and his co-accused were fortunate not to be facing even more serious charges of death or grievous bodily injury by dangerous driving.
Nightmare that began with banging on our door at 3am
It's taken a year for Victoria Grierson to get a full night of sleep after her family home was burgled while they slept.
On November 22, 2012, the mother-of-two, her partner and their sons were in bed when, completely unknown to them, a nightmare scenario was unfolding.
Ms Grierson only became aware something was wrong when she was woken by a neighbour banging on the door.
She then discovered her house had been broken into, ransacked and burgled before the assailants made off with both family cars – a Mini and her partner's BMW.
She recalled what happened.
"Two houses were burgled before us," she said. "The police were sitting at the top of my street in an unmarked car while our house was being burgled.
"My neighbour heard loud music coming from my car when the engine was started. Then she saw two guys in our drive.
"She banged on our door at 3am and I knew straight away something awful had happened."
She was horrified by the scene she found downstairs after it was trashed.
"The two boys had been sleeping in their beds; there were dirty footprints leading to all our bedroom doors," she said.
Three watches valued at £7,000, a £400 laptop, an XBox, around 20 XBox games, a TV, and two children's motorbikes were stolen.
Victoria's Mini and her partner's BMW were both written off.
The damage didn't end there. Neighbours were left surveying gardens, gates, shrubbery and walls wrecked by the burglars as they careered away in the stolen cars.
They were only stopped when rammed by the PSNI patrol.
Victoria said: "We had to take £15,000 from our savings to put towards a new car and a security system for the house. My partner has only just got himself a new car.
"I nearly didn't get car insurance. It was hard to get and now it's jumped up for both of us. It doesn't seem fair."
The upset was compounded when she received a solicitor's letter saying that two police officers who rammed the car were claiming compensation.
Neighbours told Ms Grierson they were advised by the police to also claim from her car insurance for the damage to their properties.
Victoria says she has been left traumatised by what happened.
"It's only now I am getting back to sleep at night. I ended up getting sick after all this and I'm only just getting myself back together."
It's the system we have. Do I think it's fair? No
Insurance experts have said the industry is examining the legislation surrounding victims of car crime being penalised.
Victoria Grierson's case shows how car owners are being financially penalised as they are pursued for civil claims when police officers and other members of the public sustain injuries or their property has been damaged following the theft of a vehicle.
The owner's no-claims bonus can be affected and their car insurance premiums can rise as a result.
Steve Foulsham, head of technical services at the British Insurance Brokers' Association, said in Victoria Grierson's case the injury claim coming from the police is unlikely to have affected the new premium over above what it would have done for a theft claim.
When the Belfast Telegraph asked Mr Foulsham if he felt it was fair that consumers are being penalised for the actions of criminals he said: "No I don't.
"In an ideal world the perpetrators would be prosecuted, but if they are a man of straw, with no means, that's not going to go far."
Mr Foulsham explained there is currently a lot of discussion both in the insurance industry and in Government about this matter, as well as fraudulent activity and whiplash claims.
"Where you have criminal activity, if there is an innocent victim involved they do have access to compensation somewhere; whether that should be directly from government or an insurance policy is debatable," he said.
"I would agree it's not an ideal situation we have at the moment."
Paul Ryman is head of technical at the Motor Insurance Bureau which was established in 1946 as a central fund to provide a means of compensating the victims of road accidents by negligent uninsured and drivers who could not be traced.
He said: "Insurers, under legislation, are obliged to pay a claim from an injured or damaged third party regardless of who is making the claim.
"Section 98 of the Road Traffic Northern Ireland Order 1981 includes a requirement to have third party insurance and places a legal obligation on insurers when there is a claim arising from use of a vehicle they insure.
"Police, neighbours and other innocent victims can make a claim and insurers are obliged to deal with it. That's no comfort to your readers and I do sympathise, but that's the mechanism in place."
Belfast Telegraph |
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April 18, 2016, 3:46 AM GMT / Updated April 18, 2016, 11:28 PM GMT By Tim Stelloh, Alex Johnson and Elisha Fieldstadt
The death toll from Ecuador's earthquake rose to 413 on Monday as the State Department confirmed at least one U.S. citizen was killed.
"We are aware of the death of one U.S. citizen and have been in touch with their family." John Kirby, a spokesman for the department, said. "We will continue working with Ecuadorian authorities going forward."
Kirby did not identify the dead American. Earlier, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said two Canadians were killed.
Related: Family Waits for Word of Missing American After Ecuador Earthquake
The developments came after Ecuador's President Rafael Correa rushed home Sunday to coordinate rescue and recovery efforts from the 7.8-magnitude temblor that injured an additional 2000 people, reduced hundreds of buildings to rubble and buckled major highways.
Most of the deaths were in and around Portoviejo, a city of 200,000 where rescue crews worked around the clock to free people trapped in the wreckage of collapsed buildings.
"The pain is immense, but the spirit of the Ecuadorian people is greater," Correa said. "We will move forward from this."
The earthquake hit the South American country's northwest coast at 6:58 p.m. Saturday (7:58 p.m. ET).
Rescue workers in the city of Manta search through the rubble for survivors with the help of trained dogs on Sunday. ARIEL OCHOA / AFP - Getty Images
It came on the heels of a smaller 4.5-magnitude quake, which was recorded along the coast south of Muisne, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The country's Geophysics Institute said it recorded 230 aftershocks, some of them quite powerful.
Correa, who cut short a trip to Italy to return home, said the immediate priority was the search and rescue mission. "Everything can be rebuilt, but lives cannot be recovered, and that's what hurts the most," he said.
Standing next to a wrecked building in Portoviejo, Manuel Quijije said his older brother, Junior, was trapped under a pile of twisted steel and concrete with two relatives.
"For God's sake help me find my family," the 27-year-old cried out. "We managed to see his arms and legs. They're his, they're buried, but the police kicked us out because they say there's a risk the rest of the building will collapse. We're not afraid. We're desperate. We want to pull out our family."
Alice Gandelman and Bill Freedman of Vallejo, California, were on vacation in the seaside town of San Clemente when the quake hit.
"We're from the Bay Area. We feel earthquakes," Gandelman told NBC station KCRA of Sacramento. "But this was pretty intense — more than anything we've felt in the Bay Area."
Freedman told NBC Bay Area that he saw entire buildings that had been caved in and crumbled cement littering the town.
"It started, and there was a big boom, and everyone ran out of the restaurant," Freedman said. "And then it went completely dark."
Freedman said many of the buildings were made of cement, like the sidewalks, which he said he saw crumbling before his eyes.
"We had no way to get out. We had no place to go," he said. "And we had to go back and get our stuff, so if a tsunami had happened, I don't think we would have made it out."
The quake damaged El Rodeo prison in the city of Portoviejo, allowing about 100 prisoners to escape, Justice Minister Ledy Zúñiga said. About 30 had been recaptured by Sunday night, Zúñiga said.
Seeking security from any unrest, about 400 residents of Portoviejo gathered Sunday night on the tarmac of the city's former airport, where authorities handed out water, mattresses and food.
Shantytowns and cheaply constructed brick and concrete homes were reduced to rubble along the quake's path. In the coastal town of Chamanga, authorities estimated than 90 percent of homes had damage, while in Guayaquil a shopping center's roof fell in and a collapsed highway overpass crushed a car, killing the driver. |
Samsung today announced the latest addition to its “edge” lineup. It calls the Galaxy BLADE edge the “world’s first smart knife” that has been made with the modern chef in mind. For this device Samsung has built up on the culinary expertise and cutting-edge technology that it has displayed with its Chef Collection series. The Galaxy BLADE edge smart knife as all of the features that you would find on the Galaxy S6 but it also as an edge that is “so sharp and strong” that it can double as a chef’s knife. The company says this can actually make all the knives in your kitchen obsolete.
Samsung says that the Galaxy BLADE edge has a variety of sensors and algorithms that can make you chop and cut up to 50 percent faster than conventional knives. There’s even a special feature just for dicing vegetables and slicing fruit. It can even double as a wireless meat thermometer and baking tool. Then there’s the finger-detection management which will ensure that you never cut yourself in the kitchen again, the BLADE will retract automatically before it even cuts the skin.
According to Samsung it designed the Galaxy BLADE edge to be the champion of all kitchen knives, no longer will the modern chef require any other smartphone or a set of knives again.
Many of you would have guessed by now that this is not a real product or concept. It’s Samsung’s April Fools’ prank!
Source |
A century ago, Otto Warburg discovered that cancer cells display a unique metabolic phenotype of lactate fermentation in the presence of oxygen. This phenotype, known as the Warburg effect, enables tumor visualization using fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG‐PET) scans owing to the elevated rate of glucose consumption in most cancers. Metabolic therapies can exploit this phenotype, offering novel therapeutic directions aside from the classically targeted cytotoxic and gene‐based therapies. The Warburg effect exposes a fundamental weakness of cancer cells, reliance on excess glucose for survival and maximal proliferation. Fasting, calorie restriction (CR) and the carbohydrate‐restricted ketogenic diet have been successfully used to limit glucose availability and slow cancer progression in a variety of animal models and human studies.1-9 These dietary manipulations produce a physiological metabolic shift to an unfavorable environment for glucose‐dependent cancer cells. Previously, the anticancer effects of these dietary manipulations have largely been attributed to decreased circulating blood glucose, which limits energy substrates for cancer cells. New evidence suggests, however, that the physiological state of ketosis and elevated circulating ketones also have anticancer effects.
Recently, Fine et al. demonstrated that a carbohydrate‐restricted ketogenic diet inhibited disease progression and promoted partial remission in patients with advanced metastatic cancers from various tissue origins.10 On average, the patients did not exhibit a drop in glucose from baseline, suggesting that decreased glucose availability was not the sole or primary cause of efficacy. Interestingly, the study found that the most important factor dictating the patients' response to therapy was the degree of elevated ketosis from baseline. Indeed, a prominent metabolic shift to higher levels of ketosis correlated with reduced disease progression, stable disease or partial regression. A small number of reports have investigated the effects of ketones on cancer growth in vitro. Acetoacetate (AcAc) and β‐hydroxybutyrate (βHB) are the two most abundant and physiologically relevant of the three ketone bodies. Acetone is produced as a nonenzymatic byproduct of AcAc metabolism and is rapidly excreted in the lungs. AcAc supplementation inhibited proliferation and ATP production in seven aggressive human colon and breast cancer cell lines but did not affect proliferation in healthy primary fibroblasts.11 Similarly, βHB inhibited proliferation of transformed lymphoblasts, HeLa cells and melanoma cells in a dose‐dependent manner up to 20 mM.6 In neuroblastoma cells, βHB and AcAc supplementation decreased viability and increased apoptosis, but had no effect on fibroblasts.12
Although ketone bodies are efficient energy substrates for healthy extrahepatic tissues, 13 cancer cells cannot effectively use them for energy. Widespread mitochondrial pathology has been observed in most if not all tumors examined, including decreased mitochondrial number, abnormal ultrastructural morphology, mitochondrial swelling, abnormal fusion–fission, partial or total cristolysis, mtDNA mutations, altered mitochondrial membrane potential and abnormal mitochondrial enzyme presence or function, among others.14-19 These defects in mitochondrial structure and function impair respiratory capacity and force a reliance on substrate‐level phosphorylation for survival.20 As ketone bodies are metabolized exclusively within the mitochondria, cancer cells with impaired mitochondrial function are unable to efficiently metabolize ketone bodies for energy. Indeed, unlike healthy cells, ketone bodies fail to rescue glioma cells from glucose withdrawal‐induced death.21
Although mitochondrial dysfunction explains the inability of cancer cells to effectively use ketones for energy, the anticancer effects of ketones in a normal glucose in vitro environment are not immediately clear. Upon closer examination, ketone bodies possess many characteristics that can impair cancer cell survival and proliferation. (i) Ketone bodies inhibit glycolysis, thus decreasing the main pathway of energy production for cancer cells.22 (ii) Cancer cells thrive in an environment of elevated reactive oxygen species (ROS) production but are very sensitive to even small changes in redox status.23 Ketones decrease mitochondrial ROS production and enhance endogenous antioxidant defenses in normal cells, but not in cancer cells.13 Ketone metabolism in healthy cells near the tumor may inhibit cancer cell growth by creating a less favorable redox environment for their survival. (iii) Ketone bodies are transported into the cell through the monocarboxylate transporters (MCTs), which are also responsible for lactate export. It has been shown that inhibiting MCT1 activity or inhibiting lactate export from the cell dramatically decreases cancer cell growth and survival.24 Ketones may impair cancer cells indirectly by competitive inhibition of the MCTs, decreasing critical lactate export from the cell. (iv) Recently, Verdin and coworkers demonstrated that βHB acts as an endogenous HDAC inhibitor at millimolar concentrations easily achieved through fasting, CR or ketone supplementation such as with a ketone ester (KE).25 Thus, ketone bodies may elicit their anticancer effects by altering the expression of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes under control of the cancer epigenome.26 Clearly, ketone bodies exhibit several unique characteristics that support their use as a metabolic therapy for cancer.
The Warburg effect is especially prevalent in aggressive cancers and metastatic cells. Metastasis, the spreading of a primary tumor to distal locations, is the primary cause of cancer morbidity and mortality and is responsible for more than 90% of cancer‐related deaths.27 To make significant strides toward long‐term cancer management, we must evaluate therapies that are effective against late‐stage metastatic cancers. The major obstacle preventing the discovery of such treatments has been the lack of animal models that mimic the true metastatic phenotype and accurately predict the clinical success of therapeutics. The VM‐M3 model of metastatic cancer is a novel murine model that closely mimics the natural progression of cancer invasion and metastasis.28 The original VM‐M3 tumor arose as a spontaneous brain tumor in a VM/Dk inbred mouse. The VM‐M3 tumor was adapted to cell culture and transduced with the firefly luciferase gene to allow for in vivo bioluminescent tracking of tumor growth.29 VM‐M3 cells express many in vitro and in vivo characteristics of human glioblastoma multiforme with macrophage or microglial properties.28-30 When implanted subcutaneously, the VM‐M3 cells are morphologically similar to histiocytes and rapidly produce systemic metastasis, forming tumors in all major organ systems, most notably the liver, lung, kidney, spleen, brain and bone.28 The VM‐M3 model of metastatic cancer spreads naturally in an immunocompetent host, and chemotherapeutic agents inhibit metastatic spread in this model similar to their observed effects in humans.31 The VM‐M3 model has many advantages that support its use as a representation of the true metastatic disease state and has therefore been used in our study.
Although the literature strongly suggests that ketone bodies impede cancer growth in vitro, the in vivo efficacy of dietary ketone supplementation has not been adequately examined. It is possible to raise blood ketone levels without the need for carbohydrate restriction by administering a source of supplemental ketones or ketone precursors. 1,3‐Butanediol (BD) is a commercially available food additive and hypoglycemic agent that is converted to βHB by the liver.32, 33 The KE elevates both AcAc and βHB in a dose‐dependent manner to levels beyond what can be achieved with the KD or therapeutic fasting.34 Oral administrations of BD and KE have been shown to elevate blood ketones for at least 240 min in rats.34 As ketone bodies appear to elicit anticancer effects, and metastasis is the most significant obstacle in the successful treatment of neoplasms, we tested the efficacy of ketone supplementation in the VM‐M3 cell line and mouse model of metastatic cancer. |
A row of different AR-15 rifles are displayed for sale July 20, 2012 at the Firing-Line indoor range and gun shop in Aurora, Colo. (Photo: AP FILE PHOTO)
Florida could soon have looser gun laws. Or tighter gun laws.
Or something.
Numerous gun bills await the Legislature when it convenes March 7. From the right we have a full-frontal assault by Sen. Greg Steube, who filed a comprehensive bill — since broken into smaller proposals — to allow open display of firearms in courthouses, government meetings, on college campuses and in airport baggage claim areas. Another bill would make private businesses that ban concealed weapons liable if a gun owner who leaves his weapon at home is injured in an attack that “could reasonably have been prevented” with a gun.
With a strong Republican majority in the Legislature, this could be the year these bills — some of which were (ahem) shot down in years past — become law.
But not so fast. Orlando Democrats Sen. Linda Stewart and Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith have proposed an assault weapons ban that also would outlaw “parts that convert a firearm into an assault weapon,” like large-capacity magazines. Another Democratic bill would prohibit concealed-weapons permit holders from carrying guns in performing arts centers or theaters.
My bold prediction: Regardless of what happens, it won't move the public opinion needle. Opinions are entrenched; not many people change their minds about guns.
Not many. But some.
Including your humble host.
Once upon a time I was anti-gun. I viewed the issue through what I thought was a rational lens. Guns, particularly the semi-automatic rifles commonly called "assault weapons," are engineered and designed to kill. They excel at the task.
And I didn't get why the pro-gun crowd didn't see a need to curtail the availability of these weapons with the goal of preventing more more massacres.
But even then my anti-gun enthusiasm was tempered by the fact I'd spent some time around guns — not in my own home, but at my in-laws'.
My wife's dad — "the armed father-in-law," as I refer to him — carried at least one gun on him at all times, plus a .45 (he's totally old school) tucked into the pocket behind the driver's seat of his vehicle. The first time I met him, we went out to an Italian restaurant in my wife's hometown of Altoona, Pennsylvania. When we left, my girlfriend/now-wife walked ahead with her mother, while he and I walked behind.
"I want to show you something," he said. He pulled a Derringer-style pistol from an ankle holster.
"This is in case we run into any bandits," he said.
And I thought: How many bandits do you run into in Altoona? But clearly, he was sending a message: Hands off my daughter.
Message received.
But it wasn't like he waved the guns around. He either concealed-carried them or they were locked up. I learned what responsible gun ownership looked like. And I noticed the guns didn't shoot themselves.
I didn’t actually fire a gun until years later, when my oldest son was in Boy Scouts and went to a range. There, I fired several .22 rifles and, later, another dad’s semi-automatic .380. That bugger was loud.
Then my buddy George, a Vietnam vet, asked if I wanted to go shooting. George still had his service .45, and at the range he rented an M1A, the civilian equivalent of the M14 he carried in Vietnam. I was a terrible shot with the pistol, but did pretty well with the rifle, scoring a couple of near-bull's-eye.
It was fun. It was cool. There’s a feeling when you hold a weapon like that in your hand, a feeling of power and control.
I think that's the allure: the idea that if you have a gun, you can be in control rather than being at the mercy of someone else.
Indeed, the moment I realized my position had changed came in the wake of a brutal rape-murder in my hometown of Lancaster. Two young men broke into the home of a beloved local teacher and slaughtered her. This doesn't even begin to describe what happened. The District Attorney was reluctant to release details, perhaps concerned a lynch mob might show up outside the jailhouse.
In subsequent online discussions, several people said: If she'd owned a gun, maybe this wouldn't have happened.
I couldn't disagree.
Sure, maybe the killers would have gotten the drop on her anyway; m. Maybe, had her weapon been locked up, it would have been inaccessible when she needed it most.
But maybe it could have made all the difference.
Ultimately, I think guns are a reflection of human nature and American culture. That very American anger and resentment that motivates so many killers is a rationale to limit guns. But it also is a reason to own them.
And I think the loudest anti-gun rhetoric comes from those who have never been around firearms. If you have never owned one or known anyone who has, they're scary machines used to kill and nothing more, and you simply can't understand why anyone would have one unless they want it for nefarious purposes.
For me, proximity created familiarity, which ultimately led to greater understanding. Your own mileage might vary. But the issue now seems more complicated, more nuanced, than it once seemed. There are no easy answers.
One thing I'm sure of, though: We'll be offered many easy answers, from both sides, as the Legislature debates these bills.
Gil Smart is a columnist for Treasure Coast Newspapers and a member of the Editorial Board. His columns reflect his opinion. Readers may reach him at [email protected], by phone at 772-223-4741 or via Twitter at @TCPalmGilSmart.
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What is now considered one of Stanley Kubrick’s most accomplished films, as well as an example of innovative, audacious filmmaking at its best, was almost given birth to by accident. After Kubrick’s dream of making Napoleon crumbled into pieces, he used this studious research and shifted his ambitions and talent into William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon. The story of an unscrupulous Irish scoundrel who marries into high society and advances in the aristocratic society of 18th century England proved an ideal ground for the master to exhibit his storytelling powers. With the significant help of his director of photography John Alcott, Kubrick created a cinematic world that could be most easily described as a moving 18th century painting. Giving its best to avoid using electric sources of artificial light, relying on the illuminating power of candles and natural lighting, investing enormous effort into costume design, Barry Lyndon looks genuine through and through. Moreover, it leaves the impression of actually being comprised of works of art taken down from the walls of some filthily rich British nobleman. The colors, shading and atmosphere aren’t the only things Barry Lyndon has in common with two-dimensional works of art—the film also appropriates a certain quality of unresponsiveness. It’s somehow distanced from the viewers, it masterfully puts them into the position of an observer in an art gallery, not someone who actively interacts with the screen. Barry Lyndon is detached, cold and to a degree unburdened with the pressure of entertaining an audience. Kubrick, who not only directed but also adapted Thackeray’s satiric novel to produce a sharp, narration-driven script, created a technically breath-taking, arrogantly and recklessly fearless, monumental film over three hours long. The first reactions to it, unfortunately for Kubrick’s peace of mind, perhaps failed to be as enthusiastic as the piece deserved, but decades that followed certainly did Barry justice. All hail Barry Lyndon, an exceptional piece of filmmaking, a masterclass in bringing a unique filmmaker’s vision to life, a work of art only a few others have the quality to measure up to.
What we have here is an extremely rare document of exceptional historical value; a monumentally important screenplay. Dear every screenwriter/filmmaker, read Stanley Kubrick’s screenplay for Barry Lyndon [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available from the Criterion Collection and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.
“This film is a masterpiece in every insignificant detail. Kubrick isn’t taking pictures in order to make movies, he’s making movies in order to take pictures. Barry Lyndon indicates that Kubrick is thinking through his camera, and that’s not really how good movies get made—though it’s what gives them their dynamism, if a director puts the images together vivifyingly. for an emotional impact. I wish Stanley Kubrick would come home to this country to make movies again, working fast on modern subjects—maybe even doing something tacky, for the hell of it. There was more film art in his early The Killing than there is in Barry Lyndon, and you didn’t feel older when you came out of it. Orwell also said of Thackeray that his characteristic flavor is ‘the flavor of burlesque, of a world where no one is good and nothing is serious.’ For Kubrick, everything has become serious. The way he’s been working, in self-willed isolation, with each film consuming years of anxiety, there’s no ground between masterpiece and failure. And the pressure shows. There must be some reason that, in a film dealing with a licentious man in a licentious time, the only carnality—indeed, the only strong emotion—is in Barry’s brutally caning his stepson. When a director gets to the point where the one emotion he shows is morally and physically ugly, maybe he ought to knock off on the big, inviolable endeavors.” —Kubrick’s Gilded Age, by Pauline Kael
The following interview with Stanley Kubrick is excerpted from the book ‘Kubrick’ by Michel Ciment. It was conducted upon the release of Barry Lyndon in 1975 and published in a partial form at the time. In 1981 Stanley Kubrick revised and approved the complete text of the interview for the English edition of Ciment’s book on his films.
You have given almost no interviews on Barry Lyndon. Does this decision relate to this film particularly, or is it because you are reluctant to speak about your work?
I suppose my excuse is that the picture was ready only a few weeks before it opened and I really had no time to do any interviews. But if I’m to be completely honest, it’s probably due more to the fact that I don’t like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what’s even worse, of being quoted exactly, and having to see what you’ve said in print. Then there are the mandatory—“How did you get along with actor X, Y or Z?”—“Who really thought of good idea A, B or C?” I think Nabokov may have had the right approach to interviews. He would only agree to write down the answers and then send them on to the interviewer who would then write the questions.
Do you feel that Barry Lyndon is a more secret film, more difficult to talk about?
Not really. I’ve always found it difficult to talk about any of my films. What I generally manage to do is to discuss the background information connected with the story, or perhaps some of the interesting facts which might be associated with it. This approach often allows me to avoid the “What does it mean? Why did you do it?” questions. For example, with Dr. Strangelove I could talk about the spectrum of bizarre ideas connected with the possibilities of accidental or unintentional warfare. 2001: A Space Odyssey allowed speculation about ultra-intelligent computers, life in the universe, and a whole range of science-fiction ideas. A Clockwork Orange involved law and order, criminal violence, authority versus freedom, etc. With Barry Lyndon you haven’t got these topical issues to talk around, so I suppose that does make it a bit more difficult.
Your last three films were set in the future. What led you to make an historical film?
I can’t honestly say what led me to make any of my films. The best I can do is to say I just fell in love with the stories. Going beyond that is a bit like trying to explain why you fell in love with your wife: she’s intelligent, has brown eyes, a good figure. Have you really said anything? Since I am currently going through the process of trying to decide what film to make next, I realize just how uncontrollable is the business of finding a story, and how much it depends on chance and spontaneous reaction. You can say a lot of “architectural” things about what a film story should have: a strong plot, interesting characters, possibilities for cinematic development, good opportunities for the actors to display emotion, and the presentation of its thematic ideas truthfully and intelligently. But, of course, that still doesn’t really explain why you finally chose something, nor does it lead you to a story. You can only say that you probably wouldn’t choose a story that doesn’t have most of those qualities.
Since you are completely free in your choice of story material, how did you come to pick up a book by Thackeray, almost forgotten and hardly republished since the nineteenth century?
I have had a complete set of Thackeray sitting on my bookshelf at home for years, and I had to read several of his novels before reading Barry Lyndon. At one time, Vanity Fair interested me as a possible film but, in the end, I decided the story could not be successfully compressed into the relatively short time-span of a feature film. This problem of length, by the way, is now wonderfully accommodated for by the television miniseries which, with its ten-to twelve-hour length, pressed on consecutive nights, has created a completely different dramatic form. Anyway, as soon as I read Barry Lyndon I became very excited about it. I loved the story and the characters, and it seemed possible to make the transition from novel to film without destroying it in the process. It also offered the opportunity to do one of the things that movies can do better than any other art form, and that is to present historical subject matter. Description is not one of the things that novels do best but it is something that movies do effortlessly, at least with respect to the effort required of the audience. This is equally true for science-fiction and fantasy, which offer visual challenges and possibilities you don’t find in contemporary stories.
How did you come to adopt a third-person commentary instead of the first-person narrative which is found in the book?
I believe Thackeray used Redmond Barry to tell his own story in a deliberately distorted way because it made it more interesting. Instead of the omniscient author, Thackeray used the imperfect observer, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the dishonest observer, thus allowing the reader to judge for himself, with little difficulty, the probable truth in Redmond Barry’s view of his life. This technique worked extremely well in the novel but, of course, in a film you have objective reality in front of you all of the time, so the effect of Thackeray’s first-person story-teller could not be repeated on the screen. It might have worked as comedy by the juxtaposition of Barry’s version of the truth with the reality on the screen, but I don’t think that Barry Lyndon should have been done as a comedy.
You didn’t think of having no commentary?
There is too much story to tell. A voice-over spares you the cumbersome business of telling the necessary facts of the story through expositional dialogue scenes which can become very tiresome and frequently unconvincing: “Curse the blasted storm that’s wrecked our blessed ship!” Voice-over, on the other hand, is a perfectly legitimate and economical way of conveying story information which does not need dramatic weight and which would otherwise be too bulky to dramatize.
But you use it in other way—to cool down the emotion of a scene, and to anticipate the story. For instance, just after the meeting with the German peasant girl—a very moving scene—the voice-over compares her to a town having been often conquered by siege.
In the scene that you’re referring to, the voice-over works as an ironic counterpoint to what you see portrayed by the actors on the screen. This is only a minor sequence in the story and has to be presented with economy. Barry is tender and romantic with the girl but all he really wants is to get her into bed. The girl is lonely and Barry is attractive and attentive. If you think about it, it isn’t likely that he is the only soldier she has brought home while her husband has been away to the wars. You could have had Barry give signals to the audience, through his performance, indicating that he is really insincere and opportunistic, but this would be unreal. When we try to deceive we are as convincing as we can be, aren’t we? The film’s commentary also serves another purpose, but this time in much the same manner it did in the novel. The story has many twists and turns, and Thackeray uses Barry to give you hints in advance of most of the important plot developments, thus lessening the risk of their seeming contrived.
When he is going to meet the Chevalier Balibari, the commentary anticipates the emotions we are about to see, thus possibly lessening their effect.
Barry Lyndon is a story which does not depend upon surprise. What is important is not what is going to happen, but how it will happen. I think Thackeray trades off the advantage of surprise to gain a greater sense of inevitability and a better integration of what might otherwise seem melodramatic or contrived. In the scene you refer to where Barry meets the Chevalier, the film’s voice-over establishes the necessary groundwork for the important new relationship which is rapidly to develop between the two men. By talking about Barry’s loneliness being so far from home, his sense of isolation as an exile, and his joy at meeting a fellow countryman in a foreign land, the commentary prepares the way for the scenes which are quickly to follow showing his close attachment to the Chevalier. Another place in the story where I think this technique works particularly well is where we are told that Barry’s young son, Bryan, is going to die at the same time we watch the two of them playing happily together. In this case, I think the commentary creates the same dramatic effect as, for example, the knowledge that the Titanic is doomed while you watch the carefree scenes of preparation and departure. These early scenes would be inexplicably dull if you didn’t know about the ship’s appointment with the iceberg. Being told in advance of the impending disaster gives away surprise but creates suspense.
There is very little introspection in the film. Barry is open about his feelings at the beginning of the film, but then he becomes less so.
At the beginning of the story, Barry has more people around him to whom he can express his feelings. As the story progresses, and particularly after his marriage, he becomes more and more isolated. There is finally no one who loves him, or with whom he can talk freely, with the possible exception of his young son, who is too uoung to be of much help. At the same time I don’t think that the lack of introspective dialogue scenes are any loss to the story. Barry’s feelings are there to be seen as he reacts to the increasingly difficult circumstances of his life. I think this is equally true for the other characters in the story. In any event, scenes of people talking about themselves are often very dull.
In contrast to films which are preoccupied with analyzing the psychology of the characters, yours tend to maintain a mystery around them. Reverend Runt, for instance, is a very opaque person. You don’t know exactly what his motivations are.
But you know a lot about Reverend Runt, certainly all that is necessary. He dislikes Barry. He is secretly in love with Lady Lyndon, in his own prim, repressed, little way. His little smile of triumph, in the scene in the coach, near the end of the film, tells you all you need to know regarding the way he feels about Barry’s misfortune, and the way things have worked out. You certainly don’t have the time in a film to develop the motivations of minor characters.
Lady Lyndon is even more opaque.
Thackeray doesn’t tell you a great deal about her in the novel. I found that very strange. He doesn’t give you a lot to go on. There are, in fact, very few dialogue scenes with her in the book. Perhaps he meant her to be something of a mystery. But the film gives you a sufficient understanding of her anyway.
You made important changes in your adaptation, such as the invention of the last duel, and the ending itself.
Yes, I did, but I was satisfied that they were consistent with the spirit of the novel and brought the story to about the same place the novel did, but in less time. In the book, Barry is pensioned off by Lady Lyndon. Lord Bullingdon, having been believed dead, returns from America. He finds Barry and gives him a beating. Barry, tended by his mother, subsequently dies in prison, a drunk. This, and everything that went along with it in the novel to make it credible would have taken too much time on the screen. In the film, Bullingdon gets his revenge and Barry is totally defeated, destined, one can assume, for a fate not unlike that which awaited him in the novel.
And the scene of the two homosexuals in the lake was not in the book either.
The problem here was how to get Barry out of the British Army. The section of the book dealing with this is also fairly lengthy and complicated. The function of the scene between the two gay officers was to provide a simpler way for Barry to escape. Again, it leads to the same end result as the novel but by a different route. Barry steals the papers and uniform of a British officer which allow him to make his way to freedom. Since the scene is purely expositional, the comic situation helps to mask your intentions.
Were you aware of the multiple echoes that are found in the film: flogging in the army, flogging at home, the duels, etc., and the narrative structure resembling that of A Clockwork Orange? Does this geometrical pattern attract you?
The narrative symmetry arose primarily out of the needs of telling the story rather than as part of a conscious design. The artistic process you go through in making a film is as much a matter of discovery as it is the execution of a plan. Your first responsibility in writing a screenplay is to pay the closest possible attention to the author’s ideas and make sure you really understand what he has written and why he has written it. I know this sounds pretty obvious but you’d be surprised how often this is not done. There is a tendency for the screenplay writer to be “creative” too quickly. The next thing is to make sure that the story survives the selection and compression which has to occur in order to tell it in a maximum of three hours, and preferably two. This phase usually seals the fate of most major novels, which really need the large canvas upon which they are presented.
In the first part of A Clockwork Orange, we were against Alex. In the second part, we were on his side. In this film, the attraction/repulsion feeling towards Barry is present throughout.
Thackeray referred to it as “a novel without a hero.” Barry is naive and uneducated. He is driven by a relentless ambition for wealth and social position. This proves to be an unfortunate combination of qualities which eventually lead to great misfortune and unhappiness for himself and those around him. Your feelings about Barry are mixed but he has charm and courage, and it is impossible not to like him despite his vanity, his insensitivity and his weaknesses. He is a very real character who is neither a conventional hero nor a conventional villain.
The feeling that we have at the end is one of utter waste.
Perhaps more a sense of tragedy, and because of this the story can assimilate the twists and turns of the plot without becoming melodrama. Melodrama uses all the problems of the world, and the difficulties and disasters which befall the characters, to demonstrate that the world is, after all, a benevolent and just place.
The last sentence which says that all the characters are now equal can be taken as a nihilistic or religious statement. From your films, one has the feeling that you are a nihilist who would like to believe.
I think you’ll find that it is merely an ironic postscript taken from the novel. Its meaning seems quite clear to me and, as far as I’m concerned, it has nothing to do with nihilism or religion.
One has the feeling in your films that the world is in a constant state of war. The apes are fighting in 2001. There is fighting, too, in Paths Of Glory, and Dr. Strangelove. In Barry Lyndon, you have a war in the first part, and then in the second part we find the home is a battleground, too.
Drama is conflict, and violent conflict does not find its exclusive domain in my films. Nor is it uncommon for a film to be built around a situation where violent conflict is the driving force. With respect to Barry Lyndon, after his successful struggle to achieve wealth and social position, Barry proves to be badly unsuited to this role. He has clawed his way into a gilded cage, and once inside his life goes really bad. The violent conflicts which subsequently arise come inevitably as a result of the characters and their relationships. Barry’s early conflicts carry him forth into life and they bring him adventure and happiness, but those in later life lead only to pain and eventually to tragedy.
In many ways, the film reminds us of silent movies. I am thinking particularly of the seduction of Lady Lyndon by Barry at the gambling table.
That’s good. I think that silent films got a lot more things right than talkies. Barry and Lady Lyndon sit at the gaming table and exchange lingering looks. They do not say a word. Lady Lyndon goes out on the balcony for some air. Barry follows her outside. They gaze longingly into each other’s eyes and kiss. Still not a word is spoken. It’s very romantic, but at the same time, I think it suggests the empty attraction they have for each other that is to disappear as quickly as it arose. It sets the stage for everything that is to follow in their relationship. The actors, the images and the Schubert worked well together, I think.
Did you have Schubert’s Trio in mind while preparing and shooting this particular scene?
No, I decided on it while we were editing. Initially, I thought it was right to use only eighteenth-century music. But sometimes you can make ground-rules for yourself which prove unnecessary and counter-productive. I think I must have listened to every LP you can buy of eighteenth-century music. One of the problems which soon became apparent is that there are no tragic love-themes in eighteenth-century music. So eventually I decided to use Schubert’s Trio in E Flat, Opus 100, written in 1828. It’s a magnificent piece of music and it has just the right restrained balance between the tragic and the romantic without getting into the headier stuff of later Romanticism.
You also cheated in another way by having Leonard Rosenman orchestrate Handel’s Sarabande in a more dramatic style than you would find in eighteenth-century composition.
This arose from another problem about eighteenth-century music—it isn’t very dramatic, either. I first came across the Handel theme played on a guitar and, strangely enough, it made me think of Ennio Morricone. I think it worked very well in the film, and the very simple orchestration kept it from sounding out of place.
It also accompanies the last duel—not present in the novel—which is one of the most striking scenes in the film and is set in a dovecote.
The setting was a tithe barn which also happened to have a lot of pigeons resting in the rafters. We’ve seen many duels before in films, and I wanted to find a different and interesting way to present the scene. The sound of the pigeons added something to this, and, if it were a comedy, we could have had further evidence of the pigeons. Anyway, you tend to expect movie duels to be fought outdoors, possibly in a misty grove of trees at dawn. I thought the idea of placing the duel in a barn gave it an interesting difference. This idea came quite by accident when one of the location scouts returned with some photographs of the barn. I think it was Joyce who observed that accidents are the portals to discovery. Well, that’s certainly true in making films. And perhaps in much the same way, there is an aspect of film-making which can be compared to a sporting contest. You can start with a game plan but depending on where the ball bounces and where the other side happens to be, opportunities and problems arise which can only be effectively dealt with at that very moment.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example, there seemed no clever way for HAL to learn that the two astronauts distrusted him and were planning to disconnect his brain. It would have been irritatingly careless of them to talk aloud, knowing that HAL would hear and understand them. Then the perfect solution presented itself from the actual phsical layout of the space pod in the pod bay. The two men went into the pod and turned off every switch to make them safe from HAL’s microphones. They sat in the pod facing each other and in the center of the shot, visible through the sound-proof glass port, you could plainly see the red glow of HAL’s bug-eye lens, some fifteen feet away. What the conspirators didn’t think of was that HAL would be able to read their lips.
Did you find it more constricting, less free, making an historical film where we all have precise conceptions of a period? Was it more of a challenge?
No, because at least you know what everything looked like. In 2001: A Space Odyssey everything had to be designed. But neither type of film is easy to do. In historical and futuristic films, there is an inverse relationship between the ease the audience has taking in at a glance the sets, costumes and decor, and the film-maker’s problems in creating it. When everything you see has to be designed and constructed, you greatly increase the cost of the film, add tremendously to all the normal problems of film-making, making it virtually impossible to have the flexibility of last-minute changes which you can manage in a contemporary film.
You are well-known for the thoroughness with which you accumulate information and do research when you work on a project. Is it for you the thrill of being a reporter or a detective?
I suppose you could say it is a bit like being a detective. On Barry Lyndon, I accumulated a very large picture file of drawings and paintings taken from art books. These pictures served as the reference for everything we needed to make—clothes, furniture, hand props, architecture, vehicles, etc. Unfortunately, the pictures would have been too awkward to use while they were still in the books, and I’m afraid we finally had very guiltily to tear up a lot of beautiful art books. They were all, fortunately, still in print which made it seem a little less sinful. Good research is an absolute necessity and I enjoy doing it. You have an important reason to study a subject in much greater depth than you would ever have done otherwise, and then you have the satisfaction of putting the knowledge to immediate good use. The designs for the clothes were all copied from drawings and paintings of the period. None of them were designed in the normal sense. This is the best way, in my opinion, to make historical costumes. It doesn’t seem sensible to have a designer interpret—say—the eighteenth century, using the same picture sources from which you could faithfully copy the clothes. Neither is there much point sketching the costumes again when they are already beautifully represented in the paintings and drawings of the period. What is very important is to get some actual clothes of the period to learn how they were originally made. To get them to look right, you really have to make them the same way. Consider also the problem of taste in designing clothes, even for today. Only a handful of designers seem to have a sense of what is striking and beautiful. How can a designer, however brilliant, have a feeling for the clothes of another period which is equal to that of the people and the designers of the period itself, as recorded in their pictures? I spent a year preparing Barry Lyndon before the shooting began and I think this time was very well spent. The starting point and sine qua non of any historical or futuristic story is to make you believe what you see.
The danger in an historical film is that you lose yourself in details, and become decorative.
The danger connected with any multi-faceted problem is that you might pay too much attention to some of the problems to the detriment of others, but I am very conscious of this and I make sure I don’t do that.
Why do you prefer natural lighting?
Because it’s the way we see things. I have always tried to light my films to simulate natural light; in the daytime using the windows actually to light the set, and in night scenes the practical lights you see in the set. This approach has its problems when you can use bright electric light sources, but when candelabras and oil lamps are the brightest light sources which can be in the set, the difficulties are vastly increased. Prior to Barry Lyndon, the problem has never been properly solved. Even if the director and cameraman had the desire to light with practical light sources, the film and the lenses were not fast enough to get an exposure. A 35mm movie camera shutter exposes at about 1/50 of a second, and a useable exposure was only possible with a lens at least 100% faster than any which had ever been used on a movie camera. Fortunately, I found just such a lens, one of a group of ten which Zeiss had specially manufactured for NASA satellite photography. The lens had a speed of fO.7, and it was 100% faster than the fastest movie lens. A lot of work still had to be done to it and to the camera to make it useable. For one thing, the rear element of the lens had to be 2.5mm away from the film plane, requiring special modification to the rotating camera shutter. But with this lens it was now possible to shoot in light conditions so dim that it was difficult to read. For the day interior scenes, we used either the real daylight from the windows, or simulated daylight by banking lights outside the windows and diffusing them with tracing paper taped on the glass. In addition to the very beautiful lighting you can achieve this way, it is also a very practical way to work. You don’t have to worry about shooting into your lighting equipment. All your lighting is outside the window behind tracing paper, and if you shoot towwards the window you get a very beautiful and realistic flare effect.
How did you decide on Ryan O’Neal?
He was the best actor for the part. He looked right and I was confident that he possessed much greater acting ability than he had been allowed to show in many of the films he had previously done. In retrospect, I think my confidence in him was fully justified by his performance, and I still can’t think of anyone who would have been better for the part. The personal qualities of an actor, as they relate to the role, are almost as important as his ability, and other actors, say, like Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson or Dustin Hoffman, just to name a few who are great actors, would nevertheless have been wrong to play Barry Lyndon. I liked Ryan and we got along very well together. In this regard the only difficulties I have ever had with actors happened when their acting technique wasn’t good enough to do something you asked of them. One way an actor deals with this difficulty is to invent a lot of excuses that have nothing to do with the real problem. This was very well represented in Truuffaut’s Day For Night when Valentina Cortese, the star of the film within the film, hadn’t bothered to learn her lines and claimed her dialogue fluffs were due to the confusion created by the script girl playing a bit part in the scene.
How do you explain some of the misunderstandings about the film by the American press and the English press?
The American press was predominantly enthusiastic about the film, and Time magazine ran a cover story about it. The international press was even more enthusiastic. It is true that the English press was badly split. But from the very beginning, all of my films have divided the critics. Some have thought them wonderful, and others have found very little good to say. But subsequent critical opinion has always resulted in a very remarkable shift to the favorable. In one instance, the same critic who originally rapped the film has several years later put it on an all-time best list. But, of course, the lasting and ultimately most important reputation of a film is not based on reviews, but on what, if anything, people say about it over the years, and on how much affection for it they have.
You are an innovator, but at the same time you are very conscious of tradition.
I try to be, anyway. I think that one of the problems with twentieth-century art is its preoccupation with subjectivity and originality at the expense of everything else. This has been especially true in painting and music. Though initially stimulating, this soon impeded the full development of any particular style, and rewarded uninteresting and sterile originality. At the same time, it is very sad to say, films have had the opposite problem—they have consistently tried to formalize and repeat success, and they have clung to a form and style introduced in their infancy. The sure thing is what everone wants, and originality is not a nice word in this context. This is true despite the repeated example that nothing is as dangerous as a sure thing.
You have abandoned original film music in your last three films.
Exclude a pop music score from what I am about to say. However good our best film composers may be, they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music which is less good when there is such a multitude of great orchestral music available from the past and from our own time? When you’re editing a film, it’s very helpful to be able to try out different pieces of music to see how they work with the scene. This is not at all an uncommon practice. Well, with a little more care and thought, these temporary music tracks can become the final score. When I had completed the editing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I had laid in temporary music tracks for almost all of the music which was eventually used in the film. Then, in the normal way, I engaged the services of a distinguished film composer to write the score. Although he and I went over the picture very carefully, and he listened to these temporary tracks (Strauss, Ligeti, Khatchaturian) and agreed that they worked fine and would serve as a guide to the musical objectives of each sequence he, nevertheless, wrote and recorded a score which could not have been more alien to the music we had listened to, and much more serious than that, a score which, in my opinion, was completely inadequate for the film. With the premiere looming up, I had no time left even to think about another score being written, and had I not been able to use the music I had already selected for the temporary tracks I don’t know what I would have done. The composer’s agent phoned Robert O’Brien, the then head of MGM, to warn him that if I didn’t use his client’s score the film would not make its premiere date. But in that instance, as in all others, O’Brien trusted my judgment. He is a wonderful man, and one of the very few film bosses able to inspire genuine loyalty and affection from his film-makers.
Why did you choose to have only one flashback in the film: the child falling from the horse?
I didn’t want to spend the time which would have been required to show the entire story action of young Bryan sneaking away from the house, taking the horse, falling, being found, etc. Nor did I want to learn about the accident solely through the dialogue scene in which the farm workers, carrying the injured boy, tell Barry. Putting the flashback fragment in the middle of the dialogue scene seemed to be the right thing to do.
Are your camera movements planned before?
Very rarely. I think there is virtually no point putting camera instructions into a screenplay, and only if some really important camera idea occurs to me, do I write it down. When you rehearse a scene, it is usually best not to think about the camera at all. If you do, I have found that it invariably interferes with the fullest exploration of the ideas of the scene. When, at last, something happens which you know is worth filming, that is the time to decide how to shoot it. It is almost but not quite true to say that when something really exciting and worthwhile is happening, it doesn’t matter how you shoot it. In any event, it never takes me long to decide on set-ups, lighting or camera movements. The visual part of film making has always come easiest to me, and that is why I am careful to subordinate it to the story and the performances.
Do you like writing alone or would you like to work with a script writer?
I enjoy working with someone I find stimulating. One of the most fruitful and enjoyable collaborations I have had was with Arthur C. Clarke in writing the story of 2001: A Space Odyssey. One of the paradoxes of movie writing is that, with a few notable exceptions, writers who can really write are not interested in working on film scripts. They quite correctly regard their important work as being done for publication. I wrote the screenplay for Barry Lyndon alone. The first draft took three or four months but, as with all my films, the subsequent writing process never really stopped. What you have written and is yet unfilmed is inevitably affected by what has been filmed. New problems of content or dramatic weight reveal themselves. Rehearsing a scene can also cause script changes. However carefully you think about a scene, and however clearly you believe you have visualized it, it’s never the same when you finally see it played. Sometimes a totally new idea comes up out of the blue, during a rehearsal, or even during actual shooting, which is simply too good to ignore. This can necessitate the new scene being worked out with the actors right then and there. As long as the actors know the objectives of the scene, and understand their characters, this is less difficult and much quicker to do than you might imagine. |
Victims of Libyan-sponsored IRA attacks 'need answers before they die' BelfastTelegraph.co.uk British officials have been likened to a bucket of "slippery eels" over their repeated failures to guarantee compensation for victims of Libyan-sponsored IRA attacks. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/victims-of-libyansponsored-ira-attacks-need-answers-before-they-die-35045171.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article34489962.ece/84055/AUTOCROP/h342/PANews%20BT_P-9cda7e3f-ff88-4f61-8a2a-66953cf3fd57_I1.jpg
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British officials have been likened to a bucket of "slippery eels" over their repeated failures to guarantee compensation for victims of Libyan-sponsored IRA attacks.
Democratic Unionist Ian Paisley Jr insisted it is "impossible" to get a straight answer from Whitehall as he warned many victims need answers and a settlement before they die.
He urged ministers to "take a risk for peace" by agreeing to use British cash to compensate families and victims, knowing around £9.5 billion of Libyan assets are currently frozen in the UK.
Under Mr Paisley's proposal, the UK Government would then reclaim its money w hen a new government of national unity in Libya is fully established - by the two parties coming to an agreement over how much of the seized assets are returned.
The regime of former Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi supplied Semtex explosive and other weapons to the IRA, with attacks including the 1996 London Docklands bombing.
Speaking during a Westminster Hall debate, Mr Paisley Jr (North Antrim) said he appreciated there are difficulties in dealing with the Libyan government given the circumstances in the country.
But he added: " Can I also put on the record there has been difficulties dealing with successive governments of Her Majesty.
"I don't know if you've ever tried to fish eels from a bucket of water but it's an incredibly difficult task, and trying to get your hands on some people in the FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and getting your hands on the Government to give a straight answer, successive governments to give a straight answer, to many of the issues that victims genuinely put on the table.
"It's like putting your hand into that bucket and trying to catch a slippery eel. It's practically impossible to get straight answers and I think the purpose of today's debate starts to get to the point where victims have waited long enough for answers.
"They are sick and tired of the dilly-dallying and the delays. Many of them are coming to - let's face it - the latter years of their lives and they need answers before they pass the immortal tide, and I think we need to face up to that and face up to it pretty darn fast."
Mr Paisley Jr said "life-changing injuries require life-changing levels of compensation" before he suggested that the UK put forward the cash before claiming it back from Libya at a later date.
He told the debate: " That will allow us to expedite compensation, to resolve this matter, to allow the victims to move on and to put this, thankfully, once and for all behind us and it'll allow the Government to concentrate on setting up the new government in Libya.
"On that basis, the Government will have solved the issue. They're not spending the seized assets but they're recognising that one day those seized assets will be spent on the victims."
A law proposed in the Lords by Ulster Unionist Party's Lord Empey wants to allow the Treasury to prevent the release of frozen assets owned by those involved in supplying arms to terrorist organisations until a settlement is reached with their UK victims.
This has a particular focus on those attacks linked to Gaddafi's regime.
Earlier in the debate, Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) said Conservative former minister Norman Tebbit had received a "very pitiful" sum of compensation.
Lord Tebbit was injured along with his wife during the 1984 IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, which targeted the Conservative Party conference.
Tory Sir Gerald said: "Some people were compensated and I had a chat with Lord Tebbit, who everybody knows suffered so horrendously and especially his wife suffered even more horrendously than he did.
"He has been compensated but the level of compensation was very pitiful indeed and so it isn't simply a question of those who have received none, it's also a question of those who have received some compensation being adequately compensated."
Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood said: " Until Libya has a government we can work with, we are simply not able to consider what to do with the frozen assets - we are simply not able to have those conversations."
He questioned what would happen to the UK's relationship with Libya if it decided to "dip" into the frozen assets.
Mr Ellwood went on: "We need to be careful. I pose some difficult questions to the House.
"How much would we take? To whom would we give the money? How would we distinguish between somebody injured by Semtex, where it is very clear - Semtex has a footprint that can be identified because of the way it is made by hand - and somebody injured by ammunition provided by Libya?
"These are difficult questions that those involved in compensation need to start thinking about.
"Were we ever to get any form of compensation from Libya, I suspect that we would need to get our heads around the idea that it will be a single sum that is slid across the table.
"It will be for the victims' organisations to assess how the compensation is divided up, as those in authority in Libya would not want to be involved in the detail.
"I share that now because these are awkward, difficult questions." |
UNITED NATIONS -- After the launch this week of an intercontinental ballistic missile by North Korea, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley and her counterparts from Japan and the Republic of Korea requested an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting.
At the Council meeting late Wednesday, the United States set out a path forward, asking China to cut off oil to North Korea and asking the U.N. to cut off North Korea's voting rights at the U.N., saying, "we need China to do more."
"Through sanctions we have cut off 90 percent of North Korean trade and 30 percent of its oil. But the crude oil remains. The major supplier of that oil is China." Haley said.
"We are once again at a time of reckoning," Haley said. "North Korea's behavior has become more intolerable." She added that "over 20 countries from every corner of the globe have restricted or ended their diplomatic relations."
"The dictator of North Korea made a choice yesterday that brings the world closer to war, not farther from it," Haley said. "We have never sought war with North Korea, and still today we do not seek it. If war does come, it will be because of continued acts of aggression like we witnessed yesterday. And if war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed."
North Korea launches new missile
The missile test, which was signed off personally by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was its first one since September.
Wednesday's launch of what the North called the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) demonstrated a greater range than other missiles it's tested and showcased several capabilities the North must master if it were ever to actually try to unleash them at the United States.
The Pentagon confirmed Tuesday that North Korea had launched its first ballistic missile in 10 weeks. Spokesman Col. Robert Manning said U.S. officials detected the launch.
An undated photo shows North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. North Korea government handout
Manning said the missile was launched from Sain Ni, North Korea, and traveled around 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), before landing in the Sea of Japan. He added that the launch did not pose a threat to "North America, our territories or our allies."
North Korea says it now has a missile that can strike anywhere in the U.S. including Washington, D.C., and Kim Jong Un's regime successfully launched its third intercontinental ballistic missile, CBS News' Correspondent Ben Tracy reported.
Although there were no missile tests during President Trump's trip to Asia, the U.S put North Korea back on a U.S state sponsors of terrorism, allowing the U.S. to impose more sanction and President Trump said Wednesday more "major sanctions" will be imposed on North Korea in response to its latest ballistic missile launch.
Trump tweeted that he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping about Pyongyang's "provocative actions," and he vowed that "additional major sanctions will be imposed on North Korea on Wednesday, saying, "This situation will be handled!" Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. could target financial institutions doing business with North Korea.
Just spoke to President XI JINPING of China concerning the provocative actions of North Korea. Additional major sanctions will be imposed on North Korea today. This situation will be handled! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2017
In September, the U.S. drafted a U.N. resolution calling for a complete oil embargo along with an asset freeze and travel ban on North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un -- a measure that had the support of U.S. allies but was met with resistance from China. Diplomats now say the U.S., along with Western nations and Japan, will be looking to increase pressure with tougher sanctions as a last resort to diplomatic and economic measures.
At the Council meeting, several Council members talked about the enforcement of existing sanctions and also suggested adding new sanctions.
U.K. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said, "The latest missile launch is not a one-off. It follows 19 previous launches this year, and North Korea's sixth nuclear test in September. The latest violation demonstrates, once more, North Korea's disregard for our collective security and the international obligations, that all of us, as law-abiding states, take upon ourselves."
"Japan will never tolerate a nuclear armed North Korea, Japan's Ambassador Koro Bessho said, adding that North Korea is a "clear global threat to all member states."
"You don't bully and play games with nuclear weapons," Haley said.
North Korea's state-run television claimed that it had successfully tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could reach all of the U.S. mainland.
A look at a missile launch by North Korea. North Korea government handout
North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 related to its ballistic missiles and nuclear programs.
France's Ambassador Francois Delattre called for tighter sanctions saying that the threat posed by North Korea, "has shifted from being regional to global, from being potential to immediate." He said that France's President Emmanuel Macron just called for an increase sanctions on North Korea after the missile test.
"Confronted with such a threat and challenge from North Korea, weakness or ambiguity are simply not an option," Delattre said, adding that France favors tightening the sanctions with strong additional measures.
Italy's Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi told CBS News, "Sanctions are working because we know of the constraints they are putting on the regime which is going short of foreign currency ... We can do more also in terms of implementation."
In September, the U.S. drafted a U.N. resolution calling for a complete oil embargo along with an asset freeze and travel ban on North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un -- a measure that had the support of U.S. allies but was met with resistance from China. Diplomats now say the U.S., along with Western nations and Japan, will be looking to increase pressure with tougher sanctions as a last resort to diplomatic and economic measures.
Rycroft, who said that the launch "demonstrates that this reckless regime will put their nuclear and ballistic nuclear programs ahead of the needs of their own people."
Asked by CBS News if a full oil embargo is under consideration, Rycroft said, "That's one of the issues which I'm sure will come up in the course of our discussions today. We're looking closely with our Security Council colleagues on what response the Security Council should come up with in light of this reckless provocation from the DPRK (North Korea) regime," saying that the latest is " the longest of the three ICBMs they have ever launched."
"We will take care of it," Trump says after North Korea missile launch
At the Council, China's Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations, Wu Haitao, pushed back on the call for China to do more, calling for less confrontation with Pyongyang. And, Russia's Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia talked about the "unprecedented military exercises" between South Korea and the United States, and he questioned the sincerity of Washington to find a solution.
Nebenzia added to the Council's condemnation, saying, "Russia does not accept the claims of the DPRK for obtaining the status of a nuclear power… At the same time, it is obvious to us that there is no military solution to the problems of the Korean Peninsula... in the current situation, we urge all parties involved to end the escalation of tension."
Russia then re-introduced the proposal made by Russia and China for a "double freezing" in which North Korea suspends testing and the U.S. and South Korea reduce the "scope and intensity" of military exercises, which, he said "would open the way for a discussion of the principles of peaceful coexistence between Washington and Pyongyang and the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue."
In a briefing to the Council by United Nations political affairs head, Jeffrey Feltman, he said that he met with North Korea's Ambassador Ja Song Nam on Wednesday to tell him Pyongyang must: "Desist from taking any further destabilizing steps," and told the Council: "This is the 13th time the Council has met to discuss North Korea."
In a speech in St Louis about taxes, Trump, who has called North Korea's leader "Little Rocket Man" told the crowd, "He is a sick puppy."
Trump himself had talked about dialogue before the recent launch, and the international watchdog agency's chief, Yukiya Amano told CBS News that, if that day came, the agency would be ready to inspect North Korea's nuclear sites.
Haley concluded with both a warning and a word of reassurance to the leaders in Pyongyang, "we have never sought war with North Korea, and still today we do not seek it. If war does come, it will be because of continued acts of aggression like we witnessed yesterday." |
Is India planning to install undersea surveillance sensors in the Bay of Bengal? It is a question that has animated discussions in maritime circles recently. A recent report in the Indian media suggests New Delhi is planning to undertake joint projects with Japan and the United States for the defense of its littoral spaces, including one for the installation of a sound surveillance sensors (SOSUS) chain in India’s near seas. In an article for a Indian defence magazine in April this year, Prasun Sengupta, a well-known analyst and commentator, surmises that New Delhi is considering Japanese assistance in the construction of an undersea network of seabed-based sensors stretching from the tip of Sumatra right up to Indira Point in the Bay of Bengal to prevent Chinese submarines from approaching Indian exclusive economic zone. According to Sengupta, besides providing funds for the upgrading of naval air bases and construction of new electronic/signals intelligence stations along the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands, Tokyo plans to finance an undersea optical fiber cable from Chennai to Port Blair. Once completed, this network is likely to be integrated with the existing US-Japan “Fish Hook” SOSUS network meant specifically to monitor People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) submarine activity in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean Rim.
The starting point for this collaboration is supposed to have been Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington last year, when India and the United States agreed to intensify cooperation in maritime security. New Delhi is said to have decided to move forward with its plans to strengthen its near-seas defenses after ASEAN defence ministers at the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus gathering in Lankawi, Malaysia, in March collectively stated their desire for India to play a security role beyond the Indian Ocean.
There is no official confirmation of these developments. However, it is entirely possible China’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) plans in Southeast Asia may have served as a trigger for an Indian response in the Bay of Bengal. In an article last month, Lyle Goldstein, a well known China specialist, claimed Beijing was in the process of creating an undersea “Great Wall” in the South China Sea by establishing an array of ocean-floor acoustic sensors to detect US submarines. China’s hydrophone system is reportedly modeled on the US Navy’s SOSUS, meant originally to track Soviet submarines in the mid-1950s. Reports that the PLAN is on the verge of operationalising its sensor chain may have prompted New Delhi to pursue an undersea sensor project in the South Asian littoral.
The more interesting venture, from an Indian perspective, is between Japan and the United States in the wider Pacific. Since the early 2000s, when PLAN submarine patrols are supposed to have turned aggressive, the US Navy and the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) began setting up a chain of fixed arrays to monitor the movement of Chinese submarines in the East China Sea and South China Sea. This resulted in the establishment of the “Fish Hook Undersea Defense Line” in early 2005, stretching from Japan to Southeast Asia with key nodes at Okinawa, Guam, and Taiwan. The system reportedly consists of two separate networks of hydrophones, one stretching from Okinawa to southern Kyushu, and the other from Okinawa to Taiwan.
In July 2013, Beijing claimed that the United States and Japan had established “very large underwater monitoring systems” at the northern and southern ends of Taiwan. One supposedly stretched from Yonaguni to the Senkaku Islands, while the other covered the Bashi Channel down to the Philippines. In addition, Chinese analysts contended, large numbers of hydrophones had been installed “in Chinese waters” close to China’s submarine bases in Qingdao, Xiaopingdao, and Yulin on Hainan Island, even though it wasn’t fully clear if these sensors were all operational.
Fewer doubts remain about the efficacy of an older version of the SOSUS in the northeastern Pacific (off the Tsugaru Strait) and the southwestern Pacific (the Tsushima Strait) that Japan and the United States have jointly managed since the days of the Cold War. Analysts aver that Japan’s experience with working the system for over six decades has provided Japanese engineers and technicians with the proficiency and professionalism to install sea-based sensors in distant littoral spaces, including in the Indian Ocean.
New Delhi, however, would need to consider the implications of operating sensitive equipment with a foreign partner– especially the sharing of critical sensor data. In the case of the joint Japan-US SOSUS, for instance, while the JMSDF and US Navy personnel jointly manage the JMSDF Oceanographic Observation Centre in Okinawa, all the information is available to the US Pacific Command,as the facility is under the operational control of the US Navy. Needless to say, there are concerns that India may be required to provide its foreign collaborators with a level of informational access with which the Indian navy may not be too comfortable.
Some observers worry that placing undersea sensors around the Andaman and Nicobar islands may ultimately result in deployment of other A2/AD tools that China might find provocative. Japan’s activation of a coastal surveillance unit on Yonaguni Island, only 67 miles from the east coast of Taiwan, has been widely perceived to be an A2/AD measure. Reports suggest that Japan’s far-flung islands may soon see the placement of mobile anti-ship missile batteries and air-defense systems to bolster A2/AD capabilities.
Against the backdrop of a recent logistical agreement with the United States, and with other foundational pacts like the Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum Agreement and Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-Spatial Cooperation in the pipeline, there are concerns that the establishment of an undersea sensor chain around the Andaman and Nicobar islands might be a precursor to the placement of area-denial weapons — a move that Beijing would deem “escalatory.”
Inadequate return on investment constitutes another source of worry. The setting up of a listening array, experts aver, goes well beyond the placement of hydrophones on the seabed. A sound surveillance system requires steady economic and human investment, with the careful cultivation of an entire cadre of specialists able to interpret the array’s data output. The United States and Japan invested in their system for years before it began producing results. India could seek Japanese assistance in installing a SOSUS but could take years on training specialists and refining the related technologies.
Moreover, undersea sensors produce enormous quantities of raw data that require a dedicated system to sift and sort through. Over the years, the task of organising the data collected has become increasingly unviable. The lack of resources to manage data-collection facilities has led navies to consider a proposal to treat the data as a marketable commodity, by sharing it with environmental scientists and civilian agencies for a price. In order to allow the access of data in real-time,however, the hydrophones have had to be connected online, therebyraising concerns about the possible misuse of data.
Despite such worries, an Indian sound sensor array in the Indian Ocean could prove invaluable. For a country that has a major anti-submarine warfare handicap and a lack of operational submarines, an undersea sensor would be a god-send. India has so far not made any major investments in improving its sub-hunting capabilities. If it can install a deterrence system and operate it with a degree of competence, it could retain its strategic primacy in the Indian Ocean.
This commentary originally appeared in Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. |
The Turkish government was furious after she made a documentary into the state of the country's orphanages which claimed that children were being neglected and maltreated.
The Duchess, disguised in a black wig and headscarf, was accompanied by her teenage daughter Princess Eugenie who was moved to tears by the scenes they filmed.
She has been accused of breaking Turkey's strict privacy laws by carrying out the secret recording.
The Turkish authorities have now passed a formal request to the Home Office for the Duchess to be questioned, according to reports.
A source told The Sun: "We have had a request from the Turkish government for Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) in relation to the Duchess of York.
"If following a police investigation, charges are laid in Turkey, the Duchess could be arrested and extradited to appear in court in Turkey."
The Metropolitan Police refused to comment and a Home Office spokesman said: "We would never confirm or deny the existence of MLA or extradition requests."
The Turkish authorities have already spoken out against the Duchess, accusing her of trying to smear the country's image in order to prevent it joining the EU.
Nimet Cubukcu, the Turkish minister responsible for women and family, said: "It is obvious that in this incidence that she is trying to leave Turkey in the midst of a smudge campaign.''
But her spokesman Kate Waddington insisted the Duchess was not trying to be political: "The Duchess of York is apolitical; therefore she has no political motivations. This is all about the welfare of children.''
The Duchess filmed inside the Saray institution near Ankara, where more than 700 disabled children are housed.
She and the team from ITV1's Tonight programme found children tied to their beds or left in cots all day without being taken out to be fed.
One child, who was not allowed outside, was discovered crawling along the corridor to feel the sun on his face.
Princess Eugenie cried after visiting one centre which houses 60 disabled children - many abandoned by their parents. |
8WEEKLY
In 2000 kregen vele trouwe abonnees het droeve bericht dat hun favoriete games-magazine ophield te bestaan. Hoog Spel was een pionier op spellenbladengebied. Zonder twijfel konden we dus spreken over het einde van een tijdperk. We spraken met uitgever en redacteur Harry d’Emme over zijn ervaringen en over de evolutie van de gamesindustrie. Van hobbyniveau tot dog-eat-dog-wereld.
In het begin van de jaren negentig werd Hoog Spel opgericht. Jullie doel was grof gezegd het beste spellenblad van de Benelux te worden. Was destijds het klimaat in de gamesindustrie anders dan nu? Welke grote veranderingen hebben er tijdens meer dan 80 afleveringen Hoog Spel plaatsgevonden?
Om eerlijk te zijn was mijn doel een algemeen Nederlandstalig blad over games te maken. Indertijd was er niks, alleen de MSX gids, die later de Software Gids werd. Ik had al in 1986 het idee gekregen een blad over spellen (alle vormen, dus ook bordspellen) te maken, maar er nooit iets mee gedaan. In 1990 waren mijn vriend Max Barber en ik het zat dat we steeds Engelse bladen moesten lezen, en besloten we een dergelijk spellenblad in Nederland uit te gaan geven. We legden onze spaarcentjes bij elkaar en zijn aan Hoog Spel begonnen. Over het eerste nummer hebben we ruim 1 jaar gedaan .
Er was in die tijd niet echt een klimaat. Spellen werden wel verkocht maar niemand nam het serieus in Nederland. Een anekdote die ik wel vertel uit die tijd is dat ik op feestjes regelmatig te horen kreeg dat iedereen wel een pc had maar dat was voor de boekhouding van de vereniging. Of zoiets doms. En spellen? Nee, dat speelden ze niet, maar er stonden wel wat spellen voor de kinderen op de pc. Alleen als de alcohol vrijelijk genoeg gevloeid had kwam men bij me en zei, “Joh, jij hebt toch dat spellenblaadje? Weet jij hoe je door level 3 van Prince of Persia heen komt?” Alleen voor de kids he?
Het is jammer om te zeggen, maar een blad kan niet leven van zijn abonnees. Je leeft van je adverteerders en HET grote verschil is dat aan het eind van de 90er jaren de adverteerders grotere druk begonnen uit te oefenen om resultaten in bladen te krijgen, zie ook mijn stuk op de site.
In de laatste Hoogzit van Hoog Spel 82 schrijft u: “Steeds vaker worden er zogenaamde exclusieve afspraken met bepaalde bladen gemaakt. Voor zo’n exclusiviteit moet je als blad wel wat terug doen. Wij hebben daar nooit aan mee willen werken, met als gevolg dat het regelmatig voorkwam dat we een titel niet konden bespreken.” Kunt u ons iets meer over uw ervaringen vertellen?
Er zijn legio ervaringen, maar in mijn schrijven op www.hoogspel.nl kun je een en ander lezen. Waar het op neerkomt is dat advertenties weigeren je geld kost, maar als publishers je geen recensiemateriaal meer willen geven moet je het gaan kopen in de winkel. Met als gevolg dat je twee maanden te laat bent met je review. Want je hebt een productietijd van 6-8 weken voor een blad.
Te laat recenseren kost je lezers, want die beseffen niet hoe de wereld in elkaar zit in dat opzicht. Je hebt dus in feite altijd een haat-liefde verhouding met de publishers, want je hebt ze absoluut nodig voor de spullen. Dus je kunt ze ook weer niet echt voor het hoofd stoten. En dan hangt het er maar van af hoe belangrijk een titel voor een publisher is. Is er veel geld mee gemoeid dan zal hij druk op je uitoefenen.
Heeft u ooit overwogen Hoog Spel in een andere vorm voort te zetten? Een on-line versie van het blad, of een nieuwe herstart?
Er is begin 2000 een begin gemaakt met een soort Hoog Spel Online, maar dan onder de naam Games.nl. Een zeer ambitieus plan waarbij een site (www.games.nl) ondersteund zou worden met een blad met cd-rom. Dat blad zou in een oplage van 500.000 stuks gratis deur aan deur verspreid worden.
We waren echter te laat met het idee, de internet crash was net begonnen en we hebben geen investeerders kunnen vinden die ons wilden steunen. In December 2000 heb ik, na bijna 200.000 gulden aan het online project uitgegeven te hebben, het kantoor gesloten. Het plan ligt er nog steeds, en wie weet gaan we het ooit nog eens doen.
Momenteel is er in de industrie een enorme heisa gaande vanwege de nieuwe generatie spelcomputers. Prijzen worden stevig opgekrikt, en zijn voor de gemiddelde speler amper nog betaalbaar. Is de industrie eigenlijk niet het contact met zijn consument kwijtgeraakt?
De industrie is al lang geleden het contact met de consument kwijtgeraakt. Toen de publishers namelijk beursgenoteerd werden, werd omzet belangrijker dan kwaliteit. Kijk maar wanneer de meeste spellen uitkomen, dat is in maart, juni, september en december. Dat zijn de einde van de boekkwartalen en dan moet er dus nog even omzet gegenereerd worden, anders zakken de aandelen. Dat zijn ook de momenten dat spellen gestopt worden en vaak onaf (of met minder levels, of met veel bugs) de markt ingaan. Infogames is ook een goed voorbeeld, die doen hun meeste releases in juni: het eind van hun financiële boekjaar.
Erg belangrijk voor de Publisher is de inkoper, want die bepaalt wat er op de markt komt. En als laatste is er dan de consument, die mag ook een spelletje kopen. Ik zeg het wat gechargeerd, begrijp me goed.
Vroeger kon men een complete applicatie in 8 kb geheugen schrijven. Maar het is des programmeurs om lui te zijn, waarom in 8 kb als hij 650 mb op de cd heeft. Ook de roep naar steeds betere graphics speelt daar een rol in uiteraard.
Tenslotte is er nog het feit dat wanneer een spel aan de nieuwste technologie voldoet dit voor de hardcore gamer, de pers en de inkopers extra reden is er aandacht aan te besteden. Waarbij vergeten wordt dat de gemiddelde speler zoiets niet heeft. En dus zo’n spel niet zal kopen. Aan de andere kant, als je nu een spel uitbrengt wat op de gemiddelde huiskamer pc goed draait je in de bladen de wind van voren krijgt. Oude zooi blablabla. En zo zit de industrie in een vicieuze cirkel.
Alleen sommige bedrijven zoals Davilex proberen daar doorheen te breken. En zie, ze verkopen ook nog goed. Dat het bij Davilex nu fout gaat heeft heel andere redenen, met name dan dat ze besloten die filosofie los te laten en een “echte” games developer te willen worden. En dat kunnen ze – nog? – niet.
Aan het eind van uw laatste redactioneel stelt u dat: “principes hebben als je in deze industrie een blad wilt maken iets is wat je je niet veroorloven kunt. Wij willen onze principes echter niet verloochenen. En dan rest er slechts één keus. Die hebben we dan ook gemaakt.” Kan de consument momenteel dan nog wel één van de bestaande bladen vertrouwen?
Er zijn mensen die het nog proberen, bijvoorbeeld PC Gameplay. Maar ook die wordt tegengewerkt.
Hoe ziet u de toekomst van de spellen en bladenindustrie?
Die zal altijd blijven bestaan, maar ik denk dat er wel wat gaat veranderen. Er wordt teveel geproduceerd (en niet allemaal goed), er wordt teveel gekeken naar de beursnotering en niet naar wat de consument wil (waarom zijn er geen adventures meer? Omdat een of andere CFO in 1997 gezien heeft dat adventures minder verkopen dan 3d shooters; dus maakt iedereen 3d shooters). De tekenen zijn er al, kijk maar naar de lange reeks faillissementen in de industrie, de financiële problemen waar iedereen in zit.
Voor Hoog Spel heeft u zelf ook diverse spellen getest. Wat zijn uw eigen persoonlijke favorieten, en wat was het grootste misbaksel?
Je smaak in spellen verandert, maar bij mij zal altijd speelbaarheid boven grafisch vertoon gaan. Ik heb geen persoonlijke favorieten momenteel, maar dat heeft meer te maken met het feit dat ik weinig meer speel. Dat is wel het gevolg van teveel games zien/spelen, op gegeven moment slaat de vermoeidheid toe, zo van, nee hé, niet weer een kloon van (vul maar in). Het ergste misbaksel? Wow, het waren er zoveel, niets dat erboven uitsteekt.
Wat zijn uw plannen voor de toekomst?
De toekomst? Ik zou nog steeds Games.nl willen doen. Maar of dat ooit lukken zal? Tot die tijd houd ik me bezig met het op de markt proberen te brengen van spellen van kleine developers. Mijn meest recente project in deze is het opzetten van de wereldwijde distributie van Hooligans – Storm over Europe. |
‘Though thousands of miles apart, we are still able to share the beauty of the moon and enjoy this moment with our heart being together.”
This signature verse, dedicated to the Mid-Autumn Festival, is from a widely known Chinese poem Thinking of You, which perfectly explains the meaning of the festival.
article continues below
As time approaches late September, you probably wonder, “What are these mooncakes that everyone is stocking up with at Asian supermarkets? Why do people go out and stare at the moon on the night of the celebration as if E.T. was flying over? What are these people celebrating?” Some may wonder, “How can I join in the celebration as one of the privileges of living in a multicultural neighborhood?”
Hold onto your curiosity and let me peel the onion for you!
• Mid-Autumn Festival
This is a harvest festival that falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, equivalent to late September to early October of the Gregorian calendar, when the moon is at its fullest and roundest. To ethnic Chinese, a full moon is a symbol of prosperity, happiness and family reunion. Therefore, these three fundamental ideas shape the rituals and activities of the festival, with a focus on family reunions, praying for health, beauty, good fortune and a bright future, and also appreciation of the prosperous season.
• Myth and origins
The celebration originally started during the Shang Dynasty in China as farmers worshiped mountain gods and gave thanks for the harvest of crops. As time passed by, people started to worship the moon since it is the symbol of immortality and rejuvenation. There is a well-known myth about the relationship between the Moon Goddess of Immortality, Chang’e — who flew up to live on the moon — and her husband, Hou Yi, a hero by that time. That story has made the Mid-Autumn Festival more mysterious, yet also more fascinating to talk about.
• Celebration
The festival is celebrated with many cultural customs, which among them all, the most popular ones would be sharing mooncakes with family and friends on the night of the 15th under the bright moon, floating brightly lit lanterns into the sky, and gathering neighbours to play lantern riddles together.
To enjoy the Mid-Autumn Festival, you could go to the event at Richmond Centre and Richmond Olympic Oval, or even celebrate with your Asian neighbors for a night of traditional food feast. Either way, it’s a traditional holiday that brings joy and happiness to every one of us.
Serena Mu is a Richmond resident who writes about culture. |
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