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Vijay Seshadri became the first Asian American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize yesterday for his book 3 Sections. In its citation, the Pulitzer committee hailed the work as “a compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless.”
Reviewing the collection for The American Reader, Bhisham Bherwani wrote that Seshadri’s characters found themselves, “in situations that compel them—even as they remain inevitably attached to reality—to grapple with the domain of their disassociated selves.”
Born in Bangalore in 1954, Seshadri moved to the United States with his family five years later and grew up in Columbus, Ohio. In this 2004 interview with Jeet Thayil for Poets and Writers magazine, Seshadri said he began writing as a teenager:
I think I conceived of myself as a writer before I started writing, and I started writing poetry when I was 16. I was in college. I had become interested in poetry and that first January I heard Galway Kinnell read from The Book of Nightmares, which as yet was unpublished. I loved that reading. I remember it clearly; it made me want to go home and start writing. I was never one of those writers who knew from the age of six that they were writers, who lisped in numbers. In my early twenties I wrote, or tried to write, a novel that was much too ambitious for me. I’d been influenced by the French new novel, and by Pynchon, and John Hawkes. They were radical novelists and I felt I had to write a novel like theirs. I probably had a novel in me, but it was much more a conventional novel that a person in their early twenties would write, a coming-of-age story; but I had modernist and postmodernist models. Around the time I was also reading Beckett’s trilogy and thought that’s what novels had to be. An impossible model, really. In my mid-twenties I went back to poetry.
Seshadri’s 3 Sections is his third book. It was preceded by 1996’s Wild Kingdom and The Long Meadow, which was published in 2005. He is currently a professor at Sarah Lawrence College.
Read poems by Vijay Seshadri at Poetry Daily (Elegy), Poets.org (Survivor, The Descent of Man) and at The New Yorker online.
Lakshmi Gandhi is an editor at The Aerogram. Follow her on Twitter @LakshmiGandhi. You can follow The Aerogram @theaerogram or on Facebook here. |
Growing up, I loved any video game rooted in my favorite genre of fantasy. I would rent and buy all the video games with a passing relation to dragons and wizards, regardless of quality. Like many of you, as my taste in games grew, I began to recognize how much I was limiting my own fun. While I never lost a love of classic fantasy tropes, a whole world of other video games beckoned, inviting me into other interactive settings of action, mystery, horror, science-fiction, sports, racing, puzzles, and more. Why had I spent so long with an artificial barrier that kept me from such great entertainment?
In the back of my head, that’s always the memory that comes to mind when I hear that someone loves video games, but has never dipped their toe into the other half of the gaming hobby that lives on your home tabletop. It feels like declaring that you love Italian food, but for some reason you just don’t want to try Mexican cuisine. Sure, some people just don’t like guacamole, but how would you know until you try?
Prevailing opinion suggests that tabletop and video games are fundamentally different hobbies, and I certainly acknowledge that they each branch in separate directions. But they share the same roots, and much of the same appeal. While the form of presentation and interaction is different, many of the tenets of game design are in common, whether you’re talking about the need for balance in competition, the appeal of growth and progression over the course of the game, or the link between mechanics and narrative that make a game feel cohesive.
Anecdotally, I can’t count the number of video game developers I’ve visited who trace their gaming roots back to role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, or early board games like Risk. Before the constraints of technology allowed for complex digital gaming, the only place to discover rich and nuanced gaming projects was on the tabletop. As both disciplines have matured, they’ve moved in often parallel and intersecting lines, and each reveal new facets of the way gaming can entertain, educate, and enrich our social interactions.
Today, no one can doubt the power of either medium. Many predictions 20 years ago suggested that video games meant the end for the tabletop hobby, but the surprising opposite effect has occurred. Even as video games soar in popularity and claim their place in popular culture, the tabletop hobby has continued to expand. The tabletop hobby convention Gen Con draws record crowds year after year. New tabletop crowdfunding ventures draw incredible support. Franchises like Dark Souls, BioShock, and XCOM attract fans, whether the product lives on a screen or a table. It seems clear that both hobbies are strong, stable, and primed for continued growth.
Game Informer has always and will always be a place for people who love video games, where a shared community can celebrate the excitement of interactive worlds and new ways to adventure. But as we’ve learned with articles like our yearly tabletop round-ups, it’s a myth that video gamers aren’t also excited about the tabletop scene. Like us, many of you have grown up enjoying both hobbies, and recognizing that a great game is a great game, no matter what form it takes.
Other readers may just now be rediscovering board, card, mini, and role-playing games, and what a time a time to do so! Close observers have marveled at the renaissance of tabletop design that has been underway in recent years, in which creators are constantly exploring new themes, game mechanics, and fictional worlds. It’s a thrilling time to embrace the tabletop side of the hobby.
For several years, Top of the Table has been an intermittent presence on our site – a way to offer occasional recommendations and enthusiasm for some of the great stuff going on in the tabletop scene. But it’s increasingly apparent that many of our readers want to learn more about this branch of gaming, and others who have loved these games for a long time want to have a more involved conversation about its merits. With that in mind, Top of the Table is jumping up into a twice-monthly column, and its scope and depth is expanding.
In future entries, I’ll continue to highlight some of my favorite tabletop games with in-depth recommendations, like my forthcoming review of Fantasy Flight’s massive Star Wars: Rebellion board game. But I’ll also explore deeper looks at tabletop game design, conduct interviews with some of the best creators working in the field, reveal exclusive looks at new games like last year's Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, and provide insight into ways you can deepen your home role-playing campaigns and enrich your home board gaming groups. Sometimes a given column might just be the best games to try in a particular situation, like titles to play with kids, great cooperative adventures, addictive competitive dueling card games, or casual party games that you can play in less than 30 minutes.
More than anything, I want to welcome gamers into a deeper discussion about tabletop games, no matter your level of previous experience with the hobby. And I want to hear from you. Email or tweet me directly from the links below, and tell me what tabletop games you want to learn about. Are you a video game player looking for a particular entry point into board games, but you don’t know where to start? Are you a longtime tabletop enthusiast, but you want a deep dive on a recently announced project? Maybe you’re even a tabletop game developer that wants to discuss your project? I’m eager to hear from you.
Everyone deserves to find the joy of gathering around a table with friends to enjoy a great game, whether that experience is a simple card game about bluffing your buddies, or a richly woven role-playing campaign that stretches across months of playtime. An endlessly rich universe of worlds and mechanics awaits discovery. Come join the conversation.
Watch for Top of the Table every other Friday here at Game Informer. To dive in right away, explore some of our previous tabletop coverage with picks for the best tabletop games of 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. |
IT’S the hottest game in town and it’s coming to foxsports.com.au.
The world’s best Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) teams will compete in Atlanta for a $1.4 million prize pool in the finals of ELEAGUE season 1 over the next fortnight.
eSports, or competitive video gaming, is one of the fastest-growing genres in entertainment, expected to be worth over $1.5 billion overall in 2017 as fans all over the world flock to watch the best players in gaming battle it out.
It’s a lucrative business for players too with over $US71 million given away in 2015 as prize money alone, plus many millions more in salaries.
The beauty of it is you don’t need a TV to watch it and foxsports.com.au is helping fans of one of the biggest games in the business (CS:GO) watch its richest event ever.
The ELEAGUE group stages are over with the six best teams in the world advancing into the playoffs. Now the runners-up, plus a lucky extra few, will face off in the Last Chance Qualifier.
WHAT ARE THEY PLAYING?
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is the fourth game in the much-loved Counter-Strike series which began back in 1999. Developed by Valve, the first-person shooter franchise sees teams of terrorists and counter-terrorists battle it out in a series of rounds, attempting to secure objectives or eliminate the opposition. CS:GO was released in 2012 and continues the tradition while expanding further into eSports.
A general view of action between Ninjas in Pyjamas and G2 Esports at the ELeague Arena. Source: Getty Images
WHY IS THIS EVENT IMPORTANT?
- CS:GO’s biggest events are known as ‘majors’, sponsored by game creators Valve, with the latest (ESL One: Cologne 2016) having a $1 million prize pool
- ELEAGUE has a $1.4 million prize pool (biggest ever in CS:GO) and is being streamed online as well as on cable television in the US (TBS)
- ELEAGUE invited the world’s 24 biggest and best teams who fought it out in six groups over May/June. Now in July the top 14 will travel to Atlanta to battle for ultimate supremacy.
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
Foxsports.com.au will host a live stream of the event, starting with the Last Chance Qualifiers from 4am Thursday (AEST).
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The eight Last Chance Qualifiers will be whittled down to just two teams over a series of games on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (AEST).
Those two teams will join six others in the quarter-finals, where teams will go head-to-head for a spot in the semis.
The final will be held on Sunday July 31 (AEST).
Fans watch a match at the ELeague Arena in Atlanta. Source: Getty Images
WHO SHOULD I BE WATCHING FOR?
Six teams have qualified for the Playoffs bracket already - Team EnVyUs, Fnatic, Astralis, Natus Vincere (or Na’Vi), Ninjas in Pyjamas and Cloud 9. Eight other teams will clash in the Last Chance Qualifier - G2 Esports, FaZe Clan, Virtus.pro, Counter Logic Gaming, FlipSid3 Tactics, mousesports, Gambit Gaming and the Australian hopefuls, Renegades.
Team EnVyUs
ELEAGUE Group F Winners (9-1)
Nationality: French
Players: Vincent ‘Happy’ Cervoni, Nathan ‘NBK-‘ Schmitt, Kenny ‘kennyS’ Schrub, Dan ‘apEX’ Madesclaire, Timothée ‘DEVIL’ Démolon (captain)
ELEAGUE Map Score: 160-109 (+51)
Best Major Result: Winners of DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015
Key Stat: EnVyUs is the most recent team remaining in ELEAGUE to have won a Valve major but struggled in the most recent major, ESL One: Cologne 2016.
Fnatic
ELEAGUE Group D Winners (9-2)
Nationality: Swedish
Players: Jesper ‘JW’ Wecksell, Robin ‘flusha’ Rönnquist (captain), Freddy ‘KRiMZ’ Johannson, Olof ‘olofmeister’ Kajbjer, Dennis ‘dennis’ Edman
ELEAGUE Map Score: 152-93 (+59)
Best Major Result: Winners of ESL One: Cologne 2015, ESL One: Katowice 2015, DreamHack Winter 2013
Key Stat: Of the nine Valve-sponsored majors in CS:GO history, Fnatic has won three. No other squad has won more than one.
Australian team The Renegades compete against Luminosity. Source: Getty Images
Astralis
ELEAGUE Group C Winners (9-2)
Nationality: Danish
Players: Finn ‘karrigan’ Andersen (captain), Andreas ‘Xyp9x’ Højsleth, Nicolai ‘dev1ce’ Reedtz, Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen, Markus ‘kjaerbye’ Kjærbye
ELEAGUE Map Score: 169-123 (+46)
Best Major Result: 3rd/4th Place at MLG Major Championship: Columbus
Key Stat: This squad has finished in the top eight in every major in the last two years under two names, Astralis and Team SoloMid, but has only broken into the top four at a major event once.
Natus Vincere
ELEAGUE Group E Winners (8-2)
Nationality: Ukrainian/Russian/Slovakian
Players: Daniil ‘Zeus’ Teslenko, Denis ‘seized’ Kostin, Ladislav ‘GuardiaN’ Kovács, Ioann ‘Edward’ Sukhariev, Egor ‘flamie’ Vasilyev
ELEAGUE Map Score: 145-86 (+59)
Best Major Result: 2nd at MLG Major Championship: Columbus and DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015
Key Stat: Better known as Na’Vi (which originates from Latin and be translated as “born to win”), this team finished as runner-up in two of the last three majors.
Ninjas in Pyjamas
ELEAGUE Group B Winners (8-3)
Nationality: Swedish
Players: Patrik ‘f0rest’ Lindberg, Christopher ‘GeT_RiGhT’ Alesund (captain), Adam ‘friberg’ Friberg, Richard ‘Xizt’ Landström, Jacob ‘pyth’ Mourujärvi
ELEAGUE Map Score: 152-111 (+41)
Best Major Result: Winners of ESL One: Cologne 2014
Key Stat: This much-loved team made the finals of the first five CS:GO majors before falling off, leading them to change their squad leading into 2016.
Australia’s The Renegades in action. Source: Getty Images
Cloud9
ELEAGUE Group A Runners-Up (5-4)
Nationality: American/Canadian
Players: Jordan ‘n0thing’ Gilbert (captain), Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek, Tyler ‘Skadoodle’ Latham, Jake ‘Stewie2k’ Yip, Alec ‘Slemmy’ White.
ELEAGUE Map Score: 149-28 (+21)
Best Major Result: 5th-8th at ESL One: Cologne 2014
Key Stat: This American squad originally finished second in its group but when Group A winners Luminosity were disqualified, they ascended into the top eight.
Renegades
ELEAGUE Group A Third Place (3-5)
Nationality: Australian
Players: Aaron ‘AZR’ Ward, Justin ‘jks’ Savage, Yaman ‘yam’ Ergenekon, Karlo ‘USTILO’ Pivac, (fifth player unknown as of publication).
ELEAGUE Map Score: 86-118 (-32)
Best Major Result: 9th-12th at ESL One: Cologne 2015
Key Stat: This Australian squad lives and plays at the Downtown Grand hotel in Las Vegas. Its captain, Chad ‘SPUNJ’ Burchill, retired last month requiring a replacement to be found at short notice for the Last Chance Qualifier. |
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Manchester United have informed Jorge Mendes they are keen on signing Benfica midfielder Renato Sanches in the summer.
Sanches, 18, is the latest starlet to be represented by Mendes but United are expected to face intense competition for the Portugal youth international ahead of next season.
M.E.N. Sport understands United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward contacted Mendes about Sanches and was informed Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona are also interested in the teenager, who would cost United £46m.
Reports that United tabled a deadline day bid for Sanches, however, were inaccurate. United were intent on strengthening only at full-back, where they explored the possibility of loaning a right-back following a slew of defensive injuries.
United have not agreed a transfer fee or personal terms with Benfica prodigy Sanches, who has scored two goals in 15 games this season.
Jose Mourinho's potential arrival could also bolster United's chances of signing Sanches. United have held talks with Mourinho's representatives about the possibility of him managing the club in recent weeks and, should he succeed Louis van Gaal at Old Trafford, his association with Mendes could clinch Sanches' signature.
Mourinho agreed to take Mendes' client Radamel Falcao on loan last year at Chelsea - despite his sorry season at United - and he has worked with a number of Mendes' players over the years.
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Cristiano Ronaldo, Fabio Coentrao and Pepe were among the GestiFute clients at Real Madrid while Mourinho was manager when, according to Spanish journalist Diego Torres, Mendes had his own office at the club's Valdebebas training ground.
Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, Tiago and Maniche all joined Chelsea within two years of Mourinho's 2004 appointment.
United have signed several players represented by Mendes since Ronaldo's £12.24m move in 2003. Anderson, Nani, Bebe, David de Gea, Angel di Maria and Falcao all agreed deals under the guidance of Mendes. |
Submissions for PAX East 2019 and GDC 2019 are now closed. Subscribe to our mailing list to be notified of future submission dates and keep up with IMB news!
Click here to access our submissions system.
FAQ
What is the Indie MEGABOOTH?
The Indie MEGABOOTH is a curated traveling showcase of independent game developers working together to bring indie games to the forefront of the gaming community and conference goers’ minds. The core IMB team aspires to give indie dev teams exposure to new audiences by creating a support network for their exhibitors while connecting them with fans, publishers, platforms and individuals in mutually beneficial partnerships.
What are the differences between IMB’s PAX and GDC Showcases?
IMB’s PAX showcases comprise several individual booths to form a collective MEGABOOTH (Ah you see what we did there?). It also features a large MINIBOOTH area comprised of smaller, more cost-effective kiosks.
PAX is a conference for fans first. If you are really interested in getting in front of your potential consumer audience, PAX is the way to go. Games that are just released, close to launch or in Beta tend to show better at PAX than games that are very early in their development. If you plan to show a game that’s in Alpha or early development, carefully consider how you would make your demo appealing and enticing to a fan and what you are hoping to learn or obtain by showcasing at the event, to consider if it is worthwhile. For IMB’s PAX showcases, you may have the opportunity to show the same game up to three times, but you will need to submit your game for consideration each time.
The IMB GDC Showcase is one of the featured Community Spaces of the conference. It is not comprised of booths but is instead a free-play lounge area. In 2018, the showcase featured 24 games. 12 games showed on Monday-Tuesday and the other 12 showed on Wednesday-Friday. There is no participation cost if you are accepted into the IMB GDC Showcase, however you would still be responsible for travel & accommodations. If you are accepted into more than one Community Space at GDC, you may be asked to choose a single space to participate in.
GDC is an industry-focused conference and often it feels like the entirety of the game dev industry is collectively convened in San Francisco. That’s because that’s usually the case. This is a great conference to meet peers and connect with potential partners. It’s also an opportunity to learn from the most prolific figures in the industry, as GDC features sessions and panels across every facet of the industry.
What are some benefits for showing with Indie MEGABOOTH?
Teams selected to participate as an exhibitor with Indie MEGABOOTH will receive some of the following benefits (caveat: devs will need to provide the appropriate info and assets by the assigned deadline):
Inclusion in IMB’s showcase lineup press release, blog post(s), and newsletter
Inclusion in the lineup announcement trailer
Inclusion in the gameplay montage video (if you submit footage in the correct format by the deadline)
“Indie MEGABOOTH Official Selection” laurels image to use on your social media channels, Steam/online storefront pages, website/marketing materials, trailer end slates, etc.
Mentions on the official IMB social media channels (primarily Twitter, Discord, and Facebook)
Access to a support network via Google Group mailing list to ask other IMB exhibitors for advice, best practices, vendor contacts (i.e. print materials, swag, etc.), recommendations on travel to Seattle or Boston, etc.
Access to the GDC or PAX press pre-reg list plus a PR resource guide on best practices for booking your press appointments
Two invites to the Indie MEGA Mixer (PAX showcases), where you’ll get to mingle with the IMB exhibitors and meet representatives from IMB sponsors
Access to professional quality photos captured by the IMB team and hired photographer (please note we try to take and upload as many photos as possible but can’t guarantee that we’ll get shots of every single game)
After a team has exhibited within an IMB showcase, they’re then added to the Indie MEGABOOTH Alumni mailing list/network
The Indie MEGABOOTH team also works directly with conference organizers to help streamline logistics, paperwork and communication so that you can continue to focus your time on development and how best to showcase your game.
We have also worked with organizations to implement various indie developer grant programs to help support teams and offset the cost associated with participating in big conventions with the goal of enabling more and a wider variety of teams to become a part of the MEGABOOTH.
Participation in PAX or GDC also provides exposure to tens of thousands of fans and industry peers that can give real-time feedback and provide critical insight into your development process. It’s a great way to capture highly engaged fans that are attending to find their next favorite game. It’s also an opportunity to connect with peers in the gaming industry in person and to become part of the ever-growing Indie MEGABOOTH community.
How much does it cost to submit for consideration?
Submissions are $50 USD per game.
Late submissions (submissions that are not completed before the November 9, 2018 deadline but make it into the system before November 13th at 11:59pm PT) have an additional late submission fee of $50 USD, therefore $100 USD total. To avoid paying the late fee: Please ensure you complete your submission before the deadline has passed.
I have more than one game I want to submit – How do I do that?
You may submit as many games as you would like for us to consider – but they must be submitted as individual entries.
Only games that are selected by the Indie MEGABOOTH jury are allowed to showcase at the event.
What if I’m an indie publisher?
Indie MEGABOOTH will no longer host publisher booths. Having a publisher does not disqualify a game from the showcase, but each game needs to be submitted by the developer (not the publisher or PR rep/agency), and if accepted, a representative from the core development team is required to staff their booth or space at the event.
Does the Indie MEGABOOTH accept tabletop games?
Historically, IMB has had a small Tabletop dedicated area, however, due to funding and sponsorship constraints we won’t be able to host Tabletop teams at a subsidized rate for PAX East 2019. We are working hard to figure out ways to make this area more robust and hope to have it return in the future. For games that were submitted for consideration for PAX East, submission fee refunds were sent in January.
How much does it cost to show at each event?
Short answer: it varies depending on which event/city your game is selected for. For PAX, it also varies depending on if you’re participating in the MEGABOOTH or MINIBOOTH area.
PAX East 2019: PAX East takes place March 28-31, 2019 in Boston, MA. For a typical 10 ft. x 10 ft. MEGABOOTH space at PAX we advise teams to budget somewhere around $5,000 USD depending on your setup, merchandise and other expenses. The estimated break down would be ~$2,000 for the booth space cost and $3,000 for other expenses. This does not include travel or shipping costs. We estimate a MINIBOOTH space to cost around $1,500 USD. Closer to exact prices will be sent out alongside acceptance notifications.
Here are some good write-ups that explain in detail what your expected budget could be, including potential hidden costs, for PAX. REMINDER that PAX East is a four day event, so you’ll need to increase your budget accordingly. MEGABOOTH teams showcase all four days, while MINIBOOTH teams showcase for two days.
PAX East 2014: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PeterSheff/20140502/216827/www.tetrapulse.com
PAX East 2013: http://www.hatsproductions.com/blog/news/pax-east-postmortem-2/
GDC 2019: GDC takes place March 18-22, 2019 in San Francisco, CA. The Indie MEGABOOTH showcase is one of the featured Community Spaces at GDC. This showcase only features digital games and is one of our smallest but does not have any participation fees associated. Please note, like all other showcases with the Indie MEGABOOTH, developers accepted to participate are responsible for covering the cost of their own travel and accommodations. In addition to showcasing your title at the largest professional industry conference specializing in game development, you’ll receive a GDC badge. (Note: if you are accepted into multiple GDC Community Space showcases, you may be asked to choose only one showcase to participate in.)
PAX: Should I choose MEGABOOTH or MINIBOOTH?
Great question! It entirely depends on a few different factors and boils down to your budget, availability and goals.
Do you have the resources/staff and finances to show for FOUR full days? Are you and your booth staff able to commit to arriving one full day before the event for booth set-up and can stay through the end for breakdown? Are you nearing launch (i.e. less than 6 months to shipping) If so, MEGABOOTH could be a good option. If your answer is no, then MINIBOOTH is likely better suited for your needs. MINIBOOTH may also be a good option if you are super early in your development cycle. It is also a more cost-effective option if you do not have the financial resources or bandwidth to commit to a full booth. If selected, you would also showcase for two out of the four days. Here are some details about each option:
MEGABOOTH: Full booth spaces are bought and run by your own team within the Indie MEGABOOTH showcase area. The typical booth size is 10 ft. x 10 ft. and we offer a very limited amount of 10 ft. x 15 ft. and 10 ft. x 20 ft. booths. You’ll be invoiced by PAX for your space and be individually responsible for all logistics such as booth design, set-up, merchandise, etc. IMB will work with you to streamline the process to order electricity, rental furniture and AV equipment if needed from the conference vendors. We provide information and guidance along with group packages and sponsorship opportunities but you have ultimate ownership over the space.
MINIBOOTH: This is an opportunity for developers with limited resources to show their game. We provide a smaller kiosk space, basic PC hardware and AV setup, and some PR. You may submit non-PC titles for the MINIBOOTH, but will need to bring your own hardware if accepted. You’ll also be included in the mailing list, networking events, parties and sponsorship opportunities. IMB handles all conference logistics so you do not need to worry about things like ordering electricity, for example. One thing to note is that the MINIBOOTH space rotates halfway through the show, meaning if selected, you’ll only be showing for 2 days out of 4. The layout/look of MINIBOOTH may vary from past years but will have the same amount of space.
I’ve shown with Indie MEGABOOTH before – May I show again?
Yes, you may! We have a limit of three showings per game but you’ll still need to go through the submission process, fill out the paperwork and submit payment ($50 USD per game) Showing at a previous Indie MEGABOOTH is not a guarantee that you will be accepted for the next show.
As a team/company, you may submit new games as often as you like – this limit is for each individual game.
Can I share my booth space?
Short answer: no.
We stopped allowing a group to purchase booth space to “host” other indies. The reason for this is that all content in the Indie MEGABOOTH is curated and goes through a rigorous review process to ensure a diverse set of high-quality games. When done in the past, it also became a logistics issue with the PAX organizers, especially in regards to paperwork, additional exhibitor passes, and confusion for vendors having multiple contacts so we have discontinued the practice.
When will I know if I’m accepted?
For the GDC and PAX East showcases, our judges will be reviewing submissions until late December/January. You will receive notification on the status of your submission starting in mid-January. If we require additional information or materials, you will be contacted as soon as possible. If you have not heard back either way about the status of your entry by late January, please contact us using the Q&A section on your entry link.
For the submission cycle for the PAX West showcase the call for submissions usually opens in the Spring and we aim to start notifying teams on their status in June.
What happens if my game doesn’t get space?
There are other indie showcases, both onsite and offsite, during PAX and it’s always wise to not put all your eggs in one basket or shop around for the best suited showcase for the type of game that you’re creating. It doesn’t hurt to have a back-up plan.
We also highly recommend volunteering to help run the MEGABOOTH. This will give you an opportunity to meet developers, see what types of games are there and attend the show. More information is available here: http://indiemegabooth.com/about/volunteer
If we can’t provide you space, please don’t be discouraged! There are plenty of alternative opportunities, and we try to offer mentorship when possible. We’re on your side!
Criteria & Selections
Our goal is to provide a ‘snapshot’ of the current indie scene and gaming community at large while building a community that provides support, mentorship, and networking opportunities to developers. We review all of the materials submitted. This includes not only your game, but also your involvement in the indie community, how participation could benefit your team (and vice versa), what your goals are, and how you apply these to your game and company philosophy.
Things We’re Looking For
We require the following materials:
Game/company information
Build of your game
Three-minute gameplay video. This must be three minutes of raw gameplay footage , not an edited trailer.
There are a couple of open-ended questions in the application form and you’ll want use those fields to tell us why you/your team/your game should be considered. Tell us your origin story!!! Ask yourself some of the following questions and relay those answers to us:
Does the game present a unique, interesting, or thoughtful design or mechanic?
Is the aesthetic style compelling or different?
Does the game address a social issue or offer a unique perspective or philosophy on game design?
Does your game represent a larger genre in a compelling way, or an under-represented genre?
Is the game or developer able to contribute positively to the indie community?
Are you an active member of your local community or an advocate for indie game devs?
Our goals
To build a community where indie developers help each other become successful – whether through mentoring, providing access to additional resources, financial/logistical support, or increased visibility. To raise awareness of indie games and to spotlight games overlooked by press, publishers, and fans. Indie MEGABOOTH works to drive the conversation about indie games out into the larger gaming industry, addressing discoverability issues and creating support networks.
We like to have a mix of larger indie games and studios helping to bring in awareness and offer mentorship, alongside newer/lesser-known companies who will benefit from the increased visibility and experiences of other developers.
This means we don’t make selections based solely on your game. We also take a look at how participating in the Indie MEGABOOTH could help your team, and how you can contribute to the community.
The core team involved with organizing the Indie MEGABOOTH will be reviewing the submission information with the help of a selection of judges. If we have questions or need additional information we’ll request items from your team before making a final decision.
If you ever have any questions please contact us at [email protected]! We keep the process transparent and stay engaged with everyone as best we can. |
Heading into the 2006 NHL Draft, Dale Tallon, then general manager of the Chicago Blackhawks, knew exactly which player he wanted.
NHL.com will take a look back at the NHL drafts from five, 10 and 25 years ago this week, leading up to the 2016 NHL Draft at First Niagara Center in Buffalo. How would a redo of those drafts look today?
But with the No. 3 pick of the first round, he wasn't sure University of North Dakota freshman center Jonathan Toews would still be available.
Video: We turn back the clock to the 2006 NHL Draft
"We wanted Toews the whole time," Tallon told the Chicago Tribune in 2015. "Of all the drafts I've been at, I had a sleepless night because I was worried he was going to go first or second. I don't know what we would have done if Toews hadn't been there. He was our guy."
Toews has been the leader of three Stanley Cup championship teams and the face of the franchise since he arrived with the Blackhawks.
Not every player picked that weekend at Rogers Arena in Vancouver has reached that lofty status. So with 10 years of hindsight, how would that draft go if the same players were made available today?
Note: Players listed with current teams; original draft position in parenthesis
1. Jonathan Toews, C, Chicago Blackhawks (3)
Toews was so respected he was made captain at age 20, the start of his second season. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2010 and the Selke Trophy in 2013. He also has two Olympic gold medals and was named the Best Forward at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Toews' 251 goals are second among players picked in 2006, and he is considered one of the top two-way players in the League.
2. Nicklas Backstrom, C, Washington Capitals (4)
In nine seasons, Backstrom has become the perfect setup man for Alex Ovechkin; he's assisted on 196 of Ovechkin's League-best 427 goals since 2007 (45.9 percent), according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Backstrom's 477 assists and 642 points are the most of any player picked in 2006.
3. Claude Giroux, C, Philadelphia Flyers (22)
No player in the League has more than Giroux's 443 points since the start of the 2010-11 season. He's also been nearly a point-per-game player during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, with 62 points in 63 games. He plays in all situations for the Flyers and is an emotional leader.
4. Phil Kessel, RW, Pittsburgh Penguins (5)
Drafted by the Boston Bruins, Kessel scored at least 30 goals five times in 10 seasons with the Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs and Penguins, including 37 goals in 2011-12 and 2013-14. He led Pittsburgh with 10 goals and 22 points during the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs. His 273 goals are the most by any player in the 2006 draft class, and his 579 points are second.
5. Jordan Staal, C, Carolina Hurricanes (2)
Drafted by the Penguins, Staal helped Pittsburgh win the Stanley Cup in 2009 as a shut-down third-line center. He was a Calder Trophy finalist in 2007 after scoring a career-high 29 goals. He's scored at least 20 goals five times in 10 seasons with the Penguins and Hurricanes.
6. Milan Lucic, LW, Los Angeles Kings (50)
The second-round pick helped the Bruins win the Stanley Cup in 2011 when he had personal NHL-bests of 30 goals and 62 points. In nine seasons with the Bruins and Kings, Lucic has mixed nasty, physical play with hands skilled enough that he's scored at least 20 goals four times.
7. Brad Marchand, LW, Boston Bruins (71)
The third-round pick became a full-time NHL player in 2010-11 and established himself as an undersized complementary scorer and an out-sized pest. This season he stepped into a top offensive role and scored 37 goals, sixth-most in the League and tied with Kessel for the most goals in a season by a 2006 draft pick.
8. Bryan Little, C, Winnipeg Jets (12)
Drafted when the franchise was the Atlanta Thrashers, he had his best season in 2008-09, his first full NHL season, when he had 31 goals in 79 games. He's scored at least 20 goals in three of the past four 82-game seasons, and he's been durable. Until 2015-16, when injuries limited him to 57 games, Little had missed 29 games in the seven previous seasons combined. He ranks in the top seven in the draft class in goals and points.
9. Derick Brassard, C, New York Rangers (6)
Brassard was drafted by the Columbus Blue Jackets and, after parts of six seasons, was traded to the Rangers on April 3, 2013 for Marian Gaborik. Brassard has blossomed into a top-six center in three full seasons with the Rangers, topped by his personal NHL-best 27 goals this season. He also won more than 50 percent of his faceoffs for the first time in 2015-16. He's been a reliable playoff performer with 44 points and a 52.04 shot attempts-for percentage in 59 games.
10. Semyon Varlamov, G, Colorado Avalanche (23)
Varlamov was drafted by the Washington Capitals and, after parts of three seasons, was traded to the Avalanche prior to the 2011-12 season. His best season was 2013-14 when he was second in voting for the Vezina Trophy, had a League-high 41 wins, and a .927 save percentage despite facing a League-high 2,013 shots. His NHL career .917 save percentage is the best among goalies drafted in 2006 to play at least 10 games.
11. Kyle Okposo, RW, New York Islanders (7)
Okposo has developed into a strong sidekick for Islanders captain John Tavares and has scored at least 22 goals in three of the past four 82-game seasons. He ranks in the top 10 in the 2006 draft class in goals (139) and points (369).
12. Erik Johnson, D, Colorado Avalanche (1)
Johnson was drafted by the St. Louis Blues and, after parts of three seasons, was traded to the Avalanche during the 2010-11 season. He's grown into a cornerstone player for the Avalanche, scoring at least 10 goals in each of the past two seasons. He also helped the United States win the silver medal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. His 59 goals and 220 points make him the leading offensive performer among defensemen selected in 2006.
13. Patrik Berglund, C, St. Louis Blues (25)
Until offseason shoulder surgery kept Berglund out until January, he had been a solid, durable contributor in his eight NHL seasons; Berglund missed 27 games in his first seven seasons. He's scored 20 goals twice and helped Sweden win the silver medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
14. Nick Foligno, LW, Columbus Blue Jackets (28)
One of the Blue Jackets' better trades was acquiring Foligno from the Ottawa Senators, who had drafted him, for defenseman Marc Methot in July 2012. Foligno scored 31 goals in 2014-15 and played in his first NHL All-Star Game, and was named captain for Columbus prior to the start of this season.
15. Steve Mason, G, Philadelphia Flyers (69)
Mason, a third-round pick of the Blue Jackets, won the Calder Trophy and was a Vezina Trophy finalist with Columbus in 2009. But he struggled to regain that level in the four ensuing seasons and was traded to the Flyers on April 3, 2013, and the move has allowed him to get his career back on track. Among goalies to play at least 75 games the past two seasons, Mason's .936 even-strength save percentage is second in the League (Carey Price, Montreal Canadiens, .941).
16. James Reimer, G, San Jose Sharks (99)
A fourth-round pick by the Toronto Maple Leafs, Reimer emerged as a full-time NHL player in 2010-11 with 20 wins in 35 games, and led Toronto to the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons in 2012-13. Traded to the Sharks on Feb. 27, he had a 1.62 goals-against average in eight games to help in their push for a spot in the playoffs.
17. Artem Anisimov, C, Chicago Blackhawks (54)
A second-round pick by the Rangers, Anisimov centered arguably the best line in hockey this season with the Blackhawks, flanked by Art Ross Trophy winner Patrick Kane and Calder Trophy finalist Artemi Panarin. Anisimov scored 20 goals, his second season in the past three with at least 20.
18. Leo Komarov, LW, Toronto Maple Leafs (180)
This season, Komarov scored a career-high 19 goals and played in the 2016 NHL All-Star Game. He's also a physical presence; Komarov's NHL career average of 4.1 hits per game is second in the League among players since 2012-13 with at least 150 games played (Matt Martin, New York Islanders, 4.7).
19. Michael Grabner, RW, Toronto Maple Leafs (14)
Drafted by the Vancouver Canucks, Grabner was with the Islanders, his third team, when he scored 34 goals and was a Calder Trophy finalist in 2010-11. He scored 20 goals the following season but hasn't produced at the same rate since. Instead, Grabner used his blazing speed to become a solid penalty killer. He had nine goals in 80 games this season, his first with the Maple Leafs.
20. Michal Neuvirth, G, Philadelphia Flyers (34)
A second-round pick by the Capitals, Neuvirth had his best season in 2015-16, the first with the Flyers. Among goalies to play at least 30 games, Neuvirth's .924 save percentage was fourth in the League and his 2.27 GAA was eighth. Injuries are a reason he's played more than 40 games once in the NHL, but Neuvirth said he plans on changing his offseason training in hopes of staying healthy next season.
21. Matt Beleskey, LW, Boston Bruins (112)
A fourth-round pick of the Ducks, Beleskey had an career-high 22 goals in 2014-15 with Anaheim and followed that with 15 goals and a career-high 37 points this season, his first with the Bruins.
22. Nikolay Kulemin, LW, New York Islanders (44)
A second-round pick of the Maple Leafs, Kulemin's best season was in 2010-11 when he had 30 goals and 57 points for Toronto. He hasn't approached that level since, but has been a dependable performer the past two seasons with the Islanders, playing 163 of 164 regular-season games, and 18 games in the playoffs.
23. Cal Clutterbuck, RW, New York Islanders (72)
A third-round pick of the Minnesota Wild, Clutterbuck has established himself as a physical, energy player during his nine NHL seasons with the Wild and Islanders. He had 15 goals in 77 games this season, and formed arguably the Islanders' most consistent line with center Casey Cizikas and left wing Matt Martin.
24. Michal Frolik, RW, Calgary Flames (10)
Frolik was drafted by the Florida Panthers and started his NHL career with back-to-back 20-goal seasons in 2008-09 and 2009-10. After a few bumps in the road, he helped the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup in 2013 and has scored at least 15 goals in each of the past three seasons, including 15 this season, his first with the Flames.
25. Chris Stewart, RW, Anaheim Ducks (18)
Stewart is playing for his fifth team after being drafted by the Avalanche. He had consecutive 28-goal seasons for Colorado in 2009-10 and 2010-11, but hasn't gotten back to that level since. At 6-foot-2 and 231 pounds he remains a physical presence, and played well this season with Ducks top-line center Ryan Getzlaf, showing he can raise his game when skating with high-end players.
26. Mathieu Perreault, C, Winnipeg Jets (177)
A sixth-round pick of the Capitals, Perreault had consecutive 18-goal seasons with the Ducks and Jets in 2013-14 and 2014-15, but dipped to nine goals this season. He is a speedy, versatile forward who has a career shot-attempts percentage of 55.2 in 361 games.
27. Trevor Lewis, C, Los Angeles Kings (17)
Lewis has been a fourth-line center on two Stanley Cup championship teams for the Kings in 2012 and 2014. After scoring 18 goals in his first six seasons, he has 17 in the past two. He's also one of Los Angeles' top penalty-killing forwards.
28. Jamie McGinn, LW, Anaheim Ducks (36)
A second-round pick of the Sharks, McGinn had his best offensive season in 2015-16. He scored 14 goals in 63 games with the Buffalo Sabres, and had eight goals, including two game-winners, in 21 games with the Ducks, who acquired him before the 2016 NHL Trade Deadline.
29. Andrew MacDonald, D, Philadelphia Flyers (160)
A sixth-round pick by the Islanders, MacDonald has developed into a dependable, stay-at-home defender. Since becoming a full-time NHL player in 2010-11, his 2.5 blocked shots per game is tied for third among players with at least 350 games. Despite playing 28 games with the Flyers this season he averaged a team-best 2.6 blocked shots per game.
30. Viktor Stalberg, LW, New York Rangers (161)
A sixth-round pick of the Maple Leafs, Stalberg scored 22 goals with the Blackhawks in 2011-12 and helped them win the Stanley Cup in 2013. He was a dependable bottom-six forward and penalty killer in 75 games with the Rangers this season.
Missing first-round picks: Peter Mueller, Arizona Coyotes (8); James Sheppard, Minnesota Wild (9); Jonathan Bernier, Los Angeles Kings (11); Jiri Tlusty, Toronto Maple Leafs (13); Riku Helenius, Tampa Bay Lightning (15); Ty Wishart, San Jose Sharks (16); Mark Mitera, Anaheim Ducks (19); David Fischer, Montreal Canadiens (20); Bobby Sanguinetti, New York Rangers (21); Dennis Persson, Buffalo Sabres (24), Leland Irving, Calgary Flames (26); Ivan Vishnevskiy, Dallas Stars (27); Chris Summers, Arizona Coyotes (29); Matthew Corrente, New Jersey Devils (30). |
The trial of four occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge went to the jury Tuesday afternoon. The 12-person jury will begin their deliberations Wednesday morning.
Attorneys spent much of Tuesday delivering closing arguments to jurors in U.S. District Court in Portland and tempers were high outside the courtroom.
During the morning recess on the ninth floor of courthouse, defendant Jason Patrick walked up to Jarvis Kennedy, a council member of the Burns Paiute Tribe.
Jason Patrick Hometown: Bonaire, Georgia Verdict Reached Jason Patrick was found guilty of conspiracy; not guilty of carrying a firearm in a federal facility.
The refuge covers some of the tribe’s sacred lands, and several Burns Paiute members expressed anger over damage to those lands during the 41-day occupation near Burns, Oregon.
“I want to apologize,” Patrick started, before being interrupted by Kennedy.
“You need to walk the f—- away from me,” Kennedy replied. “You need to back up.”
Patrick stood there and Kennedy repeated himself.
After the encounter, Patrick said he went up to Kennedy to apologize for what happened.
“I want to tell him I’m sorry,” Patrick said. “I’m sorry if they feel slighted in some way.”
Patrick said the occupation was “not at all” about disrespecting tribal lands.
Amanda Peacher/OPB
Many tribal artifacts are located at the Malheur refuge, and tribal officials say some were damaged during the occupation.
Kennedy said Patrick upset him.
“You’ve seen what happened,” Kennedy said. “Speaking of idiots, why would you want to poke a pissed off bear, which [Patrick] was doing?”
Government Closing
After the altercation, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ethan Knight delivered the government’s closing arguments in the case. He went charge-by-charge for Patrick, Darryl Thorn, Jake Ryan and Duane Ehmer, before asking jurors to find the four guilty on all counts.
“At its core, this case is about four defendants that went too far,” Knight said in court.
Knight told jurors there is an overwhelming amount of evidence in the case to convict.
The government has charged the defendants with conspiracy to impede federal employees who worked at the refuge from doing their jobs through force, threats and intimidation. Some have also been charged with additional felonies, like depredation of property and weapons charges.
Duane Ehmer Hometown: Irrigon, Oregon Verdict Reached Duane Ehmer was found not guilty of conspiracy; guilty of depredation of government property.
Jake Ryan Hometown: Plains, Montana Sentenced Jake Ryan was found not guilty of conspiracy; not guilty of carrying a firearm in a federal facility; guilty of depredation of government property.
Last fall, a jury acquitted occupation leader Ammon Bundy and six others on some of the same charges, including conspiracy. Jurors at the time said the government failed to present clear evidence showing the occupiers intended to impede the federal employees.
Earlier Tuesday, the defense rested its case with a few final pieces of evidence, including a stipulation to jurors about how AR-15 rifles and other semi-automatic weapons are widely available for sale in the U.S. and have a variety of civilian uses, including hunting.
Portions of the government’s case included dozens of firearms recovered at the refuge and some 20,000 rounds of ammunition.
Before delivering closing arguments, federal prosecutors put on a rebuttal case.
FULL COVERAGE An Occupation In Eastern Oregon Ongoing coverage of the federal case against the people involved in the 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and how life has changed in Harney County, Oregon.
Refuge manager Chad Karges testified he took safety measures after he learned the same people associated with the 2014 Bunkerville, Nevada, standoff were in Harney County before the occupation.
“At my house, I had loaded guns at every door,” he said. “Normally, the guns are locked in a safe.”
Karges also testified he was concerned about his family’s safety in late 2015. “After Christmas, I told my children and grandkids they could no longer visit Burns,” he said.
Karges testified he received a briefing from law enforcement on Jan. 7, 2016, after the occupation began, in which he learned about threats to federal employees.
“They were from the occupiers at the refuge,” he said. “After the briefing, we jointly made the decision to remove all refuge employees from the area.”
Outside the presence of the jury, Assistant U.S. Attorney Geoff Barrow told the court that during the Jan. 7 briefing, Karges learned the threats were about employees being kidnapped by the occupiers.
U.S. District Court Judge Anna Brown ruled those specifics were too prejudicial.
“It’s not necessary for the jury to know it was as specific as a kidnapping threat,” she said, before the jury heard Karges’ testimony.
Refuge biologist Linda Beck also testified she was scared during the occupation. She read in a Reuters article the occupiers used her full name and occupation leader Ryan Bundy referenced her as “the carp lady.”
“I ran out to my driveway and locked my gate,” she testified. Beck said she also purchased a handgun.
The government’s final piece of evidence was a segment of an interview OPB aired on Jan. 9, 2016, with Ryan Bundy. In it, Bundy talks about the role guns play in the occupation.
Defense Targets Informants
The defense gave its closing arguments Tuesday afternoon. The attorneys focused their final remarks on many of the same themes from the first refuge trial.
Andrew Kohlmetz, Jason Patrick’s standby counsel, said there’s no evidence Patrick intended to impede federal employees.
He also sought to raise doubt about the government’s use of confidential informants at the refuge.
The government had nine informants at the refuge, Kohlmetz reminded jurors. Three have been made public, he said.
“What were those other six informants doing on the refuge?” he asked. “We don’t know. Who were they? We don’t know.”
The government has said throughout the trial that none of the guns left at the refuge belonged to informants. But during testimony, FBI officials said informants were permitted to break the law to maintain their cover as members of the occupation.
“That in and of itself is reasonable doubt,” Kohlmentz concluded.
Marc Friedman, the attorney for Thorn, argued to jurors his client was a “pawn.”
“Mr. Thorn was a team player,” Friedman said in closing remarks. “He wasn’t the coach, he wasn’t the quarterback.”
Friedman said merely being at the refuge isn’t enough to find his client guilty.
“There was no conspiracy,” Friedman said. “Darrly Thorn wasn’t part of any conspiracy.”
Michele Kohler, Ehmer’s attorney, said the government started its case by saying there was no signed document, no recording, no direct evidence of an agreement to impede federal employees.
“It was never there,” she told the jury. “The thought was never given to the employees. [The occupiers] went there on a holiday weekend.” |
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Tuesday said President Trump's Advisory Committee on Election Integrity is making false claims about voter fraud, and called for it to be disbanded.
On the Senate floor, Schumer cited a Washington Post story that dismissed claims from the group's commissioner, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who claimed that more than 5,000 people voted in New Hampshire without a valid state driver's license, and said that was evidence of voter fraud. The story downplayed the findings by saying at least a few of them were college students who weren't aware they had to get a state driver's license.
"This commission, and I would say particularly its vice chair, Mr. Kobach, are so eager to prove their point, which is virtually unprovable, that there's huge amounts of voter fraud that they come up with these baseless claims and then have to back off," Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning. "Throwing these kinds of deeply misleading, bogus claims around about stolen elections, massive voter fraud without any actual evidence is extremely irresponsible and damaging to our democracy."
"They are so eager to prove their point about voter fraud, which is demonstrably false, they are resorting to these crazy claims, discrediting their commission and discrediting them," Schumer continued.
"The voter integrity commission is a punishment in search of a transgression that never happened," Schumer said. "If there were overwhelming evidence of fraud, obviously we'd have to do something, but there isn't. ... The election integrity commission ought to be disbanded. We will be looking for ways to do that legislatively."
The comments came as the commission meets for the first time in New Hampshire. The commission is chaired by Vice President Pence. |
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Sells 3.72 Million Units First Week in the US - News
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by, posted on 12 November 2014
First week sales figures in the US for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare are in. The franchise has been one of the top sellers every holiday for many years now, but seen a decline the last couple of years. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has sold a combined 3,722,031 units at retail in the US.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare like with past games in the franchise sold the most on the Xbox consoles. The Xbox One was the top platform for the game with 1,293,397 units sold. The PlayStation 4 was the second biggest platform with 1,249,181 units sold.
The last generation consoles lagged behind in sales as gamers slowly upgrade to a new generation of consoles. The Xbox 360 version of the game sold 765,471 units, while the PlayStation 3 version sold 390,788 units.
Earlier this week Activision announced Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare launch outsold last year's Call of Duty: Ghosts launch. However, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game did not launch until a couple weeks later when the consoles themselves launched. The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC versions of Ghosts sold 3,423,561 units in the US in the first week. However, when you add in the PS4 and Xbox One launch sales of the game it sold 4,163,984 units.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is available for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. The game launched in North America and Europe on November 4 and November 13 in Japan.
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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. Outside, in the real world, he has a passion for the outdoors which includes everything from hiking to having received his B.A. in Environmental Studies. You can contact the author at [email protected] or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Rare songbird fights back from brink of extinction and found to be thriving in habitat used by Navy for bomb practice
Numbers of the rare San Clemente Island loggerhead shrike thriving
The endangered songbird had been threatened with extinction
But a US Navy investment programme has helped it bounce back
One of North America's rarest birds has fought back from the brink of extinction and is enjoying a renaissance - on a rocky outcrop used by the US Navy as a firing range.
The San Clemente Island loggerhead shrike is thriving on the rocky outcrop off the Californian coast, known as the 'boom box'.
In the 90s its numbers had dwindled to just seven breeding pairs, but now there are believed to be 70 on the island.
Back from the brink: A San Clemente Island loggerhead shrike chirps away in its enclosure at a facility on San Clemente Island
It is a remarkable success story given the black, grey and white songbird shares its home with an area that is regularly bombed by US Navy battleships.
The Navy itself has claimed credit for the shrikes survival after it launched a $3-million-a-year captive breeding programme to protect the threatened species, according to a report in the Telegraph.
Where once the volcanic island was pitted with craters, the investment programme has allowed native plants to be reintroduced, such as the Channel Island tree mallow.
Warhead: An old target from the days of extensive Navy bombardments now decorates the scenic coast
Vital work: Wildlife biologist Melissa Booker is helping to protect a variety of endangered species on San Clemente Island Navy biologist Melissa Booker said: 'The shrike seems to be unaffected by the loud noises. Ms Booker added: 'Some places that resembled cratered moonscapes are now covered with native shrubs so thick it's hard to wade through them.' Snipers have been told to the nests of endangered birds, such as the shrike. The nests of western snowy plovers have even been moved out of the way of tanks.
Aid: The US Navy injects $3million each year to help protect the wildlife on the island, such as the shrike
Saved: Botanists have prevented the Channel Island tree mallow from being wiped out on San Clemente Island too
San Clemente Island fox numbers have also bounced back from just a few hundred 10 years ago to about 1,100
And the Navy is now trying to get the San Clemente night lizard taken off the endangered species list, after numbers increased.
According to the Pentagon, $73 million was spent on protecting more than 400 species across an area of 28 million acres last year. They are making the investment to avoid possible confrontations with conservationists.
Commander Christopher Kirby, the officer in charge of San Clemente, said: 'If we were to abuse the island, we would lose it.' Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity, said: 'They're doing some good things for endangered species, which is great, but there are activities that are really damaging to the environment at the same time.'
Botanist: Bryan Munson stands in the middle of brush that's critical to survival of various creatures including the loggerhead shrike on San Clemente Island
Danger: A sign warns visitors of the dangers involved when entering the seaside hills of San Clemente Island |
The time is ripe for a rediscovery of Leopold Kohr. Or perhaps better: the time is ripe for the discovery of Leopold Kohr, since few have any idea who he was. A select group of readers might connect him with E.F. Schumaker, author of Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (orig. 1973). Kohr was one of Schumaker’s instructors, and the two remained lifelong associates and friends.
I.
Roughly three years after the Meltdown of 2008 I encountered an article online with the curious title, “This Economic Crisis is a “Crisis of Bigness.” It attracted my attention, because like many other observers I’d become convinced long before that both government and corporations had grown too large to accomplish even well-intentioned goals. The impulses for a more centralized society and a more economically integrated world — the impulses, that is, that bring about “bigness” — were mistakes from the get-go. Globalization promised universal prosperity, but instead has made the rich richer, slowly and painfully begun wiping out the American middle class, and created legions of unemployed or underemployed poor people — precariat is the term some writers are now using for this new class. The precariat consists of the army of adjunct faculty, temps, short-term contract workers, etc., most doing what they are doing because it is the only work they can find in the globalized “new economy.” The underemployment crisis heralds eventual civil unrest, especially with the Bureau of Labor Statistics insisting, against all experience, that the unemployment rate is just 5.5% (the U-3 figure as of this writing). Does anyone really think this is good, whether for workers or the economy at large?
The above article cited Leopold Kohr, on the grounds that he had predicted central aspects of the present situation over half a century ago in his magnum opus The Breakdown of Nations (1957). I immediately ordered Kohr’s book, and when it came, I put every spare minute into reading it straight through. It is not light reading. Works that raise fundamental issues in political philosophy as well as economics never are. I wondered why I’d never heard of Kohr or Breakdown before. Then I realized: unlike someone such as Joseph Schumpeter, whose analysis of the long-term fate of capitalism as an industrial system in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1947) was the most interesting I’d run across, Kohr was not at Harvard. He’d been exiled to lowly University of Puerto Rico. He was not part of the academic one percent.
Kohr had spent ten years, moreover, trying to find a publisher for Breakdown. This was no surprise, as the book’s basic premises, methodology, and conclusions ran 180 degrees counter to the then-reigning doctrines in all the fields he was addressing. Fascination with bigness gripped the social sciences. Large nation states were the primary visible actors on the global scene, and taken for granted as most were known quantities. Large corporations, likewise, were using new telecommunications technology to extend their reach. With the founding of the UN and the establishing of Bretton Woods, financial power had begun to migrate quietly to transnational organizations (e.g., the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, NATO, etc.). This, it was widely assumed by those at the levers of power, would continue until we had achieved a stable “new world order” in some sense of that term. The idea was not necessarily malicious in intent. It was presented as the culmination of a natural progression. Many of its advocates saw global unity as the best means of ending the dangers of high-level war, especially in light of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in light of the fact that newer nuclear weapons promised even more destructive force. These factors all worked against a manuscript like Kohr’s being taken seriously.
Breakdown was finally published in 1957, but was ignored completely and sank without a trace. It went out of print and remained out of print until 1978. A second edition, issued by a small press without fanfare, also disappeared despite the attention growth-related issues were receiving (courtesy of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth). In 1986, we saw a repeat. The book was again out of print until Green Books reissued it in 2001. Its author had died in 1994.
Today, the situation is somewhat different. Widening wage gaps all over the world are one of the more conspicuous features of our times. Even globalist elites have expressed worry about them. High-level war is no longer perceived as the biggest danger civilization faces; the danger, now, is from populist groups and decentralized terror networks. Not to mention man-made climate change; if it is happening, it just illustrates the idea that systems (in this case, industrial civilization which burns fossil fuels for energy) cannot grow indefinitely without eventually disrupting surrounding systems and forcing them to reconfigure, very likely to our detriment. Thus we are seeing slightly less unanimity among thinking people on the fundamental benevolence of globalization and the possibility of endless economic growth. We have seen the formation of mega-states such as the European Union, but the supposed need for “austerity” measures is prompting rebellion in the voting booths in countries such as Greece, perhaps indicating that such entities are inherently unmanageable and doomed eventually to destabilize and collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. There are independence stirrings all over the world, from the Catalans wanting freedom from Spain, the Kurds wanting out of Iraq, the Chechens wanting freedom from Russia, Tibetans wanting independence from Beijing, and so on. Move to the U.S. Despite Americans’ “one nation under God,” equivalent movements exist in the South, Texas, Hawaii, Vermont, southwestern Oregon, and in doubtless in other states as well. In a sense, Leopold Kohr was their prophet.
Who was Kohr; and what, precisely, was his message?
II.
Leopold Kohr was born in 1909 in the small town of Oberndorf bei Salzberg, in Austria, where he grew up. He would retain fond memories of his hometown, which he came to see as governed efficiently and effectively. Oberndorf remained his regulative ideal for the proper size and reach of a political unit. An exceedingly bright youth, Kohr studied law at the University of Innsbruck and political science at the University of Vienna, obtaining doctorates in both subjects. Then he studied economics at the London School of Economics.
By now it was the 1930s. With the Spanish Civil War having broken out and the world inching toward the larger war to come, Kohr worked as a war correspondent where he befriended George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway and André Malraux. He observed with great interest the mostly self-contained separatist movements of Aragon and Catalonia within Spain, before returning to his native Austria. As a Jew, his stay there was short lived. He fled to the U.S. right before the Nazis annexed Austria, applied for, and received U.S. citizenship. His philosophical ideas forming rapidly, he began intensive work on what would become his major achievement: The Breakdown of Nations.
From the early 1940s until the mid-1950s Kohr taught economics and political philosophy at Rutgers University. During this period he struggled unsuccessfully to find a publisher for Breakdown. The manuscript — a treatise devoid of the charts, graphs, and equations that filled books and technical journals of mainstream social science — probably bewildered academic acquisitions editors. Was this economics or sociology? Or political philosophy? It was interdisciplinary, during an era when micro-specialization completely ruled academia (unless you were famous, like Schumpeter).
Moreover, as we noted, with its attack on the cult of bigness during a period of fascination with incipient global governance, Breakdown was swimming against a very strong tide. In the 1950s, almost no one knew what to make of Leopold Kohr. Without the assistance of British philosophical anarchist Herbert Read, the manuscript might not have found a publisher for many more years, if at all. Read persuaded British publisher Routledge & Kegan Paul to issue Breakdown, and Kohr’s major work came out in 1957. As we also noted, it met with complete indifference.
Kohr had accepted a position teaching economics at the University of Puerto Rico, and also advised local planners. The poor reception accorded Breakdown doesn’t seem to have fazed him, as he soon published a follow-up, The Overdeveloped Nations: The Diseconomies of Scale, in 1962. It also disappeared. In 1973, now 64, he moved to rural Wales, taught for a while at the University College of Wales Aberystwyth, lent his support to a Welsh independence movement, and published Development Without Aid: The Translucent Society (1976). He finally retired from teaching and began to divide his time between his Welsh residence and one near his beloved Austrian hometown. Meanwhile, E.F. Schumacher’s books Small Is Beautiful and A Guide for the Perplexed referenced Kohr’s ideas. This won them a small but significant audience. In 1983 Kohr received the Right Liveliness Award, a sort of alternative Nobel Prize, “for his early inspiration of the movement for a human scale.” He had planned on returning to Austria permanently at the time of his sudden death at the age of 84.
III.
What was Kohr’s central message?
We have stated part of it. It came to be expressed it in a few succinct phrases. “When something is wrong, something is too big.” And: “There seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness.”
In other words, the problem wasn’t this or that ideology, “left” or “right.” Both, Kohr would note, had served as the basis for cruel, totalitarian regimes. Nor is the problem this or that economic system. “Socialism doesn’t work,” say rightists; “capitalism is mired in contradictions,” say leftists. But either public or market-driven systems can be rendered workable under the right circumstances. These involve the human scale: the scale at which everyone in the community has a say in the choices and policies that affect them. In very large nation states, this can’t happen, voting and other pretenses of representation notwithstanding. Those at the top do not see those at the bottom, or even in the middle, as persons like themselves. States must therefore be kept small, so those voices can be heard — and, in particular, so that aggressive impulses can be contained.
Kohr called his key idea the power theory of aggression. Social brutality and cruelty appear and worsen to the extent the perpetrators realize they can get away with it. The problem is not their ideology but their becoming immune to retaliation. Those atop empires command vast authority structures including military might, along with the necessary resources, so that their victims have no realistic hope of mounting a response. “Everyone having the power,” Kohr says, “will in the end commit the appropriate atrocities” (Breakdown, p. 47). These include breaking their own laws if there is no greater power to hold them in check. That greater power can only be the aggregate will of the people, which can only operate as a kind of feedback loop if the human scale is maintained. When it is not maintained, those at the top, or in the middle, become ciphers. He who accumulates sufficient power in a political system grown too big “does whatever it induces in its possessor the belief that he cannot be checked by any existing larger accumulation of power” (ibid.).
Bigness thus corrupts nation states. Those at its center tend to accumulate more and more power, and to play faster and looser with whatever rules they began with, such as a Constitution. Eventually they will invade weaker neighbors, as Germany had done with Austria under the Nazis and the Soviets had done when they acquired Eastern Europe later. Then they become empires, whose rules know only aggression and force, whether against other nations or against their own people.
But under very large regimes, lines of authority become bureaucratic and unwieldy. They grow in complexity, often to correct for the unwieldiness. Bureaucracies tend to operate in ways that justify their own existence and expansion first, moreover. This frequently sends them not in search of solutions but manufactured problems that did not exist before. The entire system becomes less and less accountable, and there is a growing sense — even (or especially) under an immense totalitarian regime like the Soviet Union — that those in power literally do not know what they are doing. Ordinary Russians learned early in life not to depend on agents of the Soviet state; today, many U.S. citizens are figuring out the same thing.
Every kind of system, Kohr seemed to be saying, has an optimal size. If it exceeds that size, it experiences increasing dysfunction, be this turning against other systems or against its own.
Why, for example, would a 200-foot tall man (as in that cheesy 1950s sci-fi film The Amazing Colossal Man) be impossible? Because such a person would be crushed by the immense weight of his own skeletal structure, and a muscular system strong enough to hold him upright would just add to his enormous weight. Or consider cancer. While cancers differ, all are abnormal, chaotic, cell growths that disrupt their surroundings and eventually destroy the life of their host.
What is true of biological systems is true of political and economic ones. They have an optimal growth potential and size. If they get too big, problems grow and multiply. They attack their surroundings; and they start to self-destruct. There really are “limits to growth.” Some are imposed by their environment; others are inherent to the systems themselves.
IV.
But when Kohr was writing, wasn’t there a glaring exception to this: the United States of America? The “indispensable nation,” as neocons would begin calling it much later?
Following the Second World War, this seemed to be true, at least superficially. By the time Breakdown appeared, the U.S. had become the most powerful nation in the world, militarily and economically. But America seemed benevolent. Americans wore the white hats. We had been the good guys, and were viewed as such in Western Europe at least, where we had taken the lead in vanquishing Hitler.
Kohr was undeterred by this. Things would change for the “land of the free.” They had to, because the organic logic of bigness required it. In a chapter entitled “The American Empire” — Kohr might have been the first author to use those two words together — Kohr all but predicted the general trend of the next 70 years of U.S. history. Military might required a powerful central state to oversee it. Power always grows aggressive, and though it might take a generation or so, the U.S. would turn into everything it had once opposed. The Soviet Union had also emerged from World War II a much stronger entity. Kohr saw that the two superpowers were on collision course, and unless one or both collapsed from within, the result would be a third world war. As it turned out, we saw a frightening arms race, but no war because the Soviet Union collapsed. But Breakdown’s predictions for the U.S. came to pass!
Unlike previous empires, the Anglo-American world exercises economic rather than political domination, as City of London, Wall Street investment banks, and other leviathan corporations eventually had their political classes bought and paid for. Global corporations now reach around the world courtesy of so-called free trade agreements, the first of which was GATT in the late 1940s. The U.S. had actually begun to pursue an aggressive foreign policy to secure foreign holdings before Breakdown was published. Kohr apparently did not know that the CIA had already sabotaged the democratically elected government of Muhammed Mosadegh in Iran, so corporations could continue extracting that nation’s oil and taking the profits out of the country. At the end of his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower sounded the first public warnings about the “military-industrial complex.” It was probably already too late!
The U.S. would begin to pursue wars on false pretexts, such as in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. There were plenty of other instances, vastly smaller, in which democratically elected popular leaders were crushed by U.S. might when they stood up to corporate interests, as did (for example) Omar Torrijos in Panama. Officially, Torrijos died in a helicopter crash in 1981. Many Panamanians maintain he was assassinated.
Things have indeed gotten worse. When the Soviet empire collapsed, the U.S. war machine needed new enemies to fight. With the rise of neoconservatism which was essentially aggression concealed inside Straussian political philosophy, the 1990s saw a move towards initiating wars of choice for “regime change.” The government of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega who assumed power after Torrijos’s death had been crushed by the first Bush regime in 1989. The following year saw the Gulf War which began an ongoing campaign of aggression against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Next came Kosovo, under the Clinton regime. Then, even more obviously, were Afghanistan and Iraq under the Bush II regime following 9/11. Those nations are now in shambles. One reason the U.S. empire could attack Iraq was the clear perception that Iraq had no real capacity to fight back. This perception was right. It took less than three weeks to bring the regime down and send Saddam into hiding. “Nation building,” however, proved to be impossible, costing roughly 4,500 Americans their lives, maiming thousands more, and rendering hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead or homeless. It is no exaggeration to call the Iraq War a nearly-unprecedented military and public relations disaster for the U.S.
Or consider the rise of the domestic police state. It is common knowledge that the past several years have seen an explosion of deadly police violence against usually innocent people. If you live in the U.S., you are now more likely to be killed by a cop than by a criminal. Police are armed to the teeth with weaponry more suited to a battlefield, nearly all of it the product of the Department of Homeland Security. True to what Kohr would have said, police now act as if they are on a battlefield, with the civilian population the enemy. Explosions of aggression by a government against its own people also result from a size and scope of governmental entities that diminish accountability: police shoot innocent people because they usually get off with slaps on the wrist. If their department is sued successfully, taxpayers pick up the tab. What bullies and sociopaths can get away with, they will get away with! If there is no contrary power base to retaliate against the bullying, it will grow worse, as with a cancer. This, Kohr argues, is human nature. Only the balance of power that exists in small states where most everybody knows everybody else, and in a balance of power between small states, or other organizations (corporations, police departments, etc.), will we minimize the damage bullies and sociopaths are able to do.
Kohr’s predictions in Breakdown were spot on, in other words! Today, the U.S. federal government is widely regarded as the most aggressive entity in the world. We have gone from a state of affairs in which people fled the Soviet Union to the U.S. in search of freedom to one in which an Edward Snowden seeks asylum in Russia to be out of reach of what has become the world’s most aggressive power.
V.
Kohr’s thesis accounts nicely for other states of affairs. Consider North Korea, which illustrates very well the power theory of aggression. North Korea appears safe from attack, because they have nukes and a large and very well-disciplined military. The U.S. won’t threaten North Korea as it did Iraq. It is clear that anyone who invaded North Korea by conventional means would find themselves up to their necks in blood — their own. Anyone attacking using nukes would be retaliated against in kind. By the same token, the North Koreans are surrounded by governments with sufficient power (South Korea, Japan, China) that they don’t dare aggress! Thus the balance in that part of Asia. One unhappy result is that the sociopaths running North Korea turn viciously against their own on the slightest provocation. Theirs is easily the most repressive regime on the planet, where people disappear along with their families into prison camps for uttering even the slightest criticism of the government or belief in Christianity.
Or consider Iran. The war of words between the Iranian leadership and that of the West has continued for years over the former’s presumed nuclear program. The latest saber-rattling notwithstanding, it is likely that the U.S., probably alongside Israel, would have attacked Iran by now if both governments did not fear the repercussions: unlike Iraq, not only does Iran have the means to fight back conventionally (they could mine the Strait of Hormuz, for example), but the country has a sufficiently strong ties with both the Russians and the Chinese that an attack on Iran could lead to that third world war.
No one’s power elites, it seems, wish to preside over a radioactive wasteland!
Finally, it should be clear that Kohr was dead set against creating a European Union! He prophesied and promoted the division of Czechoslovakia into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and the breakup of Yugoslavia into several smaller nations after Tito’s death. He continued to advise independence movements in Spain, Wales, and elsewhere for as long as he lived.
It is not hard to figure out what he would say to the new Greek government: send the EU packing! Forget making deals with the money titans in the euro zone. Default on their debt as their price for having made bad loans; leave the euro; establish your own currency; and begin the hard work of cleaning up the mess made by ever joining the euro-boondoggle! This course of action would, clearly, entail a very rough ride for the Greek people whose standard of living would probably drop further than it has. Investments would leave the country, a sign of disapproval by globalists. But if Greece persevered, self-determination could be her reward down the road! Plus, her having told the euro-crats to take a hike could destabilize the EU and lead to a stampede of other nations out, beginning with Italy and Spain. If that happened, the EU would unravel rapidly. What the Greek government does this year could determine the future of Europe: a return to autonomous nations, or continuance under the heels of a mega-state bureaucracy run by the money titans — who know that as Napoleon once put it, the borrower is always the slave of the lender.
Kohr’s thesis applies to more than just governments and mega-states, as the above example implies. If applied to corporate behemoths, e.g., leviathan banks, it predicts the increasing dysfunction to be found in those as well. It explains how such irresponsible practices as Enron “accounting” and mortgage “robo-signing” can get established. It explains how dangerous financial instruments such as derivatives can be invented, and how they can create a bubble capable of bringing down much of the world’s financial system. This is what happens when too many organizations not only grow too large but are networked together into a still-larger and more expansive system yet: today’s bloated edifice of global crony one-percenter capitalism.
Greed, bad political moves (e.g., the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999), and short-term thinking precipitate increasing dysfunction, and from these we got the Meltdown of 2008! The bought-and-paid-for U.S. government rescued the leviathan banks instead of allowing them to tank. Too big to fail became the watchword of the day. Today, of course, these leviathans are still larger; the bubble on Wall Street is larger; the financial system is leveraged to the hilt; and none of the fundamentals have changed. This is why despite the present happy-talk about the U.S. “economic recovery,” many observers from various perspectives (Paul Craig Roberts, Peter Schiff, Doug Casey, Gerald Celente, Simon Black, and many others) are predicting a future meltdown that will make the last one look like a walk in the park by comparison!
VI.
Like Herbert Read his publishing benefactor, Kohr described himself as a philosophical anarchist. Anarchism denies that there can ever be either rational justification or moral legitimacy for the state, as a self-legitimizing monopolist of aggression. Well over 200 million people have been murdered by states just during the twentieth century. The philosophical anarchist eschews violent action as the appropriate response to the state, however. It is not just that such action typically leads to an even more violent response, but because violence is the way of the state, not a free people. Philosophical anarchists do not believe the state has any inherent right to command, or that any person has an obligation to obey, though of course it may be prudent to do so — especially if its agents have guns pointed at your head!
Kohr’s work thus has quixotic overtones he himself recognized. The shortest chapter in Breakdown follows “The Elimination of Great Powers: Can It Be Done?” with “Will It Be Done?” The text for this chapter consists of the single word, “No!” This is probably the shortest book chapter in the history of political ideas.
Kohr was therefore philosophical about the prospects his views had for a serious hearing, much less their being realized. Indeed, their impact has been limited to a relatively small counter-culture. There are things we can do, however. Kohr believed in local action out of a spirit of benevolence, working with people on the human scale to solve problems that the state arrogated for itself, the goal being to exhibit the state as redundant and irrelevant. The morality at work: one shouldn’t hurt people. At first, do no harm! One should help them, cheerfully, enabling their independence and freeing their minds from beliefs that encourage submission to the state and enable repressive state actions.
The philosophical anarchist’s regulative ideal is the self-governing community, a community small enough that everyone has at least some awareness of all others in the community as persons — extended families with children, the elderly, the disabled, and so on — so that those who are well off are aware of the plight of those who are not, or who have experienced a run of bad luck. The former will not see the latter as statistics.
What matters is not the economic arrangements but the scale. A “Kohrian” believes that if political units can be kept small, the good will that is natural within communities will serve the purposes reformers, social engineers, and technocrats have believed only the state could serve. The human scale, again, is the scale at which human beings can participate directly in the systems governing their lives. It alone makes room for both freedom and safety nets, because a human scale will give rise to safety nets through natural benevolence. Kohr would doubtless have approved of the “mini-states” cropping up around the world today.
VII.
Kohr was not saying the human scale would magically make aggressive impulses or bad behavior disappear. There would still be sociopaths around, just as there always had been. In small communities whose inhabitants grew up together and in which there is an organic sense of unity, persons become known quantities and sociopaths find themselves ostracized if not expelled when they prove they can’t be trusted. A few, perhaps, here and there, would successfully dissemble and scheme their way into power along with like-minded henchmen, forming rogue states. In a world of small states in which communities are not policed by some continent-wide political entity, this is unavoidable. But if political units remained small, the capacity of rogue states to do damage, e.g., by aggressing against their neighbors, would also remain small. Small self-governing communities would be aware what their neighbors are up to, and nothing prevents them from forming alliances of convenience. Even a sociopath knows that if he bullies the wrong person he’ll be slapped down hard. He would have a strong disincentive to invade. Whatever wars did happen in a world of small states would be small, affecting no one outside a limited region. Rogue states could be contained through alliances of convenience on the part of vigilant neighbors who got wind of what was going on. Wars capable of laying waste to entire continents (or the planet itself) are only possible between expansionist empires.
From one standpoint, Kohr’s view of this world is somewhat bleak. He doesn’t invoke the Christian concept of original sin as such, but he clearly sees human nature as having its dark side (it is interesting that religious references permeate Breakdown). Although we can learn to behave morally, morality is not the human default setting. Immoral behavior isn’t held in check by principle but by lack of opportunity, or perception of such. Kohr wasn’t promoting an ideology, “left” or “right.” In the hands of bigness, all ideologies are dangerous. He was one of those thinkers who wrestled seriously with what some of us consider the fundamental unsolved problem of political philosophy: how does society contain power? Or perhaps more clearly and specifically: how do those who wish to live free and stable lives in autonomous communities place checks on that minority among us whose entire value system revolves around dominating others: exercising power, whether politically or economically, and who see human beings as expendable pawns on a global chessboard?
There is the power of the sword, which exercises power directly by pointing a gun at your head. Then there is the power of the purse, which accumulates wealth, often through dishonest manipulations, then buys the loyalty of the man with the gun. The latter is probably a fair description of American crony capitalism, with its political class essentially owned by Wall Street and other lobbyists. Checking power means checking both powers, and the only means of doing is: shrink all organizations to minimize their reach, and then keep them small!
Sadly, like many social thinkers with a vision of “how things ought to be,” Kohr had no idea how to get from point A (where we are now) to point B (where we want to be, someday). No one was more aware of this than he, which was why he was philosophical about the prospects of his vision. He understood that the only way anarchism could work was if human beings were sufficiently ethical to respect each other’s personhood and space, and be able to check their emotions with reason. In the world of human nature as it is, that wouldn’t be likely except under relatively rare and temporary circumstances.
What then, are the prospects for the “Kohrian” vision? There both had been, and would be continue to be, periods when small states could prevail. In them, freedom would be possible for at least some. The U.S. in the 1800s offered this kind of circumstance for some, although obviously it wasn’t freedom for all. Blacks did not enjoy basic freedoms; nor did Native Americans. The former worked for and sometimes fought for at least some freedoms, but today, freedom for everyone has been compromised by the dominance of empire, which means centralization and the circumscribing of all lives, of whatever race or ethnicity, within sets of rules laid out in offices hundreds of miles away. Some of these draconian rules forbid children from opening lemonade stands, teenagers from shoveling snow, and adults from generating their own electricity off the grid. Freedom for persons has clearly grown narrower and narrower until it is barely exists outside our vocabulary. As the U.S. “deep state” expands, freedom shrinks even more!
VIII.
There is, however, light at the end of the tunnel! Kohr’s analysis predicts that no global “new world order” will prove sustainable. Any actual world state, or government of global scope — assuming it could be formed at all — would soon enter a period of increasingly abuse of those it had robbed of their autonomy. Much of the abuse these days would be financial. Then it would slowly strangle on its own bureaucracy, mismanagement, and corruption, possibly at a pace exceeding that of the ongoing decomposition of the EU.
One may consider first how poorly managed most federal agencies of the U.S. federal government are. Some cannot account for hundreds of millions of dollars. This is money simply lost! Imagine global equivalents attempting to oversee not a single oversized nation but several continents, managing continental divisions and further subordinate entities of increasing regionality and locality, taking their marching orders from increasingly distant Platonist philosopher-kings or Nietzschean supermen, or however the superelite at the very top will think of themselves.
The latter include, at most, a few hundred extended families. They can command financial resources most of us cannot imagine, get around quickly, but they cannot be everywhere at once! They will have instituted extensive authority structures which could be mapped on organizational charts. These would not manage themselves, however.
“New world order” authority structures would depend, absolutely, on the continued loyalty of functionaries and their administrators and undersecretaries further down the chain of command, who would need some autonomy to deal in a timely fashion with unanticipated regional matters or local “black swan” events. To function at all, therefore, a “new world order” would have to devolve some power out from Central Headquarters. If by some chance, its regional undersecretaries decided to begin accumulating and squirreling away resources for themselves, and those under them came to believe that their best opportunities were to support the regional undersecretaries whose agendas differed from that of the superelite at the top; and if this happened in multiple places at once, the “new world order” system would start to unravel. The elite would, perhaps, have a military at their disposal to put down regional rebellions — unless the undersecretaries had thought of that first and paid off a few regional generals. No “new world order” could survive without a huge and unified military machine. If the superelite lost control of even a part of it, the most likely result would be civil war and the disintegration of their empire, perhaps hastened by other forms of passive resistance already employed by ordinary people who reject being treated as statistical ciphers.
The fate of any “new world order” is speculation, of course. We have no hard evidence that the system dreamt of at Bilderberg meetings, perhaps, or behind the closed doors of the Trilateral Commission, is even possible. The closest the world has come is the EU, which should tell us something about the prognosis. While much of the public in most advanced nations is fairly oblivious, of course, captivated by sports, celebrity culture, and myriad other distractions, there are groups and a few regions that would refuse to cooperate. It is clear that efforts to disarm the public would meet with violent resistance in states like Texas and probably elsewhere. This is clear to those with a power elite mindset. Why, after all, does the U.S. Department of Homeland Security purchase ammunition, or shills for power such as the Southern Poverty Law Center keep lists of “hate groups” for mainstream media to demonize? While a few groups on such lists fit this bill, of course, many, if one actually studies them, have in common something far more dangerous to those with a power elite mindset: support for personal freedoms, the rule of law (not confused with rule by those in power), self-reliance, and community autonomy however they cash this out. They are suspicious of globalization and centralization, as they have not benefited. They have the means to make their views known before a wide audience. Call this the power of the pen (or, these days, of the bandwidth). It is conceivable that we will see an attempted power grab over the Internet during our lifetimes. It may work, but only for a time. Those who understand the technology will always figure out ways to get ahead of the bureaucrats. Control over the Internet will be short-lived at best.
Summarizing: empires subordinating continents may persist for a time, but Kohr’s analysis concludes that none will prove sustainable. The laws of systems posit that every system including units of governance has a maximum size it can sustain over time. Exceed that size, and the system enters a period of destructive aggression and unmanageable dysfunction. Usually it disintegrates from within, as did the Soviet Union. Then, once again, freedom and community autonomy become possible — for those who have made advance preparations!
IX.
I cannot recommend The Breakdown of Nations enough! I would recommend Leopold Kohr’s other works were they findable. Breakdown explains, more than any other single work available, why the U.S. has become an increasingly violent plutocracy, why so many of our institutions seem out of control — large corporations as well as government agencies — and why, even if we may be in for a rough ride in the near future, our long term future may be brighter than it may seem at present if we begin thinking about it and planning for it intelligently now!
Present-day institutions — governments, corporations, mega-states like the EU — are too big! They are unsustainable! Many of their activities are utterly irrational (e.g., the Iraq War, “austerity” that enriches banks while impoverishing peoples). Globalist entities created by a free trade mythos (be they the World Trade Organization or secretive agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership) that benefit primarily global corporations also consolidate too much power. Bigness and concentration enable greed, aggression, corruption, cruelty, poor judgment, dysfunction at all levels, and ecological destruction. Worse, it begets more bigness: organizations grow larger through desperate attempts to correct for, or at least manage, the corruption and dysfunction their present level of bigness has generated.
Leopold Kohr deserves far more attention than he has received, which aside from favorable citations from other outsiders like Schumacher, Kirkpatrick Sale, and a few others, is nearly zero. The present problem: today, if you are not on the bandwagons of globalization, urbanization, centralization, and unlimited economic growth, it is very difficult to get a seat at the table and be heard. But if people of whatever ideological inclination will track down The Breakdown of Nations and absorb its lessons, maybe we can start a new conversation, with Leopold Kohr finally coming into his own as what he was: one of the last century’s most original and insightful social thinkers. |
4. Set up and use a planning system
This is so essential, because if you don't plan where you want to go, you'll get nowhere. No one wants that, right?
Whether you're a paper-planner lover (like me) or a strictly-digital planner baby, find a system that works for you.
After trying lots of different things, I found my perfect system in the mix of paper and digital. I schedule all appointments in Google Calendar, and I also use it as my digital (and universally accessible) content calendar.
This way even if I don't have my paper planner with me, I can still access my appointments and content calendar.
I also use a bright yellow Leuchtturm1917 notebook (yeah, the "Bullet Journal" notebook) as my planner and brain-dump-central. It makes me happy, and it's important for me to put pen to paper when I'm brainstorming post and product ideas.
I find it easier to work through mental and writer's blocks on paper, and I also find it handy to make my own calendar in the notebook, and use it to plan out my content calendar, my quarterly/monthly/weekly goals, and keep track of my daily tasks.
I also use and recommend Asana to keep track of processes in your business and logging your projects and tasks.
Find a system that works for you and use it for a reasonable amount of time (at least a two to four weeks), and only switch if it's really not working for you.
Sometimes you might have multiple ways of doing the same thing, like my content calendar on paper and in Google Calendar, and that's fine.
It doesn't matter what the system is as long as there is one, and it works for you, and you're scheduling tasks and keeping track of your goals, because that's absolutely essential to having clarity and getting things done.
5. Make task lists your friend
If you're struggling to stay afloat with your blog or business and keep track of all the work that needs to be done, you better make task lists your friend.
Ideally, your planning system should help you find a schedule that prioritizes the most important work.
One way to implement that is to make daily task lists (or to-do lists) a part of your daily routine.
At the end of each work day, I make a list of all the tasks I want to tackle the next day, based on what didn't get done that day and what is important to move me towards my goals.
To-do lists often get a bad rap for being too long and too overwhelming and that's why I have a rule of not including any more than 3 main tasks for one day.
No matter how efficient you are, it's highly unlikely you'll be able to focus enough to tackle more than 3 large projects on a day.
If you really want to learn how to be productive, make planning specific tasks ahead of time a priority so you're not left with a mile long list of small, seemingly "busy" chores and endless stress (yikes!).
The daily task lists help you to break your monthly goals down into bite-sized, actionable tasks that you can work on day-by-day and week-by-week and moves you towards your goals by default.
It beats ending up in December and realising you didn't "have the time" to work on most of your large goals, doesn't it?
A daily task list also helps you gain clarity and peace of mind, so that you're never sat at your desk thinking, "what should I do now?!"
You've got a clear plan for the (next) day and you can be focused from the get go next morning!
6. Use time blocks to supercharge your focus
Time-blocking has been one of my favourite productivity discoveries of the last few years.
At University, we had to do new weekly in-depth research projects (with a 3500 word paper that also needed to be submitted!).
The only way I ever got that done was by being laser-focused and using time wisely to get most bang for my time buck.
I found my groove in devoting 70% of my work time to focus on the research work, and 30% of the remaining time to summarize what I'd worked on earlier.
This way when the end of the week rolled around, I already had the bulk of my work written up, and I could focus 70% of time I had on the last day to put it all together (that included many, many 23:59 submissions for the 00:00 deadline).
It was intense, so intense, but if I hadn't found and stuck to this system, it would have been dire.
Breaking down my days into blocks of work time gets me focused, in the zone, and helps me to knock out a lot of important tasks every day.
Currently, a typical workday might look something like this:
06:30 - 08:00 | "Me" time, which includes meditation, working out, a shower, breakfast with my favourite man (and journalling on days I'm feeling it)
08:00 - 10:00 | Work block 1
10:00 - 10:30 | Break (because I can)
10:30 - 12:00 | Work block 2
12:00 - 12:30 | Lunch
12:30 - 14:30 | Work block 3
14:30 - 15:00 | Break (because it's good for you)
15:00 - 17:00 | Work block 4
17:00 - 17:15 | Review to wrap up + making the task list for the next day
It might seem like I have way too many breaks, but this schedule gets me really focused during the work blocks (designed for the optimal time our brains can focus at a stretch on intense work).
My work blocks are dedicated to only one task at a time, and this slowly, but surely, adds up over the week to getting so much work done (that I otherwise might have procrastinated on).
If you've been sucked into the biggest "corporate" lie of abhorring breaks, this schedule might shock you.
Breaks, however, are the very reason I can focus deeply in my work blocks. I use that time to either read a book, take a walk, watch a quick episode of whatever I'm watching, or move to a cafe to get myself (and my work) out of the house.
JUMPSTART YOUR PRODUCTIVITY WITH THE FREE FOCUS PLANNER |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Both President Barack Obama and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have made opening offers in negotiations to resolve the “fiscal cliff.
Here is a look at the two proposals, which are aimed at averting a more drastic combination of tax increases and spending cuts that economists say could cause a recession:
REPUBLICAN OFFER
House Republican leaders on Monday called for $2.2 trillion in new deficit reductions over 10 years.
When counting deficit reductions enacted last year, anticipated savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and some interest savings, the package would amount to $4.6 trillion in reductions over a decade, according to House Republicans.
The offer made the following proposals to achieve $2.2 trillion in new deficit reductions over 10 years:
* $800 billion in new revenue through tax reform;
* unspecified healthcare program savings of $600 billion;
* other savings from changes to unspecified mandatory spending programs of $300 billion;
* tying cost-of-living increases for federal benefit programs to the Consumer Price Index to get savings of $200 billion;
* and further unspecified savings to domestic spending programs of $300 billion.
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and six other House Republican leaders made the offer on Monday in a letter to Obama.
DEMOCRATIC OFFER
The White House on Thursday proposed raising tax revenues by nearly $1.6 trillion, in line with what Obama has said is needed for long-term deficit reduction of nearly $4.4 trillion over 10 years.
The administration also sought $200 billion in economic stimulus from a combination of investments including infrastructure spending, extension of a payroll tax cut and jobless benefits.
The White House would also continue individual income tax cuts from the administration of former Republican President George W. Bush for all but the wealthiest earners.
Obama’s negotiators also sought the ability to raise the nation’s borrowing limit unilaterally. At present, Congress must approve an increase in the debt ceiling.
The administration’s proposal would delay across-the-board spending cuts for a year. In exchange the administration agreed to make $600 billion in spending cuts to entitlement programs. |
Leslie Harry Compton (12 September 1912 – 27 December 1984) was an English sportsman who played football and cricket for Arsenal and Middlesex, respectively. He gained two England caps late in his football career, and remains the oldest outfield player to debut for England (and the oldest post-war debutant in any position). His brother, Denis, was also a footballer and cricketer for Arsenal and Middlesex, though Leslie was more successful in football and Denis in cricket.
Compton was born Woodford, Essex and played football for Middlesex Schools before joining Arsenal as an amateur in 1930. He would spend his entire senior club career at Arsenal, over a period of 22 years, making him one of the club's longest-ever serving players. He made his debut on 24 April 1932 against Aston Villa in a 1–1 draw at Villa Park, two months after he had turned professional.
He started out as a right-back, and deputised for Tom Parker in the early 1930s, before George Male was converted to that position and became Parker's long-term replacement. Relegated to reserve team football, Compton only played 13 first-team games in four seasons. By 1935–36 he had started to feature more regularly, playing 12 games that season and 15 the next, but missed out on a First Division winners' medal in 1937–38 as he only managed 9 appearances that season.[1]
Despite being down the pecking order throughout the 1930s and missing out on the success that Arsenal enjoyed, Compton stuck with Arsenal and won a Charity Shield winners' medal in 1938–39, playing 19 times that season. However the Second World War then intervened; Compton served in the Army while continuing to play football for Arsenal. Converted to an emergency centre-forward, he once scored ten times in a wartime match against Leyton Orient, which finished 15–2 to Arsenal. He also guested for Chester, scoring a hat-trick against Everton during the 1942–43 season.[2] In June 1940, he was one of five Arsenal players who guested for Southampton in a victory over Fulham at Craven Cottage.[3]
After the war had ended, he reverted to defence, becoming a mainstay in the Arsenal side at centre half. Although he missed the first six games of the 1947–48 due to cricketing commitments but was a near ever-present for the remainder of the season, as Arsenal won the First Division title and Compton finally earned a top-class honour; his brother, Denis, had also by this time established himself in the Arsenal side and won a medal as well. During the close season, he succeeded Joe Mercer as Arsenal captain, but relinquished the armband soon after, saying Mercer deserved the honour more.
Compton went on to win the FA Cup in 1949–50, scoring a last-minute equaliser in the Gunners' semi-final against Chelsea, heading a corner kick from his brother Denis to level the match 2–2; Arsenal won the replay 1–0, and then beat Liverpool in the final. Compton's form was such that he was selected for England for their match against Wales on 15 November 1950, making him, at 38 years and 64 days, the oldest post-war England debutant and the oldest ever outfield player to debut. These records still stand. Alexander Morten holds the all-time record.
He was a regular in the Arsenal side until the start of the 1951–52 season, during which he only played four matches. He decided to retire from playing football in the 1952 close season; in total he played 273 matches and scored 6 goals. He stayed on at Arsenal for another three years as a coach and scout.
Cricket career [ edit ]
Compton also played cricket for Middlesex, playing as wicket-keeper from 1938 to 1956. He appeared 272 times, scoring 5,814 runs (an average of 16.75), and taking 468 catches and 131 stumpings. Together with his brother, he won the 1947 County Championship title with Middlesex, making them the only brothers ever to have won the national title both in football and cricket. Unlike Denis though, Leslie never played Test cricket for England.
Retirement and death [ edit ]
After retiring he ran the "Prince of Wales" pub in Highgate High Street, north London. He died in Hendon in December 1984, from complications due to diabetes, aged 72; his foot had been amputated two years previously because of this. He was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium where his ashes remain.[4]
Honours [ edit ]
Arsenal |
Just who is developing “Common Core” curricula and where is that money coming from?
The Washington Post has some answers for New York state:
“The New York State mathematics curriculum was developed by an organization located in Washington D.C. known as Common Core, Inc. According to reporter Jessica Bakeman of Capital New York, Common Core Inc. was awarded three large contracts from the New York State Education Department: $3,323,732 for K-2 curriculum, $2,715,958 for grades 3-5, and $8,108,919 for grades 6-12.”
Interestingly enough, Common Core Inc. was founded and funded years before the standards had been adopted by the states… or even released! Interestingly enough, it was funded by Bill Gates:
“[D]espite Bill Gates’ claim that there was no need to build national Common Core curriculum, he has, through his grant program, quietly funded its development in excess of $10 million, with Common Core Inc. being the first to receive a grant. According to authors Gigante and Archbold, ‘Despite the overlap between corporate branding, mission, funding and leadership, Common Core Inc. claims that it is “not affiliated with the Common Core Standards”.’ The article suggests that although some advocates of the Common Core claim that they want to only nationalize standards, their true intent is to nationalize a still experimental curriculum.”
Futher:
“The New York State Regents Research fund has received millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation to further its reform agenda. But more importantly, the State Education Department has helped finance the effort to create curriculum by using more than $28 million in Race to the Top federal taxpayer dollars. And it appears that one of the recipients, Common Core Inc., intends to influence curriculum beyond New York State.”
What they got for all this money was not only an obvious case of corporatism, but a horrible curricula. The author of the Washington Post column says:
“The Common Core has some features that are good and others that are awful. We have been through this before—the New Math program from my childhood and Whole Language when our daughters were in school. Although both programs made some positive contributions, those who wholeheartedly and uncritically adopted them did a terrible disservice to their students. One of my colleagues, Maureen Dockery, tells how when she was an elementary teacher she would close her door and teach students some phonics because of the damage done to her own son’s literacy development by purist Whole Language instruction.”
The “New York State Common Core Mathematics Curriculum for Grade 2” can be found here, or read below:
g2 m3 Full ModuleNew York State Common Core Mathematics Curriculum for Grade 2
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PHILADELPHIA -- A city police detective is facing kidnapping and assault charges, as well as the loss of his job, after police said he broke a man's leg and dumped him on the side of the road.
The district attorney's office said Det. Adam O'Donnell, 43, is assigned to the department's Special Victims Unit and was escorting Theodore Life Jr., 35, out of the unit's Hunting Park Avenue location on Feb. 3 when the assault occurred.
O'Donnell, a 9-year veteran of the force, allegedly got out of the sight of security cameras before he grabbed and kicked Life in the knee, causing Life to fall and not be able to stand on the leg.
Authorities said O'Donnell then used an unmarked police vehicle to transport Life to a random road in the city's Hunting Park section.
Life's father drove him to the Albert Einstein Medical Center and then Abington Memorial Hospital for treatment for a non-displaced fracture in his femur. The office said Life is left with a limp and faces ongoing treatment.
"A senseless attack on one Philadelphian is an attack on all Philadelphians," said District Attorney Seth Williams in a statement. "I also hope that by charging Mr. O'Donnell he not only understands the severity of his crime but is reminded that when law enforcement does something to clearly hurt a complainant it will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
O'Donnell faces charges of aggravated assault, simple assault, kidnapping, unlawful restrains, obstructing administration of law and official oppression.
He turned himself in on Wednesday. Police said Commissioner Richard Ross suspended O'Donnell for 30 days with the intent to dismiss him from his position.
Michelle Caffrey may be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @ShellyCaffrey. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. |
Bitcoin Amex Third-Party Data Breach is A Lesson For Bitcoin Users
Making payments with a credit card is very convenient, as this method of value transfer is accepted both online and in-store all over the world. But at the same time, so many different third party players are involved in the processing of credit cards, leaving customers exposed to financial information being stolen. Amex users have received a letter from the card issuer informing them about a potential hack recently. Bitcoin users could take note from this lesson, though, as there is no need to trust third parties with digital currency either.
Also read: Lisk Partners With Microsoft Azure, Chain of Things
Amex Data Breach Puts Cards At Risk
It is not the first – nor the last – time credit card users are faced with a third party data breach, as there are many hands through which this payment information passes along the way. The letter sent out to Amex card holders informs them regarding a data security incident at a merchant where a set of Amex cards has been used in the past for legitimate transactions.
Apparently, that dealer did not take the necessary security precautions, as account information has been leaked due to this security incident. No systems owned or controlled by American Express were breached during this attack, though, keeping the number of affected users rather on the low.
The Amex Letter states the following:
“At this time, we have been informed that your current or previously issued American Express Card account number, your name and other Card information such as the expiration date, may have been compromised. Please be aware that you may receive additional letters from us if more than one of your American Express Card accounts were involved.”
A combination of the above credit card information is enough for internet criminals to purchase goods with stolen details, as most websites do not require more details than the basic information. Granted, most modern platforms will require users to send a copy of their identity card and a utility bill to process the order, but that is not always the case. Amex users will need to keep a close eye on their credit card statements over the next few months, and dispute fraudulent charges as soon as possible.
Bitcoin Users Need To Stop Trusting Third Parties
Although there are many benefits to Bitcoin over more traditional payment methods – such as credit cards – there is a valuable lesson to be learned from this debacle as well. Trusting third party services which control user funds at any given stage is never a good idea, as bitcoin transactions were designed to occur between parties instantly and remove the middlemen from the equation.
Far too many Bitcoin users are keeping their funds in online wallets or stored at exchanges, which put their money at risk as well. If these platforms were to be breached, or face an outage for whatever reason, there is no way to access funds. Third parties have no place in the Bitcoin world, and stories like the Amex breach show why Bitcoin users need to be more careful about where to store their funds.
What are your thought’s on this umpteenth credit card data breach? Should we push for less third party usage in the Bitcoin world? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: OAG
Images courtesy of Amex, Shutterstock |
Ken Livingstone is taking on the car – and he appears to be winning.
The London mayor was denounced five years ago when he introduced a congestion fee, requiring every vehicle entering the central core to pay for the privilege on weekdays.
There are no toll booths. Instead, hundreds of mounted cameras at boundary roads take photographs of licence plates. Drivers have until midnight that day to pay – online, by phone, at self-service kiosks or at shops and gas stations – and if they don't, late fees are applied.
The zone where the congestion fee applies was expanded last year and, beginning in late October, large gas-guzzling cars and trucks will face a surcharge.
Currently, drivers must pay £8, or about $16, on the day they enter the zone. If they pay the next day, the charge goes up to £10, or about $20. After that, stiff penalties begin to accrue. |
Google Assistant to Have 60 Percent Virtual Assistant Smartphone Share in 2022 Up from 46 Percent Today
Strategy Analytics published a new report that estimates current virtual assistant share on smartphones and forecasts changes over the next five years. The short answer is that Google Assistant leads today with 46% market share and will expand its lead significantly by 2022 to exceed 60%. Senior Analyst, Ville Ukonaho commented:
Google has a narrow lead in total smartphones sold with onboard virtual assistants in 2017. That lead will only grow as Android smartphone sales, with Google Assistant onboard, continue to expand into lower price tiers.
Note: The numbers in the chart below exceed 100% because Strategy Analytics reported some consumers will use more than one voice assistant.
Google and Baidu to Significantly Expand Share
While we would have liked to see more assistants considered, namely Alexa, it is good to see the analyst’s thinking on this topic. The first thing that becomes clear is that Google and Baidu are expected to significantly expand market share, by 31% and 75% respectively. This the law of conservation of power for the global search giants. Both serve as the front-end for many online interactions today and Strategy Analytics’ expects that to be solidified with the rise of virtual assistants. It is also worth noting that both of these virtual assistants today enable interaction by both voice and text-based input. That is a differentiator over rivals that is particularly relevant on mobile.
Apple and Samsung Virtual Assistant Share to Fall Fast
The other notable forecasted trend is that the world’s two largest smartphone manufacturers are expected to lose share by about 58% each. Apple and Samsung have strong market share today at 41.1% and 12.7% respectively. However, the hypothesis must be this early strength is primarily a function early mover advantage, particularly for Apple’s Siri, in placing functionality on their devices.
Apple currently commands market share of only about 13% of smartphones globally. The decline to 17% appears to be an estimate that Siri usage will decline to Apple’s global market share. Apple’s current market share strength is largely a function of so few Android devices having a true virtual assistant on board. Google is addressing that by rolling out Google Assistant to the three most recent versions of Android OS. However, note that even a 60.3% market share for Google Assistant will mean that many Android smartphone owners choose another virtual assistant. Samsung’s forecasted drop in market share is likely a function of consumers choosing Google Assistant over Samsung Bixby, a trend that is already playing out, along with expected erosion of the company’s smartphone market share.
Virtual Assistant Timeline
Strategy Analytics also provides a nice timeline of virtual assistants on smartphones. Note that Google Assistant, Bixby and Alexa all first appear on smartphones in 2017. Samsung’s market share to date has been driven by its legacy S-Voice product which will be supplanted by Bixby over the next two years. Cortana shows up in 2016, but disappears presumably because the product lost its smartphone platform when Microsoft discontinued Nokia’s products. It is true that Cortana is accessible as a mobile app on iOS and Android, but it does not benefit from low-level device integration.
Virtual Assistant Market Share Beyond Smart Speakers
Strategy Analytics and several other research firms have offered virtual assistant market share estimates for smart speakers. However, estimates for virtual assistant use on smartphones has been scarce. Virtual assistants, whether accessed by voice or text, with be used across a number of surfaces. Mobile will be a very important surface and it looks like Google Assistant will have a big advantage over the next few years. If that is true, the remaining question is how that may positively influence consumer preferences for Google Assistant on smarts speakers, IoT and other surfaces. Will there be a preference for virtual assistants that are widely available across many popular surfaces? Let us know your thoughts on Twitter @bretkinsella or @voicebotai.
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4 |
“No woman should say, ‘I am but a woman!’ But a woman! What more can you ask to be?” trailblazer Maria Mitchell admonished the first class of female astronomers at Vassar in 1876. Mitchell — the first professional woman astronomer in America, the first woman admitted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the first woman hired by the United States federal government for a “specialized nondomestic skill” in her capacity as “computer of Venus,” a one-woman GPS guiding sailors around the globe — paved the way for women in American science through personal example and dedicated mentorship. She marked an event horizon in women’s plight for equality in scientific vocation and intellectual life.
Just as Mitchell’s long life was coming to an end, a new wellspring of opportunity for women astronomers was coming to life at one of the world’s most venerated academic institutions. At the Harvard Observatory, a devoted team of female amateur astronomers — “amateur” being a reflection not of their skill but of the dearth of academic accreditation available to women at the time — was coming together around an unprecedented quest to catalog the cosmos by classifying the stars and their spectra.
Decades before they were allowed to vote and a century before NASA’s unheralded women mathematicians helped put the first man on the moon, these women, who came to be known as the “Harvard computers,” illuminated the composition of stars and classified hundreds of thousands of stars according to a system they invented, which astronomers continue to use today. Their calculations became the basis for the discovery that the universe is expanding. Their spirit of selfless pursuit of truth and knowledge stands as a timeless testament to pioneering physicist Lise Meitner’s definition of the true scientist.
Science historian Dava Sobel, author of Galileo’s Daughter, chronicles their unsung story and lasting legacy in The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars (public library).
Sobel, who takes on the role of rigorous reporter and storyteller bent on preserving the unvarnished historical integrity of the story, paints the backdrop:
A little piece of heaven. That was one way to look at the sheet of glass propped up in front of her. It measured about the same dimensions as a picture frame, eight inches by ten, and no thicker than a windowpane. It was coated on one side with a fine layer of photographic emulsion, which now held several thousand stars fixed in place, like tiny insects trapped in amber. One of the men had stood outside all night, guiding the telescope to capture this image, along with another dozen in the pile of glass plates that awaited her when she reached the observatory at 9 a.m. Warm and dry indoors in her long woolen dress, she threaded her way among the stars. She ascertained their positions on the dome of the sky, gauged their relative brightness, studied their light for changes over time, extracted clues to their chemical content, and occasionally made a discovery that got touted in the press. Seated all around her, another twenty women did the same.
Among the “Harvard computers” were Antonia Maury, who had graduated from Maria Mitchell’s program at Vassar; Annie Jump Cannon, who catalogued more than 20,000 variable stars in a short period after joining the observatory; Henrietta Swan Leavitt, a Radcliffe alumna whose discoveries later became the basis for Hubble’s Law demonstrating the expansion of the universe and whose work was so valued that she was paid 30 cents an hour, five cents over the standard salary of the computers; and Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin, who became the first person to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard-Radcliffe.
Helming the team was Williamina Fleming — a Scotswoman whom Edward Charles Pickering, the thirty-something director of the observatory, first hired as a second maid at his residency in 1879 before recognizing her mathematical talents and assigning her the role of part-time computer. Having emigrated to America in a “delicate condition” after the collapse of her marriage, Fleming had to return to Scotland shortly after she joined the Harvard Observatory to give birth to her son, whom she named Edward Charles Pickering Fleming and who would go on to become an MIT-educated engineer. But she returned to Harvard in 1881 and forever changed the gender landscape of astronomy.
Long before Nikola Tesla proclaimed that technology would unleash women’s true potential, Pickering saw an opportunity to involve smart, skilled women in making use of new astrophotography technology and championed that vision fiercely. Ironically, society’s blatant sexism was applied even to his largehearted feminism — the Harvard computers were disparagingly referred to as “Pickering’s harem” for decades. And yet, galling moniker notwithstanding, Pickering’s practice of hiring women became a countercultural act of courage to which we owe a great deal today.
Sobel conveys his rationale:
While it would be unseemly, Pickering conceded, to subject a lady to the fatigue, not to mention the cold in winter, of telescope observing, women with a knack for figures could be accommodated in the computing room, where they did credit to the profession.
Pickering was a visionary man in many regards. Before coming to Harvard, he had revolutionized academia at the newly founded MIT by initiating a sort of proto-hackerspace — a hands-on laboratory where students could cultivate critical thinking by trying on and trying out ideas. He was also an early champion of open-source and refused to patent any of his inventions under the conviction that ideas should be shared freely in order for scientists to build on each other’s work.
Pickering first began hiring women after he ran out of funding and was unable to afford any more paid staff. Shortly after the first class of female astronomers had graduated from Maria Mitchell’s Vassar program, Pickering printed and distributed a plea for volunteers that read like the polar opposite of Shackleton’s recruitment ad. Sobel writes:
He believed women could conduct the work as well as men: “Many ladies are interested in astronomy and own telescopes, but with two or three noteworthy exceptions their contributions to the science have been almost nothing. Many of them have the time and inclination for such work, and especially among the graduates of women’s colleges are many who have had abundant training to make excellent observers. As the work may be done at home, even from an open window, provided the room has the temperature of the outer air, there seems to be no reason why they would not thus make an advantageous use of their skill.” Pickering felt, furthermore, that participating in astronomical research would improve women’s social standing and justify the current proliferation of women’s colleges: “The criticism is often made by the opponents of the higher education of women that, while they are capable of following others as far as men can, they originate almost nothing, so that human knowledge is not advanced by their work. This reproach would be well answered could we point to a long series of such observations as are detailed below, made by women observers.”
But what ultimately enabled Pickering to hire women as paid observers was the generous patronage of another woman — Anna Draper, the widow of an astrophotography pioneer and herself an ardent proponent of astronomy. Determined to memorialize her husband’s legacy and advance further research through astrophotography, which revealed stars invisible through even the most advanced telescopes, she gave Pickering a check for $1,000 on February 20, 1886, equivalent to more than $25,000 today — the first of numerous installments.
With Anna Draper’s funding, the women of the Harvard Observatory amassed an enormous library of half a million glass plates — Sobel’s “glass universe” — cataloging more stars than anyone had previously thought possible. (Lest we forget, the first comprehensive star catalog had been completed two centuries earlier by another woman, effectively the first female astronomer of the Western world.)
For her part, Williamina Fleming had a much more specific lens on equality. Sobel writes:
Though Mrs. Fleming fully affirmed the principle of equality, she was not an American citizen, and the feminist struggle for the right to vote was not her fight. The cause she championed was equality for women in astronomy. “While we cannot maintain that in everything a woman is man’s equal,” Mrs. Fleming averred in her [National American Woman Suffrage Association presentation], “yet in many things her patience, perseverance and method make her his superior. Therefore let us hope that in astronomy, which now affords a large field for woman’s work and skill, she may, as has been the case in several other sciences, at least prove herself his equal.
(A generation earlier, Maria Mitchell had made a parallel case for why women make better astronomers than men.)
Sobel transports us to the Harvard Observatory to experience the painstaking nature of the work through which the computers arrived at their cosmic revelations:
Mrs. Fleming removed each glass plate from its kraft paper sleeve without getting a single fingerprint on either of the the eight-by-ten-inch surfaces. The trick was to hold the fragile packet by its side edges between her palms, set the bottom — open — end of the envelope on the lip of the specially designed stand, and then ease the paper up and off without letting go of the plate, as though undressing a baby. Making sure the emulsion side faced her, she released her grip and let the glass settle into place. The wooden stand held the plate in a picture frame, tilted at forty-five-degree angle. A mirror affixed to the flat base caught daylight from the computing room’s big windows and directed illumination up through the glass. Mrs. Fleming leaned in with her loupe for a privileged view of the stellar universe. She had often heard the director say, “A magnifying glass will show more in the photograph than a powerful telescope will show in the sky.”
By 1890, Fleming had singlehandedly classified the spectra of ten thousand stars and published the findings in the tome The Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra, all four hundred pages of which she herself had meticulously proofread. On May 11, 1906 — just four days before her forty-ninth birthday — she received “perhaps the most pleasant shock of her life,” as Sobel aptly puts it: Fleming was elected honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society — an institution far ahead of its time in recognizing women’s scientific work. (Nearly eight decades earlier, pioneering astronomer Caroline Herschel has become the first woman awarded their prestigious Gold Medal.) Fleming became the first American-based woman to earn the distinction.
But, back at the Harvard Observatory, further studies required better technology. Pickering determined that the ideal telescope would be a lavish 24 inches in diameter. (For comparison, Maria Mitchell made her trailblazing comet discovery with a two-inch telescope.) He estimated it would cost a towering $50,000 to build. When Pickering issued a plea for funding, another woman stepped up as the benefactress who would make it possible — Catherine Wolfe Bruce, an elderly painter and patron of the arts who admired science with an outsider’s curiosity.
Sobel surmises:
Perhaps Pickering’s reference to the 24-inch object glass as a “portrait” lens appealed to Miss Bruce’s artistic sensibility. Surely his optimistic enthusiasm provided an antidote to the disquieting article she had recently read by astronomer Simon Newcomb, director of the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office and professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Professor Newcomb predicted that no exciting astronomical finds would turn up in the near or even the distant future. Since “one comet is so much like another,” he asserted “that the work which really occupies the attention of the astronomer is less the discovery of new things than the elaboration of those already known, and the entire systematization of our knowledge.”
As an artist, Bruce must have been particularly put off by such poverty of imagination — the artist necessarily comes at life from the very opposite perspective, which Georgia O’Keeffe memorably articulated: “Making your unknown known is the important thing — and keeping the unknown always beyond you…” Maria Mitchell expressed the same sentiment from the standpoint of science: “The world of learning is so broad… We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.” Bruce surely saw the common ground between art and science in this unflinching insistence that there are always more unknowns to be made known, so she promptly gave Pickering all of the $50,000 needed for the new telescope.
Here, it is worth noting that the story of the “Harvard computers” also raises subtler questions about the cultural narratives woven into our language itself. Why, for instance, do we use the masculine “patronage” when so many of history’s great “patrons” have been women? Anna Draper and Catherine Wolfe Bruce belong to a vast constellation of “matronage” — there are, perhaps most famously, the women of the Medici family, one of whom was instrumental in Galileo’s life; there is Gertrude Stein, who helped the stars of creative visionaries like Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald rise; there is Nadezhda von Meck, without whom there would be no Tchaikovsky. That Draper and Bruce’s generosity continues to sustain the Harvard Observatory more than a century later only amplifies the magnitude of their unheralded magnanimity.
Sobel writes:
[Miss Bruce] volunteered to lend further assistance, not just to Harvard, but to astronomers everywhere, if Pickering would agree to help her choose the most deserving cases. With her promise of $6,000 to start, he announced a call for aid applications in July 1890. He also sent letters to individual researchers at observatories all over the world, asking whether they could put $500 to immediate good use — say, to hire an assistant, repair an instrument, or publish a backlog of data. Nearly one hundred responses met the October deadline. Pickering evaluated the proposals and Miss Bruce approved his recommendation in time for a November selection of the winners. Simon Newcomb, author of the article that had aroused Miss Bruce’s indignation, became one of the first five scientists in the United States to receive her support. Another ten awards went overseas to astronomers working in England, Norway, Russia, India, and Africa.
A century before Primo Levi’s beautiful case for how studying the universe brings humanity closer together, Pickering captured the unifying power of astronomy in his introduction to the list of awardees, published in the Scientific American Supplement that autumn:
The same sky overarches us all.
In the remainder of The Glass Universe, Sobel goes on to chronicle and celebrate the legacy of these extraordinary women, who opened up astronomy and cosmology for visionary scientists like Vera Rubin and Janna Levin. Complement it with the story of the black women mathematicians of NASA and this illustrated homage to women in science, then revisit the story of how astronomer Jocelyn Bell earned the exclamation “Miss Bell, you have made the greatest astronomical discovery of the twentieth century.” |
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>| British Map
Title text: West Norsussex is east of East Norwessex, but they're both far north of Middlesex and West Norwex.
Explanation [ edit ]
This comic is a joke similar to "How Americans see the world" showing how the average American has opinions on the world, often including jokes such as a lack of Africa, etc. This has been used before in 850: World According to Americans. The map also plays with the joke by noting it has been labeled by a specific American rather than "Americans".
Many areas of the UK are most familiar to foreigners thanks to their depiction in various fantasy novels and TV series. This map labels some of these, as well as including many silly names that simply sound like real British towns to an American ear. A protractor is shown off the coast of the Mull of Kintyre in reference to the "Mull of Kintyre test" - according to urban legend, the angle of the Mull defines the maximum allowed erectness for a man on films and home video releases in the UK.
Randall previously posted a map of the UK on his blog as part of the promotion for his book What If?. This map is from a very similar position and appears to have been traced from the same source, although there are some slight differences. Both maps include a sketch of Lake Windermere with boats on it, and both have the locations of London, Oxford and Cambridge labeled (the blog map also shows Edinburgh and Bristol - in this comic, these are labelled Eavestroughs and Minas Tirith). Both also contain references to Stonehenge and Watership Down.
Note that in British English, the correct spelling of “labeled” is ‘labelled’.
The title text plays around with the concept of the compass directions and how numerous regions (such as South "Sussex" and West "Wessex") incorporate such literal names in their description. Randall is creating similar sounding names which are nonsense-ish ("Norsussex" would be the region of the Northern-Southern Saxons), and placing them in relation to each other in ways which would be geographically implausible, similar to this old joke about Boston. However, in Germany there exists the region called Westphalia (Westfalen), and the eastern part of it is often referred to as East-Westphalia (Ostwestfalen), which sounds somewhat ridiculous. Part of the joke in the title text could be the fact that while three of the locations are fictional, Middlesex does actually exist.
Transcript [ edit ]
[A black-and-white map of Great Britain. The detail on the map is minimal, showing mainly the outlines of the land, upward-pointing angles representing mountains, and points representing cities. The only other features are a small drawing of a protractor south of one peninsula, and a lake with two small sailboats on the west side of the largest landmass. The caption in the upper-right states in large letters "A BRITISH MAP," then in smaller letters underneath, "LABELED BY AN AMERICAN." Most of the map's area is covered by labels for various features, which are listed below.]
In Scotland, from north to south Helcaraxë Blick Everdeen Norther Sea (to the west) Highlands Loch Lomond Fjordham Glassdoor Eavestroughs Seasedge Meowth Chough Blighton Glutenfree In England, from north to south Eyemouth Earhand Hairskull Lakebottom Braintree Skinflower Weedle Bjork Crewneck Paisley Eeugh Aidenn Basil Hillfolk Waterdown Borough-Upon-Mappe Cadbury Landmouth (to the East) The Shire West Norsussex Redsox Hamwich Lionsgate Keebler South Norwessex Kingsbottom Cambridge Frampton Nothingham Cair Paravel Dampshire Cumberbatch Oxford Paulblart Corbyn London GMT BBC Channel 4 (to the West) Minas Tirith Tems-Upon-Thames Tubemap Hogsmeade Cambnewton Oughghough Efrafa Chansey Sundial Lower Bottom Dobby Menthol West Sea (to the West) Blandford Southframpton Tarp Longbit In Whales, from north to south Fhqwhgads Cabinetry Bloughshire Aberforth Dryford Kingsfriend Camelot The CW Whaling Moorhen Cardigan In Northern Ireland Belfast Devoe In the Republic of Ireland Dubstep
Discussion |
The Problem
Many people have skin folds or places where skin touches skin. Unfortunately, these ‘pockets’ or ‘skin folds’ are a breeding ground for Intertrigo, (pronounced inter-try-go) a skin rash that thrives in hot, sweaty places where skin rubs against skin.
This skin-on-skin rash occurs in warm, wet areas where skin meets skin; under the breasts, in stomach folds, the groin or armpit area and it breeds bacteria, yeast and fungus with symptoms that include odor, itching and burning.
Until recently, the only available treatments for skin-on-skin rashes were messy, inconvenient creams and powders that did little to stop the underlying cause of the rash. But that changed with the launch of InterDry.
The Solution
InterDry Ag is a patented, moisture-wicking fabric with antimicrobial silver. The fabric wicks away moisture so your skin stays dry and helps eliminate skin-on-skin friction. And the antimicrobial silver in the fabric fights itching and odor-causing bacteria so you can be active, comfortable and confident all day. And, it’s now available without a prescription. |
So here’s some good, and horrible, news. I do believe I’ve — at least partially — gotten to the bottom of some of my gluten’ing. Thanks to lovely reader Katherine Kelley, I discovered wheat starch in my generic Tylenol from Safeway. Imagine that! Thanks for that tip I would have never, ever, considered that, Katherine. And seriously, WTF?
Additionally, and this totally falls under the “shame on me” category, there’s gluten in my Skinny Vanilla Latte. Apparently I’m the kind of gal who has to learn hard lessons biannually, as I clearly forgot why I swore I would never go back to Starbucks. (Also, I just know I’ll be in line again before the week is out. What’s wrong with me? Don’t answer that.) Here’s the response I received when I asked Starbucks HQ about my go-to treat, since the people actually working in Starbucks did not seem to be clued into the gluten scene:
Our light syrups use gluten, so unfortunately for the Skinny Vanilla Latte that would mean that it does. We can also never guarantee that any of our products are 100% gluten free and if you are ever unsure of a product, we advise not consuming it because your safety and health is important to us.
So your health is so important we’d like you to never consume our products. Yes, I know I already knew this. But I read somewhere on the Internet that the SVL was totally cool, and I asked the barista, and well, that’s why I’ve been sucking down those lattes like a virgin on prom night. Stupid Internet, always telling you the wrong things.
In spite of me knowing full well that celiacs have to go above and beyond when checking ingredients, I do feel duped. First, by a generic brand that adds something in that’s not in the original and doesn’t bother to warn customers who, oh I don’t know, might have a serious medical condition that would be affected by said additive. And twice (thrice?) by a company that is all about fair trade and saving the children, but could give two shits about keeping their food safe. Or even labeled. Honestly, if I knew I could have a regular vanilla latte (which I’m totally unclear on at this point) I would still give Starbucks like half of my paycheck.
Starbucks, I’m willing to shell over so much money to you, yet you can’t be bothered to provide your employees (or your web site) with the basic information about allergens. I know I should just ignore you, but it’s kind of like I revert to being 10-years-old and I simply can’t help myself.
Damn it.
Any other foods/drinks/meds I should be outing here?
Image via Starbucks |
The number of Afghan trainees who have disappeared while traveling in the United States more than doubled last year, according to the latest Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) Quarterly Report released to Congress this week.
More than half are unaccounted for, the report says.
A prominent portion of the report was dedicated to discussing the increasing number of Afghan security personnel going AWOL while training in the United States. Of the 320 foreign military trainees that went AWOL since 2005 while in the U.S, almost half – 152 – hailed from Afghanistan. About 83 of those Afghanis remain unaccounted for.
“We found that the increasing instances of AWOL since 2015 may have had a negative impact on operational readiness of Afghan Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) units and the morale of fellow trainees and home units, as posed security risks to the United States,” the report states.
The revelations come at a time when the U.S is upping its troop numbers in an effort to try and reverse the deteriorating security situation in the war-embattled nation, in which the Afghan government’s district and population control has declined to its lowest levels in years and armed clashes inside the country are at an all-time high, as reported by the United Nations.
Since 2001, the U.S. has sought to “promote a stable and prosperous Afghanistan,” with a considerable goal in reconstruction efforts through training their armed forces. In July of this year, Congress appropriated a further $68.27 billion to the Department of Defense (DOD) to train and equip the ANDSF. As part of this mission, the U.S government sponsors numerous military training programs – including an Aviation Leadership Program, Regional Defense Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program and a Counter-Drug Training Program – inside the U.S.
“Our analysis showed that between 2005 and 2017 – 253,977 foreign trainees came to the United States for training. 2,537 were from Afghanistan. During this time, 320 foreign trainees went AWOL,” SIGAR noted. “Of the 320, 152 – 47.5 percent – were from Afghanistan.”
This overall figure represents about 6 percent of all Afghans who received U.S-based training, while only 0.07 percent of trainees from other countries went AWOL. But the Afghan trainee problem is on the uptick – last year, the percentage of Afghan trainees who disappeared doubled from the “historical average of 6 to 7 percent to 13 percent.”
Trainees had gone AWOL from 23 different locations across the country and 103 of the 152 were of the rank of lieutenant or captain.
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The reasons cited by the Afghans who were previously documented as having been AWOL, centered on personal/family safety matters and concerns over job security.
For example, one female claimed that after she departed Afghanistan the Taliban threatened her family because of her U.S. association, while another trainee expressed concern that he expected not to have a job upon return to his home country as many others were able to pay bribes and thus fill the employment allotments.
“The lack of job security is compounded by Afghan government policy that requires Afghan trainees that are in training longer than one year (many U.S.-based trainings are longer than one year) be taken off active duty and moved to reserve status,” the report stated. “While in reserve status, trainees’ pay is cut in half and various benefits are forfeited.”
However, the issue of AWOL trainees – which takes place when a visiting trainee does not show up at scheduled activities without prior permission for more than 24 hours – is hardly new. A Fox News exclusive back in 2010 exposed the fact that 17 Afghan military men had defected from an Air Force Base in Texas alone, while a further 46 members of the Afghan military had walked away from the Defense Language Institute’s English Language Center.
“ANDSF trainees who go AWOL while training in the United States cost the U.S. government millions of dollars in cancelled course and per diem costs, while wasting training opportunities that could have gone to other students,” the Commander of the Combined Security Transition Command – Afghanistan (CSTC-A) said last year.
In response, the CSTC-A rescinded several slots for trainee courses slated for 2017, but SIGAR contends that more needs to be done to combat the rising problem.
SIGAR urges more stringent monitoring measures be put in place, suggesting that the Department of Defense (DOD) mentors in Afghanistan work closely with the Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Ministry of Interior (MOI) in Kabul to develop processes and procedures.
The report also indicated that there needs to be an improvement in coordination between U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to help prevent AWOL trainees who may pose a national security threat.
“Although the United States and Afghan governments have established processes for selecting and vetting ANDSF personnel for training, these processes appear flawed,” the report concluded. |
At the beginning of the second round, with the 20th overall pick in the 2013 MLS SuperDraft, FC Dallas has selected UCLA midfielder Ryan Hollingshead.
Hollingshead made some headlines over the last couple weeks for skipping the MLS Combine for pursuing a religious mission. This is a very interesting choice considering there may be a chance that he may not pursue a professional career in soccer.
Should he actually play, which will likely come later this spring/summer, Hollingshead will be a solid addition. Dallas will need to sort out his future, and possibly the club is just hedging their bet that he will eventually play.
Honestly, before he claimed to be going on a missionary project before the Combine, I would have said this would be a heck of a pick up for Dallas. As we all know the club needs depth and help on the wings and Hollingshead would be just that guy to do it. But if he isn't going to play at all this year, then this could just be a wasted pick at the end of the day. |
John Brenkus, Kinesiology, and Minimizing Risk in the NBA
An Anecdote from 2015 Draft Prospect Myles Turner
Behind the Scenes of Turner's Testing
ROM (approximate) Right Left Normal Hamstrings 70° 70° 80°-90° Hip Flexors - 1 Joint 5° 5° 0° Hip Flexors - 2 Joint 70° 70° 80° Calves 10° 10° 15° Internal Rotation 45° 35° 30°-45° External Rotation 55° 55° 45°-60° ITB/TFL (Outer Thigh Flexibility) Normal Normal Quadriceps Normal Normal
Right Left Hip Abduction 4/5 3/5 Hip Extension 5/5 5/5 Knee Extension 5/5 5/5 Knee Flexion 5/5 5/5
Myles Turner Interview
Performance Optimization and the Future
The 2015 NBA Combine will run from May 12th through May 17th, and while much of the attention paid to the event will focus on the action on the floor, the athletic testing conducted, and the interaction between teams and prospects, medical testing windows are the only item that appears on the schedule throughout the six days. Both at the Combine, and in the private workouts held by teams in the coming weeks, the crop of prospects eligible for the 2015 Draft will be poked and prodded by medical personnel from around the League in an effort to measure their fitness and diagnose any previously undiscovered issues.The battery of tests these prospects will be put through range from echocardiograms to simple vision tests to complex assessments looking to ascertain joint or muscular problems. Asked to submit a full medical history prior to the combine, and then answer a questionnaire upon arrival, some prospects face highly specific tests tailored to explore potential red flags, while others face a fairly standard gambit of examinations. Though the results of these tests can hurt the stock of some prospects, they've also proven to serve their underlying purpose of uncovering serious health concerns. For example, less than a year ago, Isaiah Austin 's EKG at the 2014 NBA Combine was the first domino to fall in his unfortunate, career-ending diagnosis with Marfan Syndrome.There's a good chance that if you're reading this article, you're already familiar with John Brenkus, the host of SportScience, an aptly named television series that gained traction on Fox Sports Net in the late 2000s before being picked up by ESPN and sprinkled over its existing programming as short segments.Analyzing the physics and engineering principles at work in the more interesting feats of athletes competing at the highest levels of their respective sports, SportScience, with Brenkus as the executive producer and on-air narrator, brought the methods and findings of human performance analysis mainstream. The public face of an ongoing surge in innovation in the application of technology in the field of kinesiology, Brenkus is but one of a growing number of researchers leveraging new measuring tools to gain new insight into how athletes move.The utility of that new insight is fairly clear for NBA teams, especially during the draft process, where many prospects undergo a full battery of tests to assess the strength of their joints and their potential risk for serious injury for the first time in their entire lives. With first round prospects receiving guaranteed money and the implications of insurance coverage for potential free agent acquisitions ( which are described succinctly in Larry Coon's CBA FAQ ), information about physical weaknesses and the probability they have to limit a player's ability to stay on the floor obviously goes a long way towards helping NBA teams minimize risk.Given the basketball industry's collective proclivity for new information, it should come as no surprise that human movement science has gained considerable traction among NBA personnel over the years. Whether it's something as simple as a scout scrutinizing a player's gait or the success of the Phoenix Suns' training staff in rejuvenating the careers of older players with comprehensive strength and flexibility assessments, coupled with aggressive preventative strengthening routines (summarized nicely by Eric Freeman here and in tremendously well-researched detail by Michael Schwartz here ), principles of kinesiology have found their way into how NBA teams are evaluating and physically preparing players.For the average NBA Draft prospect, the battery of tests they're put through this time of the year tend to be a formality, but for other players the stakes are a bit higher. It seems that at least one player per draft cycle is faced with concerns based around how they move on the court and what kind of toll the resulting forces are taking on their musculoskeletal system. Sometimes those questions are raised about a bruising big man struggling with lower back pain late in the season or a prospect who is particularly knock-knee or bow-legged relative to the norm, but they can also pop up for more subtle reasons like unsteady running form or a lack of ideal knee bend in the post.This season, Myles Turner is perhaps the highest profile player in this draft to face scrutiny specifically forhe moves. DraftExpress's video scout, Mike Schmitz, broke down Turner's specific mobility issues in our preseason video scouting report on the potential top-10 pick. The following video is linked to start with that section: https://youtu.be/sU_qZL9LevA?t=6m22s Turner's somewhat ginger, choppy running stride was a part of not only our scouting report on him, but of those published by most major NBA Draft outlets as well. As Schmitz notes, Turner is plenty mobile for a 7-footer. He moves better than numerous center prospects we've covered over the years, but with the lamentable history of big men with injury problems over the last two decades and the increased attention to detail in the internet era of scouting, Turner's gait was still viewed as a concern.Turner selected Andy Miller of ASM Sports as his representation earlier this spring. Miller, in concert with Turner, Turner's father David, and renowned Dallas strength coach Ken Roberson, decided to be proactive about the questions facing the 19 year old center and look for answers in advance of the NBA Combine. That search led Turner and his team to undergo a trio of tests at the Hospital for Special Surgery based in New York, the same hospital where Kevin Love and Paul George had their respective surgeries done over the last year.The returns of Turner's lower extremity physical, running mechanics physical, and foot and ankle evaluation revealed the root of Turner's mechanical issues as weakness in both his left and right gluteus medius. The resulting 27-page report, which includes analysis from three phyisicians, stills of Turner performing various stability and running on a treadmill, and numerous x-rays was distributed to all 30 NBA teams, but more significantly, paints a picture of an imbalance that can be corrected over time.The battery of tests Turner faced began with a look at his flexibility as the doctor's gauged the angles he was able to achieve in various stretches. Looking for tightness in his lower body, they revealed, in the doctor's estimation, nothing outside of the norm.The second test was more enlightening about the reasons for Turner's gait. Looking for deviations in the knee and pelvis to identify weaknesses through manual testing, the tests showed Turner's gluteus medius on both sides to be very weak. An important lower limb stabilizer, this weakness and the imbalance between the strength of his left and right side were deemed the culprit behind his running form.Performing shallow one-legged squats to look at what kind of pelvic control he was able to maintain and what kind of forces were being applied to his knee, the subsequent tests Turner went through uncovered to what degree his gluts were having on his balance and running form.After completing his balance testing, Turner took to the treadmill where doctor's diagrammed and measured the angles of his joints as well as his ground contact patterns to paint of full picture of his running style.The first diagram shows Turner running with a comfortable mid-foot strike, but the second diagram displays excessive pronation on the left foot according to the report. Though its Turner's gluts that are the issue, it is interesting to note just what kind of impact that weakness creates further down the chain of muscles he uses when running.The below diagrams look at the angles of Turner's upper leg when he's running. An example of the lack of pelvic stability the reports point to can be seen clearly in the first picture, while the second shows a loss of control in his legs in his natural running stride.Fortunately for Turner, the ultimate outcome of this comprehensive look into the issues identified by scouts early in his career was very positive as his strength deficit in the gluts is, in this doctor's view, very correctable. The running mechanics portion of the report sent to teams ends with a set of exercises for Turner to do daily to help him activate the specific areas of concern.Turner was kind enough to answer a few of our questions regarding his situations before he headed to Chicago for the NBA Combine.I have heard about it for years and I wanted to prove to everyone that it's just mechanics. I wanted all the NBA teams to know I was 100% healthy.My Agent Andy Miller, my trainer Ken Roberson and My father David TurnerMy Agent recommended it and my father had surgery there years ago.No, I knew that I was completely healthy.Yes that was the first time that I went through tests like that. The actual test looked at my movement, I also did a stress test on a treadmill and they stretched out my legs to gauge how flexible and strong I was.NoNo, the aches and pains I had did not have anything to do with my gait. They were just the normal aches and pains college players feel during the season.I had done some track work and traditional speed training, but it was not a main concern, my focus before the assessment was mostly about basketball.I have been working on my core, hips and gluteal muscles. I have noticed huge gains in my transitional drills. I have been able to get out and run the court better.I will continue to do the physical therapy work, building on the base we have set up during predraft. I think this is going to be a key factor in my long-term development.Yes if someone has a similar situation I think they should definitely look to have the problem identified. Don't let what people say frustrate you, just continue to work hard and get better.Turner isn't the first prospect to have a running mechanics assessment and subsequently send it to teams, but he is the first to share those results publically. Obviously, the positive nature of his prognosis played a role in that decision, but he and his representation deserve credit for giving draft fans a glimpse into just how in-depth the medical testing these players are put through has become and were smart for approaching the process pro-actively.Given the performance and draft stock implications of correcting or just beginning to correct a muscular imbalance, it wouldn't be shocking to see more agents looking to not only get ahead of the medical testing that will be done this week at the NBA Combine, but also use the results of this type of testing to help players make gains pre-draft preparation, even if their client isn't identified as having any significant issues. With few players reaping the benefits of tests like this at the college level, the opportunity to get them assessed and build a program to help them work to eliminate any potential imbalances or weaknesses seems like promising step towards maximizing their athletic performance. Look for this process to continue to move to the forefront as it becomes more accepted and common in sports circles. |
Swedes shocked by police's Roma registry
Minister calls the police behaviour 'unsettling, unethical, unacceptable, and illegal'.
Storified by The Stream· Tue, Sep 24 2013 11:32:36
Swedish Minister for European Union Affairs Birgitta Ohlsson called reports of the registry "unsettling, unethical, unacceptable, and illegal".
läst @niklasorrenius skakande reportage i @dagensnyheter om registrering av romer. Otäckt, oetiskt, oacceptabelt och olagligt.Birgitta Ohlsson
Protesters gathered in Malmo and Stockholm to speak out against the police record-keeping.
Blixtinkallad manifestation i Malmö, mot strukturell antiziganism och rasism inom polisen. #romgate #svpol http://twitter.com/richardolsson/status/382174295226449920/photo/1Richard Olsson
Demonstration in Stockholm against the police registration of roma people, and even children,in Sweden 2013 #romgate http://twitter.com/royah/status/382183490327814144/photo/1roya hakimnia
Swedish Integration Minister Erik Ullenhag, according to The Local , responded to the allegations by saying, "This is upsetting, to say the least. Registration based on ethnic background is illegal and does not belong in a society based on the rule of law".
Many people online responded with widespread disgust and shock, using #romgate to discuss the scandal.
Sweden, September 23, 2013 and #romgate trending bigtime. Not a proud moment in Swedish history. :((Elisabet Rydell
Swedish moral authority on rights was always a bit of a myth, but even that mythology is going down the drain now. #Romgate #DNChristianChristensen
@nixenji @Amina_Semlali This is a HUGE scandal. People are totally outraged in #Sweden right now. @tparsi #romgateAnusche Noring
Several Swedes directed sarcastic and outraged tweets to the police on Twitter. Dilsa writes, "Hey @polisen_malmo, I'm not 100% sure that I DON'T have Roma blood. Heard you could be of assistance. Thank you in advance".
Hej @polisen_malmo , jag är INTE 100% säker på att jag INTE har romskt blod. Hörde att ni kan vara behjälpliga. Tack på förhand. #romgateDilsa Demirbag-sten
Jonas tweets, "Hey Skane police! I started a family tree in the summer, but got tired of dusty church records. Can I hire you instead?"
Hej Skånepolisen! Jag påbörjade ett släktträd i somras, men tröttnade på dammiga kyrkböcker. Kan anlita er istället? @polisen_skaneJonas Rhudin
Vicki adds, "You have made me really ashamed of the country I live in, in a different level than ever before".
Ni har fått mig att verkligen skämmas över landet jag bor i, på helt andra nivåer än någonsin förut @polisen_skanevicki from the block
Though the response online and throughout Sweden has been predominantly negative, not everyone is outraged. Tommy writes, "If the police have kept an analysis file for eight years, one can assume that they have found it useful. They're not just doing it for the genealogy research".
Har polisen sparat på en analysfil i 8 år kan man utgå från att de haft nytta av den. De sysslar inte med släktforskning. #svpol #romgate←Tommy Funebo
Translation: "Lamest excuse of the day: analysis file".
Dagens lamaste bortförklaringsord: analysfil. #granskapolisen #romgateGustav Gelin
The excuse "it is not a registry, it is a file" is insane. "Drugs, no no, it is refined poppey" #romgate http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/09/23/sweden-outraged-by-illegal-polic... Sci |
How To Make Museums More Inviting For Kids With Autism
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Noelle Murphy Courtesy of Noelle Murphy
Last January, Noelle Murphy and her family were on their way to the Please Touch Museum for children in Philadelphia. Right before they arrived, 3-year-old Dylan had an accident.
"He wet himself," Murphy said, "And we were thinking, 'Oh no, how are we going to deal with this?' "
Dylan has autism, and his mom, Noelle, tends to choose at-home activities over unpredictable outings like a day at the museum. If Dylan becomes overwhelmed by his surroundings, he might yell loudly, or drop to the floor and refuse to get up. For Noelle, that's not out of the ordinary. But when strangers around them are added to the mix, it can make for an embarrassing scene.
But that day at the museum was different for the Murphys.
They took advantage of Play without Boundaries -- an hour of museum time for kids with special needs. No weirdness, no awkward explanations, just families with other families who understand the challenges of being in public with kids who are on the autism spectrum.
"When we got there, they had a pair of hospital scrubs in his size, they took his dirty pants and washed them," Murphy said. "It was an extremely different experience than what we are used to."
A study released Monday by the American Alliance of Museums finds more and more of these centers for learning and preservation are also places where health awareness is on display. The Please Touch Museum is one of over 30 museums in the U.S. that has responded to the special needs of visitors with autism.
"My first reaction in the car on the way home was to cry," Murphy said. "My husband asked why I was crying, and I said it was so nice to finally take him somewhere other kids go without having to worry about an unpleasant experience ... for us and those around us."
But it's not always easy to take a kid with autism out into the world, especially a museum. A recent tally found that 1 in 88 children in the U.S. is somewhere on the autism spectrum. For these youngsters, if a place doesn't have appropriate accommodations, museum-going is a no-go for much of their childhood. That's because so often, what seems like a fun diversion ends up causing feelings of anxiety and sometimes panic.
That's why some museums have made special accommodations. "During those hours the museum looks different," said Leslie Walker, Please Touch Museum's vice president for community learning.
Flashing lights are dimmed, and booming music is turned down. Kids who want a sense of security about their visit are encouraged to create custom schedules and maps beforehand. And museum employees who will teach kids about the exhibits go through sensitivity training to learn what needs a child with autism might have to interact like their peers.
"They know now to bend down and get on that kid's level, and to wait awhile before following up if they ask a question," Walker said.
At museums that acknowledge not every kid craves raucous, stimulating sights to have a good time, parents of children with autism find public places where they can be themselves. And they don't have to miss out on experiencing another childhood pastime with their kids, like getting lost in a museum. |
Portland leaders project that the city's population will grow by nearly 42 percent -- reflecting about 260,000 new residents -- over the next 20 years. Approximately 140,000 new employees will work in the city, a 38 percent spike.
So how to accommodate all that growth?
The Portland City Council on Wednesday marked years of work trying to answer that question, unanimously passing a new road map for growth -- officially dubbed the Comprehensive Plan -- that sets the city's course through the year 2035. Imagine taller towers downtown, more apartments in single-family neighborhoods and perhaps even a new streetcar line.
"This is indeed a milestone for all of us," said Commissioner Amanda Fritz, calling the vote a "once-in-a-career opportunity."
The plan, which won't fully take effect until January 2018, dictates where and how the city will develop through zoning rules. It also prioritizes infrastructure improvements such as transportation and parks projects.
Commissioners spoke Wednesday about how the plan attempts to address the largest problems facing Portland, including a housing affordability crisis and a lack of adequate infrastructure in eastern swaths of the city.
The work isn't over: Concurrent efforts are being made at City Hall on other detailed rule changes that could add density to single-family neighborhoods and require developers to include units affordable to lower-income residents in housing projects that would otherwise be market-rate.
Commissioner Dan Saltzman addressed those issues before he voted Wednesday.
"I like height," Saltzman said. "We're a city, and we need to plan for incredible growth.... A big part of accommodating growth is to increase the height of all of our buildings."
But Saltzman quickly added: "We need more housing. And all height and floor-area-ratio bonuses should be tied to affordable housing. All of them."
A planning committee working on infill development, for example, would encourage more so-called "middle housing" in single-family neighborhoods, such as duplexes, triplexes and cottages. A tentative proposal would allow a developer to build an extra unit, resulting in a fourplex in some cases, if at least one unit meets certain affordability guidelines.
Proposed transportation projects in the plan include an $80 million extension of the Portland Streetcar to Southwest Portland's Johns Landing neighborhood, seismic improvements to Willamette River bridges, and upgrades to pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure across the city.
Downtown, the plan will allow for more height so developers can build taller office buildings, accommodating for an influx of new employees at a time when office vacancy rates are very low. Proposals such as the Goodman family's wish to add 11 buildings, some of them as tall as 460 feet, to the city's skyline hinge on such zoning changes.
The city also wants to invest in brownfield remediation throughout Portland, allowing contaminated lands to be redeveloped for employment opportunities. A polluted site formerly home to a gas station along Interstate Avenue, for example, is now a health clinic operated by Providence Health & Services thanks to funding from the Portland Brownfield Program.
The plan additionally contains provisions to address displacement, acknowledging that previous efforts at urban renewal have pushed poorer residents, particularly communities of color, to the fringes of east Portland.
Mayor Charlie Hales said the plan comes at an opportune time, during a week when Portlanders found out an average home in the region now sells for above $400,000 and after a year when the city gained 1,000 residents a month.
"At a time when there's so much negative noise about government... progress is possible," Hales said.
Residents who testified on the plan have 21 days upon receipt of an impending letter from the city to object to it. The state Land Conservation and Development Commission will take those objections into account as it works to make the plan final before 2018.
-- Luke Hammill
[email protected]
503-294-4029
@lucashammill |
FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Judiciary Committee in September. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP)
Crafting a compelling and intricate story is a challenge. The key, I learned as author of three popular legal thrillers, is getting the right mix of character development, suspense, atmosphere and, above all, an ending no one can see coming. You need an active—and sometimes jaded—imagination to pull off the trick.
Still, even in my most febrile writer’s dreams, I couldn’t have devised a plotline approaching what happened the morning of Oct. 28, when FBI Director James Comey sent a terse, 166-word letter to the chairs of eight congressional committees, disclosing that the bureau had discovered additional emails that required it to take further “appropriate investigative steps” regarding Hillary Clinton’s use of a private internet server during her tenure as secretary of state. Only last July, Comey had broken the hearts of Republicans everywhere as he told Congress and the world that the email probe had been completed and Clinton would not be prosecuted.
So forget WikiLeaks, and forget Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs and the behind-the-scenes machinations of John Podesta: Comey’s letter was the ultimate October surprise, at once breathing new life into the seemingly moribund Trump campaign and triggering shockwaves of anxiety and spasms of political bed-wetting among Democrats.
And then came another, even more improbable twist: The new emails had been found on a laptop computer owned by none other than Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former New York congressman who just happens to be the estranged husband of top Clinton aide and confidante Huma Abedin. The emails had been uncovered during the course of a separate investigation into sexual messages Weiner had dispatched to a 15-year-old North Carolina girl.
If I had pitched a screenplay like that—even to the edgy Coen brothers—the concept would have been shot down as too implausible and incapable (in the argot of the trade) of generating the required “suspension of disbelief” needed to sustain viewer interest. I can just see the rejection note now, telling me that no one would buy into a culprit named Weiner with a penchant for circulating dick pics online. No one.
Except this plotline isn’t fiction. It’s fact, and it has the potential to alter the outcome of the presidential election and, with it, our collective future.
So I, along with sundry other legal and political commentators, have to ask: Why did Comey write his letter, and was his decision to do so a clear break with long-standing FBI and Justice Department policies — and possibly itself a violation of law? Even more fundamentally, I have to ask what the whole stomach-turning tale says about the state of American democracy.
Unfortunately, coming up with answers isn’t easy. For starters, only Comey knows the full extent of his motives. In his letter to Congress, the director wrote merely that his Oct. 28 letter was sent to “supplement my previous testimony,” given before the House Oversight Committee in July and House Judiciary Committee in September.
In a memo circulated to FBI staff the afternoon of Oct. 28, Comey elaborated:
Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record. At the same time, however, given that we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression. In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directly from me about it.
Comey is an imposing physical figure. A towering 6 feet 8 inches tall, he has a blunt, no-nonsense speaking style and a stern countenance. He also has a reputation for doing the right thing, no matter the consequences and who gets pissed off.
Comey was the guy who in 2004, as a deputy attorney general, rushed to the hospital bed of his seriously ill boss, John Ashcroft, and stood up to then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and George W. Bush chief of staff Andrew Card as they attempted to persuade the weakened Ashcroft to certify aspects of the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program that the Justice Department had deemed unconstitutional. If cast in a classic Hollywood movie for the gesture, you’d think of Gary Cooper, standing tall and alone as the quintessential lawman in “High Noon.”
But dig a little deeper into his background and a more nuanced and far less flattering picture of Comey emerges as a GOP hitman. Early in his government career, Comey worked as a special counsel for the Senate Whitewater Committee, investigating Bill and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in a set of shady Arkansas real-estate investments from the 1970s and ’80s. Later, as a federal prosecutor, he supervised a probe of Bill Clinton’s 2001 pardon of financier Marc Rich, who had been indicted for tax evasion and illegally trading with Iran and subsequently fled the country.
In addition, Comey’s resume includes important and highly lucrative private-sector stints of a decidedly right-wing bent. As MarketWatch columnist Brett Arends catalogued in a post Wednesday, Comey raked in millions a year in salary and stock bonuses as an attorney working on behalf of defense-contractor giant Lockheed Martin, and Bridgewater Associates, known as the country’s largest hedge fund. For a time, he held a seat on the board of HSBC, the global investment bank that was hit in March 2013 with a $1.3 billion fine for international money laundering.
Initially appointed to the Justice Department by the Bush-Cheney administration in 2003, Comey was nominated by President Obama in June 2013 to become FBI director. He was confirmed a month later by the Senate on a 93-1 vote, with Rand Paul, R-Ky., the lone dissenter.
Among his public declarations since assuming the top post that September, Comey has claimed that the Black Lives Matter movement and the “Ferguson effect” (referring to the impact of street protests against police shootings and viral videos of police misconduct) are responsible for the recent uptick in violent crime in some cities. His position has drawn sharp criticism from the Obama administration, as well as the broader civil rights community.
So, was Comey’s Oct. 28 letter the result of his pent-up urge to get back finally at the Clintons and the Democratic establishment? The highly respected Guardian columnist Spencer Ackerman asserted in an article published Wednesday that the FBI has become “Trumpland,” populated by field agents and other officials rankled over Comey’s initial decision not to seek criminal charges against Hillary Clinton.
Those looking for bias in Comey’s letter might also point to the bureau’s release Tuesday of a 129-page archive from the Marc Rich investigation and pardon. Why make such documents public, Clinton backers have asked, just days before voters head to the polls if not to place a thumb on the electoral scale?
Still, it’s not easy to come to any definite conclusions about Comey’s intentions. Ever since Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s fateful encounter with Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport in early July, Lynch has encountered demands that she recuse herself from the email controversy. As a result, Comey has been forced to become the public face of justice on the issue and take on the task of announcing the results of the long federal inquiry into the email controversy.
He remains that public face to this day.
To be sure, in revealing that the bureau is once again looking into Hillary Clinton’s emails, Comey has violated long-standing Justice Department protocols that instruct federal prosecutors to remain silent about ongoing investigations within 60 days of an election.
But to be fair, Comey has been caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. By announcing that the email hunt is once again on, he has entered the forbidden arena of partisan politics, condemned by Democrats for boosting Donald Trump’s fading prospects at the last possible minute. On the other hand, remaining silent until after the election would also have had profound political ramifications, especially if Hillary wins, sparking outrage on the Republican right over yet another Clinton cover-up.
In the end, the biggest casualty in the entire tangled and interminable scandal may be democracy itself. We’ve been reduced to a pulp-fiction version of constitutional governance. The head of the nation’s pre-eminent law enforcement agency, his hand forced by an online sex addict named Weiner, may determine the outcome of one of the most consequential presidential elections in our history.
That’s something I, for one, never saw coming. |
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Photo: Wiseau-Films
Ten years ago, in June 2003, a small independent film with a terrible script, a no-name director, and a cast of unknowns opened for a short run in Los Angeles. It was panned by the few critics who saw it and closed two weeks later, having grossed $1,800. But the film had something that set it apart. For while there are plenty of bad movies, there are no movies that are bad in all the ways The Room is bad. It suspends all normal rules of drama. Conflicts are introduced and then disappear instantly. Characters experience rapid mood swings, and everyone speaks in a weird brand of English filled with bizarre idioms. (“Keep your stupid comments in your pocket!”) The sex scenes are scarier than the scary scenes.
The Room hit theaters at the right time. As it turns out, its unending series of bizarre moments were perfect for the dawn of the Internet’s GIF and YouTube culture. As word of “the Worst Movie Ever Made” spread throughout message boards, an embryonic Room fandom coalesced around a series of midnight screenings in L.A. The movie’s director became the center of a strange cult of personality, one that grew to include some of the top names in Hollywood. With their help, The Room became an international phenomenon, replete with a computer game, a stage adaptation, countless memes, celebrity parodies, ironic scholarship, an upcoming tell-all memoir, and regular screenings in three countries. Here’s how the biggest cult movie of the past decade came to be.
Sometime in the Twentieth Century
Tommy Wiseau, The Room’s mysterious star-director-writer, is born. Little else is known.
Wiseau: ”[My past] has nothing to do with what I do. My private life is my private life.”
Juliette Danielle, Room cast member: “We tried for a long time to find out where he’s from. We never got an answer.”
Sometime in the Late Twentieth Century
Wiseau is inspired.
Wiseau: “I got the idea of The Room from life,” he says. “I conducted a lot of research, detailed work about human behavior, based on my environment. So I decided that I have this ‘concept,’ you know, about human behavior, and that’s where everything started.
The idea begins as a 600-page book, which Wiseau considers turning into a stage play. Eventually, he decides to make a film, written by, directed by, and starring himself.
1998
In an acting class in San Francisco, Wiseau meets Greg Sestero, who will become his right-hand man.
Sestero: “He went up onstage and was just so entertaining. The whole class was laughing and chanting his name, and he was getting into it with the teacher and I thought, This guy’s kind of cool. We just clicked. He told me, ‘I have a movie I’d love to make, and I think you’d be great.’”
2002
Production begins on The Room, though how Wiseau raised the film’s $6 million budget is a mystery. In interviews, the director says that he got it from his leather jacket business.
Wiseau: ”If you work, you have to save money, right? I didn’t get money from the sky. I was preparing, let’s put it this way.”
The cast has no illusions that they’re making a serious film.
Danielle: “I can remember one time that I just lost it. It’s the line where Johnny has locked himself in the bathroom and he says, ‘In a few minutes, bitch.’ I was doing okay until I saw the entire crew in my field of vision, stifling their laughter. I couldn’t help it. Tommy came out and demanded to know what was so funny. That made it worse!”
But Wiseau’s eccentricities hamper production.
Anonymous crew member: ”[The script] was actually a lot longer. There was stuff that was just unsayeable. I know it’s hard to imagine there was stuff that was worse. But there was.”
Sestero: ”[Production lasted] almost six months. It took longer than Transformers. That is sad.”
Photo: Wiseau-Films
June 27, 2003
The film has its world premiere in Los Angeles. Wiseau arrives in a limousine.
Sestero: “People were hypnotized with laughter. Some people [walking out of the theater] looked dismayed. One guy said he may never get hard again.”
Variety critic Scott Foundas: “Given audience reaction at screening attended, pic may be something of a first: A movie that prompts most of its viewers to ask for their money back — before even 30 minutes have passed.”
By the end of its two-week run, the film has found a super-fan in screenwriter Michael Rousselet.
Rousselet: “‘It was like our own private Mystery Science Theater. I was calling friends during the end and saying, ‘You have to come to this movie.’ We saw it four times in three days, and on the last day I had over 100 people there.”
A Los Angeles billboard that was essentially The Room’s only piece of advertising.
Late 2003
The first wave of Room diehards begin a campaign to bring the film back.
Wiseau: “We got several phone calls from the theater that people were campaigning because they wanted to see The Room. I said to myself, What the heck? We got thousands of e-mails.”
2004
The Room begins regular midnight screenings at the Laemmle Sunset in Los Angeles. Fans take to the Internet to sing the film’s praises.
IMDb user Brickyard Jimmy: “See this film at all costs. See it twice. Or three times. Or as one kid that I met from Woodland Hills has, 12 times! See it until you can recite every precious line of dialogue this movie has to offer. Let The Room become your new religion.”
Room fever infects the L.A. comedy scene. Members of the State seem particularly prone.
David Wain: “I was at Paul Rudd’s house a couple of years ago, and he said, ‘You have to watch this. Within two minutes, I’m like, ‘Okay, this is my favorite thing I’ve ever seen.’’’
December 2005
Wiseau releases the film on DVD, allowing Room fans to mock the film from the comfort of their homes.
May 5, 2006
NPR runs the first trend piece on Room screenings.
NPR: “During the movie, audience members shout out their own commentary about the dialogue, the sets — and notably, the framed photograph of a spoon that inexplicably reappears. Each time this happens, plastic spoons are thrown at the screen, in the can-do spirit of Rocky Horror Picture Show fans”
March 8. 2009
Tim and Eric, Room fans both, get Wiseau to guest-direct an episode of Awesome Show. Watch it here.
The experience is a strange one, even for them.
May 21, 2009
Monthly midnight screenings begin in New York City. The Room is now bicoastal.
July 24, 2009
The Room makes its London Premiere at Soho’s Prince Charles Theater.
The Independent: “The Room’s crappiness is so compelling that, rather than market it as the Greek tragedy it was so obviously meant to be be, Wiseau nowadays insists it was conceived as black comedy.”
April 30, 2010
The Room celebrates its one-year NYC premiere with a sell-out show at the 1,200-seat Ziegfield Theater. Wiseau is on hand to embrace the circus.
Entertainment Weekly: “While Sestero hung back, quietly signing autographs and taking pictures with fans, Wiseau — wearing a suit and those trademark sunglasses — was immediately bombarded with requests to pose in photos with football-wielding fans dressed in his likeness, and to sign shirts that read ‘I heart Tommy Wiseau.’ […] In fact, during the half hour that Wiseau rubbed elbows with fans outside the theatre, he was constantly surrounded by a mob worthy of Rob Pattinson, which made unknowing passersby curiously ask folks in line, “Who is that?”
September 7, 2010
With the arrival of an online computer game, The Room becomes fully meme-ified.
Vulture: “Can you find Lisa’s red dress in time?”
May 23, 2011
Sestero becomes Wiseau’s Boswell in earnest, signing a book deal with Simon & Schuster to write a tell-all about the making of the film. The Disaster Artist will hit shelves in October.
June 11, 2011
Wiseau’s vision finally comes full circle with a stage adaptation of The Room, which premieres at the AFI Silver Screen in Maryland. (Watch a video of it here.)
2013
Wiseau announces a special tenth-anniversary tour for the film, with appearances in Hollywood, Minneapolis, and Denver. He will likely introduce each of them with what has become his trademark phrase.
Wiseau: “I always say, ‘You can laugh, you can cry, you can express yourself, but please don’t hurt each other.’” |
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
June 27, 2016, 12:18 PM GMT / Updated June 27, 2016, 3:11 PM GMT By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann
First Read is a morning briefing from Meet the Press and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.
Sanders supporters are slowly (but surely) coming around to Clinton
As Hillary Clinton campaigns Monday morning with Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Cincinnati, the newest NBC/WSJ poll finds that Bernie Sanders supporters are slowly -- but surely -- coming to Clinton’s side. In the poll, 45% of Sanders supporters have a positive view of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, while 33 percent have a negative view of her (+12). That’s an improvement from last month, when it was 38 percent positive/41 percent negative among Democratic primary voters backing Sanders (-3), but it’s still a far cry from the 60% positive/15% negative score that Clinton supporters have of Sanders (+45) in this new poll. What’s more, in the poll’s horserace result showing Clinton leading Donald Trump by five points, 78% of Sanders supporters are picking Clinton, while 10% back Trump and the rest are neither/other/unsure. But in a four-way ballot -- where Clinton’s lead is reduced to one point -- 63% of Sanders supporters are behind Clinton, 14% pick the Green Party’s Jill Stein, 9% back Trump, and 8% are for Libertarian Johnson. Bottom line: Clinton is a stronger position with Sanders supporters than she was a month ago, but she still has a ways to go. And that helps explain Warren’s appearance with Clinton as Sanders continues to hold off of an official endorsement.
Breaking down Clinton vs. Trump in the new NBC/WSJ poll
In the NBC/WSJ poll result showing Clinton ahead of Trump by five points, Clinton leads -- much like last month -- among African Americans (87%-5%), Latinos (69%-22%), those ages 18-34 (53%-30%), women (52%-35%). Trump, meanwhile, has the edge among whites (49%-37%), men (48%-38%) and independents (40%-30%). Additionally, Clinton gets overwhelming support from Democrats (85%-8%), and Trump gets similar, though slightly less, support from Republicans (79% to 9%). And keep this perspective in mind about our poll: In June 2012, President Obama was ahead of Mitt Romney by just three points, 47%-44%.
Explaining the difference between the NBC/WSJ and WaPo/ABC poll results
Our poll wasn’t the only survey that was released over the weekend. Also on Sunday, the Washington Post/ABC poll showed Clinton ahead by 12 points, 51%-39%, after Trump was up by two points in May. The biggest difference between the NBC/WSJ and WaPo/ABC polls? Our poll has Democrats with a four-point party ID advantage, while the WaPo/ABC poll has Democrats with a 12-point party ID edge. So when in doubt, average them out -- and in the latest RealClearPolitics average, Clinton leads Trump by nearly seven points in a head-to-head matchup. And remember, seven points was the final margin of the 2008 Obama-McCain contest.
Trump, Clinton remain the most unpopular presidential nominees in history of NBC/WSJ poll
Fresh out this morning, our new NBC/WSJ poll also finds that Trump and Clinton remain the most UNPOPULAR presidential nominees/presumptive nominees in the survey’s history. Clinton’s positive/negative score stands at 33%/55% (-22), while Trump’s is even lower 29%/60% (-31). Here are the scores for the other politicians and organizations our NBC/WSJ poll tested -- from most positive to least positive:
FBI: 48% positive, 16% negative (+32)
Planned Parenthood: 48% positive, 29% negative (+19)
Bernie Sanders: 43% positive, 34% negative (+9)
Barack Obama: 48% positive, 41% negative (+7)
NRA: 42% positive, 36% negative (+6)
Paul Ryan: 27% positive, 29% negative (-2)
Democratic Party: 37% positive, 43% negative (-6)
Republican Party: 28% positive, 48% negative (-20)
Hillary Clinton: 33% positive, 55% negative (-22)
Donald Trump: 29% positive, 60% negative (-31)
The rest of the NBC/WSJ poll comes out later today.
Clinton and Warren to hit Trump on his Brexit response
Meanwhile, NBC’s Monica Alba reports that both Clinton and Warren are expected to criticize Trump’s response to Britain’s decision to leave the Europe Union. This comes after the Clinton campaign released a TV ad -- on national cable -- hitting Trump on this very topic. “Every president is tested by world events,” the ad’s narrator says. “But Donald Trump thinks about how his golf resort can profit from them,” using Trump’s quote that “When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry.” On “Meet the Press” yesterday, the Trump campaign’s Paul Manafort fired back at the ad. “The American people care about what is going to happen to their lives, about change. And the issues of Brexit, this kind of phony ad doesn't address those things. And Hillary Clinton is ignoring the reality because she's part of the establishment. She can't get away from the fact that she is part of the problem that's being rejected,” he said.
Here are your VP frontrunners
On NBCNews.com this morning, we’ve published articles looking at the Dem and GOP frontrunners to the vice-presidential running mates.
Top Tier
Dems: Tim Kaine, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown
GOP: John Thune, Bob Corker, Chris Christie, Rick Scott
In The Hunt
Dems: Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Tom Perez, Xavier Becerra
GOP: Mary Fallin, Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, Newt Gingrich
On The Bubble
Dems: Al Franken, Shaun Donovan, Mike Mullen
GOP: Kelly Ayotte, Scott Brown
Veepstakes Watch
Tim Kaine weighed in on why his name’s in the mix – and whether he’s “boring” -- in an interview with one of us(!)… Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack would be a safe choice for Clinton’s VP, but insiders worry he doesn’t have the personality for the job… The RNC is hoping to turn Sanders supporters away from Clinton’s pick, the Huffington Post writes... Elizabeth Warren is campaigning with Clinton for the first time in Ohio… Newt Gingrich says he has not heard from the Trump campaign but hypothesized that the candidate is “probably going to start thinking about it two days before Cleveland.”… Bob Corker praised Trump’s Scotland news conference as “one of his best events.” … Marco Rubio says it’s not a “viable option” to be Trump’s running mate.
On the trail
Hillary Clinton campaigns with Elizabeth Warren in Cincinnati at 10:30 am ET, and Clinton later travels to Chicago to speak at the Rainbow PUSH Int'l Women's luncheon. Don’t forget to check out the political unit’s rolling minute-to-minute coverage of all the latest 2016 developments at the On the Trail liveblog at NBCNews.com. |
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement A Malawian court has ruled that US pop star Madonna has failed in her bid to adopt a second child from the country. "I must decline to grant the application for the adoption of the infant," judge Esmie Chondo said after a closed-door hearing on Friday. The application has been rejected over residency rules. Madonna, who flew to Malawi on Sunday, was not in court to hear the ruling over Chifundo James, three. Her lawyer said she would lodge an appeal. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. The 50-year-old singer applied to adopt Chifundo James, whose name translates into English as Mercy, on Monday. Had her application been successful, Chifundo would have been a sister to David, the first child she adopted from the African country, and her biological children Lourdes and Rocco. Chifundo is in the same orphanage that previously housed David, now three years old. Trafficking concerns Madonna's application was rejected because of a requirement that prospective parents be resident in the southern African state for 18 to 24 months. To deny Chifundo James the opportunity to be adopted by me could expose her to hardship and emotional trauma which is otherwise avoidable
Madonna in newly-released court papers
Head to head: Madonna adoption The rule was waived in 2006 when Madonna was allowed to take her adopted son, David Banda, to London before his adoption was finalised in 2008. In the ruling, read out outside the court, the judge also voiced concerns about the potential ramifications a ruling in Madonna's favour might have on adopted children's human rights. "By removing the very safeguard that is supposed to protect our children, the courts by their pronouncements could actually facilitate trafficking of children by some unscrupulous individuals," she said. The judge also noted that Chifundo had been placed in one of Malawi's best orphanages and no longer suffered the severe poverty endured after her mother died in childbirth. "It is evident that Chifundo James no longer is subject to the conditions of poverty at her place of birth," she said in the ruling, made at the hearing in Malawi's administrative capital Lilongwe. HAVE YOUR SAY Surely, once adopted, she could have gotten anything money can buy. But is that really everything a child should receive? Esther, Belfast According to court papers just released, Madonna had said she was "able and willing to securely provide for Chifundo James and make her a permanent and established member of my family". "To deny Chifundo James the opportunity to be adopted by me could expose her to hardship and emotional trauma which is otherwise avoidable," she continued. However, Madonna's efforts to adopt the three-year-old attracted criticism from some parties who said the little girl would be best off with relatives. The performer was also accused of using her fame and money to fast-track the adoption process, a charge refuted by her spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg. The singer, who was represented in court by her lawyer Alan Chinula, first travelled to Malawi in 2006 to film a documentary in the country.
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8 Hot IT Jobs For 2014
What IT skills and roles will be in demand this year? Recruiters share the scoop.
10 Jobs Destined For Robots (click image for larger view)
Sorry, IT job-hunters: If you're hoping for surprising predictions about what 2014 has in store, you're probably going to come away dissatisfied. That's because it's unlikely there will be any seismic shifts that completely upend the technology skills, roles, and titles that employers want.
"There's nothing that I would say is the new 'hottest thing ever' " coming in 2014, said Jack Cullen, president of IT staffing firm Modis, in an interview.
Indeed, much of what follows should sound familiar. This could be a good thing. Earth-shattering predictions have a knack for missing the mark. (Apocalypse 2012, anyone?) So the job-market calls that Cullen and other industry experts shared with InformationWeek are more realistic and more useful if you're looking for a new position in 2014. Here they are, in no particular order:
1. Big data experts. Yesterday's buzzword is tomorrow's hot job market. While the hype around big data isn't new, Cullen thinks actual hiring in the category will start to gain tangible ground in 2014. "The area where I think we'll see some pickup, that people are still trying to figure out, is this whole world around big data -- whether it's products like Hadoop or big data analytics" or other relevant skills, Cullen told us.
2. Business intelligence (BI) designers. Tom Hart, CMO of staffing firm Eliassen, offered another specific example within the big data universe: the ability to turn all of that information into stuff the executive suite, marketing, and other non-technical business units can actually understand and use. (PowerPoint achieved popularity for a reason, people.) Enter BI designers.
[Are you aiming for the corner office? Read IT Millennials: CEO Or Bust.]
"There are plenty of companies that can help you to store data, build redundancy into storage, and normalize the data for efficient storage and access," Hart said via email. "But there's clearly a shortfall of talented developers that can help you to interpret and present the data in a meaningful way, in the form of executive-level or business-level dashboards, guiding the decision-making process through the intelligent discerning and representation of that stored data."
3. DevOps experts with cloud and mobility skills. We're cheating a bit here. IT pros with serious DevOps chops are in high demand right now, according to Kevin Gorham, recruiting manager at Hollister. That's going to continue in 2014; DevOps experts who build and maintain cloud infrastructure and mobile apps are sitting pretty in the labor market.
"If I have people with this skill set, I can call my clients and easily get several interviews set up for these candidates. They really are a walking placement," Gorham told us in an email. "They can command higher salaries, and I'll often get into a bidding war with my clients over these potential hires. Developers who are more of an engineer and can program and script in Linux -- not your just your run-of-mill admins -- are highly marketable, too."
4. Linux pros. Indeed, while "Linux" and "hot" don't often appear in the same breath, IT pros with Linux expertise will remain in demand in the coming year. In 2013, the "Linux Jobs Report" -- produced by Dice.com and the Linux Foundation -- found that three out of four Linux pros had received calls from headhunters in the previous six months. Meanwhile, 90% of hiring managers reported difficulties filling Linux positions.
Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, expects even more favorable conditions for Linux job seekers in 2014.
"Demand for Linux professionals continues to go up and represents a multi-year trend that is the result of Linux becoming more and more ubiquitous. It is the software that runs our lives, and we need more systems administrators and developers to keep up with the growth," Zemlin said via email. He attributes much of the demand to wider business adoption of open-source technologies in general, and added that the Linux Foundation will ramp up online learning and advanced training opportunities in the coming year to help meet demand. "If you're an IT professional looking for long-term career growth, there is no better place to be than working with open-source."
We welcome your comments on this topic on our social media channels, or [contact us directly] with questions about the site.
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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InterrogationByVandalism
No! Not the picture description, you fiend!
Advertisement:
A character needs to get information from someone, but Cold-Blooded Torture or the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique would make him or her seem too nasty, or would simply be ineffective. So instead they threaten to destroy... the priceless Ming vase!
Usually only used by heroes on characters that show a distinct regard for possessions over human life, so it seems a bit like they deserve it. However, when push comes to shove, villains are vastly more likely to actually go through with the threat.
Often Played for Laughs (see Torture for Fun and Information), with a common punchline being the victim's retort that "that wasn't even mine". However, nobody actually does this in real life except for maybe your parents throwing something of yours in the trash. The police especially do not do this - it's illegal to destroy property.
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See also Shame If Something Happened, Cool and Unusual Punishment.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
Ah! My Goddess: In episode 9 of the 2005 series, Sayoko tortures Keiichi by smashing toy cars in front of him with a small hammer. She notes that this technique seems to be particularly effective against him. Note that the toy cars are hers to begin with, and it's implied that she bought them just for this purpose.
In Soul Eater, Gopher tortures Kid by vandalizing his body. He plays on Kid's Super OCD by doing things like drawing an asymmetrical pattern on his stomach in permanent marker and scratching one of Kid's body parts and not the other. He only tried this because he noticed Kid's OCD and that the usual "beat him til he talks" technique wasn't working.
Comic Books
V for Vendetta — the original comic — has V take Lewis Prothero, formerly a death camp commander and currently the "Voice of Fate" for the government's radio broadcasts, hostage and threatens him with the incineration of his collection of priceless dolls unless he tells him everything that happened at Larkhill. And then he does it anyway, driving Prothero insane and depriving Norsefire of its major voice of propaganda. Prothero's concern for the dolls is in stark contrast to his callous disregard for the human beings he disposed of in similar incineration chambers.
It wasn't an interrogation, but in X-Statix, Vivisector was tied to a chair and forced to watch as his prized book collection was burned. He had recently been administered the mutant cure, and his powers can be activated by emotional distress; the idea was to see if he had truly been cured (he had).
From "Officer Down", Nightwing and Azrael are interrogating a dealer of stolen art at his gallery. Owner : Young man, I do not believe even you are enough of a Philistine to destroy my sculptures. Nightwing : You're right. But my friend here? He's real Philistine.
In Fables: The Wolf Among Us, Bigby uses a cricket bat to smash up Georgie's nightclub till Georgie tells him what he wants to know.
Les Innommables: Inverted when Tony is kidnapped by an antiques collector, who clearly loves his treasures (talking about a ceramic figurine that was dipped daily in the blood of a just-killed man to attain its unique color). Tony gets up and swings his chair into the kidnapper's trophy shelf, causing him to faint.
Films — Animation
Toy Story 3: After Ken refuses to tell her how to turn Buzz Lightyear back to normal, Barbie goes to town on his accessories and wardrobe. He manages to hold out until Barbie threatens his precious Nehru jacket.
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Films — Live-Action
Literature
Brotherhood of the Rose, a novel by David Morrell: The heroes force the English member of the Abelard conspiracy to talk by shooting his priceless roses. However he doesn't tell the full truth, as it turns out.
In Wolves of the Calla, Enciro Balzar pressures Calvin Tower by threatening to burn Tower's most valuable books.
Devil in a Blue Dress, Easy Rawlins bashes the beloved marble countertop owned by his barman friend with a hammer to force him to tell the truth about the job he's been given. Also shows up in The Film of the Book.
Taken Up to Eleven in a hilarious moment in The Lost Conspiracy. They get in a massive hostage stand off... Character A: I smash this
Character B: You do that, and I'll burn this valuable scroll!
Character C: You do that, and I'll cut her
(beat)
Character A: Okay, this is just getting ridiculous... I smash this fish! You do that, and I'll burn this valuable scroll!You do that, and I'll cut her throat. Okay, this is just getting ridiculous...
In Metagame by Sam Landstrom, D_Light interrogates an Analyst by smashing some of his computer equipment. The Analyst estimates that the destruction of just one monitor will reduce his efficiency by 0.5%, which is a huge blow for someone created to be obsessed with work.
A Piece of Resistance, a novel by Clive Egleton set in a Soviet-occupied Britain. The protagonist breaks a landlady's Dresden china heirlooms to get her to reveal where she's hiding the people he's after.
In Feet of Clay, Detritus uses this to coerce a troll drug smuggler (and pottery merchant) into assisting the Watch. Though that was more a case of "accidentally" smashing a rather valueless statue, thereby revealing a massive cache of drugs, and using that evidence of trafficking to blackmail said smuggler into cooperating.
Happens at least twice in The Dresden Files. In the short story Last Call, Murphey knocks some delicate geodes off a shelf while Harry questions the shop owner. (She gleefully declares herself "the good cop.") In the novel Small Favor, Harry is trying to get past an administrative assistant who is insisting that her boss is out of the building. He asks his vampire friend, Thomas, to "give her a visual." Thomas promptly twists a pair of heavy barbells together, while Harry details what else he can break.
Several ancient sources record an anecdote about a dinner party attended by the emperor Augustus, where the host ordered a slow and painful death for a slave who accidentally broke one of a set of valuable drinking cups. In one version of the story, Augustus had his own servants gather up the remaining cups and smash them one by one until the host agreed to let the slave off.
Live-Action TV
Video Games
One of the first Thieves' Guild quests in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has you threaten shopkeepers to break items they're fond of (A Dwemer urn and a goddess' statue respectively) to get them to pay their protection money.
An option in The Godfather: The Game, where the player can extort shop owners by smashing up their stores.
In Mass Effect 2, Kasumi's loyalty mission has a combination of this and Shut Up, Hannibal!, where Shepard can interrupt the villain's ranting by casually shooting one of his priceless statues.
Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl: An informant gives you a lead, but he's not being entirely sincere, and the only way to get him to tell you the truth (and get the best ending) is to smash his priceless car.
The Wolf Among Us: In episode 2 Bigby threatens to destroy several items in Georgies club with a baseball bat. Whether or not he does is up to the player.
In Late Shift, the protagonist may interrogate someone by smashing their valuables with a golf club.
Web Comics
Western Animation |
Today we will again take a high-level look into the world of benchmarking: CPU and GPU benchmarks, benchmarking tools and much more. Specifically, we will be looking at thirteen point-scoring benchmarks listed at HWBOT.org as well as the more common utilities used for overclocking and submitting scores to their system. We also touch on system information and monitoring applications.
For those that have not heard of HWBOT, it is the premier online repository for submitting PC benchmarks and as a hardware specification resource. HWBOT is the “only non-stop overclocking competition platform known as the HWBoints rankings.” They serve over 67,100 overclockers from all over the world compete in well over twenty of the most popular benchmarks in thousands of hardware categories, resulting in over 550,000 benchmark results, a figure that is increasing by over 500 every day. The benchmark results generate points awarded to both the member’s profile, the team’s profile and the country of origin and based on those points members are ranking in the Overclockers League, Hardware Masters League, Teams League and many more sub-rankings.
Now you have a brief background on the most popular host for competitive benchmarking and where the world’s 7th ranked team (of over 1000!), the Overclockers.com Benchmark Team, hang their hats. Lets take a look at the benchmarks and utilities you will use to run them! Due to the recent additions in the benchmarks used at HWBOT.org as well as updates in the utilities used, we have again updated this article.
Utilities
Below is a list of the major applications used and a brief description. Their functions are anything from overclocking CPU’s and GPU’s to system status/monitoring applications needed to confirm and enter scores at HWBOT, to temperature monitoring tools and programs. Of course, you don’t need ALL of these, but can choose which you like the best to use for your tweaking needs. Please be sure to verify compatible programs with your specific hardware.
CPUz (Current version) – This utility shows information about your AMD or Intel CPU, Mainboard, Memory, and System. It will be used in all of the benchmarks listed so it’s a must-have when submitting any scores.
GPU-z (Current version) – GPU-z is a program that shows information about your AMD or NVIDIA GPU including but not limited to shader count, memory, core speed (both stock and overclocked), as well as temperature and voltage monitoring of the GPU. It will be used in 3D based screenshots and is also a must-have for submitting those scores.
AMD Catalyst Control Center (Current Version – comes with driver package) – CCC is for overclocking AMD video cards as well as tweaking settings and is usually downloaded from the AMD driver package. Like RivaTuner, this video card tweaking utility you are able to set Core/Memory speeds, fan settings, enable/disable AA/AF, raise and lower detail settings along with many other features.
Saphhire Trixx (Current version) – This is another application used for overclocking your video card. Like the other applications, it will allow you adjust the Core/Shader(NVIDIA)/Memory clocks and Fan speed as well as adjusting the voltage.
EVGA Precision X (Current version) – Precision is a small footprint, little frills video card overclocking program for NVIDIA cards. It will allow you to adjust the Core/Shader/Memory clocks and Fan speed. It has a nice graphing function on it to see temperature, core/shader/memory speed, GPU use as well. You are also able to save overclocking profiles. You do not have to have an EVGA-based card to use Precision.
MSI Afterburner (Current version ) – MSI afterburner is a nice utility for both NVIDIA and AMD video cards. Like the other video card tweak programs, Afterburner allows one to adjust the core/shader/memory clocks and fan speeds, monitors clock speed/temperatures (min/max), fan speeds and frame rates. You can also save five profiles.
ASUS GPU Tweak (Current Version)- ASUS GPU Tweak is another graphics card overclocking software released by ASUS which will work with NVIDIA and AMD video cards. The software has a fairly intuitive interface with many options available for tweaking such as GPU core clocks as well as voltages,power target, and memory clock. On ASUS high end cards such as the MATRIX there will be additional options available to get that little bit extra out of your overclock. GPU Tweak also comes with a detachable monitoring window, live bios updates and the ability to alter your 2D settings.
NVIDIA Inspector (Current Version )– NVIDIA Inspector can be used on any NVIDIA graphics cards. This lightweight utility isn’t installed to the system and is opened when needed. Like other utilities Inspector has the ability to adjust Core and Memory speeds as well as Voltages/Power Targets and Temperature limits. It also includes a fairly extensive driver tweaking section.
SetFSB (Current version) – SetFSB is a CPU overclocking utility that is used to raise the Front Side Bus (FSB) of Intel LGA775 (and more) chips. It is primarily used to get those last 100+Mhz out of your system as this adjusting is completed from within windows. You will have to locate the clock generator for your specific motherboard to properly use this Tool.
AMD Overdrive (Current version) – AMD:O is for overclocking AMD CPU’s. This utility allows for HTref adjustments (FSB/Bclk for you Intel folk!), voltage adjustments and in Windows memory tweaking. It also has built-in stability testing, as well as monitoring for volts and temps. Here is a link to the AM3 AM2 Performance Tuning Guide from AMD which gives a good outline of how to use AMD Overdrive and overclock your AMD CPU.
MemSet (Current version) – MemSet is a windows based memory tweaking utility that will work for Intel DDR2/DDR3 without an integrated memory controller (IMC). It shows the various common memory timings (and others) and allows for on-the-fly adjustments for your memory timings.
CPU-Tweaker (Current version) – CPU-Tweaker is a memory tweaking utility for the Intel i3/i5/i7 series. Like Memset, it shows the various common memory timings and a lot of others, as well as allowing you to adjust them on the fly. The application does not look any different.
RealTemp (Current Version) / Core Temp (Current version) / HWMonitor (Current version 1.26) – RealTemp is simply a temperature monitoring program for Intel chips. Core Temp, designed by an Overclockers.com member, is for AMD and Intel chips. You wouldn’t want to have these running while benchmarking, but they are needed when trying to find your highest clock speed on CPU and GPU.
A couple of things to note about some of these programs…
1. It is usually recommended to begin your overclocking adventure from the BIOS. The most common reason is for stability. You would generally want to use an application like SetFSB or motherboard specific programs like EasyTune6 to get the very last out of your overclock. Here are some local overclocking guides to get you started: C2D/C2Q, i3/i5/i7, AMD.
2. YOU DO NOT NEED TO USE ALL OF THESE APPLICATIONS. Do not be intimidated! Try them out and see which application you prefer to use!
2D Benchmarks
2D Benchmarks are programs that do not test the video card but test the CPU and subsystems.
CPUz (See above for DL link)
This benchmark program is simply used to capture a validation and screenshot of the clock speeds. In order for this score to be submitted to the ‘bot, you must validate the score and submit the link you received from your validation to HWBOT. Any online CPU-Z submission must comply to the following rules: use most recent CPU-Z version, have a valid canardpc validation link as verification, screenshots are no longer allowed since 19th May 2008. You can save your overclock and submit later if your bench rig is not connected to the internet. use the same nickname in the CPU-Z submission as your HWBOT name. Example CPU-Z verification link: http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=218928.
Tips/Tricks – The goal here is reach and validate the highest speed your CPU can go. There is no such thing as stable here. So long as you get the validation link saved and can submit it to the bot properly, that is all that matters.
Super Pi 1M/32M (HWBOT accepted version, 1.5 XS mod)
SuperPi is a program that calculates a specific number of digits of Pi. In this case we use 1 million and 32 million digits. It is commonly used by overclockers to test the stability and speed of an overclocked system. You must use the XtremeSystems version 1.5, having accuracy in milliseconds and checksum validation choose 1M/32M calculation, and have a valid screenshot (see example below): clearly show SuperPi time and “calculation done” popup, processor in CPUz, memory settings in another CPUz instance, and checksum. You may use all Windows based, except for Windows 8 based operating systems (W8, W8.1, and Server 2012) and Windows 10.
Tips/Tricks – This application (like most benchmarks) is best run with nothing else going on in your system. This includes eliminating any unneeded active services as well as active processes. 32M times are influenced by memory timings and FSB/uncore/HyperTransport speed more so than 1M. XP is the OS of choice for this bench.
WPrime 32M/1024M (HWBOT accepted version 1.55)
WPrime is a multi-threaded benchmark application that can quickly test your processor performance. It does so by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions. In contrast with most other simple benchmark applications, wPrime is written to take full benefit of processors with multiple cores. In order to submit a valid score, you must use the wPrime 1.55 version, choose 32M/1024M calculation, and have a valid screenshot (see example below): clearly show wPrime time, processor in CPUz and memory settings in another CPUz instance. You may use all Windows based, except for Windows 8 based operating systems (W8, W8.1, and Server 2012) and Windows 10.
Tips/Tricks – This application of course likes nothing else running with it on your rig again eliminating any unneeded active services you can as well as active processes. Windows XP 32bit / Vista 32 bit are the better OSes to complete this benchmark. Be sure you click on “advanced settings” and change that value to use all your cores and threads!
Hexus PiFast (HWBOT accepted version 4.1)
PiFast is used to compute pi with a very large number of digits. It is a single threaded benchmark. Any online PiFast submission must comply to the following rules: use Hexus PiFast version (4.1) and have a valid screenshot (see example below): clearly show time, DOS box, processor and memory tabs in CPUz. You may use all Windows based, except for Windows 8 based operating systems (W8, W8.1, and Server 2012) and Windows 10.
Tips/Tricks – Again like all other benches, trimming your un-needed services and active processes will help in getting the best score.
Intel Xtreme Tuning Utility
Intel® Extreme Tuning Utility is supplied by Intel and will only work on newer Intel processors. Intel Management Engine and Intel Chipset INF must be installed to run XTU. The utility itself has a lot of functions which will enable you to tune your CPU and IGP in a Windows environment as well as test it for stability. That brings us to the fun part, XTU also has a benchmark which can be submitted to HWBot for points and comparisons to other similar systems. Running the XTU benchmark can be harder than it seems. This bench requires a very stable system to complete. There really aren’t a lot of tweaks for this bench aside from CPU speed and memory performance. Submission is pretty straight forward with this benchmark. When the benchmark has finished just hit the Submit Online button.
Tips/Tricks – Again like all other benches, trimming your un-needed services and active processes will help in getting the best score.
HWBot Prime
HWBot Prime is a multi-platform CPU benchmark and will run on Windows, iOS, Linux and Android. You may use all Windows based, except for Windows 8 based operating systems (W8, W8.1, and Server 2012) and Windows 10. It is a fairly easy benchmark to run on your system. It runs quickly and isn’t overly demanding. You should be able to run it on your maximum overclock with all cores. One note, prior to running you will need the current JRE (Java Runtime Enviroment) which is downloadable here: JRE 8.0. Just select your appropriate Operating System version, download and install. After that, the HWBot Prime executable will run when double clicked. In the HWBot Prime GUI, click on “Quick Benchmark” to initiate the program. Once you have a result whether you choose to save or submit to HWBot make sure that you have the required CPUz processor and memory tabs visible on the screen prior to clicking the save/submit button. Valid submission must clearly show HWBot Prime GUI, CPUz processor and memory tabs. (Example Below)
Tips/Tricks – Again like all other benches, trimming your un-needed services and active processes will help and this is a multi-threaded benchmark so all cores and HT if applicable to get the best score.
Cinebench R15 and Cinebench R11.5
Both Cinebench benchmarks test you CPUs ability to render 3D images. This benchmark will require relative stability to complete, it pushes the CPU and Memory quite hard and it’s those two parts that play a key role in the scores. CPU speed is king here with Memory pulling a close second. You should be able to run this benchmark faster than your “stable” clocks, but pay attention to the processor’s temperature. You will find that Cinebench R11.5 is a bit easier to run so you can likely run it a bit faster than R15. Valid submission screen shots must show the Cinebench GUI with version and score visible, CPUz processor and memory tabs. (Example Below) You may use all Windows based, except for Windows 8 based operating systems (W8, W8.1, and Server 2012) and Windows 10.
Tips/Tricks – Again like all other benches, trimming your un-needed services and active processes will help and this is a multi-threaded benchmark so all cores and HT if applicable to get the best score.
GPUPI 100M and 1B
GPUPI calculates the mathematical constant Pi in parallel so the more cores the better. This will run on CPU and GPU and has specific benchmaks for both that are uploadable to HWBot.org. Sometimes this bench can be a bit tricky to get running on your system and if you’re having difficulties go here to the home site for assistance. Running in 64bit gives the best results and as I said follow the instruction on the site. You will need to install the 32 AND 64 bit Visual C++ Redistributable packages for windows, links are available on the home site. Once installed and running, try different combinations of batch and reduction sizes to see which gives the best score. This scores on pure CPU speed and is quite light on resources so run it as fast as you can. Valid screenshot (see example below): clearly show GPUPi time and “calculation done” popup, processor in CPUz, memory settings in another CPUz instance.
Tips/Tricks – Again like all other benches, trimming your un-needed services and active processes will help and this is a multi-threaded benchmark so all cores and HT if applicable to get the best score.
GeekBench Multicore
Geekbench is a multi-platform CPU benchmark and will run on Windows, iOS, Linux and Android. You may use all Windows based, except for Windows 8 based operating systems (W8, W8.1, and Server 2012) and Windows 10. Both the multi-core and single core results are produced from the same test but they have to be submitted to hwbot.org separately. The same screen shot is sufficient for both. This is a fairly demanding benchmark and your system needs to be quite stable to get a valid result.There aren’t a lot of tweaks to this one,CPU and memory speed will give best results. There is a 64bit version that is available, but requires a paid license, this will also allow you to run without an internet connection. Valid screenshot (see example below): clearly show Geekbench score and webpage address, Geekbench GUI, processor in CPUz and memory settings in another CPUz instance.
Tips/Tricks – Again like all other benches, trimming your unneeded services and active processes will help and this is a multi-threaded benchmark so all cores and HT if applicable to get the best score.
3D Benchmarks
3D benchmarks are programs that are supposed to test the GPU. However, many of them are becoming a pure CPU race these days because graphics cards have become so powerful.
Aquamark
Is one of those 3D benchmarks that rely heavily on CPU speed. This bench comes in a “wrapper” from HWBot and can be run on all Windows based OS, except for Windows 8 based operating systems (W8, W8.1, and Server 2012) and Windows 10. A valid screen shot requires processor in CPUz and memory settings in another CPUz instance plus CPUz motherboard tab if using onboard graphics/IGP solution. It also requires GPU-z in screenshot, drop-down must be visible if you run in SLI so all video cards are identified. (See example below.) The newest Aquamark wrapper has a submission and save button. Either is acceptable but all CPUz/GPUz tabs must be open first. The GUI will take it’s own screenshot and submit to HWBot.org or save to file.
Tips/Tweaks: Aquamark relies heavily on CPU speed and is very light so run the CPU as fast as you can. Disabling HT can allow for higher clocks so a higher score. The same applies for the GPU, since the benchmark is so light you will be able to clock the GPU higher than you normally wold for everyday use. As is typical with 3D benching, make sure your card’s settings are at performance and not high quality. AA , AF and Tessellation should be application controlled or off. Windows XP/Vista 32bit may also give an advantage depending on the platform, and driver choice will play a role in scores as well so it doesn’t hurt to experiment.
3DMark 2001 SE (Current version 3.3.0)
3DMark 2001 is an old 3D benchmark application that measures video card performance in DX7 and DX8. It has little to no relevance for current game performance. However, it is a lot of professional benchers’ ‘favorite game’ to play. You may use all Windows based, except for Windows 8 based operating systems (W8, W8.1, and Server 2012) and Windows 10. In order to submit a valid score, one must have a valid screenshot (see example below): clearly show 3DMark score, 3DMark subtest scores, 3DMark settings, processor in CPUz, video card in GPU-z, unless you provide a Futuremark orb link. GPU-z in screenshot, drop-down must be visible if you run in SLI so all video cards are identified. Rivatuner may be used if GPU-z fails to identify video card properly (as of 8 oct 2007). You must have a valid FuturemarkFuturemark orb link as verification for scores in the top 20.
Tips/Tricks – This application, being so old and run on a low resolution, loves CPU speed along with a video card overclock. So, be sure to push that as far as you can for best results. As is typical with 3D benching, make sure your card’s settings are at performance and not high quality. AA, AF and Tessellation should be application controlled or off. You are also able to run the individual tests that make up the benchmark in any order and as many times as you want. This is beneficial as some tests are harder on the GPU than others so you can get away with higher overclocks for some of the tests yielding a better score. The best OS for this is XP. Driver choice will play a role in scores as well.
3DMark 2003 (Current version 3.6.0 1901)
3DMark 2003 is another older video card benchmarking application. It measure performance in DX8 and DX9. Any online 3DMark03 submission must comply to the following rules: use default 3DMark settings, have a valid screenshot (see example below): clearly show 3DMark score, 3DMark subtest scores, 3DMark settings, processor in CPUz, video card in GPU-z, unless if you provide a Futuremark orb link. GPU-z in screenshot, drop-down must be visible if you run in SLI so all video cards are identified. Rivatuner may be used if GPU-z fails to identify video card properly (as of 8 oct 2007). You will need to have a valid Futuremark orb link as verification for scores in the top 20. You may use all Windows based, except for Windows 8 based operating systems (W8, W8.1, and Server 2012) and Windows 10.
Tips/Tricks – Another 3D bench that really gets a boost from faster clock speeds. As is typical with 3D benching, make sure your card’s settings are at performance and not high quality. AA, AF and Tessellation should be application controlled or off. The best OS for 3DMark 2003 is Windows 7 32bit (vary by card brand). Driver choice will play a role in scores as well.
3DMark 2005 (Current version 1.3.0 1901)
3DMark 2005 is a slightly older 3D benchmark that uses DX9. Being a DX9 benchmark some older cards that do not support that API cannot be used in this bench. 3DMark05 also shows significant improvements with CPU clock speed as well as overclocking the video card. Any online 3DMark05 submission must comply to the following rules: use default 3DMark settings, have a valid screenshot (see example below): clearly show 3DMark score, 3DMark subtest scores, 3DMark settings, processor in CPUz, video card in GPU-z, unless if you provide a Futuremark orb link. GPU-z in screenshot, drop-down must be visible if you run in SLI so all video cards are identified. Rivatuner may be used if GPU-z fails to identify video card properly (as of 8 oct 2007). You must have a valid Futuremark orb link as verification for scores in the top 20. Windows 8/8.1 and Server 2012 and Win10 may be used ONLY in combination with System Info 4.20 (and above), a verification link, and no “Timer is off” message
Tips/Tricks – Another 3D bench that really gets a boost from faster CPU clock speeds. As is typical with 3D benching, make sure your card’s settings are at performance and not high quality. AA, AF and Tessellation should be application controlled or off. A good OS for 3DMark 2005 is Windows Vista 32 (vary by card brand). Driver choice and will play a role in scores as well. This benchmark will only use a thread or two so HT is not needed.
3DMark 2006 (Current version 1.2.1)
3DMark 2006 is the 2nd newest version of Futuremark’s 3D benching applications. This version uses DX9 and Shader Model 2.0 as well as 3.0. Any cards without DX9 and SM3 support will not work with this benchmark. It consists of two SM2.0 graphics tests, using DirectX 9 SM2.0 features extensively, two HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, using DirectX 9 SM3.0 features and floating point extensively, and finally, two multiprocessor CPU tests focusing on CPU intensive tasks in 3D games. At the end of the benchmark it will give a score for each test and a total. Any online 3DMark06 submission must comply to the following rules: use default 3DMark settings, have a valid screenshot (see example below): clearly show 3DMark score, 3DMark subtest scores, 3DMark settings, processor in CPUz, video card in GPU-z, unless if you provide a Futuremark orb link. GPU-z in screenshot, drop-down must be visible if you run in SLI so all video cards are identified. Rivatuner may be used if GPU-z fails to identify video card properly (as of 8 Oct 2007). You must have a valid Futuremark orb link as verification for scores in the top 20. Windows 8/8.1 and Server 2012 and Win10 may be used ONLY in combination with System Info 4.20 (and above), a verification link, and no “Timer is off” message
Tips/Tricks – Another 3D bench that really gets a boost from faster CPU clock speeds AND the number of cores used. The more cores used, the higher your CPU score. Sometimes however, that extra 200 MHz or so one may get with HT off, will outweigh the use of HT, so play around!. As is typical with 3D benching, make sure your card’s settings are at performance and not high quality. AA, AF and Tessellation should be application controlled or off. A good OS for 3DMark 2006 is Windows Vista 32 (vary by card brand). Driver choice will play a role in scores as well.
3DMark Vantage (Current version 1.0.2)
3DMark Vantage uses DX10 and Shader Model 3.0. Since it uses DX10, it will require a video card that supports it as well as an OS (Vista or Windows 7) that supports it as well. There are a couple settings on here and the standard at HWBOT is the Performance bench. If you run an NVIDIA GPU you must disable PhysX for a valid score. Any online 3DMark Vantage – Performance submission must comply to the following rules: use Performance settings, have a valid screenshot (or valid Futuremark orb link): clearly show 3DMark score, 3DMark subtest scores, 3DMark settings, processor in CPUz, video card in GPU-z, unless if you provide a Futuremark orb link, GPU-z in screenshot, drop-down must be visible if you run in SLI so all video cards are identified. Rivatuner may be used if GPU-z fails to identify video card properly (as of 8 oct 2007). You must have a valid Futuremark orb link as verification for scores in the top 20. Windows 8/8.1 and Server 2012 and Win10 may be used ONLY in combination with System Info 4.20 (and above), a verification link, and no “Timer is off” message.
Tips/Tricks – While pouring on the CPU clock speed and cores has its advantages here as well, its not as pronounced as the others especially when you get into the higher presets. As is typical with 3D benching, make sure your card’s settings are at performance and not high quality. AA and AF should be application controlled or off. A good OS for 3DMark Vantage is Windows Vista 32bit (vary by card brand). Driver choice will play a role in scores as well.
3DMark11 (Current version 1.2)
3DMark11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. This is one benchmark that will bring your GPU to its knees. Submission must comply to the following rules: use Performance settings, have a valid screenshot (or valid Futuremark orb link): clearly show 3DMark score, 3DMark subtest scores, 3DMark settings, processor in CPUz, video card in GPU-z, unless if you provide a Futuremark orb link, GPU-z in screenshot, drop-down must be visible if you run in SLI so all video cards are identified. Rivatuner may be used if GPU-z fails to identify video card properly (as of 8 oct 2007). You must have a valid Futuremark orb link as verification for scores in the top 20. Windows 8/8.1 and Server 2012 and Win10 may be used ONLY in combination with System Info 4.20 (and above), a verification link, and no “Timer is off” message
Tips/Tricks – CPU and GPU clock speed and plenty of cores rule this roost. Can only run under Windows 7 being DX11.
Unigine Heaven (Current version 1.0.3)
Any online HWBOT Unigine Heaven submission must comply to the following rules: Use latest stable build V1.0.3, Use standard benchmark settings, Verification file is mandatory for submitting results, have a valid screenshot: clearly show benchmark score, processor and memory information in CPU-Z, video card in GPU-Z, gpu-z in screenshot, drop down must be visible if you run in SLI so all video cards are identified. Rivatuner may be used if GPU-Z fails to identify video card properly (as of 8 oct 2007). You may use all Windows based, except for Windows 8 based operating systems (W8, W8.1, and Server 2012) and Windows 10.
Tips/Tricks – Plenty of GPU clocks and high memory speeds help this bench out.
3DMark
3DMark is a suite of tests all of which count for hardware points, but Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme are the ones to concentrate on since they also carry World record and Global points. All the tests must be run at default settings, have a valid screenshot (or valid Futuremark orb link): clearly show 3DMark score, 3DMark subtest scores, 3DMark settings, processor in CPUz, video card in GPU-z, unless if you provide a Futuremark orb link, GPU-z in screenshot, drop-down must be visible if you run in SLI so all video cards are identified. Rivatuner may be used if GPU-z fails to identify video card properly (as of 8 oct 2007). You must have a valid FuturemarkFuturemark orb link as verification for scores in the top 20. Windows 8/8.1 and Server 2012 and Win10 may be used ONLY in combination with System Info 4.20 (and above), a verification link, and no “Timer is off” message
Tips/Tricks- GPU core and memory speed. CPU speed and more cores the better.
Catzilla
Touted as the “gamer” benchmark. This software tests the CPU, GPU, and overall system speed to some extent. Running with an SSD will yield a better score. Catzilla has four options with 720p and 1440p yielding the most points for HWBot.org. For a valid screen shot (example below) you must include Benchmark GUI with your score, sub-test scores and version clearly visible. Processor and memory information in CPU-z, GPU-z in screenshot, drop-down must be visible if you run in SLI so all video cards are identified. Rivatuner may be used if GPU-z fails to identify video card properly (as of 8 oct 2007). All versions of Windows, except for Windows 8 based operating systems (W8, W8.1, and Server 2012) and Windows 10
Tips/Tricks: Windows 7 64bit, CPU and GPU speed and as always trimming your unneeded services and active processes will help
2D/3D
A combination bench such as PCMark 2005 and PCMark Vantage have an assortment of tests from the CPU and subsystem to video card performance.
PCMark 2005 (Current Version 1.2.0)
PCMark 2005 is a dated, but still relevant release of a complete system benchmark. This tests CPU, GPU, Memory, Web page rendering, and Hard Drives. Having all these items tweaked are going to yield the best results. Any online PCMark05 submission must comply to the following rules: use default PCMark settings, have a valid screenshot (see example below): clearly show PCMark score, PCMark settings, processor in CPUz, GPU-z, Subtest Scores (XP startup speed!), unless you have a valid Futuremark ORB url. You must have a valid Futuremark orb link as verification for scores in the top 20. XP Startup cannot exceed 220 MB/s.
Tips/Tricks – Since this is a complete system benchmark and all relevant items (CPU/GPU/Memory) need to be overclocked and tweaked where applicable in order to achieve the highest score. Obviously drives in RAID 0 will score higher than a single drive of the same make/model as well as SSD’s generally scoring higher than most 2/3 drive RAID 0 setups. The faster the memory runs and tighter the timings, the better score you will get also. This is a HIGHLY tweakable benchmark.
Now that you have seen all the benchmarks, and have all the tools you need to be successful at it, it’s time to get down and chilly and get overclocking! Also note that there are a lot more tricks the benchmarking team have up their sleeves with years of combined experience that will help boost those scores up! Join the fray by heading into the forums to the Overclockers.com Benchmarking Team’s sign up thread and completing 10 of the 12 benchmarks above .
–EarthDog, Johan45 |
Three days from the end of his term, Barack Obama used his clemency power to commute sentences for a notorious terrorist, and an even more notorious source for a website that Obama has spent the past two months attacking as a Russian intelligence front or stooge. What does the outgoing president plan for an encore? What could possibly be more controversial than this round of clemency actions?
I don’t know, but … we’re about to find out:
In a last-minute flurry of orders, Obama commuted sentences for 209 people and issued 64 pardons. Aides said he will commute substantially more on Thursday, the day before he leaves office and Donald Trump is inaugurated.
Normally, one would expect outgoing presidents to make the most controversial pardons at the last minute. Other clemency actions of less controversy would already have taken place sometime over the last eight years, and certainly since the 2014 midterm elections, the last time Obama’s pardons and commutations could have had a direct electoral impact. Bill Clinton held off on the notorious pardon for fugitive and major Democratic donor Marc Rich until the morning of George W. Bush’s inauguration, for instance, perhaps hoping the news would get buried in the inaugural coverage.
With that in mind, it seems at least somewhat likely that we’ll see clemency actions that will generate even more controversy than in this round. So who else might benefit from Obama’s sense of mercy (or politics) that would be more controversial than Chelsea Manning and Oscar Lopez? These names come to mind:
David Petraeus – This one would make sense in light of the pardon for James Cartwright. Petraeus also served Obama well, and has much more to contribute to national security after learning a lesson (we hope) from his indiscreet affair. This would be relatively uncontroversial, so much so that one might wonder why Obama hasn’t already pardoned Petraeus. The answer: He never asked for a pardon.
– This one would make sense in light of the pardon for James Cartwright. Petraeus also served Obama well, and has much more to contribute to national security after learning a lesson (we hope) from his indiscreet affair. This would be relatively uncontroversial, so much so that one might wonder why Obama hasn’t already pardoned Petraeus. The answer: He never asked for a pardon. Edward Snowden – After all of the screeching over the DNC hack, it would seem almost impossible for Obama to forgive the man who stole highly classified NSA information and handed it off to Wikileaks while absconding to Russia, but … that’s what we said about Manning, too. Obama and the White House tried to emphasize that Manning served over six years in prison and admitted guilt to rationalize his release, but that’s not the case with Snowden. If Obama pardons Snowden, Democrats will need to shut up about Russia.
– After all of the screeching over the DNC hack, it would seem almost impossible for Obama to forgive the man who stole highly classified NSA information and handed it off to Wikileaks while absconding to Russia, but … that’s what we said about Manning, too. Obama and the White House tried to emphasize that Manning served over six years in prison and admitted guilt to rationalize his release, but that’s not the case with Snowden. If Obama pardons Snowden, Democrats will need to shut up about Russia. Julian Assange – Assange has problems with the US and Sweden, so an Obama pardon will only solve some of his problems, and may not even get him out of the Ecuadorian embassy. Supposedly he will surrender to the US after the Manning commutation, but, er … don’t hold your breath on that one. Assange gets the same support on the Left as Snowden — or at least he did until the DNC hack — and now some on the Right are just as inexplicably enamored of Assange. A pardon will also kill the Democrats’ Russia narrative, but commuting Manning’s sentence mortally wounded it already.
– Assange has problems with the US and Sweden, so an Obama pardon will only solve some of his problems, and may not even get him out of the Ecuadorian embassy. Supposedly he will surrender to the US after the Manning commutation, but, er … don’t hold your breath on that one. Assange gets the same support on the Left as Snowden — or at least he did until the DNC hack — and now some on the Right are just as inexplicably enamored of Assange. A pardon will also kill the Democrats’ Russia narrative, but commuting Manning’s sentence mortally wounded it already. Bowe Bergdahl – Obama’s already made light of espionage with Manning’s commutation, and terrorism with Lopez’. Why not make light of desertion with a Bergdahl pardon?
– Obama’s already made light of espionage with Manning’s commutation, and terrorism with Lopez’. Why not make light of desertion with a Bergdahl pardon? Leonard Peltier – A cause celebre on the Left for decades, the biggest surprise is that it’s taken this long for his name to emerge on a lest of potential clemency actions. Hollywood is very big on Peltier, but the FBI is adamantly opposed to releasing someone who murdered two of its agents and is serving two consecutive life sentences for those crimes. When it looked like Bill Clinton was about to commute Peltier’s sentence, the FBI marched to the White House in protest.
– A cause celebre on the Left for decades, the biggest surprise is that it’s taken this long for his name to emerge on a lest of potential clemency actions. Hollywood is very big on Peltier, but the FBI is adamantly opposed to releasing someone who murdered two of its agents and is serving two consecutive life sentences for those crimes. When it looked like Bill Clinton was about to commute Peltier’s sentence, the FBI marched to the White House in protest. Ethel Rosenberg – Her children want a presidential pardon and exoneration from her conviction of espionage. It’s a little late for Ethel, of course, but this is another Hollywood cause, and even though more evidence has emerged of her involvement, it’s not clear that Ethel was in as deep as her husband Julius.
– Her children want a presidential pardon and exoneration from her conviction of espionage. It’s a little late for Ethel, of course, but this is another Hollywood cause, and even though more evidence has emerged of her involvement, it’s not clear that Ethel was in as deep as her husband Julius. Hillary Clinton – Last and least deserving of a pardon, in large part because she keeps insisting that she’s as pure as the driven snow, which she wipes with a cloth. Hillary hasn’t asked for a pardon and Donald Trump sounds much more diffident about pursuing a prosecution, but Hillary’s scandal was also Obama’s. He may not want any more probing into his own administration. The bonus on this will be that it kills the Clintons’ political power once and for all.
If I was a betting man, I’d guess that we’ll see at least three of these names on the clemency list on Thursday. And if I was to bet further, I’d guess that those names will be Clinton, Peltier, and Snowden.
Update: Matt Stock on Twitter offers up another potential beneficiary of Obama’s clemency — Mumia Abu-Jamal. Some on the Left claim he’s a political prisoner, but he’s a cop killer who managed to work his way off of death row. Obama adviser Van Jones is a Mumia supporter, and it wasn’t all that long ago that Obama tried to appoint Debo Adegbile to the DoJ until Senate Democrats balked at his free-Mumia activism. This one looks like a real possibility — and one that would have definitely been held off until the final few hours. However, Mumia was convicted at the state level, not federal, as other Twitter followers have pointed out, so … he’s off the list, unless Obama wants a fight over jurisdiction on his way out the door. |
Mr. Levin, a Democrat, is the lead sponsor of a bill that would create a unit within the Buildings Department dedicated to responding to complaints related to work without permits and to extensive renovations, which the bill defines as work in more than 10 percent of a building. This “real time enforcement unit,” Mr. Levin said, would respond within two hours after a complaint about unpermitted work, which would address the problem of missed violations because inspectors show up after the work has stopped.
Two other bills target the practice of landlords falsely claiming their buildings are unoccupied. The bills call for the Buildings Department to review occupancy claims in certain cases, rather than rely on the word of owners or owners’ agents, as it does now.
A coalition of tenant advocacy groups that lobbied for and helped draft the legislation says construction inside buildings has increased in the past three to five years in rapidly gentrifying areas like Crown Heights in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. While landlords try to maximize rents by renovating vacant apartments and common areas, some landlords, tenant groups contend, have another motive — to make life miserable for rent-stabilized tenants so their units can be cleared out and rented at higher rates.
“It’s a violent assault on the tenant — to have a ceiling collapse on you or the walls shaking,” said Brandon Kielbasa, director of organizing for the group Cooper Square Committee. “It’s really some of the worst psychologically and physically threatening harassment we see.”
Tenant claims brought to Housing Court for all forms of harassment have increased steadily — to about 800 last year — since a city law allowing tenants to sue their landlords over harassment went into effect in 2008, city officials said. |
Spider-Man launched himself into space, survived a flaming re-entry, did battle on the streets of Paris, hitched a ride on the Chunnel, called upon his international team of genius scientists and spy friends, and declared a pledge to his responsibility, even if it meant losing it all, all in order to defeat the nefarious Scorpio and his Zodiac goons. Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 4) #11 finally brings that story to a close… right after Spider-Man decides that he’s hosed and has no chance to win.
After one of Dan Slott’s best issues of Amazing Spider-Man since the end of the Superior Spider-Man era, I hate to admit just how incredibly disappointed I was to open this comic and see that the characterizations and storytelling that I had championed in the previous issue may have just been a fluke, a moment where somehow the stars had aligned, much as they do in this issue, to give me, even for a fleeting moment, a recognizable Peter Parker. Yes, Peter starts this issue by insisting that he cannot win, in direct opposition to his previous declaration, but even more confusing is why he feels that way.
At the end of Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 4) #10, Spider-Man called upon his friends to aid him in his quest to locate Scorpio before he could do further damage to his international enterprise, Parker Industries. It was a wonderful, rallying moment that this story tells us is impossible now because the satellites Nick Fury Jr. and Spidey destroyed several issues ago are… well… gone. It makes sense but in retrospect it calls into question actions of the previous issue and implies that when Scorpio snapped (if you don’t know what I’m referring to, go check it out) in the previous issue he somehow isolated Peter’s feed from his friends’ connections.
It is these kinds of magical plot explanations and story vagaries that have done serious damage to the stakes of this book ever since its relaunch. Villains pull orreries out of historical artifacts, use masks to brainwash citizens, read the future at special and inconsistent times, and find secret underground time vaults that can see into the future, but with nary an explanation of why or how. Comics can get away with this kind of elevated fantasy in most cases, but when oddities continue to stack up on each other, issue after issue, it can be hard for readers to find any kind of grounding. That’s what made the previous issue of this title fun to read; everyone can imagine the real-world implications of trying to cling to the side of a Chunnel train. Less conceivable is reading morse code from a star/satellite that you spot randomly blinking.
When Peter does finally catch up with Scorpio, we get what the issue promised, a big brawl between Spider-Man and the Zodiac Key-wielding Vernon Jacob Fury, grand-nephew to the original Nicolas J. Fury.
What does that make him to Spider-Man? In the eternal words of Dark Helmet: “Absolutely nothing.”
The brawl is entertaining enough but not nearly as thrilling as the issue prior and only really gets interesting once Scorpio unlocks the Zodiac Door. There’s an interesting premise to what’s behind the door but the most frustrating thing about this issue is that this concept means another year of waiting for any kind of resolution. To that point, the ending to this story highlights an ongoing frustration that I’ve had with a great deal of Slott’s stories: They are all just teasers for other stories.
Yes, a certain degree of teasing and anticipation should be built into any serialized art form but when every single issue and every single story isn’t allowed to resolve itself in a satisfying way all in the favor of building up another later story that itself lacks a satisfying ending, how are readers supposed to be surprised when something actually happens? I wouldn’t be so hard on this point if Dan Slott hadn’t already proven that he knows the power of a good surprise in his fabulous Amazing Spider-Man #698, perhaps the best teaser-free reveal in the history of the series.
As the end of the “Scorpio Rising” story, I’m left wondering what I’m supposed to take away as a reader. I don’t come away any more knowledgeable about who Peter is as a person; I can’t figure out any moral lesson or question that I’m supposed to be pondering; and I have no idea how Scorpio’s sudden disappearance will affect Parker Industries, if it affects it at all. The only character moments that I got from Peter in this issue were him giving up and later having a sudden and surprised realization that Mockingbird might be romantically interested in him.
He has every reason to be surprised too because either I missed a very subtle courting between the two of them or someone flipped a switch and decided that was how the characters should behave. Equally baffling is Anna Maria’s reaction that sees her clinging to Peter’s arm in an attempt to make Mockingbird jealous. Wasn’t it just two issues ago that we learned that Anna Maria had made the healthy choice to move on from Peter/Otto and began dating another random young lad?
There’s so little rhyme or reason for why characters do the things they do or act the way they act in this book and many of the recently published issues of Amazing Spider-Man that it suggests that the editorial team is, like Scorpio, so focused on playing the “long game” and setting up stories for the future that in the meanwhile they’ve resorted to making things up as they go. When a major villain’s devious goal is to learn spoilers for upcoming stories, it suggests a marketing first, narrative later approach to storytelling that I think should be discouraged.
That this story is so limp is a shame to the reliable workmanship of Giuseppe Camuncoli‘s pencils. Camuncoli really delivers in a few stunning panels depicting Scorpio’s raw power and capability of destruction. However, even I, as a lover of his work, have to admit a growing comfortabilty with his work. I’ve often marveled at his speed and growth on the title but he’s never been the most iconographic penciller the book has seen and for all his time on the book I sense that I’ve seen his full range completely expressed. As much as I love the work of some of the all-time Spidey artists, there comes a time when the book needs a fresh and distinctive new look to pump some energy into the title. With Ramos working on the Extraordinary X-Men title, this series is hungering for a new and distinct artist to freshen things up a bit.
Listen to us discuss this issue on our podcast, the Amazing Spider-Talk.
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Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 4) #11 – REVIEW Dan Gvozden April 27, 2016 4.5 / 10 Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 4) #11 is a disappointing non-ending that revels in fantasy instead of revealing character and fresh ideas. April 27, 2016 |
UPDATED 12/12/16: Just to underline the extraordinary implausibility of Blaine Alan Gibson’s finds, I’ve taken the extra step of putting in bold the three (3) separate occasions when Gibson hit the jackpot with a one-in-a-million stroke of luck. See if you can spot them below. My personal favorite is the one with the ATV.
On December 8, 2016, the Twitter account voice370 (@cryfortruth) Tweeted the following:
Another piece of potential debris washed up the shore and found by B.A. Gibson on the same beach where NOK Jiang found a piece yesterday. pic.twitter.com/PdXCkYX4oI — voice370 (@cryfortruth) December 9, 2016
In a Facebook post the same day, Grace Subathirai Nathan (one of the NOK on the current debris-finding expedition to Madagascar) posted about the same find:
Another piece of debris found earlier today. This time by private citizen Blaine Alan Gibson while he was with two French journalists Pierre Chabert and Renaud Fessaguet.
He walked past the spot on the beach where next of kin Jiang Hui found a piece yesterday and nothing was there then 30 mins later on the way back the waves washed the piece on debris to the shore.
This just goes to show that debris can be there one minute and gone the next and vice versa.
She included some of the images that were also in the Tweet, among them this one:
I’ve already written in the comment section of the preceding post that I find it quite extraordinary that a purported piece of MH370 apparently washed up on the shore within half an hour of Blaine’s passing by the spot. The ocean is vast, the number of pieces of MH370 necessarily limited. The odds of finding a piece of the plane on any given stretch of sand is very small; the odds of finding something that washed ashore within the last half hour must be infinitesmal.
One would also would not expect a newly washed-ashore piece of debris to be free of biofouling, as I’ve discussed before. Something that just came out of the ocean, if free of biofouling, must have spent time ashore, gotten picked clean, then washed back out to sea, only to come ashore again within a few days. Truly miraculous.
I’ve voiced suspicions in the past about Gibson’s self-financed investigation. He said that he found his first piece of MH370 debris, so-called “No Step,” 20 minutes after starting his first beach search. Though it was found on a sand bar that is awash at high tide, it, too, was remarkably free of biofouling. Since then, he has found more than half of the pieces of suspected debris. All have have been completely innocent of marine life. His finds have excited remarkably little enthusiasm among the authorities; the Malaysians waited six months to retrieve one batch, and then only made that effort after their inaction was the subject of unflattering news stories.
Gibson is clearly an eccentric; before he found “No Step” he was bouncing around the Indian Ocean littoral, investigating crackpot theories and making himself known to the authorities and next-of-kin. In the past he has, he says, tried to find the Ark of the Covenant. A recent article in the Guardian had this bit:
Blaine Gibson, a lawyer turned investigator who arrived on Madagascar six months ago, said he has seen debris from the plane used to fan a kitchen fire by a nine-year-old girl on the island. “It was light and it was solid and it was part of the plane,” said Gibson, 59. “When I put the word out around the village, another guy turned up with another piece he had been using as a washing board for clothes.”
Are we to believe that he walked up on a girl fanning a fire and, lo and behold, she happened to be fanning it with a piece of MH370? Instead of any of a billion suitable small, light, flat objects that exist in the world? What’s more, I am troubled by Gibson’s suggestion that the residents of this region are so materially impoverished that they would eagerly size on any scrap of material that comes their way and put it to immediate use—to incorporate into a shelter, to burn for fuel, to fan a fire with, or to use as a washboard. In fact I find this idea rather bonkers.
Some people feel that it is unacceptable to question Blaine Alan Gibson; they say that he has inspired and given hope to the next-of-kin. As I’ve said before, I feel that if we are going to solve this mystery, we have to put every piece of evidence under intense scrutiny, regardless of however someone may or may not feel emotionally about that scrutiny.
Indeed, I find the fact that Gibson and his associates try to aggressively silence questions about his finds even more arousing of suspicion.
UPDATE 12/11/16: A couple of points I’d like to add to the above:
— In September, Gibson enlisted the aid of Australian aviation journalist Geoffrey Thomas in claiming that two pieces of debris that he’d found likely came from the electronics bay, showed evidence of fire damage, and therefore supported the hypothesis that the plane had come to grief due to an accidental fire. This theory, while favored by some, is very much at odds with other evidence in the case. Australian authorities responded by saying that “contrary to speculation there is no evidence the item was exposed to heat or fire.”
— More on Gibson’s background from SeattleMet:
For the next 25 years, Gibson lived a life that could be described as unconventionally adventurous. After a short stint at Seafirst, he moved to Olympia and worked for three years in the office of Washington state senator Ray Moore. Then he joined the U.S. Department of State. But he didn’t last long there either; in the late ’80s he could see that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse and decided to capitalize on it. For 10 years he lived off and on in the newly capitalist Russia, serving as a consultant to new business owners and fattening a bank account that would later fund his globe-trotting.
When I interviewed him after the “No Step” find, he told me that he speaks fluent Russian.
— Based on the total quantity of debris found in the last year and a half, one observes that the pieces turn up quite infrequently. Yet Gibson has now twice found debris with a camera crew present. In June he found three pieces while accompanied by a crew from the France 2 TV show “Complément d’enquête.” From the same SeattleMet piece:
In the first week of June he did, in fact, go to Madagascar. And on June 6 he led a French television news crew to a thin strip of land off the island’s east coast. They rode quads along the beach, and at the north end he signaled for the party to stop. The camera crew had a good reason to follow him: He is, to this day, still the only person to find a piece of Flight 370 while actually looking for it. And he’d done enough research to have a good idea where he might find more. But come on, it was still a one-in-a-million find. There’s no way he’d actually uncover another.
Right? With the cameras trained on him, Gibson dismounted and started walking. And as he got closer to the object that had caught his eye, he could see that it was gray fiberglass. It was almost a clone of No Step. Later, he found a handful of other pieces, one of which looked exactly like the housing for a seat-back TV monitor. He couldn’t be sure, but he had a pretty good idea they came from Flight 370.
To recap, Blaine and a TV crew rode in ATVs along the beach until he signaled them to stop, got out, and pointed to a piece of MH370 debris. Holy. Shit.
— This is the piece that NOK Jiang Hui found the day before Blaine discovered his on the same beach. Again, pretty clean:
— Note: I’ve take out a paragraph in the original in which I said that the location of the debris in the sand appears to be way too far from the water to have washed up there within the last half hour. Several commenters pointed out that the piece appears to straddle the wet/dry line demarcating the high water mark, and I concede that point.
UPDATE 12/12/16: There’s a story in Der Spiegel today about a tree trunk that washed up in New Zealand. The remarkable size and density of these organisms is so striking that this entirely natural phenomenon struck those who came upon it as something fantastical and alien.
I bring this up to emphasize how extraordinary it is that all the debris recovered by Blaine Alan Gibson, and indeed all of the suspected pieces of MH370 debris save two, have been recovered in a nearly pristine state. Yes, objects which spend some time ashore can become picked clean in time. But many of the pieces of debris recovered so far have been found within hours of being deposited. As I’ve previously written in some detail, such pieces would be expected to be colonized by a variety of marine organisms. If you look at galleries of objects which have washed ashore after having spent a similar amount of time at sea, such as tsunami debris collected in the US Northwest and Hawaii, it collectively looks very, very different from MH370 debris. Don’t take my word for it; there are links to such image galleries at the end of the piece linked above. |
Dr. Otis Brawley, an oncologist and chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, has long been an outspoken critic of unnecessary medical tests and procedures.
On this topic, he is perhaps best known for his opposition to the routine screening of men for prostate cancer, pointing out repeatedly that the scientific evidence does not support it — and stating that anybody who says otherwise is “not telling the truth.”
Earlier this week, Brawley spoke before a group of medical reporters at the annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists in Atlanta. Although I didn’t attend the event, I watched Brawley’s on-the-record speech on YouTube.
Once again, he didn’t mince words.
Unsustainable costs
Brawley began by pointing out that health-care costs are currently 18 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP), a cost that’s projected to climb to 25 percent in 2020. That’s just eight years away.
If we don’t start reining in those costs, Brawley said, “it’s going to cause our economy to collapse.”
Yet despite all the money we spend on health care in the United States, we still lag behind other countries in many important health indicators.
“When we had the conversation about health-care reform, I can remember some of the politicians talking about how great our health care system is,” Brawley said. “And I was thinking, ‘Gee, we’re 50th in life expectancy. We’re 47th in infant mortality rate. Countries such as Cuba do better than the United States in those measures.’”
In fact, said Brawley, we spend more than any other country on health-care costs — about $8,000 annually per man, woman and child. “The number two country, which is Switzerland, is a little less than $4,000 dollars,” Brawley noted. “Switzerland is fourth among [United Nation] countries in life expectancy, and we’re 50th. I don’t think we get what we pay for.”
Brawley also talked in his speech about how “the whole discussion about health care and health-care reform seemed to lack the fact that there were people out there who were suffering. There were people out there dying.”
He quoted a saying used by the Marines: “We are Americans. We leave no one behind.”
It’s a message, Brawley said, that appears to have eluded many of the politicians and others who are developing our health-care policies. “We are Americans, and we leave a lot of people behind in our health-care system,” he said.
‘Irrational form of medicine’
Brawley also pointed out that much of the spiraling health-care costs in the United States comes from waste and greed. Doctors need to be paid more for prevention than intervention, he said, and all treatments and procedures should have solid scientific evidence behind them to show that they’re both effective and safe.
We practice “an irrational form of medicine,” Brawley said. “When I hear politicians talking about death panels and rationing, we need to be talking about the rational use of medicine — not rationing, but rational. But unfortunately, that’s not happening in the United States.”
He peppered his speech with several examples of irrational medicine. Routine prostate cancer screening was one. But he also mentioned how pharmaceutical companies are able to make a minor change in a drug that is about to go off patent and then market it as a new — and, of course, much more expensive — drug, even though it’s essentially the same medication. His example was AstraZeneca’s transformation of the heartburn drug Prilosec into Nexium. The off-patent drug, Prilosec, now sells for about $1 a pill, while Nexium sells for about $6, according to Brawley. (A generic version of the drug sells for about 35 cents.)
Brawley also criticized the medical community for adopting medical treatments long before their benefits — or safety — have been proven. As an example, he cited autologous bone marrow transplantation for breast cancer, which was widely used in the late 1980s and 1990s. The theory behind the treatment seemed reasonable, Brawley said, so doctors and hospitals began providing it to their patients (and women began demanding it), despite the fact that nobody had done any studies to prove that it worked.
“The folks who wanted to make money said, ‘Why don’t we just do it?’” said Brawley.
Finally, in 1999, researchers published four clinical trials that showed that the treatment was more likely to kill women than to benefit them. But by then, said Brawley, “there were more than 220 bone marrow transplant breast-cancer centers in the United States” and thousands of women had received the treatment.
‘Subtle form of corruption’
Health care today is “a subtle form of corruption,” said Brawley.
Who’s at fault for this corruption? All of us. “Quite honestly, it’s the doctors, it’s the hospitals, it’s the hospital system, it’s the insurers, it’s the drug companies, it’s the lawyers, and it’s even the patients,” he said.
“What we desperately need to do is not reform health care,” said Brawley. “We need to transform how we view health care. We need to become more appreciative of health-care prevention efforts.”
We also need, he added, “to understand and appreciate science. We’re not going to have improvements in our health-care system until the mass population demands that doctors appreciate science [and] demands and asks doctors to justify their recommendations and justify their decisions. We need the skeptical, educated consumer. We need people who consume medicine to think about health care the same way they think about buying a television set at a Best Buy. We need people to stop just accepting things and start being skeptical.”
You can listen to Brawley’s speech — and the question-and-answer session that followed — on YouTube. |
Sample collection
From each station, 1–5 l of seawater were filtered through a 0.2-μm diameter filter from the Gulf of Mexico during two monitoring cruises from 27 May 2010 to 2 June 2010 on the R/V Ocean Veritas and R/V Brooks McCall. Detailed information regarding sample collection can be found in Hazen et al. (2010).
DNA extraction
DNA was extracted from microbial cells collected onto filters using a modified Miller method (Miller et al., 1999), with the addition of a pressure lysis step to increase cell-lysis efficiency. One-half of each filter was placed into a Pressure Biosciences FT500 Pulse Tube (Pressure Biosciences, Easton, MA, USA). A total of 300 μl of Miller phosphate buffer and 300 μl of Miller SDS lysis buffer were added and mixed. A solution of 600 μl phenol:chloroform:isoamyl alcohol (25:24:1) was then added. The samples were subjected to pressure cycling at 35 000 psi for 20 s and 0 psi for 10 s for a total of 20 cycles using the Barocycler NEP3229 (Pressure Biosciences). After pressure cycling, the sample material was transferred to a Lysing Matrix E tube (MP Biomedicals, Solon, OH, USA) and the samples were subjected to bead beating at 5.5 m s−1 for 45 s in a FastPrep instrument (MP Biomedicals). The tubes were centrifuged at 16 000 g for 5 min at 4 °C, 540 μl of supernatant was transferred to a 2-ml tube and an equal volume of chloroform was added. The individual samples were mixed by inversion and then centrifuged at 10 000 g for 5 min. A total of 400 μl of the aqueous phase was transferred to another tube and two volumes of Solution S3 (MoBio, Carlsbad, CA, USA) were added and mixed by inversion. The rest of the clean-up procedures followed the instructions in the MoBio Soil DNA extraction kit. Samples were recovered in 60 μl Solution S5 and stored at −20 °C.
16S rRNA gene sequencing and analysis
16S rRNA gene sequences were amplified from the DNA extracts using the primer pair 926wF (5′-AAACTYAAAKGAATTGRCGG-3′) and 1392R (Lane, 1991) as previously described (Kunin et al., 2010). The reverse primer included a 5-bp barcode for multiplexing of samples during sequencing. Emulsion PCR and sequencing of the PCR amplicons was performed at DOE’s Joint Genome Institute following the manufacturer’s instructions for the Roche (Branford, CT, USA) 454 GS Titanium technology (Allgaier et al., 2010). A total of 87 000 pyrotag sequences were obtained and analyzed using QIIME (Caporaso et al., 2010a). Briefly, 16S rRNA gene sequences were clustered with uclust (Edgar, 2010) and assigned to operational taxonomic units (OTUs) with 97% similarity. Representative sequences from each OTU were aligned with Pynast (Caporaso et al., 2010b) using the Greengenes (DeSantis et al., 2006) core set. Taxonomy was assigned using the Greengenes 16S rRNA gene database (version 6 October 2010). As the number of sequence reads in each sample varied, the data set was rarified prior to alpha diversity calculations.
RNA extraction and amplification
Immediately following sampling and filtration at the proximal sampling station, samples intended for RNA extractions were placed in RNAlater (Ambion, Foster City, CA, USA) to prevent RNA degradation. Samples were stored according to the manufacturer’s protocol (in RNAlater at −80 °C) until the time of extraction. Total RNA was extracted from the proximal and distal plume stations, as well as from the uncontaminated sample from plume depth, as previously described (DeAngelis et al., 2010). The quantity and quality of extracted RNA was checked using a Bioanalyzer (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA). Specifically, the RNA integrity was verified by determining the RNA integrity number. For our samples, the RNA integrity number was ∼9 on a scale of 1–10, with 10 indicating that no degradation had occurred. Insufficient RNA was obtained from the uncontaminated sample for downstream processing. Total RNA from the proximal and distal plume stations was amplified using the Message Amp II-Bacteria Kit (Ambion) following the manufacturer’s instructions. First-strand synthesis of cDNA from the resulting antisense RNA was carried out with the SuperScript III First-Strand Synthesis System (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA). The SuperScript Double-Stranded cDNA Synthesis Kit (Invitrogen) was used to synthesize double-stranded cDNA. cDNA was purified using a QIAquick PCR purification kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA, USA). Poly(A) tails were removed by digesting purified DNA with BpmI for 3 h at 37 °C. Digested cDNA was purified with QIAquick PCR purification kit (Qiagen).
Emulsion PCR
To increase yields required for sequencing, DNA and cDNA were amplified by emulsion PCR. A detailed description of this method can be found in Blow et al. (2008). Briefly, DNA for metagenomic samples was sheared (cDNA was not sheared) using the Covaris S-Series instrument (Covaris, Woburn, MA, USA). DNA and cDNA were end-repaired using the End-It DNA End-Repair Kit (Epicentre Biotechnologies, Madison, WI, USA). End-repaired DNA and cDNA were then ligated with Illumina Paired End Adapters 1 and 2. For each sample, 10 ng was used for emulsion PCR. Emulsion PCR reagents and thermal cycler protocols were as previously described (Blow et al., 2008). Amplified products were cleaned with a PCR mini-elute column (Qiagen), visualized and ∼300 bp fragments were excised from a 2% agarose gel.
Sequencing
Metagenomic shotgun sequencing libraries of the samples were sequenced using the Illumina GAIIx 2 × 114 bp pair-end technology. The Illumina sequencing platform was used to generate 14–17 Gb of sequence data per sample.
cDNA was sequenced using the Illumina GAIIx sequencing platform. cDNA was quantified and clustered accordingly onto one lane of a flow cell on Illumina’s cBot Cluster Generation System. After cluster generation, the flow cell was transferred to a GAIIx and was sequenced for 100 cycles for read 1. Then, turnaround chemistry was performed by the paired-end module, which prepared the flow cell for read 2 sequencing. Another 100 cycles of sequencing followed, resulting in 100 bp paired-end reads.
Sequence assembly and analysis
Raw Illumina metagenomic reads (∼113 bp in length) were trimmed using a minimum quality cutoff of 3. Both trimmed and untrimmed reads were kept for further assembly. Paired-end Illumina reads were assembled using SOAPdenovo (http://soap.genomics.org.cn/soapdenovo.html) at a range of Kmers (21, 23, 25, 27, 29 and 31) for both trimmed and untrimmed reads. Default settings for all SOAPdenovo assemblies were used (flags: –d 1 and –R). Contigs generated by each assembly (12 total contig sets) were merged using a combination of in-house Perl script. Contigs were then sorted into two pools based on length. Contigs <1800 bp were assembled using Newbler (Life Technologies, Carlsbad, CA, USA) in an attempt to generate larger contigs (flags: −tr, −rip, −mi 98 and −ml 60). All assembled contigs >1800 bp, as well as the contigs generated from the final Newbler run, were combined using minimus 2 (AMOS, http://sourceforge.net/projects/amos) and the default parameters for joining. Minimus2 is an overlap-based assembly tool that is useful for combining low numbers of longer sequences, as are found in assembled contigs. Assembly of the total of 368 million paired-end quality filtered metagenome sequence reads that averaged 113 bp in length (45 Gb) resulted in 1.1 million contigs. These contigs had an average N50 length of 382 bp (N50 is the length of the smallest contig in the set of largest contigs that have a combined length that represents at least 50% of the assembly (Miller et al., 2010)). Assembled data was annotated in IMG (Markowitz et al., 2008). Cluster of Orthologous (COG) annotations for both plume samples and the uncontaminated sample, including average fold, were exported. A pairwise statistical comparison of COGs in each of the three samples was carried out using STAMP (Parks and Beiko, 2010). Raw Illumina metatranscriptomic reads (∼100 bp in length) were assembled using the CLC Genomics Workbench (version 4.0.3; CLC Bio, Cambridge, MA, USA). Paired-end reads were assembled using the following parameters: mismatch cost 2, insertions cost 3, deletion cost 3, length fraction 0.5 and similarity 0.8. The minimum contig length was set to 200 bp. Assembled metatranscriptomic data was annotated using CAMERA (v2.0.6.2) (Seshadri et al., 2007).
blastn
Single reads from each metagenomic and metatranscriptomic sample was searched against the Greengenes (DeSantis et al., 2006) database of 16S rRNA genes using blastn with a bit score cutoff of >100. For each sequence, the blast result with the highest bit score was selected.
tblastn
Raw metagenomic, metatranscriptomic and single-cell reads were searched against a subset of proteins (∼12 000 archaeal and bacterial proteins) involved in hydrocarbon degradation from the GeoChip (He et al., 2010) database. This database was selected because, to our knowledge, this is the only curated database of the nearly complete pathways for hydrocarbon degradation. Paracel blast was used with the tblastn algorithm, allowing all possible hits and using a bit score cutoff of >40. For each sequence, the blast result with the highest bit score was selected. Although putative and potential proteins were part of the overall database searched, only characterized proteins were included in the final data analysis and presentation. A pairwise statistical comparison of the results of the metagenomic and metatranscriptomic blast analyses was carried out using STAMP (Parks and Beiko, 2010), using the a two-sided Chi-square test (with Yates) statistic with the DP: asymptotic-CC confidence interval method and the Bonferroni multiple test correction. A P-value of >0.05 was used with a double-effect size filter (difference between proportions effect size <1.00 and a ratio of proportions effect size <2.00).
Single-cell sorting, whole-genome amplification and screening
Cells were collected following the clean sorting procedures detailed by Rodrigue et al. (2009). Briefly, single cells from the proximal plume water sample were sorted by the Cytopeia Influx Cell Sorter (BD Biosciences, Franklin Lakes, NJ, USA) into three 96-well plates containing 3 μl of ultraviolet-treated TE. The cells were stained with SYBR Green I (Invitrogen) and illuminated by a 488-nm laser (Coherent Inc., Santa Clara, CA, USA). The sorting window was based on the size determined by side scatter and green fluorescence (531/40 bp filter). Single cells were lysed for 20 min at room temperature using alkaline solution from the Repli-G UltraFast Mini Kit (Qiagen) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. After neutralization, the samples were amplified using the RepliPHI Phi29 reagents (Epicentre Biotechnologies). Each 50-μl reaction contained Phi29 Reaction Buffer (1 × final concentration), 50 μM random hexamers with the phosphorothioate bonds between the last two nucleotides at the 3′ end d (IDT), 0.4 mM dNTP, 5% DMSO (Sigma, St Louis, MO, USA), 10 mM DTT (Sigma), 100 U Phi29 and 0.5 mM Syto 13 (Invitrogen). A mastermix of multiple displacement amplification (MDA) reagents minus the Syto 13 sufficient for a 96-well plate was ultraviolet-treated for 60 min for decontamination. Syto 13 was then added to the mastermix, which was added to the single cells for real-time MDA on the Roche LightCycler 480 for 17 h at 30 °C. All steps of single-cell handling and amplification were performed under most stringent conditions to reduce the introduction of contamination. Single-cell MDA products were screened using Sanger sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons derived from each MDA product. A total of 16 Oceanospirillales cells were obtained. Three single-amplified genomes were identified as being 95% similar to the dominant Oceanospirillales OTU, and of high sequence quality (16S rRNA gene) and pursued for whole-genome sequencing.
Single-cell Illumina sequencing, quality control and assembly
Single-cell amplified DNA of three Oceanospirillales cells was used to generate normalized, indexed Illumina libraries. Briefly, 3 μg of MDA product was sheared in 100 μl using the Covaris E210 (Covaris) with the setting of 10% duty cycle, intensity 5 and 200 cycle per burst for 6 min per sample and the fragmented DNA purified using QIAquick columns (Qiagen) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The sheared DNA was end-repaired, A-tailed and ligated to the Illumina adaptors according to the Illumina standard paired-end protocol. The ligation product was purified using AMPure SPRI beads, then underwent normalization using the Duplex-Specific Nuclease Kit (Axxora, San Diego, CA, USA). The normalized libraries were then amplified by PCR for 12 cycles using a set of two indexed primers and the library pool was sequenced using an Illumina GAIIx sequencer according to the manufacturer’s protocols (run mode 2 × 150 bp). Approximately 2.5 Gb (16 797 846 reads) of sequence data was collected from the Oceanospirillales single-cell genomes. The Illumina single-amplified genome data was quality controlled using GC content and blast analysis and no contamination was detectable in two of the single-amplified genomes, whereas the third single-amplified genome was excluded from the analysis due to the presence of contaminating sequences. Reads from these two single cells were assembled using Velvet (Zerbino and Birney, 2008). To estimate genome-sequence completeness, the annotated, assembled draft genome data was compared with core COGs for Proteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria (number of identified core COGs/number of expected core COGs).
Mapping and analysis
Unassembled metatranscriptomic reads were mapped to the Oceanospirillales single-cell draft genome using the CLC Genomics Workbench (CLC bio), using the following parameters: mismatch cost 2, insertions cost 3, deletion cost 3, length fraction 0.5 and similarity 0.8. Assembled single-cell data was annotated using CAMERA (v2.0.6.2) (Seshadri et al., 2007). The Interactive Pathways Explorer v2 (Letunic et al., 2008) was used to map the assembled, annotated metatranscriptome with an assembled, annotated Oceanospirillales single-cell draft genome. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat regions were identified in the draft genome using CRISPRFinder (Grissa et al., 2007).
Cell counts
Cell counts were carried out as described in Hazen et al. (2010). Briefly, samples were preserved in 4% formaldehyde and stored at 4 °C until the time of analysis. Filtered cells were stained with Acridine Orange and imaged with a Zeiss Axioskop (Carl Zeiss, Inc., Oberkochen, Germany) microscope.
Infrared spectromicroscopy and data processing
Synchrotron radiation-based Fourier-transform infrared measurements and analyses were conducted at the infrared beamline of the Advanced Light Source (http://infrared.als.lbl.gov/) on thin layers of fresh samples. Samples consisted of 25 ml of seawater from the proximal plume station. A total of 10 subsamples were randomly collected using a glass pipette. Samples were placed between a gold-coated Si wafer and a SiN x window. Photons emitted over a mid-infrared wavenumber range of 4000 to 650 cm−1 were focused through the samples by the Nicolet Nic-Plan IR microscope (with a numerical aperture objective of 0.65), which was coupled to a Nicolet Magna 760 FTIR bench (Thermo Scientific Inc., Waltham, MA, USA). The entire view-field was 200 × 150 μm2, which was typically divided into equal-sized 2 × 2 μm2 squares before raster scanning. The synchrotron radiation-based Fourier-transform infrared transflectance spectra at each position were collected using a single-element mercury cadmium telluride detector at a spectral resolution of 4 cm-1 with 32 co-added scans and a peak position accuracy of 1/100 cm−1. In transflectance, the synchrotron infrared beam transmitted through the cells, reflected off the gold-coated surface and then transmitted through the sample a second time before reaching the detector. Background spectra were acquired from neighboring locations without any cells and used as reference spectra for both samples and standards to remove background H 2 O and CO 2 absorptions. All synchrotron radiation-based Fourier-transform infrared transflectance spectra were subjected to an array of data preprocessing and processing calculations using Thermo Electron’s Omnic version 7.3. The processing includes the computation conversion of transflectance to absorbance, spectrum baseline removal and univariate analysis. In the univariate analysis, the calculated infrared absorbance at each wavenumber in the mid-infrared region can also be related to the relative concentration of a particular chemical component through the Beer–Lambert Law. Because analysis of each spectral absorption band provides a single absorption value (representing the relative abundance of a chemical component), we also constructed two-dimensional images to visualize the relative abundance of petroleum products and microbial biomolecules.
Hydrocarbon analysis
The profile of Macondo crude oil (collected on 22 May 2010 directly from the Discovery Enterprise drill ship located above the wellhead) was determined by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry using an Agilent 6890N (Agilent Technologies). Triplicate samples of 0.2 μl of raw oil were directly injected to the column with no sample cleanup. This method was used to enable detection of low-molecular weight compounds that would be lost during sample processing or masked due to interference from solvent peaks. The Agilent 6890N was equipped with a 5972 mass selective detector and operated in SIM/SCAN mode. The injection temperature was 250 °C, detector temperature was 300 °C and column used was 60 m Agilent HP-1MS with a flow rate of 2 ml min−1. The oven temperature program included a 50°C hold for 3 min ramped to 300 °C at 4 °C min−1 with a final 10-min hold at 300 °C. Compound identification was determined from selective ion monitoring coupled with comparison with the known standards and compound spectra in the NIST 08MS library. Compounds were reported as fractions of total oil in Supplementary Figure S2 from averages of triplicate injections, the error bars indicating s.d.
Hydrocarbon concentrations in all samples (Supplementary Table S1) were determined from water samples that were collected in the field and directly filtered through Sterivex filters (0.22 μm; Millipore, Billerica, MA, USA) as described previously (Hazen et al., 2010). Oil biomarkers from the plume samples matched to those observed from the Macondo well.
Volatile aromatic hydrocarbons were measured using USEPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) methods 5030/8260b on an Agilent 6890 GC with a 5973 mass spectrometer detector. Initial oven temperature 10 °C, initial time 3 min, ramp 8–188 °C min−1, then 16–220 °C min−1 and hold for 9 min. Split ratio 25:1. Restek Rtx-VMS capillary column, 60 m length by 250 μm diameter and 1.40 μm film. Scan 50–550 m z−1. |
Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning is escorted out of court after testifying in the sentencing phase of his military trial at Fort Meade, Md., on Aug. 14, 2013. Photo by James Lawler Duggan/Reuters.
Let’s puncture a few myths and misunderstandings about Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning’s 35-year sentence.
First, the entire Manning case, from start to finish, has nothing to do with the Obama administration’s avid pursuit of leakers. The military courts operate independently of the Justice Department. If the most purebred civil libertarian were president of the United States, the Army would have gone after Manning no less relentlessly.
Manning’s leak is unprecedented, not only in its volume (700,000 classified files) but also, at least potentially, in its seriousness (the inclusion, in these files, of raw reports detailing combat operations).
I asked two eminent scholars of military law—Gary Solis of Georgetown Law School and Eugene Fidell of Yale Law School—whether they could recall any parallels in the past century. They could come up with only one: John Walker, a U.S. Navy chief warrant officer who, in 1985, sold highly sensitive secrets to the Soviet Union. He was court-martialed and is still serving a life sentence. In another notable case, Samuel Morison, a former Navy intelligence officer, leaked classified photos of Soviet ships, taken by a secret U.S. spy satellite, to a British defense publication. But Morison had left the Navy by that point and was a civilian Defense Department official. A civilian court convicted him under the Espionage Act and sentenced him to two years in prison. Bill Clinton pardoned him on the last day of his presidency, in part because that World War I–era law had been enforced so rarely and inconsistently.
These comparisons, of course, are far from precise. Manning neither supplied a cache of documents to an enemy entity nor made any money from the deal. But this only highlights how brazen the Manning case looms in the annals of American military history. This is not “another case” of the Obama administration chasing down the source of a national security leak; it is a massive and extremely unusual violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Second, the very purpose of the military court system is very different from that of the civilian courts. As a recent study of military justice by the Congressional Research Service put it:
“In the [civilian] criminal law system, some basic objectives are to discover the truth, acquit the innocent without unnecessary delay or expense, punish the guilty proportionately with their crimes, and prevent and deter further crime, thereby providing for the public order. Military justice shares these objectives in part, but also serves to enhance discipline throughout the Armed Forces, serving the overall objective of providing an effective national defense.” (Italics added.)
Many of Manning’s supporters have complained that the military prosecutors dragged the soldier into court as an example to others. To some extent, that’s true. It’s also beside the point. Even if it were the case, as Manning’s supporters also argue, that the leaks exposed war crimes or at least did no real harm to national security, that wouldn’t matter in a military trial. Given that one function of the military justice system—a key reason for keeping it separate from the civilian justice system—is to enhance discipline across the armed forces, no Army judge would have cut slack for a soldier who had violated his or her security pledge so blatantly.
Third, in this context, and given that Manning was convicted on 20 of 22 counts, a sentence of 35 years is not excessive. More to the point, it’s very unlikely that Manning will spend anywhere nearly that long behind bars.
The presiding judge, Col. Denise Lind, could have imprisoned Manning for 90 years, had she pushed the sentencing guidelines to the max. The Army’s prosecutors urged her to send Manning to prison for 60 years, as a deterrent to others. It’s a good thing—for Manning, the legitimacy of military courts, and freedom of the press—that Lind waved off their absurd calculus. Having already acquitted Manning of the one charge (“aiding the enemy”) that carried an automatic life sentence, Lind apparently reasoned that it would be unjust to hand down a sentence amounting, for all practical purposes, to the same thing.
It’s worth noting that, early on in the trial, Manning pleaded guilty to a handful of the charges with the understanding this would mean 20 years in jail. After the guilty verdict on all but two of the charges, Manning’s lawyer pleaded for a 25-year sentence as a gesture of mercy for Manning’s good intentions, apologies, and promise to lead a good life after release. As a compromise, 35 years comes much closer to Manning’s position than to that of the judge’s fellow officers.
But there are several reasons why Manning will likely see wide-open skies well before 2048. First, Lind ruled that the 3½ years of time served would count against the sentence. Second, as in all court-martial trials, Manning’s sentence will automatically be examined by a review board, which has the power to reduce—but not extend—the term of imprisonment.
Finally, there are some interesting passages in Army Regulation 15-130, which deals with clemencies and paroles. According to Section 3-1.e(1)(c), a prisoner sentenced for 30 years or longer is eligible for parole after serving 10 years—or, subtracting the time Manning has already served, 6½ years. Even more alluring, Section 3-1.d(5) states that a prisoner sentenced to 30 years or longer can apply for clemency (a pardon or reduced sentence) a mere three years “from the date confinement began”—in other words, Manning could apply for clemency now—and can reapply “at least annually thereafter.”
Of course, applying for clemency or parole doesn’t ensure getting it. But there is another card up Manning’s sleeve. According to Section 3-2.a(4), the Army Clemency and Parole Board may consider, among other criteria, the prisoner’s “psychological profile” and “medical condition,” including “the prisoner’s need for specialized treatment.” (Italics added.)
In a statement released Thursday, Manning—who has a long and well-documented history of confused gender identity—came out as female, asked to be addressed as Chelsea instead of Bradley, and requested hormone treatments while in the Army prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan. Army spokesmen have said they are under no obligation to supply such treatments.
If the wardens at Ft. Leavenworth take the same position, a case could be made that incarceration would violate “the prisoner’s need for specialized treatment” and that, therefore, Manning should immediately be granted clemency. (Recall: Under Army regulations, Manning is eligible to apply for clemency now.)
At that point, the Clemency and Parole Board would suddenly find itself under a very glaring public light. It’s worth noting that, according to Army regulations, the board’s ultimate power comes from—and its rulings can be overruled and preempted by—the secretary of the Army. The current secretary is John McHugh, who, until President Obama appointed him to the post in 2009, was a nine-term Republican congressman from New York, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, and, before he advanced to that rank, chairman of the committee’s Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Panel.
Will McHugh be sympathetic to Manning’s plea? Will he regard the whole issue of gender identity as prompting a “need” for specialized treatment? The ultimate authority here is President Obama, who as commander-in-chief governs all aspects of military life. Could pressures force a decision about Manning’s fate to the very top of the chain? If it did, which Obama would come to the fore—the upholder of military discipline (including the prevention of leaks) or the crusader for equality of gender rights in the military? And does equality of gender rights include transgender rights for Obama? And do those rights include the full expression of gender identity?
The Manning case could soon get very interesting in a totally unanticipated way. |
Cast:
Genau genommen haben wir ja einen CW des Spieltags, die Shoutcastkonferenz gibt es schon seit Jahren nicht mehr. Diese (und teilweise auch letzte) Saison ging das nur unter, weil zwei unserer Caster kaum Zeit und der dritte (ich) aktuell nicht streamen können.
Tbh fällt es mir persönlich schwer den Cast in externe Hände zu geben, denn das war immer auch ein Teil der WC3CL.
Donations/Preisgeld:
Wir hatten ein einziges Mal ein Preisgeld für die WC3CL und auch wenn am Ende alles gut lief und die Liga nicht sonderlich darunter gelitten hat (bzw. der Grundgedanke der Liga) war es für uns Admins damals doch etwas "seltsam" irgendwie. Nicht zuletzt weil das Preisgeld mit 100€ (oder so, sorry weedfly ich weiß es nicht mehr genau!) für einen Cup vllt. in Ordnung war, für eine Teamliga mit teilweise zhen Spielern pro Teams aber ein relativer Witz. Wohl auch deswegen haben die Jungs von tR das Geld damals einfach gespendet. Ein weiteres Problem ist, dass die Teams ja keine Organisationen darstellen, die das Geld betreuen könnten. Im Endeffekt würden wir nur einem ausgewählten Orga die Kohle in die Hand drücken und danach ist es die Angelegenheit der Teams, wie und ob das Geld verteilt wird.
Donations sind ansich eine gute Idee um ein solches Preisgeld aufzustellen, aber ich weiß ehrlich gesagt nicht ob da viel zusammenkommen würde. Auch hier wieder eine persönliche Meinung, aber ich lege auch nicht sonderlich viel Wert darauf, im Zuge der WC3CL mit Geld hantieren zu müssen. Geld verpflichtet schließlich auch, selbst wenn ich davon nichts habe.
Zentralisierung, Bindung am Sonntagabend:
Über einen zentralisierten Channel kann man natürlich nachdenken, weiß aber nicht inwieweit das erwünscht ist. Also klar, zentrale Hostbots würde jeder mit Kusshand nehmen, aber will man wirklich eine zweistellige Summe von CWs in einem Channel organisieren? Klingt nach Chaos pur.
Für alle Teilnehmer der WC3CL gibt es eine Skypegruppe, in der von jedem Team Orgas vertreten sind. Dort kann man sich sowohl allgemein austauschen, als auch seinen Gegner privat ansprechen.
Die "Bindung an den Sonntagabend" und die "18 Uhr Tradition" sind ja eigentlich der Wunschgedanke. Doch in einer Liga die zu großen Teilen nur für den Spaß ihrer Teilnehmer existiert halten wir eine extreme Versteifung auf den Sonntagabend für Blödsinn. Klar, wenn wir die dicken Preisgelder ausschütten würden, dann würde es da harte Restriktionen geben, aber so wie es jetzt ist, ist es eigentlich in Ordnung.
Davon ab entsteht das Verschiebechaos nicht selten durch mangelhafte Regelkunde oder übermäßige Kulanz. Wenn ich meinem Gegner vier Adhoc-Verschiebungen erlaube dann ja, dass ausspielen über die Woche wird dann stressig.
Mappool:
Der Mappool steht grundsätzlich ja immer zur Diskussion, auch wenn wir in letzter Zeit nicht aktiv danach gefragt haben. Da kann beliebig nachgebessert werden, obwohl wir auf bestimmte Aspekte schon ein wenig Wert legen. |
William Nelson, 44, the former head of purchasing for the Staten Island District Attorney's office, was indicted after he stole more than $440,000 from the office from 2006 to 2016, federal prosecutors said. View Full Caption Department of Investigation
STATEN ISLAND — The former head of purchasing for the Staten Island District Attorney's office was hit with a 10-count indictment after he embezzled more than $440,000 from the office to pay for items like knives and vacations, federal prosecutors said.
William Nelson, 44, served as the procurement director for the DA from 2006 to 2016 and used two office credit cards to buy electronics, groceries, New York Giants tickets, books, survival gear, handbags and more.
He even used PayPal to transfer thousands of dollars from the cards to his personal account, prosecutors said.
"This case is a textbook example of what can happen when power goes unchecked," said William Sweeney, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI, in a statement about the former Richmond County DA employee.
"Not only did Nelson allegedly steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the RCDA, but he shamefully exploited his official position to authorize the very transactions that made this possible."
Nelson was indicted on one count of theft of funds and nine counts of mail fraud and is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges Thursday afternoon, prosecutors said.
The employee primarily worked under then-DA and current Congressman Dan Donovan. His department was largely left without oversight and his credit card activity was unmonitored during that time, authorities said.
A spokesman for Donovan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nelson was hired to oversee all purchases by Donovan in 2005, but started funneling money from the agency to cover a myriad of personal expenses a year after he started, prosecutors said.
This included an extensive knife collection that Nelson dedicated most of his Instagram account to.
Nelson took advantage of a lack of financial protocols in the DA's office to get away with the scheme for 10 years and had no supervision over his purchases during that time, according to a Department of Investigation report.
He concealed credit card statements sent to his work email to avoid review, mischaracterized the nature of some purchases and approved all of them himself, federal prosecutors said.
The DOI report found the DA's office did not have a purchase threshold set for Nelson, didn't review expenditure codes in the budget he used to hide his theft, and did not approve payments to vendors in a way required by the city.
Current DA Michael McMahon previously said the office did not have written fiscal procedures to oversee finances until 2012 and the ones that were put in place at the time were "limited."
Since Nelson's arrest, McMahon made changes to the procedures and adopted a series of recommendations by the DOI to increase oversight of its finances.
Nelson was demoted to procurement analyst in May 2016 after McMahon took office and made changes to the staff. A spokesman for the DA couldn't say why he lost his original position.
He worked in that post until he resigned in December after the office started interviewing new procurement directors and he was put on terminal leave.
After his resignation, the DA's office noticed irregularities and unauthorized spending by the agency and notified the DOI to investigate, McMahon said.
The DOI arrested Nelson for grand larceny in June and he was officially fired from the DA's office then.
"These are funds that were meant to make Staten Island safer; to fight the opioid crisis, the surge in domestic violence, the use of illegal guns, to name a few; but instead they were allegedly used for personal indulgences," McMahon said in a statement. "I am very glad that my new administration was able to quickly detect Nelson’s crimes and immediately refer the matter to DOI and the Eastern District for prosecution." |
If you follow this blog with a certain regularity – and I assume it’s almost none of you reading right now – you might have noticed that 42-year old North Carolina-native Ryan Adams is somewhat of a big deal for who’s writing this. The singer-songwriter’s self-titled album, released in late 2014 to moderate success, has had an overwhelming impact on me that only few others have over my whole life and, surely in some ways because of that, I have come to thoroughly enjoy everything he has put out ever since (not mentioning revisiting his impressively huge and prolific past catalogue). Plus, carved in the history of this blog there is also a commentary slash review of Adams’s stunning live performance at London’s Hammersmith Apollo back two years ago, as well as a rather loose take on his largely talked about 1989 cover album revisiting in his own signature style one-by-one all the songs contained in Taylor Swift’s best-selling release from 2015. Furthermore, in an attempt at celebrating and highlighting Adams’s multi-artistic talent, another blogpost entry was dedicated to one of his free verse poems off of his debut collection titled Infinity Blues and published through Akashic Books in 2009. To sum it up in other words, as you can easily judge by yourself Ryan Adams is a pretty badass talented artist.
It is with this spirit in mind and with great enthusiasm that yours celebrated the release of Prisoner, Ryan Adams’s 16th (!) studio album of his career, which came out officially a little less than two weeks ago on Friday 17th February. Prisoner is Adams’s latest release under his own LA-based label PaxAmericana Recordings and it spans 12 tracks across 43 minutes. The record was previewed by a series of singles (“Do You Still Love Me?”, “To Be Without You” and “Doomsday”) and multiple promotional trips/talk show appearances which often saw the Grammy-nominated musician performing exclusive acoustic cuts off of the record. Furthermore, as part of the album cycle, the not-so-secret metalhead and cat lover started off his own radio show called The Midnight Wave on Apple’s Beats 1 and came up with glorious deluxe packages for every fan’s delight. Obviously, Prisoner’s release is also to be accompanied by a massive worldwide live tour that will keep him busy for the remainder of 2017. This is to say, is really does look like to Adams this record means something special, something that possibly wasn’t there in with previous ones or that perhaps he himself wasn’t able to experience and embody as much, as confirmed in a recent Facebook Live Q&A.
Enough for background and scene setting, let’s jump into the actual craftsmanship of this new album without any further ado. As briefly mentioned above, the first taste of Prisoner came through its lead single “Do You Still Love Me?”, made available late last year (7th December) and very much in line with Adams’ self-titled album from 2014, both sonically and thematically with respect to the overall record. The track is one of the “rockiest” ones with huge, arena-like guitars sitting on a bed of mellow and all-encompassing keyboards. Think of Tom Petty having a go at AC/DC in an ’86 London recording studio. Lyrically, the track finds Ryan questioning (his) love longing for answers but only to find more question marks along the way (“I been thinking about you, baby / Been on my mind / Why can’t I feel your love? / Heart must be blind”). Such a sappiness and inner melancholia is in fact a key reading lens for the overall record, further confirmed by the thin, acoustic second single “To Be Without You”. The track, most than any others on Prisoner, takes the listener back to the early, folky-alt-country songwriting era of Adams with trademark heartbreaking and touches of liberation and carelessness here and there. Definitely an interesting choice for a second single as, looking back, the track is pretty much left on its own in the tracklist, i.e. not being truly representative of the overall sound (yet this might as well have been a very thought-trough choice by weirdo Adams). Wrapping up with singles, the third one revealed through YouTube, “Doomsday”, is by contrast a unique musical pearl culminating from the songwriters’ latest sonic directions including, but not limited to: 80s Bruce Springsteen, The Smiths, Bruce Hornsby and Neil Young. This song at number three on the setlist combines wonderful lyrics (“My love, we can do better than this / My love, how can you complicate a kiss? / My love, you said you’d love me now ’til doomsday comes / ‘Til doomsday comes”) with musical finesse, mixing perfectly harmonica and guitars. In pole position to becoming a Ryan Adams classic for years to come.
Just preceding “Doomsday” on the record’s tracklist is title track “Prisoner”, which unfortunately, even after prolonged and insistent listenings, might funnily enough be one of the dullest and tasteless tracks on the whole effort. Albeit being a doubtless uplifter mood-wise, especially when considered within the context of this overall moody record, the track results a bit too incomplete and frankly too naked to be a final album version, but probably too confused and at the same time elaborated to be considered as a demo or B-side. However, the title track probably remains the only lower moment on Prisoner, which indeed sees a number of incredibly subtle and powerful cuts, such as the perfect modern-day acoustic number “Haunted House” at number four, or the minimalistic, heart-wrenching, and chilling “Shiver and Shake”, both carrying exclusive signature Adams’ sound and harmonies as developed and nurtured over the past five years. These two tracks, still very much in line with an irresistible – and at times cheesy – Springsteenian 80s echoy, chorusy, and reverberate sound, with the aforementioned “To Be Without You”, come to complete side A of the LP. And yet many would say that the best is yet to come.
Track number seven is “Anything I Say to You Now”, a fiery, 5-minute long classic rock cut with numerous walls of guitar sounds that dial in direct digits to The Smiths and some lateish Police vibes, just to name a few of the influences very explicitly worn on Adams’ sleeves. No doubt the rockiest moment on the whole album alongside the lead single “Do You Still Love Me?”. Immediately after that we find the superb guitar work of “Breakdown”, possibly among the most electrifying and proud tracks Adams has released in years, with the addition of an high catchiness alert. Following the energy of “Breakdown” it’s time for yours truly’s favourite bit on the whole record (and potentially of the whole Ryan Adams catalogue, although “Shadows” and “Dear Chicago” remain hard to beat), called “Outbound Train”, which if one were not to look carefully could easily be mistaken for a song off of Bruce Springsteen’s 1986 Tunnel of Love (“Two Faces” anyone?). The track perfectly encapsulates anger, emotion, love and much more in a very uncompromising climax of sounds and lyrics (“The cars don’t move in the middle of the night / Lost inside the void of the fading tail lights / I swear I wasn’t lonely when I met you, girl”). Tempo, structure, and rhythm all take each other by the hand and carry the listener in a phantasmagoric four and a half minute journey marking intimacy, honesty, and rawness on Adams’ behalf.
Moving on, the last trio of songs on Prisoner begins with the mellow and rather hopeless “Broken Anyway”, which finds regularly captivating and dreamy electric guitar strums accompanying a rather simple acoustic lead with pleasant vocal melody. Also, this very song, alongside the following one “Tightrope”, bear heavy influences and remnants of Adams’ Taylor Swift interpretation and recording sessions for 1989, as both tracks just simply possess that vibe and overall feel which are impossible to negate. Prisoner calls its curtains with the properly titled “We Disappear”, which showcases what might be the best guitar sound that’s been heard out there in the electrical pantheon in a very long while and turns very quickly, very weird, perfectly matching the personal mission that Adams himself has been advocating for long (read his Twitter bio).
It’s no secret by now, being two weeks into its release, that Prisoner has found enormous success and praise by both critics and charts, demonstrating once more how amazingly the singer-songwriter is still able to not only reinvent and re-craft his musical outputs but also becoming an artist on his own, disregarding for the most part trends, genres, and commercial reasonings. The overwhelmingly positive reception the record has gotten around the world does nothing else other than confirming that we, the people, needed a record like this in present times of disorder, dismay and loss of connections. That is, by figuratively stripping himself completely naked and putting his most inner emotions out there telling stories of his failed marriage and connected despair, Ryan Adams showed us all that there is nothing to fear in being open and transparent about oneself and, most importantly, that honesty and truth will eventually unite us all in appreciation. Because at heart, we really shouldn’t be capable of nothing else.
I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.
AV
RYAN ADAMS
“PRISONER”
2017, PaxAmericana Recording Company
http://paxamrecords.com
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Originally Posted by Chaosbringer12 Originally Posted by
As stated already it sounds like it's more of a man power issue and where they choose to use those resources so perhaps my suggestion wouldn't really make a difference.
The mobile application is free, but wouldn't charging people to download the app help with maintaining it and keeping it running? Again as most people have already stated there are plenty of us who use the mobile application for communication if not anything else which as a guild leader myself is extremely valuable to keep the guild running. We got along without it before its inception and I'm sure a lot of people would just have to bite the bullet and get used to that again, but it's a very useful communication tool.
I think in the end we'd preferr pay for it if need be rather than losing it all together if there aren't any other alternatives. |
One of the most concerning revelations arising from the recent WikiLeaks publication is the possibility that government organizations can compromise WhatsApp, Telegram and other end-to-end encrypted chat applications. While this has yet to be proven, many end-users are concerned as WhatsApp and Telegram use end-to-end encryption to guarantee user privacy. This encryption is designed to ensure that only the people communicating can read the messages and nobody else in between.
Nevertheless, this same mechanism has also been the origin of a new severe vulnerability we have discovered in both messaging services’ online platform – WhatsApp Web and Telegram Web. The online version of these platforms mirror all messages sent and received by the user, and are fully synced with the users’ device.
This vulnerability, if exploited, would have allowed attackers to completely take over users’ accounts on any browser, and access victims’ personal and group conversations, photos, videos and other shared files, contact lists, and more. This means that attackers could potentially download your photos and or post them online, send messages on your behalf, demand ransom, and even take over your friends’ accounts.
View the demos on WhatsApp and Telegram
The exploitation of this vulnerability starts with the attacker sending an innocent looking file to the victim, which contains malicious code.
The file can be modified to contain attractive content to raise the chances a user will open it. In WhatsApp, once the user clicks to open the image, the malicious file allows the attacker to access the local storage, where user data is stored. In Telegram, the user should click again to open a new tab, in order for the attacker to access local storage. From that point, the attacker can gain full access to the user’s account and account data. The attacker can then send the malicious file to the all victim’s contacts, opening a dangerous door to a potentially widespread attack over the WhatsApp and Telegram networks.
Since messages were encrypted without being validated first, WhatsApp and Telegram were blind to the content, thus making them unable to prevent malicious content from being sent.
Check Point disclosed this information to WhatsApp’s and Telegram’s security teams on March 7th. Both companies have verified and acknowledged the security issue and developed a fix for web clients worldwide soon after. “Thankfully, WhatsApp and Telegram responded quickly and responsibly to deploy the mitigation against exploitation of this issue in all web clients,” said Oded Vanunu. WhatsApp and Telegram web users wishing to ensure that they are using the latest version are advised to restart their browser.
Following the patch of this vulnerability, content is now validated by WhatsApp and Telegram before the encryption, allowing them to block malicious files.
Check Point Security Tips
While WhatsApp & Telegram have patched this vulnerability, as a general practice we recommend the following preventive measures:
Periodically clean logged-in computers from your WhatsApp & Telegram. This will allow you to control the devices that are hosting your account, and shut down unwanted activity. Avoid opening suspicious files and links from unknown users.
WhatsApp has over 1 billion users worldwide, making it the most prevalent instant messaging service existing today. The company’s web version is available on all browsers and WhatsApp supported platforms, including Android, iPhone (iOS), Windows Phone 8.x, BlackBerry, BB10 and Nokia smartphones.
Telegram has over 100 million monthly active users, delivering over 15 billion messages daily. It is a cloud-based mobile and Web messaging app, stating that their focus on security and speed.
In September 2015, we revealed another vulnerability in WhatsApp Web, which allowed hackers to send users a seemingly innocent vCard containing malicious code. Once we disclosed the vulnerability to WhatsApp, it was immediately fixed by the company.
Technical Details – WhatsApp
WhatsApp upload file mechanism supports several document types such as Office Documents, PDF, Audio files, Video and images.
Each of the supported types can be uploaded and sent to WhatsApp clients as an attachment.
However, Check Point research team has managed to bypass the mechanism’s restrictions by uploading a malicious HTML document with a legitimate preview of an image in order to fool a victim to click on the document in order to takeover his account.
Once the victim clicks on the document, the WhatsApp web client uses the FileReader HTML 5 API call to generate a unique BLOB URL with the file content sent by the attacker then navigates the user to this URL.
The attack on WhatsApp consists of several stages that mentioned below.
First, the attacker crafts a malicious html file with a preview image:
WhatsApp web client stores the allowed document types in a client variable called W[“default”].DOC_MIMES this variable stores the allowed Mime Types used by the application.
Since an encrypted version of the document is sent to WhatsApp servers it is possible to add new Mime type such as “text/html” to the variable in order to bypass the client restriction and upload a malicious HTML document.
After adding the malicious document Mime Type to the client variable, the client encrypts the file content by using the encryptE2Media function and then uploads it encrypted as BLOB to WhatsApp server.
Moreover, changing the document name and extension and creating a fake preview by modifying the client variables will make the malicious document more attractive and legitimate to the victim.
This is the result:
Once he clicks on the file, the victim will see a funny cat under blob object which is an html5 FileReader object under web.whatsapp.com. That means the attacker can access the resources in the browser under web.whatsapp.com
Just by viewing the page, without clicking on anything, the victim’s Local storage data will be sent to the attacker, allowing him to take over his account.
The attacker creates a JavaScript function that will check every 2 seconds if there is new data in the backend, and replace his local storage to the victim.
Part of attacker’s code:
The attacker will be redirected to the victim’s account, and will be able to access anything in it.
WhatsApp web does not allow a client to have more than one active session at a time so after the attacker steal the victim account the victim will receive the following message:
It is possible to overcome this situation from the attacker perspective by adding a JavaScript code like this:
The malicious HTML file that will cause the client browser window to get stuck and allow the attacker to control the account without interference, although the attacker will be connected to victim account until the victim will log from the account. Closing the browser wills not logout the attacker from the account and the attacker will be able to login to user account as long as he wants.
Technical Details – Telegram
Telegram supports multiple document types to be sent within the Telegram Web application, but only image and video document types are stored on the Filesystem section within the browser.
Check Point researchers have managed to bypass Telegram’s upload policy and upload a malicious HTML document with a mime type of a video file “video/mp4”. Then, they were able to send it to the victim side in an encrypted channel through telegram servers. Once the victim opens the video in a new browser tab, it will start playing and the users’ session data will be sent to the attacker.
The attack on Telegram consists of several stages, described below.
First, the attacker crafts a malicious html file that also contains the video data.
Telegram’s client stores the file mime type under t object, and during the upload process verifies if it matches to a video or image mime types. In a case of a match, the file will be stored under the client FileSystem URI.
Since an encrypted version of the file is sent to Telegram’s servers, it is possible to modify the mime type to “video/mp4”, in order to bypass the client restriction and upload a malicious HTML document to Telegram in a form of a video.
After modifying the malicious document mime type, the client uploads it encrypted to the Telegram server.
The result will be a seamless malicious file that looks like a legitimate video with a malicious payload inside:
Once the user plays the video, the html file will be uploaded to the browser memory under web.telegram.org. The user needs to open the video in a new tab in order to access the resource in the browser at the FileSystem URI under web.telegram.org URI.
By viewing the video in a new tab the victim’s Local storage data will be sent to the attacker, allowing him to take over his account.
In order to do that, the attacker creates a JavaScript function that will check every 2 seconds if there is new data in the backend, and replace local storage with the victim’s local storage – as seen in the WhatsApp POC code snippets.
The attacker will be redirected to the victim’s account, and will be able to access anything in it.
The user isn’t aware of the account takeover since Telegram allows users to keep as many active sessions as they want at the same time. |
Published 25.04.2017 12:29 GMT+1 | Author Andy Potts
World Championship debutant Liam Stewart is proving that he's more than the son of famous parents with encouraging performances for GB in Belfast.
Great Britain forward Liam Stewart is revelling in his first senior international tournament in Belfast this week – and as well as bringing goals, his presence has added a touch of glamour to the tournament.
As GB warmed up for its game with Estonia on Monday evening, Liam’s mother, supermodel Rachel Hunter, was tweeting her support for the team from the SSE Arena. And she went away with plenty to be proud of after Liam scored the game-breaking goal in a 5-1 home victory that keeps the Brits perfect after two games in in the 2017 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship Division I Group B.
Stewart, 22, is used to his family making the headlines – as well as a celebrity mum, dad Rod Stewart is a world-famous rock star, whose distinctive gravelly voice has produced hits such as ‘Sailing’, ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ and ‘Maggie May’. But now he’s out to make his own name in the game he encountered growing up in Los Angeles, and representing GB on the international stage is another exciting step in his career.
“It’s been awesome so far,” he said. “The guys have been really welcoming and we’re having a great time in Belfast. This is one of the funnier teams I’ve been a part of, as a group we’re kind of a little loose until we get onto the ice. But when it comes to a game we know what to do and we work hard.”
That hard work has brought results so far, with a 4-2 win over Croatia and a 5-1 defeat of Estonia keeping Britain among the front runners in its first tournament on home ice since the 1990s. Stewart himself has quickly moved up the team’s pecking order: initially listed as a fourth-line forward, he was promoted to the second line during the opening game and is settling into a new combination alongside Robert Farmer and fellow World Championship rookie Brendan Brooks. Coming off his first full season in British hockey, playing with Coventry Blaze in the Elite League, Stewart, trained in the U.S. but not a citizen there and thus eligible to represent his country of birth Great Britain, is learning to adapt fast.
“There’s a little bit of a difference in international play,” he said. “It’s not as physical in these tournaments, in the Elite League it’s certainly a bit rougher. In the end, you have to adjust and keep playing your game.”
At times, that adjustment has hindered GB. There were passages in both games where penalty trouble disrupted the team’s momentum and made the win harder to secure.
“That’s something we’ll look to get rid of, we want to play a full 60 minutes of hockey and we haven’t done that yet,” he said. “Luckily we came out strong in the third period and got the wins, but it’s something to work on.
“It looks like the competition here will go down to the wire, but as a kid those are the kind of games you dream of playing, those big games for medals at the end of a tournament.”
While Stewart is understandably keen that his career develops on his sporting merits rather than the reputations of his famous parents, having his mum in the crowd to cheer him on obviously means a lot to him. But it might have been a bit of a surprise for a hockey player to be judged on his singing – something usually reserved for rock stars. However, when ‘God Save the Queen’ rang out following GB’s opening 4-2 victory over Croatia, the cameras lingered on Stewart as he struggled to remember the words. By the time Estonia came into view, though, Liam was no longer fluffing his lines.
“I’ve learned them a little bit now, but that was a bit embarrassing,” he admitted. “Hopefully we’ll keep hearing it after every game here and I’ll have them perfect by the end of the week.”
And there may yet be a chance of some vocal coaching from his dad if Rod can make it over from Glasgow after enjoying Celtic’s football success at the weekend. “I know he was enjoying that Celtic game and they came out with a big win [in the Scottish Cup semi-final against Rangers],” Stewart added. “Given the choice, he’s always going to pick Celtic first and I can’t blame him for that. But I’ve converted him to hockey a little bit, he came to some of my games with Coventry earlier in the season. I’m not sure if he’ll be able to come over during the week, though.”
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The 1989 action hit “Road House” still makes the rounds on TV quite often, be it on AMC or one of the premium cable channels.
And that is bad news for one of the movie’s stars, Kelly Lynch, and worse news for her husband, writer and producer Mitch Glazer.
Lynch, who played the love interest of Patrick Swayze in the film, revealed that every time the movie pops up on cable that Bill Murray or one of his brothers calls Glazer.
“By the way, speaking of Bill Murray, every time ‘Road House’ is on and he or one of his idiot brothers are watching TV— and they’re always watching TV — one of them calls my husband and says [In a reasonable approximation of Carl Spackler (Murray’s character in “Caddyshack”)], ‘Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now. They’re doing it. He’s throwing her against the rocks,’” Lynch said in an interview with AVClub.com to promote her Starz show “Magic City.”
At this point in the AV Club interview, Glazer overhears what Lynch is talking about and relays a story to his wife.
“Mitch was just walking out the door to the set, and he said that Bill once called him from Russia,” Lynch, 54, said.
Fortunately for Lynch and Glazer, “Road House” is not set to air in the next couple of weeks according to TVGuide.com. But it will return to the listings soon.
“I dread it. If I know it’s coming on—and I can tell when it’s coming on, because it blows up on Twitter when it is—I’m just like, ‘Oh, my God…’ And God help me when AMC’s doing their Road House marathon, because I know the phone is just going to keep ringing. It doesn’t matter if it’s 2 or 3 in morning. ‘Hi, Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now…'” Lynch said. |
The key figures reflecting the extent of the economic collapse that Greece has experienced since 2009 are pretty well known, even to those who have not been following the story that closely over the past few years.
The loss of a quarter of economic output and the increase in the unemployment rate close to 28 percent at one point have been widely and repeatedly reported as Greece has struggled through a state of perma-crisis in recent years.
As economic activity fell, jobs were lost, wages were severely cut, taxation kept increasing and disposable incomes were abruptly reduced. Large parts of Greek society felt like the ground under their feet had given way. Living standards were compromised to varying degrees and, as usual, the weakest in society were the most vulnerable to these abrupt changes. Many faced a daily battle to meet basic needs and keep their families afloat. Habits have also been affected by the economic calamity, which has impinged on Greek society in ways that often go unnoticed, unlike the headline numbers.
For instance, according to the Living Conditions publication of ELSTAT, Greeks seem to be much more reluctant to get married: weddings have dropped from a high of 61,377 in 2007 to 53,105 in 2014, when the most recent data is available. In the meantime, civil weddings have doubled from their 2003 level of 13,210 to 26,915 in 2014. The two contrasting trends suggest that financial considerations have played an important part in shaping them.
The last few years have also seen an increase in the number of divorces. The most recent data, from 2013, points to 16,717 divorces, compared to around 13,000 in the preceding years. Although the increase affected marriages of all durations, the most marked rise was in marriages of more than 10 years, where divorces increased from 8,334 in 2009 to 10,091. Obviously, there is a range of factors that can affect the sustainability of marriage, but there is a suggestion that the added financial and social pressures linked to the crisis have taken their toll on some unions.
Since the high of 118,302 births in 2008, there has been a significant drop during the crisis. By 2014 the figure had fallen to 92,148. In fact, Greece has had a negative birth rate since 2011. In the absence of migration, the population of Greece would have fallen by 21,592 in 2014.
Greece’s demographic footprint is steadily being reshaped as the crisis rumbles on.
Job and income insecurity have impacted family planning as long-term unemployment in 2015 was 875,259 – equally affecting men and women – and only marginally lower from the 2014 high of 936,832.
Within the economically active age group of 18 to 60 year olds, 18 percent were living in jobless households in 2015. When children are included in this group, the figure reaches 1,280,745, which means that 12 percent of the entire Greek population does not have an income from employment.
In the same year, more than 1.1 million Greeks were living in low-work intensity homes, where working-age members worked less than 20 percent of their work potential and availability, with a knock-on effect on incomes. In 2009 that figure was much lower at 539,000.
These labour-market developments have pushed parts of Greek society below the poverty threshold, which in 2015 was 4,512 euros of annual income, down from 7,178 in 2010.
More than a third of Greeks (35.7 percent) are currently considered at risk of poverty or social exclusion. The absolute figure stood at 3.8 million in 2015, from about 3 million in the 2007–2009 period. In 2014, when there is comparable data, only Bulgaria and Romania had higher risk-of-poverty rates.
The risk-of-poverty rate is even higher when current income is compared to the poverty threshold set in 2005. When measured that way, the deterioration of living standards is startling as 42.2 percent of Greeks have dropped below the poverty threshold of 2005, from just 16.3 percent in 2010. That amounts to an almost threefold increase in just five years.
From 23 percent in 2009, almost four in ten Greeks are now facing material deprivation in terms of basic standards of respectable living. That is 44.5 percent for children, 41.5 percent for economically active adults and almost 35 percent for over-65 year olds.
The impact of the financial strain on Greek society is multifaceted and so far-reaching that it has been deemed to have directly linked to the quality of people’s health. In 2009 just 4.1 percent of the Greek population were unable to obtain medical examination and treatment. The obstacles in meeting these needs were economic, operational (waiting lists), logistical (not being close to a doctor or hospital) or psychological (fear of being treated) in nature. In 2015, over 14 percent of the Greek population could not obtain the required examination or treatment.
The gravity of the role that economic difficulties have played in the deterioration of health standards is demonstrated by the bottom two quintiles of income, which have seen the percentages of unmet health needs more than double to 19.7 percent for the quintile with the lowest income and treble to 18 percent for the next income quintile.
Naturally, spending habits have also changed as lower disposable income required the reallocation of financial resources in types of spending. Households average monthly expenditure, according to the annual Budget Survey published by ELSTAT, is falling continuously since 2009 and in 2014, the latest available year with data, it is 31% lower at 1,461 euros from the 2008 level.
Food, a basic need, now represents more than 20 percent of monthly household expenditure from 17.3 percent in 2009. In spite of a higher budget allocation to food, Greeks dietary habits have taken a turn for the worse. Since 2009, the average monthly consumption of vegetables has fallen by 3.5 kilograms, of fruit by 2.5kg, of meat by 1.6kg and of milk roughly by around 1.3 litres.
Housing expenditure has increased by two percentage points to 13.4 percent. Clothing and footwear has dropped by two percentage points to 5.9 percent of expenditure, durable goods have also lost two percentage points in the household budget allocation, falling to 5 percent of the monthly spend. Hotels, cafes and restaurants dropped by a percentage point to below 10 percent.
The drop in spending across all categories has been precipitous since 2008, ranging from 13.7 percent on food to circa 51% sharp drop in expenditure on clothes and footwear category and on durables.
Tighter budgets influence residents’ ability to engage in travel and recreation. In 2009, almost 4 million Greeks took a trip of four days of more. In 2013, this figure had fallen to 2.6 million and recovered only marginally to 3 million in 2015. Total personal trips came to over 7.7 million in 2009, but this figure plummeted to 4.3 million last year.
These statistics reflect developments that are life-altering, abrupt and involve deep changes in the standards and quality of life. They are so extensive that they are likely to leave permanent scars.
Economically active men and women might not expect to find themselves in full employment again as their skills erode after years out of work amid an expected slow recovery for the labour market.
Thousands of children that live in households that have no member in work (230,774 in the first quarter of 2016) will not have decent opportunities to develop in physical, educational or professional terms.
These devastating social developments have often been described as a humanitarian crisis, a term so overused by some that it became tired and seemed like a vast exaggeration in the context of the refugee crisis or the Syrian situation. However, war-torn countries and migration on an unprecedented scale should not be the benchmark here.
Greece is a country where statistical figures are thoroughly monitored. This hard data drives political decisions from its lenders. The economic and social deterioration that Greeks are living through is also captured in hard numbers. These statistics should not be neglected any longer.
*You can follow Yiannis on Twitter: @YiannisMouzakis |
NOTICE: Activation key must be used on a valid Steam account. Requires internet connection.
About the game
Base Game
Ringtones (three notification tones and one ringtone)
Commander Edition Forum Icon (Paradox Plaza)
Forum Avatars (Paradox Plaza)
Includes:
In Tyranny, the grand war between good and evil is over – and the forces of evil, led by Kyros the Overlord, have won. The Overlord’s merciless armies dominate the face of the world, and its denizens must find their new roles within the war-torn realm... even as discord begins to rumble among the ranks of Kyros’ most powerful Archons.
Players will experience the new world order under Overlord in a reactive role-playing game (RPG), interacting with the populace as a powerful Fatebinder in the Overlord’s forces -- roaming the lands to inspire loyalty or fear as they bring control to the last holdouts of the Tiers.
Key features
Branching, unique stories in an original setting: The battle between good and evil has already taken place, and evil stands victorious
The battle between good and evil has already taken place, and evil stands victorious Choices matter – make world-altering decisions with far-reaching consequence: As a Fatebinder in the Overlord’s army you wield a vast amount of power in the occupied lands of the Tiers. Will you use that to inspire stability and loyalty, will you be feared, or will you seek your own power?
As a Fatebinder in the Overlord’s army you wield a vast amount of power in the occupied lands of the Tiers. Will you use that to inspire stability and loyalty, will you be feared, or will you seek your own power? Challenging, classic RPG combat: Tactical real-time-with-pause combat with new party-driven mechanics and modern presentation
Tactical real-time-with-pause combat with new party-driven mechanics and modern presentation A rich original setting: Not just another “hero’s journey” -- Tyranny turns the archetypal RPG story on its head and allows players to explore a new take on good and evil
System requirements |
So, you go to Wal-Mart to buy your groceries because it's so damn cheap, but then you realize Wal-Mart is hiring very few full-time employees and not offering reasonable health care to its employees and it's walking employees through the process of how to get Medicare, not to mention they're closing down small businesses by exploiting foreign economies to get the lowest possible fucking cost; so, Wal-Mart's making YOU pay medical benefits for ITS employees, and replacing good jobs with shitty on
So, you go to Wal-Mart to buy your groceries because it's so damn cheap, but then you realize Wal-Mart is hiring very few full-time employees and not offering reasonable health care to its employees and it's walking employees through the process of how to get Medicare, not to mention they're closing down small businesses by exploiting foreign economies to get the lowest possible fucking cost; so, Wal-Mart's making YOU pay medical benefits for ITS employees, and replacing good jobs with shitty ones, and you don't want to support that, not to mention most of their food comes from the big corporations that have copyrighted their grains and are in the process of pushing small farms out of business by suing them for copyright infringement after their seeds blow onto the smaller farmer's land, so you decide to shop somewhere else, and isn't it time to go organic anyway, so you drive over to Trader Joe's and load up your cart, that feeling of guilt finally subsiding.
So you get home and you unload your reusable bags and load up the fridge and then, as you slide a boxed pizza into the freezer, you see, printed across the bottom, "Made in Italy."
So now, you're shopping for your groceries at a different store from where you do the rest of your shopping, adding to your carbon footprint, not to mention they're transporting your pizzas across half the fucking earth before they land on your shelf. So, you may not be selling out your next door neighbor, but now you're shitting a big one right on Mother Earth's face.
You head down to the local farmer's market and buy some little pygmy apples the size of clementines, and they're all weird colors but they're from some local farm, and you buy some locally made bread and buy some. . . wait, what is this? Red Bull? Doritos? All of a sudden you realize only the fruit here is local, and some of the bread, so you find another farmer across town you can buy beef from, and another farmer who you can get pork from, and now you're buying all locally, and driving all over God's red desert to get everything you need, and spending twice what you did at Wal-Mart, and spending half your saturday collecting food. Now, you're contributing to the local economy and not giving money to the giant food corporations that are trying to push small farms out of business. . . but you're still driving all over to buy the shit, and burning through petroleum like a motherfucker.
Face it: when it comes to the continuity of life on this planet, you are a pest. You're the renegade cell, eating away at all of the nice and friendly cells around you. I know I'm not telling you anything new right now: you've seen The Matrix, you've heard about overpopulation, global warming, oil spills and you know how totally, absolutely fucked polar bears are right now, but it's always been like that ever since you were born, and we keep coming up with new sciences, so inevitably something will come up to save the day, right? We'll take some polar bear DNA and store it, and once we're all caught up with Jurassic Park technologies, we'll bring 'em back. And, by the time we get to there, we'll be able to stop raising cows; we can just raise steaks: little flat cows that don't have brains, don't have needs other than maybe watering them and spooning nutrients into their slack mouths, and sea-urchin-like chicken creatures without any minds that we can make into chicken fingers, and none of them will feel a thing, so there won't be any question, ethically speaking, right? Right?
Don't hit me up with your "playing God" argument, because that's bullshit. We "play God" when we amputate a gangrenous leg, when we remove a tumor, when we brush our fucking teeth. So, what is really wrong with growing steaks in soil, and not raising cows in huge concentration camps where they hang out in their own shit all day? What's wrong with doing away with coffins, and simply mulching our loved ones? They're going in the dirt either way.
If we're being utilitarian, is our urchin-chicken happier or less happy than our chicken in a lightless pen with ridiculous pecs so oversized his legs are broken? What about the chicken who has gone mad and is now pecking other chickens to death? Probably urchin-chicken. I'm just saying.
That said, I wouldn't eat urchin-chicken, if I wanted to go out on a limb and say a company would be required to even TELL me the product I was buying was urchin: "Warning: this product is made from something that tastes like, but isn't, a chicken." They don't tell me when my steaks are cloned, or through what fucked up chemical reactions they've made my food, so I have my doubts.
What's wrong with growing a mindless food animal, much the way we grow corn or rice or soy? What's wrong with growing mindless clones of ourselves, just for the purpose of harvesting their organs? This would be an easier question to answer if I wasn't an atheist, and I could quote an instruction book, but I can't.
I have to answer the question, and I'll give an answer that Atwood kinda-does-but-doesn't: we don't know what will happen. We didn't know sea walls would increase erosion in other parts of the river when we first started building them. We didn't know that lighthouses would kill tons and tons of birds because birds fly toward the light. We didn't know that carbon emissions could be a problem until we'd flooded tons of them off into the atmosphere. So, why shouldn't we use science to make the world cater to our every desire and impulse?
Because we can't even predict the weather.
********
Oh, you want me to talk about the book? Yeah, I guess I could do that. As you can tell by my meta-review, this one gets the gears in your head turning. But, the characters were all flat and, although full of potential, ended up dull. The post-apocalyptic world we're reading about is intriguing, as are the new creatures that have replaced humans. The bizarre, freakish animals created by science are also perfectly horrific.
That said, some of this feels like a pretty big stretch. According to Atwood, we'll eventually be desensitized enough that we'll enjoy watching people tortured to death online, and we'll also like watching little children having sex with grown men. And I'm not talking about in a "2 girls 1 cup," watch-it-once-because-it-sounds-fucked-up way. . I mean, she imagines people will sit around watching this shit all the time. Perhaps I'm a prude, but I don't think either of these will ever become popular with more than a small audience. My cynicism only goes so far, I guess.
Far as dystopias go, this is an interesting and unusual one. It's also an entertaining and quick read. I wish Atwood would've invested a bit more time in filling out these characters, and given us a five-star book instead. . . but nobody bats 100%. I'm looking forward to trying some of her non-science fictiony works soon. |
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I wrote yesterday about discrepancies in the results reported by Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines in New Jersey.
Sequoia issued a memo giving their explanation for what might have happened. Here’s the relevant part:
During a primary election, the “option switches” on the operator panel must be used to activate the voting machine. The operator panel has a total of 12 buttons numbered 1 through 12. Each party participating in the primary election is assigned one of the option switch buttons. The poll worker presses a party option switch button based on the voter authorization slip given to the voter after signing the poll book, and then the poll worker presses the green “Activate” button. This action causes that party’s contests to be activated on the ballot face inside the voting booth. Let’s assume the Democrat party is assigned option switch 6 while the Republican Party is assigned options switch 12. If a Democrat voter arrives, the poll worker presses the “6” button followed by the green “Activate” button. The Democrat contests are activated and the voter votes the ballot. For a Republican voter, the poll worker presses the “12” button followed by the green “Activate” button, which then activates the Republican contests and the voter votes the ballot. This is the correct and proper method of machine activation when using option switches. However, we have found that when a poll worker selects the lower of the two assigned selection codes, followed by pressing an unused selection code and then pressing the green “Activate” button, the higher numbered party on the operator panel has its contests activated instead while the selection code button for the original party stays active on the operator panel. Using the above example with the Democrat Party as option switch 6 and the Republican Party as option switch 12, the poll worker presses button 6 for Democrat. The red light next to button number 6 lights up and the operator panel display will show DEM. The poll worker then presses any unused option switch. The red light stays lit next to option switch 6 and the display still says DEM. Now the poll worker presses the green “Activate” button. The red light stays lit next to button number 6, but the operator panel display now says REP and the ballot in the voting booth will activate the Republican party contests. In each and every case where a machine displays the party turnout issue at the close of the polls, this is the situation that would have caused it, and it can be duplicated on any machine. In addition, for this situation to have occurred, the voter that was in the voting booth at the time of the poll workers action would have voted the opposite party ballot instead of telling the poll worker that the incorrect ballot was activated and the machine would not allow them to vote the party they intended. If they had informed the poll worker, they could have made the party selection change and the voter would have then voted the correct ballot style.
Several points are in order.
First, it’s obvious from this description, and from the fact that this happened on so many machines across the state, that even if Sequoia’s explanation is entirely correct, there was some kind of engineering error on Sequoia’s part that caused the machines to misbehave. Sequoia has tried to paint the anomalies as poll worker error, but that’s not plausible in light of Sequoia’s own explanation.
Consider the scenario described above: there is a moment when the red light next to the DEM button is lit, the operator panel displays DEM, then the poll worker presses the Activate button – and the Republican ballot is activated. No competent engineer would design a system to work that way.
No competent engineer would design this system to ever display REP in the operator panel while simultaneously lighting only the DEM light.
No competent engineer would design this system to ever activate the Republican ballot when the poll worker had pressed the DEM button but had not pressed the REP button.
Sequoia’s own explanation makes clear that they made an engineering error that caused the voting machine to behave incorrectly.
Second, this doesn’t look like fraud, only error. A malicious attacker who had access to a machine would have had much more powerful, and much less detectable, options at his disposal.
Third, Sequoia seems to avoid saying that what they describe is the only possible cause of such errors. Note the careful wording, “In each and every case where a machine displays [an error], this is the situation that would have caused it …” (emphasis added). They don’t say this “did” cause the errors; they say it “would have”. The sentence is either clumsy or artfully worded.
Fourth, Sequoia’s explanation involves a voter seeing the wrong party’s ballot being activated, and not complaining about it. Assuming (as press accounts say) that the problem happened about sixty times in New Jersey, one would expect that many voters noticed and complained. And one would expect that in at least one of those cases, a poll worker would have noticed that the operator panel was displaying REP and DEM at the same time. Yet there don’t seem to be reports of such behavior.
Fifth, Sequoia doesn’t characterize fully the cases where this problem might occur, so election officials don’t know, for example, which past elections might have been affected.
The bottom line is clear. An investigation is needed – an independent investigation, done by someone not chosen by Sequoia, not paid by Sequoia, and not reporting to Sequoia. |
05 December, 1:08am
Could the pairing of Super Rugby’s most enigmatic player with its most frustrating team be a match made in heaven?
The most notable name in Australian unemployment statistics this week, Quade Cooper, probably won’t have a hard time finding a new gig somewhere in the world. While it might be a stretch to think he’d return to the land of his birth, some analysis of a potential move to the Blues does actually hold some water – especially since there is no evidence that any other Australian franchise has plans to pick up Cooper for 2018.
Here’s why the Blues should sign him:
Super 10’s
The Auckland-based Blues have a ton of talent on paper, including some of the most dangerous backs in the competition: Sonny Bill Williams, Rieko Ioane, Melani Nanai to name a few. But, to the frustration of their fans, they’ve consistently under-delivered in the New Zealand conference – having to watch every other New Zealand franchise win at least one title since 2010.
There is one common theme among the champions. They all had an international calibre first-fives – including the Crusaders’ Richie Mo’unga, who played his first game for the All Blacks on their recent European tour. Historically, the teams that win Super Rugby have had an international quality 10 at the helm, and this isn’t just the New Zealand championship teams.
The Blues right now are similar to the Hurricanes of the 2000’s – rock star backs without a top quality first five. Cooper has vast international experience with 70 test caps to his name, is one of the few 10’s to have beaten the All Blacks, already has a Super Rugby title and, maybe most importantly, has a New Zealand passport.
The Blues troubles at 10
The Blues region has been infamously unable to produce a first five since the beginning of Super Rugby. From their first, and best ever, Carlos Spencer (who hails from Levin) to their pivot from last year, Ihaia West (Hawkes Bay).
Their latest two prospects – Stephen Perofeta and Otere Black, hail from Wanganui and Manawatu – in the Hurricanes region. These two players have come through the New Zealand under 20’s and present exciting prospects, but are unproven in Super Rugby. In pure bad news Blues fashion, Black is out for the entire Super Rugby season anyway with a knee injury picked up in the Mitre 10 Cup.
The Blues have shown before they will gamble – the ill-fated signing of league convert Benji Marshall in 2014 was a high-risk high-reward signing that did not pay off. On the face of it, Cooper is a much better proposition – for a start, he plays the right code.
Sea Change
Moving to the Blues would give Cooper’s Super Rugby career an immediate reboot. The problems at the Reds run far deeper than Cooper himself – a fresh location, new teammates and less onus on Cooper would give him the best chance to return to his stellar 2011 form.
The current situation will be hurting Cooper’s ego. Never before has he been unwanted like this, he left the Reds on his terms and they bent over to bring him back. This works in the Blues favour, a bruised ego will hopefully bring back the best side of him and motivate change.
He arguably has never had the sort of weapons such as Rieko Ioane and Sonny Bill Williams to work with before. Williams is renowned for his professionalism and work ethic – and more importantly already harbours a close relationship with Cooper. Any concerns about a negative impact of bringing Cooper in should be dampened by this fact, the two would likely work well together.
If Cooper can re-capture the 2011 magic, it would be the second coming of Carlos. They are similar players who shared criticism for their creative style of play and attitude. Playing in Auckland worked for Spencer, it could work again for the closest thing we have seen to Spencer.
Then there’s the added factor of ‘redemption’ for the Tokoroa-born Cooper. He’s long been unfairly bagged as a traitor by New Zealanders, however he did himself no favours during his test career by trying to tussle with Richie McCaw in their Bledisloe Cup encounters. A successful return to an NZ team would greatly improve his legacy in these parts, in fact all it can take is one successful kick – just ask Stephen Donald.
The biggest hurdle for Cooper
There is no denying that since 2011, the best of Cooper has been seen sparingly. At 29-years-old Cooper is, admittedly, approaching his twilight years.
Super Rugby is a young 10’s game – all of the pivots that have won Super Rugby are in their mid-20’s – Richie Mo’unga (23 in 2017), Beauden Barrett (25 in 2016), Lima Sopoaga (24 in 2015), Bernard Foley (25 in 2014), Aaron Cruden (23/24 in 2012/13), Cooper (23 in 2011), Morne Steyn (25/26 in 2009/10).
Dan Carter, who won three titles with the Crusaders, won his last at 26-years-old – despite playing Super Rugby until 33. The oldest first five to win a Super Rugby title is Stephen Larkham, who at 30 guided the 2004 Brumbies championship.
Cooper would have to buck the recent trend, but he has missed significant game time recently. 2015 was largely spent on the sidelines due to injury, and his time in France saw limited action.
However, it’s notable that Spencer was 28 at the time of his vintage 2003 championship season for the Blues – the last time they troubled the Super Rugby trophy engravers.
Roll of the dice
A key factor in this decision would be – does Cooper care about winning? Would he take a pay-cut to prove he can play at a high-level in the best professional club competition in the world? Or does he want to take the yen in Japan playing in a lower quality competition?
If the Blues could pick up Cooper on a cheap one-year deal – they could give him the opportunity to start the 2018 season. If the spark is there, they could make a run to the playoffs. If it isn’t, they hand the reigns over to Black or Perofeta and begin building their experience.
The Blues have nothing to lose – as the above history suggests, they aren’t going to be in the frame to win without a top-level first-five. Despite the outstanding promise shown, it will take a few seasons for 22-year-old Black or 20-year-old Perofeta to get to that level.
Like the Marshall deal, signing Cooper would attract a massive amount of scrutiny. But, unlike Marshall, this actually makes some sense. It could pay off handsomely – and if it doesn’t then the Blues haven’t lost much.
Because given the results they’ve had in recent years, there’s nothing left to lose anyway.
READ MORE:
Former Wallabies take to Twitter to protest Quade Cooper’s treatment
Queensland Reds drop second player within 24 hours
Tell us what you think about the Rugby World Cup and you could win £100 |
Needing some new home decor ideas that you can sew? Some of the most incredible and creative home decor ideas I have ever seen were homemade and hand sewn. There is just something about the look of handmade sewing projects that mass produced items will never capture. Home decor sewing projects are not just for the experts, either. Plenty of awesome sewing projects are perfect for beginners and can even be made pretty quickly. With a basic sewing machine and a trip or two to the fabric store plus a little hard work and ingenuity, you can make some the the best curtains, pillows, bedding, rugs, napkins and home decor. Craft ideas like these make super DIY gifts for friends and family, too – especially housewarming gifts! Check out these do it yourself ideas and tutorials for home accessories and decor you will be be proud to show off.
79 Amazing Sewing Projects for your Home
1. DIY Fabric Floor Mat
melissating
2. French Mattress Style Cushion
diyjoy
3. DIY Reversible Fabric Storage Bin
haberdasheryfun
4. Reversible Table Runner
tealandlime
5. DIY Ribbon Trimmed Roman Shades
lifelovelarson
6.Adjustable Unisex Apron
purlsoho
7. Cozy Pillow Bed
dabblesandbabbles
8. Black and White Pot Holders
wecanmakeanything
9. Super Simple Dishtowels
purlsoho
10. Curtains from Vintage Scarves
apartmenttherapy |
Tied to your Steam ID
Steam Early Access survival game Rust is no stranger to controversy -- having made players' in-game penis size based on their Steam ID -- and it looks like there is about to be another one.
In the latest update, Rust has made gender assignment tied to your Steam ID, meaning players have no choice in the matter of whether they are male or female. Some vocal players are upset by this change, but everything about the player's character has always been randomly generated, perhaps to simulate being born into the real world.
Developer Garry Newman had previously said, "We're not 'taking the choice away' from you. You never had a choice. A man’s voice coming out of a woman’s body is no more weird than an 8-year-old boy's voice coming out of a man’s body."
This update released besides a plethora of other changes which you can check out on the developer's blog.
We're not 'taking the choice away' from you. You never had a choice. A man’s voice coming out of a woman’s body is no more weird than an 8 year-old boy’s voice coming out of a man’s body."
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Home Audio samples Download Register Forums Help Perfect Declipper 3.01 (April 2017) For a quick impression of what Perfect DeClipper does, listen to this: [ WAV ] [ MP3 ].
What is it?
Perfect Declipper improves the audio quality of too loud recordings. This includes most modern CD's and MP3's (see 'Why should I use it' on the right). It does this by calculating the missing (clipped) information from the data that is still available.
Clipped input signal
Perfect DeClipper output signal. Note that even in larger clipped areas the higher frequencies are restored. This does not depend on how many samples there are before another clipped area starts!
Why should I use it?
In the 1980's, CD's were expensive and only available in high-end systems - and hence most CD's were recorded at the best possible quality. In the last two decades, due to what is called the loudness war, music has been released at continuously increasing volume levels. This has come at a cost: Reduction of dynamics and clipping. Clipping means that the loudest spikes in the music are cut off, which causes digital clipping distortion. In the last few years, it has gotten so bad that in some cases you can even clearly hear the distortion on laptop speakers.
Perfect Declipper can restore the clipped parts of the audio, in many cases the result is indistinguishable from the original, not clipped, recording. In the process, it also restores part of the dynamics.
Do I need high-end audio equipment to hear the difference?
No! In fact, I've received many emails and messages from people who stated that their cheap equipment suddenly sounded like a high-end system to them. Even on the cheapest headphones the difference in quality is amazing. Just check the samples on this site.
Products that have Perfect Declipper built-in
Perfect DeClipper technology is available in the following products:
Stereo Tool
Omnia.9
Omnia.11
Interested to build it into your product? Contact us via the email address at the bottom!
Most declippers to date restore spikes based on the last few samples just before clipped audio starts and the first few samples after the clipping ends. While this does restore some lost dynamics, it often does not remove the distortion that is caused by clipping.
Perfect DeClipper uses a revolutionary new algorithm to restore clipped areas in audio recordings. This new algorithm does not only restore the dynamics, but it also removes almost all the distortion.
A perfect reconstruction is not possible because some data is lost. Perfect DeClipper is called 'perfect' because I think I can mathematically prove that its algorithm approaches (one of) the best possible reconstruction(s) based on the data that is available.*
*) I have not yet tried to prove this. Multiple solutions might be equally good based on the available data. |
Washington (CNN) -- The top U.S. military officer said Thursday that Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, was risking lives to make a political point by publishing thousands of military reports from Afghanistan.
"Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference at the Pentagon.
In equally stern comments and at the same session, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the massive leak will have significant impact on troops and allies, giving away techniques and procedures.
"The battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners, and may well damage our relationships and reputation in that key part of the world," Gates said. "Intelligence sources and methods, as well as military tactics, techniques and procedures will become known to our adversaries."
Gates said the United States has been contacted by Afghanistan, Pakistan and "other governments" concerned about the leak. One of the lasting impacts, he said, is rebuilding trust that the U.S. military can keep secrets secret.
Assange has refused to say where his whistle-blower website got about 91,000 United States documents about the war. Some 76,000 of them were posted on the site Sunday in what has been called the biggest leak since the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War.
"I spent most of my life in the intelligence business, where the sacrosanct principle is protecting your sources. And that involves your sources trusting you to protect them and to protect their identities," Gates said. "That is one of the worst aspects of this, as far as I'm concerned. Will people trust us? Will people's whose lives are on the line trust us to keep their identities secret? Will other governments trust us to keep their documents and their intelligence secret?"
Gates said he called the FBI director to partner with the Pentagon in investigating the leak.
The defense secretary said the Pentagon is also reviewing procedures for handling classified information, which could affect the flow of valuable information to troops.
"In the wake of this incident, it will be a real challenge to strike the right balance between security and providing our frontline troops the information they need," Gates said. "We want those soldiers in a forward operating base to have all the information they possibly can have that impacts on their own security but also being able to accomplish their mission."
Perhaps surprisingly, the defense secretary said it was "only very recently" that he was made aware of the magnitude of the number of documents" that had been leaked. One of the main suspects in the current document leak investigation, according to military officials, had been arrested back in the spring and eventually charged with downloading thousands of documents and a video of a 2007 airstrike in Iraq that was published earlier this year by WikiLeaks.
Gates said the defense department did not know how many more documents were out there.
"The reality is, at this point, we don't know how many more there are out there ... it could be a substantial additional number of documents, and we have no idea what their content is, either," he said.
For those put at risk by the documents, the defense secretary said the U.S. has a "moral obligation" to protect those whose names appear in the documents.
WikiLeaks' founder has said the organization held back thousands of documents in order to redact information that could put people at risk. But CNN's own review of documents found instances of names of informants and those who cooperated against the Taliban, as well as names of suspected insurgents who were being watched. |
“ There’s no other place I’d rather be.” – Anthony Davis, when discussing the city of New Orleans at All-Star weekend, 14th February 2014.
In the two years since New Orleans won the draft lottery there has been mass transformation to a franchise fighting to get back into the playoffs. The team has evolved its roster with a core group of young veterans mixed with a variety of key role players.
The catalyst for change is not in any one of these details, it’s in the emergence of their young rising power-forward Anthony Davis.
At just 21 years of age he has already won a gold-medal, already been to an All-Star game and already led the league in shot-blocking. He’s a terrifying force to be reckoned with and there’s little anyone can do to stop him.
What makes the New Orleans Pelicans such an enigmatic team is the level at which Davis can reach. Nobody is quite certain how good he could be with the cliché moniker, “the sky is the limit” being perpetuated around the league.
But the NBA truly is Davis’ oyster, he can be as good as he wants to be and choose to be any type of player he wants. The skill-set is still as diverse and bountiful as it was coming in to the league.
The 2013-14 season was a reflection of just how far Davis has come in so short a time.
What Did His Season Compare To?
To get a grasp as to just how ridiculously amazing Anthony Davis played let us filter the results for the following categories:
PER >/= 26
Points Per-Game >/= 20
Blocks Per-Game >/= 2.8
Free-Throw Percentage >/= 70%
Minutes Qualified
A total of 5 players make the list, they are:
David Robinson (6)
Kareem Adbul-Jabaar (4)
Tim Duncan (1)
Hakeen Olajuwon (1)
Anthony Davis (1)
The brackets in this case signifies how many times a player had such a season. Want to guess who the youngest was to achieve such a feat? You guessed it, Anthony Davis at 20 years of age. The next closest was David Robinson at 24 years old (this was his rookie season too).
It captures an overall sense of just how spectacular Anthony Davis’ season was. Every single one of these players are Hall of Famers.
Extending the comparisons further using the table below we can judge just how he fares when placed next to some of the other league’s leading power-forwards.
The two tables above clearly demonstrate that Anthony Davis belongs in the conversation as best power-forward in the entire NBA. At his age he is already challenging other big-men for best in the league. The discussion is valid; Davis was 15th in the league in double-doubles, 15th in scoring, 2nd in PER and 3rd in win share per-48 among big-men.
Further to that if we look at where the others were in their careers at the same point as Davis it becomes clear that there’s plenty to be excited about.
For instance at the same age, Davis posts the best PER, best block percentage, scored the second most points and had the best offensive rating and win-share per-48. Defensively he still has a ways to develop, but all of the comparing big-men struggled early in their careers with that aspect of the game.
“Only three men have ever lead their teams in the following categories in a single season: Points, Rebounds, Blocks, Steals, and FG%. Looking at this roster and projecting forward, Anthony Davis could easily become the 4th.” – Michael McNamara October 20th 2013.
The Stretch
Davis was so close to doing something very few had done before: lead their team in points, rebounds, blocks, steals and FG%. Unfortunately he could not lead the team in the last category, that title went to Greg Stiemsma.
“The Stretch” refers to the series of games that Davis played in March where he was simply unstoppable. Everyone was in awe at how easily he dominated his opponents getting every look he could think of. In this period the Pelicans faced the Lakers, Bucks, Nuggets, Grizzlies, Trail Blazers, Celtics, Hawks, Heat and Nets.
Every night, fans witnessed a player becoming completely aware of his ability to be the best amongst his peers. Against the Heat, a likely contender for the NBA championship, he demanded the ball late in the game and he led his team to victory.
When playing Boston he took a game winning shot and made it before leading the Pelicans to an overtime victory.
Over the nine game stretch he averaged 31 points, 13.5 rebounds, 2.6 blocks, shot 57 per cent from the field and 86 per cent from the free-throw line. It was a thing of beauty to watch a young player dominate against much more experienced opposition.
His Team and Their Chemistry
Bill Simmons: I really like when you play small ball, with you at the 5 and him [Ryan Anderson] at the 4 and then the three guards. But it doesn’t seem like they always do that. What fails about that lineup that makes them not want to play it? Anthony Davis: Defense. *Chuckles* … . Our defense in that group is terrible. I don’t know why… He [Monty Williams] wants to play that group a lot, but we got to learn how to play better defense with that unit. – Anthony Davis and Bill Simmons | B.S. Report, 14th February 2014.
The New Orleans Pelicans are well on their way to developing their roster around Anthony Davis. Tyreke Evans does an excellent job of pushing the tempo off of steals and blocks. Jrue Holiday scores and distributes the ball evenly. Ryan Anderson spaces the floor. Eric Gordon slashes and handles the ball.
But no one is quite sure how it all fits together.
It presents a challenge for coach Monty Williams to figure out how to get the most out of the players on his roster. With Anthony Davis on the floor the Pelicans were +1.1 overall. Fans might be surprised to see that he played 58 per cent of the time at power-forward with 42 per cent at center.
Table 1.3 — The most frequent New Orleans Pelicans lineups involving Anthony Davis.
The above table illustrates who Anthony Davis played with the most. None seem to be very effective outside of the 5th most common. This lineup involved the one that many fans believe to be the best. In many respects it’s true, they outscore their opponents, they blocks more shots, get more steals, shoot better overall.
But they make less three pointers (4 less than their opponents overall) and as Anthony Davis pointed out they don’t play consistent defense.
There are very few that believe that Anthony Davis and Ryan Anderson aren’t the best options late in games for the Pelicans. Pairing Davis with Withey seemed productive late in the season. And there were times that Ajinca and Davis worked well in the front-court.
No single answer will solve this puzzle and for Monty Williams it will be an ever changing jig-saw to figure out who works well with his NBA superstar.
The issue this season was that injuries significantly affected Davis’ ability to mesh with the talent assembled on the roster. Tyreke Evans and Davis started to really click towards the end of the season and just goes to show you how important playing together for long periods of time will be.
Jrue Holiday and Ryan Anderson could not play throughout the season and the team could never find a groove. There were times when it appeared that this team was starting to click, as GM Dell Demps said, “At times, we were unguardable.”
But finding the right players to surround Davis is going to be dependent on the right balance of offense and defense and it’s up to both Monty Williams and Dell Demps to figure out how to do that.
His Case for Most Improved Player
The New Orleans Pelicans tried to make a case for Anthony Davis as the most improved player in the league. They might of been right, but they couldn’t stop Goran Dragic from taking the honor.
Davis had an amazing season. He was an All-Star and showed a remarkable ability to dominate games in a variety of ways. Dragic also replicated this in Phoenix, albeit with a slightly different style. The Suns were in the playoff hunt until late in the season when Dallas did just enough to get in.
This may seem trivial for the “Most Improved Player” award but it’s not. National analysts usually allocate awards based on team performance and the Suns were a much better and healthier team.
Across most statistics both Davis and Dragic fared even. Both players had near equal improvements in a variety of categories. It’s important to note that Dragic’s offensive efficiency was vastly better than Davis’. The reason for this was because Goran was able to shoot better from three.
Overall Davis had a very plausible case to be Most Improved Player of the year, but so too did Dragic.
His Best Game of the Season
I can’t decide which game was his best. Was it the Portland game? Or perhaps it was against the Heat? I’m going to go with the Celtics game when he posted a 40-20 game and pushed the Pels to victory in overtime.
As far as games go it doesn’t get much more awesome than this. Sure, it was against a pretty average opponent but he dominated them and when the game was on the line he wanted the ball in his hands.
His Game Is Ever Evolving
When a player develops he must add areas to his game. Offensively Davis seems to be making strides. His shot seems improved, he’s diversifying his isolation game and he’s growing chemistry in the pick and roll with certain team mates.
Defensively things are promising, but far from perfect. His pick and roll defense can be inconsistent at times with Davis not containing the ball-handler and forcing a reset of the opponents set. Teams have also worked out the best way to score against New Orleans is to take Davis away from the basket. This is as much a coaching issue as it is a players’, however it’s tough when the best shot blocker on the team is often found very far away from the basket.
Davis’ game has indeed evolved. If we glance at his shooting we can already see a marked improvement from his rookie season.
While these are less than ideal, comparing against his peers we can understand just how far he’s already come in his jump-shooting:
Table 1.5 — Anthony Davis vs. the avg of the listed players in jump-shooting by range for 2013-14.
Though it’s an aspect of his game that is concerning to a degree. Michael McNamara previously discussed at length what adding a jump-shot might do for Tyreke Evans and the same could be said about Davis.
His ability to finish in traffic is right up there with the best. He draws contact and is able to contort his body in ways which prevents the defender from even having a chance. Though developing this aspect of his game is vital for his longevity in the league. Taking sustained hits is never really a positive thing over the long term.
For Davis to expand his game his must be creative and luckily that’s something he’s already starting to do.
Graph 1.1 – Anthony Davis shot type 2012-13 vs. 2013-14
In the above graph Davis is already starting to isolate, post-up and spot up more. He’s shooting less as the pick and roll man and he’s cutting less as an off the ball player.
However this information isn’t quite useful without his performance in each category.
Graph 1.2 – Anthony Davis shot type points-per-possession 2012-13 vs. 2013-14
Davis shot more from isolations and as the post-up option and he did so by shooting better. His isolation was at 36% compared to 26% in 2012. His post-up game was at 40% compared to 25% in 2012. The numbers keep going on and on.
What this means is that the Pelicans are running a lot more of their sets through Davis. It’s likely the coaching staff see’s Davis as the filter through which their offense flows. If this is the case it’s something to be excited about, but it’s not without its limitations. Putting the ball in Tyreke Evans’ hands proved to be a winner towards the end of the season, so keeping a diversity of offensive functionality will be key moving into the future.
The one aspect which stands out above all others in the two graphs that may not be clear, is Davis’ ability to finish in transition. He was the 4th best player in the entire NBA when finishing in transition in 2013-14. He was the 2nd best in 2012-13.
This goes a long way towards rejecting Monty Williams’ desires to slow the tempo down. His top player is at his best when you push the ball, plain and simple.
There’s two sides to every argument which is why it’s important to look at how he’s fared defensively.
Table 1.5 – Anthony Davis defensive possessions individually faced 2012-13 vs. 2013-14.
The majority of the time Davis faced post-ups and spot-up situations. In those instances he played fairly well, though not overly outstanding. His defensive rank (in terms of PPP) jumped from 401st in the league to 118th. There’s something to be said for this as Davis grows into the league. Monty Williams has also made no secret of how tough players find his defensive schemes. This is also evident by the lackadaisical defensive numbers for the Pelicans.
Further behind the numbers there are patterns quickly emerging from Davis’ game. He’s reliant heavily on his ability to drive left which is a plus but appears far too reliant on it at times. There’s also a question about his discipline falling for pump-fakes. There’s been a noticeable difference, compared to last year, with Davis’ discipline to not fall for it every time.
Though these are minor critiques. Davis’ ceiling is higher than ever and quantifying it is no easy task. Many might say that developing each aspect of his game should take time and go through due process, but Anthony Davis’ waits for no one.
Next Season and Beyond
There is plenty for Davis to work on throughout the off-season. He needs to continue to get stronger and develop his lower body and core strength. His isolation and post up games continue to need refinement. Also continuing to build on his jump-shot will be just as vital.
Though it’s important to remember what got Davis to the position he’s currently in. The reason why he’s so good at what he does is because he’s able to play freely and with a style unique to his own. Boxing him in with notions of Tim Duncan and LaMarcus Aldridge in mind can do as much harm as good.
The most important aspect that many don’t consider is Davis’ defensive game. This is an area which he hasn’t made the world dominating strides that many predicted heading into his rookie season. The NBA is much more complex and fast-paced and as such Davis’ ability to defensively impact the game hasn’t been as significant as his offensive one. Beyond his first two seasons it is this area of his game which will be the most intriguing and likely will affect his place among the NBA’s elite.
To read past articles from our Season in Review series, click here. |
SAN DIEGO -- A sexual deviant reportedly exposed himself on a popular trail in Mission Valley Monday night.
Ashley Matthews, who works at 10News, says she was jogging along the San Diego River at about 7 p.m. when she saw a man pleasuring himself on the side of the public trail.
Matthews jogs on that trail about four times a week.
“It's frustrating, because it's so beautiful,” she explained. This is a perfect place to jog.”
“He was standing right here, and just watching the runners.”
The man had a scruffy beard, gray hoodie and dark pants was masturbating on the side of the trail.
“His pants were down at his knees, and I mean, serious face, like no big deal. This is apparently where that happens.”
It's making Matthews rethink where she exercises, even in broad daylight.
“I was like, ‘ah,’ and started running in the opposite direction,” Matthews said.
Matthews warned others to do the same and then she called police. She’s frustrated more isn’t being done to keep the trail safe.
“We pay really high rent to live over here, and we can't even enjoy this part,” she said.
Lately, Matthews says that with every step she takes on the trail, her fears grow.
“I turn down my music just so I can hear if something's going on. And that's a terrible feeling to have when you're out running and getting exercise.”
Matthews would like to see more officers patrolling the area so she and other runners can feel secure in their own neighborhood.
“Every time I'm down here, there's homeless people. There's men just staring at you when you're running from the brush, and I just don't feel safe.”
San Diego police tell 10News they are aware of the situation, but have to prioritize their resources.
You can expect to see more people on this trail as it continues to stay lighter longer. For a lot of neighbors, the river trail was one of the selling points for area. |
A photo of a 40 year old male producer has become a hot topic online.
On August 30, singer and songwriter Yoon Jong Shin posted on his Twitter account, "Lee Gyu Ho's photo is becoming quite a topic. He has produced another one of Ye Rim's songs, which will be released on her upcoming 2nd album."
The viral photograph of Lee Gyu Ho has left viewers in shock and wondering if he is really 40 years old. With his milky clear baby skin and melting eye-smile, viewers have been calling him the doppelganger of Girls' Generation's Taeyeon.
Viewers have commented, "He looks exactly like Taeyeon," "I can't believe I got butterflies by looking at a photo of a 40 year old ahjusshi," "I fell in love with Lee Gyu Ho after this picture," "He is the Korean Peter Pan," and "He gets prettier as he ages."
Contradicting to the image, Lee Gyu Ho is actually 40 years old. He was born in 1974 and in 1993 was presented the bronze medal at a popular music contest. In 1994 he debuted with the release of his first album "Alterego," and since then he's been labeled a hit producer as he has produced the songs of many artists, such as Yoon Jong Shin, Lee So Eun, Lee Seung Hwan, and many more. |
The fact that Community is nowhere to be found in the NBC mid-season schedule has fans understandably freaked out.
The show’s terrible ratings so far in the 2011-12 season cannot have helped with the anxiety levels.
However, with three full seasons ordered (NBC currently maintains that Community will return at some point later in the season), my assumption has always been that Sony (the show’s producer) would give the show away to get enough episodes produced for syndication (88 episodes would do it).
Now that the show will be off the schedule, at least temporarily, I think that the renewal of Community for season four will require a ‘Til Death style miracle renewal.
What was ‘Til Death you say? It was a little lamented Sony comedy that aired on Fox, sporadically, through 81 episodes.
Here is the miraculous tale of Sony’s ‘Til Death season four renewal.
After a weak sophomore season in 2007-8, ‘Til Death was renewed for a third season in 2008-9 during which its terrible ratings caused it to be pulled from Fox’s schedule in early October , never to return that season.
was renewed for a third season in 2008-9 during which its terrible ratings caused it to be pulled from Fox’s schedule , never to return that season. Amazingly, it was renewed yet again for a fourth season in 2009-10, almost certainly because Sony gave it away to generate episodes for syndication (I don’t recall commenters crying “Fox executives love it!” or “It has great DVR numbers!”), and during 2009-10 it aired at somewhat random times (and in somewhat random episode order) during the year (but rarely during sweeps!) bleeding into summer 2010 after which it failed to rise from the dead yet again (81 episodes in the can).
Community fans believing in miracles can take solace in the fact that this particular kind of Sony sitcom renewal miracle has happened before, and for that reason I still think the show’s no worse than a “toss up” for renewal or cancellation for next season. |
Marjory Holn had just finished running some morning errands when neighbours told her news that’s kept her holed up in her Scarborough home, fearing the worst. A “sick-looking” coyote has been spotted around Larwood Blvd. near the Scarborough Bluffs in the past week, and residents say their efforts to have it taken care of seem to be caught in a bureaucratic tangle.
A "sick-looking' coyote with a Ministry of Natural Resources collar has been spotted in Scarborough neighbourhoods. ( TORONTO STAR PHOTO )
“I can’t get out of here,” Holn told the Star, after her neighbours escorted her home as the animal lay on her lawn, scratching itself. Holn is elderly and has trouble with her vision. “I don’t know what it’s going to do. It could probably attack me.” Holn says she alerted police Friday morning. Police confirmed they received calls, but referred the matter to the Ministry of Natural Resources.
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The ministry, whose tag the coyote was wearing, says the animal was part of a study looking at coyote population dynamics in urban areas. Ministry officials say they are unsure how the animal got to the neighbourhood, but hope to “chemically immobilize” it and place it in the care of the Toronto Wildlife Centre this week. In an email to the Star, the centre’s executive director said “considerable time and resources” have been spent trying to capture the coyote. “Our rescue team tried again this weekend, spending four hours tracking the sick animal before losing sight of him,” said Nathalie Karvonen. “Coyotes are notoriously hard to catch; they are smart and very wary of people’s actions around them.” Despite resident fears, Karvonen said the animals are not known to attack, because they are “terribly afraid of people.” She confirmed that the “animal is suffering terribly and may die if not captured and treated soon” because it has a severe case of mange, a skin disease that causes itching, fur loss and the formation of scabs.
Residents such as Gloria Llewellyn, who first spotted the animal on Sept. 8 around 9 a.m., say they are concerned for its well-being because it has been seen looking ill, wandering slowly and resting for prolonged periods. “I thought someone would have already come because I think he needs to be caught,” she says. “There might be something wrong with him and may be may need to be treated or put down.”
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Mary Lou Leiher, Toronto Animal Services program manager, says city staff have looked at the animal, but have not confirmed whether it is sick. “If it was sick enough to be captured, we would, but it sounds like it isn’t sick enough to pick up.” The animal’s presence along the quiet, suburban street has triggered plenty of alarm, Holn says. “We have lots of deer, but they don’t do anything. You never see a coyote lying on the street or the lawn,” she says. “There’s nearby schools and kids may think it’s a dog they can pet.” Leiher says coyotes tend to be “elusive” and have only ever bitten one person in Toronto, but “sometimes they become less afraid and hang around houses.” She urges anyone who sees the coyote to avoid feeding or agitating it. |
Mosques around France have paid tribute to the victims of the attack on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo which left 12 people dead.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CRCM) and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France called on the imams of the 2,300 mosques in France to devote their Friday preaching to the condemnation of "violence and terrorism".
"It's a special occasion today to call for solidarity," said Houssen Amode, representative of CRCM ahead of Friday prayers.
France, the home to one of Europe's largest Muslim populations, witnessed several attacks on Muslims' places of worship places after Wednesday's deadly attack in Paris.
Several training grenades were thrown into the courtyard of a mosque in the French city of Le Mans on Wednesday. One exploded, but no one was injured.
Near Narbonne in southern France, several shots were fired in the direction of a Muslim prayer hall shortly after evening prayers.
The hall was empty, the local prosecutor said.
An explosion was reported at a kebab shop close to a mosque in eastern France on Thursday morning,
There are no reports of any injuries and the cause of the blast was unknown.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith condemned the attack on the Charlie Hebdo publication, describing it as a "barbaric act against democracy".
"We are deeply shocked by what we saw and felt at the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, the horror stories, the unspeakable pain: it was a war field with Kalashnikov rifles and shooting in Paris," said Dalil Boubaker, president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith.
"Those who have committed this attack are barbarians and cannot claim to have done it in the name of the Muslim community or religion: the Muslim community aspires to peace and living together. Islam absolutely condemns the killings," he said.
The Union of Islamic Organizations of France said: "We condemn this criminal attack and these horrible murders."
The Collective Against Islamophobia in France said the attack was a "despicable and hateful act that we denounce with force".
"We expect from our representatives responsible speeches in order to avoid any unwelcome stigma of Muslim citizens and to avoid feeding a heavy climate of prejudice and rejection," it said in a statement.
Three human rights associations - the Council for Justice, Equality and Peace, the Union of French-Turk Entrepreneurs and the Organization of Racism and Islamophobia Watch - issued a joint statement condemning the attack.
"No act justifies the barbarity and cruelty of these crimes. We can be in disaccord with the press, but the fight should be led with words against words and certainly not with weapons," the statement said.
"This act risks having heavy consequences for the Muslim community in France and puts an end to the years of work by our associations in fighting against Islamophobia and racism," it added. |
Actor George Segal’s name will be among the stars on the Walk of Fame, it was announced Monday by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
Segal, 82, a Hollywood icon with a more than 50-year career, has been a performer ever since 1934 — when, as a 10-year-old, he started a magic act. Since those humble beginnings, the veteran stage, film and television actor has amassed an impressive resume that runs the gamut from lighthearted comedies to heart-wrenching dramas, earning him five Golden Globe nominations, an Academy Award nomination, a BAFTA nomination, two Golden Globe wins, and other honors.
Among his numerous television appearances, fans most recognize him from his roles on “Just Shoot Me!” and “Entourage.” Currently, he’s part of the sitcom cast of “The Goldbergs.” He also co-hosted the 48th Annual Academy Awards in 1976.
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On the big screen, his many credits include “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” for which he received an Oscar nomination, as well as “Ship of Fools,” “King Rat,” “The Owl and the Pussycat,” and “A Touch of Class.” He most recently appeared as Jake Gyllenhaal’s father in “Love & Other Drugs.”
He also is an accomplished banjo player, having released three albums and performed with the instrument in several of his acting roles.
Segal long has been an advocate and donor for the charity Erasing the Stigma, which aims to eradicate misperceptions about those suffering from mental illness.
His star, in the television category, will be the 2,602nd on the Walk of Fame. The dedication will take place at 11:30 a.m., Tuesday, Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, at 6433 Hollywood Blvd., in front of the historic Pacific Theatre. Guest speakers at the event will include David Spade and Kevin Smith.
The dedication will be live-streamed exclusively on WalkofFame.com. |
From nearly the beginning of the Citus Cloud service, we’ve had an internal formation provisioned and managed by the service itself. Dogfooding in this manner brings all the usual benefits such as gaining operational knowledge, customer empathy, and etc.
However, more interesting than yet another blog post going over the importance of dogfooding is the two different ways we’re using our Citus formation. Setting up a distributed table requires a bit more forethought than a normal Postgres table, because the choice of shard column has a big impact on the types of queries and joins you can do with the data.
We’re going to look at two cases here: a time-series metrics table and an events table.
Time-Series Metrics
The first is a metrics table that we fill with data from AWS Cloud Watch for all servers and volumes that we manage. We then show graphs of this both for internal and customer-facing dashboards. The table has the following structure and is sharded on server_id . The primary key is several columns wide to both serve as a unique constraint preventing duplicate data points and as an index over all the columns we query on.
Table "public.cw_metrics" Column | Type | Modifiers --------------+--------------------------+-------------------- server_id | uuid | not null aws_id | text | collate C not null name | text | collate C not null timestamp | timestamp with time zone | not null sample_count | bigint | not null average | double precision | not null sum | double precision | not null minimum | double precision | not null maximum | double precision | not null unit | text | collate C not null Indexes : "cw_metrics_pkey" PRIMARY KEY , btree ( server_id , "timestamp" , aws_id , name )
Some sample rows:
citus => select * from cw_metrics order by timestamp desc limit 2 ; - [ RECORD 1 ] + ------------------------------------- server_id | f2239a4b - 7297 - 4 b66 - b9e3 - 851291760 b70 aws_id | i - 723 a927805464ac8b name | NetworkOut timestamp | 2016 - 07 - 28 14 : 13 : 00 - 07 sample_count | 5 average | 127505 sum | 637525 minimum | 111888 maximum | 144385 unit | Bytes - [ RECORD 2 ] + ------------------------------------- server_id | f2239a4b - 7297 - 4 b66 - b9e3 - 851291760 b70 aws_id | i - 723 a927805464ac8b name | NetworkIn timestamp | 2016 - 07 - 28 14 : 13 : 00 - 07 sample_count | 5 average | 32930 . 8 sum | 164654 minimum | 18771 maximum | 46584 unit | Bytes
There are currently only two queries on this table. The first is simply inserting data after periodically fetching data from AWS CloudWatch.
The other gets the data for the graphs that are shown both on the internal admin site and on the customer-facing console and looks like select … where server_id in (?,) and name in (?,) and timestamp > now()-'? hours'::interval . Because Citus shards are just normal postgres tables, this query is parallelized by going to only the shards necessary for the server_id list. Once on each shard, finding the data is very fast because the other two where conditions are covered by the primary key.
The main downside to sharding on server_id is expiring old data is a little cumbersome. We have to go to each shard and run a delete … where timestamp > '?' . This can take a while depending on how big a window we’re pruning, and it leaves a bloated table that requires vacuuming. A nice alternative is to use standard time-based table partitioning for each of the shards, and then simply drop the old time tables. We haven’t done this yet because expiry hasn’t been a problem so far, but it’s nice the option is there.
Events
The other table is a general event table. We are using a hosted exception tracker to discover problems in production. However we were also sending that service unexceptional exceptions. That is, these were expected errors, such as the failure to ssh into a server that was still booting. Sometimes an increased rate of exceptions in a particular category can indicate a problem even though a normal baseline rate is okay.
However the exception tracker was not the right place for this. It made it harder than necessary to spot real errors, so we moved these events to a distributed Citus table which looks like this:
Table "public.events" Column | Type | Modifiers ------------+--------------------------+----------- id | uuid | not null name | text | not null created_at | timestamp with time zone | not null data | jsonb | Indexes : "events_pkey" PRIMARY KEY , btree ( id ) "events_created_at_idx" brin ( created_at ) "events_data_idx" gin ( data jsonb_path_ops ) "events_name_idx" btree ( name )
The id column is a randomly generated uuid and the shard key, which gives a roughly equal distribution amongst the shards as events come in. Also because Citus is just an extension on top of Postgres, we’re able to take advantage of the powerful jsonb data type with the corresponding gin index which gives us very fast lookups on arbitrary keys, and the new brin index type.
Here are some example rows from the events table:
citus => select * from events order by created_at desc limit 2 ; - [ RECORD 1 ] - id | 9 a3dfdbd - c395 - 40 bb - 8 d25 - 45 ee7c913662 name | Timeout :: Error created_at | 2016 - 07 - 28 13 : 18 : 47 . 289917 - 07 data | { "id" : "5747a999-9768-429c-b13c-c7c0947dd950" , "class" : "Server" , "message" : "execution expired" } - [ RECORD 2 ] - id | ba9d6a13 - 0832 - 47 fb - a849 - 02 f1362c9019 name | Sequel :: DatabaseConnectionError created_at | 2016 - 07 - 28 12 : 58 : 40 . 506267 - 07 data | { "id" : "232835ec-31a1-44d0-ae5b-edafb2cf6978" , "class" : "Timeline" , "message" : "PG::ConnectionBad: could not connect to server: Connection refused
\t Is the server running on host \" ec2-52-207-18-20.compute-1.amazonaws.com \" (52.207.18.20) and accepting
\t TCP/IP connections on port 5432?
" }
This data is currently mostly used to show graphs on the admin dashboard to spot outliers. The query to gather data is for the graphs is
SELECT count ( * ), name , date_trunc ( 'hour' , created_at ) as hour FROM events WHERE created_at > now () - '1 week' :: interval GROUP BY name , hour ;
And the graphs look like
This clearly shows a time period of something not quite right. Sometimes we’ve gone into psql to look at the jsonb to get details if there is a high rate of some particular error to figure out which server is causing it. That is currently a manual process, and perhaps sample json bodies could be put into the UI, but doing the work for that hasn’t been worth it yet.
A more exciting project would be to use some machine learning on past time periods to automatically detect outliers. If we ever do that, I’ll be sure to put a writeup on the experience on this blog. |
WASHINGTON ― Still lacking an agreement on an omnibus spending deal to keep the government open, Congress passed a one-week funding measure on Friday so that Republicans and Democrats could continue negotiations.
Lawmakers generally saw the so-called continuing resolution as yet another letdown. Congress has already passed two previous continuing resolutions to give members more time to complete the 2017 appropriations process, which was supposed to be finished by the end of last September. Republicans were also hoping that passing an omnibus deal this week would allow President Donald Trump to tout the agreement as an accomplishment in his first 100 days, even if there are hardly any wins in the deal for Republicans.
The House easily passed the bill by a vote of 382-30, and then the Senate passed it by voice vote later Friday afternoon. Now the stopgap bill moves to Trump’s desk for his signature before midnight to avoid a government shutdown. With the extra time gained and barring any unexpected hiccups, lawmakers sound confident they can come to an agreement next week on legislation that will fund the government until October.
Democratic and Republican leaders, however, have yet to settle all their issues on the larger bill. Lawmakers are still hammering out some lingering provisions dealing with environmental, financial and drug regulations.
“Our people on the Appropriations Committee stayed up till 1:30 last night,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Friday. “They made a good deal of progress, but we still have some progress to go.”
Schumer said that Republicans had removed a number of policy riders that Democrats thought were inappropriate for a spending bill, but there were still some more provisions that Democrats want out. “And so we’re willing to extend things for a little bit more time, in hopes that the same kind of progress can continue to be made,” Schumer said. “But we still have a little bit of a ways to go, and they still have some poison pill riders that they haven’t dropped yet.”
Republicans and Democrats have agreed to the overall framework of the omnibus deal. Lawmakers and aides said the bill would appropriate money at levels consistent with the sequestration caps set in 2011 ― save for “emergency” border security funding and some money for the Overseas Contingency Operations fund. In a blow to Trump and other Republicans, the spending deal would not put money toward the construction of a border wall. In a blow to Democrats, it would not appropriate money for the Obamacare subsidies.
Even though many Republicans favor the government continuing to pay those subsidies, Republican appropriators said it would be unfair to force members of their party to vote for that money. “Because then you’d have to have members voting to sustain a system that they were against, and that’s not fair to ask them that,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said Friday.
The House is technically suing over the executive branch’s authority to make those payments. But Republicans seem to believe the situation is sustainable as long as the Department of Health and Human Services keeps making the payments and a court ruling in favor of the House remains stayed pending an appeal.
Lawmakers are also looking to close deals that would offer a permanent fix on health care benefits for retired miners and provide money to address a Medicaid shortfall in Puerto Rico, although both items are somewhat in flux. Members are still figuring out how much money will go to Puerto Rico and how miners’ health care costs will be offset in the budget.
“As long as they work out the details between how it’s going to be paid for,” said Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.), who’s been pushing for the miners, “we think it’s going to be fine.”
Zach Gibson/AFP/Getty Images House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer vented his frustration over the spending talks on Friday.
While the various agreements all seem to be coming together, there’s still the possibility that congressional talks could derail. It appears that Trump and his administration have periodically jumped into the talks and nearly wrecked already settled deals. A Trump tweet this week seemed to oppose money going to Puerto Rico even after Republicans had already conceded that point. Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney almost caused a health care crisis himself when he appeared to threaten a stoppage in the Obamacare subsidies, pressing Democrats to reconsider whether they could accept an omnibus deal without those “cost-sharing reduction” payments.
And then there is the larger push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act hanging over the whole process. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Thursday that he would urge Democrats to vote against the continuing resolution if Republicans tried to pass their health care bill this week. He sounded like a man at wits’ end over the entire situation.
“I am going to vote for this continuing resolution,” Hoyer said on the House floor Friday, “but I want to put my colleagues on notice, and the American people on notice, Mr. Speaker, that I will not vote for another one.” |
Apple has announced that it will be rolling out the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to an additional 36 countries this month, bringing the total number of markets to 69. The latest rollout will begin with India and Monaco alongside China on Friday.
Apple today announced that iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the biggest advancements in iPhone history, will arrive in 36 additional countries and territories across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa by the end of October. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will be available in a total of 69 countries and territories by the end of the month and are on track to be available in more than 115 countries by the end of the year, making this the fastest iPhone rollout ever …
NordVPN
The full schedule is:
Friday, October 17: China, India and Monaco
Thursday, October 23: Israel
Friday, October 24: Czech Republic, French West Indies, Greenland, Malta, Poland, Reunion Island and South Africa
Thursday, October 30: Bahrain and Kuwait
Friday, October 31: Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Guam, Hungary, Iceland, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macau, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, South Korea, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine and Thailand
Apple originally launched the new models in the US, France, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, United Kingdom, Australia and Japan, with a further 24 countries added on 26th September. Regulatory issues delayed the planned launch in China.
The iPhone 6/Plus is already available in pre-order in China, with claimed orders exceeding 20M units. The new models had already set a new sales record of 10M handsets in the opening weekend. Accessories too hit record sales levels in the US.
Apple’s full press release can be see below |
Content originally published at iBankCoin.com
A snarky elitist librarian from Cambridge, Mass. responded to First Lady Melania Trump’s gift of Dr. Seuss books with a condescending screed about how Dr. Seuss is racist – recommending Mrs. Trump should instead gift the (racist) books to underprivileged children.
Liz Phipps Soeiro turned down the collection of nearly a dozen books, telling the First Lady that her elementary school was ‘award-winning’ and ‘well-funded,’ before adding ‘You may not be aware of this, but Dr Seuss is a bit of a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature.
‘Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.
‘Open one of his books (If I Ran a Zoo or And to Think That I Saw it On Mulberry Street, for example), and you’ll see the racist mockery in his art.’
Oh no she didn't...
Within hours of Soeiro’s statements, internet sleuths dug up photos of the rabid liberal educator decked out as the Cat in the Hat in 2015 to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday, leading some to speculate it's the reason she deleted her Twitter account, @reflectlibrary.
2. Here's a picture Liz Phipps Soeiro posted actually celebrating Dr Seuss's books, so apparently she likes "racist" reading materials also! pic.twitter.com/F1CY0XJx5f — Deplorable Tigerfan (@Auburngirlx) September 29, 2017
I'm sure this is why the twit @reflectlibrary deleted her twitter account. Hahahahahaha pic.twitter.com/Gdi2RUuUbp — AnimalMother (@lusthogs) September 29, 2017
Melania responds
In response to Soeiro's rejection and letter, Melania Trump said the librarian's response was 'unfortunate,' adding that she wanted to use her platform 'to help as many children as she can.'
'To turn the gesture of sending young students some books into something divisive is unfortunate.' -First lady Melania Trump's office
Racist Michelle Obama
People were also quick to point out that first lady Michelle Obama has read the 'racist' books to children for years.
Last but not least – looks like professor hypocrite is also the creator of an anti-Trump t-shirt which says “Read Write Resist,” who says she designed the shirt “in response to our current political climate as a reminder of the power of information and the power of the people.”
Liz Phipps Soeiro Librarian who rejected .@FLOTUS donated Dr. Seuss books also designed this resist shirt for her reading campaign. pic.twitter.com/quEv7kDO00 — ???E? ??I? ???? (@passionatechica) September 29, 2017
Just google: reflectlibrary twitter
Not everything can be deleted pic.twitter.com/Skp0ARZ7a6 — lostinthemiddle (@dhb1974) September 29, 2017
Epic fail.
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U.S. officials fear that Ukraine's leaders are near a political implosion. | Getty Obama's Ukraine policy in shambles Distracted by ISIL, frustrated by infighting in Kyiv, the administration makes little progress against Putin in Europe.
President Barack Obama’s effort to rescue Ukraine from Russia’s military grip has stalled, and turmoil inside Ukraine's government may hand Russian President Vladimir Putin a victory in a conflict that Obama has said involves "the most basic principles of our international system.”
Two years after the pro-western protests that toppled Kyiv’s government, enraged Putin, and caused an international crisis, Obama’s Ukraine policy is foundering — the victim of Putin’s steely determination, the distractions of Syria and ISIL, and wavering support from European allies eager to move past the conflict.
Story Continued Below
Despite personal pleas from Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. officials fear that Kyiv's leaders are near a political implosion that would derail efforts to stabilize the country and eject Russia from its eastern territories.
"Syria has really taken the focus off of Ukraine. It feels to me like its going to be difficult for Europe to stay together and continue to pressure Russia with sanctions," the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, told POLITICO. "At some point you're going to have a frozen conflict that's very much to Putin's advantage."
Critics like Corker say that Obama's actions have failed to live up to his rhetoric, which casts Russia's presence in Ukraine as a grave threat to European security. Obama has rejected calls from several top advisers to provide Ukraine with weapons to fight off Moscow-backed separatists.
"Putin has paid no price," Corker said, adding that European leaders have told him Putin says "there is just no push back" from the U.S.
Nonetheless, the U.S. and Europe have imposed several rounds of economic sanctions on Moscow, and in recent months Obama has beefed up America's military presence on NATO's eastern flank.
But even as he warily partners with Putin on a cease-fire for Syria, Obama has not shaken the Russian leader’s support for the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has killed nearly 10,000 people and stunted the country’s political and economic progress. After a lull in violence, combat has spiked in recent weeks to the highest levels since last summer.
“Nothing has happened to suggest that the Russians are any more willing to give up control of Ukraine than they were before,” said Ivo Daalder, Obama’s first ambassador to NATO and now President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “In some ways, Syria became a distraction for us because it led us to work with Russia to try to address the Syrian crisis and to ignore what’s happening in Ukraine.”
Obama officials insist that the core of their strategy — implementing a February 2015 peace accord signed in Minsk that calls for Russia to withdraw forces from the country’s east — is still on track.
“We are pressing hard to see Minsk fully implemented by the time the president leaves office,” said a senior administration official, referring to the pact brokered by France and Germany and signed by Ukraine and Russia. “We’re aiming for implementation during the second half of 2016.”
Under the Minsk deal, Moscow must withdraw forces from eastern Ukraine and end its support for separatists; Kyiv must allow elections and greater autonomy for the country's relatively pro-Russian east; and the U.S. and Europe will lift sanctions on Moscow.
Privately, U.S. officials concede that a government collapse could make implementing the Minsk accord — something that was supposed to happen by the end of 2015 — all but impossible, at least before Obama departs the White House.
"The worst thing that could happen right now is for the government to collapse and to have new elections," said a second senior administration official, "because everything will spin into chaos, and the whole system will get locked up."
That was Biden's concern when he flew to Kyiv in early December. In an address to parliament, Biden urged Ukraine's government to remain focused on political unity and reform in the face of Putin's intimidation.
“It is no exaggeration to say that the hopes of freedom-loving people the world over are with you because so much rides on your fragile experiment with democracy succeeding,” Biden said. “It may be your last moment.”
Biden had barely departed when, two days later, the country's beleaguered prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenuk addressed the same parliament. As he spoke at the podium, a rival member threw his arms around him and carried him off like a mannequin, touching off a wild brawl.
The government nearly fell earlier this month when Yatsenuk, who enjoys a single-digits approval rating, narrowly survived a no confidence vote in parliament. Ukraine's President, Petro Poroshenko, has called for Yatsenuk's resignation, but Poroshenko is barely more popular, and faces charges he has done too little to combat rampant corruption.
Biden has been conducting damage control from Washington. The vice president, who has visited Ukraine four times since 2014 and says he's logged "close to a thousand hours on the telephone" with its leaders, has placed several more call to Yatsenuk and Poroshenko this month.
Russia has gleefully exploited the political disarray, casting Ukraine's leadership as unable or unwilling to take the political steps required by the Minsk deal.
"Our Ukrainian friends aren't doing their share," Moscow's ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, said in a recent interview. Russia wants the Ukrainians to move first on steps like amending the country's constitution to grant more autonomy to the east.
U.S. officials are adamant that Moscow is mainly to blame for the stalemate, saying that Kyiv can't be expected to move first when a portion of their country is a combat zone stoked by Russia.
Anti-government protesters make their voices heard in Kyiv on Feb. 21. | AP Photo
But even some Western officials concede that the Russians have a partial point.
"The implementation of Minsk now is more or less frozen," said a European diplomat. "Unfortunately, the Ukrainians are now actually carrying a big part of the responsibility of the blockage, because of the crisis in Kyiv.”
Such talk from Europe is ominous given the pressure European leaders are facing to end sanctions on Moscow, which have slowed their economies and cost their businesses profits.
Despite the occasional fistfight, U.S. officials insist things in the capital are not quite as bad as they appear. Ukraine's parliament has passed some significant reform measures in recent months. Poroshenko recently fired the country's prosecutor general, whom the U.S. saw as a major obstacle to battling Kyiv's endemic corruption.
"It's not necessarily pretty to watch," said one Western diplomat, arguing that "rooting out the vestiges of the old Soviet state" was never going to be easy — particularly amid "a concerted effort from their big neighbor to see that the reform project fails," he added.
That "big neighbor" is Russia, where Putin has worked to thwart Ukraine's political progress — including through the use of organized crime, according to Western officials.
And although Putin dialed down the violence in Ukraine's east last fall, Obama officials have been alarmed by a recent spike in fighting there. It remains unclear whether Putin is escalating the conflict, officials say, or if the separatists might be acting on their own.
U.S. officials say that until Putin stands down in the east, Kyiv will be hard-pressed to pass the political reforms required by Minsk. The problem was illustrated when the parliament considered a measure granting limited autonomy for separatist-controlled areas last summer; violent protests broke out in Kyiv, leaving several people dead.
"Minsk is now in tatters. Western attention at the highest level is gone due to the migration crisis and the Obama administration's priorities lying elsewhere," said Andrew Weiss, a former Clinton White House national security aide now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The whole thing just looks really messy."
"The Russian bet here is that we have ADD, won't be able to keep the sanctions regime together, and will find other stuff to worry about," Weiss added.
The second administration official said the U.S. would remain focused on Ukraine, but that resolving the crisis could be impossible so long as its parliament looks like a fight club.
"Our message is, you have to have a government that functions. You can’t have disarray" the official said. "Otherwise, support from the international community is going to evaporate. So that’s the main point: 'You guys have got to figure this out.'" |
Getty Images
Bears quarterback Jay Cutler went from joking about winning the lottery to saying the Bears didn’t have to play him Powerball money.
Cutler said during his weekly radio show on ESPN 1000 that he’d consider taking a “hometown discount” to remain with the Bears.
Cutler has a year left (at $8.47 million) on his current deal.
“I’m not gonna try to break the bank,” Cutler said, via Michael Wright of ESPNChicago.com.
Co-host Tom Waddle suggested the veteran minimum, when Cutler said “What kind of discount we talkin’?”
Waddle said: “50 percent off.”
“Ah, c’mon,” Cutler said with a laugh. “We can talk like 5 or 10 [percent off], but 50? This isn’t a going-out-of-business sale.”
When things turned more serious, Cutler said it was important to him to leave the Bears with flexibility to bring in more players.
“I want to be on a successful team, and I know that paying one or two or three players premium [salaries] hurts your chances of being able to bring in extra talent,” Cutler said. “So when we get there, we’ll figure it out. . . .
“You get to a point in your career I think it’s not even about money. You’re secure. You want to win Super Bowls.”
The two sides haven’t started talking about a new deal, but Cutler knows he made things more difficult for his agent.
“I don’t think I should even be saying stuff like this. I’m killing myself right now,” Cutler said. “I’m breaking the bank. Let’s go back; rewind. Bus [Cook] is gonna text me [saying], ‘What are you doing right now?'”
For all the attention paid to his previous pouting and trantrums, Cutler has flourished this year with wide receiver Brandon Marshall. While he may not be everyone’s cup of tea, in Chicago, it seems to be working, and he seems to realize he can extend that if he chooses. |
After a few timid signs of warming, Sino-Indian relations seem to be headed for the freezer. While Beijing refuses to take Indian security concerns seriously, New Delhi may have decided to take the Chinese challenge head-on. To complicate matters for India, its erstwhile ally Russia, which has become a close friend of China, is showing interest in establishing closer ties with Pakistan.
The latest move that clenches teeth in India is China refusing to lift a hold on Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar, accused of plotting multiple acts of terrorism against India, and blocking him in December from being listed as a terrorist by the United Nations. Since March, China has blocked India’s attempts to put a ban on Azhar, under the sanctions committee of the UN Security Council, despite support from other members of the 15-nation body. In response, India has gone beyond expressing dismay by testing its long-range ballistic missiles—Agni IV and Agni V—in recent weeks. Pakistan, aided by China, has also jumped in by testing its first sea cruise missile that could be eventually launched from a Pakistani submarine.
China has upped the ante, indicating a willingness to help Pakistan increase the range of its nuclear missiles. China’s official mouthpiece, Global Times, contended in an editorial: “if the Western countries accept India as a nuclear country and are indifferent to the nuclear race between India and Pakistan, China will not stand out and stick rigidly to those nuclear rules as necessary. At this time, Pakistan should have those privileges in nuclear development that India has.”
China’s $46 billion investment in the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, also troubles India as the land corridor extends through the contested territory in Kashmir which India claims as its own. India views CPEC as an insidious attempt by China to create new realities on the ground and a brazen breach of India’s sovereignty and territory. The Chinese media have suggested that India should join CPEC to “boost its export and slash its trade deficit with China” and “the northern part of India bordering Pakistan and Jammu & Kashmir will gain more economic growth momentum.” New Delhi has questioned if China would accept an identical situation in Tibet or Taiwan, or if this is a new phase in Chinese policy with China accepting Pakistan’s claims as opposed to the previous stance of viewing Kashmir as disputed territory.
Faced with an intransigent China, India under the centre-right government led by Narendra Modi is busy reevaluating its China policy. Modi’s initial outreach to China soon after coming to office in May 2014 failed to produce any substantive outcome and he has since decided to take a more hard-nosed approach. New Delhi has strengthened partnerships with like-minded countries, including the United States, Japan, Australia, and Vietnam. India has bolstered its capabilities along the troubled border with China and the Indian military is operationally gearing up for a two-front war. India is also ramping up its nuclear and conventional deterrence against China by testing long-range missiles, raising a mountain strike corps for the border with China, enhancing submarine capabilities, and basing its first squadron of French-made Rafale fighter jets near that border.
More interesting is a significant shift in India’s Tibet policy with the Modi government deciding to bring the issue back into the Sino-Indian bilateral equation. India will openly welcome the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader who has lived in exile in India since 1959, at an international conference on Buddhism to be held in Rajgir-Nalanda, Bihar, in March. And ignoring Beijing’s protests, the Dalai Lama will also visit the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh which China claims as part of its own territory.
After initially ceding ground to Chinese sensitivities on Tibet and refusing to explicitly acknowledge official interactions with the Dalai Lama, a more public role for the monk is now presented as an essential part of the Indian response to China. In the first meeting in decades between a serving Indian head of state and the Dalai Lama, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee hosted the Buddhist leader at the inaugural session of the first Laureates and Leaders for Children Summit, held at the president’s official residence in New Delhi in December.
Pawn for giants: China strives to curb the influence of the Dalai Lama, who lives in India. The religion emerged in India during 5th century BC and has numerous sects. (Data: Pew Research and Dalai Lama’s schedule)
China has not taken kindly to these moves by India and vehemently opposes any attempt to boost the image or credibility of the Dalai Lama.
China has been relentless in seeking isolation for the Dalai Lama and often succeeds in bullying weaker states to bar the monk. After the Dalai Lama’s November visit to the predominantly Buddhist Mongolia, where he is revered as a spiritual leader, the nation incurred China’s wrath and soon apologised, promising that the Dalai Lama would no longer be allowed to enter the country.
But India is not Mongolia. There is growing disenchantment with Chinese behaviour in New Delhi. Appeasing China by sacrificing the interests of the Tibetan people has not yielded any benefits for India, nor has there been tranquility in the Himalayas in recent decades. As China’s aggressiveness has grown, Indian policymakers are no longer content to play by rules set by China. Although India has formally acknowledged Tibet as a part of China, there is a new push to support the legitimate rights of the Tibetan people so as to negotiate with China from a position of strength.
This Sino-Indian geopolitical jostling is also being shaped by the broader shift in global and regional strategic equations. Delhi long took Russian support for granted. Yet, much to India’s discomfiture, China has found a new ally in Russia which is keen to side with it, even as a junior partner, to scuttle western interests. Historically sound Indo-Russian ties have become a casualty of this trend and to garner Chinese support for its anti-West posturing, Russia has refrained from supporting Indian positions.
Worried about India’s growing proximity to the United States, Russia is also warming up to Pakistan. The two held their first joint military exercise in September and their first bilateral consultation on regional issues in December. After officially lifting an arms embargo against Pakistan in 2014, Russia will deliver four Russian-made Mi-35M attack helicopters in 2017 to Pakistan’s military. It is also likely that the China-backed CPEC might be merged with the Russia-backed Eurasian Economic Union. Jettisoning its traditional antipathy to the Taliban, Russia indicates a readiness to negotiate with the Taliban against the backdrop of the growing threat of the Islamic State in Afghanistan. Towards that end, Russia is already working with China and Pakistan, thereby marginalising India in the regional process.
As the Trump administration takes office in Washington on Jan. 20, it will be rushing into headwinds generated by growing Sino-Indian tensions and a budding Sino-Russian entente. Trump’s own pro-Russia and anti-China inclinations could further complicate geopolitical alignments in Asia. Growing tension in the Indian subcontinent promises to add to the volatility.
This piece first appeared on YaleGlobal Online. We welcome your comments at [email protected]. |
Must-Read: Larry Summers: Four Common-Sense Ideas for Economic Growth : “Since the summer of 2009, the US economy has grown at about 2 percent…
…The 10-year interest rate at the end of trading today [February 18, 2016] was just a bit below 1.8 percent…. We are having trouble achieving… a 2 percent inflation…. This is the judgment of a market that thinks that the Fed is not going to do anything like what it says it’s going to do…. The real interest rate is at least a kind of measure of the certainty equivalent of the productivity of capital. If the market is saying that’s below 1 percent, that has to be of concern as well. [And] the Fed has been substantially too optimistic in its one-year-ahead forecast every year for the last six….
What should be done?… First, there is an overwhelming case in the United States for expanded public infrastructure investment…. Yt the rate of infrastructure investment is lower now than it’s been anytime since 1947. If you take depreciation out, federal infrastructure investment is negative…. Second, we should increase support for private investment in infrastructure…. With respect to private investment, tax reform is critical…. Third, we should grow our effective labor force…. What we do to educate our workforce matters. What we do to incentivize our workforce—through the design of our social safety net, and through disability insurance—matters. What we do to change our immigration policies—particularly our immigration policies on highly skilled workers—matters….
Fourth, our financial system requires continuing attention… the 1987 crash, the 1990 real-estate bubble, the S&L crash, the Mexican financial crisis, the Asian financial crisis, the internet bubble, Enron, and then the Great Recession of 2008. On average, a crisis every three years for the last 30 years. That surely has taken a toll on growth. At the same time, because pendulums swing, at a time of substantial unemployment, a large number of middle-class Americans are not able to get mortgages today with reasonable down payments. It appears, though the matter is in some dispute, that there are significant impediments in the flow of capital to small businesses as well. Financial reform, labor-force support, stimulus to private investment, increases in public investment—this stuff is not rocket science. Most of it operates on both the demand side and the supply side….
If all you care about is that we’ve got an excessive federal debt, the most important determinant of the debt-to-GDP ratio in 2030 is how rapidly the economy grows between now and then. If what you care about is American national security, the most important determinant of how much we are respected and how much influence we have in the world is how well our economy performs. If what you care about is inequality and poverty, the most important determinant of the employment prospects of the poor is how rapidly the economy is growing… |
Samsung is putting
Israel
on the map again:
The global technology giant on Tuesday launched its new initiative, an international innovation and strategy center. The center's headquarters will be located in Menlo Park in California's Silicon Valley, but it will have two branches – one in South Korea (Samsung's country of origin) and one in the central Israeli city of Ramat Gan.
The new center will be headed by Young Sohn, Samsung's chief strategy officer, who was appointed just four months ago. Yedioth Ahronoth has learned that Young Sohn visited Israel two weeks ago and that this week's announcement is a direct result of that visit.
Global Recognition Tel Aviv named 2nd best high-tech center Sagi Cohen International study ranks Israeli metropolis immediately after Silicon Valley as top place in the world to found a startup company Tel Aviv named 2nd best high-tech center
The innovation center's Israeli branch will be established under Samsung Semiconductor's existing research and development center in Ramat Gan. Samsung executives are said to be extremely satisfied with the R&D center's performance and results, which have prompted them to open one of the new initiative's branches in Israel.
The new center is part of Samsung's comprehensive strategic plan aimed at increasing investment in research and development.
The Israeli technology Samsung plans to invest in will eventually reach the company's future products.
Samsung's new investments in Israel, as part of the innovation and strategy center, will focus on three areas: Investment in young Israeli startup companies, whether through a direct investment of capital or through active cooperation aimed at advancing developments and technologies matching Samsung's future plans; investment in the Israeli academia, whether by funding research being conducted in the country's universities or by taking ideas and studies created in the academia and developing them into a company and product in collaboration with the R&D center in Ramat Gan; and investment in local venture capital funds investing in Israeli startups.
Employees at Samsung Semiconductor's R&D center in Ramat Gan have been holding intensive rounds of meetings with many companies in recent months in an attempt to find the suitable candidates for cooperation and investments.
The new center will in fact be a wing of Global Samsung, through which the company will expand its activity in Israel. Acquisitions of local companies may follow, according to estimates.
Young Sohn said in a press conference in Silicon Valley on Tuesday that the company was likely to carry out both major and small acquisitions in the near future.
Strong relationship with Israel
The technologies the new center will focus on will not necessarily be smartphones and tablets, but would rather be part of a long-term outlook: LED screens, medical products, cloud technologies, data protection and other technologies meant to serve as growth engines for the company.
The semiconductor center, for example, does not develop chips but rather sensors for cameras and phones, digital picture processors and technologies in the field of computer vision.
Samsung is basically trying to become a leading company which reinvents new technological fields and categories. The decision to establish one of its innovation centers in the Jewish state implies that it is going to do so using Israeli technology.
The volume of Samsung's financial investment in Israel will be determined according to the number of projects and investments. But the potential is clearly huge: Samsung has announced the start of a new $100-billion investment fund, which will invest in larger companies as well. Part of this money will also reach Israel.
In fact, Samsung is conveying the message that it has available money for the Israeli market and that the projects for investment must be found.
Samsung's relationship with Israel has been particularly strong for many years now. Apart from the R&D center in Ramat Gan, which employs some 200 workers and is based on the Transchip company acquired by Samsung in 2007, there is another R&D center in Yakum, alongside the marketing activity and import of the company's products. |
Update: moments ago Reuters, citing the Saudi State News Agency, confirmed the report:
POWER RELAY FACILITY SET ON FIRE BY PROJECTILE FIRED FROM YEMEN TOWARDS SOUTHERN SAUDI ARABIAN CITY OF NAJRAN- SAUDI STATE NEWS AGENCY
* * *
While oil is spiking thanks to the dollar's kneejerk reaction lower following Yellen's (not really) hawkish speech, another reason for the move higher appears to be an unconfirmed report by Iran's PressTV that Yemeni forces have fired ballistic missiles at the facilities belonging to the Saudi state oil giant Aramco in the kingdom’s southwest.
From the report:
Yemeni forces have fired ballistic missiles at the facilities belonging to the Saudi state oil giant Aramco in the kingdom’s southwest. The retaliatory attack took place on Friday, hitting targets in Saudi Arabia’s Jizan region and causing considerable damage to the Aramco facilities there, Yemen’s al-Masirah television reported. The Saudi military has been pounding Yemen since March last year to undermine Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and to restore power to the former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh. Nearly 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Riyadh’s military aggression which lacks any international mandate.
An alleged video of the explosion (unconfirmed).
Historically, the accuracy of PressTV reports has been spotty at best, so waiting for confirmation may be prudent, although as of this moment algos are buying first and not even bothering to ask questions. |
Recently WPEngine released a new Vagrant machine called Mercury designed specifically for testing development WordPress sites with WPEngine’s specialized High Performance servers. WPEngine has been well known for a long time to provide specialized WordPress Servers which can handle an insane amount of traffic on even the most complex WP sites. For the average Joe who doesn’t know a lot about servers or the details of hosting a popular site this is the perfect setup since WPEngine handles the complicated server stuff and Joe only has to worry about adding content and such. Even for most web development agencies this is a good deal. However WPEngine has one major letdown, it’s expensive as all hell. Now for most people it’s well worth the money and if your site’s popular enough to warrant the specialization WPEngine provides you can easily make it back, but if you’re like me you want that same performance and specialization without the cost. WPEngine uses a lot of customized server setups, however Mercury gives us a glimpse into how WPEngine provides the kind of performance it does, and allows us to replicate it (on a much smaller scale).
An important note before we go any further. This guide is based off of the Mercury Vagrant machine released by WPEngine which was only designed to allow developers to test their WordPress sites before pushing them to WPEngine’s specialized environment. It contains only some of the technologies used by WPEngine, which is why I said WPEngine-Like, however it should get us most of the way to their high performance levels without too much technical stuff.
Picking a Server
The rest of this guide doesn’t matter if your hardware can’t keep up. The reason WPEngine can charge so much is that their servers are top-of-the-line and well-maintained, however we need the same high performance without paying an arm and a leg. For 95% of setups, I would recommend a simple VPS. Personally I would recommend Linode as I find that their support and service to be excellent however I know many people who swear by Digital Ocean and I’ve also never had a problem with them.
Linode (Referral Code, Non-Referral Code)
Digital Ocean (Referral Code, Non-Referral Code)
Vultr
We also want to be able to scale this server in line with our traffic, however since we’re going for the cheapest we can let’s compare the cheapest plan for both:
Linode: $10/month CPU: 1 Core Storage: 24GB SSD Transfer: 2 TB Digital Ocean: $5/month Memory: 512 MB CPU: 1 Core Storage: 20GB SSD Transfer: 1000GB Vultr: $5/month CPU: 1 Core Memory: 768 MB Storage: 15GB SSD Transfer: 1000 GB
IMO go for Linode since it provides you with a little more control over your servers, however both with work fine for our purposes.
Please use Ubuntu 14.04 LTS for the time being!
High Performance Setup
Once you have your VPS up and running and you’re connected through SSH we can start making some magic! I’ve setup two versions for you to choose from:
Full
This one includes:
Percona DB (MySQL)
(MySQL) HHVM (Default)
(Default) PHP-FPM (Backup)
(Backup) Nginx
Varnish (Running by default)
(Running by default) Memcached and APC
Clean WordPress Install (Latest Version)
(Latest Version) WP-CLI
Basic
This one includes:
Percona DB (MySQL)
(MySQL) HHVM (Default)
(Default) PHP-FPM (Backup)
(Backup) Nginx
Clean WordPress Install (Latest Version)
(Latest Version) WP-CLI
Installation
You can find the installations instructions in each Github Repository:
Full Version
Basic Version
Once it’s done remember to remove the cloned git directory from your server as it’s no longer needed.
If the server is still not running you may need to restart Varnish and Nginx. You can do so with:
sudo service varnish restart && sudo service nginx restart
You’re good to go! A new WordPress install running HHVM should be waiting for you at your hostname!
Speed/Stability Results
All load tests are run with Blitz.io (Referral Link, Regular Link) on a $10/month Linode server with a barebones install of WordPress (Full has W3 Total Cache installed and configured but nothing else). The test is run over 60 seconds and sends a total of anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000 hits to your server.
Basic Setup
Running:
Nginx
HHVM
Percona
No Caching Plugins
Report Link
Oh dear. That won’t do at all. As soon as the server took any kind of traffic it spluttered out and threw errors. And that’s even with HHVM! This is exactly the kind of things we need to prevent.
Full Setup
Running:
Nginx
HHVM
Percona
Varnish
APC & Memcached (Only Memcached used)
W3 Total Cache
Report Link
That’s more like it! Our tiny little $10/month server took 25,000 hits over 60 seconds and only had 1 error! This is exactly the kind of high performance we were looking for.
Security
I highly recommend installing fail2ban, a program which should stop most SSH brute force attacks. You can read on how to install it here. I also recommend a security plugin such as iThemes Security for more WordPress oriented security.
Conclusion
By the end you should have a server that runs close to the high performance of WPEngine, but rather then paying $30/month you’re now paying $5/10 and you can scale at your own rate. It’s also good to remember that YOU are in charge of your own server now, so it’s important to keep it well-maintained and updated.
Let me know if you have any questions or issues! |
On November 12, Nakanishi Chiyori (17) of Hakata, Fukuoka-based HKT48 (sister group of AKB48)appeared at a press conference for the �R-1 Grand Prix�2013� solo�comedian competition.
Nakanishi, who is in charge of HKT�s variety show, will participate in the Fukuoka preliminary for the competition this year. �I do not want people to think of me as an idol; I want them to think that I'm funny.� In front of other participants, such as storyteller Katsura Sando (43), Nakanishi stated, �I will make people who think I am just an idol, regret it,� and �declared war� by making a �strange face� under the concept of �a high-grade jar at a museum.�
A grand prize of �5,000,000 (USD $62,861.50) will be awarded to the winner in February, and the competition will be broadcast live on Fuji TV.
Source and Image: Sanspo
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A start-up plans to help solve the world’s climate problems by using drones to plant forests of seedlings.
“We are going to counter industrial scale deforestation using industrial scale reforestation,” says Lauren Fletcher, the founder of BioCarbon Engineering.
The environmental engineer who worked 20 years with NASA wants to use drone technology to plant up to one billion trees a year, without having to plant each one by hand.
Drones will fly two or three meters above the ground and fire out pods containing pre-germinated seeds that are covered in a nutritious hydrogel.
The company’s CEO, who might be called ‘Johnny Apple Drone’, thinks it should be possible to plant up to 36,000 trees a day, and at around 15% of the cost of traditional methods. And they aren’t just looking to create plantations of trees, but full ecosystems.
“Together with tree seeds, we hope to seed in other species including micro-organisms and fungi to improve the soil quality and ensure long-term sustainability of our efforts.”
(WATCH the video below or READ more from the Independent) |
Phillip Lolley will step out of his full-time coaching duties and take on an administrative position, Auburn coach Gene Chizik announced Tuesday.
“We appreciate Coach Lolley and the contributions he has made to the Auburn football program in his various roles over the years,” Chizik said. “We look forward to him continuing to help with the program’s success in his new capacity.”
Lolley has coached at Auburn since 1999. He was hired by Tommy Tuberville as a conditioning coach in 1999 before being promoted to secondary coach from 2000-03, Lolley served in an administrative position from 2004-08 before Chizik named him cornerbacks coach in 2009.
Lolley, 57, received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Livingston in 1977 and 1981, respectively. He was a high school coach in the state of Alabama from 1977-98.
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A search for his replacement will begin immediately. |
Don Groves is a Deadline contributor based in Sydney.
The Australian Army’s 34th Battalion fought fierce battles against the Germans in France during World War I. Now the unit’s little-heralded story will be chronicled in The 34th Battalion, a $A19M ($19.8M) Australian film with Luke Hemsworth, Charles Mesure and Les Hill. They join Nick Farnell, Clare van der Boom, Henry Nixon, Andrew Lees, Vince Colosimo, Ashley Zuckerman, Tony Bonner and Khan Chittenden in the ensemble cast. The 34th Battalion tells the story of four friends in Maitland in rural New South Wales who joined the Army in 1916 after the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. In their first engagement the battalion saved the French town of Villers-Bretonneux. Later the 34th played a role in the Allies’ offensive in the battle of Amiens and the battle of St Quentin Canal, the operation that breached the Hindenburg Line, thus sealing Germany’s defeat. Ian Sparke will serve as executive producer and his son Luke Sparke will direct. The father-son team also penned the screenplay. Shooting is due to start in early 2013. |
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In January, Samantha Bee inducted President Donald Trump's adviser Kellyanne Conway to the “Great Feminists in Feminism Herstory Hall of Lady Fame." After Ivanka Trump's latest White House promotion, the "Full Frontal" host is ready to welcome a new entrant.
"Wishful thinkers are hoping [she'll be a] secret progressive buddy," Bee quipped. Indeed, some in the media have even suggested that the first daughter will make climate change her signature issue after meeting twice with Leonardo DiCaprio.
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But as the "Full Frontal" host observes: "Meeting with Leo DiCaprio is not a sign that you care about climate change, it’s a sign that you were a teenager in the ‘90s."
As for Ivanka organizing a summit between her father and Al Gore, Bee is certain "she's not going to convince her dad climate change isn't a Chinese hoax."
The first daughter has also helped negotiate one of the Trump Organization's biggest deals, Trump Tower Baku in Azerbaijan—a partnership with the Mammadovs, one of the most corrupt families in the world.
Ivanka may be the "nicest, smartest, best-smelling Trump," Bee notes, but she's a "loyal Trump" eagerly "pushing her dad's dodgy agenda with a smile."
Toward the end of her monologue, Bee reminded viewers of Ivanka's infamous claim that the most important job a woman could have was being a mom.
“You know what another important job is?" Bee asked. "Working in the White House! Because when you work there, people need you to know what the f*ck you’re doing when you float your $500 billion childcare plan.”
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A commercial pilot with a major European airline told The Sunday Telegraph, London, that other parts of the data log suggested that windows in the right side of the cockpit were blown out by an explosion inside the aircraft. A life vest from EgyptAir flight 804 found floating along with human remains, luggage and seats from the doomed jetliner. Credit:AP "It looks like the right front and side window were blown out, most probably from inside out," said the pilot, who flies an A330 similar to the crashed A320 and spoke on condition of anonymity. The data was taken from the plane's Acars system, which sends short transmissions from the aircraft to receivers on the ground. Until investigators find the aircraft's black boxes, which are still missing in the Mediterranean, the Acars system offers the best information about what was happening aboard. Three different warnings showed there were faults in the windows next to the co-pilot, suggesting they could have been blasted outwards by an on-board bomb. That does not mean the explosion came from the cockpit but indicates the right side of the plane was more badly damaged than the left.
The pilot suggested the smoke detectors may have been triggered not by fire but by fog which filled the cabin as it lost air pressure in the moments after the explosion. Friends and relatives of EgyptAir hostess Yara Hani, who was working aboard flight MS840, mourn during a ceremony at a church in Cairo on Saturday. Credit:Getty Images Egyptian and French investigators said they couldn't comment on reports by CBS News that said the cockpit voice and flight-data recorders had been found. The network suggested on Saturday that search teams had discovered the devices near a site where body parts and aircraft debris had been located. Meanwhile, the Egyptian military released images of shoes, handbags and other forlorn items pulled out of the sea near the crash site. Video footage showed unused life vests and torn up parts of seats scattered across the deck of an Egyptian naval ship. French and Egyptian ships are focused on trying to recover the black boxes, which would reveal what was said in the cockpit before the plane crashed. Friends and relatives of EgyptAir hostess Yara Hani who was working aboard EgyptAir MS840 mourn. Credit:Getty Images
Although no terrorist group has claimed responsibility, French detectives are examining a pool of about 85,000 people with "red badge" security clearance that gives them access to restricted areas of Charles de Gaulle airport. The task is complicated by the fact many work for sub-contractors and turnover is high. Screenings are often limited to checking an employee has no criminal convictions and does not appear on a terror watch list. Last December some 70 red badges were withdrawn from staff at Charles de Gaulle who were found to have praised the attacks in Paris, prayed at mosques linked to radicalism or shown signs of growing religiosity, such as refusing to shake hands with women. Debris and personal belongings from MS804, including a shoe, which were recovered from the sea. Credit:Egyptian Armed Forces With no bodies to bury, Egypt continued to mourn the loss of 30 of its citizens but was unable to carry out formal funerals. Among the dead was a husband and wife who had sold everything to pay for lifesaving cancer treatment and now leave behind their three young children as orphans. Ahmed Ashery, 31, sold his family's flat and car to raise money so his wife Reham could undergo cancer surgery in France, according the Egyptian newspaper Masrawy. The couple left their young son and two daughters with his mother and spent a month in Paris, where Mrs Ashery had surgery and seemed on the path to a full recovery. They boarded flight MS804 on Wednesday excited to be reunited with their small children but the plane never made it back to Cairo.
"Ahmed sold everything to save his wife and ease her grief," said Mohamed al-Shenawi, a family friend. "I advised him to accept the command of God and look for treatment in Egypt but he insisted on travelling." Family and friends of flight attendant Yara Hany Farag gathered at a Coptic church in Cairo to grieve around a cross of white flowers with a picture of the young woman. Her grandmother stood in front of the picture crying: "Yara answer me, I want hold you." Her mother described her unmarried daughter as "a bride for heaven". Earlier in the day the family were asked by EgyptAir to provide DNA samples to help with identification of bodies. So far a few human parts but no full bodies have been recovered. In a dark premonition of things to come, it emerged that the crashed aircraft had once had graffiti written on it: "We will bring this plane down".
The New York Times reported the vandalism was done two years ago and was a protest against Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian president who seized power in a coup, rather than a jihadist threat. The airline went on to fire a number of staff with alleged Muslim Brotherhood sympathies in 2013 as part of a general purge of suspected Islamists after the military takeover. In the weeks after the Paris attacks in November, French police said Arabic graffiti such as "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) were found daubed on EasyJet and Vueling planes at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and at Lyon airport. The discoveries raised fears that a bomb could be planted on a plane at an airport in France, but EasyJet and the French authorities insisted there was nothing to worry about. Telegraph, London; Bloomberg |
Yesterday I went fishing for wild steelhead on the Deschutes River up in Maupin, Oregon. It’s a beautiful spot, and I was sure I’d return with a whole mess of fishies. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The mistake I think I made was choosing to bring a gun instead of a fishing pole. The gun was a Nighthawk Custom 10-8 combat pistol, and while it’s a great option for the military or police, it’s a decidedly terrible choice when it comes to recreational fishing.
In hindsight, this probably should have been obvious to me, as all my previous attempts to shoot fish out of the water have been a failure. Even so, I am stubborn, and I suppose I thought this time might be different. It wasn’t. I spent hours silently trolling the river looking for the perfect fishing spot, gauging wind and water temperature, attempting to use my fishermen’s sixth sense to determine where the steelhead might be lurking. Finally I found the spot, a little eddy on the north side of Mount Thielsen. There I found a huge school of hungry fish just waiting to be caught. Well, let me tell you something: as soon as I opened fire on those fuckers, they swam away, never to be seen again. All that work for nothing.
Fucking fish.
Some experienced fishermen might think my efforts to shoot fish with a handgun are misguided. Well those fishermen can suck my dick. Just because something hasn’t worked in the past doesn’t mean it can’t work now. The Nighthawk is a terrific pistol specifically designed for close quarter combat. What could be closer combat than fishing? In retrospect, I don’t think the mistake I made was bringing the gun; it was not bringing enough ammo. I unloaded all nine clips into the river within about a minute. This required some very fast shooting on my part! The law of average states that if I fire enough bullets, eventually one of them is going to hit a fish. The problem: not enough bullets.
(My fishing pole)
Also, shooting a gun is a lot more fun than sitting in a boat with some string attached to a pole. I know a lot of guys who have fished in the traditional way all day and came back with exactly as many fish as I did: zero. The difference? I had a blast (pun intended), and they just sat out there “in nature.” If I wanted to hang out in nature, I would do it from the comfort of my living room.
The other advantage of using a gun for fishing is that you don’t have to dig up worms, which are scary. Fishermen may tell you that they enjoy hooking their lines with grubs and night crawlers, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret: worms are really creepy even to fishermen. They just act like they’re not because they don’t want to be called pussies. But no matter what anybody says, in their heart of hearts, even hardened fishermen know that all bugs are creepy and scary. They just won’t admit it.
So it was a bad day on the Deschutes. I ran out of bullets and I didn’t shoot any fish, but I did accidentally wing a hiker, which normally would be a terrible tragedy but he went down so fast I don’t think he had any idea what hit him, and I got the hell out of there before anybody saw what happened, so I think I’m in the clear. |
Technically speaking, this is the 2nd time I've done an Enemy Reaction for a game ending in a tie. In 2012, the 49ers and Rams played to a 24-24 stalemate, with both David Akers and Greg Zeuerlein missing game-winning field goals in the extra session, and the Rams having an 80-yard pass (which would've led to a really short field goal) and a made field goal both wiped out due to penalties. You can take a trip down memory lane here.
I initially wasn't going to bother with an Enemy Reaction for this game, as it felt way too much like that 2013 MNF game against the Rams. The overtime that ensued (plus the ensuing fan poll) changed my mind. We're about to venture into unchartered territory; it's an Enemy Reaction where the Seahawks don't win. Did Revenge of the Birds treat it like a loss? What about Field Gulls? You're about to find out.
Bobby Wagner plays leapfrog, blocks Chandler Catanzaro's field goal (0-0)
Frank Clark strip-sacks Carson Palmer to deny Arizona a field goal at the half (3-0 ARI)
Jeremy Lane's mindless penalty offsets Arizona's, so the half ends, and some of ROTB isn't happy (3-0 ARI)
David Johnson gets stuffed on 4th and 1 (3-0 ARI)
Chandler Jones strip-sacks Russell Wilson, but Seahawks recover at their own 1 (3-0)
Tanner McEvoy blocks Ryan Quigley's punt, Seattle kicks the tying FG to make it 3-3
Seattle's game-winning drive in regulation gets halted by two straight holding penalties, game goes into OT (3-3)
@guga31bb holding on Gilliam with 55 seconds left in regulation on 1st and 10 from midfield backs SEA up pic.twitter.com/SBiC4OmWEt — Ben B (@guga31bb) October 24, 2016
Michael Floyd drops the ball, Arizona regains the lead with Chandler Cantazaro's FG to make it 6-3 ARI
Hauschka ties the game again (6-6)
...We should've seen this coming
JJ Nelson makes a huge catch, but Kelcie McCray saves the game by denying him a TD (6-6)
...The miracle happened (6-6)
bruce arians and pete carroll's reactions to the missed field goal pic.twitter.com/BEDcPQPyue — spooky hombre (@whoisjoserivera) October 24, 2016
Doug Baldwin gets inside the Arizona 10 with a terrific catch-and-run (6-6)
Welp (6-6)
Palmer's Hail Mary falls incomplete, the game ends in a tie (6-6 FINAL)
Post-Game Audio Link: EPIC opponent audio recap with Cardinals announcers Dave Pasch and Ron Wolfley (via KJR-AM's Softy Mahler Show)
Post-Game: Long snappers are not hurdles
The fact that the NFL is allowing this is concerning. With the emphasis on player safety currently at its peak, the league needs to address this situation immediately. Imagine if the Highway Patrol took the same approach - drive in the suicide lane as much as you want, as long as you don't crash into anyone! By not allowing players to leap over the long snapper, there are multiple players saved from potential harm. Not only is the long snapper not at risk, but the leaping player as well. We all saw Wagner twisting and turning as he clipped Brewer's back on his way down after getting a shove from another offensive player. It isn't out of the realm of possibility to think that Wagner could have been blocked enough to land right back on Brewer, injuring both of them. Blocking a defender leaping over the snapper is akin to a defensive back hitting a receiver in the legs as he jumps for a high pass, only to make him flip on his way down. What we have here is a classic case of teams finding a way to take a rule meant to promote safety, and creating an even less safe situation. I would love to see players quit leaping over one another altogether. Whenever I see a player do it in the open field, I fear they will get injured. All I can hope for is that the NFL sees that this is an unsafe play and can create a rule disallowing it. Other teams across the league will most likely start finding a player on their team that can do this, seeing as it actually worked last night. - Ray Finney, Cardinals Fan Blog
Post-Game: Blame Bruce Arians for the tie
First, Arians loses a crucial timeout trying to challenge a call that he can't challenge when Bobby Wagner leaped over long snapper Aaron Brewer and blocked Chandler Catanzaro's 39-yard field goal in the first half. The play is not reviewable and the timeout came back to bite Arians right on his rear end when, at the end of the first half at Seattle's 25 yard line with 17 seconds remaining, Carson Palmer was sacked and fumbled. Although Cards offensive guard Earl Watford recovered the fumble at the Seattle 32, time ended up running out because Arizona was out of timeouts. So instead of attempting a 49-yard field goal to end the first half, Arizona got nothing. Sorry, but that is on Arians for wasting a timeout he needed. Second, in a close, physical football game where points are a premium, Arizona has the ball fourth-and-1 at the Seattle 19 yard line on its first possession of the second half, and what does Arians do? Does he kick the field goal from 36 yards out to go up 6-0 and make a challenged Seattle offense have to score a touchdown against an Arizona defense playing its best game of the year to beat them? No, he decides to run on Seattle's vaunted defense. And David Johnson gets stopped for no gain. Third brain fart by Arians was at the end of the game. Seattle has back-to-back holding penalties moving them back 20 yards to their own 28 yard line. On first-and-30 with 41 seconds left, Seattle attempts to run out the clock with a run by C.J. Prosise for no gain. With all three timeouts remaining and a chance to get decent field position and set up a game-winning field goal attempt, Arians elects to use none of his timeouts and go to overtime. Seattle would have run two plays, used eight seconds up and had to punt from inside their own 20 yard line, giving Arizona a couple cracks at getting in field goal range. Doesn't make sense. Blame who you want for this bad tie, but I point my finger at Arians. - John Gambadoro, Arizona Sports
Enemy Reaction Bonus: Los Angeles Rams (Turf Show Times)
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Well that game happened. The Seahawks are 29th in points scored (yes, even behind the Texans, who haven't had their bye week yet), the only team in the league without a 3rd quarter touchdown, but joint-leaders with Minnesota for fewest points allowed. If you're one to believe the defense was culpable for several of Seattle's losses last year, they're arguably the biggest reason why the Seahawks are sitting atop the NFC West by 1.5 games.
This Sunday will be a 10 AM PT kickoff against the New Orleans Saints, who are 2-4, have a rotten defense, but still have a dangerous offense led by Drew Brees. It should be a fascinating matchup, and ideally, the Seahawks offense can get back on track against a team that has given up a staggering 118 points in 3 home games. It's also worth noting that this is the last early kickoff for the Seahawks for the rest of the regular season, and if they win the division and get a first-round bye, they're assured to not have any more 10 AM games the rest of the way.
I hope you enjoyed this somewhat special edition of Enemy Reaction. I'd rather be doing these for when the Seahawks win, so let's get back in the win column by marching into the Superdome and knocking off the Saints.
Go 'Hawks!
...Previously on Enemy Reaction 2016 |
Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in a news conference after an EU-Russia Summit in Brussels January 28, 2014. Putin said on Tuesday it would honor its obligations to lend Ukraine $15 billion and reduce its gas prices even if the opposition formed the next government. REUTERS/Yves Herman Russian President Vladimir Putin has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, CBS News reports.
The nomination, which can be submitted by any one of thousands of people eligible to submit from around the world, is one pick among many others in a record year for submissions.
The submission is sure to be controversial, considering Russia's ongoing military action inside Ukraine's Crimea region, which has been called an "armed invasion."
The Nobel Committee has received 278 nominations for the Peace Prize this year, making it the highest number of candidates ever, according to the official website. The committee narrowed the list down to just 25 on Tuesday, and will eventually whittle that number down to a dozen before May, CBS News reports.
Others in the running this year include fugitive ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Pope Francis, and Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who recovered after being shot in the head by the Taliban to become an incredible advocate for women's rights. |
Ann Coulter has made no secret of her love for GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, gushing at a campaign rally in Iowa earlier this week that “President Trump” is proof that “God hasn’t given up on America yet.” Coulter took the Trump love-fest to Iowa talk radio host Simon Conway’s program yesterday, declaring that in Trump, the Republican Party finally has a candidate “who genuinely loves America.”
Coulter told Conway that she understands “why the Democratic Party wants to transform America into a third-world hellhole” through immigration reform, because Latinos “have been trained to memorize the symbol of the Democratic Party and will go and bloc vote for the Democrats,” but that she was baffled by “why the Republicans are going along with it.”
The answer, she said, was because of pressure from all their big corporate donors who do not care about America” or “American culture.” But thankfully, she said, “Trump is exposing them all.”
“We finally have someone who genuinely loves America and is not beholden to the donors,” she said. “He will be beholden to no one but regular Americans when he, well I hope, when he becomes president.” |
President Trump gave a contentious speech at a campaign rally in Phoenix on Aug. 22, attacking the media, GOP senators and "obstructionist" Democrats. Here are the highlights. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
President Trump was in rare (okay, well, maybe not for him) form at a campaign-style rally Tuesday night in Arizona, delivering more than an hour-long speech in which he threatened a government shutdown, suggested he will pardon controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and again threatened to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
But before he got to all that, he delivered a lengthy, 15-minute-plus defense of his comments about Charlottesville — comments that earned criticism both from the left and from many on the right and reportedly alienated his own staff.
Trump, as he has made clear, doesn't see anything wrong with what he said. But he also completely skirted the most controversial parts of his comments — when he blamed “both sides” and “many sides” for the kind of violence that was perpetrated in this particular case by white supremacists. He also fudged plenty of details.
Below, I break down the relevant sections of Trump's defense.
“But the very dishonest media, those people right up there with all the cameras. … They don't report the facts. Just like they don't want to report that I spoke out forcefully against hatred, bigotry and violence and strongly condemned the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists and the KKK.”
Trump's initial comments on Charlottesville on Aug. 12 were anything but “forcefully” speaking out against neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He did condemn “hatred, bigotry and violence,” but he did not attach it to neo-Nazis or white supremacists. Instead, he blamed “many sides” and didn't even mention those groups.
Here's what he said:
TRUMP: But we're closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence — on many sides. On many sides. It's been going on for a long time in our country.
Two days later, on Aug. 14, he did offer a more forceful denunciation in a prepared statement, saying, “Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
But the following day, Aug. 15, he seemed to revert to his initial comments. In a news conference with reporters, he again suggested there was blame to be shared. He was asked repeatedly about neo-Nazis and white supremacists and kept alluding to the fact that there was blame on “both sides” of the situation.
A sampling:
Q: Mr. President, are you putting what you're calling the alt-left and white supremacists on the same moral plane? TRUMP: I'm not putting anybody on a moral plane. What I'm saying is this: You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible. And it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side. … Q: You said there was hatred, there was violence on both sides. TRUMP: Well, I do think there's blame, yes. I think there's blame on both sides. You look at — you look at both sides. I think there's blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don't have any doubt about it either. … And you have some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.
Trump did eventually mention neo-Nazis and white nationalists and say they should be “condemned totally,” but it was literally an aside — a brief departure from his “both sides” comments:
TRUMP: And you had people — and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats.
His second and final mention of neo-Nazis and white nationalists called them “bad people” but again quickly returned to both-sides-ism.
The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people — neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them — but you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know — I don't know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn't have a permit. So, I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country.
Trump did, at one point, forcefully denounce neo-Nazis and white nationalists. But that wasn't his initial response, and the totality of his comments suggests he doesn't think they are particularly culpable or their actions are unique in this whole situation. That's the source of the controversy that had even many Republicans speaking out.
“I openly called for unity, healing and love, and they know it because they were all there.”
Trump's initial comments made no mention of these things. He did mention unity and love in his Aug. 14 comments.
“So what I did is I thought, I'd take just a second, and I'm really doing this more than anything else, because you know where my heart is, okay? … So here's what I said, really fast, here's what I said on: 'We're closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia' — this is me speaking. 'We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence.' That's me speaking on Saturday. Right after the event. So I'm condemning 'the strongest, possible terms,' 'egregious display,' 'hatred, bigotry and violence.' ”
Trump dishonestly truncates his comments here. The next six words out of his mouth on Aug. 12 were " … on many sides. On many sides.” Without those words, his comments wouldn't have been so controversial. To leave that part out is to ignore to source of the entire controversy.
“So this is me — 'It has no place in America' — I'm talking about hatred, bigotry and violence — 'It has no place in America. What is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives. No citizen should ever fear for their safety, security in our society, and no child should ever be afraid to go outside and play or be with their parents and have a good time.' This is me speaking.”
This is the part after “on many sides” which, again, he conveniently left out.
“So in my second statement, I got really specific, and they said, why didn't he do it faster? The — I'm telling you folks, look, look, I know these people probably better than anybody.”
Trump did get more specific in his second statement on Aug. 14, and he earned praise for it. It also came two days after a very high-profile case of racial violence that dominated the news and gripped the country, and with controversy swirling around his “many sides” comment. In that context, two days is a long time. And then Trump's comments the following day, Aug. 15, reverted to his initial “many sides"/"both sides"-ism.
“So, I said here's my — this is, by the way folks, this is my exact words — 'I love all the people of our country. We're going to make America great again, but we're going to make it great for all of the people of the United States of America.' And then they say, is he a racist? Is he a racist? Then, I did a second one. So then I did a second one. … So on August the 14th — so that was it, and I said all people, I love all people, everything, right? Now I figure I'm going to do it again. I'll be even more specific. So I said, based on the events that took place over the last weekend in Charlottesville, I'd like to provide the nation with an update. Because that was right after the event, the first one, right? An update on ongoing federal response to the horrific attack and violence that was witnessed by everybody. To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend's racist violence, you will be held fully accountable, justice will be delivered. That's what I said. Listen to that, I said that, but they don't show that. They don't show it. They take — they'll take one thing, like, seriously, he was late was the best thing. He was late.”
Trump's comments on Aug. 14 were widely broadcast. It's unclear what he thinks was skirted over.
“Then I said, 'Racism is evil.' Do they report that I said that racism is evil?”
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes. This was the headline and chyron for many major national news outlets.
“And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold true as Americans. Now let me ask you, can it be any better than that, in all fairness?”
That's a very strong statement that bears no resemblance to what Trump said on Aug. 12 and Aug. 15.
“But they also said that he must be a racist because he never mentioned the driver of the car, who is a terrible person, drove the car and he killed Heather, and it's a terrible thing. But they said I didn't mention, so these are my words. 'The driver of the car is a murderer, and what he did was a horrible, inexcusable thing.' They said I didn't mention it.”
Trump didn't mention this until his Aug. 15 comments, three days after the tragedy. And his lack of mentions of the woman killed, Heather Heyer, is a stark contrast to Trump's regular highlighting of victims of immigrant crime and Islamic terrorism. |
If you crash into a police car and the officer asks for your driver's license, here's a tip: Don't hand him a beer instead.
Police in Dunwoody, Georgia, say that's what Damon Tobias Exum, 37, did after slamming into a patrol car shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday.
The officer was not injured in the crash and managed to chase down and stop Exum’s vehicle, WSB-TV reports.
When asked for his driver’s license, Eum allegedly handed the officer a beer.
Dunwoody Police spokesman Sgt. Fidel Espinoza said the suspectwas “totally unaware that he had collided with the officer’s patrol car,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Dunwoody police Officer Tim Fecht may have been understating Exum's actions when he told the New York Daily News: “The driver was intoxicated and not making the best decisions.” |
Mordekaiser wearing a yellow soccer jersey with a giant 1 emblazoned on the back and blue shorts. He will have a giant shaker in place of his mace. Will also serve the dual purpose of allowing people to play a full soccer team lineup along with Akali, Blitz, Ez and Kat.
Upon Selection
"Eu sou o número um."
Movement/Attacking
"Brazil... forever!"
"Carne"
"Medo do escuro."
"Eu tenho um medo constante de que n00bs estão sempre aqui."
"Essa coisa de vida.... inteira é altamente superestimada."
"A alimentação é o número um!"
"Meu escudo é invencível. Nunca vou morrer."
"Why U no Help?"
"N000b Summoner!"
"Eu sou o Presidente!"
"Gibbe money pls!"
Taunt
"Team es n00000b"
"Eu report U"
"Es Always Win, Es Never Die."
"Free Game, HueHueHuah!!!"
Joke
"Eu ping lots because ping so high in Rio."
"BTW I'm actually just pretending to be Brazilian"
Dance
Either Samba or Capoeira. Not sure which.
When casting Children of the Grave
"HUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUAH"
The FX mark placed by his ult now looks like a Brazilian flag.
Note that this is in no way meant to offend. I just find this meme hilarious.
Keep it bumped guys
New Pencil Art By Rahgar Added!!!
Riot saying they won't make the skin. Sad day
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=7875125#7875125 |
Two weeks from today, Angels pitchers and catchers will report for spring training. And don’t be surprised if at least one pitcher who isn’t on the roster now is in the clubhouse then.
It was no secret that Matt Garza was the Angels’ primary target to add depth to their starting rotation. After Garza signed last week with the Milwaukee Brewers, General Manager Jerry Dipoto said the Angels would be OK standing pat with a rotation of Jered Weaver, C.J. Wilson, Hector Santiago, Garrett Richards and Tyler Skaggs.
While the Angels’ rotation has potential – Santiago, Richards and Skaggs all have the stuff to be solid major league starters – it’s also a rotation with significant risk. None of the three has made 30 starts in a single big league season. Skaggs is only 22.
So you can bet that the Angels’ preference would be to sign one more starter with some big league experience. The Angels are most likely looking to see if they can sign someone on a one-year deal for less than $4 million.
(Yes, they still have Joe Blanton and they have Mark Mulder and Wade LeBlanc on minor-league deals, but those are less-than-ideal answers.)
Fortunately for the Angels, as we get closer to spring training, the prices surely go down among the free agents scrambling to find jobs. Bruce Chen just agreed to a one-year, $4.25-million deal.
The best available free agent pitchers are A.J. Burnett, Ubaldo Jimenez and Ervin Santana. Burnett isn’t likely to sign with a West Coast team, and the Angels have said they won’t give up a draft pick to sign Jimenez or Santana. The Angels don’t appear to be involved with Korean pitcher Suk-Min Yoon, either.
That leaves this foursome: Bronson Arroyo, Chris Capuano, Jason Hammel and Paul Maholm. There are other guys out there, such as Joe Saunders, Barry Zito and Aaron Harang, but I don’t believe any of them is on the Angels’ radar (unless they want to give out more minor league deals).
So, here’s a breakdown of the four guys who have the best chance of winding up in an Angels uniform, with the caveat that it’s still very possible they add no one:
BRONSON ARROYO, RHP
Age: 37
37 2013: 3.79 ERA, 202 innings with Reds
3.79 ERA, 202 innings with Reds Last three seasons: 4.19 ERA, 603 innings
4.19 ERA, 603 innings Injuries: None. In fact, Arroyo has never been on the disabled list.
None. In fact, Arroyo has never been on the disabled list. Comment: His durability and consistency make him attractive. However, he’s a pitch-to-contact guy (5.8 K/9) who gives up a lot of homers (1.2 HR/9) and that may be a bad combination in the American League. Arroyo is also the least likely of the group to accept a one-year deal.
CHRIS CAPUANO, LHP
Age: 35
35 2013: 4.26 ERA in 125 innings with Dodgers
4.26 ERA in 125 innings with Dodgers Last three seasons: 4.15 ERA in 490 innings
4.15 ERA in 490 innings Injuries: Two short stints on the DL last season, with a leg strain and a shoulder strain. Also missed time in September with a groin injury. Tommy John surgery in 2008.
Two short stints on the DL last season, with a leg strain and a shoulder strain. Also missed time in September with a groin injury. Tommy John surgery in 2008. Comment: Capuano has a career 4.27 ERA, pitching only in the National League. He’s a finesse guy (average fastball 88-89), but still manages to miss bats (7.5 K/9). He also has a strong 3.1 K/BB ratio over the past three years.
JASON HAMMEL, RHP
Age: 31
31 2013: 4.97 ERA in 139 innings with the Orioles
4.97 ERA in 139 innings with the Orioles Last three seasons: 4.46 ERA in 427.2 innings
4.46 ERA in 427.2 innings Injuries: Missed five weeks with elbow injury last season. Had knee trouble throughout the second half in 2012.
Missed five weeks with elbow injury last season. Had knee trouble throughout the second half in 2012. Comment: Hammel’s only season with an ERA under 4.00 was 2012, when he posted a 3.43 mark in 20 starts with the Orioles. Hammel is relatively young and still throws 92-93 mph. He’s also been successful in the American League, but the injuries and inconsistency throughout his career make him risky.
PAUL MAHOLM, LHP
Age: 31
31 2013: 4.41 ERA in 153 innings with the Braves
4.41 ERA in 153 innings with the Braves Last three seasons: 3.89 ERA in 504.1 innings
3.89 ERA in 504.1 innings Injuries: Missed a month with sprained wrist and about two weeks with elbow inflammation last season. Missed last six weeks of 2011 season with shoulder strain.
Missed a month with sprained wrist and about two weeks with elbow inflammation last season. Missed last six weeks of 2011 season with shoulder strain. Comment: A soft-tossing lefty, Maholm has the best ERA of this group over the last three seasons. Although his career strikeout rate is only 5.8 per nine innings, he’s been at 6.4 over the past two seasons.
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About This Game
Features:
New hints, storylines and voiceovers.
Desolate yet beautiful environments to explore.
Challenging puzzles to solve.
Secrets and collectibles hidden across the island.
Voice narration by Derek Riddell (Ugly Betty, Frankie, No Angels and more).
Oculus Rift demo. (Windows only)
First game to promote the Irish language (Gaeilge).
Full language support for English, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish and Russian.
Montague's Mount is disturbing psychological thriller set in the bleakness of an abandoned Irish island, featuring exploration and challenging puzzle solving. This game is part one of a two part story, some questions are left unanswered and open to interpretation. To thank our fans for our successful Greenlight campaign, we have added new voiceovers, clues and storylines, and also made the Oculus Rift demo available.The mixture of cold Atlantic water and coarse sand in your mouth brings you back from unconsciousness. Surrounded by the wreckage of a boat’s hull, you can only draw one conclusion: your vessel has been torn apart by the submerged rocks. The secrets of the island must be uncovered if you are ever going to find a way to escape. Where is everyone; is the island really uninhabited; and what is lurking within the isolated caves? |
At its current stage of development, grano has achieved some level of maturity as an influence mapping toolkit. We’ve got a great workflow for importing raw data, and we’re running a number of different sites off the backend. A new web interface, to make the application more accessible to non-technical users, is in the works.
So it’s time to look at the next big challenges: building out the way in which grano lets journalist ask complex questions of their data, and improving the handling of source and quality metadata. As I’ve pointed out on IJNet, both of these are essential: having a big bunch of integrated data is cool, but only when you have a tool that lets you interrogate those relationships does it become a real journalistic asset.
</a>
Unfortunately, the questions that journalists might want to ask against influence networks are often recursive: “show me all the family members of politicians who work for organisations that receive government contracts”, “show me what connects these people to each other”. These are the exact type of query that make relational databases cry.
After producing a proof-of-concept query tool based on grano’s relational backend it became clear that a more flexible approach was needed: queries would easily take seconds, some would eat up all server memory. From this point on, there are two choices: use additional backends to satisfy different types of queries; or migrate to another data model entirely.
Thankfully, the amazing Jun Matshushita was thinking through influence mapping technology choices at the same time, and we had some interesting discussions on graph databases on GitHub. He convinced me to have another look at RDF/Linked Data as a storage mechanism. Unlike, for example, Neo4J, RDF has a variety of ways for attaching provenance to individual statements - a must-have for applications that integrate data from a wide range of sources to find evidence for misconduct and corruption.
At the same time, there is still a total lack of mature (Python) tooling around linked data. This was true when I first experimented with the stuff in 2010, and many libraries haven’t received a single commit since then. Documentation for routine tasks is non-existent, and the standard Python RDF toolkit, rdflib doesn’t actually connect to the vast majority of available triple stores.
It is clear that nobody is using Python and RDF to build web applications. Ironically, people on public-lod seem to believe that the main challenge to broader adoption of linked data is producing the stuff. In truth, your problems really start when you have RDF data and need to store, query and export it in anything other than Java.
Even so, I managed to get another proof-of-concept of my experimental query API implemented, this time running on top of an RDF-converted copy of the data. The surprise: using Apache Fuseki’s backend was even slower than a SQL database for graph traversal, queries would easily take twice or three times as long as their relational equivalent. I’m sure that I haven’t tuned my queries very well, but performance seems to be degrading proportionally to the size of the dataset. And while other triple stores may be somewhat faster, it’s becoming clear to me that this route isn’t leading anywhere. What’s left is a set of open questions:
Who out there is still building Python tools that use RDF and can talk about making it work?
How does one connect to triple stores like Virtuoso and Stardog from Python in meaningful way, without having to write a complete binding for even the most trivial operations?
What are good ways to EXPLAIN ANALYZE SPARQL queries and to get a sense of where their complexity is?
SPARQL queries and to get a sense of where their complexity is? If triple stores are slow when aggregating data and doing distinct counts, how can you get multiple solutions for a query, but limit the number of entities they relate to?
So, it is now time to bring grano into split brain mode: use the existing relational database to store provenance and data quality information, while keeping a simplified data model in Neo4J to enable the types of recursive queries that our users need. As always, I need lots of help to hack out the new Neo4J query API: not only to make sure data is synchronised between the two data stores, but also to experiment with query endpoints that might enable interesting journalistic questions and cool data visualisations. |
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said on Sunday it will withhold the bodies of Palestinian militants killed in attacks against its citizens as it seeks to pressure the Islamist movement Hamas to return the remains of soldiers and hand back missing Israeli civilians.
Hamas says it is holding two Israeli soldiers whom the army declared dead after they were lost in action in the 2014 Gaza war. The group also says it is holding two Israeli civilians who strayed into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Israel’s security cabinet, a forum of senior ministers, made the decision on Sunday, enacting what it said would be a permanent policy for dealing with the bodies of militants.
“The security cabinet discussed ways to effect the return of fallen soldiers and of civilians held in the Gaza Strip ... and decided that (the bodies of militants) should be buried, rather than returned,” the statement said.
Under the new policy, the bodies could be exhumed and handed back for burial if Hamas was willing to strike deals. It marks a hardening of Israel’s stance: during 2016, according to the Israeli army, 102 bodies were returned for burial.
Israeli officials have previously signalled they are willing to repeat past amnesties of jailed Palestinians in order to recover the two soldiers’ remains and the civilians held by Hamas. But Hamas has said Israel must make a preliminary release of prisoners before it will discuss such a deal. |
(No, not LITERALLY . . . calm down, you Tea Partiers . . . )
So as I hinted yesterday, I had Jury Duty today. I went down to the Courthouse in San Antonio (which is the Bexar County courthouse, which for some inexplicable reason is called the “JUSTICE CENTER.” I kept looking over my shoulder for Batman and the rest of the Super-Friends, but I never did see them.)
I last had Jury Duty four years ago. At that time they called 300 of us, and only empaneled 200, releasing the rest of us by 3:00pm that afternoon. I had spent the day reading magazines and waiting for call that never came. I expected the same today.
No such luck.
They immediately began empaneling jurors for jury selection at 9:00am sharp, and I was selected for a 60-person group to sit on a criminal trial. They promised us we’d very likely be out of there by 5:00 pm at the latest.
And then they threw a bomb at us. The defendant was being tried for aggravated sexual assault; which in Texas essentially means rape of a person 13 years old or younger.
And everything went to hell quickly. The prosecutors began their questioning; has anyone served on a jury previously, has anyone ever been a witness in a trial previously, does anyone have any member of their family that is in law enforcement . . . standard questions, and people answered them fairly quickly and honestly.
Then the prosecutors asked if anyone had ever had a family member or knew someone who had been a victim of sexual abuse. You could see the discomfort on their faces as they answered; they hemmed and hawed; they asked to speak with the judge privately. One lady had to be excused because she became physically ill. But we al danced very carefully around the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Nobody admitted they were victims of sexual abuse openly. No one spoke of the unspoken taboo.
And then they asked me if I had a family member or knew someone who had been a victim of sexual abuse. And I took a deep breath.
One of my psychology professors at Valparaiso University once told me that Child Abuse would continue for one reason; Children can’t vote. And by the time kids can vote, they’re adults who don’t want to admit they were abused as children. So the whole thing continues to be hushed up and held in, and nothing ever changes.
And one of my advisers at VU had once told me, “If you keep doing things over and over again that you don’t like, at some point you have to ask yourself why it is you do that.
And all this swam in my head as the Prosecutor asked me if I had a family member or knew someone who had been a victim of sexual abuse. Why yes, Yes I did, in fact.
So I looked that pretty blonde Prosecutor in the eyes and told her, “I’m Juror number 30, and I was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. And a very close member of my family was also sexually molested, which is one of the reasons why we moved to Texas from Indiana. And the Prosecutor’s Office in Indiana refused to prosecute the case.”
I must have shocked her. She blinked hard like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming semi. Then she did something extraordinary: she started to cry. A tear actually rolled out of her left eye. She paused, then asked, “Would you be able to be fair in judging the case of the accused?”
And I told her “Dear God, No! I have no faith in the Judicial System whatsoever.” And I sat down.
And she pretty much fell down into her chair.
And all hell broke loose, quickly and quietly. It was all downhill after that. Suddenly every other juror knew someone or wanted a priate conference with the judge (which I took to mean they were victims themselves, but not quite so foolhardy as I to speak it openly.) The woman behind me began to weep openly during her questioning, grabbing my hand hard for support. She had never admitted her abuse to another living soul in 40+ years — but she did in voir dire today. It was a scene that was repeated over and over again. A licensed social worker spoke of his experience with abused kids. Several people had kids in their immediate families who had been abused by someone they trusted. One lady brought down the house and got us an immediate adjournment for a break after she told of how a vindictive foster child had sent her grandfather to prison for 20 years on a false accusation of childhood sexual abuse — that they later recanted.
And then the judge began to lecture us on a point of the law — over and over again. One of questions we began to get caught up on was about sentencing — would we be able to consider the full range of punishments should the accused be found guilty, from imprisonment to probation.
Only two people in the courtroom would even consider probation as a punishment. The rest of us told the judge we did not think Probation would ever be an appropriate punishment for the rape of a 13-year-old. And the judge just could not understand why we would not be open-minded about that.
In the end we got out about 7:30pm (not 5:00 pm) tonight after failing to empanel a jury. Only 2 jurors were acceptable out of the possible 60 — two out of 60!
Because we refused to consider probation for a rapist of a 13 year old. I’d like to think it had something to do with me making a tiny little stand for an abused kid, too.
But that’s just me; Me and 58 of my new closest friends.
~Johnny~ |
Canada’s new search-and-rescue aircraft will abandon their familiar yellow paint scheme, instead getting a makeover that will allow them to be used in other missions, including combat.
The Royal Canadian Air Force has requested that its new fleet of 16 search-and-rescue planes be painted tactical grey and have asked for a change in the original contract which stipulated a yellow colour scheme.
The C-295W, being built by Airbus, will replace the main search-and-rescue fleet of six Buffalo aircraft as well as the Hercules transport planes which are also used at times in a search-and-rescue role.
The Buffalos are painted yellow, as are Canada’s other fully dedicated search-and-rescue aircraft such as the Cormorant helicopters.
“The RCAF has made the decision to use a grey colour scheme for the C-295W fleet to enable surging flexibility for the very wide range of missions the RCAF is required to conduct, from humanitarian and disaster relief missions, to security missions with partners, and all the way to full spectrum operations,” Department of National Defence spokesman Daniel Le Bouthillier said Thursday.
He noted that the Hercules used in the search-and-rescue role are painted grey so they can be used in missions other than rescue.
Sources inside DND, however, have raised concerns about what they say is a unilateral decision by the RCAF leadership. They worry the RCAF used the opportunity to replace the search-and-rescue aircraft as a way to instead outfit itself with a new fleet of multi-mission transport planes.
They said at the time that it provided the high visibility needed for search-and-rescue, both for those in the air and on the ground
When the Liberal government awarded the contract to Airbus in December 2016, cabinet ministers highlighted the importance of having the right aircraft for the search-and-rescue job. “With this technology, we are giving our women and men in uniform the tools they need to continue to deliver effective and essential search and rescue operations,” defence minister Harjit Sajjan said at the time.
RCAF insiders defended the change in the paint scheme, saying any aircraft can be called upon to be used in a variety of missions, including in an overseas war zone.
Defence analyst Martin Shadwick said it was the Canadian Forces that decided to switch to the yellow paint scheme in the 1970s because it aided in search-and-rescue. “They said at the time that it provided the high visibility needed for search-and-rescue, both for those in the air and on the ground,” said Shadwick, who teaches strategic studies at York University.
The Buffalos, first purchased in 1967, are key to search-and-rescue on the west coast and in parts of the Rockies and the yellow paint scheme was deemed to be an advantage in those situations.
Shadwick said the decision to have the new fleet of planes available for potential overseas missions raises new questions. Under the existing contract, private-sector employees are going to play the main role in maintaining the planes.
“So, if you are now going to use the C-295 in a front-line role, maybe even as combat transport, does that mean your private-sector workers go along on the overseas mission?” Shadwick said.
The project to buy new search-and-rescue planes took more than a decade. In 2004 the then-Liberal government announced the program as a priority. The project was re-announced by the Conservatives in 2006; the contract was supposed to be awarded in 2009 but continued being delayed for years.
Other questions have also been raised about the purchase. After the contract was awarded, it emerged that the Canadian government made a last-minute change to the amount of money available to spend on its new fleet, but didn’t bother informing the bidders trying to win the contract. Though the program’s budget jumped from $3.4 billion to $4.7 billion, the losing bidder, Italian aerospace firm Leonardo, was still under the impression Canada could only afford to spend the lesser amount and cried foul after tailoring its bid based on that information.
• Email: [email protected] | Twitter: davidpugliese |
Bob Graham was a U.S. senator from Florida from 1987 to 2005. He served as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 2001 to 2003 and as co-chairman of the Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.
Since the Justice Department named a special investigator, Robert Mueller, to handle the government's official inquiry into Russian meddling in the U.S. election, the weight of public expectation has largely fallen on his shoulders. While the two congressional panels, the Senate and House intelligence committees, continue to hold hearings and question witnesses, including Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, both are led by members of a party that is, with the exception of Charlottesville, skittish about criticizing the president. The greatest hope for an aggressive and impartial inquest seems to lie with Mueller, whose bosses have either recused themselves from the Russia probe (as Attorney General Jeff Sessions did) or volunteered that he would have autonomy to follow the facts wherever they led (as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein did). The pressure, it seems, is off Congress to act as the primary body holding the president to account.
This is a dangerous sentiment. The two intelligence committees should act as if their investigations will be the final (and possibly the only) ones — because they may be. President Trump has worked hard to undermine Mueller's effort, not only berating it as beholden to a partisan "hoax" but also belittling Sessions on Twitter in a transparent attempt to force the attorney general's resignation. That way, the president could replace him with an appointee who would stymie Mueller's work. A central role for Congress is the only real way to guarantee a full report, with conclusions and recommendations, for the American people.
I oversaw a similarly complex and politically fraught inquiry as co-chairman of the joint congressional inquiry into 9/11, so I know what it takes — as a matter of resources, time, perseverance and, yes, occasional political courage — to run an investigation of this size and importance. And I know this, too: The congressional intelligence committees, as they are constituted today, are not ready for this burden.
They must tackle three problems.
First, the committees need substantially more capacity. After 9/11, the Senate and House leadership decided to merge the two intelligence committees so they could collaboratively and thoroughly investigate the intelligence issues raised by the attacks. The joint committee had a staff of 24 experienced professionals who were dedicated to the inquiry, independent from the regular professional staff of either the House or the Senate intelligence committee. They'd worked at key intelligence and law enforcement agencies and had knowledge of forensic accounting, investigation and intelligence analysis. Staff director Eleanor Hill had previously prosecuted organized crime for the Justice Department and served as staff director and chief counsel for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Given the number of highly classified documents under review, the joint inquiry also had its own secure office space, separate from each chamber's committee office. It had its own budget of at least $5 million, dedicated solely to the one-year inquiry. By comparison, the Senate committee had $8.1 million and the House panel $8.6 million to address regular legislative and oversight responsibilities for the two years of the 107th Congress.
Right now, the Senate has 38 staffers and the House has 31 devoted to the intelligence committees, with budgets for the 115th Congress of $11 million and $12.1 million, respectively. Those personnel and funds are intended to cover all the legislative and oversight work of the intelligence committees, including the Russia investigation. Early in the inquiry, the Senate committee reportedly had only seven staffers working on the probe. It needs many more.
To complete the Russia investigation, the committees need independent staff members who are solely dedicated to this topic: forensic accountants and specialists in international law, financial crimes, counterintelligence investigations, and cybersecurity and coding. Those devoted to Russian meddling should not be regular committee staffers on overtime, unfamiliar with the tasks unique to the Russian inquiry.
After more than six months of separate activity, it is probably too late to merge the current congressional committees. It is not too late, however, to create independent, experienced and substantially larger staffs capable of fulfilling the committees' responsibilities, particularly in a post-Mueller era.
Second, the House and Senate intelligence committees must quickly begin planning for post-Mueller scenarios. Yes, perhaps Sessions will stick around and Rosenstein will continue to guard Mueller's autonomy. But the congressional committees need to devise protocols now that would be activated, if Mueller were fired, to ensure the protection of, and access to, all documents, transcripts, communications and other materials amassed by the Mueller and James Comey probes. The protocols should ensure that these materials are made available to the congressional committees in their original form. If Mueller is dismissed, the congressional inquiry would probably expand, as in the Watergate investigation, to the consideration of impeachment.
Third, Congress must embrace its investigatory role with renewed urgency. The 9/11 inquiry had a deadline of December 2002, the end of the 107th Congress. This investigation has no such finale. But there are serious consequences to procrastination. If Russia has in fact attempted to interfere with democratic elections in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, disclosing that reality and repelling further intrusions are crucial. Preventing future tampering in elections will require the support of an informed American public, which should be told of Congress's definitive conclusions as soon as possible. Any delay in publicly sharing clear and convincing evidence will add to the already staggering distrust of many Americans in their government. (Portions of the 9/11 inquiry report remain classified even today, limiting the public's understanding of the tragic event and its ability to influence policy, especially regarding U.S.-Saudi relations.)
The nation's best option is for Mueller to continue his investigation until it ends, wherever it leads. Should Trump find some way to remove him, it would spark a constitutional crisis unlike anything since Watergate; Congress must be ready for this worst-case scenario. In our system of checks and balances, it has the right and duty to exercise full oversight. Now is the time to start preparing for that responsibility.
Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter. |
It’s that time of the year again where we have a look at what happened in the project in the last 6 months. In mere weeks it will be released with the shiny GNOME 3.6 (best.release.ever), but since release notes don’t write themselves here’s a sneak preview of all the new toys in Web-land.
The overview has landed
As Claudio already advanced the most noticeable difference in 3.6 is the first iteration of what we call “The Overview”. This is still an evolving design and implementation, but we felt that it was important to land a first version in time for this release that brought actual, solid improvements to the user experience.
What the overview currently does is easy to explain: we have changed the blank start page for a grid that holds your most visited pages. Your favorite pages are now easier to access, especially on touch devices, and we have put valuable screen real estate to work! But what about if some unwanted visitor ends up there? Fear not, if you need to you can remove them from the grid by clicking on the ‘X’ icon on the top right corner of each snapshot.
There’s more to come, but we feel this is already much better than it was, and fixes a long standing feature request for a better start page experience.
WebKit2, beta
It’s been a long time in the making, but the first bits of the WebKit2 support are already in the master branch. As we had anticipated for now it is available in beta form, which means we don’t build it by default and there’s still some functionality missing. That being said, it is really usable at this point, and doing the actual porting has helped us a lot in maturing the up and coming next generation of the WebKit framework. If you want to give it a shot, just build the browser with “–with-webkit2”, and you’ll notice:
Increased responsiveness (how amazing the scrolling is!) and stability.
Thanks to the OOP plugin support GTK 2.x plugins work out of the box again. That means Flash support without having to rely on nspluginwrapper.
Other things that are there, but invisible to users, like increased security or a new and improved API, built on top of all our experience with the classic WebKit.
You can look forward to having a WebKit2 powered Web by default in GNOME 3.8, but for now you are more than welcome to give us feedback about this Beta version.
Fullscreen mode, now with more full and more screen
For a long time Web’s fullscreen mode was somewhat awkward. You’d still get a toolbar, so it wasn’t really fullscreen, plus it would have a strange button embedded in it telling you how to go back to the safety of the vanilla mode. Probably this was fine for the time, but with more and more HTML5 games or presentations done inside browsers, it was about time we had way of making your browser show you the full content and nothing but the content. So we just did that:
Unit testing and code coverage
This is not sexy, but I think it’s really important. For a long time our test coverage was really poor. And when I say really poor, I mean completely non-existent. Some time ago we started to add a few tests here and there, but starting in this cycle we have taken this a lot more seriously and our test coverage has grown by leaps and bounds. We have unit tests for most major classes, they are executed automatically during distcheck (so you won’t release if you broke something), and lately we have added support for the code coverage infrastructure that is now available in gnome-common (thanks Philip!). As I write these lines our coverage is around 40%, which is not great but is a massive improvement considering where we were 6 months ago. These tests have helped us to catch a bunch of bugs (some really obscure and older than some good wines), prevented lots of regressions, and helped us to do some hairy refactorings with the confidence that we wouldn’t break absolutely everything.
I think these three things (having unit tests, running them automatically before release, measuring your progress with code coverage) are very important, so I’m writing another post that just focuses on how to do this for a typical GNOME project.
Other bits and pieces
As usual there are lots of additional features and bugfixes, too numerous to mention: automatic session recovery, tab-less mode, Do Not Track, using SoupTLD to make the URL completion smarter (so it can automatically figure out that google.com is a URL, but foo.bar is a string you want to search), and many more.
Onwards GNOME 3.8
But the show must go on, and Igalians never sleep. We are already working towards the next major release: in 6 months we expect to graduate the WebKit2 version of Web out of Beta status (deprecating the classic WebKit version) and land the next iteration of the overview as major new features. But those are just the known knowns, the unknown unknowns is where it’s at. Until then, happy hacking. |
Riffing off Martin Niemöller’s famous Nazi-era “First They Came for the Socialists…” passage, Religious Right activist Bradlee Dean has posted his own poem on WorldNetDaily titled “And Then They Came For Marriage…”
Dean writes that Supreme Court decisions striking down state-sponsored prayer in school, decriminalizing abortion and legalizing same-sex marriage will eventually lead to a Nazi-style holocaust of Christians.
When the hypocrites and accomplices to Adolf Hitler (Matthew 7:21-23) would sing praises to Jesus in the Protestant churches in Germany, they would sing louder to drown out the noise of the Jews, gypsies and dissidents that were crying out for help while they were being hauled off in cattle cars to concentration camps, or even worse, extermination camps (Psalm 78:9).
…
In fact, we could rewrite Niemöller’s quote quite well for today’s church leaders. It would probably go something like this:
First they came for prayer in school, and I did not speak out, because I was not a student. Nor did I ever look into the fact that the Supreme Court is not above the law (Article III, Section 1, of the United States Constitution (Ephesians 6:18)).
Then they came to murder the unborn in their mother’s womb, and I did not speak out, because I was not an unborn child. After all, I was told that the Supreme Court could sanction the murder of the innocent in the womb by simply calling it a woman’s choice (Proverbs 6:17). Then they came for marriage through the legalization of two men or two woman getting “married” to upend America’s sovereignty, and I did not speak out (as if to say the Supreme Court injustices have a God-given right to redefine what God Himself designed), because I did not want to be called a hater or a bigot (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13, Romans 1:24).
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me, because I never spoke out for anyone else (let alone God) (Ezekiel 3).
It is disgraceful what we are not seeing from the pulpits in America today. Rather than seeing a thunderous barrage of righteous indignation against murder of the unborn and zeal against tyranny, injustice and immorality, we are hearing virtually nothing from over 300,000 pulpits … silence (Zechariah 1:15).
We hear church leaders (1 Corinthians 12:28) say, “Well, I don’t speak out against anything political.” The murder of innocent children, political? Homosexual marriage, political? A corrupt, wicked and lawless administration that means to destroy your country and religious freedom, political?
…
Together, we can turn this destruction around, but if you choose to remain silent, don’t be surprised when they come for you and there is no one left to speak out. And at that point you can rest assured that others may sing loud enough to drown out your cries. |
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