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By Ben Blatt and Bobby Samuels
Every year, when March Madness comes around, numerous sites offer huge jackpots to anyone who can perform the most hallowed feat in sports betting: filling out a perfect bracket. The prizes can be staggeringly large: ESPN is offering $1 million this year, and a few years ago Papa John’s promised to give away one million pepperoni pizzas. Oftentimes with large promotions, companies will instead pay a fixed fee to an insurance company who will be responsible for the actual payoff. Although most companies don’t disclose if they did insure their grand prize, the question arises: How much money would Yahoo!, for instance, have to pay to insure its $1,000,000 prize?
First, we need to find the odds of filling out a perfect bracket. This has already been studied at some length, so we’ll be as brief as possible here. If completed randomly, the odds of picking a perfect bracket are (1/2)63, or a mere 0.00000000000000001% chance. However, even someone filling out their office pool bracket after not watching a single game all season isn’t doing so completely randomly. In order to create a baseline of how probable a reasonably filled out bracket is of being perfect, we filled out a bracket utilizing Ken Pomeroy’s rankings and computed the odds of perfection using his Pythagorean win expectation. The result: 1.2 x 10-11, or a 0.0000000012% chance.
Using this number, we can simply find the probability that at least one person in a large pool would fill out the bracket perfectly and then estimate the insurance on the prize. Of course, we don’t know the markup that an insurance companies would use, so we’ll just assume that they’re breaking even: that is, the amount paid to the insurance companies is equal to the expected cost of assuming the risk of the payout. Assuming the companies choose to use insurance (we don’t know if they did or not), below is what some of the competitions would have looked like:
Original Competition: Yahoo! Sports $1,000,000 Tourney Pick’em Number of Entrants: Approximately five million Likelihood of at least one perfect bracket: 0.006085%
New Description: The verified entrant who, on a single Game Bracket, correctly predicts the outcome of all 63 games in the 2011 tournament, will receive one million dollars ($1,000,000) from the insurance company, payable in 40 equal annual installments of $25,000, without interest. Whether or not there is a winner, the insurance company will receive $60.85, payable in 40 equal annual installments of $1.52 each, without interest.
Original Competition: Hooters FOXSports.com Number of Entrants: Limited to 1.5 million Likelihood of at least one perfect bracket: 0.001826%
New Description: Enter the Hooters FOXSports.com Bracket Challenge for a chance to win $1,000,000 from the insurance company that FOXSports and/or Hooters has paid $18.26. The top scorer not to enter a perfect bracket can choose between a year’s supply of Hooters’ Wings, valued at $1,300, or the insurance costs for a $70,000,000 perfect bracket challenge, also valued at $1300.
Original Competition: The KABZ-FM 103.7 $10,000 Buzz Bracket Challenge Number of entrants: Limited to 10,000 Likelihood of at least one perfect bracket: 0.00001%
New Description: The $10,000 Buzz Bracket Challenge will award a grand prize of $10,000 to an entrant who completes a perfect bracket. The competition is only to the first 10,000 entrants, so sign up quickly if you want to win the money that we paid 0.1 cents to insure. Don’t forget to fill out the total points in the finals as your tiebreaker just in case multiple entrants (only legal residents of Arkansas aged 21 or older) fill out a perfect bracket.
Ben Blatt can be contacted at [email protected].
Original Competition: Yahoo! Sports $1,000,000 Tourney Pick’emNumber of Entrants: Approximately five millionLikelihood of a perfect bracket: 0.006085% Cost of Insurance: $60.85 New Description: The verified entrant who, on a single Game Bracket, correctly predicts the outcome of all 63 games in the 2011 tournament, will receive one million dollars ($1,000,000) from the insurance company, payable in 40 equal annual installments of $25,000, without interest. Whether or not there is a winner, the insurance company will receive $60.85, payable in 40 equal annual installments of $1.52 each, without interest. Original Competition: Hooters FOXSports.com Number of Entrants: Limited to 1.5 million Likelihood of a perfect bracket: 0.001826% Cost of Insurance: $18.26 New Description: Enter the Hooters FOXSports.com Bracket Challenge for a chance to win $1,000,000 from the insurance company that FOXSports has paid $18.26. The top scorer not to enter a perfect bracket can choose between a year’s supply of Hooters’ Wings, valued at $1,300, or the insurance costs for a $70,000,000 perfect bracket challenge (when entrants are limited to 1.5 million). Original Competition: The KABZ-FM 103.7 $10,000 Buzz Bracket Challenge Likelihood of a perfect bracket: 0.0001% Cost of Insurance: .1¢ New Description: The $10,000 Buzz Bracket Challenge will award a grand prize of $10,000 to an entrant who completes a perfect bracket. The competition is only to the first 10,000 entrants, so sign up quickly if you want to win the money that we paid 0.1 cents to insure. Don’t forget to fill out the total points in the finals as your tiebreaker just in case multiple entrants fill out a perfect bracket. The contest is open to legal residents of age 21 or older from Arkansas. | {
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Charlie Brooker is to launch a spin-off from his BBC Four show Screenwipe, concentrating on TV news.
Charlie Brooker's News Wipe, which will air on BBC Four in the spring, is billed as a ‘funny, thoughtful and scabrous digest of recent news events’.
He said: ‘This is new territory for me – I'm no current affairs expert. Just like, I suspect, many people, when I tune into the news I often feel like I've wandered into episode 389 of the world's most complex soap opera. So it's also about me trying to make sense of a bewildering and often bloody stupid world.’
Brooker's credits include Nathan Barley, which he co-wrote with Chris Morris, and the recent thriller Dead Set.
The six-part series, commissioned by former BBC4 controller Janice Hadlow and BBC controller of comedy Lucy Lumsden, will be made by production company Zeppotron, a subsidiary of Big Brother producer Endemol.
Last month, Chortle reported how Brooker will soon be hosting a new Channel 4 comedy show about the workings of TV, You Have Been Watching, in which he will be joined by guests in front of a live studio audience.
Published: 29 Jan 2009 | {
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Calgary police are investigating a shooting and theft of a vehicle in the community of Auburn Bay on Monday evening.
In a post on Facebook, Calgary police spokesperson Const. Jeremy Shaw said officers are “currently investigating a shooting that took place.”
Police said in a news release they were called to the 0-100 block of Auburn Meadows Garden S.E. for reports of a shooting just before 5 p.m.
One man with serious injuries was taken to hospital in stable condition.
“The victim has been transported to hospital, and we will hopefully be making an arrest of the offender shortly,” Shaw said.
Story continues below advertisement
Police said the investigating is ongoing and ask anyone with information to contact police at 403-266-1234 or to contact Crime Stoppers. | {
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Flight of Fancy #2
Flight of Fancy, in which I take a quick look at 4 beers I’ve recently enjoyed.
Mirror Pond Pale Ale – Deschutes – 5% ABV – 40 IBU
I’m jealous of people who live in a Deschutes area. This would easily be a fridge stocking beer. Very easy drinking, low enough ABV to not ruin you after a few, and crisp and clean. Sure, I can head into Philly to pick this up any time as a single, but to have my local place stocking six packs of it? That’d be awesome.
Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ – Lagunitas – 7.5% ABV – 64.2 IBU
The go-to when my fiancée and I are going to split a six pack. A hoppy wheat beer that features a smooth start with a bitter than expected finish, yet not bitter enough to overwhelm the flavors from the start. Really well balanced.
Sculpin – Ballast Point – 7% ABV – 70 IBU
I mean, what else is there to say about this beer that hasn’t already been said somewhere already? It’s just phenomenal. I was going to do a full review of this beer, but realized how overdone that already is so this will suffice. A great mix of grapefruit and mango hops, the bitterness balanced out by the playfully sweet malt. It’s just spot on in every aspect.
Viridis Lupulus – Weyerbacher – 7.5% ABV – 95 IBU
This one was an enamel stripper, a palate wrecker. But, that’s what it was intended for. A fresh, bottle conditioned, hop bomb of a beer. And on that front, they succeeded. I would never call this balanced, but still, mission accomplished. I’ll look for it again when it’s released next year.
Obviously, I’ve been on a bit of an IPA kick, getting my hops in before the weather turns to stout and porter season. Have you had any good beers lately?
Das Ale Haus is now on Facebook! Follow us here.
Follow @dasalehaus | {
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Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Justice Antonin Scalia is dead, and his death looks likely to set off partisan fireworks, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying that Scalia’s seat should be filled not by the lame-duck Barack Obama, but by America’s next president, whoever that turns out to be.
It wouldn’t be the first time that happened. In 1968, Republicans filibustered Abe Fortas, President Lyndon Johnson’s pick for chief justice to replace Earl Warren, until after the election, allowing Richard Nixon to choose Warren’s successor. And the GOP was in the minority then. As Josh Blackman notes, only once in the 20th century was a justice nominated by a president of one party confirmed by a Senate of the other party in an election year.
One might think that all this politicking in the wake of a great jurist’s death would be unseemly, but in Scalia’s case, I think it is perhaps fitting. It was a characteristic of his jurisprudence that he favored clear rules for running the government, but that he believed the Constitution should leave as many substantive decisions as possible to politics and the elected branches.
Scalia towered over John Marshall: Steven Calabresi
That’s a point I stress in teaching two leading cases in my own Constitutional Law classes, where I agree with the majority but nonetheless find Scalia’s dissents worthy of special attention. Lawrence v. Texas, the case in which the Supreme Court — reversing its own relatively recent decision in Bowers v. Hardwick — found that laws against homosexual sex violate the Constitution, Scalia observed: “One of the benefits of leaving regulation of this matter to the people rather than to the courts is that the people, unlike judges, need not carry things to their logical conclusion.”
Though I would not have stopped where Scalia did — I think that laws regulating sexual behavior that doesn’t harm anyone are beyond the legitimate power of any democratic government — his point about the difference between legislators and judges is an important one. Judges have to give reasons for what they do, and those reasons get built on in future cases. Legislators do not, and can stop wherever it suits them. At least, unless judges get involved.
Even more striking were his words in United States v. Virginia, which overturned single-sex education at the Virginia Military Institute: “Much of the court's opinion is devoted to deprecating the closed-mindedness of our forebears with regard to women's education, and even with regard to the treatment of women in areas that have nothing to do with education. Closed-minded they were — as every age is, including our own, with regard to matters it cannot guess, because it simply does not consider them debatable. The virtue of a democratic system with a First Amendment is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly. That system is destroyed if the smug assurances of each age are removed from the democratic process and written into the Constitution.
Playwright: Scalia enjoyed playing the monster
Scalia's defining moment: Stephen Henderson
"So to counterbalance the court's criticism of our ancestors, let me say a word in their praise: They left us free to change. The same cannot be said of this most illiberal court, which has embarked on a course of inscribing one after another of the current preferences of the society (and in some cases only the counter majoritarian preferences of the society's law-trained elite) into our Basic Law."
Every year, that passage has seemed more relevant to me, perhaps because we live in an age in which those “smug assurances” seem especially smug. As we remember Justice Scalia’s time, let us remember that every age’s smug certainties come to an end eventually, and that the dissents of Supreme Court justices often turn out to be prophetic.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page. | {
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Warforged
Built as mindless machines to fight in the Last War, the warforged developed sentience as a side effect of the arcane experiments that sought to make them the ultimate weapons of destruction. With each successive model that emerged from the creation forges of House Cannith, the warforged evolved until they became a new kind of creature—living constructs. Warforged are renowned for their combat prowess, their size, and their single-minded focus. They make steadfast allies and fearsome enemies.
Prejudice
Despite the Warforged's peaceful nature, most citizens of the five nations see them as reminders of a dark past. Some still see them as implements of destruction, killing machines and equipment made in the form of a man, and see them as a danger that must either be destroyed or removed from society. Of the five nations it is Karrnath that has the least liberal social attitude towards warforged. Most Karrns see them only as machines rather than individuals, this is perhaps due to their relation with undead soldiers. Warforged prejudice isn't exclusive to Karrnath and there are those who make the common Karrn citizen seem fair in their views. Some citizens hold outright racist views towards the warforged, an example of such an individual would be Nolan Toranak, a member of the Sharn council. Nolan endorses anti-warforged organizations and advocates the banishment or the murder and melting down of warforged.
Warforged Names
Warforged often take up the nicknames given to them by their friends, colleagues and superiors though they also name themselves after their rank, job title or something that describes an aspect of themselves. It is not rare for a warforged to change his name when they feel their old one no longer suits them. Others could take names from other races, such as humans.
Example Names: Azm, Book, Bulwark, Cart, Charger, Cutter, Falchion, Graven, Hammer, Mark, Morg, Nameless, Pierce, Pious, Relic, Rune, Steeple, Sword, Three, Titan, Unsung, Victor, Watcher, Zealot.
Warforged Traits
Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 2.
Age. Being living constructs the warforged theoretically can live for eternity as long as they receive maintenance and repairs. Being created in 965 YK the oldest a warforged can be (providing the campaign starts in 998 YK) is 33 and the youngest 2.
Alignment. Warforged are generally neutral. They were built to fight, not to wonder whether fighting is right. Though they are perfectly capable of independent thought and moral speculation, most choose not to wrestle with ethical ideals.
Size. Warforged stand between 6 and 8 feet tall and usually weigh between 270 and 300 pounds. Your size is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Composite Plating. Warforged were designed to fight in the Last War, and were built with armoured plates covering their most vital areas. You gain a +1 bonus to your Armour Class.
Integrated Armor. When you are not wearing armor, your AC is 11 plus your Dexterity modifier. During a short or long rest, you can bond a suit of armor you are wearing to your body. When you finish that short or long rest, the armor you are wearing is bonded to you, and it cannot subsequently be removed from your body until you finish another short or long rest during which time you remove the bonded armor. This feature counts as wearing armor, and you must be proficient with the Armor in order to bond it to yourself.
Living Construct. Even though you were constructed, you are a living creature. You are immune to disease. You do not need to eat or breathe, but you can ingest food and drink if you wish. It should be noted that while Warforged may be immune to Suffocation, they are still made of wood stone and metal, thus they cannot swim, and are subject to deterioration if they spend too much time submerged underwater
Self-Stabilizing. You may add your proficiency bonus to your death saving throws.
Unsleeping Watcher. Instead of sleeping, you enter an inactive state for 4 hours each day. You do not dream in this state; you are fully aware of your surroundings and notice approaching enemies and other events as normal. You can still be rendered unconscious from spells that cause you to be put to sleep, however you do not dream, and are immune to abilities that would affect you otherwise.
Warforged Composition. Your form is composed of both living plant material and inanimate metal and stone. Because of this you take half healing from all healing spells.
Warforged Resilience. You automatically succeed on saving throws against poison, and you have immunity to poison damage.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common.
Types. When Warforged are created, they are built with a single purpose in mind. The most common type of Warforged are warforged scouts and warforged soldiers, though others may exist. Choose one of these types.
Warforged Soldier
Built to be the main Infantry in the Last War, Soldiers are strong, sturdy, and relentless in their duty
Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 1.
Relentless Endurance: When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.
Warforged Scout
Warforged Scouts were made to serve as Reconnaissance in the Last War. Unlike Soldiers they are suprisingly light on their feet, and tend to be slimmer than the averaged warforged overall.
Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 1.
Extra Movement. Your base walking speed increases to 35 feet. | {
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The White House has enlisted veteran actor Bill Murray to get the word out during the final days of open enrollment to receive health insurance next year under the Affordable Care Act.
In a video tweeted by the official White House account Sunday evening, Murray and President Obama take turns putting into a glass in the Oval Office as the president reminds viewers that open enrollment for the health care exchanges ends on December 15.
So Bill Murray walks into the Oval Office… #GetCovered https://t.co/X4R4hhC5Fe — White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) December 12, 2016
“Generally, I don’t let Cubs fans into the Oval Office,” Obama jokes as the 66-year-old actor lines up a shot.
“It’s probably not a coincidence that your popularity is at an all-time high,” Murray jokes back. “So I would just stick with this if I were you. I would just ride this baby.”
When Murray bends down to retrieve his ball, he winces, telling Obama his knee has been bothering him.
“I don’t have anyone to look at it,” Murray tells Obama.
“You don’t have health insurance?” Obama asks the actor. “Look, Bill. You don’t have to go without health insurance because these days — because of the Affordable Care Act — anybody can get health insurance and it doesn’t matter if you already have something wrong with you because insurance companies have to take you even if you have a pre-existing condition.”
After sinking another putt, Murray jokingly asks Obama where First Lady Michelle Obama keeps his money.
This isn’t the first time Obama has enlisted celebrity star power to help promote the Affordable Care Act. Shortly after the launch of the legislation, the White House called on celebrity supporters to promote it with the hashtag #GetCovered, which is still in use. In 2014, Obama appeared on Funny or Die’s popular web series “Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis” to similarly promote the health exchanges.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | {
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In an unremarkable warehouse on the outskirts of Shanghai, music journalist Ben Westhoff claims Chinese chemists fill orders off the internet for a synthetic opioid called Fentanyl - it's so lethal, that just 2 milligrams can kill you.
He spent four years immersed in the shadowy world of designer drugs, becoming the first reporter to get an inside look at a Chinese laboratory where, he claims, this powerful drug has been made to order.
His journey is recounted in his book, Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating The Deadliest Wave Of The Opioid Epidemic.
Photo: 123RF
It’s important to note that fentanyl isn’t always deadly, when used responsibly it’s a vital drug and pain reliever. For example, it can be given to women during childbirth for epidurals and men are also sometimes given fentanyl for colonoscopies.
Photo: Supplied - publicity
“When we hear about the fentanyl that's killing people, that's different. That's not usually fentanyl stolen from hospitals or pharmacies. That's usually the illicit fentanyl, the illegal fentanyl, that's made in Chinese laboratories,” Westhoff told Afternoons.
The synthetic fentanyl that’s made in labs is part of a whole new crop of chemicals of drug variations – called novel psychoactive substances (NPS) - that people hadn’t heard of until recently, he says.
“They often have these unpronounceable names, but they're replacements for known drugs. And so you have the new synthetic heroin, which is fentanyl, you have new versions of cocaine, of meth, of LSD.”
And synthetic cannabis, too, is also being made in those labs, he says. Although it sounds similar to regular marijuana, he says they’re not alike in the substance - with the synthetic version being a chemical sprayed onto dried plant matter – nor the effects.
Westhoff says the synthetic cannabis being made in labs now is also different to what was developed by Kiwi chemist Matt Bowden, who sold then-legal highs as an alternative to black market drugs, before moving into the production of synthetic cannabis in 2011.
Photo: AFP / Getty Images
“And this wasn't again like the synthetic cannabis that's killing people. It wasn't too strong. It was regulated. It was safe. And he took his case all the way to the New Zealand government who agreed to legalise all of this synthetic cannabis and party drugs.”
It was unprecedented, with Westhoff describing it as the most wide-ranging drug legalisation in history. However, about a year later the drugs were made illegal again.
Banning NPS is problematic, because rogue chemists are always prepared to tweak the chemical formula that would make it fall out of the ranges of whatever newly implemented legislation comes in, Westhoff says.
“So now you've got something that still acts like the drug - it still gets people high in the same way, and it's still dangerous - but now it's technically legal. And the chemists can just keep doing that over and over and over.”
America’s opioid epidemic
In the United States, Westhoff says many doctors were over-prescribing opioid pain killers and that some Americans may have unwittingly become addicted to the substance.
Photo: Spencer Platt / Getty Images / AFP
“Doctors overprescribed them because the pharmaceutical companies put out a sort of wrong information campaign, they said that these drugs like Oxycontin were not really addictive, and that people weren't going to have any problems with them.
“When, in fact, their own research showed that these drugs like Oxycontin were much more addictive than they ever let on.”
More recently the country has started to change the laws and rules about prescribing these powerful drugs, he says.
He describes fentanyl as being worse than crack was in the 1980s, or meth in the early 2000s, and more damaging than heroin and Oxycodone in the 2010s. In 2017 alone, more than 70,200 Americans died from drug overdoses, including illicit drugs and prescription opioids.
Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images / AFP
“The number of deaths from fentanyl is actually going up every year. And it's not just the US, it's Canada, it's the UK, places like Australia even,” he says.
America’s opioid epidemic can be thought of in three waves, he says, the first being prescription pills like Oxycontin.
“We had a huge problem and still do with doctors over prescribing these opioids. And so when people's prescriptions run out, they often turn to street heroin.”
And heroin thus became the second wave, he says, but now it’s almost impossible to find ‘pure’ heroin because fentanyl is mixed into it, making it the third wave of the opioid epidemic.
The rogue chemist labs
When the journalist noticed an uptick in deaths at raves, he started a quest to understand the drug which took him all the way to China.
He says in almost every rave he went to, someone died, and it was attributed to ecstasy. While in the past he says some have been known to take ecstasy pills at raves, this was different – he was noticing people passing out, having seizures and overdosing.
“But I didn't know ecstasy was such a dangerous drug. So I kind of went down the rabbit hole and found out that almost all of the ecstasy available was now adulterated.
“It was adulterated with these brand new drugs, all of them were synthetic, all of them were made in China, and the most powerful one was fentanyl.”
But not all of China’s pharmaceutical or chemist industry is to blame, of course. He says the trouble lies within a subsection of rogue chemists willing to make these illegal drugs in huge quantities.
Photo: 123RF
“In fact, I was able to go inside one of these laboratories I posed as a drug dealer, and I saw one company making quantities of these drugs that I just couldn't even fathom.”
Westhoff says at one point his cover was almost blown, when one lab owner from Shanghai asked who he really was and whether he was a journalist.
“I kept denying it. And eventually though, they took me to the lab, I wanted to see you know what this environment was like because no journalist had ever been in one of these labs and to me it reminded me of the show Breaking Bad.
“And then the synthetic cannabis … there were huge piles of it … It was being bagged up, one kilo bags, whole drums filled with them.
“Then all of the synthetic cannabis on the tables reminded me of the movie Scarface actually - when at the end Al Pacino his face all covered with cocaine and he's got the big piles of cocaine on the table - except that there was much, much more being made at this lab I went to.”
Westhoff claims that the lab owner said in a candid moment that he was aware these drugs were dangerous and did harm, but justified it also by saying they were in fact legal in China.
However, in a recent report by Reuters, China denied that most of the illicit fentanyl entering the United States originated in China.
And China too is facing the same problem as the rest of the world with bringing in regulations for NPS, Westhoff says.
“There are literally hundreds and hundreds of these new drugs. When it comes to synthetic cannabis, there's something like more than 100 new ones every year.
“So the government of China has to ban each one, one by one. It takes a while for them to ban one. And then by that time, these chemists have already created a new one and it's just an endless sort of cat and mouse game.”
And these drugs end up going through post and across the world, Westhoff claims the owner said they went to places like Russia, Europe and the United States.
Having seen the effect of these drugs on others and how the industry worked, Westhoff says he would support pill testing at raves or parties because, whether we like it or not, people are going to use drugs and this is one way to ensure safety. | {
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Florida State's most important players for 2018: No. 30
Wayne McGahee III | Tallahassee Democrat
The countdown to Florida State's season is heading into its final stretch.
The Seminoles are one month away from the start of fall camp with FSU head coach Willie Taggart attempting to lead the program back into the national spotlight.
Taggart is going to have his hands full this season with a brutal schedule that is ranked as one of the Top-3 toughest schedules in college football by nearly every pundit.
If the Seminoles are going to be successful the players are going to have to step up.
Democrat sports writer Wayne McGahee III and Curt Weiler start their countdown of the 30 most important players on FSU's roster for the 2018 season at No. 30.
Wayne - Redshirt sophomore offensive tackle Jauan Williams
Williams enters the fall with a lot to prove and an opportunity to do so.
He will be competing for one of the two open offensive tackle positions with Josh Ball no longer on the FSU football roster.
Williams came to FSU as a four-star offensive lineman out of Washington D.C., but wasn't able to find his way onto the field in his first two years. He missed the 2017 season with a shoulder injury.
He also missed most of spring practice with new offensive line coach Greg Frey at the helm so that could hinder his progress.
With a lack of offensive tackles on the roster, Williams seems primed to make his way into the starting lineup, but he will have to compete with redshirt senior Derrick Kelly.
FSU could also move an interior offensive lineman like Landon Dickerson or Mike Arnold to tackle. Arnold played tackle in the spring.
At 6-foot-7, 293 pounds, Williams has the size that FSU is looking for on the outside and he also has the athleticism and quickness to be a standout tackle.
But Williams will have put it all together to win the job, and if he does, that would be a very good sign for FSU in 2018.
More: No. 1 overall recruit Kayvon Thibodeaux has Florida State in his Top-5
More: Stan Wilcox sets potential time frame for decision on FSU's football-only facility
More: Stan Wilcox enjoying the beginning of the Willie Taggart era of FSU football
More: FSU finishes 9th in Learfield Director’s Cup
Curt -- Redshirt junior offensive guard Cole Minshew
Minshew enters his junior season with plenty to prove.
The Pridgeon County (Ga.) product has an impressive 6-foot-5, 335-pound frame and has been one of FSU’s best linemen when healthy and among the starters.
Early in his career, that was a significant problem as he battled multiple concussions and other injuries that kept him sidelined.
This prevented him from practicing consistently and allowed him to play in just six games (three starts) across his first two seasons in 2015 and 2016.
This past season, Minshew finally remained healthy for an extended period and started all 13 games at right guard as a result.
Minshew suffered a minor setback this spring with a left foot injury, but is expected to be ready to go by the time fall camp gets underway.
Minshew was already going to be looked at as one of the veterans on FSU’s offensive line. His 16 career starts are third most among the unit behind Alec Eberle and Derrick Kelly.
The suspension of Ball – and the subsequent realization that FSU will be replacing two starters instead of just one – makes Minshew’s development all the more important.
On an offensive line that has as much room for improvement as any position group under the new FSU regime, Minshew’s ability to stay healthy and emerge as a leader will be crucial in the group’s first year being coached by Frey. | {
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Oh, you don't smoke and you hate 420? Tell me how you spent St. Patrick's Day
160 shares | {
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Long, strong, and thick lashes never go out of fashion. Every woman desires luxurious eyelashes that flutter with each blink. Eyelash Serums are very popular these days and believe me, most of them really work. They give the desired look literally in a month. However, they might be not very affordable. If you are not sure you want to invest in trying an eyelash serum you are at the right place, then. In this article, I will share with you one of my favorite homemade eyelash serums that will make your eyelashes strong, long and healthy.
They all are a combination of natural oils, creating a boosting serum for quick results. These natural oils will penetrate into your eyelash hair follicles and will nourish your eyelash. This will help to restore the health of your lashes, preventing the excessive number of eyelashes falling out. Oh, and the best part? These serums are very affordable and really easy to make. With regular use, you will be amazed how thick and long your lashes will be in just a month.
Before we begin I would like to briefly introduce you to the essential qualities of these natural oils that we are going to use. I definitely recommend you to look at this article, where you can find very detailed and interesting information about those oils.
This concentrated oil is very rich in Vitamin E and fatty acids with antibacterial and nourishing effect on your eyelashes.
Also rich in Vitamin E and fats, this oil will strengthen your lashes, preventing damage and breakage.
The amazing coconut oil not only contains fatty acids, that have anti-fungal and antibacterial properties, fighting against the eyelash loss and preventing infections that might limit eyelash growth.
In this post you will learn more about the coconut oil and its benefits for your hair.
This is super powerful antioxidant with moisturizing effects on your lashes. Applied to your eyelashes, this vitamin will not only make your eyelashes beautiful but protect them from damage and breakage because it creates a protective barrier against toxins.
Rich in antioxidants, fatty acids, and Vitamin E, the Argan oil is a powerful moisturizer that can help your eyelashes to be hydrated.
Did you know that Argan Oil is a great hair moisturizes too?
This rich in protein, saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, vitamins A, D, E, B, magnesium, copper, iron and folic acid, avocado oil is among the most useful vegetable oils in cosmetics, especially in hair and therefore eyelash care.It strengthens the structure of the eyelash hair and acts as an excellent hydrate with long-lasting effect.
The essential fatty acids and antioxidants of the olive oil help the cell regeneration and help prevent further eyelash damage.
Its moisturizing properties make it especially useful for treating and taking care of the hair.
Widely used in hair care, the Burdock oil stimulates growth and nourishes eyelash hair. It will make your eyelashes soft and shiny.
Promotes hair and eyelash growth by stimulating “sleeping” hair follicles. It nourishes and prevents the loss of proteins from the hair.
It is an extract of the seeds of the jojoba plant. People call it “liquid wax”, and it is believed to be the closest to the human sebum. It is rich in vitamins E, C, B, copper, zinc, silicon and many others, making jojoba oil capable of restoring the firmness and elasticity of the eyelashes in depth.
Now is time to grab your oils and let the fun begin.
How to Mix?
For your convenient opt for these empty mascara tubes that are just perfect for this purpose. Instead of using old empty commercial mascara bottle, I prefer those because they are clean, really cute and very easy to use. Each of them has a small piece that plugs in on the top once you fill it up with the serum. My advice: don’t fill up till the top. The serum might overflow when you try to put the plug.
How to apply?
Best time to apply this natural eyelash growth serum at night before bed. This way it will allow more time to for the serum to work on your skin and eyelashes. Before you start, clean your face and make-up. Using the empty mascara wand apply gently on your lash line. Be careful and avoid getting into your eyes, because may cause irritation. Wash it off in the morning, and your lashes will look healthy and moisturized!
Olive Oil Lash Moisturizer
1 teaspoon Olive oil,
1 teaspoon Castor oil,
Empty container and mascara wand
Using a disposable mascara wand, mix well by shaking the olive oil and the castor oil together and apply the solution oil on your lashes before going to bed.
Castor Oil Lash Strengthener
1 teaspoon Castor oil,
1 teaspoon Coconut oil,
2 capsules Vitamin E or 1 teaspoon Vitamin E oil,
Empty container and mascara wand
Add the 3 oils into the container, If you have chosen the Vitamin E in capsules, after mixing the castor and coconut oil, pierce and drain the Vitamin E capsules into the container. Mix well by shaking. Apply the solution oil on your lashes before going to bed.
Argan Lash Growth Stimulator
1 teaspoon Avocado oil, Argan oil,and Sweet Almond oil,
Empty container and mascara wand
Combine the oils into the container. Shake well and apply on your lashes before bedtime…
Burdock Lash Conditioner
2 teaspoon Sweet Almond oil,
1 teaspoon Olive oil, Burdock oil,and Castor oil,
Empty container and mascara wand
Combine the oils into the container. Shake well and apply on your lashes before bedtime.
Almond Oil Serum Against Damage
1 teaspoon Castor oil,
1 teaspoon Sweet Almond oil,
Empty container and mascara wand
Make a combination of these two well-liked and effective oils that aids to make your eyelashes extremely attractive, beautiful and healthy.
Serum To Prevent Eyelash Loss
½ tablespoon Castor oil, and ½ tablespoon Jojoba oil,
½ tablespoon Vitamin E oil or squeeze ½ Vitamin E capsule,
Empty container and mascara wand
Mix all oils together with and apply before bed.
Emu Oil For Volume
1 tablespoon Aloe Vera,
10 drops of Emu oil,
Empty container and mascara wand
Mix all oils together with a toothpick and apply before bed.
Have in mind that in case you are allergic to some of these oils, or any eye irritation appears, you should discontinue using any of these treatments.
Some of these oils are heavy, like the castor oil, for example, so don’t over apply the eyelash growth serum as it can weigh down your lashes!
Have you tried my recipes? Share your results in the comment section and help others to chose the best homemade serum. | {
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Lena Dunham said after Donald Trump won the election she “stopped being able to eat food.”
During an interview Monday on “The Howard Stern Show,” the 30-year-old actress blamed her recent weight loss on Trump and called the results of the election “soul-crushing,” according to Entertainment Weekly. (RELATED: INSPIRING: Lena Dunham Leaves Paul Ryan A Voicemail)
“Donald Trump became president and I stopped being able to eat food,” Dunham told Stern. “Everyone’s been asking like, ‘’What have you been doing?’ And I’m like, ‘Try soul-crushing pain and devastation and hopelessness and you, too, will lose weight.'”(RELATED: Lena Dunham Takes After Her Mom: ‘I Still Haven’t Had An Abortion, But I Wish I Had’)
“He [Trump] said I was a B-list actor with no mojo,” she added.
Stern then pressed the “Girls” star if she thinks it’s a mistake for the president to pay attention to celebrities.
“Here’s the funny thing,” Dunham answered. “Of course, it’s a mistake, but we’re talking about him like he’s a person who is operating in a sane way. “We’re talking about him like a person who doesn’t have a personality disorder.”
The actress also addressed her vow to move to Canada if Trump won and clarified that she never thought it was a possibility, calling it “an impossible joke” that she thought “would never happen.”
“The most qualified candidate we’ve ever had is running against a steak salesman,” Dunham said. “We’re going to be fine.”
After the election, Dunham said that she was one of “millions of women” that were terrified about what will happen to their “reproductive” rights under Trump’s administration.
Dunham was a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter during the election and even spoke on behalf of the former secretary of state during the Democratic National Convention. | {
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Concurrency in elisp via CPS
Last updated on November 1, 2016
There is apparently quite a bit of excitation around a “concurrency branch” which may make it to Emacs master in a not-too-distant future. In this post I show that asynchronous programs can be conveniently written in Emacs already today.
Points against thread-based concurrency
Even though there seems to be a lot of enthusiasm around the concurrency branch, there are dissident voices. Lunaryorn (of flycheck) is critical of changing Emacs core to support concurrency, and argues that instead Emacs should support “Futures”.
Let me summarize Lunaryorn’s points against the approach proposed in the concurrency branch.
Cooperative threads do not fundamentally change the programming model.
The programmer is essentially left with handling locks and shared resources themselves.
Concurrency issues should ultimately be solved by a proper programming model rather than by adding a feature to elisp.
I am generally agreeing with all those points (until proven otherwise).
Concurrency in Emacs Today
Existing asynchronous programs in Emacs revolve around callbacks. That is, if a function depends on an external resource being ready, it will typically take a callback as argument, do an asynchronous wait on the resource and, when the resource is ready, run the callback. For example, I have recently written code such as this:
(blocking-call (lambda (ret) (dante-async-load-current-buffer nil (lambda (_load-messages) (dante-async-call (concat ":loc-at " symbol) (lambda (target) (let ((xref (dante--make-xref target "def"))) (funcall ret (when xref (list xref))))))))))
In the above, both dante-async-load-current-buffer and dante-async-call run commands in an external process. When the response is ready, they call their last argument and pass it the response. Such last argument is called a “continuation”, and code written in the above style is deemed in “continuation-passing style” or CPS for short.
Even though CPS is syntactically heavy, it is is a good way to structure code which can potentially “yield” to other processes. There is a wealth of literature on how to structure code around CPS for asynchronous programming (including some of mine). CPS code used to be extremely unwieldy to write in elisp, because of dynamic scoping: one needs to explicitly save the state needed by further continuations. A contrario, with lexical scoping, one simply accesses the needed variables, and the run-time takes care of saving the needed state in a closure. Fortunately lexical binding has been available in Emacs for a long time, and package writers may assume that it is there.
CPS syntactic-sugar
As the saying goes: “a bit of syntactic sugar helps swallowing the semantics medicine”. In this case, the CPS syntactical overhead can be diminished drastically thanks to macros. Indeed, given a single cps-let macro, the above code can be rewritten as follows:
(cps-let ((ret (blocking-call)) (_load-messages (dante-async-load-current-buffer nil)) (target (dante-async-call (concat ":loc-at " symbol)))) (let ((xref (dante--make-xref target "def"))) (funcall ret (when xref (list xref)))))
The programmer conceptually binds the result of (blocking-call) to res , that of (dante-async-load-current-buffer nil) to _load-messages , and that of (dante-async-call (concat ":loc-at " symbol)) to target . Everything looks (nearly) as tidy as synchronous code, even though we call an asynchronous function at each line.
The macro facilities of (Emacs) lisp allow to implement cps-let in a handful of lines, as follows (I also support binding several variables at once).
(defmacro cps-bind (vars expr &rest body) "Bind VARS in a continuation passed to EXPR with contents BODY. So (cps-bind x (fun arg) body) expands to (fun arg (λ (x) body))" (declare (indent 2)) (if (listp vars) `(,@expr (lambda ,vars ,@body)) `(,@expr (lambda (,vars) ,@body)))) (defmacro cps-let (bindings &rest body) "Expand multiple BINDINGS and call BODY as a continuation. Example: (cps-let ((x (fun1 arg1)) (y z (fun2 arg2))) body) expands to: (fun1 arg1 (λ (x) (fun2 arg2 (λ (x y) body))))." (declare (indent 1)) (pcase bindings (`((,vars ,expr)) `(cps-bind ,vars ,expr ,@body)) (`((,vars ,expr) . ,rest) `(cps-bind ,vars ,expr (cps-let ,rest ,@body)))))
Perhaps the above macros even exist somewhere in Emacs already.
Conclusion
As far as I am concerned, there is no need to change elisp in any way to support concurrency. In particular, I do not see a use for “cooperative threads”. I do not see a need for “Futures”, as Lunaryorn advocates. Instead, the CPS convention can support a suitable concurrent programming model with today’s elisp. Additionally, these CPS “threads” are extremely lightweight and customizable. Indeed, the scheduler is provided by the user. (This is no recent discovery: the idea can be traced to the seventies at least.) Even further, they are syntactically pleasing, thanks to macros.
Instead of changing the core of Emacs to support concurrency, I would thus recommend to write a standard library for CPS-based concurrency. This library would include a scheduler, standard functions to talk to external processes, and macros hiding the syntactic overhead. | {
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Adam Bandt's first major policy initiative as the only member of the Greens in the House of Representatives was always going to be loaded with symbolism. When that moment came, he used his political capital in support of same-sex marriage. What, you may ask, has this got to do with the environment? Nothing. Obviously.
Same-sex marriage is now the No.1 issue of the hard left in Australia; therefore it has become the No.1 issue for the Greens. Bandt, a lawyer and academic, was a member of the Left Alliance and his doctoral thesis involved a consideration of Marx. His decision to make gay marriage his top priority reflected his electoral base, where concerns for the environment are subservient to the obsessions of the left.
Michael Mucci Credit:Michael Mucci
The Greens are a fraudulent brand. There are not enough letters of the alphabet to encompass the image fraud this party is perpetrating on the electorate. It is simply not a party preoccupied with the environment.
A: ABCC. The Australian Building and Construction Commission was established to combat rampant corruption and intimidation in the building industry and has been highly effective. The main construction union, the CFMEU, has run a vociferous campaign to shut down the ABCC, which curbed the practice of building sites being threatened with industrial action unless they were ''paid up'' with the union. The CFMEU has donated to the Greens. The Greens want the ABCC abolished. | {
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Anyone with access to a television can probably think of at least one movie comparing people to primates. There's MVP: Most Valuable Primate, or The Planet of the Apes. The trope in science-fiction books is even more popular. As these popular books and movies suggest, we seem to be forever asking the question—just how are we different?
Out of our roughly 20,000 genes, less than 50 are exclusive to humans.
At the most fundamental level, we're nearly identical to apes. Humans share 99 percent of our genetic information with chimpanzees, our closest relatives, and 93 percent with rhesus macaques, one of the most common monkey species. Out of our roughly 20,000 genes, less than 50 are exclusive to humans. From such tremendous similarity, how do our substantial differences arise?
The PsychENCODE Consortium—a U.S. government-funded initiative, involving 116 researchers at 15 institutes—is trying to finally come up with an answer. The collective recently published their findings as a series of 11 papers in a special issue of Science. One of these studies, spearheaded by Yale neuroscientist Nenad Sestan, radically redefined our understanding of how our brains become human.
Science, AAAS
Sestan’s team studied both humans and rhesus monkeys as they grew up, from infancy into early adulthood. The researchers followed how the human and monkey brains changed over time, using a technique known as single cell RNA sequencing. This allowed them to isolate individual cells from the brains at different ages, profiling the amount of every gene in each cell. This means that the scientists could track changes, uncovering differences that are masked when millions of cells are combined, as they are in traditional genetic tests.
The amount of a gene in each cell can matter just as much, if not more, as the identities of the genes themselves.
The amount of a gene in each cell can matter just as much, if not more, as the identities of the genes themselves. Consider baking cookies: Two recipes can have all the same ingredients, but if one calls for twice as much salt or baking powder, the final results will be dramatically different. If what separates people from primates is a result of how many genes of a certain type are in certain groups of cells—well, this would be the first study that could possibly detect these differences.
The researchers quickly noticed that for the most part, humans and monkeys don't actually diverge much as they're growing up. Humans go through every stage of macaque development, and most aspects of brain growth happen at the same time across the two species. In both humans and monkeys, brain cells—including neurons, cells that send messages to and from the brain, and glia, the cells that support neurons by providing nutrients and protection—develop and diversify in the same order, and at about the same time. As a result, our brains don't just grow in parallel—during certain periods, they actually become more similar to each other as they develop.
Though humans advance through all stages of macaque development, humans also have two extra stages of brain development, ones found in no other animal.
The next logical question, is what, exactly, causes humans to deviate so radically from monkeys? The Yale researchers found a few notable differences: Though humans advance through all stages of macaque development, humans also have two extra stages of brain development, ones found in no other animal. The first comes at the very beginning of life, when fetuses experience a short period of great change. Interestingly, during this phase fetuses show developments in their prefrontal cortex, which is crucial to complex thought and decision making, the most distinctive parts of human thought, and an area of the brain that's comparatively. After this period, our brains rapidly become more similar to those of monkeys—until the next period of divergence.
Sestan’s team found this second period comes during late childhood, around the age of ten. Humans have a prolonged childhood, meaning we take longer to mature, and also keep some childlike traits, like having large eyes and heads, permanently. But until now, scientists didn't understand why we take so long to develop. Only around the end of elementary school do the brain cells from our two species begin to form connections and transmit information differently. As a result, the researchers speculate that this phase could be responsible for how humans learn, think, and remember differently than monkeys.
Surprisingly, in all stages of development, humans and monkeys shared most cell types. This means if a neuron is present in humans, it is likely present in monkeys too. Our two species' genetic differences are generally found in a few small groups of cells, mostly subgroups of neurons. But even in these, the genetic differences across species remained relatively small—in total, the researchers found out of 20,000 genes, only about 50 diverged significantly. Despite the small number, some of these genes play major roles in mental function; many have been linked to disorders such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. For example, the gene GRIA1 controls learning and memory, causing schizophrenia by distorting the underlying basis of thought.
Prem Jejurkar on Pexels.com
Even though this work represents a major step forward in our understanding of what makes humans unique, this study only examined the genes found in a cell. Human and monkey brains may also differ in many other ways—like how brain cells connect to one another, or how these cells communicate. Further research along these lines will be necessary to fully understand the relationship between our two species.
Regardless, Sestan’s study illustrates how seemingly minor changes can yield major effects. Only two short periods of development meaningfully separate the brains of humans and monkeys, where only a few cell types receive the brunt of these changes. A minute number of genes diverge in just a few cells, and suddenly, we acquire the ability to read, to write, to speak—to be human.
After the Planet of the Apes came out, there was some speculation on what hypothetically could've made these apes become so close to humans, and what such a scenario would require in real life. We now finally have an answer: not much at all. | {
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'Hundreds more' could be drawn into Epstein sex slave scandal
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Hundreds more associates of Jeffrey Epstein could be linked to the sex slave scandal surrounding the late tycoon, a court heard on Wednesday. Their names are among almost 10,000 pages of court documents that could become public. Lawyers acting for British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and a man known only as ‘John Doe’ tried to block the release of the papers in New York yesterday. Miss Maxwell’s attorney, Jeffrey Pagliuca, said the files contained an address book with around 1,000 names. Legal sources told the Mail the documents have further damaging revelations about Prince Andrew’s association with Epstein. Details about the Duke of York’s visits to the paedophile’s homes could emerge if the files are released.
Lawyers acting for Virginia Roberts, who was abused by Epstein for three years and who claims she had sex with Andrew, called for the files to be made public by a Manhattan federal court yesterday.
Attorney Sigrid McCawley said that only social security numbers, names of underage victims and personal medical information should be kept secret.
The files follow the 2,000 pages of documents released on August 9. The next day, Epstein committed suicide in his New York jail cell at the age of 66 – a month after he was arrested on child sex-trafficking charges.
Yesterday’s court hearing stemmed from a defamation lawsuit filed against Miss Maxwell by Miss Roberts, a 36-year-old married mother of three now called Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
She claimed the 57-year-old, who is the daughter of tycoon Robert Maxwell, recruited her for Epstein and participated in the sexual abuse, then defamed her by calling her a liar.
Mr Pagliuca, who is paid around £800 an hour to represent Miss Maxwell, said many of the documents should not be released because they were entered as evidence after his client settled the defamation case.
District judge Loretta Preska adjourned the hearing for five weeks. She said hundreds of names were in the papers.
Yesterday’s session came after an appeals court ordered the release of ‘all documents for which the presumption of public access outweighs any countervailing privacy interests’.
Miss Maxwell denies any wrongdoing. Her spokesman said: ‘The allegations made against Ghislaine are untrue.’
Prince Andrew has denied ‘any form of sexual contact or relationship’ with Miss Roberts.
Daily Mail | {
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Remembers the words to the song you're about to sing forgets in the middle of the second verse
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The rugby team from Our Lady and St Patrick's College, Knock, has broken new sporting ground.
They are thought to be the first team from a Catholic grammar to play in rugby's Ulster Schools' Cup.
On Wednesday, they lost a tight game in the competition to local rivals, Wellington College, by 12 points to 7.
The Schools' Cup is Ulster's oldest and most prestigious schools rugby tournament.
The final is held at Ulster Rugby's Kingspan Stadium in Belfast on St Patrick's Day each year.
The current holders are Methodist College Belfast, who also have the record number of wins in the tournament.
A new group structure for the 2019/20 competition opened the door for Our Lady and St Patrick's College to enter.
Other Catholic schools play rugby and compete in Ulster schools' competitions, but the east Belfast school are thought to be the first to take part in the elite event.
Image caption Head of PE, Frank Wilson, said parents, staff and the Ulster Branch had helped with the team
The head of PE at Our Lady and St Patrick's College, Frank Wilson, said it was the climax of many years of hard work and coaching.
"Some of the boys expressed an interest in rugby," he said.
"We worked with Ulster Branch who came in with these boys in year 8 and year 9.
"There were also parents from different clubs, like Cooke and Instonians and Malone, and they helped us out.
"This is the fruition here now where we've got to the Schools' Cup.
"This is a local derby, Belfast schools going head to head."
The players train on the school's GAA pitch and a number also play Gaelic Games to a high standard.
Image caption Oran O'Neill also plays Gaelic football
Team captain Oran O'Neill said that playing Gaelic football had helped his rugby skills, and vice-versa.
"The handling skills are really essential in both games," he said.
"I've also found that from a young age I was able to get experience under a high ball in Gaelic and then I would use that in rugby."
When the game kicked off, Wellington College took an early lead through a fine try by their left wing.
But Our Lady and St Patrick's hit back with a converted try midway through the first half to lead 7-5 at the break.
However, their opponents scored a decisive try in the second half to earn a hard-fought 12-7 victory.
As is customary, both teams clapped each other off at the end.
And Frank Wilson told his team he was proud of the fight they had put up.
"I'm so proud to go nip and tuck, toe to toe, with a side like Wellington College," he said.
The new structure for this year's Schools' Cup means, though, that all is not yet over for Our Lady and St Patrick's College.
They still have a chance of silverware in the Schools' Bowl which will run alongside the later rounds of the main tournament. | {
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SINGAPORE - A cleaner who stole his 83-year-old mother's ATM card and withdrew a total of $21,776 over five months was sentenced to five months' jail on Friday (Dec 30).
Mohamed Nasir Salim, 57, faced 48 charges. He pleaded guilty to 10 charges, including theft of Madam Maznah Mohd Noor's POSB ATM card at the Woodlands flat in August 2015.
A district court heard that Madam Maznah discovered her ATM card missing in August 2015. She subsequently checked her POSB account and found out that there were several Nets transactions and cash withdrawals made from her savings account.
She suspected that her son might have taken it. She did not make any report until April 27, 2016.
Upon Nasir's arrest, he admitted that he had stolen his mother's POSB ATM card from the flat without her permission or knowledge.
He had obtained the card's personal identification number from her previously.
The amount involved in the proceeded charges is $10,000. Nasir withdrew the amounts at unknown locations.
He has previous convictions for motor vehicle theft, drug possession and consumption.
His sentence was backdated to Nov 8.
He could have been jailed for up to seven years and fined for theft.
For knowingly causing the POSB computer server to perform a function for securing access to the complainant's bank account to withdraw money, he could have been fined up to $5,000 and/or jailed for up to two years per charge. | {
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In the wake of President Trump's decision to remove America from the Paris Climate agreement, you'd be forgiven for feeling a little negative about the future of the planet.
Fortunately though, there are some good news stories on the horizon; with many of them coming from China. The country has been leading the way when it comes to 'green living' in recent years, with the government announcing it had completed construction of the world's largest floating solar farm. Now, in an attempt to curb the production of toxic gasses, the country is continuing to pave the way (so to speak) with the construction of one of the world's first 'forest cities'.
Designed by Stefano Boeri, who you might remember also designed two vertical skyscraper 'forests', the city is currently under construction in Liuzhou, Guangxi Province.
Picture: Stefano Boeri
Once completed, the new city will reportedly host 30,000 people and - thanks to the abundance of trees and plants - will absorb almost 10,000 tons of CO2, 57 tons of pollutants per year and produce approximately 900 tons of oxygen annually.
The city will achieve these rather impressive figures thanks to roughly a million plants from over 100 species, as well as 40,000 trees being planted in facades over almost every surface imaginable.
The new Liuzhou Forest City will connect to the existing Liuzhou via a series of fast rail services and electric cars; it will also reportedly house a number of schools and two hospitals. There are also plans to make the city self-sustainable with regards to power, thanks to geothermal and solar energy resources.
Picture: Stefano Boeri
Mr Boeri's website states:
The diffusion of plants, not only in the parks and gardens or along the streets, but also over building facades, will allow the energy self-sufficient city to contribute to improve the air quality (absorbing both CO2 and fine dust of 57 tons per year), to decrease the average air temperature, to create noise barriers and to improve the biodiversity of living species, generating the habitat for birds, insects and small animals that inhabit the Liuzhou territory. | {
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DeSoto Cab Co. might not like the under-regulated and fast-emerging alternative-ride service industry, but company President Hansu Kim knows an opportunity when he sees one.
If Uber, Lyft and others are allowed to expose loopholes in the regulatory process — which boost their bottom lines exponentially — then so too can the traditional taxi industry, he realized.
During public comment at many recent San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors meetings, Kim has explained that his 204-vehicle operation is “bleeding money” due to competing ride services subject to a different set of rules enforced by the state, not The City.
If DeSoto were to change the model of its operations, it would cut its highest cost — nearly half a million dollars in monthly payments to taxi medallion holders — but not become another Uber or Lyft (the app-based ride services dubbed transportation network companies). Instead, DeSoto — The City's third-largest cab company — would seek charter-party carrier, or TCP licenses, intended for limousines and Lincoln Town Cars but legally obtained by nonluxury vehicles.
“Uber isn't putting me out of business,” Kim said, speaking hypothetically. “What Uber is making me do is retool — and given the same rules, I'll beat them all day long.”
The California Public Utilities Commission's Transportation License Section states, “The most important operational difference is that TCP transportation must be prearranged” whether by telephone or writing, whereas, “Taxis may provide transportation 'at the curb.'”
To have a livery plate, a type of TCP permit, a vehicle can be any sedan or SUV that seats 10 or fewer passengers including the driver.
“If a driver has applied for and received a livery plate and then becomes a driver with a TNC, that driver can provide TNC service in that vehicle,” CPUC spokesman Andrew Kotch said.
AN ALTERNATIVE PLAN
Technology-driven companies like Uber have blurred the definition of prearranged transportation and the code has not since been amended, said Barry Korengold, president of the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association. That has allowed TCP-licensed cars to use smartphone apps and act as taxis.
“Somehow, they've played with the words so much that 'on-demand' is 'prearranged,'” Korengold said.
Together, Kim said, the TCP and TNC ride services are a “double-whammy” to taxis.
“I hate to say it,” he said, “but all this deregulation is, from a financial standpoint, an opportunity for me.”
The cost factor is also important to DeSoto, as Kim pays $2,200 per month each to his 204 medallion holders for an annual total of nearly $5.4 million. If Kim decided to pull the trigger, it would take him three months to remove the cab meters and infrastructure while keeping his dispatch system, DeSoto name and two-toned blue colors. Each TCP license would be a one-time $1,500 fee plus $100 to renew annually. Kim said he would do just fine because he has built a loyal customer base over the company's 80-year history and now receives an additional 2,000 hails daily through the hailing app Flywheel, which he hopes would adapt with him.
Since 2010, medallions have been sold to drivers at $250,000 each. Up until a few months ago, Kim was paying medallion holders $2,500 per month, but that dropped to $2,200 with competition from other ride services. The monthly rate could drop to $1,800 by September, Kim said. Yet a medallion does have advantages, like allowing drivers to pick up street hails and airport customers.
“The SFMTA is going to kill their golden goose, which is their medallion sales,” Kim said.
NO CONCERNS FROM CITY
The repeated warning from DeSoto Cab Co. about retooling was not a major concern for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Taxis and Accessible Services' interim director, Kate Toran. DeSoto's medallions are a small fraction of the roughly 2,000 citywide, she said, and the medallion holders could do business with other taxi companies.
“That could be a business decision that they undertake and really that's [Kim's] choice,” Toran said. “There would be no loss for the SFMTA taxi fleet.”
There continues to be a “strong demand” for medallions, she said, with about 1,000 people ready to buy them.
“If the industry continues the positive work of adapting to the new challenges, we believe that the value of the medallions will remain strong,” Toran added.
Ed Healy, 69, a taxi driver for more than 25 years, said he sold his medallion a year ago because it appeared to him The City was not going to regulate the app-based ride services. He now drives for DeSoto two or three days a week.
“The state is allowing these people to put in all the vehicles they want, whether they are needed or not,” Healy said of the app-based ride services.
WILD, WILD WEST
Korengold said his main issue is that The City still cannot crack down on the state-regulated ride services. A state audit last month found that CPUC failed to enforce safety laws around limousine and bus companies and lacks properly trained investigators.
Luxor Cab, the second-largest taxi company in The City, is not considering converting its entire 220-vehicle fleet to a sedan service, Assistant Manager Charles Rathbone said. But it is keeping an open mind about getting TCP licenses for vehicles to operate them commercially or getting TNC licenses.
“We're not about to abandon the medallion system that has worked so well in San Francisco for generations,” Rathbone said.
While there are cabs that aren't leaving company lots, a number of drivers are returning to the cab industry, noted Steve Humphreys, CEO of the app Flywheel that is working with every taxi company in The City.
Kim's own reservations around the sedan service route are based on his belief that vehicles transporting people should be subject to regulation.
“Of course I want to be a business that is not losing money, but I don't want to see the industry become deregulated, because it's not in our public interest,” Kim said.
Bay Area NewsDeSoto Cab Co.Luxor CabSan Francisco Municipal Transportation AgencyTransittransportation
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Michael Vadon/Flickr
Donald Trump’s inaugural speech was filled, bizarrely and predictably, with dystopian falsehoods. His reference to “American carnage,” a reprise of his oft-repeated and utterly backwards claim that the country faces a violent crime epidemic, was an instant classic in authoritarian fear-mongering.
But that was not the most important moment in Trump’s inaugural. Singling out the most outrageous lie from any string of Donald Trump utterances is, of course, a bit like trying to pick the best Beatles album. But for my money, the heart of yesterday’s speech was Trump’s theory about why regular Americans aren’t prospering: because Washington politicians and foreign governments are stealing all their money. Here’s the key section:
For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished—but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered—but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.
A few moments later, he added:
The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.
This is a master class in scapegoating and misdirection, an astonishing example of chutzpah even by Trump’s historically awesome standards. There really is a group of people that has been sucking up the economic gains that should be going to the middle class, and the Trump Administration is basically its all-star team. Of the executive branch nominees picks so far announced, five are billionaires (as Trump claims to be himself, of course). At least a dozen more are multimillionaires. Andy Puzder, the fast-food magnate and Trump’s nominee for labor secretary, has talked openly about his plan to replace restaurant workers with robots. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary nominee, is a former Goldman Sachs partner who has already run into trouble for hiding $100 million in assets from the Senate Finance Committee. If middle and working class Americans watching Trump’s speech wanted to know who has been getting rich while they struggle to get by, they should have simply watched on mute. It’s the guy with his name on buildings.
The devastating irony of Trump’s promise to end Washington corruption is that he appears single-mindedly bent on using the presidency to enrich himself and his family to a degree not seen since the nineteenth century, if ever. If the master salesman can keep getting Americans to buy his narrative of ending Washington kleptocracy even as he personifies it, it will represent the colossal —and inexplicable—failure of the Democrats to rally voters around fighting economic inequality.
That failure is perhaps best distilled by the Hillary Clinton campaign’s early riposte to Trump’s campaign slogan: “America is already great.” It’s actually not great that real wages stagnate year after year even as the economy grows consistently. It’s not great that the richest 1 percent of Americans—people like Trump Cabinet picks Betsy DeVos and Wilbur Ross—control more than a third of the country’s wealth. But Clinton proved either unable or unwilling to address income inequality and its causes in all but the most perfunctory way during the campaign. Meanwhile, the unseemly riches she and her husband pulled in on the speaking circuit, while by no means corrupt, fit all too neatly into the narrative of Washington elites enriching themselves while the middle class barely gets by.
Bernie Sanders, of course, built his campaign on a theme of addressing inequality, which is why I think people who considered him unelectable in the general election—including me—were wrong. Yet his relentless focus on breaking up the big banks still missed the larger picture. It’s not just the financial system. The story of rising inequality since the 1980s is largely the story of regressive changes in tax policy and abandonment of antitrust enforcement combining to allow more and more wealth (and power) to accrue to fewer and fewer people and corporations. This magazine has told the latter aspect of the story over and over and over again.
This isn’t all that complicated. It isn’t even new. And Democratic politicians used to know how to talk about it. Consider this excerpt from Franklin Roosevelt’s speech accepting his re-nomination for Democratic presidential candidate in 1936 and defending his New Deal (and thanks to Mark Popham for tweeting it):
Throughout the Nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise. An old English judge once said: “Necessitous men are not free men.” Liberty requires opportunity to make a living—a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for. For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor—other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.
Somehow, during today’s new Gilded Age, the party of Roosevelt lost the rhetorical war over economic hardship to a cartoon version of a heartless tycoon. Or, perhaps more accurately, refused to fight it. (As my boss, Paul Glastris, wrote in October, Clinton did give a speech attacking corporate monopolists—but it was too little, too late.) Trump’s inaugural address reinforced what his campaign has proved all along: he understands the power of giving people someone to blame. That power has taken him to the White House. If his opponents don’t learn to harness it themselves, it will keep him there. | {
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In what could the second biggest corporate scandal after Satyam, Reebok India has alleged a Rs 8,700 crore fraud by its former Managing Director Subhinder Singh Prem and former Chief Operating Officer Vishnu Bhagat.
Reebok lodged an FIR with the Gurgaon police alleging that Prem and Bhagat had 'stolen' products by setting up 'secret warehouses', fudged accounts and indulged in fictitious sales to cause a multi-crore dent to the company.
When the alleged scam came to light in March 2012, Singh, who had been made the Managing Director of Adidas India in 2011 as a part of an integration of the businesses of both Adidas and Reebok brands, was dismissed from the company. Bhagat's services were terminated too.
The company's financial director, Shahim Padath, later lodged a formal complaint against the duo. The economic cell of Gurgaon police conducted a probe and found that Singh and Bhagat had allegedly rented four warehouses without informing their seniors and used them to store goods and claimed they were supplied to genuine dealers. | {
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The outbreak of violence between the two immigrant groups shocked Italians, many of whom have struggled to come to terms with the relatively recent advent of a multi-ethnic society. "It's like something out of Los Angeles, with the gang fights between the Bloods and the Crips," commented La Stampa on its front page. | {
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A new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science provides the first evidence of how goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) read human emotional expressions.
Faces are some of the most important and salient classes of stimuli involved in social communication for both human and non-human animals.
In the case of domesticated animals, both conspecific and heterospecific facial expressions are informative. However, it is not clear whether animals, in general, or those domesticated primarily for production are able to distinguish between different human emotions based on facial expressions.
To test this, University of Roehampton researcher Alan McElligott and co-authors presented goats with positive (happy) and negative (angry) images of unfamiliar human faces.
“In the study, we investigated whether goats can distinguish human facial expressions when simultaneously shown two images of an unfamiliar human with different emotional valences (positive/happy or negative/angry),” the researchers explained.
“Both images were vertically attached to a wall on one side of a test arena, 1.3 m apart, and goats were released from the opposite side of the arena (distance of 4 m) and were free to explore and interact with the stimuli during the trials. Each of four test trials lasted 30 s.”
“The study was carried out at a goat sanctuary (Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats) in the United Kingdom.”
The team found that images of happy faces elicited greater interaction in the goats who looked at the images, approached them and explored them with their snouts.
This was particularly the case when the happy faces were positioned on the right of the test arena suggesting that goats use the left hemisphere of their brains to process positive emotion.
“This study has important implications for how we interact with livestock and other species, because the abilities of animals to perceive human emotions might be widespread and not just limited to pets,” Dr. McElligott said.
“We already knew that goats are very attuned to human body language, but we did not know how they react to different human emotional expressions, such as anger and happiness,” said study first author Dr. Christian Nawroth, from Queen Mary University of London and the Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology.
“Here, we show for the first time that goats do not only distinguish between these expressions, but they also prefer to interact with happy ones.”
This study has implications for understanding how animals process human emotions.
“The study of emotion perception has already shown very complex abilities in dogs and horses,” said co-author Dr. Natalia Albuquerque, from the University of Sao Paulo.
“However, to date, there was no evidence that animals such as goats were capable of reading human facial expressions.”
“Our results open new paths to understanding the emotional lives of all domestic animals.”
_____
Christian Nawroth et al. 2018. Goats prefer positive human emotional facial expressions. R. Soc. open sci 5: 180491; doi: 10.1098/rsos.180491 | {
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The death of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old student from Iowa, has not stopped heartless goons on the right from dancing on her grave. After Mollie's left-leaning tweets emerged yesterday – the day after she was found dead – far-right creeps started mocking her for being murdered. It was initially reported that Cristian Rivera, the man charged with killing her, was undocumented (his attorney says Rivera is legally in the US).
But that hasn't stopped trolls from bombarding her with tweets like this (posted underneath Mollie's tweet of "I hate white people", in response to how voter turnout in the Roy Moore/Doug Jones election in Alabama):
Fitting that you’re now a dead white cunt — spacecowboy1963 (@spacecowboy1963) August 23, 2018
Karma's a bitch! — Andrew Walden (@CooIandy55) August 22, 2018
hahahahahahahaha
shoulda voted GOP — pimpnamedjohn (@pimpnamedjohn) August 21, 2018
Guess that backfired for you huh? — PreTJenE (@TheRealPreTjenE) August 22, 2018
I came here because I heard rumors Mollie was a race traitor but I had to see it with my own eyes. I wonder if her family knew she hated them for being white? The irony is she was killed by a "brown man." Poetic justice? — Nick DePalma (@de_palma2) August 22, 2018
How could you hate white people ? you little slut… that’s what you get you probably wanted to suck his dick — Gucci (@green_eyes113) August 23, 2018
HAH THIS BITCH GOT BEANED BY THE BEANers — Yu no (@life____succcs) August 23, 2018
Lol she got what she deserved — Bobby (@phantomyug) August 22, 2018
Meanwhile, Mollie's family has asked people to stop using her death as a tool to score political points.
Mollie's aunt, Billie Jo Calderwood, posted this appeal: "Please remember, Evil comes in EVERY color. Our family has been blessed to be surrounded by love, friendship and support throughout this entire ordeal by friends from all different nations and races. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you."
"Take her name out of your mouth," added a cousin of Mollie's named Sam Lucas. "I'm a member of Mollie’s family and we are not so fucking small-minded that we generalize a whole population based on some bad individuals. Now stop being a fucking snake and using my cousin's death as political propaganda."
@hshukman | {
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It could be a while before the Kansas men’s basketball program finds another Frank Mason III.
And it’s possible that day will never come.
But that does not mean the Jayhawks will stop searching for him and Friday night proved to be a big night in that search, when Class of 2018 point guard Devon Dotson orally committed to Kansas during a ceremony at Providence Day High in Charlotte.
Although the 6-foot-2, 180-pound five-star point guard who is ranked No. 17 in the class by Rivals.com has a ways to go before he even approaches Mason’s level, Rivals recruiting analyst Krysten Peek said more than a few people have drawn the comparison during Dotson’s recruitment.
“That’s exactly what the coaching staff has said and what has been their message to Devon,” Peek said. “‘We see you as a Frank Mason type player.’”
Dotson chose the Jayhawks over finalists Maryland and Florida and made his announcement in front of friends, family, teammates and supporters at a podium at mid-court of his high school gymnasium.
After thanking a list of people including his family, coaches and all of those who recruited him, Dotson grabbed a bag from underneath the chair behind him, pulled out a blue KU hat and said, "I'm excited to announce I've committed to Kansas University."
With that, he unzipped his black hoodie to reveal a red Kansas T-Shirt while the crowd roared.
Dotson, whom Peek referred to as a “pass-first point guard,” joins a 2018 KU recruiting class that already includes big men David McCormack (6-10, 255) and Silvio De Sousa (6-9, 245) and provides Bill Self’s program with solid insurance on the possible departure of as many as four perimeter players, including senior point guard Devonte’ Graham, following the 2017-18 season.
Dotson should challenge for a starting spot immediately and his father, Dana Dotson, told several outlets throughout the recruiting process that the KU coaches had indicated that they see him as the type of player who could make an immediate and major impact.
“They believe he’s the starting PG from day one,” Dana Dotson told Matt Scott of 247 Sports site TheShiver.com after KU’s in-home visit with the Dotsons in September.
Beyond adding one of the top point guards in the country and a player who has the kind of all-around game that Self loves, the addition of Dotson could prove big in KU’s pursuit of No. 1-ranked 2018 prospect Zion Williamson, a versatile, five-star forward who visited Kansas for Late Night and was serenaded by chants of “We want Zion” from the Allen Fieldhouse crowd during his visit.
“Those two were thick as thieves when they were playing in Vegas (this summer),” said Peek, adding that landing Dotson could only help in KU’s pursuit of Williamson. “I interviewed Zion and Devon was sitting right there and Zion was saying, ‘This is my favorite point guard I’ve ever played with.’ So there’s no doubt that they would love to play together and they’ve proven that they play very well together.”
Whether that winds up happening at Kansas remains to be seen, but snagging a commitment from Dotson was a significant pick-up for a program that missed out on the three elite point guards it targeted in the 2017 class.
Not only did it address KU’s point guard need, but it did it with the kind of player people expect to see playing for Self.
“He’s super-quick,” Peek said of Dotson. “His passing is phenomenal, he’s got a great first step with his crossover and he likes to play defense.” | {
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"I think the outside talk about me being a lame-duck coach really doesn't bother me, because this is the best I've felt, ever," Ryan told Jenny Vrentas of TheMMQB.com. "I've finally figured out how to be a head coach in my own way, and how to lead and get my vision of the team through to my players. I have to coach defense every single day." | {
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Lo so che si fa la figura del fanatico, con 'ste storie, anche di sabato... Però, uno se ne sta tranquillo a casa sua aspettando la partita in Tv quando gli cade l'occhio su un grande e stimabile quotidiano nazionale che annuncia in prima pagina la pubblicazione di un discorso tenuto alla Biblioteca del Congresso di Washington da Tony Blair. E fin qui...
Ma sapete quale tema si era scelto Blair per l'occasione? Ecco il titolo del suo discorso: The Depth Of The Challenge: Why Force Alone Will Not Defeat Islamist Extremism (ovvero: La profondità della sfida: ecco perché la forza, da sola, non sconfiggerà l'estremismo islamista), liberamente tradotto dal giornale italiano in "Aiutiamo l'islam a sconfiggere la follia jihadista". E' un discorsetto banale, pare incredibile che a produrlo sia stato l'uomo che per dieci anni ha guidato il Regno Unito, ovvero una delle potenze europee, e che per otto anni è stato il rappresentante del Quartetto (Onu, Ue, Usa e Russia) per il Medio Oriente e le trattative di pace tra Israele e Palestinesi. Si capisce perché, della sua opera di pacificatore, si ricordano ora soprattutto le note spese, e quell'intero piano del prestigioso hotel American Colony, a Gerusalemme, riservato per anni a lui e al suo staff.
Ma questo è ancor il meno. In realtà, il titolo del giornale italiano è più corretto e azzeccato. Perché il Tony, dette due robette sul fatto che bisogna sconfiggere il Daesh (alla lettera: "Il primo pilastro di una strategia a largo raggio è sconfiggere Daesh, non soltanto in Siria e in Iraq, ma ovunque". E questo è quanto, per l'aspetto militare), passa al resto: che è (vedi appunto il titolo) la necessità di appoggiare l'islam moderato contro quello jihadista.
Ora, che per avere successo in politica occorra un po' di faccia tosta lo sappiamo. Ma così tanta? Tony Blair, nel caso la cosa fosse già passata nel dimenticatoio, è quel distinto signore che un paio di mesi fa (due mesi, non due secoli), dopo la pubblicazione di alcune mail fino a quel momento secretate, ha dovuto ammettere che la guerra in Iraq del 2003 era stata combinata e decisa tra lui e George Bush addirittura un anno prima, nel 2002, fregandosene altamente delle ispezioni dell'Onu, dell'esistenza o meno delle armi di distruzione di massa che in effetti non esistevano, delle proteste di larga parte dell'opinione pubblica mondiale che, a differenza dei giornali, aveva capito benissimo che cosa bolliva in pentola.
I due, pochi mesi dopo l'attacco all'Afghanistan dei talebani, volevano far la guerra all'Iraq, avevano deciso che l'avrebbero fatta e la fecero, punto e basta. Una guerra che, secondo gli studi più recenti, ha provocato mezzo milione di morti, arrivati dopo un altro mezzo milione di morti (su una popolazione totale di 32,5 milioni di abitanti) causati dall'embargo durato 13 anni (1990-2003), che non scalfì di una virgola il potere di Saddam Hussein ma inflisse agli iracheni sofferenze indicibili. Va anche ricordato che nel 2003, dopo l'invasione dell'Iraq, le Nazioni Unite (buone pure quelle) affidarono a due Paesi la ricostruzione dell'Iraq. Indovinate quali? Usa e Regno Unito, perbacco!
La parte di Tony Blair, in quella porcheria, fu particolarmente penosa. Perché dalle mail l'allora premier inglese fa la figura della dama di compagnia della Casa Bianca, tanto da offrirsi a Bush come propagandista delle ragioni americane presso gli altri Paesi europei. Infine, per completare l'opera, Blair seminò di spie il suo stesso partito, per capire chi andava convinto e come.
Dopo la pubblicazione delle mail, Tony Blair ha chiesto scusa. Ma continua a rifilarci predicozzi come questo della Biblioteca del Congresso, in cui non si vergogna di dire cose come "in quel vuoto (il Medio Oriente, n.d.r) si faranno spazio individui i cui interessi e i cui valori potrebbero essere contrari ai nostri". Cioè, proprio ciò che è successo in Iraq con il terrorismo bombarolo prima e con l'Isis poi, grazie a quella guerra inventata da lui e Bush, che ha massacrato un popolo e ha trasformato il Paese in una fucina di instabilità. A me è capitato di andare diverse volte in Iraq, tra il 2003 e il 2008: e ricordo benissimo il clima di terrore, le esplosioni improvvise, gli ospedali che rigurgitavano di morti e feriti, il settarismo che andava inesorabilmente crescendo.
Se vivessimo in un mondo civile, se le cosiddette "democrazie liberali" fossero davvero tali nell'intimo, personaggi come Bush e Blair sarebbero già finiti sotto processo, in una qualche Norimberga o Aja delle nostre, accusati di crimini di guerra come Milosevic e Karadzic. e a promuovere il processo sarebbero i loro stessi Paesi, perché i soldati inglesi e americani li hanno uccisi i miliziani di Al Qaeda ma a morire ce li hanno mandati loro, Bush e Blair. Invece noi li copriamo di denaro perché possano ancora spiegarci come funziona la democrazia, il diritto internazionale, i processi di pace.
Per favore, processate Tony Blair. Se non per altro, per impedirgli di parlare e scrivere.
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A LIST of the ten most popular songs played at UK funerals is headed by Frank Sinatra’s My Way. And for the first time ever no hymns appear on the list, compiled by leading British funeral company, the Co-op.
The Telegraph reports that the last time the company compiled a list was in 2016, and it featured The Lord Is My Shepherd, All Things Bright and Beautiful, and Abide With Me.
This year all three dropped off of the list, to be replaced with modern pop songs.
My Way is followed by Time to Say Goodbye by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman and Somewhere over the Rainbow by Eva Cassidy.
The list reflects the fact that religious funeral services are declining in the UK, with more people choosing secular ceremonies for their loved ones.
Annual statistics released last year by the Church of England showed a decline in the number of people turning to the church for key life events, with 133,000 religious funerals compared with 139,000 in the previous year.
Earlier this year it was reported that the number of humanist weddings overtook those carried out by the Church of Scotland in 2017 and, while official statistics are not recorded for funerals, local celebrants reported a similar growth.
Janet Donnelly, who is based at Kingston on Spey in Moray, said:
It has hugely increased year-on-year since I became a celebrant in 2009. Last year was the busiest year I’ve had for funerals and that takes into account that there are more of us doing it. We do sometimes struggle to keep up with demand, and we are conscious that this is a rising trend. I don’t think it is necessarily that people are becoming less religious but that people are less willing to go down the religious route if that isn’t a big part of their life.
Halde Pottinger, a humanist celebrant from the Cawdor area, had also witnessed the increase in demand.
It is very much so on the rise in the Highland area. The younger generation are making their own choices.
The research by the Co-op also showed a shift in more people sharing their swansongs ahead of time. A quarter (24 per cent) of UK adults say they have already told loved ones which songs they want playing at their funeral, compared to just a fifth (19 per cent) in 2016, it found.
Kate Thornton, broadcaster and former Smash Hits editor, above, commented:
There’s a lot of surprises on the chart … it’s good to see that people are putting so much thought and personality into what will be their swansong, as a way of making loved ones smile, shed a tear or laugh out loud. I’ve been agonising over what song I’d choose, but the one I keep going back to is my favourite song of all time, Love and Affection, by Joan Armatrading, simply because it’s beautiful and a lovely open letter to love in all its guises.
For the record, my late partner – Brian Parry – who died of of cancer in 1996 aged 47, asked that Mood Indigo, from The Cotton Club film score, and Don’t Fence Me In, by Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters, be played at his humanist cremation.
A few months back, in a column I wrote for Spain’s Euro Weekly News, I pointed that in Spain one can instruct the authorities, via a legally-binding document called an Acta de manifestaciones (testamento vital) precisely what should be done with one’s body after death.
My document includes an instruction to harvest my organs, and, should they not be required, I am to cremated immediately without a funeral.
I am informed that so many Spanish people are now choosing this option that a small charge is now being levied on this method of disposal, which, until recently, was carried out free of charge.
I also wrote that I would set aside modest sum for a farewell celebration in my favourite gay bar. I said that if more people took this route they would avoid hefty funeral costs – and that I believed prepaid funeral plans were a complete waste of money.
The column was rejected on the grounds that it would upset companies who use the paper to advertise their funeral plans for ex-pat Brits.
And among the songs I want played at my farewell party is this one: | {
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The men’s choir at TCU has grown a lot in the last five years.
The choir, called Frog Corps, has expanded from around 18 members to 65 in the last five years. Brad White, the choir’s director, said the group brings men on campus together to make friends and practice music.
White said about 10 members are majors in the TCU School of Music.
“It really is a campus-wide organization,” White said. “It’s open to any guys across the university who like to sing.”
While singing is a key component of the organization, the growth has also allowed the men to act as a “spirit group.” Frog Corps has performed the national anthem and TCU spirit songs at sporting events, White said.
Some of the group’s senior members have been in the organization since their first semester at TCU.
Senior George Downham said the quality of the group has increased exponentially over the past few years.
“The guys who have been in it with me since the beginning can also say that everybody puts a lot more effort into it,” Downham said. “The quality of our music has gotten better, our singing has gotten better over the years, and I think it’s growing as a group.”
Frog Corps meets every Tuesday night to practice and is open to any man at TCU who wants to sing, regardless of major. | {
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The ideological climate around the world is changing. For years there has been a progressive polarization. The elements of “organic crisis” are creating new forms of thought. One of the epicenters of this change is in the heart of imperialism, the United States. On the right, there is Trumpism. On the left, there is what The Economist has called “millennial socialism,” with more than half of young people between 18 and 29 having a positive view of the word “socialism.”
A new generation of young people is searching for alternatives to capitalism. But their representatives, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have a vision of “socialism” that does not go beyond plans for progressive tax reform or the “Green New Deal,” with which they want to peacefully humanize a capitalism in decline.
New tendencies toward political activism have so far been expressed through the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has rapidly grown to 50,000 members. But after Sanders began his campaign for president, the majority of the DSA leadership prepared to mobilize for Bernie 2020, acting “inside and outside,” as they put it, one of the most important and oldest bourgeois parties in the world, the Democratic Party.
In this context there is an unusual phenomenon within the debate on socialist strategy: a renewed interest in the figure of Karl Kautsky and the vision of re-creating a “pre-1914 social democracy.” It is no coincidence that this is coming from a country like the United States, where that tradition historically remained marginal. Bhaskar Sunkara, publisher of Jacobin magazine, has proposed returning to the social democracy before the First World War.
We argued against this idea in the book Estrategia Socialista y Arte Militar (Socialist Strategy and Military Art, by Emilio Albamonte and Matías Maiello, published 2018 in Buenos Aires, currently being translated into English). Some ideas from this book were published in an article in the latest issue of Left Voice magazine, “Revolution or Attrition: Reading Kautsky Between the Lines.”
In the ongoing debate, Vivek Chibber, James Muldoon and Eric Blanc have taken Kautsky as a model. Critical responses have come from Charlie Post, Louis Proyect, Mike Taber, Nathaniel Flakin, Nathan Moore and others.
Here we want to take up some aspects of the debate regarding the relationship between strategy and program, and particularly the question of anti-imperialism as a fundamental problem.
Strategy: De Te Fabula Narratur (About You the Story Is Told)
Among Kautsky’s defenders, Eric Blanc is one of the most determined. His thesis is that Kautsky’s theory serves as a foundation for the strategy of Jacobin’s editors, the “inside-outside” strategy toward the Democratic Party, which he summarizes as follows:
Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other newly elected radicals have raised working people’s expectations and changed national politics. Socialists should participate in this electoral upsurge to promote mass movements and to organize hundreds of thousands of people into independent working-class organizations.
The expectations of broad sectors are indeed rising, which is more than promising. But it is contradictory to propose that these young workers raise money and campaign for candidates who run for one of the main capitalist parties of the planet—with the supposed goal of developing an independent organization of the working class. It really is. To do justice to Kautsky, as Nathaniel Flakin points out, it must be said that he did not propose supporting candidates of bourgeois parties. At the very least, he recognized the need for the working class to have its own parties and candidates.
Beyond this, it is interesting to examine the balance sheet that Blanc draws up about Kautsky, when he points out the following:
What caused the SPD’s degeneration was not a theoretical mistake, but the unexpected rise of a caste of party and union bureaucrats. … Kautsky’s greatest pre-war political limitation was that he, like all other Marxists of the era, failed to fully predict, or prepare for, the rise of this bureaucracy. As was the case with Rosa Luxemburg and Vladimir Lenin, he incorrectly assumed that an upsurge in class struggle would either sweep the “opportunist leaders” aside or force them to return to a class struggle stance.
Although his assertion about Luxemburg and Lenin is inaccurate (see the article by Matías Maiello in the latest issue of Left Voice magazine), Blanc is right to draw attention to the role of the bureaucracy in the degeneration of the SPD. But if Kautsky could not oppose the political and trade union bureaucracy inside a young workers’ party, why does Blanc feel so confident that he can outwit the political (and trade union) bureaucracy of one of the world’s oldest bourgeois parties? How does he intend to convince it that certain candidates are Democrats when in fact they “actually” intend to build an independent workers’ party?
Blanc could answer that they plan to counter these pressures by “promoting mass movements,” but he has just told us that—supposedly—Luxemburg and Lenin had “incorrectly assumed that an upsurge in class struggle” would, by itself, remove those obstacles. Moreover, if there is one thing with which the Democratic Party has a lot of experience, it is co-opting sectors of the left that emerge from social movements, as it did with the CIO trade union federation in the 1930s, or with the immigrant rights movement of the 2000s.
The development of a well-oiled apparatus of co-option and coercion—what Gramsci described using the concept of the “integral state”—especially by the imperialist states, their regimes and their parties as a form of neutralizing left-wing movements, might have been a novelty for Kautsky, Lenin or Luxemburg at the beginning of the 20th century. For us, living in the 21st century, it is well established.
Program: That Thing Called Imperialism
The whole strategic hypothesis of “inside outside” seems based on the condition that the concrete content of socialism’s political program is relegated to a secondary question. That is, answering the question of “how” is detached from the question of “what” we are trying to conquer. Here we want to deal with one aspect of program that is of key importance.
In his contribution, Blanc correctly highlights the emergence of the (political and trade union) bureaucracy as a fundamental element in the degeneration of German social democracy. But this argument stops short of investigating the material bases of the strength of those bureaucracies. In fact, there is an element that has been peculiarly undervalued in this entire debate, namely the imperialist character of the state and the “democracy” with which Kautsky attempted to reconcile the socialist movement.
The profits from plundering colonies had resulted in a growth of per capita income. Growth was very strong until 1902, then somewhat slower, accompanied by the expansion of social legislation in the epoch of Bismarck (including pensions, insurance for sickness, insurance for workplace accidents, etc.), which some believe was a precursor of the so-called “welfare state.” This was the context of the continuous growth of the trade unions and the SPD, creating a strong pressure on the party to integrate itself into the regime.
Lenin later conceptualized this phenomenon by pointing out how the massive superprofits of imperialist capital, far superior to those obtained by squeezing its own working class, make it possible to corrupt the workers’ leaders and co-opt the upper layer of the working class in the central countries, either directly or indirectly, openly or covertly. Since then, imperialism has undergone many transformations, but without a doubt this mechanism continues to function.
If one wants to find the secret of the Democratic Party’s incredible ability to co-opt progressive mass movements, the answer is undoubtedly to be found here: It is one of the two pillars of the greatest imperialist power on earth for the last three quarters of a century.
In debates like this one, the problem of imperialism seems pushed into the background. It is easy to remember the old debates about Obama. Just 10 years ago, for example, David Harvey, at a conference in Buenos Aires (in Spanish), informed us that Obama could be pressured to make a New Deal and cut the military budget. This was the same president who earned the nickname “Lord of the Drones” with wars and interventions in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan, and is also remembered in Latin America for supporting coups in Honduras and Paraguay.
Kautsky’s Legacy
When the SPD’s members of parliament voted in favor of war credits so that the German state could participate in the imperialist massacre of 1914, this marked a turning point in the history of the international workers’ movement. But the pressure to adapt to German imperialism had developed during the entire previous stage.
An important turning point was the elections of 1907, when all parties of the regime concentrated their election campaigns on defending German imperialism against the “danger” of social democracy. Despite tremendous pressure, the SPD maintained its votes in absolute terms (going from 3,010,800 votes in 1903 to 3,259,000 in 1907), although it lost a bit in relative terms (from 31.7% to 29%). Because the country’s political system was so anti-democratic, it lost 38 seats. Even though its electoral base remained steady, the SPD leadership interpreted the results as a defeat that demanded a “correction” of the party’s position against German imperialism.
From 1908 to 1909, they started proclaiming their acceptance of “national defense” and colonialism in the Reichstag. In the “Agadir Crisis” of 1911 (after a German warship was sent to Morocco, which was controlled by France), almost three years before the world war, the SPD—despite having 1 million members—had shown itself powerless to stop German militarism. Anti-imperialism was successively pushed into the background, first for the election campaign of 1912, and later in the name of possible agreements with liberal sectors in parliament. By 1914, the SPD leadership agreed to retain its legality in exchange for supporting the war and guaranteeing civil peace (including the prohibition of strikes, for example). As Lenin stated: “The proletariat’s right to revolution was sold for a mess of pottage.”
Is it worth considering the experience of German social democracy at the beginning of the 20th century in order to think about current political problems? Of course it is, because of all the lessons we can gain for the present. But conclusions such as those drawn by Blanc would appear to go in the opposite direction, when he tells us:
Some leftists believe that we should not support Bernie because he is running on the Democratic Party ballot line and/or because of his political limitations (e.g. on foreign policy issues or his definition of socialism). This criticism is hardly a serious reason to withhold endorsement.
Can the fact that Sanders is running not just for any old imperialist party, but perhaps “the” main imperialist party in the world, be a secondary question? We do not believe that this question is central just because we are writing from Latin America, where it certainly cannot be considered a minor question. Blanc speaks of “political limitations” “on foreign policy issues” without considering it necessary to pause for a second.
Without a doubt, it is necessary to take up this question. If we take Jeffrey St. Clair’s analysis of “Bernie and the Sanderistas,” we see that although Sanders voted against the authorization of the Iraq War in 2002, he voted in favor of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which called for removing “the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power,” and he supported CIA operations, economic sanctions and bombing. He also voted several times in favor of the war in Serbia, as well as George W. Bush’s Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF). And the list goes on and on. More recently, in the context of an open coup attempt on February 23 by the Venezuelan (and regional) right under the leadership of Bolton, Pence, Abrams and company, who hypocritically attempted to camouflage their intervention with “humanitarian aid” (while brutal economic sanctions were in place), Sanders demanded that Maduro “allow humanitarian aid in the country,” which in practice served to legitimize the coup attempt.
There Is No Struggle for Socialism Without Anti-Imperialism
One of the most promising phenomena at present is the ideological turn to the left, particularly among the youth, which is taking place in the United States (and also in other imperialist countries such as Great Britain). Elements of a new “common sense” are beginning to emerge within the framework of tendencies to organic crises: These might anticipate more radicalized class struggle and political processes. This is great news for people who are fighting for socialism around the world. The 20th century shows that it is imperative that these energies not be wasted.
A few years ago, in an interview with New Left Review, Bhaskar Sunkara defined his objectives for Jacobin to contribute to the emergence of
an opposition current in the U.S. of 5 to 7 per cent that identifies as socialist or would support a socialist candidate. If that happened in the core of the imperialist world, it would create a lot of space for others, and allow the weak link in capitalism to be broken somewhere else.
Indeed an event of this magnitude would have far-reaching consequences for the entire world. At present, however, Jacobin is devoted to a very different objective, namely convincing young people who are just entering political life and see the word “socialism” positively to go into the Democratic Party and support Sanders’ campaign, treating questions that are so important to the workers’ movement like anti-imperialism as secondary. This policy is in direct opposition to a policy of taking steps toward constructing a truly independent party of the working class, one that is anti-imperialist and socialist.
In this respect, it is always good to bear in mind the words of Walter Benjamin, in his “Theses on the Concept of History,” about the social democracy: “There is nothing which has corrupted the German working-class so much as the opinion that they were swimming with the tide.” If there is a fundamental lesson from the development of German social democracy, it is that there is not and there cannot be a socialist policy without a consistent struggle against imperialism. Kautsky, despite the claims of Eric Blanc and others, was not right. The sooner we take note of this, the better prepared we will be for current and future battles.
First published in Spanish in Ideas de Izquierda on May 19, 2019.
Translation: Nathaniel Flakin | {
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Felipe Melo was called a ‘monkey’ by an opponent during a game. (Brazil Photo Press/LatinContent/Getty Images)
Felipe Melo has spectacularly hit back after he was racially abused by an opponent on Wednesday evening.
The former Juventus and Inter midfielder claims he was called a ‘monkey’ by Penarol midfielder Gaston Rodriguez during Palmeiras’ 3-2 victory in their Copa Libertadores on Wednesday evening.
‘The guy who made their goal (Gaston Rodriguez) was calling me a monkey for a long time, monkey here, monkey there, I think the television can catch him calling me a monkey,’ said Melo.
‘I think he had some problem, his wife must have cheated on him with a big black man, or something like that.’
Melo has hit back after being targeted by racist abuse. (Brazil Photo Press/LatinContent/Getty Images)
Melo, who has been capped 22 times by Brazil, also confirmed after the game that Rodriguez apologised to him for the abuse.
‘It’s a game thing, we have to forgive everything, it’s forgivable, the important thing is to recognise the mistake of heart,’ said the 33-year-old.
‘I think there’s a self-criticism, he saw that he was wrong, he apologized, what else do I have to do?’
MORE: Didier Drogba backs Romelu Lukaku’s return to Chelsea
MORE: Chelsea stars Eden Hazard and N’Golo Kante lead nominations for PFA Player of the Year Award | {
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The Miami Heat have been focused on acquiring talent through trades, largely because of their current salary-cap woes.
However, a new report indicates that if the Heat do end up making any future deals, two of their younger players, Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo, will not be included in any trade packages.
Sean Deveney of Heavy.com noted how even before Herro’s scoring outburst on Monday night, the rookie and third-year man Adebayo were non-starters in any discussions about a possible deal.
“They’ve been firm on him and Adebayo being untouchable,” one GM told Heavy.com before Herro’s explosive night.
That big evening against Atlanta began with Herro connecting for the Heat’s first 14 points and saw him score 23 points by the time the contest had ended. Herro was 5-for-7 on 3-pointers and 9-for-14 overall.
While Herro has yet to play in a regular season NBA game, Adebayo has put in two years for the Heat and officially enters this season as the team’s starting center. He took over that starting role during the last six weeks of last season, with Hassan Whiteside subsequently being dealt to Portland.
The two players’ youth is one of the chief reasons that the Heat are seeking to hold onto the duo. Herro is only 19 years old, but has already made himself stand out in a variety of ways. From his confidence, his work ethic, and most notably, his shooting ability, Herro could be a steal as the 13th overall pick in last June’s draft.
Adebayo is only 22 years old, but in his two seasons has averaged 8.0 points, 6.5 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game. Those numbers are expected to move upward now that he’ll be a regular presence in the Heat’s starting lineup.
Both players already shared the bond of having played collegiately at the University of Kentucky. Their current untouchable statuses now puts them in inviting positions for the future. | {
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Julio Salazar
The Patio, a gorgeous old movie palace currently experiencing a run of very bad luck
After getting shut out of its former home at the Portage Theater last May, the Northwest Chicago Film Society found refuge at the Patio Theater in Portage Park. Now, just five months later, the society is packing up its reels and moving on again to the Gene Siskel Film Center in the Loop.
The Patio, which was without air-conditioning throughout the summer, is now without heat; its boiler, installed when the theater was built in 1927, has broken down.
"Given the considerable expense, scarce parts, and specialized expertise required to fix this crucial piece of equipment," says Becca Hall, the society's executive director, "we cannot predict when the theater management will have the heat restored."
The society will screen M this Wednesday, November 6, at the Patio as scheduled. But it will show its next film, No Time for Love, at the Siskel on Sunday, November 17. The full updated schedule has been posted on the society's website. Admission is now $11 per film, or $50 for a pass to all seven remaining films on the society's 2013 schedule.
The mild weather this summer made it possible for the Patio to keep showing movies without air-conditioning, but it's harder to get through a Chicago winter without heat.
I've left a message with Demetri Kouvalis, the Patio's owner and manager, and will update this post with more information about when he thinks the boiler might be repaired and if there will be changes to the Patio's own programming.
UPDATE: "It's been a perfect storm of catastrophes," says Kouvalis.
He first found out the boiler wasn't working when he checked it four or five weeks ago. "I thought we'd have more time to fix it," he says, "but we didn't think it would get so cold so fast."
The problem with fixing an old boiler is that there aren't very many repair people who understand how the mechanics work or who know how to get the parts. Kouvalis has spent the past few weeks searching for someone who would be able to get the job done before January. Fortunately, he says, he's finally found someone and the heat should be on by November 17 when the Patio is scheduled to premiere a Wild Chicago DVD and definitely by the end of the month when Kouvalis plans to screen Dario Argento's Suspiria, a film that hasn't played in Chicago in nearly a decade since 2009.
There's no animosity between the Patio and the Northwest Chicago Film Society, he says. "The other location was giving them a deadline and I had no answer. They said they had to finish the season. They're very open to coming back for the spring and summer season. We should have the air-conditioning fixed by then."
Ironically, before this latest catastrophe, the Patio was doing a good business in hosting special events and one-off screenings. "It's two steps forward, one step back," Kouvalis says. "It's hard to upgrade with things breaking down. It's harder than I anticipated. But we're still open." | {
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UPDATE: Botched drug deal robbery led to stabbing death at N.J. campgrounds, cops say
One person has been arrested and charged with murder after a person was found dead Sunday night at the Surf & Stream Campground in Manchester.
John T. Mullen is being held at the Ocean County jail on murder, robbery and tampering charges out of Manchester, according to online records.
Manchester police issued a brief statement Sunday night saying there was no threat to the public as they investigated an incident at the campground.
Witnesses reported a large police presence at the campground around 7 p.m.
Manchester police and the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office didn’t immediately respond to requests for additional information.
Surf & Stream said on its website that it’s a “family-friendly RV park” that features a swimming pool, picnic area, playground, mini golf, bocce court and volleyball court.
Jeff Goldman may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman.
Have a tip? Tell us: nj.com/tips. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters. | {
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Brad Pitt has fired back at Angelina Jolie's claims that he failed to pay 'meaningful' child support to the actress amid their bitter split.
In documents obtained by Dailymail.com, lawyers for the 54-year-old heartthrob claim that Pitt has paid over $9million to his 43-year-old ex.
Jolie's claim to the contrary was 'a thinly-veiled effort to manipulate media coverage' according to the filing.
Happier times: Brad Pitt has fired back at Angelina Jolie's claims that he failed to pay 'meaningful' child support to the actress amid their bitter split. Seen here in January 2015
The filing by the Se7en star's lawyers say that he loaned his Maleficent star ex $8million 'to assist her in purchasing her current residence'.
He has also paid 'over $1.3million in bills for the benefit of [Jolie] and the minor children.'
Brad's lawyers say Angelina's claims that he's withheld child support are 'calculated to increase the conflict.'
Attorneys for the actress alleged on Tuesday that the actor hasn't paid 'meaningful' child support for 18 months, according to other court documents seen by DailyMail.com.
'As of present, [Pitt] has paid no meaningful child support since separation,' Jolie's attorney, Samantha Bley DeJean wrote.
Big brood: The duo's divorce has apparently ground to a halt over disagreements about how much time Pitt gets with their six children; Maddox, 16, Pax, 14, Zahara, 13, Shiloh, 12, Vivienne, 10 and Knox, 10. Seen here in 2011
The actress-turned-director alleged her third husband has not been meeting his financial obligations and has demanded the court force him to pay up.
'Given the informal arrangements around the payment of the children's expenses have not been regularly sustained by [Pitt] for over a year and a half, [Jolie] intends to file an RFO for the establishment of a retroactive child support order,' the filing says.
She has asked the judge to arrange a meeting to discuss the issue.
'Meaningful' support was not defined in the filing and Pitt's team are yet to formally respond.
A Pitt source familiar with the situation hinted to Dailymail.com that the actor would likely fight the allegations, commenting: 'Brad always fulfills his commitments'.
Later on in the day a spokesperson for Angelina explained to People why the star had requested child support to 'provide closure to the marriage in a way that clears a path toward the next stage of their lives and allows her and Brad to recommit as devoted co-parents to their children.'
The documents also demand that the divorce be finalized this year, with Jolie seemingly in a hurry to bring the battle to an end.
Jolie’s net worth has been estimated at $160 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth and in 2014, she was ranked 74th highest-earning celebrity by Forbes. The same site puts Pitt's net worth at $240million.
It's been nearly two years since their shocking split was announced. Jolie filed for divorce in September 2016 citing irreconcilable differences.
Attorneys for the actress alleged on Tuesday that the actor hasn't paid 'meaningful' child support for 18 months, according to court documents
It came amid allegations that Pitt had been 'rough' with one of their children on a private plane. Pitt was investigated but cleared of all wrongdoing.
It started months often nasty exchanges and the couple are still 'not even close to settling their divorce', according to E! News.
'They are so hung up on dealing with the custody issues' that the rest of the proceedings have not yet advanced, according to the site.
The duo's divorce has apparently ground to a halt over disagreements about how much time Pitt gets with their six children; Maddox, 16, Pax, 14, Zahara, 13, Shiloh, 12, Vivienne, 10 and Knox, 10.
And it's these discussions that have held up the rest of the divorce proceedings -such as division of assets- with E!'s sources describing the process as being at 'kind of at an impasse at this point'.
And according to UsWeekly, a major reason for the holdup is the Maleficent actress' resentment towards her World War Z star ex.
'She can't see past her anger for Brad that he is on his way to getting joint custody,' said the magazine's source.
Jolie is allegedly making the divorce negotiations and child custody battle very hostile and has been 'out for blood' ever since her September 2016 divorce filing.
A source connected to the Fury actor told TMZ that they believe the Maleficent actress wants 'to kill any relationship he has with his kids'.
They also claim that there has been a lot of screaming on Jolie's part, adding, 'She's fueled with anger and has gotten ridiculously unreasonable.'
It's become so bad that the mother-of-six's lawyer Laura Wasser, who has represented many divorcing celebrities over the years, is apparently going to quit and has 'made it known' to Jolie because it's become too 'venomous'.
Wasser, who has worked for stars such as Ashton Kutcher during his split from Demi Moore, Heidi Klum and Seal as well as Mariah Carey amid her divorce from Nick Cannon, promotes settlements and co-parenting.
TMZ claims the Wanted actress has already hired another law firm to take over when Wasser officially leaves.
However Angelina's people have disputed that account.
'I've spoken directly to Laura,' Jolie's spokesperson told PEOPLE. 'The TMZ story is not true. She's not quitting now or in the future.'
Jolie is currently filming the sequel to Maleficent in London while Pitt films Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in LA. | {
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The federal government shares the overall cost of Medicaid with the states; the program covers about 75 million Americans, or 1 in 5. About 11 million of them were able to enroll as a result of states’ decisions to expand the program under the Affordable Care Act. Republican attempts to repeal the health law last year would have largely undone the Medicaid expansion and caused most of the new recipients to lose their coverage.
Virginia’s House of Delegates voted to approve Medicaid expansion during the regular 60-day legislative session that ended in March. But the Senate, whose members were not up for re-election last fall, remained opposed. Lawmakers failed to pass a state budget then because of the issue.
“That is debt, and I have four kids who are going to be having to pay for that for the rest of their lives,” Senator Amanda Chase, a Republican from Chesterfield, said of the federal funds spent on Medicaid expansion, explaining her vote against it on Wednesday. “It’s not just a fiscal burden, but it’s not the best solution for people who want real, quality health care.”
The turning point came in April when State Senator Frank Wagner, a Republican from Virginia Beach, said he had changed his position and would support Medicaid expansion, joining one other Republican, Senator Emmett W. Hanger Jr. of Augusta, and all 19 Senate Democrats. Mr. Wagner changed his mind after a work requirement was added to the plan.
Two other Republican state senators, Ben Chafin and Jill Holtzman Vogel, also voted for Medicaid expansion on Wednesday.
“I came to the conclusion, for me and my district, that no just wasn’t the answer any longer,” Mr. Chafin. who represents an economically struggling district in southwestern Virginia, said on the Senate floor. “Doing nothing about the medical conditions, the state of health care in my district, just wasn’t the answer any longer.”
The approval did not come without last-minute drama: Thomas Norment, the Senate majority leader and steadfast opponent of Medicaid expansion, tried unsuccessfully to block it in the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday, and again on the Senate floor on Wednesday, when he pushed to pass a version of the budget that did not include it. Instead, a substitute budget including amendments that allowed for Medicaid expansion, offered by Senator Hanger, was approved. | {
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Paramedics treat several people on the sand after they were pulled from the water. Credit:Emily Barton "I just ran down and jumped in and swam out to them. I got to an older lady and a young girl first and grabbed them both and swam them in." However, the words of the young girl he rescued next haunt him. "I ran around the rocks again and jumped in and pulled a younger girl out. That was a scary one. She was going down and not coming back up," Mr Martin said. "I grabbed her and she was saying she just wanted to go home and she didn't want to die.
Six-to-eight-foot waves battered the coastline at Burrill Lake Inlet on Wednesday. Credit:Emily Barton "I said to her, 'Just hang on to me and I will get you in'. That makes you feel sick to your stomach. It is overwhelming. "I know I am fine in the ocean but if something else happened to someone else like this, that is what you can't deal with. It is a horrible thought." Once the girl was safe, Mr Martin entered the water again to retrieve the rest of the swimmers, including a 43-year-old man who attempted to help the group. "Lastly, I ran around and got one of the guys who was trying to rescue them, but was getting washed out," he said.
"I helped him out as well and he was throwing up a lot of sea water. He was probably in the worst condition out of everyone. "When I left, the man was in an ambulance." 'Someone was still missing' Once Mr Martin had pulled the man to safety, there was chaos on the shore as people "screamed that someone was still missing". "I made a point of doing a head count and making sure everyone was there because that is the scary stuff, if someone is still out there and under," Mr Martin said.
"They got sucked all the way out and I ended up bringing people in right on the point. They got swept 300 to 400 metres at about 12 to 15 knots. It was really moving." The 33-year-old said he was "in the right place at the right time". Dangers not apparent Signs warning swimmers of the dangerous current in the inlet were not enough, Mr Martin said. "I don't think there are enough signs warning of the danger. It looks like a dream but it can, at the bottom end of the tide, get really dangerous," he said.
"There needs to be better signage and maybe safety buoys in place. Although, I still don't know if a safety buoy would have helped me, even if there was one. "I tried to use a surfboard but it was more of a hindrance when six-to-eight foot of whitewash was hitting me and I was trying to hold onto someone else. "For 350 days of the year, it is fine here. But there are a couple of days when it is dangerous and people aren't savvy enough to know the conditions. "I think everyone is lucky it turned out for the best. "I have seen a few people get in trouble there already this year. I was sort of shocked that the parents let the kids swim by themselves at that age."
Back to work After his heroic efforts, Mr Martin returned to work in the kitchen at Bannisters to serve dinner on Wednesday evening. The surfer and spear fisher said he was comfortable in the ocean and visited the inlet daily for a swim. However, he warned holidaymakers, or people who are not confident in the ocean, to steer clear of the waterway. "If you are on holidays and normally live inland, it doesn't matter how big the surf is. People panic and start getting swept out to sea," he said. This was not the first time Mr Martin had come to the aid of swimmers in trouble, having pulled a mother and her two young children from Narrawallee Inlet.
Illawarra Mercury | {
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A spokesman for Minister Hunt told Fairfax Media: “The Minister has written to the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman and asked him to review and investigate this action.” Bupa's announcement about the Medical Gap Scheme came soon after news that it would remove restricted cover for pregnancy, hip and knee replacements and other procedures from basic to standard hospital policies from July. Bupa's changes mean pregnancy and birth, for example, in a public hospital, will no longer be covered. It said it made the changes in a bid to lower premium increases and keep the overall cost of health care down. HBF, the dominant fund in Western Australia that is planning to merge with HCF, has also announced it will remove services such as weight-loss surgery, cochlear implants and dialysis from entry and mid-range hospital policies from July, also citing the need to limit future premium increases.
“One option is to increase the price of the products – which would impact every member who has this type of product,” HBF chief executive John Van Der Wielen said. Health Minister Greg Hunt in question time. “We believe it’s fairer to ask those members who need to claim for certain services to move to a level of cover that reflects the cost of the claims they make.” It appears health funds are taking significant steps to simplify their products ahead of the government’s introduction of gold, silver, bronze and basic categorisation of policies in April 2019. Bupa’s decision to stop paying benefits for services such as hip and knee replacements, cataract and eye lens procedures and IVF services and make them exclusions on some policies will affect about one-third of its customers.
Many Bupa members have threatened to ditch their cover. Dr Michael Gannon has blasted Bupa. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen It said psychiatric, rehabilitation and palliative care services won’t be affected, but it’s understood these were never under threat because funds are required by law to provide some cover for these services. Bupa rejected suggestions that changes to the Medical Gap Scheme was a sign it was moving towards a US-style managed care system, saying doctors will continue to decide what treatment is required and where it will be provided. "Doctors, never health insurers, will always determine patients’ treatment and care options as they do today; nothing has changed. The doctor’s right to do so is protected by legislation," a Bupa spokesman said.
"However, customers have been asking for greater clarity on costs especially at locations where mixed arrangements were in place, and this change to the medical gap scheme is designed to support this." Under the Medical Gap Scheme changes, doctors at hospitals (including public hospitals) and day-stay facilities that don’t have an agreement with Bupa will only be paid at the minimum rate the insurers are required to pay - 25 per cent of the MBS - meaning they will have to bill patients the rest. Dr Gannon warned that patients will have to do more homework to make sure they’re not hit with large out-of-pocket costs and may not be able to access their doctor of choice because of inadequate coverage. Loading He said there were “a number of implications” for medical professionals. Non-contracted hospitals, which includes most if not all public hospitals, will no longer be able to attract Bupa patients and their treating doctors. | {
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Cases of mysterious vanishings usually have no shortage of strange, impenetrable clues that orbit them and obfuscate our efforts to peer into these enigmas. In some instances, the evidence, details, and circumstances can be rather bizarre indeed, leaving us even more confused as to what is going on than when we started. Even when the missing is actually found the details surrounding their disappearance and absence can be frustratingly murky and bizarre, failing to really explain what is going on and often serving to launch the case further into the weird. Such is the case with a few strange disappearances that offer up clues in the form of mysterious animals or entities that have become involved at some point, and which leave us scratching our heads and scrambling for answers.
One of the more spectacular stories of this sort comes to us from the wilds of Ethiopia, in Africa. In June of 2005, a 12-year old girl vanished from her rural village without a trace as she was on her way home from school. Her family and other villagers searched the entire area but could find no trace of her, nor were their calls out to her answered, and authorities were notified to have no luck either. It was suspected that she had either been kidnapped to never be seen again or that she had been attacked and dragged off into the forbidding wilderness by wild animals, but either way it was expected that she was gone forever. What no one expected to find was the sight that would await authorities in the coming days.
On June 9, 2005, a full week after her mysterious vanishing, the girl was found in a rough patch of wilderness near Bita Genet, about 350 miles southwest of the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. Far from dead, but seemingly injured and terrified, the girl was unapproachable at first due to the odd presence of three lions, who were roaming about and seemed to be actually trying to protect the young girl, refusing to leave her side until help showed up. As soon as the authorities moved in the lions just sort of melted away back into the wilderness, and the girl would tell of how she had been kidnapped and severely beaten by men who had wanted to force her into a marriage, but that the lions had come out of nowhere to chase her captors off and then proceed to stay near her keeping watch until she was safe. One Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo would say of the strange incident:
They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest. If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage. Everyone thinks this is some kind of miracle, because normally the lions would attack people.
It is rather curious that these fierce predators should want to save and protect a young human child, and theories as to why this might be have flown. One wildlife expert speculated that the girl’s crying had actually saved her, as it may have sounded to the lions like the mewing sound from a lion cub, activating some sort of protective parental instinct. However, other experts have postulated that the lions may have indeed been preparing to eat her and were merely interrupted by the arrival of police. The girl was treated for her injuries and released, surviving her terrifying ordeal remarkably intact, all things considered. So was this a miracle or something else? Who knows?
A much older but just as bizarre case was related by the prominent author on vanished people, David Paulides, author of The Missing 411 series of books, in an interview for Paranormal Central, and is a case that comes from the year 1868, when 3-year-old girl suddenly went missing in Northern Michigan as she was at a lumber camp run by her father. According to the father, she had been there one second and then simply gone the next, as if she had simply blinked from existence. A search was launched, during which the panicked father enlisted the help of two hunters to try and find his young daughter lost out alone in the woods. The girl’s name was called over and over again into the thick forest as night and shadows slowly crept up on them, yet no answer came back. It was as she had vanished into thin air. With the onset of darkness, the search was called off until the next morning, with no trace of where the young girl had gone off to.
The next day the search continued and the hunters were hard at work scouring the woods for any sign of the missing girl. As they trudged through rugged, dense wilderness, they allegedly heard the shouts of a young girl from nearby, which sounded muffled and muted somehow, like sounds coming from farther away than they were, as if through some veil or blanket. The hunters claimed that they followed the source of the shouts to a river, and that as they fought through brush to approach they could hear a large splash after which they saw an enormous black shape that they took to be perhaps a bear entering the water and swimming towards the opposite shore. As they stared in shock at the retreating beast, they noticed the girl standing upon a nearby log, minus some articles of clothing.
When the girl was recovered, she seemed to be rather shaken up, and claimed that the creature they had seen was named Mr. Wolf and that he had been holding her prisoner there. She claimed that this Mr. Wolf had eaten her hat, taken her shoes, and had refused to let her leave under any circumstances, although he had also provided her with berries to eat. It is unclear whether this was a bear, a wolf, or something else, and the story certainly seems rather bizarre. What was this “Mr. Wolf” and what did it want? Just what is going on here?
There has been some doubt as to the veracity of this particular story, with skepticism cast on Paulides’ reporting of the events. According to paranormal investigator Theo Paijmans, Paulides may have exaggerated some elements of the story and even confused the case with the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, as there is very little corroborating evidence in the news of the time to suggest that there was ever this mysterious “Mr. Wolf.” Paijmans told me:
In regards to Paulides’ retelling of the 1868 missing girl case, his version is not supported by any of the original sources. The story was widely reported in various US newspapers. Not in the timeframes Paulides claims, but in 1868, 1882 and again in 1903. Each time the retellings of the story consistently remain the same. None of the many articles that appeared in the American newspapers from 1868 to 1903 mention a “Mr. Wolf”. A bear is mentioned though – but that’s it, plain and simple. Paulides may have been confused by the old German-Dutch European fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood (the girl Little Red Riding Hood visits her grandmother in the forest and meets with a wolf in disguise who wants to eat her) in this account.
Another weird tale from the 1800s concerns the disappearance of 3-year-old Alice Rachel Peck on August 25th 1898. Alice had wandered off from her home in an effort to follow her mother, who was out picking berries not far away, and then had gotten lost. A massive search was launched to try and find the missing girl, that would stretch out for 3 days without any trace turned up. Then, on August 28, she was found in safe and in good health about 5 miles from where she had vanished.
The girl was reportedly in a sort of trance at first, but when she came back to her senses she was able to relate how she remembered meandering barefoot along an abandoned road, even though she had been wearing shoes shortly before her disappearance, as well as a bonnet that had also vanished, and that she had had nothing to eat but a few berries. When asked how she had managed to overcome the series of steep drops and boulders that stood in the way of where she had gone missing and where she had been found, she gave the cryptic response: “The Black Man helped me,” who she claimed had guided her and carried her over obstacles, notably away from where she had disappeared. Who was this “Black Man” and what had caused her to go missing from right in front of her house? Was this an animal or something else? Indeed, what happened to her shoes and bonnet and what would have happened to her if she had not been found? We will probably never know.
One theory with regards to the identity of the “Black Man” is that this was a black bear that had for whatever reasons decided to help the girl, and with her incomplete knowledge of the world and animals the girl had misidentified what she was seeing. This notion is not as completely far-out as you might think, and there have actually been a few cases of mysterious disappearances tied to bears. One case supposedly happened in July of 1955, when 2-year-old Ida Mae Curtis went missing from a lumber camp in Kootenai National Forrest, in the U.S. state of Montana. The mother of the girl frantically claimed that she had seen a bear carry off her child into the forest, and that it had been “cradling” the girl as it had run off. Following a 2-day intensive search carried out by around 350 people, Ida was found safe and sound not 300 yards away from where she had gone missing, in a crude shelter. She would later relate that she had been fed and cared for by a large bear during the time of her disappearance. Authorities were skeptical of the tale, but the girl and her family have always insisted that it is true.
Much more recent is the 2019 case of 3-year-old Casey Hathaway, who went missing from the yard his grandmother’s rural North Carolina home in freezing winter temperatures. Indeed, the weather had been so ferocious at the time of his vanishing that the initial search had to be called off, and it was not expected he could have possibly survived those temperatures and harsh conditions. When the slashing rain and winds died down a massive search was launched involving helicopters, drones, tracker dogs and divers, as well as hundreds of volunteers, but no sign of the boy was found. It would not be until two days later that police would receive a tip that someone hiking in the area had heard a child crying in the woods, and when authorities arrived they amazingly found Hathaway cold, wet, and entangled in some brush, but very much alive. Even more amazingly, the boy would tell police and family members that he had survived because a bear, which he called his friend, had taken care of him throughout the ordeal. His aunt, Breanna Hathaway, would consider it a miracle, saying, “He said he hung out with a bear for two days. God sent him a friend to keep him safe. Miracles do happen.”
Of course such a fantastic claim has been met with speculation on how this could be or whether it even really happened that way or not. Opinions have been mixed. One opinion is that the whole story was a figment of the boy’s imagination, which he had conjured up in his mind to help him cope with the stress and trauma. Chris Servheen, a bear researcher at the University of Montana said of this to The Guardian:
I’ve never known such a thing to happen, bears don’t do that. Wild bears aren’t friends with people. I don’t want to say he’s not telling the truth, he obviously thinks he’s seen things and maybe he’s got a teddy bear at home. But I’ve seen no evidence anything like that has ever happened. I don’t want to cast aspersions on the child but I think the little boy had a fantasy. But if the boy felt comfortable under the watch of a wild animal that’s fine. Whatever helped him get through it.
Not everyone agrees though. Another expert has speculated that the bear might have had its motherly instincts kick in upon seeing the crying child, although it would be rather unusual. Regardless of whether the tale is real or not, it is still amazing that Hathaway could have evaded such an intensive search and survive on his own in those frigid conditions for two days. As to the bear, the boy still insists it is true, and his mother believes him, saying that he is an honest boy, and that, “If he said he was with a bear, he was with a bear.”
It is unknown just what connection or importance the detail of these animals and entities has to each of these cases. What significance does it all have and did it all ever even really happen as described or not? How are we to process these weird details and circumstances when looking at the cases as a whole? In the end they remain just more perplexing, odd clues among many, and make sure that these cases remain no less mysterious in the wake of the victims being found. | {
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Posted on Apr 14, 2015 in Meats
I realize the concept of this post will be somewhat sacrilegious to quite a few folks. Smoked brisket (especially in Texas) is a time honored tradition — one best honored by spending a heck of a lot of time tending the firebox on your smoker. To a good many aficionados, if you don’t end up smelling like post oak smoke for the next week, you didn’t really make barbecue.
On the other end of the spectrum, from a sous vide standpoint, many seem to be obsessed with cooking their meat to be as rare as possible to maintain certain flavors and textures. It’s an interesting culinary challenge, and it’s definitely a technique worth mastering for those who are accustomed to traditional cooking tools and techniques.
Let’s be clear — that’s not at all what we’re going to do here.
(Pit masters, you can let out a big, smoky sigh of relief.)
We’re going to do what we can to meld these two seemingly disparate techniques together to gain the advantages of both and make one incredibly delicious slab of meat.
There’s a method to the madness in this process, and it’s all about control.
Smoked brisket is the ultimate “low and slow” meat, but in this case, medium rare is just too “low” for this sort of application. A lot of the magic that happens in that smoke box happens when the meat is a good 30-60º F (17-34ºC) above the temperature of a warm, red center. And let’s face it, we’re not cooking a nicely marbled steak from the soft, squishy loins of the cow. We’re cooking a big chunk of well-worked pectoral muscle with a lot of connective tissue running through it. The collagens in that brisket are going to denature into gelatin at temperatures above 160ºF / 71ºC. You absolutely want that to happen.
The Stall
When smoking a brisket using the traditional method, there’s a point during the smoking process where the core temperature of the meat stops rising, sometimes for a very long time. People call this “the stall.” What’s happening is that moisture in the brisket is evaporating, and that evaporative cooling process keeps the meat at a fairly steady temperature (it may even decline a bit) until the meat starts to dry out. How you feel about the stall and what you do about it depends on how you like your brisket, how much you stick to certain “traditions,” and how much time you have. There’s a whole boatload of factors that affect this phenomenon, including (but not limited to) the fat and moisture content of the meat you’re smoking, the wood you’re using, the humidity, the temperature at which you’re smoking, and the flow rate of the air through the smoke chamber.
The Texas Crutch
That’s a big reason some people wrap their briskets in foil when they get to this stage, a technique often called “The Texas Crutch.” Most who do this splash a little broth, apple juice, or beer in the foil. (For many it’s just an excuse to open another beer.) What you’re doing with The Crutch is basically braising the meat. Some call it cheating. Some prefer it. If you like “crusty” edges, you probably don’t crutch. If you like juicier meat, you probably do. Despite the connotations that could come along with the name, let’s not consider “Crutch” to be a pejorative term for the purposes of this exercise. Let’s understand its purpose, its advantages, and its trade-offs. (Spoiler alert: What we’re going to do is basically take The Crutch and crank it up to eleven.) What you’re doing with The Crutch is giving yourself more control over the temperature and speeding up the transfer of heat into the meat. You’re raising the humidity in the cooking area (by confining it to the area inside the foil) and cooking with more conduction and less convection. You’re not allowing the “sweat” to evaporate off. It’s like making a cozy little meat sauna.
There are three main reasons people crutch:
The Crutch allows you to speed right through the stall and cook your brisket faster. The Crutch gives you more precise control of the cook temperature. Though it raises the internal temperature faster, it also gives you a little flexibility on the upper end because the liquid keeps you from overcooking the meat so quickly when it gets closer to 200ºF / 90ºC. The Crutch prevents you from putting too much smoke flavor into your brisket. Once you get the level of smoke you want, wrapping it prevents you from ending up with a brisket that tastes like an ashtray. (Though not technically “crutching,” I’ve heard this is the main reason Aaron Franklin wraps his briskets in butcher paper. This clip seems to confirm that.)
So about the sous vide…
With the crutch in mind, let’s talk about what is essentially the biggest freaking point of the immersion circulator: precise temperature control.
Even the most dedicated pit master can’t control everything about the environment in their smoker to the same degree that even your cheapest circulator can control the water bath. Keeping your smoke box within a 5-10ºF window is an admirable skill. The pit master has to work the balance between time and temperature and pull the meat off the heat at the point where as much of the collagen has “gelatinized” as possible, but before things start to dry out or get tough. If you take it off too early, you don’t get that delicious rendered fat and collagen denatured into wibbly-wobbly gelatin. If you leave a brisket sitting at 225-250ºF long enough, it will eventually be 225ºF, and that’s simply overdone.
Keeping a circulator within one tenth of a degree is so easy you can do it in your sleep. Let’s use that to our advantage, shall we?
Speaking of sleep, that’s another advantage of the process below. It allows you to have substantially more beauty rest. Because the circulator makes it so easy to maintain temperature, you’ve got a much wider window of opportunity to work with, and you can adjust your cooking schedule to allow you get a full night’s sleep in while the circulator does its thing.
Process Overview
Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of what we’re going to do:
Smoke the meat the “old fashioned way” for a few hours to get your smoke flavor and a nice, red smoke ring. At the point you’d wrap or crutch your brisket, pull it off the smoker, seal it in a vacuum bag, and introduce it to the water bath. “Turbo Crutch” the brisket in the water bath overnight. Bring the temperature of the bath up a bit. Remove from the bath and get some of that bark back. Make some sauce for folks who want it. Rest and serve
The Kit
Smoker (I used an offset smoker similar to this one.)
Immersion circulator (I’ve got an Anova.)
Vacuum sealer (This’ll do.)
Vacuum bags (With big pieces like brisket, rolls are easier than pre-cut bags.)
Container for the water bath (I used a 12-quart Cambro and a lid with the corner notched out for the circulator to stick through.)
The Ingredients
The Brisket
One brisket
Your rub Absolutely necessary: Kosher salt Black pepper Optional: Cayenne pepper Chili powder
The Sauce
Save the brisket cooking juices from the sous vide
A splash of Worcestershire Sauce
A generous squirt of tomato paste. (I used this one.)
Here we go!
1. Cut, trim, and rub the brisket
Separate the “point” from the “flat” of the brisket. (Here’s a good illustration. My cut wasn’t as precise as this, but it still worked well.) For the purposes of this demonstration we’re going to do just the flat.
Why? A couple of reasons:
You’ll need big bags and a big bath to throw the whole brisket in the sous vide at once.
In a very real sense, these are two different pieces of meat. Each will cook differently. I chose to do the flat, because that’s the part that’s usually tougher since it’s leaner. Since we’re going to make it super tender thanks to the long immersion bath, this piece will benefit from the technique more than the point.
I didn’t have as many people to feed. I separated the two so I can cook the point separately at another time. Also, I think I’m going to go ahead and smoke it the “old fashioned way” because I love burnt ends, and that’s the best part about smoking the point. (In my opinion.)
For standard smoking techniques, people vary in their opinions of how much fat to trim. For the sous vide brisket, go head and trim the brisket a little leaner than you normally would since the fat that renders after it’s put in the bag will stay right up against the meat and you’re not losing it to drippings into the smoker.
Give it a good rub. Salt and pepper are the important parts, of course. This time I threw some chili powder and a bit of cayenne in the mix. I wanted to see if the sous vide process would bring out those flavors. I wouldn’t say that it did. If anything, the long sous vide brought out the flavors in the meat and made the rub less of an issue.
Go start your fire now.
2. Smoke
I smoked the brisket over a mix of hickory and mesquite. I didn’t choose that for any specific reason. It’s just what I had in my wood pile. Normally for brisket I’m partial to oak or pecan. Anyway, that’s not all that important for this discussion. Use what you like.
I smoked the brisket for about four hours, from 8pm to midnight on a Saturday. It was nice not having to wake up before dawn to start the fire. I’m not a morning person. When I was done with the smoker for the night I put the fire out and went to bed without giving it another thought. That felt great.
3. Bag it and seal it
Here’s the brisket out of the smoker and in the bag just before sealing.
And here we go with the sealer.
I did a double seal on each end of the bag. Just in case. That seems to work better with my sealer.
4. Put the brisket into the bath
Just after midnight, my brisket went into the water bath.
Set for 185ºF / 85ºC, throw a lid on your container, and get some well-deserved sleep.
Here’s where the magic happens. At this temperature we’re above the stall, but well below being overdone. Over the next several hours fat will render, connective tissue will break down, and all that collagen will turn into succulently squishy gelatin.
When you wake up, top off the water if you’ve lost a significant amount to evaporation, and let the bath continue.
My total immersion time at this temperature was 14 hours. I think anytime after about 10 hours you’re going to get about the same result.
Two and a half hours prior to serving, bump up the temperature to 203ºF / 95ºC. That’s the temperature a lot of competition pit masters aim to pull their briskets off the smoker. (I learned that here. Based on my own anecdotal experience, I’m inclined to agree.) Let the bath sit at 203ºF / 95ºC for an hour and a half to two hours.
5. Drain the cooking liquid
Over the course of that long immersion quite a lot of liquid will cook out of the brisket. Quite a lot will stay inside the brisket. This will be one seriously juicy hunk of meat.
Cut a slice in the corner of your bag and drain that juice into a non-reactive container. (I used a one quart Pyrex measuring cup.)
Set this aside.
6. Bring some crust back
Here’s what the brisket looked like when the immersion bath was complete and the liquid was drained:
It doesn’t look all that different from when it went into the bag. It shrank a bit and it jiggles like Santa Claus now, but otherwise it looks pretty similar.
(You can definitely see where my sloppy trimming left a big chunk of point intact on the flat.)
One of the drawbacks of the Texas Crutch is that it softens up any bark you created during the smoking process. That’s even more true of our “Turbo Crutch,” as well. That’s part of the reason I said I reserved the point to smoke in the traditional fashion. Burnt ends are not going to be a big draw on this brisket.
We can put some of that crustiness back, of course. I considered throwing the brisket under the broiler, but opted for a slightly more violent approach. (The wife gets excited when I break out the torch.)
You’ve still got a good sized coating of rendered fats and a chunk of fat/gelatin on the top of the meat. When you hit it with high heat, it sizzles in an extremely satisfying way.
In retrospect, I could have torched this brisket a bit more. It’s certainly not the thick, black bark you’d find after 12 hours of direct smoke, but we definitely crisped up the exterior.
At this point, I wrapped the brisket in foil and placed it in an insulated cooler for transportation to the mother-in-law’s house for dinner.
7. Sauce
You don’t really need it, but you’ve created one heck of a base for a sauce, so you might as well use it. (Even if you don’t put it on the meat, dip a little bread in it on the side. That’s pretty tasty, too.)
My brisket gave me just under two cups of liquid that cooked off. I put a splash of Worcestershire sauce in to taste, and then added enough tomato paste to thicken it up. How much of each you use will depend on how much “au jus” cooks out of your hunk of meat.
8. Let’s cut
After about 30-45 minutes rest we sliced it up. I sliced most of it about pencil-thick. I should have given the knife a quick honing before cutting, and possibly cut a tad thicker, but it still came out great.
You can see, this is from the end with the sliver of point overlapping the flat. The smoke ring turned out beautiful.
Conclusion
In the end, I was extremely pleased with the result. So was the rest of the family. The texture of this brisket was incredible. The muscle fibers felt silky, buttery, soft.
Did we make a traditional Texas brisket? No.
We made something different — something we’ll definitely make again and again. Not only is it much easier to prepare to schedule, it’s delightfully richer — almost creamy — and a surprising twist to folks who almost certainly haven’t had anything prepared like it before. | {
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Nuggets coach Mike Malone on Russell Westbrook potential breaking the triple-doubles record in Denver: "I want to win. That's the most important thing for me. If we get a win and he breaks the record and gets a triple-double, so be it." | {
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The first online colored coins wallet, Coinprism, went live this week, kicking off public experimentation with the exchange system that aspires to take Bitcoin trading to the next level.
Never heard of colored coins?
As if Bitcoin weren’t useful enough already, crypto-currency developers have come up with the colored coins system to trade not only money, but literally anything else you want while piggybacking on Bitcoin’s security mechanism.
Here’s how they work.
Instead of representing money like Bitcoins do, colored coins represent property. The owner of the coins decides and defines for others what they represent. A colored coin can be a car, for example. Colored coins can be stock shares in a startup company you want to found.
Colored coins act as a voucher or an IOU for some real-world asset. They can be purchased (with bitcoins, for example), or traded for other colored coins.
One Redditor explained it this way: “Let's say I want to grow an apple tree. I need money for fertilizer, insecticide, and water. I can supply the seed, the land, and the labor. So to raise money for this venture I sell applecoins expecting to get a yield of 1000 apples in a season (we have fast growing trees). I sell 100 colored coins to cover those costs and will give each colored coin owner 5% of the yield rounded down to the nearest whole apple and then will offer a discount on apple pie to the applecoin holders as well. To redeem the colored coins for the apples, you must send them back to me.”
This YouTube video helps explain the process.
The colored coins are not purely created out of thin air in the digital world – they are financially backed by bitcoins. Users must own bitcoins to create colored coins, as well as manage and send them to other people.
However, the two are not directly linked in value. After putting a minimum threshold of bitcoins (600 Satoshis, or 0.000006 BTC) into their colored coins wallet, the user can issue any number of colored coins, defined as whatever they want. Coinprism is, so far, the only company operating a colored coins wallet, though ChromaWallet (still in development) is not far behind.
The issue of trust, then, is still central to the colored coins operation. Buyers have to trust that the owner of the colored coins is good for redeeming them as promised (always a tricky question). However, there are a number of safeguards available to ensure deals with colored coins are on the straight and narrow – drawing up legal contracts for buyers of colored coin stock shares, for instance.
If your project fails or you change your mind, you can convert your colored coins back to bitcoins.
Colored coins’ linkage to Bitcoin holds implications for both.
The colored coin system piggybacks on the Bitcoin blockchain, meaning it enjoys all the same security benefits. Exactly how the systems are connected is too technical to explain in detail here, but anyone interested can check out the protocol here.
Since the colored coin transactions are verified through the same process as bitcoins, they are also limited by the Bitcoin verification speed of (currently) about 10 minutes per confirmation.
Colored coin use will also increase the number of small bitcoin transactions as people trade them for colored coins, increasing the strain on the Bitcoin system with higher trade volume.
However, the confirmation speed can be increased as Bitcoin gets bigger to accommodate higher traffic. Colored coins are also good for Bitcoin business: they’ll increase the demand for bitcoins (since you have to have bitcoins to send and manage colored coins).
So far, people have responded to colored coins with a mixture of seriousness and delighted mockery.
Canadian company Vapetropolis, which describes itself as an online retailer of vaporization products for smoking weed, is already holding a 30-day colored coins IPO.
On the other hand, one enterprising individual has used the new technology to create Penis colored coins. “The currency of my pants has arrived!” he wrote on Reddit, offering directions to “receive Penises” in colored coins for a suggested donation of other users’ various colored coins.
The public response is a vivid illustration of the idea behind Coinprism, the first operating colored coins wallet: you put clean white light into the prism, and all kinds of colors come out the other side. | {
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GRAND PRAIRIE, TEXAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Six Flags Entertainment Corporation (NYSE:SIX), the world’s largest regional theme park company, today announced it has entered into an agreement with EPR Properties, owner of Waterworld California, to operate the water park located in Concord, California. Waterworld California, formerly owned and operated by Six Flags, is Northern California’s largest water park and is located 18 miles southeast of Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. The agreement is subject to approval by the City of Concord.
“This is an exciting new venture and a great opportunity to provide families with more entertainment options in this important market,” said Six Flags President and CEO John Duffey. “Guests in Northern California will now have the opportunity to enjoy two beautiful Six Flags parks. This is truly a win-win, as we welcome our 20th property—Waterworld California—back into our family of parks.”
The 30-acre Waterworld California features more than 35 water attractions, including the region’s largest wave pool, an interactive children’s play area and its newest offering—Break Point Plunge. This heart-pounding, 270-foot long looping thrill ride launches riders in a capsule from a height of more than six stories. Other extreme slides include Honolulu Halfpipe—a mammoth curved tube slide—and Cliffhanger, one of the park’s signature speed slides.
Waterworld California opens for the 2017 season on May 13. Six Flags Discovery Kingdom is now open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and opens for daily operation, beginning May 26. For more information, visit www.sixflags.com or www.waterworldcalifornia.com.
Six Flags Entertainment Corporation
Six Flags Entertainment Corporation is the world’s largest regional theme park company with $1.3 billion in revenue and 20 parks across the United States, Mexico and Canada. For 56 years, Six Flags has entertained millions of families with world-class coasters, themed rides, thrilling water parks and unique attractions. For more information, visit www.sixflags.com.
Follow us on Twitter @SixFlags
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/sixflags
About EPR Properties
EPR Properties is a specialty real estate investment trust (REIT) that invests in properties in select market segments which require unique industry knowledge, while offering the potential for stable and attractive returns. Total investments exceed $5.3 billion and the primary investment segments are Entertainment, Recreation and Education. Further information is available at www.eprkc.com. | {
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(CNN) -- Smoking and submarines don't mix.
That's the message the U.S. Navy is sending after announcing that smoking will no longer be permitted below decks on its submarines effective December 31.
"This policy was initiated for the health of the sailors who choose not to smoke," said Lt. Commander Mark Jones, spokesman for the Commander Naval Submarine Forces in Norfolk, Virginia. "It is unfair for them to be exposed to the unhealthy side effects of secondhand smoke."
Jones said the submarine force conducted a study in 2009 on nine different submarines covering the four different classes of subs. In that testing, it found nonsmokers were being exposed to the effects of secondhand smoke.
There are 71 submarines in the U.S. Navy and about 13,000sailors on submarine active duty, according to Jones. Of those sailors, recent polling indicates 35 to 40 percent are smokers, he said.
Jones conceded there will likely be complaints. However, he said the Navy has very aggressive smoking cessation programs. There will also be nicotine replacement therapy widely available on the submarines, such as Nicorette gum and nicotine patches.
"We're going to work as hard as we can to make this an easy transition," said Jones.
In the past, smoking had been confined to certain areas on the submarine. Individual submarine commanders will still be allowed to decide if crew members are permitted to smoke on deck.
CNN Radio's Ninette Sosa contributed to this report. | {
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This article is from the archive of our partner .
The grossest news of the day comes out of San Francisco, where officials say that a prime reason escalators in their BART public transit stations break down is the voluminous amounts of human excrement that "gum up" their gears. San Francisco commuters are, no doubt, already horrified, but we're most interested in the sort of sad resignation with which the San Francisco officials describe the problem.
The human excrement comes from homeless people who camp out at the bottom of BART station stairs. The San Francisco Chronicle's Will Kane's lead is stunning:
When work crews pulled open a broken BART escalator at San Francisco's Civic Center Station last month, they found so much human excrement in its works they had to call a hazardous-materials team. While the sheer volume of human waste was surprising, its presence was not.
Ugh. BART police tell the Chronicle it's nearly impossible to combat this problem, because it's hard to catch people in the act, and the transit security doesn't have much control over how their stations have become such a popular camping spot. So, while they hammer out a solution, we suppose there's always cabs. (No wait, those are gross too.)
Meanwhile, we can't help noting that escalator breakdowns aren't isolated to San Francisco's public transit. It's a big complaint among D.C.'s metro users, too. So far though, there's no evidence that the causes are quite as putrid -- just inconvenient. Let's all just cross our fingers that it stays that way.
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire. | {
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Residents in the regional city of Armidale are donating their own water to save trees in the local heritage-listed park, as the drought continues to deplete the district's water supply.
Key points: Armidale has Level 5 water restrictions due to the drought
Armidale has Level 5 water restrictions due to the drought Some trees in the city's Central Park, established in 1880, are dying
Some trees in the city's Central Park, established in 1880, are dying Locals are donating their own water to try to save the trees
Armidale, in northern New South Wales, currently has strict Level 5 water restrictions, with the local council predicting there are less than 400 days of water left in the city's dam.
The council is deciding whether to save the city's Central Park, which was established in 1880. It is one of the only Victorian-era parks left in NSW.
Usually full of thriving oaks and conifers, the drought has left some of them dying. The most at-risk trees are marked with orange ribbons.
Orange ribbons are tied around the most at-risk trees. ( ABC News )
For now, the park is being watered with bore water.
"We're putting in the equivalent of about 4 millimetres a week and we don't know whether that's enough. We'll see how that goes," said Richard Morsley, Armidale Regional Council's coordinator of public and town spaces.
The council has invited the public to donate water to keep the trees alive.
"Not a day goes past when people don't trot in, sometimes even with a shopping trolley load full of bought water, and just leave them soaking on the mulch," Mr Morsley said.
"It's been great."
Deputy Mayor says town faces 'a real crisis'
The council is drilling for water in the town of Guyra near Armidale. ( ABC News: Colin Hertzog )
Armidale Regional Council recently began searching for bore water sources in the region, something it has never had to do before.
But finding groundwater would only help in the short term.
"It could be a couple of weeks, but that's all. It's only a supplement," Scot MacDonald, the council's general manager of businesses, said.
"This is regarded as one of the safest areas in the state. It's a brilliant agricultural area for its lambs, its wool, its beef. This is new territory for us."
Deputy Mayor Lib Martin uses grey water on her plants. ( ABC News )
Armidale's Deputy Mayor Lib Martin, who has lived locally on the land for 33 years, said she and her family were drawing on their savings to handfeed their cattle.
"This is a real crisis. This is the drought to end all droughts, unfortunately," she said.
"It's pretty tough. It's tough physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, and you know, it's the day-to-day.
"A lot of people have sold off all of their stock. We're probably down to about half of ours, and it's probably nearly too many."
Conditions have 'never been seen before'
Armidale businessman Greg Frost says sales have fallen dramatically. ( ABC News: Peter McCutcheon )
It is not just farmers in the region who are struggling. Sales of farm equipment and support vehicles have plummeted.
"We did a bit of a budget a while ago — at least 50 per cent down and it's looking worse as the weeks go on," said Greg Frost, owner of Super Moto New England.
"It affects so many people, it's that widespread. It's never been seen before."
When the drought does break, Ms Martin said Armidale's economy will take a long time to bounce back.
"I just wish at some point the Government would take it seriously that we really are in crisis because I still believe a lot of them think if it rains it's going to be happy days," she said.
"We all know that's not how it works."
She is also concerned about climate change modelling which suggests similar drought events are going to become more frequent.
"We'll need to be more prepared for what's in front of us, as well as looking at ways to stop it progressively getting worse," she said. | {
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Conservative columnist George Will is making the argument to vote against Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.
In a piece published Friday in The Washington Post, Will says that President Trump's "zero tolerance" policy at the border was "the most telegenic recent example of misrule" and provided "fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which" independents and moderate Republicans should vote.
That principle, he says, is that the number of Republicans in office must be "substantially reduced."
"The principle: The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of the Constitution's Article I powers that they have been too invertebrate to use against the current wielder of Article II powers," Will wrote. "They will then have leisure time to wonder why they worked so hard to achieve membership in a legislature whose unexercised muscles have atrophied because of people like them."
Will targets House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and many other Republican lawmakers for serving as the "president's poodles."
"Not because James Madison's system has failed but because today's abject careerists have failed to be worthy of it," Will added. "Congressional Republicans (congressional Democrats are equally supine toward Democratic presidents) have no higher ambition than to placate this president."
Will continued that the failure of Congress to respond in productive ways to the president has impaired the Constitution's separation of powers.
"The Republican-controlled Congress, which waited for Trump to undo by unilateral decree the border folly they could have prevented by actually legislating, is an advertisement for the unimportance of Republican control."
Will's criticism comes after a tumultuous week for Trump - one in which he ultimately signed an executive order to stop the practice of separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border. It remains unclear, however, how or when the thousands of families divided will be reunited.
Will has frequently criticized the GOP under Trump. Last week he accused the party of being subservient to the president while making an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher." | {
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The BJP, BSP, SP and the Congress have fielded their candidates on all the seats.
Polling for the bypolls to 11 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh began on a slow pace with 15 to 16 per cent voters exercising their franchise till 11 am.
Polling, which began at 7 am amid tight security, will continue till 6 pm.
Polling started on a slow pace with about 15 to 16 per cent voters casting their votes till 11 am, the election office here said.
Voters are expected to come out in large numbers as the day progresses, they said.
Polling was going on peacefully and there was no report of any untoward incident, they said.
Of the 11 seats, eight were held earlier by the BJP and one by BJP ally Apna Dal (Sonelal). The seats of Rampur and Jalalpur (Ambedkarnagar) were held by the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, respectively.
The BJP, BSP, SP and the Congress have fielded their candidates on all the seats.
According to the office of UP's Chief Electoral Officer, 109 candidates are in the fray for the bypolls to the Assembly seats of Gangoh, Rampur, Iglas (SC), Lucknow Cantonment, Govindnagar, Manikpur, Pratapgarh, Zaidpur (SC), Jalalpur, Balha (SC) and Ghosi.
The by-elections were necessitated after some MLAs were elected to the Lok Sabha and resigned as members of the state Assembly. The Assembly constituency of Ghosi became vacant following the resignation of sitting MLA Phagu Chauhan after he was appointed as the Governor of Bihar. | {
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The Mount Everest of evidence proving IBM's Linux contributions infringed SCO's intellectual-property rights amount to little more than a mole hill, according to a lawyer for Big Blue, who recently told a federal judge SCO has identified only 326 lines of offending code, compared with more than 700,000 lines of IBM's GPL'd code in the Linux kernel. (Note: an earlier version incorrectly said out of a base of 700,000 lines.)
Of the 326 lines, most are comments, header files and other statements that aren't eligible for copyright protection, the IBM attorney, David Marriott, argued. To be copyrightable, a work must be the result of originality and creativity, not a mindless variation of something already out there.
In 2003, SCO CEO Darl McBride publicly declared SCO had a "mountain of evidence" that would prove that Linux was a direct descendant of Unix. Marriott pounced on that assertion at the March 7 hearing.
"They claimed rights to more than a million lines of code in Linux," he said at a hearing last week. "At the end of the day, there's 326 lines of code in which they have rights, and they have sought to exert the supposed monopoly they have and copyrights they claim to have over technology plainly owned by others." The transcript, along with plenty of commentary ridiculing SCO's every argument in microscopic detail, were provided by Groklaw.
According to the Groklaw screed, 121 of the 326 lines at issue are #define statements that specify abbreviations. That's tantamount to trying to copyright the abbreviation 10 Cir. when referring to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is where this case will likely land (assuming SCO doesn't go bankrupt first). Be that as it may, such shorthand isn't eligible for copyright protection, even if IBM did lift them from SCO, and Groklaw is confident IBM did not.
Also among the contested lines are what are known as structure declarations, which identify things, such as the type of OS a computer is using. A third class of header files being fought over are function prototypes, which specify which operations can be carried out and how.
According to Groklaw, an expert hired by SCO has argued that even the choice of list names put in alphabetical order and the assignment of sequential numbers requires a level of creativity sufficient to qualify for copyright protection. Marriott took aim at that claim, saying a US Supreme Court decision shows such code lacks the required originality to be protected. ® | {
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UPDATE: June 18 2018
California Judge Rules Twitter CAN Be Sued for Falsely Advertising Free Speech Breitbart News
Original Post Below:
Project Veritas Founder James O’Keefe recently exposed the dark side of Twitter.
Not only is the online messaging service harvesting personal information from its users, it’s also tracking private messages and selling all information to advertisers and the Deep State. In other words, personal information that users would most likely want to keep private can be sold to all comers. It can also easily fall into the wrong hands. O’Keefe’s undercover videos revealed the contempt Twitter engineers had for the public. Sexual messages and photos are all saved to servers and one engineer hinted that the compromising information could later be used for blackmail. Charming.
We know that Silicon Valley and most social media programs such as Twitter and Facebook already have an anti-Trump, anti-conservative bias. We now know that ‘shadow banning’ is more widespread than thought. Users work hard to grow a large audience only to find out that only a small percentage of those people are reached due to shadow banning. People may think nobody is responding to their content and messages when in reality hardly anyone is seeing it. In many cases, the accounts of conservative or pro-Trump users are banned outright.
Fighting the Big Left Tech’s censorship of Conservatives- support our cartoons!
Many government agencies such as the FBI and CIA have become politicized, thanks to Obama. The universities have long had a leftist, socialist bent. Corporate media are nearly all left leaning. The media in particular have dropped any pretense of fairness and trumpet partisan, Democratic Party viewpoints. Now the evidence also shows that social media companies are progressives as well—and they have no problem acting on their bias against conservatives. Former Google boss Eric Schmidt not only supported Hillary, but he made sure the most popular search engine favored her and downplayed Trump. Facebook also uses shadow banning and discourages conservative voices and, of course, all public and private content posted by users gets stored permanently for later use by ‘security’ agencies.
Big Brother is definitely watching us, and he’s flipping us the bird.
–Ben Garrison
Like Ben’s cartoons?
You can buy him a “coffee” here!
Deee-lisious!
https://ko-fi.com/grrrgraphics | {
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SAN JOSE (CBS SF) — Starting Monday the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority is launching an on-demand transit service called Flex, where riders can request shuttle buses using a smart phone app or on an Internet-connected computer.
VTA’s Flex service is designed to shuttle passengers between regular transit stops and high-density employment and retail centers.
The buses are automatically routed to pick up and drop off riders with similar routes. “You can have various routings,” said VTA spokeswoman Bernice Alaniz. “You can have varied pickup times. You can look at what are the requests and then be responsive.”
Passengers can only be picked up and dropped off at designated Flex stops, but Alaniz did not shy away from comparisons to Uber or Lyft. “I think there are some of the aspects of that, that it’s responsive – someone makes a request and we respond with something very tailored to individual needs.”
Passengers can also pay for their rides through their smartphone. For now, the pilot program is only available in North San Jose within about three miles of the Tasman light rail station. | {
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Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
The 9/11 attacks not only killed thousands of Americans, they also led to America’s forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iran, and elsewhere, which have brought about the deaths of thousands of other Americans and millions of foreigners. But the 9/11 attacks did more than that. They also fortified the U.S. government as a national-security state, which solidified the destruction of the freedom of the American people.
What is a national-security state? It is a type of governmental structure that has an enormous, permanent military-intelligence establishment. In the case of the United States, that means the Pentagon, the vast military-industrial complex, foreign military bases, the CIA, and the NSA. It also means power — enormous power, not only for the overall government, but also within the governmental structure itself. To place things in a general context, Egypt is a national-security state. So are China, Cuba, and Russia. And the United States.
It wasn’t always that way. America was founded as a limited-government republic, which is the opposite of a national-security state. No Pentagon, no vast military-industrial complex, no foreign military bases, no CIA, and NSA. Just a relatively small army.
That’s the way the Framers and our American ancestors wanted it. The last thing they wanted was the type of governmental structure under which we Americans live today. In fact, if the proponents of the Constitution had said to the American people after the Constitutional Convention that the Constitution was going to bring into existence a national-security state, they would have died laughing, thinking it was a big joke. Once they had realized that it wasn’t a joke, they would have summarily rejected the deal and continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, a third type of governmental system under which the federal government’s powers were so few and weak that the federal government hadn’t even been given the power to tax.
The post-World World II revolution
The revolutionary change occurred after World War II. Although the war against Nazi Germany had just ended in victory, U.S. officials told Americans that, unfortunately, they could not rest. That was because, they said, the U.S. now faced a foe that was arguable more dangerous than Nazi Germany. That foe was the Soviet Union, which, ironically, had served as America’s partner and ally during the war. U.S. officials maintained that America now faced a vast post-war communist conspiracy to take over the world, including the United States, one that was based in Moscow, Russia. (Yes, that Russia!)
U.S. officials said that the only way to prevent this conspiracy from succeeding was to convert the U.S. government to the same type of governmental system that the Soviets had, which was a national-security state. Continuing as a limited-government republic, they said, would almost certainly result in defeat for America and a communist takeover of our nation.
Omnipotent government
That’s how we ended up with a national-security state type of governmental system, along with all of the dark-side powers that come with it. Assassination. Kidnappings. Torture. Regime-change operations. Sanctions. Embargoes. Invasions. Wars of aggression. Occupations. Coups. Secret surveillance. Indefinite detention. Secret prison camps. Military tribunals. Denial of due process of law. Out of control federal spending and debt, in large part owing to ever-increasing budgets for the national-security establishment. In other words, all of the things that one would have expected from the Soviet Union were now part and parcel of the “arsenal of freedom” wielded by the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.
Never mind that none of this was authorized by the Constitution, the charter that called the federal government into existence. U.S. officials maintained that the Constitution was not a “suicide pact.” Continuing to follow it meant certain defeat at the hands of the Reds, they said. It was necessary to abandon constitutional niceties, they maintained, to save America.
Implicit in all the Cold War hoopla was that if the Cold War were ever to end, Americans could have their limited-government republic back. Of course, U.S. officials never thought for a moment that that would happen. The national-security state was a racket that was supposed to go on forever.
But then in 1989, the racket suddenly and unexpectedly came to an abrupt end. Financially broke and uninterested in continuing the Cold War, the Soviet Union declared an end to it, dismantled itself, and brought Soviet troops home from East Germany and Eastern Europe.
Interventionism and a new official enemy
That should have resulted in the restoration of America’s limited-government republic, but it didn’t. Having lost its official Cold War enemy, the U.S. national-security establishment found a new one by going into the Middle East and embarking on a killing spree, especially in Iraq, where it killed hundreds of thousands of people from 1991 through 2003. The victims including Iraqi children, hundreds of thousands of them. When US Ambassador to the UN under the Bill Clinton regime, Madeleine Albright, was asked by “Sixty Minutes” whether the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children were “worth it,” she responded that while the issue was a hard one, the deaths were in fact “worth it.” By “it,” she meant regime change in Iraq.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. mass killing of Iraqis, along with its decision to station U.S. troops near the Muslim religion’s holiest lands, along with the unconditional military support of the Israeli government, led to terrorist retaliation, beginning with the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the attack on the USS Cole, the attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa, and then the 9/11 attacks.
The 9/11 attacks then led to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by the interventions in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere, which necessarily entailed a fortification and strengthening of America’s national-security state form of governmental structure. They also led to the Patriot Act, which eviscerated the Fourth Amendment as well as to a formalized assassination program, including the power to assassinate Americans … to torture people, including Americans … to indefinitely detain American citizens and others as “enemy combatants” in the forever “war on terrorism” … to conduct secretive surveillance schemes over the American people and others … and to conduct intrusive searches at airports through the TSA … to impose more deadly sanctions and embargoes on foreign citizens … and to initate more coups and other regime-change operations.
It all adds up to the destruction of American liberty. There is only one way to get our freedom back: the dismantling of the national-security state and the restoration of a limited-government republic. | {
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Today at a press event in San Francisco, HTC Vive announced a premium virtual reality experience for the enterprise market, including a new platform, new hardware, and new software available specifically for commercial use. This launch reinforces Vive’s increased commitment to bringing best-in-class design and software expertise—paired with the world’s best VR hardware—to businesses of all sizes. With this complete solution powered by Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 835 Mobile VR Platform the enterprise market can now create, collaborate, and engage in new and effective ways with employees and customers alike. Companies across the globe such as SimForHealth, and the Volkswagen Group are already implementing Vive for training, simulation, and product design purposes.
Today, Vive is launching a portfolio of premium products in Western markets, including VIVE FOCUS™, a new standalone HMD for enterprise; VIVE WAVE™ VR SDK, the quintessential open VR platform for developers to create content for standalone devices; and VIVE Sync, a new enterprise collaboration tool.
Vive Focus: The Most Powerful Standalone VR Experience
Through Vive Focus, Vive offers the most complete and powerful standalone VR experience available for businesses on the market today. With this launch, Vive Focus will be available in 37 markets worldwide. Vive Focus is powered by the Vive Wave platform and content from VIVEPORT™, this innovative standalone headset is ideal for businesses that want a truly mobile VR experience. It offers a stunning combination of power and portability and the highest resolution graphics available on a standalone headset, with absolutely no PC needed.
With Vive Focus, no external base stations or sensors are needed—enterprises can utilize instant standalone VR with dual 3K AMOLED screens, interactive tracking, and Snapdragon 835 Mobile VR Platform. With high-resolution 2880 x 1600 graphics on par with tethered, professional-grade VR system like the Vive Pro, Vive Focus features innovative world-scale tracking and a 110° field of view. Users will enjoy a freeing, intuitive experience with no wires to pull them back to reality, built-in speakers, and up to three hours of active use on a single charge.
The Vive Focus can be paired with the Vive Enterprise Advantage professional services program, which offers two tiers (Advantage or Advantage+) of commercial licensing, dedicated support, and service utilities for Vive enterprise hardware. Each program offers purchase protection with tailored hardware warranties, limited downtime, dedicated support and advanced device management utilities such as a Kiosk mode and a batch configuration feature.
VIVE WAVE: The Most Innovative Platform for Superior Standalone VR
The new Vive Wave VR SDK offers an open interface, enabling interoperability between numerous mobile VR headsets and accessories, with Viveport as the universal distribution and storefront for all Vive Wave devices. This allows VR content developers to more efficiently develop, port and publish content while offering a much broader reach of potential customers across multiple VR headsets. Meanwhile, hardware partners are able to focus on true device innovation versus fundamental VR optimization, with access to much needed quality VR content through the Viveport platform.
Vive Wave is a clear step forward in bringing together the highly fragmented mobile VR market and enables developers to create content for a common platform and storefront across multiple hardware vendors. Today, there are over 150 applications available, with more in development, and the platform is currently deployed on five stand-alone devices worldwide. Since launch, 15 total hardware partners have announced their support for Vive Wave and are planning the integration of Wave into their products.
Shadow Creator joins the Vive Wave Platform
Today, the Vive Wave platform is also welcoming Shadow Creator as the newest hardware partner to adopt the platform. Shadow Creator builds Shadow VR, an all-in-one VR HMD that supports 6DoF controllers, has innovative functionality and capabilities, and exceptional performance. The device will launch on November 11 worldwide.
“Partnering with Vive and Wave benefits us two-fold,” said Jinxin Hu, COO of Shadow Creator. “It allows us to achieve more profit models through the open platform and also helps us connect with more global users, thus enhancing our company’s international reputation and brand influence.”
Shadow VR all-in-one HMD is equipped with a Snapdragon 835 Mobile VR Platform and Fresnel ultra-thin optical lens, using a self-developed holographic 3D UI Blue Cat and 6 degrees of freedom (DoF) capabilities. A 2K (2560×1440) HD display brings users a clearer and more realistic picture experience and the stereo dual-speaker sound effect makes the experience more immersive. Shadow VR is equipped with self-developed 6DoF controllers, which uses a nine-axis high-precision gyroscope, ray tracing, and a button layout compatible with most VR controllers today.
Vive Helps Enterprise Partners Work More Efficiently
Today, Vive also introduced VIVE Sync, a new virtual reality collaboration and meeting application specifically for enterprise that is part of the Vive Enterprise suite of services. Vive Sync is an intuitive collaboration tool where internal teams can meet in a virtual shared space, improving communication and productivity amongst organizations.
Additionally, at a media event in San Francisco today, Vive showcased Vive Sync, as well as a number of partners utilizing Vive Focus to demonstrate enterprise efforts:
Immersive Factory is a French start-up specializing in the design of virtual reality training who provide companies with a different way of addressing safety, health, and environmental issues with their teams.
Innoactive is a Munich-based start-up that develops virtual, augmented, and mixed reality enterprise software. The company serves clients in the automotive, retail, aerospace, pharmaceutical, and financial sectors. Innoactive’s software solutions streamline the content production and roll-out of VR collaborative planning, simulation, and training applications.
Modal is inspired by co-founder Nolan Bushnell’s success with Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s, bringing social, fun, and active free-roam location-based VR entertainment to a mass audience.
Primitive is an Immersive Development Environment, a three-dimensional programming world where software developers can explore, interact, and debug their code in unlimited virtual space.
Qualcomm Technologies: A demonstrative experience for medical practitioners as a way to reinvent health care education and training, the Think F.A.S.T. demo immerses users in a medical VR environment where they can receive hands-on instructional content that simulates a real-world comprehensive stroke examination designed to assist in diagnosing strokes faster and in turn, reducing the long-term impact of the disease.
SimForHealth offers an immersive, interactive and collaborative approach to the training of health professionals, in line with the principle.
For more on Vive for enterprise, please visit: https://enterprise.vive.com. | {
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yo holla
I'm Lenny! FOR THOSE JUMPING SHIP, MY INSTAGRAM IS @ lenniika_ AND MY TWITTER IS @ Len_designs PLEASE FOLLOW ME THERE. My main is @goshdongit. I do commissions and i have a ko-fi | {
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Valter De Maggio, direttore di Kiss Kiss Napoli, radio ufficiale del club azzurro, ha svelato un retroscena sul mercato azzurro nel corso di Radio Goal: “De Laurentiis ha ancora rilanciato per Chiesa: sarebbe arrivato ad offrire 55 milioni più i cartellini di Tonelli e Ounas, una proposta totale da 75 milioni di euro. Vedremo come reagiranno i Della Valle, il patron azzurro ha il pallino dell’esterno viola da ormai due anni. Se dovesse riuscire in quest’operazione monstre, ovviamente si aprirebbero le porte della cessione per Callejon, sul quale c’è ancora il Milan”. | {
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Former FBI Director James Comey stated in an interview that he has “struggled” his whole life with his “ego and– and a sense that I– I have to be careful not to fall in love with my own view of things.”
Comey addressed his self-described ego-centric tendencies in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ chief anchor George Stephanopoulos ahead of the release of his memoir on Tuesday.
Asked about this negative traits, Comey conceded that “my rap on myself is that– is that ego focus. That I– since I was a kid, I’ve had a sense of confidence. That I know I’m good at certain things. And there’s a danger that that will bleed over into pride, into not being open minded to the fact that I could be wrong and other people could have a better view of it.”
During the interview, Comey further stated he originally thought he would never write a book because authoring a memoir “always felt like an exercise in ego.”
“And one of the things I’ve struggled with my whole life is my ego and– and a sense that I– I have to be careful not to fall in love with my own view of things,” he added. “And so that battle with ego and my sense that memoirs are an exercise in ego convinced me I was never going to write a book.”
Comey claims he wrote the book out of a sense of duty to the U.S.
Stephanopoulos asked the former FBI chief whether his ego got the best of him when he infamously violated FBI tradition and bypassed the Justice Department to unilaterally make public pronouncements about Hillary Clinton’s email case. Comey did this at a news conference on July 5, 2016 at which he criticized Clinton’s private email server as “extremely careless” before finally stating that “no charges are appropriate in this case.”
“Your critics say this is where your ego got the best of you. This was your original sin?” Stephanopoulos asked.
Comey replied:
Yeah, I hear that. And, look, there’s always a risk that I’m blind to how I’m acting. I don’t think so. I knew this would be terrible for me personally. So if it was about ego, why would I step out in front of the organization and get shot a thousand times? I actually thought, as bad as this’ll be for me personally, this is my obligation, to protect the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. Given all that had gone on, the attorney general of the United States could not credibly announce this result. And if she did, it would do corrosive damage to the institutions of justice.
Despite describing struggles with his ego, Comey recounted how he originally relented when Attorney General Loretta Lynch convinced the former FBI director to use the word “matter” instead of “investigation” during public comments about the Clinton probe. This despite the Justice Department knowing the FBI probe was not only an official investigation but a criminal investigation.
Here is a transcript of the exchange where Comey recalls the matter, and admits he should have pushed back against Lynch’s request:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: She– but– she agreed. But you write that she didn’t want to call it an investigation? JAMES COMEY: That’s right. She agreed Loretta Lynch I had a great relationship with and still have a lot of respect for. And she said, “I agree. But call it a matter.” And I said, “Why would I do that?” And she said, “Just call it a matter.” And I didn’t know exactly why she was doing that, but I decided in that moment that the whole world would miss the distinction between investigation and matter. And so I dropped it at that point. At my press event, I said– used the term matter, and I was right, the press missed it and said we’d confirmed an investigation. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Did– did you think she was doing that to protect Hillary Clinton? JAMES COMEY: I didn’t know. It worried me. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling because the Clinton campaign, since the matter had come in, the investigation had started in July, had been trying to come up with other words to describe it. They had used “Review” I think, “Security referral,” things like that. And it did worry me that the attorney general’s direction was tracking that effort to avoid using the word “investigation.” And so, to be honest, it gave me a bad feeling. And maybe I should’ve pushed harder in the moment. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Yeah, did you push her on it? JAMES COMEY: I didn’t because I’ve known Loretta for a long time. We worked a case together in the early 1990s. And she’s a very smart person. And if she’d had a reason that I couldn’t see in Justice Department policy or something, she’da given it to me. But her answer, “Just do it,” told me this is an order from the attorney general. So it’s not improper, it’s a little bit off axis from the actual facts. But people are going to miss the distinction. And so I’m not going to fight this new attorney general. This is not going to be our first battle. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You think you should have? JAMES COMEY: Yeah, I probably should have. Given that I respect Loretta, I probably should’ve pushed harder in the moment.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
Written with additional research by Joshua Klein. | {
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Three teenage sisters who knifed to death their 'rapist' father are to be charged with murder in a high-profile case, sparking an outcry from Russian lawyers and human rights activists.
Two out of the three, Krestina and Angelina Khachaturyan, could be jailed for between eight and 20 years even though official investigation experts testified that they were repeatedly tortured, sexually abused and raped by their father.
The youngest sister, Maria, 17, was found not to understand her actions when she was part of an alleged 'group' conspiracy to stab their 'controlling paedophile father' Mikhail Khachaturyan, 57, through the heart with his own hunting knife.
As a result, Maria will not face jail whatever the verdict.
Mikhail Khachaturyan (left) was stabbed to death in Moscow by his three daughters (Angelina, pictured right) last year, and to the dismay of psychiatric experts and defence lawyers all three will be stand trial for murder
Evidence has emerged that Mikhail raped Krestina, 20, (left) and slashed Maria, 17, (right) with a knife
In July last year they girls attacked their father with a hunting knife, he was stabbed through the heart and died in their Moscow apartment
Lawyers had pressed for the murder allegations to be dropped against all the sisters or mitigated by recategorising the case as causing death by 'self defence'.
The three - aged 19, 18 and 17 when he was killed - were earlier released from custody on a judge's order amid signs that the criminal investigation in the high profile case saw them as victims of sustained longterm abuse by their 'bullying mafia boss father'.
Now the decision to go ahead with a full-scale murder trial has dismayed their lawyers and human rights campaigners in Russia.
The move comes despite criminal, psychiatric and medical experts recommending to the Russian Investigative Committee that murder charges should be dropped, say newspaper reports.
Their lawyers describe the sisters as the 'real victims', claiming the father was a tyrant who used 'brutal violence' against his daughters.
Official expert opinion in the investigation had backed the sisters' claims that he raped Krestina and Angelina and engaged in other sexual violence when they were underage, reported Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper citing legal sources.
Three lawyers representing the sisters have filed an appeal against the 'unfounded' charging decision.
'No-one disputes that the girls lived in conditions where each of them constantly experienced threats to their own lives,' said the lawyers.
Pictures emerged showing injuries the girls sustained. Left is Angelina with blood running down her face, while a bruise on one of the girls' jaws is seen right
Angelina (pictured in court) and her siblings don't deny attacking their father, but their lawyers maintain a murder charge is unjust
On the day Mikhail died, the girls say he attacked them with pepper spray - causing Krestina (pictured), who suffered from asthma, to collapse
A petition signed by almost 50,000 people is demanding the murder charges are dropped and posthumous legal action is begun against the 'abusive' father for violence and paedophile sex abuse.
Mari Davtyan, a lawyer for the sisters, complained that in Russia women who defend themselves against abuse 'almost always find themselves in the dock for murder'.
In this case 'self-defence is obvious and there are witnesses,' she said.
Alexey Parshin, Angelina's lawyer, called for the murder charges to be 'terminated' or reclassified as self-defence.
Anna Rivina, director of an anti-domestic violence organisation and a human rights activist, said: 'We live in a country where it is easier for a woman to die than to try to protect herself.'
Mikhail kept an array of weapons stashed in his car which lawyers now believe he used to threaten and humiliate the girls with
Weapons and ammunition uncovered in Khachaturyan's car. He was allegedly a mob boss before he was killed in July last year
She warned: 'I would like very much to hope that the Khachaturyan sisters' case can be used to show the absurdity of law enforcement and, perhaps, even change the judicial practice, but, to be honest, there is little hope left… .
'Self-defence is considered only if you are already specifically targeted with an axe, and in no case can you defend yourself with something more terrible than an axe.'
Evidence reported from the investigation indicates the father told one of his 'terrified' daughters: 'You will take the place of your mother. I will marry you and you will give birth to my baby.'
An experts' report said: 'He ordered them to get undressed in front of him, saying that he wanted to 'check' them.
'Then ordered them to masturbate him, saying that he had problems with his prostate and it would be a cure.'
After their mother left, Khachaturyan told one of his terrified daughters that she 'will take the place' of her mother and give birth to his son
Aurelia Dunduk, the girls' mother, was also allegedly slashed with a knife and fled the family home, after which his abuse of the girls became more severe
He 'abused and humiliated' them 'with various weapons'.
A picture has emerged of Angelina with blood streaming from her face after an attack.
On the day of his death, the girls had got his hunter's knife from his car as self protection because they feared he would beat them, according to new evidence in the experts' report to the court.
Maria had been wounded previously with the knife as had the girls' mother Aurelia who had fled the family home.
After waking he attacked his daughters with pepper spray, a frequent 'punishment' .
Former Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak warned: 'If the Khachaturyan sisters are imprisoned (for murder)... it will be a disgrace to Russian justice.'
The girls were the victims of a father with proven 'serious mental problems', she said.
They acted in self-defence.
'The girls were fighting for their lives...they actually had no other choice,' she said. | {
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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton leads GOP rival Donald Trump by 6 percentage points in Ohio, according to a YouGov/CBS poll released Sunday that also shows an even race in Iowa.
Likely voters in Ohio prefer Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Trump, 46 percent to 40 percent, with Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson picking up 6 percent and Green Party contender Jill Stein bringing in a 2 percent share.
The poll suggests Mrs. Clinton’s support is slowly growing stronger in Ohio, a traditional swing state that is a key part of Mr. Trump’s “Rust Belt” strategy, as he courts blue-collar workers who feel they have been ill-served by global trade deals.
Yet Mr. Trump’s support in Ohio has stalled around 40 percent since May, while Mrs. Clinton has gained 2 percentage points.
Nine out of 10 Democrats support their nominee, while just under eight in 10 Republicans back Mr. Trump, who is trying to reset the race with a shake-up of his campaign staff and a softer tone on the trail.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Mr. Trump has shown “maturity” on the trail in recent days, so the polls should tighten again over the homestretch to Nov. 8.
He said the real estate mogul still has a chance to sell himself to the American people, while voters already have made up their minds about Mrs. Clinton, a former first lady, senator and secretary of state.
“I believe that Donald Trump’s upside, is far greater than Hillary Clinton’s upside,” Mr. Priebus said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
CBS’ poll suggests Mr. Trump’s struggles aren’t affecting Senate GOP incumbents down the ballot, at least for now.
Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio Republican, enjoys a 7 percentage point lead over his challenger, former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland.
In Iowa, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley leads his Democratic challenger, former Lt. Gov. Patty Judge, 45 percent to 38 percent.
The pollsters said that cushion may be cold comfort to the long-time senator, however, because 17 percent of Democrats and 19 percent of independents are still undecided, compared to 9 percent of Republicans, “potentially giving Grassley less room to grow as voters make up their minds.”
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Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. | {
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Οι Έλληνες γραφειοκράτες ύψωσαν ένα τεράστιο εμπόδιο σε μια από τις μεγαλύτερες επενδύσεις της Κίνας στην Ευρώπη, αναφέρει σε δημοσίευμά της η εφημερίδα Wall Street Journal αναφερόμενη στην απόφαση του Κεντρικού Αρχαιολογικού Συμβουλίου (ΚΑΣ) να γνωμοδοτήσει υπέρ της κήρυξης μέρους του Πειραιά ως αρχαιολογικού χώρου, δημιουργώντας με αυτόν τον τρόπο καθυστερήσεις στο κινεζικό project υποδομών.
Μάλιστα, όπως σημειώνει η εφημερίδα, η συγκεκριμένη απόφαση αποτελεί την τελευταία ένδειξη ισχύος της αρχαιολογικής υπηρεσίας στην Ελλάδα και αναμένεται να εντείνει τη μακροχρόνια κινεζική δυσαρέσκεια σχετικά με την πρόοδο των έργων στη χώρα.
Το δημοσίευμα αναφέρει επίσης ότι «Το ΚΑΣ συχνά καθυστερεί επενδύσεις για χρόνια», ενώ αξιωματούχοι της Cosco δήλωσαν στην εφημερίδα ότι θα κάνουν μεν κάποιες αναπροσαρμογές στα πλάνα τους, αλλά τόνισαν ότι το σχέδιο μπορεί να εφαρμοστεί μόνο στο σύνολό του και όχι να επιτραπούν κάποιες από τις επενδύσεις.
H WSJ σημειώνει χαρακτηριστικά ότι «εταιρείες δυτικών χωρών αποφεύγουν την Ελλάδα για χρόνια, τρομαγμένες από τις δεκαετίες οικονομικών δεινών και τη διαβόητη γραφειοκρατία της χώρας», υπενθυμίζοντας ότι το 2016 η Cosco εξασφάλισε το πλειοψηφικό πακέτο του λιμανιού του Πειραιά. Ενα χρόνο αργότερα, «η κυβέρνηση του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, στον ΟΗΕ άσκησε βέτο στην καταδίκη της ΕΕ για τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα στην Κίνα, μια κίνηση που οι επικριτές σχολίασαν ότι στόχο είχε να κερδίσει την εύνοια του Πεκίνου, κατηγορίες που αρνείται η κυβέρνηση».
Από την πλευρά της Cosco αναφέρεται ότι αξιωματούχος εξέφρασε την έκπληξη της εταιρείας για την απόφαση, με δεδομένο ότι το λιμάνι του Πειραιά λειτουργεί για δεκαετίες χωρίς να προκύψει όποια αρχαιολογική ανησυχία. | {
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A genetic pathway previously known for its role in embryonic development and cancer has been identified as a target for systemic sclerosis, or scleroderma, therapy. The finding, discovered by a cross-disciplinary team led by John Varga, MD, John and Nancy Hughes Distinguished Professor of Rheumatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, was recently published in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.
"We showed, for the first time, that the Wnt signaling pathway is abnormally activated in scleroderma patients," said Varga, who is also a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. "This is significant for three reasons. First, it gives a better picture of scleroderma and fibrosis in general. Second, it provides a strategy for assessing disease severity, progression, and activity. And third, it opens a door for the design of treatments that aim to block the Wnt pathway and restore its normal controlled activity."
Varga's laboratory collaborated with a pulmonary team at Northwestern, along with teams at Case Western Reserve University and Dartmouth University on the discovery.
Researchers studied skin and lung biopsies from scleroderma patients and found that the Wnt pathway was 'turned on', in contrast to healthy individuals where the pathway was 'turned off.' Varga said this activation may be due to loss of Wnt inhibitors that normally serve as 'brakes' on the pathway to prevent its activation.
The team also examined what the pathway does using fibroblasts and stem cells from healthy people. They found Wnt causes fibroblast activation and blocks the development of fat cells (adipocytes), which directly contribute to scar formation and tissue damage seen in scleroderma.
Scleroderma is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system attacks itself. It causes progressive thickening and tightening (fibrosis) of the skin and also can lead to serious internal organ damage and, in some cases, death. Scleroderma affects an estimated 150,000 people in the United States, most frequently young to middle-aged women.
"Scleroderma is a complex and poorly understood disease with no cure," said Varga. "Our findings suggest that treatments targeting the Wnt signaling pathway could lead to an effective treatment."
Varga said Northwestern researchers next plan to conduct multi-center preclinical studies to evaluate treatments that block the Wnt pathway in animal models and measure Wnt activity in additional scleroderma biopsies to see if it can be clinically useful as a biomarker.
Source: Northwestern University | {
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lynformation
hi i'm lyn. let's just be chill yknow? diana by CH₃
theme: #23 from zeldathemes (now retired but the designer is rhaegarathemes now)
programs: clip studio paint, tvpaint for animating
tablet: intuos 5
FAQ (as of jan 2018)
what's your brush settings?
usually this
can i use your drawing as my icon/on my blog/as my wallpaper/whatever etc
yea w credit pls!!
do you take requests?
i draw whatever i think will be fun so you can tell me your idea i might like it. pls dont be upset if i dont do it tho!
can i repost you? / someone reposted you!
i don't really care if someone reposts me but ofc it's better not to...
commissions?
closed right now
what school do you go to?
i've done 4 years of the illustration program at academy of art university.
business inquiries?
[email protected] .
do you work for kik? or line?
i used to be a sticker designer at kik and my sticker packs are credited as lyn/rambamboo. if you use kik please download them if you like them! i make line stickers too but anyone can!
do you have another blog?
i have a few other blogs but they’re secret/for friends only! | {
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The Trump administration is now the first U.S. administration to label a white supremacist group a terrorist organization. The move, The New York Times notes, “could cut against criticism that the Trump administration has played down the threat of white nationalist violence for political reasons.” The group also happens to be pro-Russia.
The State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, Ambassador Nathan Sales, underscored in a statement to the Times Monday that by naming a white nationalist group a “specially designated global terrorist organization,” the Trump administration is doing something “unprecedented.”
“These designations are unprecedented,” said Sales, as reported by the Times Monday. “This is the first time the United States has ever designated white supremacists as terrorists, and this illustrates how seriously this administration takes the white supremacist terrorist threat. We are doing things no previous administration has done to counter this threat.”
“The State Department’s designation for the organization, the Russian Imperial Movement, sets up the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to block any American property or assets belonging to the group,” the Times explains. “It will also bar Americans from financial dealings with the organization and make it easier to ban its members from traveling to the United States.” Three of the group’s leaders — Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev, Denis Valliullovich Gariev and Nikolay Nikolayevich Trushchalov — are being labeled individually as terrorists, officials told the Times, a designation that includes additional sanctions.
Officials told the Times that the group is not believed to be sponsored by the Russian government, but that its actions have been “tolerated” by President Vladimir V. Putin and it has “helped advance the Russian government’s external goals by recruiting Russian fighters to aid pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.” The organization has also supported neo-Nazi organizations in Scandinavia, which follows a larger Russian government strategy of “sow[ing] chaos in Western democracies,” the paper adds.
While Trump’s critics have frequently portrayed the president as “racist” and “empowering” white supremacists in his rhetoric, his administration has now taken multiple decisive and historic steps to counter the threat of white supremacism. As the Times notes, the White House added white supremacist groups to the federal government’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism in 2018.
In the document, the administration cites nationalist and separatists movements, including specifically neo-Nazis’, as potential global threats. Below is an excerpt from a passage describing the global threat posed by such groups: | {
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ncp11 is the next-gen Namecoin TLS interoperability project that Aerth and I have been cooking up in the Namecoin R&D lab for a while. (See my 35C3 slides and workshop notes for more info on it if you haven’t heard about it yet.) Last month, I mentioned that I intended to get ncp11 building in rbm. I now have ncp11 building in rbm for GNU/Linux 64-bit and 32-bit x86 targets. 32-bit support involved fixing a bug in ncdns’s usage of PKCS#11 (specifically, ncp11 was making type assumptions that are only valid on 64-bit targets, which produced a build error on 32-bit targets). I’ve tested the resulting 64-bit binary in a Debian Buster VM, and it works fine when used as a drop-in replacement for NSS’s CKBI library. (It looks like there are issues when loaded alongside CKBI, which I’ll need to debug when I have some free time, but this isn’t a release blocker, and the same issues are reproducible with the non-rbm binary I used at 35C3.)
This work was funded by NLnet Foundation’s Internet Hardening Fund. | {
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AQUAMAN #51
Lex Luthor’s surprising offer to Black Manta is revealed! But is it too good to be true? Plus, a gruesome murder in Amnesty Bay shocks the town to its core”¦and the prime suspects are none other than the Old Gods! Can Aquaman and his new partner Aqualad solve this murder mystery?
| {
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Chairman China Gezhouba Group Lyu Zexiang called on Prime Minister Imran Khan in Beijing on Tuesday (today) and discussed cooperation in the energy sector.
The Chinese group showed keen interest in exploring new business avenues in Pakistan especially in the energy sector, Radio Pakistan reported.
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Minister for Planning Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar, Minister for Railways Sheikh Rasheed, Adviser on Commerce Razaq Dawood, Special Assistant on Petroleum Nadeem Babar and Chairman Board of Investment (BOI) Zubair Gilani were also present in the meeting.
China Gezhouba Group Corporation (CGGC) is one of the most competitive listed companies with very strong financing capabilities. The Chinese group has expanded its business in more than one hundred countries and regions.
The high-level Pakistani delegation, under the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan, is currently in China on a three-day-long visit.
The PM will also meet the Chinese leadership and exchange views on regional developments including the state of peace and security in South Asia arising from the situation in occupied Jammu & Kashmir since 5 August.
Comments
comments | {
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reuters
THE euro area is falling into such a deep hole that the recovery, when it eventually comes, will be a long, hard journey. Figures released on Friday May 15th showed that GDP in the 16-country currency zone fell by 2.5% in the first quarter, an annualised rate of some 10%, far worse than many analysts had feared. Germany, the largest economy in the group, fell even harder: its GDP shrank by 3.8% in the three months to March and has plunged by almost 7% since its recession began a year ago. Italy's GDP fell by 2.4% in the quarter; Spain's by 1.8%. The 1.2% fall in France, large by any normal standards, almost counts as a boom.
The figures confirmed that the euro zone has been hit far harder by the global downturn than its rich-world peers (and largest export markets) in America and Britain. When spending in these countries dried up, because of scarce credit, they exported some of the pain to their suppliers. For that reason Germany has so far paid a higher price for its reliance on exports than the Anglo-Saxon countries have borne for their dependence on credit and rising house prices. Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, export-led manufacturers have been hit hardest. For example Slovakia, the euro zone's newest member (it joined in January), saw its GDP crash by 11.2% in the first quarter. Its economy leans heavily on carmaking and its loss has been far more severe even than in Germany.
One of the ironies of this downturn is that it was caused by global housing and credit busts, and yet the economies that have suffered most, such as Germany and Japan, sat out the credit boom. Even in Europe some sinners have faired better than saints, in GDP terms at least. As painful as Spain's construction bust is, in terms of lost jobs and evaporating tax revenues, its economy has contracted less and more slowly than Germany's.
Despite the carnage in continental Europe, the sense of crisis among the population is not yet as great as in America or Britain. That is because of another irony: Europe's inflexible labour markets may hamper jobs growth, but they also work against rapid lay-offs in recession. The unemployment rate in Germany has scarcely budged in the past year. The bad news on euro-zone jobs has mostly been in Ireland and Spain, where jobless rates have roughly doubled in a year. Ireland is one of Europe's most flexible economies. Spain has its rigidities, but at the peak of the boom as many as a third of its workers were on fixed-term contracts. Those jobs can be shed quickly and easily. In both countries, jobs are disappearing fast in the construction industry, because of collapsing house-building.
Things will not get much better soon. Business-activity indicators across the euro-zone are starting to pick up from record lows. That points not to a revival but rather to a slower rate of GDP decline in the present quarter (it could scarcely get worse). A meaningful recovery is a long way off. Firms cannot take losses forever without shedding jobs. Unemployment in Germany and elsewhere will begin to pick up quickly this year and carry on in 2010. Even where cutting jobs is costly, it is unavoidable given the scale of the fall in GDP. The European Central Bank seems to have hunkered down for a long recession. It is now prepared to offer banks unlimited loans for 1% for up to 12 months, and that horizon may even be extended. When you have fallen so far, it is a long way back out. | {
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The language was pushed by lobbyists for the Catholic Church two years ago as part of a compromise to extend Maryland’s civil statute of limitations from age 25 to 38. Because it forbids the state from raising the maximum age above 38, it effectively inoculates the church and other organizations from costly lawsuits that could reveal whether they sheltered abusers decades ago.
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State lawmakers who heralded the 2017 compromise as a breakthrough for victims now say they were swindled.
“I made a deal with the devil,” said Del. C.T. Wilson (D-Charles), the sponsor of the 2017 law and a survivor of child sex abuse by his adoptive father.
“I was working with them in good faith,” Wilson, a lawyer, said of the church. “They were behind the scenes, crafting language that protects them forever.”
Sean Caine, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, said the church was upfront.
“If you don’t know what your bill says, that’s a problem,” Caine said.
Two different legal opinions — written by a Maryland assistant attorney general and a lawyer for the church — say the “statute of repose” provision in the 2017 law effectively grants organizations a permanent reprieve from child sex abuse allegations filed by someone older than 38.
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Unlike a statute of limitations, which addresses how long parties have to sue and can be changed by lawmakers, a statute of repose grants defendants a right to be free from liability after a certain point. Such provisions are often used in product liability law to limit a company’s legal exposure decades after a product is released into the market.
Some legal experts, including the attorney general’s office, argue it is unconstitutional in Maryland to take such rights away. But state lawmakers might use the final days of the 2019 session to do it anyway.
Amid the global clergy sexual abuse scandal, a growing number of states are creating a “lookback window,” a brief period when anyone can file a lawsuit alleging childhood abuse to seek both monetary damages and records that expose whether abuse was covered up.
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Lawmakers in New York and New Jersey created lookback windows this year, spurred by the Pennsylvania grand jury report that accused some 300 Catholic priests of abusing more than 1,000 children over seven decades. Five other states have done the same, including Michigan, where the window is exclusively for victims of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.
The windows — opposed by the church, the insurance industry and the Boy Scouts of America, among others — have ushered in hundreds of lawsuits and more than $1 billion in legal bills for institutions that sometimes must defend people long dead, or in circumstances where no records or witnesses exist. Large payouts from the litigation have prompted archdioceses in Delaware, California and Minnesota to file for bankruptcy.
“It has a debilitating effect in the church’s ministry, and it took money away from Catholics today, who had zero to do with this,” Caine said. If Maryland passes a lookback window, he said, the church would “absolutely” seek to overturn it as unconstitutional.
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The Maryland lookback bill, which has passed the House and is awaiting action in the state Senate, could also affect the private Key School, which faces allegations that teachers sexually abused at least 10 students in the 1970s. The statute of limitations for civil suits for Key School victims expired when they turned 21.
Advocates for abuse survivors say lookback windows have exposed predators still operating in the community and brought justice for victims who did not confront the horrors of their childhoods until well into adulthood.
“Pedophiles don’t retire,” said Jeffrey R. Dion, chief executive of the nonprofit Zero Abuse Project. “Survivors don’t come forward until they are ready.”
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Disallowing long-ago legal claims, he said, “does nothing but protect perpetrators and the people that cover up for them.”
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House Majority Leader Kathleen M. Dumais (D-Montgomery), a lawyer known for advocating for victims of sexual abuse, argued in March from the floor of the House of Delegates that a lookback window would be unconstitutional.
Her voice shaking with emotion, she said it would give false hope to victims, who might undergo years of litigation only to see their cases thrown out.
The House overwhelmingly disagreed, voting 135 to 3 to approve a two-year lookback window starting Oct. 1, and eliminating all civil statutes of limitations for sexually abused children going forward.
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Hours later, Assistant Attorney General Kathryn M. Rowe issued a letter of advice saying Maryland courts would find the lookback window unconstitutional. Such an opinion is often a political death knell for controversial legislation in Annapolis, but the bill’s prospects in the Maryland Senate are unclear.
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Judicial Proceedings Chairman Bobby Zirkin (D-Baltimore County) said he disagrees with Rowe’s analysis, as well as one written for the Maryland Catholic Conference by Kurt J. Fischer, a partner at the prominent Venable law firm.
“I’m moving that bill,” Zirkin said, promising a committee vote.
Zirkin, a lawyer, introduced the amendments in 2017 that included the repose statute. He said “it wasn’t anyone’s intent” to grant permanent immunity.
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In interviews, several other lawmakers who negotiated the compromise recalled the two church lobbyists who shopped the repose provision, saying they did not want to repeatedly revisit extending the statute of limitations. The lawmakers said they now believe they unwittingly agreed to language that could permanently prevent anyone born before the early 1980s from suing the church.
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Permanent immunity “was never discussed,” said Del. Vanessa E. Atterbeary, (D-Howard), a lawyer who is vice chair of the Judiciary Committee.
“I was in meetings with the Archbishop of Baltimore,” she said. “That’s the sort of conversation I would have remembered.”
Church lobbyist John Stierhoff declined to comment on how the provision got into law. Mary Ellen Russell, the executive director of the Maryland Catholic Conference at the time, declined to comment because she no longer works for the organization.
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Caine said the church was clear it did not want to annually revisit this debate.
“This was a key reason for the compromise, and it was among the reasons the church publicly supported the bill,” Caine said. “We always were and continue to be against the idea of retroactively reviving claims, just for the sheer fairness of it.”
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Caine said the Archdiocese of Baltimore has spent more than $11 million over the past two decades on settlements and what Caine called “unlimited counseling” for victims, deals the church negotiates even though the civil statute of limitations has expired.
In recent months, he said, the archdiocese has cooperated with Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh’s criminal investigation of church sexual abuse, turning over files of every clergy member ever accused.
Abuse victims say the civil process can provide closure that criminal investigations might not, partly because victims can initiate them without law enforcement, and partly because the cases hinge on a lower burden of proof
If the immunity is lifted, Teresa Lancaster vows to sue the church. “I have my complaint typed out and ready to go,” she said.
She and another woman sued the church in 1994, alleging their counselor at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore repeatedly raped them in the late 1960s. The case was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired. Her alleged attacker, Joseph Maskell, said he was innocent. He died in 2001.
In 2010, Lancaster accepted a $40,000 settlement from the church. By 2016, the church had settled with 16 people who accused Maskell of abuse.
Last week, Lancaster lobbied to pass the lookback window. She says she wants access to Maskell’s personnel files to see what the church may have known at the time about alleged abuse. | {
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IMAGE: ROMOLO TAVANI/123RF
デイヴィッド・ミードとその信奉者たちによると、終末（アポカリプス）が差し迫っているのだという。
聖書の「黙示録」の第12章には、「天に大きなしるしが現れた。ひとりの女が身に太陽をまとい、月を足の下にし、頭には十二の星の冠をかぶっていた」と書かれている。そして2017年9月23日、大乙女座のなかで、惑星と恒星の直列が実現するのだという。月はまさに乙女座の下を通り、人型の上部は水星、金星、火星、さらには獅子座の最も明るい9つの星により囲まれることになる。
また旧約聖書「イザヤ書」第13章では、ある予言が述べている。「見よ、主の日が来る。残忍な、怒りと憤りの日が。大地を荒廃させ、そこから罪人を絶つために。天のもろもろの星とその星座は光を放たず、太陽は昇っても闇に閉ざされ、月も光を輝かさない」
ミードの予言を完成させるにあたって、「ニビル」を欠くことはできない。そう、伝説的な「惑星X」だ。人類を滅亡させるといわれる惑星Xは、地球に衝突し、衝撃は地震と津波を引き起こし、あらゆる生命体を消滅させるだろう──。
この話は気に入っただろうか？ これはミードが書いた『惑星X──2017年到来』で読むことができる。もしくは、ウェブサイト「Planet X News」でも掲載されている。魅力的な物語かもしれないが、科学的な根拠は何もない。
だが「9月23日地球滅亡説」がネット上で広まってしまったため、ついに米航空宇宙局（NASA）も火消しのために介入。惑星ニビルの存在が、どれほど蓋然性の乏しい仮説であるかを説明しなければならなくなった。たとえ地球と衝突する可能性のある天体が存在するとして、巨大でそれほど近くにありながら、あらゆる宇宙観測システムを免れていることはありえない、と。
指摘しておくと、ミードは有名な天文学者でも、国際政治学の専門家でもない。経済学と天文学、そして統計学というあまりはっきりしない学歴のあとに、法医学の分野で働き、Amazonで本を出版している。彼の好む議論は、アポカリプス以外では、トランプ大統領に対する陰謀、世界的な電磁気の嵐、科学と聖書のつながりだ。科学者としてはまったくいい評判を得ていないが、彼の本はたくさん売れている。 | {
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With almost $2 million in new funding and an incoming executive director who is a rising star in the movement, North America’s network of Conservative day schools is looking to pull itself out of a decade-long slump.
The Schechter Day School Network, known as the Solomon Schechter Day School Association until re-branding two years ago, recently announced it has secured $1.7 million from the Avi Chai Foundation and “a substantial challenge grant” from an anonymous foundation. Currently a department within the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Schechter is in the process of becoming an independent nonprofit.
Elaine Cohen, the network’s executive director and its lone professional, will retire in 2014, to be replaced by Jon Mitzmacher, currently head of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School in Jacksonville, Fla. Mitzmacher, who is 41, is best known for spearheading EdJewCon, a series of day school conferences to share best practices in educational technology.
A Schechter school, Gottlieb has been an early adopter of technology, using QR codes, Skype and encouraging even its youngest students to share their work online. “When your audience is the world, not just your teacher, you’re motivated to do your very best,” Mitzmacher told The Jewish Week, adding that “the skill set necessary to make a quality comment on a blog is similar to what is needed to participate in a train of commentary in a page of Talmud.”
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Going forward, the Schechter network plans to expand its staff, offering regional consultants, networking opportunities and curricular and professional development resources for its member schools.
The plan, according to Mitzmacher, is not only to strengthen existing schools, but also potentially to seed the growth of new ones.
“Jewish parents are going to push to have their kids in what they perceive to be the best schools, so we just have to be the best schools,” he said, adding that “as long as there are Jewish parents spending money to put their kids in [private] non-Jewish schools, there’s a market” for Schechter schools to grow.
Mitzmacher’s bold talk is striking given that Schechter schools have in recent years been battered by the recession, the waning popularity of Conservative Judaism (indeed, of all non-Orthodox denominations) and increased competition not just from pluralistic Jewish schools, but also from tuition-free alternatives like Hebrew charter schools.
First established in the 1950s, the Schechter network peaked approximately 15 years ago, when it boasted 63 affiliated schools, enrolling more than 21,000 children in North America. In 2011, when the network re-branded, its 49 schools enrolled fewer than 14,000. A census of 2012-13 day school enrollment commissioned by the Avi Chai Foundation, found that just 10,356 students were enrolled in 41 Schechter schools. At the same time, enrollment has grown in Orthodox schools and remained stable in pluralistic ones.
In the past decade, a number of Schechter schools have closed, while others have ceased to identify as Conservative. In New York, that includes a Manhattan high school that merged with a New Jersey one, only to close soon after; the closing of a Suffolk County K-8 school, and the closing of a 40-year-old K-8 school in Rockland County.
Asked what makes Schechter schools unique, Mitzmacher, a California native who grew up in the Reform movement, said they offer “a certain kind of excellence in both secular and Jewish studies and a very particular way of understanding the relationship between the two.”
[email protected] | {
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The inaugural conference of the Israeli-American Council served as a platform for a blistering attack on President Barack Obama on Friday night, launched by his defeated rival in the 2012 elections, Republican Mitt Romney. The "naive" president, Romney said, “is weakening our military, distancing ourselves from allies, and being divisive and demeaning towards our friends.”
Romney said that he was ‘stunned’ by Obama’s recent letter to Iranian leader Ali Khamenei. “That the president would write a letter of this nature, in effect legitimizing a nation and a leadership that is violating international norms and is threatening the world, is so far beyond the pale, I was stunned. I was speechless.”
Romney was warmly received with a standing ovation by about 700 expatriate Israelis who are participating in the first-ever national political conference exclusively devoted to the expat Israeli community. The conference, organized by the Israeli American Council (IAC) aims to establish the community as a “strategic asset” for Israel in the U.S. and, according to Jewish activists, as a potent political force in the future. The organization was established in Los Angeles in 2007, but underwent dramatic development and expansion after casino mogul Sheldon Adelson's decision in late 2013 to serve as its main funder.
Romney, who was interviewed by his former adviser Dan Senor, author of the popular book “Start-Up Nation," told the crowd that he had flown on Adelson’s private plane last week from Alaska, where he had campaigned on behalf of the Republican candidate for the Senate, Dan Sullivan. Adelson sat in the audience, together with his wife Miri, who serves as the chairperson of the IAC’s Las Vegas branch. Also attending were Israel’s UN ambassador, Ron Prosor, who exhorted his audience to participate in hasbara efforts to defend Israel, as well as Israel’s new Interior Minister Gilad Erdan, who will address the conference on Sunday.
From left to right, IAC National Chairman Shawn Evenhaim, Sen. Joe Lieberman, Mitt Romney, IAC National Board Member Adam Milstein. Photo: Shahar Azran.
Although the conference claims to be bipartisan, the only other politician speaking at Friday’s opening plenary was former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, who quit the Democratic Party in 2006 and has since become one of Obama’s harshest critics. Lieberman’s “balance” to Romney, therefore, was to attack Obama for his “harmful” relations with Israel and for the “chickenshit” epithet used against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by an anonymous administration official quoted by Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic. Lieberman said of Romney “in politics and in life I’ve never met anyone as honorable or as able” as him.
Two Democratic lawmakers are also scheduled to appear before the conference on Saturday, but both – outgoing Senate Foreign Relations Committee head Robert Menendez and Florida Congressmen Ted Deutch – are also expected to criticize Obama’s policy on Iran, though in milder terms than Romney. South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, however, will probably be just as harsh as Romney, if not more so.
Speaking after a kosher Shabbat dinner in a ballroom at the Washington Hilton Hotel, a short distance from the White House, Romney said that the U.S. should treat Iran as it did apartheid South Africa, as a pariah state whose leaders are shunned. He said that Obama “continues to diminish himself and America and leads bad people to think America can be pushed around,” Romney said.
He also lambasted the fact that Obama had bypassed U.S. allies in the region, including Israel. “The president is weakening our military and distancing us from our allies - which weakens us,” Romney said. “He began by going into the Arab world and apologizing for America, and saying we were dictatorial, divisive - and that we were dismissive of other nations. And the remarkable thing is that he now is doing that very thing. But not to our enemies. To our friends.” | {
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In my last MLSFI post, I mentioned that w also recorded a MLS Fantasy 101 podcast. This podcast goes over all of the basics to getting going with MLS Fantasy Soccer Manager. And I do mean basics! We start by going over how to use the website, and then go through the questions that can be found at /r/FantasyMLS. So join Scott, Paul, and I if you’re still trying to figure out how to get started or send this to a friend that could use a little help.
MLS Fantasy Insider Episode: MLS Fantasy 101
In my last MLSFI post, I mentioned that w also recorded a MLS Fantasy 101 podcast. This podcast goes over all of the basics to getting going with MLS Fantasy Soccer Manager. And I do mean basics! We start by going over how to use the website, and then go through the questions that can be found at /r/FantasyMLS. So join Scott, Paul, and I if you're still trying to figure out how to get started or send this to a friend that could use a little help. MLS Fantasy Insider Episode: MLS Fantasy 101 MLS Fantasy Insider Episode: MLS Fantasy 101 MLS Fantasy Insider Episode: MLS Fantasy 101 Review Overview 0 User Rating: Be the first one !
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A YouTube web series star has been stabbed to death in his Bronx apartment.
Father-of-two Tyrone Fleming, 40, who starred as Tye Banga in crime drama web series 848, was found in a pool of blood Wednesday at 5:30pm.
Alarm was raised when Fleming, a Con Ed employee, didn't show up for work Wednesday.
When his fiancée Tamika arrived to his Morris Heights apartment, she found his body blocking the front door, police say.
YouTube web series actor Tyrone Fleming, 40, (above) was stabbed to death Wednesday
He starred as Tye Banga in the YouTube show 848, which follows the story of drug kingpins in the Bronx
Fleming, who also worked at Con Ed, was found slumped in a pool of blood in his apartment after he failed to show up for work, pictured right with 848 co-actors
Cops found him with wounds in the lower back. His sister reveals he was stabbed three times.
'He was stabbed three times in his back and one hit his artery. He bled out. We have no idea who might have wanted to do this. No idea,' 32-year-old Tiffany Tucker said to the New York Daily News.
Heartbroken family and friends gathered to the apartment on Wednesday evening for a candlelight vigil, where he was described as a 'good guy'.
He is survived by his fiancée and two children aged 10 and 16.
'He was hardworking and a good man. He loved his kids and his family,' Tucker said on her brother.
He was stabbed three times in the back and once in his artery, police have not made any arrest in his death and are investigating the incident
His body was found blocking the door to his Morris Heights apartment, pictured above
Police say they have surveillance footage of someone dressed in black entering and leaving the apartment shortly before his death, who could be a potential suspect
Wednesday evening family and friends gathered for a candlelight vigil outside the apartment
'He was an amazing man. He was a hardworking man who didn't have problems with anybody. This is a tragedy,' his fiancée Tamika said.
Police say they have surveillance video of someone dressed in all black entering and leaving the building as a potential suspect.
Locals say that Fleming was well known in the neighborhood, according to ABC6.
The show 848, which follows the story of drug kingpins, is also shot in the neighborhood.
The show has nearly 20,000 subscribers and episodes rack up more than 100,000 views. The show, which started three years ago, was due to air the first episode of its third season Wednesday.
No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.
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I was just released from prison today. They locked me up for “Murdering” a bicyclist. However, I was able to argue my way to freedom by explaining to the warden that Murder = Killing + Social Power. Since the bicyclist had all the social power over a pedestrian-American like myself, no action on my part can ever be considered murder. This is because murder isn’t an individual action anymore, it’s an institutional form of oppression. | {
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Order Injustice , the New York Times best selling book by J. Christian Adams about elections, race and the Holder Justice Department. | {
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As the Redskins are set to play their second preseason game on Thursday evening against the Cincinnati Bengals, rookie quarterback Dwayne Haskins will certainly get plenty of reps.
The Ohio State product is in the middle of a three-way competition for the starting job with veterans Case Keenum and Colt McCoy. For the second straight game, McCoy will not dress due to a leg injury, meaning Keenum and Haskins will get the majority of snaps.
In the first episode of NBC Sports Washington's series chronicling the rookie's Redskins' career thus far, Haskins' fall on draft night is well documented.
Entering the 2019 NFL Draft, Haskins was a consensus top 10 pick by every NFL expert, expected to be the second QB off the board behind Oklahoma's Kyler Murray. After Murray, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner, went No. 1 overall to the Arizona Cardinals and with QB-needy teams like the New York Giants in the top 10, Haskins being available when the Redskins were slated to pick at No. 15 seemed out of the question.
But the Giants decided to select Duke quarterback Daniel Jones at No. 6, growing the chip on Haskins' shoulder exponentially. Cameras captured the Bullis, Md. native half-smirk while the nearby television screen announced Jones was heading to the Big Apple.
From that moment on, Haskins, who chose to host a draft party with his extended family in Gaithersburg, Md. rather than attend the draft in Nashville, has been out to prove that the Giants made a mistake.
As the next few picks went by, it became seemingly more likely that Haskins would still be on the board when it became Washington's turn on the clock. The Redskins were going to be able to select their franchise QB of the future without having to trade up. Something that seemed impossible earlier in the day all of a sudden became the Redskins' reality.
By the time Washington officially became on the clock, Haskins already knew where he was ending up: his hometown team. His slip in the draft was no more. Cameras captured the newest member of the Burgundy and Gold saying "I'm going to D.C." moments before he got the call.
When the 22-year-old finally got the call, Haskins held up his phone for everyone in the room to see. Before NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell even announced the pick on the big-screen television, Haskins had a Redskins cap in hand, ready to proudly put on his head.
"Say it loud," Haskins said towards the screen, knowing Goodell was about to read his name.
Two days later, Haskins and fellow first-round pick Montez Sweat were formally introduced to the media and fans in Washington, D.C. in front of several historic landmarks, such as the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.
The video concluded with the line that summed the evening up best: "The only thing bigger [than those historical landmarks] are the expectations placed on the 22-year-old quarterback. Is Haskins a franchise quarterback? The Redskins and their fans certainly hope so."
MORE REDSKINS NEWS: | {
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Less than two months after the Army Corps of Engineers denied an easement required for the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Corps has reversed course and said it will grant the easement after all. Senator John Hoeven, a Republican from North Dakota, announced the news in a statement on Tuesday night. "This will enable the company to complete the project, which can and will be built with the necessary safety features to protect the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and others downstream," the statement read.
The Senator’s conciliatory words are unlikely to calm any fears held by the Standing Rock Sioux or any of the thousands of other Native Americans who joined the tribe in protesting the pipeline in 2016—especially if they kept reading the Senator’s statement. "We are also working with the Corps, the Department of Justice, the Department of Interior and the Department of Homeland Security to secure additional federal law enforcement resources to support state and local law enforcement," it said. "On Sunday, 20 additional Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement officers arrived at Standing Rock to assist local authorities."
In effect, they’re preparing for a fight.
The protest at Standing Rock began in April 2016 as the sort of environmental movement that rarely gets any national news coverage—a handful of people, an issue that few across the country fully understood, let alone had heard of. But by September, several thousand people, most of them Native Americans, had gathered at what was called the Oceti Sakowin Camp, or the Seven Council Fires.
"They were joined by a smattering of earthy white folk and a crew of Black Lives Matters activists from Minneapolis. The camp was just outside the boundary on land administered by the Army Corps. State troopers blocked the highway to Bismarck, allowing protesters—or 'protectors,' as they insisted on being called—to leave but not return. In the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the tribe’s lawyers argued that the pipeline would pollute their water and desecrate sacred burial grounds," Outside wrote in in early September.
On January 24, just four days into his administration, the President signed an executive order directing the Corps to “take all actions necessary” to move the pipeline forward.
The camp continued to grow—both in population and in the national awareness. Kristen Wiig wore a T-shirt that read "Stand with Standing Rock" when she hosted Saturday Night Live in mid-November. The Burning Man crowd got wind of it and descended. A new environmental movement seemed to be forming, helped in part by some of the draconian practices—water cannons, attack dogs—used by local law enforcement and company-hired heavies.
What was even more remarkable was that they seemed to have won. On December 4, the Corps announced it had denied the easement. (Though it was still considering alternative paths that could allow the pipeline to move forward in the future.) The camp celebrated.
"The prayer circle was disbanding as everyone rushed to the fire. Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault was jubilant. 'We won!' he said. 'You can go home and spend the winter with your families!' Drums pounded, and the high wails of a victory song rang into the cold sunshine. Hundreds stomped their feet in a victory dance," Outside wrote of the scene.
But with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, the victory seemed already at risk. On January 24, just four days into his administration, the President signed an executive order directing the Corps to "take all actions necessary" to move the pipeline forward. A week later, they have done just that.
Which does not necessarily mean that the pipeline will be built. The movement that successfully resisted and lobbied President Obama to urge the Corps to deny the easement remains intact, albeit dispersed. In the weeks after the Standing Rock camp disbanded, Native Americans have refocused their efforts on other fights: along the Keystone route, in the Navajo Nation, and even in cities like Oakland, California.
The recent announcement, then, is not a death knell for the movement that began at Standing Rock. Rather, it is a test. Will the Oceti Sakowin Camp again swell with protesters in the summer? Already, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has released a statement announcing their continued opposition to the pipeline. "While this news is disappointing, it is unfortunately not surprising," the tribe wrote on its Facebook page. "... We stand ready to fight this battle against corporate interest superseding government procedure and the health and wellbeing of millions of Americans."
It is unlikely they will stand alone. | {
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We're not saying Dead Space is comingto Sony'sNext Generation Portable(aka PSP2), but if it did, it wouldn't be a port. It would be a brand new entry in the series...
Visceral, developer of the Dead Space games, didn't dismiss the idea of an NGP Dead Space title. In fact, the company's art director Ian Milhamtold CVG, "I'm absolutely interested in bringing Dead Space 2 to other platforms in the future."
"What's key to us though is that we don't do ports. We don't do shabby conversions onto whatever platform it may be," he added.
For example, when bringing the game to the Wii, Visceral created a brand new game. Dead Space Extraction played "to the Wii's strengths," said Milham.
To reiterate, headded, referring to theNGP or other future platforms, "I'd be into it but I'd want to do something that plays to that platforms strengths rather than just a feeble version of a port."
Jan 28, 2011 | {
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Just because you’re approved to be on Google News no longer means you’ll appear on Google News. Google has been tightening up the process in which websites can appear on Gnews as a means of promoting websites that are “Accountable”, “Trustworthy”, and “Transparent”. This is part of Google’s overhaul of the “Authority” algorithm that rolled out throughout August, for which various websites were affected, according to the SeRoundtable findings. The algorithm didn’t settle into place until mid-August.
Recently we noticed that after August 19th, 2018 articles from One Angry Gamer, along with several other websites, no longer appeared publicly in Google News. This is despite the fact that the website is still listed as being verified for inclusion in Gnews.
Specific sections of the site are fed to the GNews crawlers, including the Politics, Industry News, and Entertainment sections of the site. According to the Google Webmaster tools the GNews crawlers are still actively combing and indexing the content from the three sections approved to appear in GNews.
This is further verified with the fact that if you go to the Google News tab on any web browser and type in: site:oneangrygamer.net you’ll get the following listing of sitewide content from One Angry Gamer.
The significance of this is that none of those articles appear in Google News from One Angry Gamer if you search them up individually. Instead, you’ll simply get a listing of other websites.
What’s more is that exclusive articles to One Angry Gamer no longer appear in Google News as well, including the piece from Sophia N., titled “Culture Clash: How Arkane Got Stuck Between Two Competing Ideologies”.
If you go to the general Google search you’ll see that the article is at the top of the search engine on the first page if you search up the article title:
If you click on the “News” tab you’ll note that the article doesn’t appear at all, as you can see in the archived search results.
[Update 9/1/2018: According to some webmasters, they notified us that if you click on the settings and filter the results by “Date” instead of “Relevance”, the site’s content may appear]
The article does appear if you go to the Google News section and explicitly search for the term: site:oneangrygamer.net
Essentially, it’s as if all of One Angry Gamer’s GNews content is filtered out from the general public, even though the site is still listed as verified and included in the Google News program.
When reached for answers about this discrepancy, a Google top contributor named Steve Web stated that the filtering was part of Google’s focus on “tightening” up the algorithms, saying…
“Accountability, Trustworthiness, Transparency. Those are the 3 key phrases for Google News these days. […] “The Google News algorithms are tightening up. It is possible (and probable) the Accountability, Trustworthiness, Transparency issues are kicking the site in the shins and will continue to do so.” “[…] The contact page lacks anything from the physical world, specifically a published landline telephone number and verified/registered physical business address. While your site isn’t YMYL (your money, your life), the physical contact points are becoming increasingly important for general search issues and more so for Google News. In fact sites will seldom be approved for Google News these days without physical contact points. Which also means the physical documentation is becoming increasingly important for sites which are currently approved.”
According to Web, a lack of physical locations listed on the site, a lack of image attributions, and a lack of real life author profile pictures are the reason Google may have filtered the site.
When testing Web’s postulation that physical locations would result in all of the site’s content being filtered, it turns out that this isn’t true. You’ll find that some sites are still in GNews without listing a physical location in their contact section, such as Niche Gamer or TechRaptor. This isn’t a knock against the sites, it’s just a pointed fact that a lack of physical location(s) didn’t excise sites such as Niche Gamer or Tech Raptor from GNews. If you search them up in the GNews tab they still appear.
Ironically enough, if you type in “One Angry Gamer” in the GNews search field you won’t get any news from the site, but the news feed from the Twitter account will show up.
Additionally, there are plenty of websites still on Google News that are publishing news with generic image attributions from authors without real life profile pictures. For instance, if you search up The Golf Club 2019 you’ll find that two of the top entries in Gnews are from Gamespot. Those entries were posted by a contributor going by the name of Gajan Kulasingham. You’ll note that he doesn’t have an author’s bio nor a real life photo for his avatar.
I further pressed Web on why the exclusive news content from One Angry Gamer wasn’t publicly available in Google News anymore, since the contact information and author bios haven’t changed for years. According to Web, he stated that even though he couldn’t find any “red flags” on the site or any problems that would indicate the site violated the publisher rules for Google News, Google may be examining the site as a whole and not simply the sections approved for Google News…
“[…] just remember the entire site is subject to examination in terms of Accountability, transparency and Trust. I didn’t spot any screaming red flags in the main navigation bar, but Googlebot does dig deeper/faster than I can.”
According to Googlebot there are no flags on the site, no security issues, and the site is still approved as a verified publisher in Google News.
I pressed even further, asking Web about the filters, and how the site could be penalized if it’s still approved and why there was no warning about this? And furthermore, if the rules about the contact information and author biographies not containing real life photographs of the authors themselves is a problem, why is the site still approved for GNews? Why is the crawler still listing content from the site? And why are headlines and links to the site directly extricated from Google News?
Web stated…
“[It’s] possible that some articles will be extracted In addition the pendulum of Accountability, Transparency etc could swing the other way and your site will suddenly rank extremely well for every article published.”
Except it isn’t just One Angry Gamer affected by this.
It appears certain sites have been removed from the GNews feeds, even if the content is still being crawled and indexed into the main search engine, and even when the site meets all of Google’s ever-changing requirements to be featured in the news section.
For instance, News With Views is approved to appear on Google News, and has their content updated on a daily basis.
However, if you check GNews for any of their content, nothing shows up.
Much like One Angry Gamer, if you type in: site:newswithviews.com you will get a listing of the site’s content from when Google last crawled the site for news.
However, if you type any of the website’s headlines or content into the GNews search field, none of them will bring up News With Views in the search listings. In fact, if you type in “News With Views” this is what pops up in GNews.
What’s more, if you check the general search engine results on Google, the first result will be the actual website, NewsWithViews.com.
Additionally, News With Views actually has staff bios, real photos, and a physical contact address, as listed on their contact page. Yet they’re filtered out of the Google News feed for any publicly facing content. So even websites adhering to these stricter rules that Steve Web cited, they still aren’t appearing in the news feed.
What’s more is that other GNews-approved sites like RedState.com have been filtered out of Google News since 2013, even though the site still regularly updates its content on a daily basis.
Trying to narrow down which websites are affected is difficult given that it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
However, there have been growing reports about biased filtering and algorithmic manipulation to push certain sites down the search rankings or out of the view of the general public, as reported by PJ Media. Google representative Maggie Shiels told the outlet that this was untrue, saying…
“Google does not manipulate results,”
Obviously, many of the larger mainstream websites have been left untouched. And the process for the filtering remains unclear.
Although, in a related bit of news, earlier this year Google rolled out a similar filter that affected hundreds of websites in a short amount of time, removing them all from GNews’ feed even though they were all verified and approved. When called out on it, Google stated that the filter was applied “incorrectly”, with Valerie Streit, the manager of creative insights at YouTube and Google, stating…
“[…] we apologize for the issue that resulted in a number of sites being delisted from Google News. This was an unintentional technical issue and not something we did manually. We are working hard to identify the sites that were incorrectly affected and will get them back in as soon as we possibly can.”
Now for those of you wondering why we didn’t report on this sooner, the reality is that it’s because Google News is not our main source of traffic, and we haven’t had much traffic from Google News since June of 2017. After we did the article about Anita Sarkeesian harassing Sargon of Akkad at Vidcon — which was featured in the GNews carousel that shows the top stories of a topic — the article was reported and the site was DDOS’d.
Google proceeded to remove One Angry Gamer from being featured in the top news carousel after that. So traffic specifically from Google News has been sporadic or rare, even though all of One Angry Gamer’s content still showed up in the GNews tab.
The only reason I noticed that news articles weren’t showing up any longer is because I searched up the article about Arkane Studios and noticed it didn’t appear in any capacity on GNews, and that the site wasn’t receiving any traffic at all from Google News since August 19th, 2018. This has not affected the Alexa rankings or overall traffic of the site, however.
Even still, this confirms that the site is filtered, or what people call “shadowbanned”, where the content is still approved to appear on Google News, and the site is still listed in Google News, but no one in the general public will ever see content from One Angry Gamer in Google News.
Steps for checking if your site is Shadowbanned
Now if you’re curious if your site is filtered, you can perform a very easy test by going to the Google News tab, and typing in the following: site:(insert the website name here).com
If your site is not approved then you will receive an error saying that your site doesn’t match any results:
2. If your site is approved then you should see a listing like in the example below:
3. Once you’ve confirmed that your site is still active, and the crawlers are still combing through your news content, you can check if the content is available for public display by opening a new private browsing tab, and heading to the Google News tab.
4. Proceed to type in the title of the website, not the website address. So for example, instead of typing in “www.DualShockers.com”, you would simply type “DualShockers” without the suffix.
5. If your site’s content is still visible to the general public, then you should see similar results as depicted in the image below:
6. You’ll know if your website is shadowbanned if none of the articles from your website appear, and the website itself does not appear, as indicated in the image below:
Twitter and Reddit also use a similar method of shadowbanning content, so that even though a shadowbanned user can still make use of the services, other users are either unable to see the content posted by the shadowbanned user or only a limited number of people will be able to see the content. | {
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Forum Forums
The Grand Arts Theatre, home of MuppetVision 3D at Disney's Hollywood Studios, is set to receive some updates later this month - including new seats and curtains.
To complete the work, the show will be closed from January 26 through to February 7, with a planned reopening to guests on February 8 2020.
View all current and upcoming Walt Disney World refurbishments.
Discuss on the Forums
Article Posted: | {
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England have resisted the temptation to blood a new opener in the final Test of the summer against India at the Oval, despite the imminent retirement of Alastair Cook.
It was thought the selectors could have called up a possible successor to Cook, for whom the match will be his 161st and final Test, to assimilate him into the squad before the tours to Sri Lanka and West Indies. The Surrey opener Rory Burns and Joe Denly of Kent were mentioned in dispatches.
Alastair Cook had the will to harvest runs and stay at the top for years | Andy Bull Read more
There is only one change to England’s squad from the series-sealing victory at the Ageas Bowl, with James Vince, who was called up as injury cover for Jonny Bairstow in Southampton, the only absentee from a 13-man party.
It means Ollie Pope, dropped in Southampton to accommodate the return of Moeen Ali, retains his place in the squad and the 20-year-old batsman will join up with England before the start of the final Test on Thursday morning after playing the first two days of Surrey’s championship match at Essex.
Chris Woakes is also retained, despite being ruled out of the fourth Test with a muscle problem. England are hopeful Woakes will be fit for selection at the Oval and will monitor his progress during the two practice days leading into the Test.
If fully recovered, Woakes could return as part of a four-man seam attack if England decide Adil Rashid, the leg-spinner who was overshadowed by Moeen’s nine wickets in the last Test, is surplus to requirements.
Pope also has a chance of coming back into the XI, probably lower down the order at No 6, if Rashid is overlooked.
County cricket: Essex v Surrey, Somerset v Lancashire and more – live! Read more
No decision has been yet over the identity of England’s wicketkeeper, although it appears likely Jos Buttler will retain the gloves after making a successful return to the role in the fourth Test, in which he filled in for Bairstow, whose fractured finger meant he played as a specialist batsman.
The absence of Vince for the Oval indicates there are no problems with Bairstow’s finger. He will hope to have a more successful return at No 4 than he did in Southampton, where he made six and nought.
The England selector James Taylor was in Chelmsford on Tuesday to watch Surrey’s championship match against Essex, where he was no doubt keeping tabs on Burns and Pope. | {
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I’ve always had trouble really getting into many modern horror games and films. Many of them trade in legitimate terror for jump scares and gratuitous gore, neither of which appeal to me. A general sense of anxiety melts away when you’ve predicted the jump scares or seen one too many mutilated bodies, after all. I’ve always gravitated towards more psychological horrors, but of course, they terrify me to the point that I rarely play them. That being said, one of the most terrifying games I’ve played is a free RPGMaker title that released over a decade ago.
Yume Nikki originally released to relative obscurity in 2004. However, the game was eventually translated into English and a popular Internet community got a hold of the title, bringing attention to the title first on Western shores, then in Japan itself. Even then, though, the game maintained a relative niche status, although its re-release on Steam earlier this year promises to get the more eyes on the title.
Don’t let the game engine that helped to create Yume Nikki fool you though–this is no RPG. In Yume Nikki, you explore the dream world of Madotsuki, a shut-in that doesn’t leave her apartment. The player never once leaves the girl’s apartment, as Madotsuki refuses to leave. There’s not much to do in the room–the only things worthwhile to do are save the game and sleep, a telling sign of the character’s mental state.
Once Madotsuki goes to sleep, you can freely leave the room, and explore the girl’s dreamscape. The goal of the game is to visit the various worlds of Madotsuki’s dreams and collect various objects, eventually leading to the game’s conclusion in the waking world. However, Madotsuki’s dreams aren’t happy or bright–they’re downright nightmares.
At first glance, Yume Nikki’s art style is very similar to Earthbound. It’s unusual and trippy, but still has a basis in reality. While Earthbound mostly stays on the lighthearted side of things, Yume Nikki is dark and unsettling. You’ll guide Madotsuki through twelve different, yet interlinked worlds, each with their own visual hooks. It’s never explained if these worlds are somehow related to the character’s psyche or just a terrifying jumble of nonsensical imagery; much like our own dreams, that is up to the dreamer (and in this case, the player) to decide.
But what makes Yume Nikki’s dream worlds so frightening are how lonely and oppressive they feel. While there are occasional NPCs to interact with, they aren’t exactly Madotsuki’s friends, and some are out to harm her. For the most part, though, you spend the time in Yume Nikki navigating paths, halls, and landscapes alone, with no one to accompany you besides the game’s haunting soundtrack.
It’s this intense, oppressive loneliness that really made Yume Nikki stick in my mind, more than a decade after playing it. The feeling that there’s no one to get you out of your own head, the life that Madotsuki lives every day, is one that hits too close to home for many people. There are many interpretations to Yume Nikki’s events, thanks to how vague the storytelling is, but I take it as a girl who wants to escape the troubles of the real world of her dreams but cannot even do that as nightmares plague her.
This is all made obvious with the “danger” Madotsuki is in. Some of the creatures within this dream world will attempt to harm her, but the consequences aren’t as expected. In most cases, Madotsuki will simply be transported back to the hub that lets you pick which world to explore, making you walk through the world again. In a few scenarios, the monster will force Madotsuki to wake up completely.
None of these consequences are particularly disastrous from a gameplay standpoint; the dream worlds aren’t particularly large nor is it difficult to just go back to sleep. But it’s very indicative of Madotski’s mental state that waking up is the worst thing that can happen to her.
What’s so terrifying is how close to home some of the game’s vague themes can feel. Feeling alone, wanting to do nothing but just sleep, even though sleep itself is no respite from the difficult real world… these are things felt by many people with mental health issues, and is relatable in a way many horror games are not.
Yume Nikki is an incredibly terrifying game. It’s been over a decade since I played the free, niche title, and it left a lasting impression on me. The game is available on Steam and can be run on a toaster, and I highly recommend any horror fan give it a try. The dream world of Madotski may terrify you in ways you wouldn’t expect. | {
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ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- Looking back on it all, Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson believes he could have made the jump from Palestine (Texas) High School senior to NFL rookie if he had had the chance to do so.
The question about the preps-to-pro jump has been swirling around LSU's sophomore running back Leonard Fournette, who rushed for 1,034 yards last season as a true freshman for the Tigers and has already rushed for 631 yards in three games this season, including back-to-back 200-yard games. By league rule, Fournette will not be eligible for the NFL until the 2017 NFL draft, following his junior season.
"Not to sound cocky or anything, or confident, but yeah, I do feel like I could have came out my senior year of high school and played in the NFL,'' Peterson said Monday on a conference call with Denver-area media leading up to Sunday's Minnesota Vikings-Denver Broncos game. "I really do. And I'll just say this, people were like 'well, physically you just weren't ready.' I came in my freshman year and I was up for the Heisman, had a pretty good season, was the leading rusher."
Peterson rushed for 2,960 yards and 32 touchdowns as a high school senior in 2003 and then went on to rush for 1,860 yards with 15 touchdowns -- 5.9 yards per carry -- as a true freshman at the University of Oklahoma.
"Not to sound cocky or anything, or confident, but yeah I do feel like I could have came out my senior year of high school and played in the NFL."
"And there were guys that went in the league that year, like Cedric Benson, I felt like my freshman year I should have won the Doak Walker Award [for the nation's top college running back], but they gave it to him -- I kind of got off topic there. But anyway ... I feel like I was a better player than him. And so it's like, 'I'm a true freshman, and if Cedric can go in [to the NFL] and play, then why couldn't I do it?'''
The Chicago Bears selected Benson No. 4 overall in the 2005 NFL draft.
Peterson said Monday he had not seen Fournette play a game -- "just the highlights'' -- and would have to see more of the Heisman hopeful before he could say whether Fournette would be ready for the NFL now.
Peterson also said Monday that he had watched, with interest, Maurice Clarett's lawsuit against the NFL in 2003 that challenged the NFL's rule that players must wait at least three years after they finish high school before they can enter the draft. Clarett was 19 at the time of the lawsuit and had finished his freshman year at Ohio State.
Clarett was not successful, and the NFL's rule remains in place, making 20-year-olds the youngest players who have appeared in the league's draft. For the Broncos, both running back Ronnie Hillman and backup quarterback Brock Osweiler were 20 when the team selected them.
"But I was so happy with Clarett when that situation went down the way it did ... and [before the court's decision] I was like 'Wow, I might be able to leave high school and really make this happen.' But I don't think there's too many people that could do that, though.''
Louisville defensive tackle Amobi Okoye, a 2007 first-round pick of the Houston Texans, is the youngest known player drafted in the last few decades, turning 20 less than two months after being picked. | {
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What could possibly go wrong? The gravy train will never run out!
And after all, this is their due: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).
In lieu of outright jizya payments, the dole will do just fine.
“PICS: 850,000 migrants in Turkey Paid Cash by European Union,” Associated Press, August 4, 2017 (thanks to The Religion of Peace): | {
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EU elections: Opposition scores massive victory over ruling coalition in Romania
The pro-European opposition scored a massive victory over the ruling coalition in Romania in the elections for the European Parliament on Sunday, May 26.
The biggest opposition party – the National Liberal Party (PNL) - won the vote in the country while the new opposition alliance made of Save Romania Union (USR) and former prime minister Dacian Ciolos’s party PLUS won the vote in the big cities and diaspora.
Meanwhile, the senior ruling party – the Social Democratic Party (PSD) – got a score of under 24%, down from 45% in the parliamentary elections in December 2016. Their coalition partners from the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) dropped under the 5% threshold and will not be represented in the European Parliament. The voters punished PSD and ALDE for their rhetoric hostile to the European Union and EU values and the many legislation changes in the justice area that weakened the fight against corruption in the country.
The National Liberal Party (PNL) won the EU elections with an overall score of 27.7%, according to partial data presented by the Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) after counting 97% of the votes in Romania and over 60% of the votes in the Diaspora. PNL’s score was significantly higher than the 20% it got in the parliamentary elections in December 2016. The party won most votes in 15 out of Romania’s 40 counties, with notable victories in counties such as Sibiu, Bihor, Prahova, Constanta and Ilfov, among others, according to data compiled by Hotnews.ro. The party also piggybacked on the referendum on justice organized by president Klaus Iohannis.
The biggest surprise of the EU elections was, however, the Alliance 2020 USR+Plus, which came third with an overall score of 22.7%, less than one percentage point behind the ruling party PSD. USR, a relatively young party, got into the Romanian Parliament in December 2016 after it came third in the elections with a score of almost 9%. Meanwhile, Plus is a new party formed by former technocrat prime minister Dacian Ciolos. The alliance got massive support in Romania’s biggest cities and in the Diaspora. USR and Plus won the vote in Bucharest by a wide margin, with a score of over 40%, compared to around 16% for PSD and PNL. The alliance also came first in Cluj, Timis, Iasi and Brasov counties, thanks to the support it received in big cities such as Iasi, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara and Brasov. Over 40% of the Romanians who voted abroad also voted for USR and Plus.
The Social Democratic Party (PSD) was second with a score of 23.46%, according to partial results presented by BEC. PSD won in its traditional fiefs, namely the poorer counties in Eastern and Southern Romania, but turnout in these counties was rather low and couldn’t compensate for the high turnout in big cities. Fourth came the Pro Romania party of former prime minister Victor Ponta, which got a score of 6.7%. Pro Romania has drawn former PSD members who were unhappy with the current leader Liviu Dragnea and Victor Ponta focused his attacks on Dragnea in the electoral campaign. Thus, some of PSD’s lost voters compared to the December 2016 elections can be found at Pro Romania. Even so, the two parties combined got a score of about 30%, still much lower than PSD’s score in 2016.
The other two parties that will be represented in the European Parliament are the Popular Movement Party (PMP) of former president Traian Basescu – 5.93% and the Democrat Hungarian Union (UDMR) – 5.48%. Basescu himself was his party’s top candidate for the European Parliament.
Meanwhile, the junior coalition partner ALDE, led by Senate president and former prime minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, got a score of only 4.28%, under the 5% threshold needed for getting to the European Parliament. Tariceanu was the only local political leader that openly boycotted the referendum for justice, and paid the price.
The other parties and independent candidates got low scores, of under 2%.
[email protected]
(Photo source: Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea) | {
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In 1987 President Ronald Reagan was delivering a speech about the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin. Reagan declared: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Imagine if Donald Trump had been president back then instead of Reagan. Standing at the same place, Trump would have declared, “Mr. Gorbachev, move this wall to the Southern border of the United States!”
Of course,Trump’s supporters would respond, “That’s not fair, Jacob. The Berlin Wall was keeping people from getting out. Trump’s Wall is designed to keep people from coming in.”
But isn’t that a distinction without a difference? After all, since the Berlin Wall was effective in keeping people from leaving East Germany, wouldn’t it have been just as effective at keeping people from Latin America from getting into the United States? At the risk of belaboring the obvious, all that Trump would have to do is turn the wall around, so that it faced in the opposite direction that it was facing in Germany.
Moreover, if it was West German sharpshooters that were shooting at East Germans trying to illegally cross the border into West Germany, would that have made the killings more moral than the East German killings? Not as far as I’m concerned.
In any event, desperate to appease his statist supporters before Election Day, President Trump is proceeding apace with the construction of his Berlin Wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Never mind that he has never succeeded in getting congressional approval for his massive public-works project. In the finest tradition of dictators everywhere, he has decided to do it anyway, not with his own money but instead with money that Congress appropriated to the Pentagon for military “defense.”
But hey, complying with the delegated powers principle of the Constitution is so passé. Given that presidents no longer are required to go to Congress to get a declaration of war or congressional permission to impose taxes (e.g., tariffs) on the American people, why should they feel obligated to secure permission to build massive public-works projects for history to remember them by?
To get the job done by Election Day, Trump has to secure the land on which to build his Berlin Wall. No problem. He’s told his people to just seize the land they need. If they have to violate criminal laws to do it, no problem. Trump said he would pardon them. Just do it, he said.
One option, of course, is to just have the military go in and seize people’s property along the border. No one is going to buck the military because if they do, they will soon find themselves in the hereafter. The military will resort to overwhelming force to suppress any resistance to its seizure of people’s privately owned land. If they have to kill people for resisting, so be it. Trump will pardon them anyway. Even if he didn’t pardon them, the federal judiciary would let them off the hook as part of its longtime deference to the authority of the national-security establishment.
One of the fears that proponents of immigration controls often express to justify their support of Trump’s Wall is the prospect of disease. They’re scared that immigrants will bring diseases to America, and they are convinced that Trump’s Wall will protect them from that danger.
Pardon me for amplifying the fears that drive immigration statists, but isn’t it possible for Americans who travel overseas to catch the diseases of those people who supposedly would bring such diseases into the United States? Given that we want to be kept “safe,” shouldn’t our government daddy prohibit Americans from leaving the United States? No problem. We’ll have Trump’s Berlin Wall that can do that!
It’s actually fitting that Trump wants to add to America’s immigration police state in the American Southwest with a Berlin Wall along the border. That’s because America’s system of immigration controls is a socialist system, in that it is based on the socialist principle of central planning. So, what better way to cap a socialist system that has brought crisis, chaos, mayhem, death, suffering, destruction of liberty and privacy, and an immigration police state than with a Berlin Wall?
There are two questions I’d like to pose to Trump: Whatever happened to your campaign promise to force the Mexicans to pay for your wall? And why don’t use your own money to pay for your wall rather than money that the IRS has forcibly taken from hard-pressed American taxpayers? | {
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I know... You said that FF was a fixed Mangle, which is what I have a hard time believing. Her head doesn't open and close like that, nor does she have a tail. I'm asking if it verifies that FF is indeed a copy of Mangle that didn't get destroyed on the wikia. | {
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A North Carolina school resource officer has been fired after a video was shared with a local news station showing the officer brutally body-slamming a middle schooler.
Local news outlet CBS 17 first aired the shocking video several days ago, which shows a Vance County Sheriff's deputy picking up a middle school boy and slamming him to the ground twice, before dragging him off-camera. Now the station reports that the deputy has been stripped of his badge.
"We went over and when we first saw the video, we were stunned, we were shocked. We all are parents and grandparents that have children at that same age, so it brought some great concern to us," Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame told CBS 17 last Friday.
The incident is just the latest in a string of school arrests that have made national news. In November, a school resource officer in Orange County, Florida, was fired after video showed him yanking a middle school student by her hair. In September, an Orlando school resource officer was fired for arresting two 6-year-olds. Last year, video showed a school resource officer in Texas pinning and handcuffing an autistic 10-year-old.
The Justice Department's 2017 report on civil liberties abuses by the Chicago Police Department included findings that officers beat and tased teenagers in school for non-criminal conduct and minor violations.
As I wrote in a recent column for Reason on child arrests, "The criminal justice system has become America's default solution for all of its social problems, and that mentality has oozed into the classroom."
ABC News reported in October that, according to FBI crime data, 30,467 children under the age of 10 were arrested in the United States between 2013 and 2018. During the same period, 266,000 children between the ages of 10 and 12 were arrested.
The good news is that the rate of juvenile arrests has dropped significantly since its peak, from around 8,500 arrests per 100,000 individuals between the ages of 10 and 17 in 1996 to 2,400 in 2016.
However, according to 2016 data from the Justice Department, 34 states have no minimum age for delinquency.
In a statement to CBS 17, Irena Como, acting legal director for the ACLU of North Carolina, said, "This type of heartbreaking incident is all too common as educators increasingly rely on law enforcement to handle routine disciplinary issues, especially with children of color and children with disabilities."
"School Resource Officers are charged with protecting students, but they use physical force and escalate situations to the detriment of students," Como continued. "School Resource Officers should never handle disciplinary issues, which are more appropriately addressed by school counselors or mental health professionals, and the routine presence of police in schools should end."
The now-fired deputy, whose name has not been released, is also facing potential criminal charges. | {
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At least 14 people were wounded in an apparent mass stabbing at Lone Star College's CyFair campus in Cypress, Texas, on Tuesday morning.
The suspect, a white male armed with what one witness described as an X-Acto knife, was detained, police said. The suspect, believed to be 21, was enrolled at the school.
Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia said police received a 911 call at 11:12 a.m. local time reporting a white male "on the loose stabbing people."
The school was placed on lockdown.
"Seek shelter now," Lone Star College's Twitter feed warned Tuesday afternoon. "If away, stay away."
The incident occurred near and around the school's Health Science Center and remains an active crime scene, Garcia said.
"Buildings are still being searched," he added.
Four victims were transported by helicopter with serious injuries "consistent with laceration," a spokesman for the Harris County Sheriff's Office said. Two others were taken by ambulance to a local trauma center.
Two of those victims are in critical condition, he said. Four are in fair condition. Others victims were treated for minor injuries, and two refused treatment, Garcia said.
One witness told CNN that the stabber was hearing impaired.
An announcement was made over loudspeakers warning students to seek shelter. "This is an emergency," the announcement said, according to KHOU-TV. "Everybody stay inside of your rooms. Do not leave your rooms."
An alert issued on the school's website indicated that "another suspect may possibly be at large." But Garcia said surveillance video reviewed by police indicated there was one "and only one" suspect.
An Instagram user who said he helped apprehend the stabber posted a photo of a man face down on the ground with a backpack. He said the man had stabbed five people, including two girls in the cheek. "Everyone ran the other way ... ," he said. "Me and this kid got em." #copsaretooslow
Police would not confirm the exact weapon used, but said no firearms were found at the scene.
The campus was evacuated, Vice Chancellor Randy Key told reporters, and the college will remain closed for the remainder of the day.
In January, three people were wounded in a shooting at Lone Star College's North Harris campus near Houston. More than 90,000 students attend classes across the Lone Star College system's six campuses. | {
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Scientists don't know what makes the Great Red Spot so long-lasting. Nor can they explain the chemistry behind its brilliant color. But thanks to NASA's Juno spacecraft, now on its second year of orbiting Jupiter, they know that the storm's roots go deep: The well of hot, swirling gas that powers the Great Red Spot extends some 217 miles into Jupiter's interior.
The finding was announced Monday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, along with other results from Juno's first eight flights past the solar system's largest planet. The spacecraft arrived in orbit around Jupiter in summer 2016 and has since performed looping orbits that take it skimming between Jupiter's cloud tops and radiation belts once every 53 days.
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On Earth, the Great Red Spot would almost graze the orbit of the International Space Station. The highest clouds of our planet's worst hurricanes top out at around 10 miles.
But understanding the behavior of the Great Red Spot could improve scientists' understanding of weather on Earth, said California Institute of Technology planetary scientist Andy Ingersoll, a co-investigator for the Juno spacecraft. He called Jupiter's giant storm a good “stress test” for Earth-based weather models.
It isn't clear what the new find means for the future of the storm — Ingersoll said the spot already has stretched traditional weather models to their limits. But the spot has been shrinking steadily since the Voyager 2 spacecraft visited it in 1979; it used to be big enough to engulf two Earths.
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High above the cloud tops, Jupiter is enveloped in radiation belts formed by charged particles that get trapped by the planet's magnetic field. On Monday, scientists said that Juno had discovered a new area of radiation just above the planet's atmosphere at the equator. The high energy particles in this region are even more intense than those that make up the radiation belt. But none of the eight spacecraft that preceded Juno at Jupiter had spotted it.
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Juno's orbit meant “we literally flew through it,” said Heidi Becker, a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who leads Juno's radiation investigation team.
The radiation in this region is thought to stem from fast-moving atoms of hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur. These particles are produced in the gas clouds around Jupiter's moons, Io and Europa, but are stripped of electrons and become charged as they interact with Jupiter's atmosphere.
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The spacecraft found another area of high-energy particles in Jupiter's inner radiation belt, where electrons move at nearly the speed of light. Becker and her colleagues are still studying the exact nature of these particles.
Juno's other discoveries at Jupiter include clusters of 600-mile-wide cyclones at the planet's poles and an uneven magnetic field that is weak in some places, but in others is 10 times as strong as anything found on Earth. The spacecraft's high resolution camera has also taken thousands of detailed images, revealing a planet that looks like a cross between a Van Gogh painting and the world's most elaborate latte foam art.
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In a lecture, project scientist Scott Bolton pulled up one of Juno's images of Jupiter's blue-tinged polar storms and burnt sienna gas clouds.
“If you had shown us that five years ago, we couldn’t have guessed what planet it was,” he said. | {
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Billie Joe as St. Jimmy on Broadway
"Haven't totally committed to St Jimmy for AI movie. Yes, I'm interested. Yes someone jumped the gun.."
At tonight's screening for the American Idiot musical documentary, Broadway Idiot, Michael Mayer (who directed the musical) said that when the movie gets made, Billie Joe will play the role of St. Jimmy. This news comes from the Q&A following the screening, first reported by @GreenDayMind.But that's extent of information we have on the film. Back in 2011 it was confirmed that Playtone, the production company owned by Tom Hanks, had purchased the film rights for the musical. At that time there was speculation about Billie Joe playing the role - which Billie Joe talked about on Twitter then:That was two years ago, and nothing has been said about the movie till now. Mayer said they still weren't sure when the film was going to be made due to "Hollywood bullshit", so for now we just patiently wait and keep our fingers crossed that it all comes together nicely.View a collection of photos during Billie Joe's run as St. Jimmy on Broadway.We will have a full recap of Broadway Idiot and the Q&A soon. | {
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The most memorable examples of the “Love of the Game” contract clause are the famous UNC alumni games that took place in 1986 and 1987. While the September 6, 1986 game was played between Tar Heel alumni during the Dedication of the Dean Edwards Smith Center, the June 28, 1987 game raised the stakes by making it against a star-studded rival alumni team. Never missing an opportunity to compete, MJ shined in both games while wearing his second signature sneaker. Not only did MJ put on a show, he also unknowingly debuted his original player edition, or PE colorway. In the 1986 game, he wore the Chicago home colorway of the Air Jordan II that featured a never-before-seen detail — Carolina Blue on the heel. In the 1987 game, he opted for a low version of the II in his alma mater’s team colors. Now, the II returns to honor both games by combining the original 1986 PE II with the 1987 game date. | {
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A presentation due to be shown at the Black Hat security conference at the end of the month will show that many of the routers used for residential internet connections are vulnerable to attack by hackers. The attacks would allow traffic to be redirected and intercepted, in addition to giving hackers access to victims' local networks.
The title of the presentation, "How to Hack Millions of Routers," gives a clear indication of the scale of the potential issues. Popular router models from Netgear, Linksys, and Belkin were found to be vulnerable, including models used for Verizon's FIOS and DSL services, as were widely-used third-party firmwares such as DD-WRT and OpenWrt. About half the routers tested did not appear to be vulnerable.
A list of tested routers can be found here; every router with a "YES" in the last column was successfully attacked.
The research was done by Maryland-based security consultancy Seismic. Craig Heffner, a researcher with the company, will both present the research at Black Hat and release a proof-of-concept tool to demonstrate the problem in practice. Heffner believes this is the best way to get router manufacturers to release firmware updates to fix the issue.
The attack uses a technique called DNS rebinding to subvert protections built into web browsers that are intended to restrict what scripts and HTML can do. DNS is the system that maps from human-friendly names—such as "www.arstechnica.com"—to computer-friendly IP addresses. DNS allows one name to be mapped to multiple IP addresses, which is an important technique to provide load balancing and fault tolerance, as it allows the load to be spread among several different machines. In a DNS rebinding attack, the attacker controls both a website and the DNS server used to send traffic to the site. Each time a victim visits the website, the DNS server is updated to include the visitor's IP address as one of the IP addresses used for the site.
This is useful because it allows a browser protection called the "same origin policy" to be undermined. Normally, a web browser restricts JavaScript access such that a script can only manipulate pages that originate from the same domain. This means that, for example, a page from foo.example.com cannot manipulate a page from bar.example.com—the two have a different domain and, hence, a different origin.
With DNS rebinding, however, the attacker can make the browser think that any computer he chooses has the same origin as his own malicious page—he just has to create a DNS entry pointing to that computer that matches the DNS name for his malicious site. So, by creating DNS entries for computers in the victim's LAN, the attacker can trick the victim's web browser into accessing machines on the victim's own network.
Most computers on a home LAN won't be running a web server, so on the face of it, this might not seem especially useful. However, one kind of machine typically does run a web server: the router. SOHO routers generally have administrative front-ends for configuration and monitoring. Though these front-ends are normally password-protected, most people don't bother changing the default passwords. And, even when they do change the password, security flaws within the front-end may allow the password to be bypassed anyway. With access to the router, the attacker could reconfigure it to (for example) route all DNS lookups through a malicious server, which would allow traffic to be monitored and intercepted.
DNS rebinding attacks are not new; in one form or another they have been around for nearly 15 years. Some environments such as Java and Flash have taken measures to reduce the possibility of exploitation—they cache DNS lookups to ensure that traffic destined for the same name always targets the same IP address. This prevents access to the local network.
Browsers, too, attempt to protect against such attacks. However, Heffner says that his variation of the attack bypasses the browser-based protection, allowing DNS rebinding to occur successfully. He also says that the bypasses have been known of for a long time; his attack is more the bringing together a set of known techniques rather than something novel per se.
This is, in part, his motivation for releasing a tool to perform such attacks—he says that browser writers and router vendors have had "ample time" to fix the problem, but haven't done so. Demonstrating and distributing an effective exploit is, he believes, the best way to prod them into action.
In the meantime, the best defense is probably to ensure that your router does not use the default password. Though this can't guard against exploitation of actual flaws in the router's software, it will at least prevent trivial attacks from being made. Changing the router's IP address away from its typical default might also serve as some protection; though the attack could be used to target any IP address on a local network, a little obscurity tends to work well against widely targeted attacks. | {
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This summer, one small robot should have had a big adventure.
It’s my sad duty to report that the United States adventures of hitchBOT, the Canadian hitchhiking robot, have come to an untimely end, two weeks after setting off for a final destination of San Francisco, California.
While hitchBOT had travelled across Canada and Europe coming to no harm, the hitching automaton was found vandalized and destroyed beyond repair in Philadelphia this month.
Canadian journalist Lauren O’Neil tweeted this photo below of the broken robot’s vestiges. Decapitated and with limbs removed, the remains are a reminder that hitchBOT’s sight-seeing expeditions were an experiment to see how people would react and interact with a traveling robot in society.
Canada's hitchhiking robot lasts just two weeks in US before getting decapitated. http://t.co/802FBRUMho #smh pic.twitter.com/0bJexW3igk — Lauren O'Neil (@laurenonizzle) August 2, 2015
“HitchBOT’s trip came to an end last night in Philadelphia after having spent a little over two weeks hitchhiking and visiting sites in Boston, Salem, Gloucester, Marblehead, and New York City,” wrote David Smith from McMaster University and Frauke Zeller from Ryerson University on the hitchBOT website. “Unfortunately, hitchBOT was vandalized overnight in Philadelphia; sometimes bad things happen to good robots. We know that many of hitchBOT’s fans will be disappointed, but we want them to be assured that this great experiment is not over.”
“For now we will focus on the question “what can be learned from this?” and explore future adventures for robots and humans.”
On the kindness and helpfulness of strangers, hitchBOT traveled over 10,000 kilometers (6,213 miles) through Canada and spent 10 days traveling through Germany earlier this year. This map (below) shows how far hitchBot made it in his voyage across the United States.
From Massachuserts to Philadelphia. hitchBOT.
hitchBOT is survived by a large family of researchers, friends and supporters.
My trip must come to an end for now, but my love for humans will never fade. Thanks friends: http://t.co/DabYmi6OxH pic.twitter.com/sJPVSxeawg — hitchBOT (@hitchBOT) August 1, 2015
[H/T: BBC News] | {
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Thinking of flying with pets? If you're planning a trip with your best friend then you need to know how much it'll cost and that your animal will be transported safely and in comfort. Here's everything you need to know about travelling with your beloved pet, from taking your dog on a plane, to airline carrier fees. Check out the full details on flying with pets from the biggest airlines , including British Airways, Ryanair and easyJet, and know what your options are before you fly.
Aer Lingus Can I fly with pets? Yes, airline carrier is Aer Lingus Cargo. Read on to find out more. Air France Can I fly with pets? Yes, in the hold if your pet weighs 8-75kg. Read on to find out more.
British Airways Can I fly with pets? Yes, in the hold, not in the cabin, unless they are assistance dogs. Read on to find out more.
How much does it cost? If flying with an assistance dog, free
EasyJet Can I fly with pets? No, exceptions may be made for guide dogs. Read on to find out more.
Emirates Can I fly with pets? No, exceptions may be made for guide dogs and falcons. Read on to find out more.
FlyBe Can I fly with pets? Yes, in the hold, no in the cabin, unless they are assistance dogs. Read on to find out more.
Lufthansa Can I fly with pets? Yes, read on to find out more.
Ryanair Can I fly with pets? No, exceptions may be made for guide dogs, read on to find out more.
Does my pet need a passport? Yes
Thomson Can I fly with pets? Yes
Does my pet need a passport? Yes – apply via AIA Pets. Read on to find out more.
Thomas Cook Can I fly with pets? Yes, if they weigh less than 6kg and are older than 8 weeks. Read on to find out more.
Turkish Airlines Can I fly with pets? Yes, read on to find out more.
Virgin Atlantic Can I fly with pets? Yes, only cats and dogs are allowed to fly. Read on to find out more.
Aer Lingus
Pets must be booked to travel with Aer Lingus Cargo. Animals presented for transport at passenger check-in won’t be accepted under any circumstances.
Air France
Pets must be transported by freight if the animal and its container weigh more than 75kg, or if it is traveling to a country that authorises animal transport only by freight. A dog or cat weighing 8kg-75kg must be transported in the hold. There is a limit of three animals per passenger. With prior approval from Air France’s Customer Service department, you may transport in the cabin if your dogs or cat weighing less than 8kg (including the transport bag or container). Guide dogs are authorised regardless of their weight:
Flights within France: €20
Flights within Europe: €75
All other flights: €200
British Airways
British Airways does not allow pets to travel in the cabin, except recognised assistance dogs, which can travel with the owner free of charge in the cabin. All other pets must travel as cargo in the hold – this includes emotional assistance animals. Animals are handled by BA’s sister company, IAG World Cargo. Fees and required pet carrier size depends on the animal, so passengers are advised to get in contact with the airline prior to the flight.
easyJet
The carriage of live animals, including pets, insects, reptiles, or any other form of livestock is forbidden anywhere on any easyJet aircraft. Exceptions are made for guide dogs or assistance dogs.
Emirates
Animals are not permitted in the cabin of Emirates flights. Exceptions are made for falcons between Dubai and certain destinations in Pakistan. Guide dogs are permitted.
Flybe
Assistance dogs are permitted on domestic routes, and international routes from the following airports: Birmingham, Exeter, Manchester, Newcastle and Southampton. All dogs and cats travel in the hold (except for assistance dogs). For more information, call 0844 800 2855.
Lufthansa
Pets will be transported either in the cabin or the hold, depending on the animal’s weight and size. Fees depend on the destination and size of the animal:
Small: €35 to €100
Medium: €70 to €200
Large: €150 to €400
Ryanair
No live animals are permitted to fly in the cargo hold of a Ryanair aircraft. Similarly, the airline does not generally permit live animals to fly in the cabin. Exceptions are made, however, for guide dogs or assistance animals. The dogs must have a pet passport or an official veterinary health certificate if their country of origin does not provide passports. Due to restrictions, guide/assistant dogs are not allowed on flights to or from Morocco, or flights to/from Israel.
Thomson
You can ask for your pet to be carried on most Thomson Airways flights. Passengers should complete the booking form at [AIA Pets](http://aiapets.com/), where fee information is available for your specific animal. If you’re travelling to Europe, your pet will just need a pet passport. Pets will be stored in the cargo, and all travel boxes must be fitted with a water container.
Thomas Cook
Dogs and cats less than 6kg can be carried in the cabin. This comes with a charge of €15* per animal. Cats and dogs less than eight weeks old are not permitted. Animals must be in a closed hygienic watertight bag or basket.
Turkish Airlines
Pets are not included in the free baggage allowance and incur a fee. Fees start at $35, and depend on whether the animal is being stored in the hold or cabin. Full fee information is listed online. It is charged per kilo, and based on how many ‘zones’ travelled through.
Virgin Atlantic
The cost of taking your pet can vary, depending on the length, width, height and weight of your pet, plus its container. Pets are also eligible for air miles with the Flying Paws scheme. Only cats and dogs are allowed onto Virgin Atlantic flights. Call Virgin Atlantic’s dedicated team for pricing.
Now that you know the facts about flying with your pet, are you ready to search for cheap flights? Knock yourself out…
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Want more travel tips? Stay savvy with Skyscanner:
The definitive guide to luggage restrictions and allowances for the UK’s biggest airlines. Our complete guides to baggage rules and restrictions for the UK’s biggest airlines, including easyJet, Ryanair, British Airways and Jet2.
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A no-nonsense guide to what liquids you can carry in your hand luggage when flying to and from UK airports, along with all of the exceptions.
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Okay, full motion video games seem to get a bad rap by the majority of gamers. No matter what it is, when it was released or who starred in it, gamers like trash talking full motion video (FMV). It is one of those weird quirks of gaming. Back on the Sega CD, and on Macintosh/PC’s of the time, there was a game called Dracula Unleashed released. The difference between this game and 99% of the rest of FMV games is the setting. Horror.
Full Motion Video games have one thing in common, no matter the setting or actors involved. Repetition. I am not sure why this was such a big deal, and for many still is, because ‘fans’ of movies and television shows watch them multiple times with absolutely no change in the story or action. At least with FMV games, there was a bit of interaction- do you save the girl, shoot that bad guy or not? There were generally consequences for any choice you made- most effecting the plot later.
Dracula Unleashed though was different than other FMV games. Here you are tasked as the vampire hunter himself. Not just some random guy running a surveillance system (Night Trap) but an actual vampire hunter. The setting was even in Victorian times like Bram Stoker’s original novel. This all goes very far in helping put across the feel the developers wanted.
Sure, the visuals are limited by the colors on screen lacking hardware of the Sega CD. That doesn’t stop Dracula Unleashed from telling a great story with well above average acting, for Full Motion Video games anyhow. I think full motion video in the early days was TOO experimental- they were trying things that worked in other mediums. Had they done stuff like Dracula Unleashed, even if they had done it in black and white like the original Day of the Dead and the really great boxing FMV game, Prize Fighter, I think the genre could have moved forward.
Full Motion Video and horror themes just go together so well. Too bad so many missed out on Dracula Unleashed on Sega CD, Macintosh, DOS computers and even the DVD release in 2002. There really is a good story here for the price of entry. I wonder if anyone will ever continue the idea of full motion video horror games? I would love to see more like this.
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This feature story appeared in the January print issue of VeloNews magazine. After the story went to press the cycling world learned of the tragic passing of longtime NBC broadcaster Paul Sherwen. We here at VeloNews send our condolences to Sherwen’s friends and family.
It’s lunchtime at the Tour de France, and the muggy Pyrenean air casts a lethargic haze across the broadcast television paddock. The lazy atmosphere is lost on Joel Felicio, who marches around a production truck, hurdles a thick bundle of cables, and cuts into a buffet line alongside commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen. With every step, Felicio lists the programming headaches presented by today’s unorthodox stage, a 65-kilometer route over three mountain passes. The two-hour stage may be favorable to spectators; it is hell for television producers like Felico.
“Normally a [stage] is five hours, so you can plan your commercial breaks around that,” Felicio says. “Today? We have no idea what’s going to happen.”
With a boyish complexion that defies his 43 years, Felicio has worked on the Tour de France broadcast, in some capacity, for most of his adult life. His professional title is coordinating producer for NBC Sports Network. The label fails to explain the pivotal role he plays within American cycling. Felicio controls what American fans see on their TV and computer screens at any moment throughout the Tour’s 21-day broadcast. He then produces the post-race show that boils down the six-hour stage into a compelling story.
It’s a job that requires an intimate knowledge of the sport and the ability to manage constant chaos. Pro cycling has no predetermined breaks in the action like stick-and-ball sports. Crashes and attacks occur without warning, reshaping the race in seconds. Should Felicio’s commercial break come at the wrong moment, fans simply miss the action. Once the riders finish, broadcasters face additional hurdles. Scrums of journalists and fans surround the riders, forcing cameramen to push through to capture the action.
“There’s a reason why hundreds of people work stick-and-ball sports but only a few of us can do cycling,” Felicio says. “You have to want to bring the sport to American viewers who are still discovering it.”
Felicio takes a seat besides another NBC producer, David Michaels. The younger brother of famed sports commentator Al Michaels, he once carried a television camera on a motorcycle during the Tour de France in the mid 1980’s. Now 69, Michaels has worked on the television production for dozens of sports, from Olympic gymnastics to the Super Bowl. The Tour, Michaels says, has always lured him back.
“Cycling is like a drug,” Michaels says. “No two days are the same. Some days it’s like trying to turn a cruise ship around in a bathtub.”
Joel Felicio (above) inside the NBC production truck. Photo: NBC Universal
Michaels helped pioneer cycling broadcasts in the 1980s; Felicio has produced the Tour de France since it was first shown live to American audiences in 2001. Combined, the two have more experience televising the Tour than any Americans, ever. There is enormous pressure riding on each man’s shoulders throughout July. NBC broadcasts 380 total hours of Tour coverage across its television channel and digital streaming service, NBC Sports Gold. Every day, hundreds of thousands of American fans tune in to watch the action. And NBC spends millions to produce and broadcast the race.NBC is not alone. This expensive and complex operation sits atop the growing collection of American businesses aimed at televising pro cycling. Television has long been viewed as cycling’s Shangri La, a pathway to advertising riches, financial sustainability, and mainstream recognition. In the past, enormous operations like NBC’s represented the only way to bring live images of a bike race into the homes of cycling fans. Broadcasts became an important line in the sand between races that mattered, and those that did not.
Now, technological advancements have enabled even small races to beam the action across the globe. Yet every cycling broadcast, big or small, faces a similar conundrum: how to generate enough cash to make it worthwhile? Most cycling broadcasts—including NBC’s Tour coverage—lose money, despite the best efforts of Felicio, Michaels, and their team of producers. If NBC’s operation cannot turn a profit, then what’s the point of televising bike racing at all?
(above) The complex system used to televise the Tour de France. Illustration: Heidi Carcella
An expensive system of cameras and transmitters
American cycling fans in the 1980s and ’90s had few opportunities to watch the sport on television. While Europeans enjoyed live coverage, American producers like Michaels created highlight shows that were shown after the event on U.S. television. That changed in 2001 when the Outdoor Life Network, looking to cash in on Lance Armstrong’s popularity, began daily live coverage of the Tour.
“In the old days, we’d sit around and think about what live coverage would even look like,” Michaels says. “I wouldn’t have dreamed it would ever happen.”
The switch to live broadcasts created new technical challenges for American networks. Broadcasting traditional sports is comparatively easy, since the cameras, cables, and production trucks all sit in one location. Pro cycling’s best features—the soaring alpine passes, breakneck racing speeds, and 100-mile routes—make the sport a nightmare to televise.
The Tour de France broadcast relies on a fragile ecosystem of mobile cameras and radio transmitters, spread out over hundreds of miles of countryside. Euro Media France is the company that actually shoots and transmits the race, and France Televisions produces the main feed that goes out to broadcasters like NBC.
How does it work? Cameramen on motorcycles capture the action, which is beamed via radio signals to relay helicopters and airplanes circling high above the action. The signals are then bounced off of relay transmitters along the route, up to a satellite, then back down to production trucks at the finish line. It’s there that producers like Felicio add in graphics and commentary and beam the final feed out across the globe.
“There are so many variables that are out of your control,” says Jim Birrell, managing partner of Medalist Sports, a longtime cycling production company. “If you wake up and the route is socked in by bad weather, well, then your [airplane] is grounded and you’re going to be showing a blank screen.”
Veteran broadcasters tell horror stories of various system failures. In the 1980’s the broadcast was often interrupted when the peloton went through a forest. During one stage of Colorado’s USA Pro Challenge, the race’s relay transmitter above the ski town of Breckenridge malfunctioned during a lightning storm. Birrell’s broadcast technician had to drive to the top of the peak to readjust the transmitter in the storm.
“It was ballsy stuff—he put his life at risk,” Birrell says. “We got connected five minutes before going to air. We had to make sure the client was happy.”
(above) Helicopter TV cameras add hundreds of thousands of dollars to cycling broadcast. Photo: Getty Images
Technological innovations have improved the overall system. More cameras provide different angles, and high-definition tech creates a crispier picture. Still, technology has not dramatically changed the overall system, and the complex pathway from camera, to airplane, to satellite, remains the same.
“When it comes to capturing images and audio, there’s nothing that has really revolutionized the way we broadcast these races,” Birrell says.
Instead, technological advances and new techniques have revolutionized broadcast for smaller races. Cameras now transmit images via cellphone signals and wireless internet networks, and inexpensive ground-mounted cameras now televise criteriums and cyclocross events.
Starting in 2012, Gene Dixon, founder of the USA Crits series, mounted four cameras at the crucial turns at the Athens Twilight Criterium, and hired students from the local journalism class to man each camera. The feed ran to a tiny production team, housed in a trailer, before the show was beamed out over the internet.
Dixon discovered he could televise a race for less than $15,000, and began to televise the other USA Crits events. In the ensuing years, Dixon’s production company added more features, like graphics, on-screen timing, and live results. He invested $150,000 in new cameras and infrastructure and began to work with other small events. Now, the entire USA Crits series is broadcast online.
“We learned a lot by trial and error,” Dixon says. “We do the whole thing with eight or nine people—it’s really bare bones.”
At the 2018 USA Cycling National Road Championships in Knoxville, Tennessee, Birrell utilized cameras that used cellphone signals to capture the entire race. The technology saved him the tens of thousands of dollars that are required to fly the relay airplane.
The new technology and techniques are hardly a cure-all for cycling’s broadcasts woes, however. Broadband cameras cannot function in the mountains or in other areas with bad cell service. The picture quality is lower and there are frequent delays in the action. The cheaper methods are often glitchy.
Rob Laybourne, manager of the Armed Forces Cycling Classic, streamed his race using Dixon’s production company for three years. Laybourne said the inexpensive methods caused frequent technological headaches and the constant fear of a blank screen. Now, Laybourne’s race is shot and broadcast by the local cable station, Monumental Sports Group.
“Is the [new technology] raising the bar or lowering it? I don’t know,” Laybourne says. “The main thing I learned is that if you actually want viewers, you have to do more. Just because you stream your race doesn’t mean they’re going to watch it.”
And whether this new technology can improve the broadcast system at major stage races like the Tour de France is still unknown. Televising a major race like the Tour de France or the Tour of California requires enormous manpower, which sends costs soaring. Could broadband cameras and new methods someday eliminate the airplanes and throngs of production staff? Perhaps, Birrell says, but only if it eliminates the costliest component of the operation: manpower.
“The technology you want is the stuff that can reduce your head count,” Birrell says. “That’s where you get crippled by costs.”
Economics of the Tour broadcast
Inside NBC’s production truck, a dozen or so producers squeeze past each other in a long, narrow workspace. Felicio sits in front of a wall of television screens, each showing different angles of the race. He slips on a wireless headset and begins to deliver orders.
“I have to be super buttoned up with my communication,” Felicio says. “Whatever is in my head, 50 people all need to know it at all times.”
NBC brings more than 60 staffers to the Tour de France—only British broadcaster Eurosport has a larger production footprint. Every day, the entire operation—TV screens, producers, and even the studio show set—are packed up, loaded on trucks, and driven to the next day’s finish line. The costs for an operation of this size are staggering. NBC does not divulge its final bill for the Tour broadcast, however sources familiar with broadcast costs pegged it at $2 million. And that’s not the biggest expense.
In 2012 NBC bought the rights for the Tour de France for 10 years; the deal ends in 2023. Sources familiar with the deal say it is worth $8 million a year, bringing NBC’s costs to nearly $10 million for the Tour each year. NBC representatives declined to comment on the rights fee it pays to broadcast the Tour de France.
A myth within American cycling is that NBC generates healthy profits on the Tour broadcast. Jon Miller, president of programming for NBC and NBC Sports, says the Tour loses money.
“All of that production going from city to city is an enormously expensive undertaking,” Miller says. “Does it make money? Not yet.”
The Tour’s television ratings, which often determine advertising revenue, fluctuate from year to year. In 2018, between 200,000 and 300,000 viewers tuned in each day on television. In 2009, Lance Armstrong’s comeback year, that number was twice that size. By contrast, a midweek NHL game regularly gets more than 500,000 viewers.
“The Tour does a lot of other things for us beside making money,” Miller says. “It adds to the mosaic of what we’re trying to do as a business.”
What is NBC trying to do? The Tour forms an important cornerstone of the company’s online streaming channel, NBC Sports Gold, which charges fans $50 to watch online and commercial free. Subscriptions help generate revenue amid a weak advertising market. The service has another strategic purpose. U.S. cable television subscriptions have plummeted in recent years; simultaneously, more Americans than ever stream shows to their computers and phones. A decade from now, will digital streaming be the predominant way Americans view sports?
NBC Sports Gold represents a gamble on this unforeseen future, and the Tour is at the very heart of the bet. In fact, the Tour was the first televised sport offered on NBC Sports Gold when it launched in July 2016. Now, NBC’s “Cycling Pass” subscription includes 19 total races, including the Vuelta a España, Paris-Roubaix, and the UCI World Championships. Portia Archer, NBC’s vice president of direct-to-consumer products, says cycling fans were the ideal group to launch the streaming channel because many already streamed the action on pirated feeds.
“We understood pretty quickly that cycling fans were an eager audience that had been underserved in many ways,” Archer says. “We thought we could provide a high-quality alternative.”
After three seasons, the metrics for NBC Sports Gold are encouraging. Throughout 2018, NBC Sports Gold’s cycling viewers streamed racing to approximately 600,000 devices, up 20 percent from 2017. Since its launch, NBC has added 11 other sports to NBC Sports Gold.
But the streaming product still loses money. A source familiar with NBC Sports Gold pegged the number of subscribers at 125,000, which equates to $6.5 million in subscription revenue. That sum does not even cover the rights fee for the Tour de France.
Therein lies an unfortunate reality for televised cycling. While the Tour de France generates tens of millions from its broadcast deals—Tour representatives declined to comment on the race’s television revenues— broadcasters like NBC often lose money. And further down the pyramid of American cycling broadcasts, it’s a similar story. The major U.S. stage races such as the Amgen Tour of California, USA Pro Challenge, and Tour of Utah have all sunk millions of dollars into television production, accumulating heavy financial losses in the process. Live TV represents an important carrot needed to lure in mainstream advertisers, which have large enough marketing budgets to help cover the overall costs of the race. But the cost of television production often pushes the overall race budget into the red.
And unlike the Tour de France, domestic races pay broadcasters for the airtime; these deals, called time buys, cost a half million-dollars or so for a weeklong race. That expense, plus the cost of production, can easily push the tab for television to $1.5 million, Birrell says.
“People think we’re making a s*** ton off of television; in truth we’re losing money,” Birrell says. “It begs the question: Is it worth it to the races to try and get that airtime?”
Perhaps streaming is the answer. Across the sport, other companies are experimenting with subscription models similar to NBC Sports Gold, rather than relying on traditional advertising revenue from TV broadcast. For 2017, the Giro d’Italia abandoned traditional U.S. television and instead sold its American broadcast rights to the subscription streaming service Fubo.tv. Fubo representatives declined to comment on sales. Also, the website Flobikes.com sells subscriptions to view a wide array of races, from the Tour of Flanders and the Giro d’Italia, to international cyclocross races.
In 2018, USA Crits also launched a subscription service after several races began to show promising viewership numbers—Athens Twilight alone had 20,000 viewers as a free livestream. Dixon said USA Crits hopes to someday share revenues from this broadcast with the riders and teams that participate. Those days are a long way off, however, and the service has yet to generate a profit.
“We’re still more about passion than we are about money,” Dixon says. “If we can put together some revenue from people who really love the sport, we can raise the game for everybody.”
Generating that level of cash, however, may require an increase in broadcast production. Laybourne decided to switch from Dixon’s broadcast to Monumental Sports in part because he was unhappy with Dixon’s production quality. In Laybourne’s opinion, it only attracted hardcore cycling fans. Could a broadcast with more bells and whistles bring in casual fans too? The Armed Forces Classic in 2018 was streamed across Monumental Sports’ own digital streaming platform. The broadcast included mid-race interviews, graphics, and more camera angles. Monumental offered a one-time subscription price for the race. Laybourne did not know how many subscriptions were sold, but estimates it “was in the hundreds.”
“We’re trying to add a larger array of entertainment,” Laybourne said. “Sure, you’re going to get the hardcore fans with a [basic] broadcast. Our question is how many casual fans can we get?”
Laybourne believes this number will grow, and wants to invest in the broadcast quality to win over more fans. Of course, zipline cameras, advanced graphics, and professional broadcast staff drive up costs. And nobody knows where the perfect balance between cost and revenue lies.
(above) Schlanger must navigate the chaotic post-stage scrum throughout the Tour. Photo: Getty Images
The day-to-day hurdles of broadcasting the Tour
The clap of helicopter blades beats overhead signifying the approaching peloton, as dozens of journalists and cameramen crowd the finish area. Steve Schlanger, one of NBC’s on-air reporters, pushes through the crowd, flashes his credential to a security guard, and steps into an empty area just behind the finish line. Moments later, Schlanger and his cameraman sprint in the other direction alongside a gasping Chris Froome. Over the ensuing 75 seconds Schlanger conducts a tense on-air interview with Froome, as the Tour champion continues to pedal through the scrum.
“It’s like a mosh pit. It’s always a whirlwind,” Schlanger says about his job. “I’m usually running everywhere to try and get the interviews we want.”
This chaotic scenario plays out at the finish of every stage; winners and jersey leaders enter the broadcast paddock where they deliver polished sound bites for the cameras, while the other riders push through a free-for-all of journalists and fans. Schlanger and his NBC counterpart Steve Porino must navigate the chaos to interview these riders. Often times, these impromptu chats produce the most valuable comments. On this day, Schlanger is the only TV journalist to interview Froome after the reigning Tour champion was dropped.
“We put together a game plan of the guys we want to get based on the top stories,” Schlanger says. “Who was a key player? Who was disappointed? You get a lot of the best stuff from [these riders].”
These off-the-cuff interviews form the backbone of NBC’s pre- and post-stage studio shows. Felicio and Michaels choose the discussion topics—often the GC battle, or the events of the day—and help book special guests. The video interviews featured on the show, however, are often decided by chance.
“We’re constantly texting and calling each other trying to see who we got,” Felicio says. “It’s stressful.”
As an added hurdle, the post-race show is produced in real-time, which ups the pressure for everyone involved. After Schlanger conducts an interview, he texts Felicio, who then radios NBC’s on-air talent.
Simultaneously, a staffer takes the interview memory card from the camera and physically runs it back to the production truck. Producers edit the footage and add it into the broadcast, while the on-air hosts cue it up for the audience. It’s yet another expensive and fragile system that is crucial to NBC’s broadcast. And while new technology may someday streamline the process, it’s doubtful that the inherent challenges or exorbitant expenses will ever be entirely removed.
During an afternoon conversation, Felicio replays another impossible broadcast conundrum. Quick-Step rider Julian Alaphilippe had taken a dramatic victory after Adam Yates crashed just a few kilometers from the line. Belgian rider Philippe Gilbert had crashed into a ditch. Earlier in the day, local farmers staged a protest, which led to police using tear gas to disperse the interruption.
At the the finish line Gilbert was bloodied, Yates dejected, Alaphilippe ecstatic, and dozens of riders upset. Which story should NBC chase?
“I had to pick the order,” Felicio says. “It’s like, do you even talk about GC on a day like that?” | {
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Since last week, when stories ran in the Observer, the Times, and on Britain’s Channel 4 News about Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, the S.C.L. Group, the organizations have been portrayed as possessing frightening ability and power. According to a whistle-blower, Christopher Wylie, who helped set up Cambridge Analytica, in 2013, the company managed to obtain the Facebook data of fifty million Americans, creating a digital platform of unprecedented influence and accuracy—“Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare mindfuck tool,” in Wylie’s phrase—that was deployed by the Trump campaign in 2016. S.C.L. and its subsidiaries have also been linked to the two main Leave campaigns during Britain’s E.U. referendum of 2016, which boasted of their digital prowess. S.C.L. denies those links—which include documents, witnesses, and its own employees acknowledging their existence—to the point of incredulity. Which leaves you wondering exactly what it means when a political consultancy boasts of its methods in “behavior change,” “military influence campaigns,” “psychographic segmentation,” and other euphemisms for messing with your mind.
Last week, I met a former employee of S.C.L. In our conversation, the account that emerged of life at S.C.L. and Cambridge Analytica was prosaic, chaotic, and opportunist. The company, which frequently moved offices, was small and riven by disagreements about its strategy and personal loyalties. “It was ‘Game of Thrones’-y shit,” the employee said. S.C.L. was dominated by two charismatic Old Etonians: Nigel Oakes, the company’s founder, who is based in Dubai; and Alexander (Bertie) Nix, whose mother remains a shareholder. (Nix was the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, and is currently suspended from the company.)
There were times during our conversation when the employee seemed as bemused as anybody that a company that was started in the early nineteen-nineties with some intuitive but eccentric ideas about group psychology—one of Oakes’s first ventures was selling aromas to stores, to persuade customers to buy more—was now at the center of a transatlantic conversation about voter rights, data privacy, and the integrity of the world’s most important social network. But the employee was also clear that access to big data, particularly in the form of Facebook, combined with S.C.L.’s long interest in psychological profiling and audience segmentation, had been able to equip political campaigns with digital weapons that most voters were unaware of. “You can get philosophical about this and say that Facebook being an advertising platform masquerading as a social platform is the start of the rot and the tool was always there,” the employee said. S.C.L.’s executives were the wrong people who came along at the wrong time. “There were always going to be dodgy fuckers willing to work for rich people, and the S.C.L. was just an example of the dodgy fucker.” (S.C.L. did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the company claims that it destroyed the Facebook data, in October, 2015, and that it played no role in the Presidential election.)
The employee welcomed the current attention on S.C.L.’s methodology and behavior, whether it was illegal, or whether it should have been. The leaders of the company were not interested in these questions. “Alexander is not constrained by the sort of worries we are seeing expressed right now,” the employee said. “It really is about getting money together.” The employee continued, “What is wonderful about now is this bit of it is being opened, and I think it is bloody important, because something as catastrophic as Brexit and Trump—the technical possibility of that—is achieved through this dark shit. And this dark shit can be done by fucking cowboys. And, for lots of people who worked for the organization, it wasn’t supposed to be this way.”
Oakes, who is now fifty-five, founded S.C.L. after spells as a d.j., a television producer, and an account executive at Saatchi & Saatchi, the advertising firm. In the late eighties, he had developed an interest in mass psychology and had set up something called the Behavioural Dynamics Institute (B.D.I.) with two psychologists, Adrian Furnham and Barrie Gunter. Gunter is now an emeritus professor at Leicester University. In an e-mail, he explained that the three men met regularly between 1989 and 1993 to discuss ideas, and that the academics acted as consultants on a handful of projects before ending the relationship. “Towards the end we became increasingly concerned about the kinds of pitches being made by Nigel,” Gunter wrote. “We felt he was promising more than the science of psychology at that time could substantiate.” Oakes spun Strategic Communications Laboratories (S.C.L.) out of the B.D.I. In early interviews, Oakes distinguished the company’s scientific approach from plain old political advertising in language that sounded, well, a lot like advertising. “We use the same techniques as Aristotle and Hitler,” Oakes told Marketing, in 1992. “We appeal to people on an emotional level to get them to agree on a functional level.”
S.C.L. claims to have worked on more than a hundred election campaigns around the world, but evidence for its early work is hard to come by. In 2000, the British press caught wind of Oakes’s activities in Indonesia. In Jakarta, he’d established what the company called an “operations centre”—a room full of dozens of computers, giant TV screens, and a large one-way mirror—to monitor popular opinion on behalf of the country’s troubled President, Abdurrahman Wahid. The tone of the press coverage at the time was curious and ironic. Oakes was an Englishman abroad, staying in nice hotels and chancing his arm in the former colonies. “We didn’t know the purpose of it all, we just did what he asked,” one contractor who worked for Oakes told the Independent. “We called him Mr Bond because he is English, and because he is such a mystery.”
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, S.C.L. rebranded itself as a communications company for a dangerous world, claiming that its in-house research group (the B.D.I. kept an office at the Royal Institution, Britain’s foremost scientific body) gave it an edge in “psychological warfare” and “influence operations.” In 2005, the company rented a prominent booth at Defence Systems & Equipment International, the United Kingdom’s largest military trade fair, where S.C.L. staff simulated another ops center, running the communications strategy for a fictitious smallpox outbreak in London. The company told Slate it had worked for the U.N. and in post-apartheid South Africa. According to the Observer, in 2007, S.C.L. paid twenty thousand dollars to a Washington lobbying company, Global Policy Partners, to help it win defense contracts in the United States, and the company subsequently carried out surveys for the U.S. military in Iran and Yemen.
By then, S.C.L. had hired Nix, a gifted salesman whose upper-class bearing, along with Oakes’s, helped to charm potential clients. “Alexander is a different kind of posh,” the employee said. “Nigel Oakes is a different kind of posh. . . . That means they were able to get themselves into situations.” But S.C.L. was by no means a blue-chip political consultancy. According to the employee, the company survived mainly by offering “election management” services to political parties and their funders in democracies in the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. Rivals from London’s political-consultancy scene, who were competing for the same contracts, told me either that they hadn’t heard of the firm at the time or that they were not particularly impressed. “You can judge a political firm a bit by who its clients are,” one told me. “If they all look like people you wouldn’t trust if they sent you an e-mail, then that firm is not doing very well.”
The company’s in-house research institute, the B.D.I., was also less substantial than it sounded. “I would ask Alexander, specifically, where are the files?” the employee said. “The only things that we had in relation to all these projects were, like, little case studies and that was it.” | {
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CONCLUSIONS: Two dietary interventions that successfully lowered serum cholesterol levels had no adverse effect on mood. There was some evidence for a relative impairment in cognitive function in the treated groups in one of four cognitive tests, but additional studies will be required to determine the relevance of this finding.
RESULTS: Total serum cholesterol levels fell significantly more in the intervention groups (8.2% reduction) than in the control group (P <0.001). All three groups showed a modest improvement in psychological well-being during the 12-week treatment period, but there were no differences among the groups. There were no between-group differences on three measures of cognitive function, but for a fourth measure, which involved the task with the greatest processing load, the two intervention groups did significantly worse (P <0.001) than the control group. The change in performance was correlated with the change in total serum cholesterol level (r = 0.21, P = 0.01).
Cholesterol lowering is central to the prevention of coronary heart disease (). There has, however, been concern that cholesterol lowering could have adverse effects on aspects of psychological functioning, particularly by increasing depression or aggression (). A meta-analysis suggested that the reduction in coronary deaths following cholesterol-lowering treatments in low-risk patients might be counterbalanced by an increase in deaths from external causes, especially suicide and other violent deaths ().
Most of the studies of the association between low cholesterol levels and psychological function have been observational, limiting inferences about causation (). One study showed higher levels of depression in older men with low cholesterol levels (), and there have been sporadic reports of hypocholesterolemia among depressed and suicidal patients (). However, many community studies have either failed to detect any association between low cholesterol levels and depression () or have found that adjusting for physical functioning diminished the effect (). The situation is similar for studies of aggression and hostility: hypocholesterolemia appears to be overrepresented in violent () and antisocial () patients, but neither hostility nor aggressiveness are associated with low cholesterol levels in the general population (). Studies of the effects of cholesterol-lowering drugs on mood have generally had negative results (). However, two experiments in monkeys found that animals placed on cholesterol-lowering diets exhibited significantly more aggression and had less affiliative behavior than did controls (). Two human studies that assessed the association between cholesterol levels and cognitive function found some evidence that high serum cholesterol levels are associated with better cognitive function (), but no studies of cholesterol lowering in humans have been reported.
To ensure that reducing serum cholesterol to the recommended levels does not lead to unwanted outcomes, there is a need to identify any adverse psychological effects of cholesterol-lowering interventions. This is especially true for dietary interventions, because pharmacological treatments are usually restricted to patients at greatest cardiovascular risk, in whom benefits are likely to outweigh risks, whereas low-fat diets are recommended for patients with moderately raised serum cholesterol levels, and even for the general population. The present study was designed to evaluate the effects of cholesterol-lowering dietary treatments on mood and cognitive functioning in adults with raised serum cholesterol levels.
Statistical analysis was carried out with SPSS, release 6.1. Repeated measures analysis of variance was used to evaluate changes in the primary outcome variables (lipid levels, mood, and cognitive function). Correlational analyses were used to establish associations between changes in fat intake and serum cholesterol levels, and between cholesterol reduction and changes in mood. With sample sizes of about 50 per group, the trial had 80% power to detect a 0.5 standard deviation increase in depression (Beck Depression Inventory) score (one-sided, alpha = 0.05). A one-sided test was used because the study was designed to detect adverse effects of treatment. Two-sided P values are reported in the results.
Cognitive function was assessed with a battery of computer-based tests that included assessment of verbal immediate free recall, tapping speed (two-finger tapping), choice reaction time (a modification of the Erikson and Erikson task), and a sustained-attention task (adapted from the Bakan vigilance paradigm) in which subjects watched single-digit numbers displayed briefly with no interstimulus intervals and had to respond if they saw sequences of three odd or even numbers. Cognitive testing was carried out at baseline, 6 weeks, and 12 weeks.
Depression was measured with the Beck Depression Inventory () and the depression subscale of the Profile of Mood States (); higher scores indicate greater depression. Personal history of depression was assessed by interview. Anger was assessed with the State-Trait Anger inventory () and the anger subscale of the Profile of Mood States, with higher scores indicating greater anger. General psychological well-being was assessed with the 28-item version of the General Health Questionnaire () and stress levels with the Perceived Stress Scale (). For both of these scales, a higher score denoted poorer well-being. In addition to the patient’s own ratings, where possible, a partner or a close friend completed the Profile of Mood States about his or her perception of the patient’s mood.
Assessments were carried out at baseline, 6 weeks, and 12 weeks, and included measures of physical health status (fasting serum lipid levels, weight, waist-hip ratio, and blood pressure), social functioning, mood, and cognitive function. Weight was measured on a beam balance. Waist and hip girth were measured using standard procedures (). Lipid levels were measured in fasting venous samples.
The dietary treatments were delivered in eight sessions during a 12-week period using a combination of individual and group sessions with a dietitian and a psychologist. This format provided education about the recommended dietary changes and a cognitive-behavioral intervention that was concerned with implementing changes in eating behavior. The recommendations for participants in the low-fat diet group were to shift away from foods containing saturated fats, with a target to reduce energy from fats to <20%, largely polyunsaturates. The recommendations for the Mediterranean diet were for an increase in fruit and vegetables, an increase in oily fish, and a reduction in fat to 30% of energy, with substitution of predominantly monounsaturated fats for saturated fats. All participants received individualized advice on implementing the dietary changes based on their lifestyle and food preferences, and group support in maintaining changes. They were also given free-spreading fats and oils that were high in polyunsaturated fat (low-fat diet) or monounsaturated fat (Mediterranean diet) to encourage compliance. (Fats and oils were donated by Van den Berghs, Crawley, United Kingdom.) Waiting-list control patients were told that it was necessary to wait for treatment but that they would be seen at 6-week intervals. They were not given specific dietary advice, but were not discouraged from making dietary changes; some patients elected to do so.
At the end of the first assessment session, subjects were randomly assigned to one of two lipid-lowering dietary treatments—a low-fat diet (n = 59) or a Mediterranean diet (n = 61)—or to a waiting-list control condition (n = 56). Random allocation was by sealed opaque envelopes that were produced by members of the research team who were not in contact with the subjects. Nutritional, medical, and psychological assessments were completed before treatment, after 6 weeks (midtreatment), and at 12 weeks (posttreatment). Subjects assigned to the control condition were offered treatment at the end of their waiting-list period. For each participant, assessments were completed by a member of the research team who was not involved in their treatment and was, in most cases, blind to the treatment condition.
Adults with mildly or moderately raised serum cholesterol levels were referred by hospital dietetic clinics, hospital physicians, and general practitioners in London and Southeast England. Participants were required to have a serum cholesterol level >5.2 mM (198 mg/dL); no serious illness (except cardiovascular disease, for which cholesterol lowering was indicated); no current or previous (within 3 months) use of lipid-lowering medication; and physician’s permission to participate. In addition, they could not be pregnant, lactating, or planning to become pregnant, and they were required to provide informed consent. If the patient’s serum cholesterol level was >7.8 mM (296 mg/dL), the physician was asked if he or she wished to withdraw the patient from the trial to begin pharmacological treatment. Participants were asked to complete and return a 7-day dietary diary before the first assessment. We sent brief details of the diets and the expected time commitments, as well as a dietary diary, to 260 people meeting the inclusion criteria. Diaries were returned and the first assessment session was attended by 176 subjects.
There were no significant differences among the groups in the motor speed, memory, or choice reaction time at either 6 or 12 weeks. However, results on the sustained-attention task (the Bakan task) did differ (P <0.001, Figure 2 ). Posthoc tests indicated that although the waiting-list group improved their hit rate (number of correct responses) during the study, which was the expected pattern, there was no improvement in either of the diet groups. The change in the average hit rate from before to after the intervention was significantly correlated with the change in total cholesterol level (r = 0.21, P = 0.01), indicating greater declines in performance for those with greater reductions in cholesterol level. Adjusting for weight loss, either in a repeated measures analysis or in a multivariate linear regression model, had little effect.
All three groups had stable or improved psychological well-being during the study, with no significant differences among the three groups ( Table 4 ). Depression (Beck Depression Inventory and Profile of Mood States), anxiety (Profile of Mood States), and perceived stress all declined significantly. Partner-completed Profile of Mood States were available for 111 participants at follow-up. The profile of change was similar for the partner assessments, although the decrease was less. State anger, anger expression, and the total General Health Questionnaire scores were stable, with no between-group differences. The vigor, confusion, and fatigue scales of the Profile of Mood States also showed no between-group differences. The correlations between the reduction in serum cholesterol levels and change in depression scores were not statistically significant. There was no evidence that the effects of the interventions on change in Beck Depression Inventory scores differed among the 18 participants who had a personal or family history of depression as compared with the remaining subjects.
Total energy intake was reduced significantly during treatment in all groups ( Table 3 ). Total fat intake was significantly reduced in both treatment groups, and more so than in the control group (P <0.001). In the entire sample, the reduction in saturated fat intake was associated with the reduction in total serum cholesterol (r = 0.24, P <0.01), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (r = 0.20, P <0.05) levels.
At 6 weeks, both the low-fat and the Mediterranean diet groups had significant reductions in mean total cholesterol levels (low-fat: 5.1% reduction; Mediterranean: 10% reduction; average 8.2% reduction [P <0.001 compared with control]) and in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels (average 8.3% reduction as compared with baseline, P <0.05 [ Table 2 ]). These reductions were maintained at 12 weeks. The control group did not change at 6 weeks, but showed a 3.3% reduction in mean total cholesterol level at 12 weeks. Repeated measures analysis of variance confirmed that the differences between each diet group and the control group were statistically significant. Participants in the two intervention groups lost similar and substantial amounts of weight during the 12-week period, whereas the control group did not have a significant weight loss.
There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
† There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
† There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
† There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
† There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
† There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
† There were significant differences (P <0.005) in the changes from baseline between each of the intervention groups (low-fat diet and Mediterranean diet) and control.
Similar numbers of patients withdrew before the end of treatment in each treatment group (7 from the low-fat diet, 8 from the Mediterranean diet, and 6 from the control group), largely because of difficulty in attendance. No patients reported specific adverse effects of treatment. At baseline, the noncompleters had lower mean (±SD) total cholesterol levels (6.2 ± 1.1 mM versus 7.1 ± 1.1 mM, P <0.001), and higher scores on the General Health Questionnaire (20.8 ± 8.0 versus 17.0 ± 7.4, P <0.05), but were otherwise similar to the participants who completed the study. Subsequent analyses include only those who completed the study.
Of the 176 participants who began treatment, 155 completed the posttreatment assessment and had attended at least four treatment sessions ( Figure 1 ). Participants were generally middle-aged and somewhat overweight ( Table 1 ). Nutrient analyses from the 7-day diaries showed that reported energy intakes were reasonable for adults of this age, as were levels of depression, anxiety, and aggression. There were no significant differences among the three treatment groups in any of the baseline characteristics.
Discussion
The participants in this study were adults with at least mild hypercholesterolemia by UK criteria. As volunteers who agreed to participate in a relatively demanding study, participants were probably more highly motivated than the population at large, but that is true in most clinical trials. Many of the participants were already following a low-fat diet, and the recorded fat intake at baseline (32% of energy) was lower than the UK average of 39%. The dropout rate was low, partly because extensive information was given at recruitment to ensure that participants knew what to expect and because of intensive efforts to sustain participation during the program. The reasons for withdrawing from the trial were often practical (eg, moving or taking a new job) or related to difficulty in finding time to attend treatment sessions. Nevertheless, the noncompleters had lower serum cholesterol levels (and therefore may have viewed their risk as lower) and higher General Health Questionnaire scores, reflecting poorer psychological well-being, at the start of the trial.
30 Schaefer E.J
Lamon-Fava S
Ausman L.M
et al. Individual variability in lipoprotein cholesterol response to National Cholesterol Education Program Step 2 diets. 31 Howell W.H
McNamara D.J
Tosca M.A
et al. Plasma lipid and lipoprotein responses to dietary fat and cholesterol a meta-analysis. 32 Tang J.L
Armitage J.M
Lancaster T
et al. Systematic review of dietary intervention trials to lower blood total cholesterol in free-living subjects. Both dietary interventions in this study were successful in changing lipid levels, with an average 8.2% reduction in the total serum cholesterol level and an 8.3% reduction in the low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level. This reduction is smaller than has been achieved using the US National Cholesterol Education Program Step II Diet in which all diet foods are supplied to the participants (), but somewhat larger than the 5.6% to 7.7% reductions that were estimated in meta-analyses of studies of Step II cholesterol-lowering diets ().
17 Downs J.R
Oster G
Santanello N.C Air Force Coronary Atherosclerosis Prevention Study Research Group
HMG CoA reductase inhibitors, and quality of life. 18 Lines C Hazards of reducing cholesterol. 19 Wardle J
Armitage J
Collins R
et al. Randomised placebo controlled trial of effect on mood of lowering cholesterol concentration. 33 Santanello N.C
Barber B.L
Applegate W.B
et al. Effect of pharmacologic lipid lowering on health-related quality of life in older persons results from cholesterol reduction in seniors program (CRISP) pilot study. As the cholesterol reduction was similar to that expected as a result of clinical interventions, we were able to test whether mood or cognitive function was adversely affected by compliance with cholesterol-lowering dietary advice. Reassuringly, there was no evidence that cholesterol lowering had any adverse effects on mood or well-being, whether rated by the patients or their partners, nor did we find that patients with a history of depressive illness were especially vulnerable. Indeed, most participants were in better emotional shape after the program than before, probably because of the attention and support. The absence of any effect on mood or well-being is consistent with the results of drug treatment studies, which have also failed to detect emotional impairments in treated patients, despite substantially larger decreases in cholesterol levels (). Although psychological treatments cannot blind patients to treatment allocation, it seems unlikely that the absence of blinding would explain the lack of between-group differences.
22 Benton D Do low cholesterol levels slow mental processing?. 23 Muldoon M.F
Ryan C.M
Matthews K.A
Manuck S.B Serum cholesterol and intellectual performance. 33 Santanello N.C
Barber B.L
Applegate W.B
et al. Effect of pharmacologic lipid lowering on health-related quality of life in older persons results from cholesterol reduction in seniors program (CRISP) pilot study. 34 Genko F
Cwudzinski D
Kinkel P
et al. Effects of treatment with Lovastatin and Pravastatin on daytime cognitive performance. 35 Rogers P.J
Green M.W Dieting, dietary restraint and cognitive performance. 36 Wing R.R
Vazquez J.A
Ryan C.M Cognitive effects of ketogenic weight-reducing diets. There was some evidence of an adverse effect on cognitive function, although this was seen for only one of four tasks. Both intervention groups showed impairment compared with controls on the task with the greatest processing load, and impairment was greatest among those who had the largest decrease in cholesterol level, consistent with the possibility that the cholesterol reduction may have contributed to the effect. Two recent studies have also reported associations between serum cholesterol level and intellectual performance, although both were cross-sectional and therefore examined serum cholesterol levels rather than cholesterol reduction (). In contrast, several studies of cholesterol-lowering drugs have failed to show effects on the WAIS Digit symbol test () or on most tests of cognitive function among a small sample of participants in a crossover trial of various statins (). One possible explanation for the difference that we observed from results of the drug studies is the time scale. In most drug studies, assessments were carried out after only 4 weeks of medication, whereas in the present study, the effect did not emerge until the 12-week assessment. Alternatively, any intellectual impairment may be related not to the reduction in serum cholesterol levels, but to energy deprivation or weight loss, a side effect of diet interventions (). Adjusting for weight loss in the present study, however, did not diminish the effect.
The general conclusions from this study are broadly reassuring and in line with research on pharmaceutical interventions. Patients can be reassured that neither cholesterol-lowering diets nor cholesterol-lowering drugs have an adverse effect on mood. The finding of a single adverse effect on cognitive function may be due to chance, and should be evaluated again in future studies. If the effect proves to be robust, its explanation will need to be determined. We did not measure participants’ perceptions of change in cognitive function, nor whether they had observed any changes in everyday life; these might be important questions for future studies. Because low-fat diets are recommended to healthy adults as a preventive measure against future disease, public acceptance depends upon confidence that all possible adverse effects are investigated thoroughly and that benefits are weighed against costs and risks. | {
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