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– The Slippery Rock University football team unveiled the new, one-of-a-kind Adidas uniforms and Riddell helmets the team will wear next Saturday when it faces Mercyhurst at Michigan Stadium in the Big House Battle.Rock head football coach, director of football operationsand representatives from Adidas were in talks for nearly a year developing the commemorative uniform The Rock will wear next Saturday for the one and only time."We wanted to find a unique way to show appreciation for our gracious hosts at the University of Michigan," said Mihalik. "We thought that in order to respect the Wolverines' great rivalry with Michigan State, we wouldn't wear our traditional home green uniforms in their stadium."Instead of wearing the traditional green that has become a staple of Rock football home games, Slippery Rock will wear a specially designed all gray uniform, from head to toe.The uniform features the latest and most advanced material Adidas puts into its football uniforms, from the socks all the way to visors some players will wear.In addition to the socks, gloves, jerseys and pants provided by Adidas, The Rock will also sport special reflective silver Riddell Speed helmets with white facemasks, a change from the traditional white helmets and green facemasks.The traditional "The Rock" that has become a staple of SRU football uniforms is proudly featured across the chest of the jersey, along with a commemorative Big House Battle patch and a patch featuring the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference.The numbers on the jersey are another special twist from Adidas. Rather than the traditional white numbers, The Rock will sport reflective silver numbers on the front and back of the jerseys. The reflective glow matches the new gloves Slippery Rock players will wear.In honor of the 125th anniversary of the university, Slippery Rock will also wear the commemorative striped undershirts the team has worn all year. Rather than the white and green stripes, the shirts will feature gray and green stripes."We want to thank Adidas and Riddell for coming together and helping us create this incredible uniform," said Mihalik. "We're really hoping the Michigan fans will come out and support us next weekend and become Rock football fans when we return to the Big House."The uniform was unveiled to the team for the first time Sunday night, in a presentation where Mihalik spoke about the values of Rock football and the 125th anniversary of the uniform.For complete, in depth photos of the university, view the gallery linked above.Kickoff in the Big House Battle is set for 1 p.m. next Saturday, Oct. 18, at Michigan Stadium. Tickets and information available HERE. | {
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Quick summary: 23andMe raw data contains insertions and deletions with proprietary identifiers, most of which have never been analyzed.
Our software can now handle over 1,000 of these “indels”, and nearly all of them impact a human disease or trait!
Background:
There are only a few thousand insertions and deletions (“indels”) in the 23andMe raw data. That’s not many compared to the hundreds of thousands of SNPs. But indels can be some of the most impactful types of genome alterations. Many diseases and traits are caused by an insertion or deletion in a critical gene.
Analysis of the indels in 23andMe’s raw data is difficult, because many of the indels use 23andMe’s proprietary identifier (i.e. i5037354). In addition, they do not provide enough information to determine the exact insertion or deletion that was designed to be tested. We asked 23andMe if they would share this information, but they declined to do so.
In the latest 23andMe genotyping chip (v4) there are:
4,093 total indels
and 3,413 of these indels use a 23andMe proprietary identifier (83.3%)
Even when a dbSNP (rs) identifier is used, the position of the indel can be shifted, such that it makes it difficult to compare to next-generation sequencing data.
We knew there were likely to be many important indels among those in the 23andMe data, so we set out to reverse engineer as many as we could, and identify those that affect human disease and traits.
The Indel Analysis:
We started with over 1,500 23andMe raw data files from the Opensnp.org database. We compiled a list of every indel and the frequency with which we found a DD, DI, or II genotype. Then, we cross-correlated this list with a list of nearby known indels from our own database – especially those with a disease or trait phenotype. We expect that many of the indels in the 23andMe raw data were designed to test known clinically relevant genome variants.
Finally, we went though a very labor intensive process to analyze each indel, the surrounding sequence, the nearby clinical variants, and the expected allele frequencies. In the end, we were able to confidently identify over 1,000 indels, most of which have a known effect on a disease or trait.
An Example:
Let’s take a look at one:
i5012559 8 87656009 DI
We have identified this as an autosomal recessive deletion that can lead to Achromatopsia – a condition where the individual cannot see any color – complete color blindness! There are a few carriers of this deletion in the Opensnp database, but no homozygous individuals (2 copies and therefore affected). The frequency of this deletion among the 1,500 23andMe users is consistent with the frequency of this deletion in next-generation sequencing data.
23andMe doesn’t tell you anything about this deletion (even if you have access to the health information). In the old 23andMe health reports, 23andMe identifies only 20 total insertions and deletions. Given that there is less total information in the new health reports, I expect this number to be even smaller in the newly announced 23andMe health reports.
As of this publication, this deletion is not reported by other interpretation services, like SNPedia/Promethease. To examine further, I randomly selected 50 of the indels that we identified and looked for them in SNPedia. SNPedia only had information on 2 out of the 50 indels tested.
Summary:
For the first time anywhere, we have been able to analyze over 1,000 of 23andMe’s proprietary indels. To my knowledge, the Enlis software is the only solution for identifying and getting more information on the majority of these health-impacting variants.
I will have a more complete analysis of the totality of health information in the 23andMe raw data in another blog post, but one interesting thing to leave you with — the 23andMe raw data contains information on hundreds of indels that are related to hereditary cancer. How many hereditary cancer variants does 23andMe report in their new system? Zero.
Want to get your own 23andMe indels analyzed? Click here to start our import process.
Note: 23andMe recently revamped their online service, but the genotyping chip has not changed. The v4 chip, launched in December 2013, is still being used.
Appendix:
The indels that we analyze affect these diseases:
Achondrogenesis, type IB
Achromatopsia 3
Alpha Thalassemia
Alpha-2-macroglobulin polymorphism
Alzheimer disease, susceptibility to
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis type 2
Andermann syndrome
Aspartylglycosaminuria
Ataxia with vitamin E deficiency
Ataxia, Friedreich-like, with isolated vitamin E deficiency
Ataxia-telangiectasia syndrome
Atypical Rett syndrome
BRCA1 and BRCA2 Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer
Becker muscular dystrophy
Benign scapuloperoneal muscular dystrophy with cardiomyopathy
Beta Thalassemia
Beta-plus-thalassemia
Beta-thalassemia dominant
Bloom syndrome
Breast cancer, susceptibility to
Breast-ovarian cancer, familial 1
Breast-ovarian cancer, familial 2
Bronchiectasis with or without elevated sweat chloride 1, modifier of
Brugada syndrome 1
Cardiomyopathy
Carnitine palmitoyltransferase ii deficiency, late-onset
Ceroid lipofuscinosis neuronal 5
Ceroid lipofuscinosis, neuronal, 11
Choroideremia
Colorectal cancer, hereditary, nonpolyposis, type 1
Cone-rod dystrophy 3
Congenital myopathy with fiber type disproportion
Congestive heart failure and beta-blocker response, modifier of
Cystic fibrosis
Deafness, autosomal recessive 1A
Deafness, digenic, GJB2/GJB3
Deafness, digenic, GJB2/GJB6
Debrisoquine, poor metabolism of
Delta-zero-thalassemia, knossos type
Dermatitis, atopic, 2, susceptibility to
Diastrophic dysplasia
Dilated cardiomyopathy 1A
Dilated cardiomyopathy 3B
Duchenne muscular dystrophy
Dystonia 1
Dystonia 12
Early infantile epileptic encephalopathy 2
Encephalopathy, neonatal severe, due to MECP2 mutations
Enlarged vestibular aqueduct syndrome
Familial Mediterranean fever
Familial cancer of breast
Familial hypercholesterolemia
Familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy 2
Familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy 4
Familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy 7
Fanconi anemia, complementation group C
Fanconi anemia, complementation group D1
Frontotemporal dementia, ubiquitin-positive
Fumarase deficiency
Gaucher’s disease, type 1
Glucose-6-phosphate transport defect
Glycogen storage disease IIIa
Glycogen storage disease IIIb
Glycogen storage disease type 1A
Glycogen storage disease type III
Hearing impairment
Heinz body hemolytic anemia
Hemoglobinopathy
Hereditary cancer-predisposing syndrome
Hereditary factor VIII deficiency disease
Hereditary fructosuria
Hereditary leiomyomatosis and renal cell cancer
Hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer type 5
Hereditary pancreatitis
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
I cell disease
Ichthyosis vulgaris
Immunodeficiency due to ficolin 3 deficiency
Infantile hypophosphatasia
Infantile-onset ascending hereditary spastic paralysis
Infertility associated with multi-tailed spermatozoa and excessive DNA
Inflammatory bowel disease 1, susceptibility to
Leber congenital amaurosis 4
Left ventricular noncompaction 6
Li-Fraumeni syndrome 1
Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, type 2A
Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, type 2G
Long QT syndrome 3
Lynch syndrome
Lynch syndrome I
Lynch syndrome II
Macular dystrophy, vitelliform, adult-onset
Malignant tumor of prostate
Marfan’s syndrome
Maturity-onset diabetes of the young, type 2
Meckel-Gruber syndrome
Mental retardation, X-linked, syndromic 13
Microcephaly, normal intelligence and immunodeficiency
Multiple epiphyseal dysplasia 4
Myopathy, distal, 1
Neurofibromatosis, familial spinal
Neurofibromatosis, type 1
Neurofibromatosis, type 2
Neurofibromatosis-Noonan syndrome
Niemann-Pick disease, type A
Osteogenesis imperfecta
Osteogenesis imperfecta type I
Osteogenesis imperfecta type III
Pachydermoperiostosis syndrome
Pachyonychia congenita type 2
Pancreatic cancer 2
Pancreatic cancer 4
Pancreatic cancer, susceptibility to
Parkinson disease 6, autosomal recessive early-onset
Parkinson disease, late-onset
Pendred’s syndrome
Persistent hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemia of infancy
Phenylketonuria
Phosphate transport defect
Polycystic kidney disease, infantile type
Primary familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
Primary hyperoxaluria, type II
Primary progressive aphasia
Pseudo-Hurler polydystrophy
Pseudoxanthoma elasticum
Retinitis pigmentosa 19
Retinitis pigmentosa 7
Retinoblastoma
Rett’s disorder
Schwannomatosis
Spastic ataxia Charlevoix-Saguenay type
Stargardt disease 1
Supranuclear palsy, progressive, 1, atypical
Symmetrical dyschromatosis of extremities
Tay-Sachs disease
Turcot syndrome
Tyrosinase-negative oculocutaneous albinism
Werdnig-Hoffmann disease
Wilson’s disease | {
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Only two weeks left to Double your gift
For most Americans, Earth Day is probably something you vaguely remember from elementary school. You may have sat through a lesson on reducing, reusing, and recycling, or made a poster with a frowny-faced Earth in art class. If your school was really ambitious, you might have had a bake sale and donated the proceeds to Save the Whales or Save the Rainforests. (My school was not particularly ambitious, so we’d usually watch Free Willy and call it a day.)
As an adult, you probably celebrate Earth Day the way you celebrate Flag Day: You don’t.
But Earth Day wasn’t always like this. Earth Day 2015 will likely be as fruitful as a gay stud horse, but the first Earth Day in 1970 gave birth to the modern environmental movement. Twenty million people, or one in 10 Americans, took to classrooms, auditoriums, and city streets to show their support for cleaning up the planet. The momentum from those early events led to the creation of the EPA and the passage of landmark laws like the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. According to The New Yorker, the inaugural Earth Day “generated more than 12,000 events across the country, many of them in high schools and colleges, with more than 35,000 speakers. Today devoted ten hours of airtime to it. Congress took the day off, and two-thirds of its members spoke at Earth Day events.” Can you imagine that? The only event two-thirds of Congress would show up for these days is an open bar with a side of campaign contributions.
Help Grist raise $20,000 by 9/30. Just click the image above ☝️
So why was the first Earth Day effective when the 45th promises to be just another day of feel-good fairs and corporate green-washing? Well, it was a different era. Back then, mass demonstrations actually made a difference, which was apparent from the successes of the anti-war and civil rights movements. Today, people still take to the streets — the People’s Climate March last fall brought out a record 400,000 activists — but political leaders are more willing to ignore them. And why is that? Well, are you rich? No? In that case, you just don’t matter that much.
In 1972, the presidential race cost just over $300 million (adjusted for today’s dollars). The 2012 presidential race cost over $2.6 billion, an increase of more than 860 percent, and the 2016 election will likely be the most expensive in history, with projections of up to $5 billion.
And where does that money come from? Rich people, corporations, special interest groups, and super PACs who buy influence and rarely prioritize the environment over profit.
In such a rigged system, Earth Day doesn’t stand a chance, and so this widely celebrated international phenomenon has lost its relevance. It is a Band-Aid, a pat on the back, a Facebook like. It’s dumping a bucket of ice water over your head for ALS or wearing a pink ribbon for breast cancer. It’s nothing more than a symbol. We don’t need Earth Day or Earth Month or even Earth Year: What we need is for those in power to stop working for industry and start working for the people.
How do we make this happen? Maybe we should turn to the recent developments out of Indiana for inspiration. Indiana Governor Mike Pence didn’t backtrack on the anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act because people were holding gay rights drum circles — he did it because companies like Apple, Angie’s List, and Walmart threatened to take their business elsewhere. The financial pushback was swift, and so was the governor’s retraction. It’s terrifying: Big business may be the perpetrator of much of the world’s pollution, but it could also be the solution.
So don’t spend this Earth Day buying biodegradable balloons. Instead, climb the corporate ladder and use your perch to twist politicians’ arms. Make a billion dollars and donate it to candidates who actually want to fight climate change. Marry a venture capitalist and threaten to leave if he doesn’t divest from Big Oil. Become a lobbyist if you have to. Become president if you have to. There are things you can do to effect change in the world, but your Earth Day tote isn’t one of them. | {
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Last Friday, at the direction of President Donald Trump, U.S. trade representatives increased tariffs from 10 to 25 percent on $200 billion in imported Chinese goods, with an eye to potentially raise tariffs on another $300 billion of Chinese imports in the near future.
Trump claims his tariffs are a tax, paid by China, and that these “massive payments go directly to the Treasury of the U.S.” That’s not even remotely close to accurate. In reality, it’s not China that pays; instead, American consumers cover the cost of the tariffs by paying higher prices on imported Chinese goods.
It’s difficult to accurately predict how much prices will rise since the tariffs are levied on components, not finished products. For instance, Morgan Stanley predicted an iPhone XS could cost $160 more thanks to the tariffs, but we don’t know how much Apple pays for the iPhone’s components. And given its cash reserves, Apple could also absorb some costs if needed.
“There will be price hikes at Target, Costco, Home Depot and Walmart,” Nelson Dong, a partner with Dorsey & Whitney in Seattle, predicted to the Washington Post. “The importers are going to pass on some or all of the tariff to the consumer and that will become much more readily apparent and harder to mask.”
Interestingly, American consumers are also now paying higher prices on goods that aren’t subject to Chinese tariffs. A Goldman Sachs analysis out Saturday found manufacturers in other countries have “opportunistically raised their prices” in response to decreased competition from China.
With that in mind, here’s what we should expect to pay more for now that the tariffs implemented last September have more than doubled. (For those looking to go a little deeper, here’s a 194-page PDF of the more than 5,700 items.)
Food and Beverage
Fish and seafood, butter, nuts, vegetables (e.g. cabbage, kale, carrots, beets), mill products (e.g. buckwheat, rice), oil seeds (e.g. flax, sesame, mustard), soy sauce, protein concentrates, fruit and vegetable juices, beer, wine and rice wine, and vinegars are all included.
Construction materials
Last year, tariffs added $1 billion to U.S. housing construction costs, the National Association of Homebuilders told the Los Angeles Times. We should expect that to jump to $2.5 billion if the latest tariffs are levied for a full year. That’s thanks to tariffs on items like granite, cement, materials made out of vinyl, ceramic tiles, and stainless steel.
Wearables
Backpacks, hats, various fabrics (including silk, cotton, polyester and nylon).
Electronics
This includes almost anything containing a circuit board, like televisions, cameras, smartphones, electric amps, video projectors, copiers, and, of course, computers. One analyst told The New York Times computers and computer parts account for $23 billion of tariffs alone.
Consumer Goods
Wooden furniture, upholstered chairs (e.g., sofas), car seats, baseball gloves, handbags, luggage and suitcases, glass and glassware, jars, pots, clocks and watches.
Appliances
Refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners, vending machines, microwaves, generators and air compressors. | {
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computational power will come from the GPUs and CPUs of these miners and will be sold and purchased on a market-based mechanism. Buyers are required to use the platform's cryptocurrency development kit to develop their personal projects before buying computer resources. The coin is Proof-of-Stake . It has a total supply of 100 million and is listed in Bittrex and Upbit exchanges. XEL also uses its own programming language called Elastic PL. XEL coins are used to process all transactions on the network. Elastic project was established back in 2016 by a person only known by his nickname as Lannister. This person then resigned and the project almost died. It was, however, revived by two other anonymous individuals know by their nick names as Evil Knievel and Coralreefer.
XEL is an open-source blockchain platform that brings together multiple unused computer resources to create a powerful decentralized supercomputer. Such a computer is trustless, very secure and is able to compute complex computer tasks over the internet at very high speeds. This platform links those who wish to buy such computational power online and those willing to sell their un-utilized computer resources. Those providing such resources are the miners who will be earning XEL coins. The Show more [+] | {
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Pro-Russia rebels chased from eastern Ukraine strongholds blew up three bridges leading to the regional capital of Donetsk on Monday in an apparent effort to thwart the further advance of a reinvigorated Ukrainian army.
Government troops took four key towns from the separatist rebels over the weekend, including Slovyansk, a front-line bastion of the fighting that broke out in April weeks after Russia seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region.
Russian media continue to cast the Ukrainian government’s campaign to recover territory occupied by the militants as “punitive” action against Russian-speaking eastern residents who want regional authorities to have more say over their finances and foreign relations.
Ukrainian officials have proclaimed the military successes of the last few days a watershed moment in the 3-month-old conflict.
“According to our intelligence, the morale of militants is extremely low because they feel abandoned, betrayed and deceived,” Interior Ministry advisor Anton Heraschenko told reporters at a briefing in Kiev, the capital. He described the government forces as bolstered by the “turning point” marked by their weekend recovery of Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Artemivsk and Druzhkivka.
The office of President Petro Poroshenko reported Monday that government troops had also recaptured Kostyantynivka and raised Ukraine’s yellow-and-blue national flag over the Donetsk region town after clearing land mines and roadblocks left by the rebels.
But militants who escaped from their former strongholds before troops moved in have converged on the city of Donetsk, the capital of the heavily industrialized Donbass basin that spans eastern Ukraine between the Don and Dnieper rivers.
In an apparent effort to frustrate any government move against Donetsk, a city of 1 million residents before the conflict, the separatist gunmen blew up three key bridges, including a railroad span over the highway between Donetsk and Slovyansk. News agencies in the region said part of an 11-car freight train was left suspended on the collapsed and dangling track.
Ukrainian and Western officials have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of arming and instigating the separatists, who began seizing government buildings and security facilities in Donetsk and Luhansk regions shortly after Russia seized Crimea. Russian officials deny they are orchestrating the fighting, and Putin has so far ignored appeals from the rebels to their areas annexed to Russia as well.
On Monday, the self-proclaimed governor of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic said the rebels were gearing up to carry out a major counteroffensive. But in a veiled appeal to Putin for aid, Pavel Gubarev said the rebels were unlikely to succeed without backing from Russia, the Kyiv Post quoted him as saying in a report posted on the newspaper website.
As the rebels were regrouping in Donetsk, from which much of the civilian population has fled, Ukraine’s wealthiest magnate urged both sides to refrain from damaging infrastructure that will be needed to heal the region’s deep economic wounds.
“Donetsk must not be bombed. Donbass must not be bombed. Cities, towns and infrastructure must not be destroyed,” Rinat Akhmetov insisted in an interview with Ukraina TV that aired Sunday night.
Akhmetov, whose fortune is estimated at $11 billion, owns and operates mines, steel foundries, shipyards and other major industries in the Donbass region and has been warning for months that the conflict is destroying the economy as well as national unity.
A rebel attempt to take control of the international airport in Donetsk in May led to major fighting and closure of the vital transportation hub. Rail traffic into and out of Donetsk has been repeatedly disrupted by the clashes, thwarting reliable delivery of goods from Donbass factories and mines. Government forces have also had to locate and defuse land mines around the towns they have recovered.
While the retreating separatists are leaving paths of destruction behind them, government forces have regained control of most border crossings with Russia and are now able to prevent the influx of weapons and mercenaries, Defense Ministry spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kiev.
Nearly 500 people have died in the fighting in eastern Ukraine, including 200-plus Ukrainian troops and dozens of civilians caught in the crossfire.
Follow @cjwilliamslat for the latest international news 24/7. | {
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Cat-loving Kickstarter users have coughed up more than $8m for the pleasure of Exploding Kittens, dethroning hackable games console Ouya as the crowdfunding website's most highly funded game of all time.
Exploding Kittens is a comedy card game cooked up by XBox chaps Elan Lee and Shane Small, along with Matthew Inman, the brains behind cartoon site The Oatmeal.
After an intensive fundraising campaign, the trio collected $8.78m from 219,382 backers to launch the game. This breaks the record for the largest ever Kickstarter game project, previously held by hackable Android gaming console Ouya.
According to the blurb on Exploding Kittens' (now closed) Kickstarter page, players "take turns drawing cards until someone draws an exploding kitten and loses the game."
Play is enhanced by cards that let you "avoid exploding by peeking at cards before you draw, forcing your opponent to draw multiple cards, or shuffling the deck". Such cards include ways of defusing the explosion, including feeding the explosive feline, or confusing it with a laser pointer.
Fans of Exploding Kittens were invited to cough up $20 for the standard deck, or $35 for the NSFW version - which presumably involves more horrible things happening to innocent kitties than in the kid-friendly game.
As we previously reported, Exploding Kittens raised $3m in its first three days. It took just 30 days to nearly treble that sum. ® | {
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As a feminist, I've always assumed that by fighting to emancipate women I was building a better world – more egalitarian, just and free. But lately I've begun to worry that ideals pioneered by feminists are serving quite different ends. I worry, specifically, that our critique of sexism is now supplying the justification for new forms of inequality and exploitation.
In a cruel twist of fate, I fear that the movement for women's liberation has become entangled in a dangerous liaison with neoliberal efforts to build a free-market society. That would explain how it came to pass that feminist ideas that once formed part of a radical worldview are increasingly expressed in individualist terms. Where feminists once criticised a society that promoted careerism, they now advise women to "lean in". A movement that once prioritised social solidarity now celebrates female entrepreneurs. A perspective that once valorised "care" and interdependence now encourages individual advancement and meritocracy.
What lies behind this shift is a sea-change in the character of capitalism. The state-managed capitalism of the postwar era has given way to a new form of capitalism – "disorganised", globalising, neoliberal. Second-wave feminism emerged as a critique of the first but has become the handmaiden of the second.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that the movement for women's liberation pointed simultaneously to two different possible futures. In a first scenario, it prefigured a world in which gender emancipation went hand in hand with participatory democracy and social solidarity; in a second, it promised a new form of liberalism, able to grant women as well as men the goods of individual autonomy, increased choice, and meritocratic advancement. Second-wave feminism was in this sense ambivalent. Compatible with either of two different visions of society, it was susceptible to two different historical elaborations.
As I see it, feminism's ambivalence has been resolved in recent years in favour of the second, liberal-individualist scenario – but not because we were passive victims of neoliberal seductions. On the contrary, we ourselves contributed three important ideas to this development.
One contribution was our critique of the "family wage": the ideal of a male breadwinner-female homemaker family that was central to state-organised capitalism. Feminist criticism of that ideal now serves to legitimate "flexible capitalism". After all, this form of capitalism relies heavily on women's waged labour, especially low-waged work in service and manufacturing, performed not only by young single women but also by married women and women with children; not by only racialised women, but by women of virtually all nationalities and ethnicities. As women have poured into labour markets around the globe, state-organised capitalism's ideal of the family wage is being replaced by the newer, more modern norm – apparently sanctioned by feminism – of the two-earner family.
Never mind that the reality that underlies the new ideal is depressed wage levels, decreased job security, declining living standards, a steep rise in the number of hours worked for wages per household, exacerbation of the double shift – now often a triple or quadruple shift – and a rise in poverty, increasingly concentrated in female-headed households. Neoliberalism turns a sow's ear into a silk purse by elaborating a narrative of female empowerment. Invoking the feminist critique of the family wage to justify exploitation, it harnesses the dream of women's emancipation to the engine of capital accumulation.
Feminism has also made a second contribution to the neoliberal ethos. In the era of state-organised capitalism, we rightly criticised a constricted political vision that was so intently focused on class inequality that it could not see such "non-economic" injustices as domestic violence, sexual assault and reproductive oppression. Rejecting "economism" and politicising "the personal", feminists broadened the political agenda to challenge status hierarchies premised on cultural constructions of gender difference. The result should have been to expand the struggle for justice to encompass both culture and economics. But the actual result was a one-sided focus on "gender identity" at the expense of bread and butter issues. Worse still, the feminist turn to identity politics dovetailed all too neatly with a rising neoliberalism that wanted nothing more than to repress all memory of social equality. In effect, we absolutised the critique of cultural sexism at precisely the moment when circumstances required redoubled attention to the critique of political economy.
Finally, feminism contributed a third idea to neoliberalism: the critique of welfare-state paternalism. Undeniably progressive in the era of state-organised capitalism, that critique has since converged with neoliberalism's war on "the nanny state" and its more recent cynical embrace of NGOs. A telling example is "microcredit", the programme of small bank loans to poor women in the global south. Cast as an empowering, bottom-up alternative to the top-down, bureaucratic red tape of state projects, microcredit is touted as the feminist antidote for women's poverty and subjection. What has been missed, however, is a disturbing coincidence: microcredit has burgeoned just as states have abandoned macro-structural efforts to fight poverty, efforts that small-scale lending cannot possibly replace. In this case too, then, a feminist idea has been recuperated by neoliberalism. A perspective aimed originally at democratising state power in order to empower citizens is now used to legitimise marketisation and state retrenchment.
In all these cases, feminism's ambivalence has been resolved in favour of (neo)liberal individualism. But the other, solidaristic scenario may still be alive. The current crisis affords the chance to pick up its thread once more, reconnecting the dream of women's liberation with the vision of a solidary society. To that end, feminists need to break off our dangerous liaison with neoliberalism and reclaim our three "contributions" for our own ends.
First, we might break the spurious link between our critique of the family wage and flexible capitalism by militating for a form of life that de-centres waged work and valorises unwaged activities, including – but not only – carework. Second, we might disrupt the passage from our critique of economism to identity politics by integrating the struggle to transform a status order premised on masculinist cultural values with the struggle for economic justice. Finally, we might sever the bogus bond between our critique of bureaucracy and free-market fundamentalism by reclaiming the mantle of participatory democracy as a means of strengthening the public powers needed to constrain capital for the sake of justice. | {
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“WELL, that’s just great.” Quick, what does that sentence mean? Is the speaker acknowledging some good news, celebrating a joyful event that just took place? Do we take the statement at face value? Or could the person who said it mean something quite different, maybe even the opposite? Perhaps his pleasure is not genuine.
The fact is we do not know. The words are ambiguous. The comment could be kind and authentic: imagine his daughter has just announced that she made the school honor roll for the first time. But he could just as well be stuck in rush-hour traffic, late for an important meeting. His comment in that case is probably not genuine at all but sarcastic.
How can we tell which is which? How as listeners do we recognize and comprehend irony? And what makes us use sarcasm and irony in the first place, when we could just as easily be literal and unambiguous? Communication is tricky enough without deliberately muddling things with hidden layers of meaning. What social purpose could such vagueness serve?
Language of Failed Expectations?
Psychologists are very interested in both how we use ironic language and how we see it for what it is. And there are lots of ideas. Some argue that ironic language is the language of failed expectations; it is a fact of the human condition that things do not always turn out as planned, and language needs to capture and highlight that ironic sense of life. But when and how does that sense of life emerge, and when do we develop the social competence to recognize it?
One way to approach these questions is to look at language comprehension in children. Youngsters have few life experiences to speak of, so it would seem that they should be innocent of its ironies. They should take every sentence they hear literally, unless they are given some reason not to do so. So, to stick with the same example: if someone says, “Well, that’s just great,” kids should simply believe it. They should not be expected to probe for deeper meaning. If they do probe, it should be as an afterthought.
But is that the case? Psychologist Penny M. Pexman of the University of Calgary in Alberta decided to explore this problem in the laboratory, to see how quick and efficient kids are at processing irony and sarcasm. She wanted to see how early in life this cognitive skill emerges. She also wanted to find out if indeed kids go through a two-step process every time they are confronted with irony—taking the literal meaning first, then perceiving the hidden meaning as an afterthought.
It is hard to study children’s minds, especially the five- to 10-year-old minds in Pexman’s studies. She could not entirely rely on them to report on their own thinking, so she had to devise special methods to probe their perceptions. Here is an example of what she did. In one experiment, she trained kids to associate niceness with a smiling yellow duck and meanness with a snarling gray shark. Then they watched puppet shows, in which the puppets made both sarcastic and literal remarks. Rather than asking the kids to interpret the remarks, she tracked their eye gaze, to see whether they shifted their attention ever so slightly toward the shark or the duck after a particular remark.
The results, reported in the August issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, were intriguing. If kids were indeed processing every sentence as literally true to begin with, then their eyes would reveal that. That is, they would look automatically at the duck on hearing “Well, that’s just great.” But they did not. When that sentence was used ironically, their eyes went immediately to the mean shark. The irony required no laborious cognitive crunching. They processed the insincerity as rapidly as they processed the basic meaning of the words.
Hints of Irony
So ironic sensibility appears to be hardwired into the neurons, although using and understanding irony also require social intelligence. Both children and adults need hints that a comment is ironic as opposed to literal. These hints come in the form of facial expression, tone of voice, knowledge of the speaker’s personality, and so forth. But all these social cues are processed instantaneously and integrated into a reliable sense of another person’s beliefs and intentions. Children with autism have difficulty doing this processing—that is, “theorizing” about what others are thinking and feeling. Interestingly, some autistic children also have difficulty appreciating irony and sarcasm, suggesting that the same brain abnormality may be linked to both deficits.
Pexman’s puppet experiments have revealed a fascinating subtlety about children’s emerging ironic sensibilities. She found that although even those as young as six years understand ironic criticism, they do not seem to “get” ironic praise. For example, if a young child misses a soccer goal, he has no trouble knowing that “Hey, nice shot” is insincere and mean-spirited. But if he scores a difficult shot and a teammate yells, “Hey, lousy shot, man,” that is a lot harder to process. It does not compute automatically. In other words, children appreciate hurtful irony but not cheerful irony.
Why would that be? Pexman believes it is because most people have a general expectation that others will be nice to them, not mean; ironic language calls attention to the unexpected meanness. Which seems to suggest that kids develop a sardonic sense of life’s travails very early on. Well, that’s just great.
Note: This story was originally printed with the title, "A Sense of Irony". | {
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While some of those titles were already on Prime, they're now exclusive to the service as some were also available on Netflix and other streaming options in the past. What's more, Nature Cat and Ready Jet Go! are now on Prime for the first time. And now that the video service is available as a standalone subscription, parents can opt in during summer break. | {
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LeVar Burton, a children’s literacy advocate and a former star of Star Trek: The Next Generation, plans to make an ambitious comeback, giving the once-loved Reading Rainbow brand a 21st-century upgrade. Burton’s for-profit venture, RRKidz, plans to launch an educational iPad app that lets children explore topics of interest–such as, say space–in a multimedia-rich environment, with voice-over-enhanced children’s books, familiar videos of Burton at real-life places (like NASA), and, of course, games. Burton tells Fast Company he’s on a mission to “get kids hooked on books,” and says his company is “going to where kids are today; those devices that they love to spend time on.”
Burton aims to distinguish himself in the crowded educational space as the company’s “Curator in Chief,” who will personally curate top-notch educational books, apps, and games, to help parents navigate through the growing jungle of digital products. “I’m the curator,” he says. “I chose the voices, I put together the team; this is the value of 25-plus years of experience that I bring to this venture.” Years of experience delivering instruction through a technological medium, television, argues Burton, has given him a unique insight into what engages the fickle mind of a child.
After all, he says, Reading Rainbow (which he helped produce and hosted) originally began as a PBS summer series to get kids interested in occupying their free time with books, instead of intellectually slacking off for three months.
The first RRKidz product will be a multimedia-enhanced reading ecosystem on the iPad. Hand-selected stories are given a digital upgrade with voice-overs, light animation, and games. “Wrapped around” the expansive digital library (launching with 300 books) is a set of games and professionally produced videos, with Burton in the familiar role of curious investigator. For instance, for the topic of space, Burton says he recorded video “all over” the NASA station during the penultimate launch of the Atlantis space shuttle.
RRKidz also plans some “disruptive” technology, which Burton says will allow him to enhance a PDF book with voice-over, light animation, and games “in a matter of hours.” Though details are scant, the technology is a “streamlined” process that will allow an individual (human) worker to digitally enhance enough content to grow the library at 35 books in the first months after launch.
To finance the endeavor, Burton has assumed an unfamiliar entrepreneurial role, aided by CEO Asra Rasheed. RRKidz recently scored a first funding round from Raymonds Capital LLC and additional funds from Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. “We were really looking for the right kind of money, the kind of money that really believed in what we were doing,” he says. | {
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True story: Some friends and readers know that I have a graduate degree in political science, but few would guess that it has nothing to do with American politics. Instead, in 1982 – this is long before the Internet made this sort of thing easier, chilluns – I spent an entire summer doing primary research for a thesis on the then-very-new capitalistic economic policies being tried out in “enterprise zones” in some outlying Chinese provinces, notably Fujian on the southeast coast. The centralized Chinese state media didn’t talk much about the heretical experiments being carried out in the hinterlands, and so I spent an entire summer holed up in the library of Simon Fraser University outside Vancouver, B.C., the closest source for this stuff at the time, poring through literally thousands of microfiched pages of provincial state newspaper articles, transcriptions of provincial state radio broadcasts, and the official Chinese national newspaper, Renmin Ribao (“People’s Daily”). My task was to figure out the experimental policies and their outcomes by translating these sources from Orwellian Mandarin Newspeak, to Mandarin (which I was somewhat fluent in at the time), and thence to English, in which I compiled the findings.
From this experience, I gained an expert-level appreciation of the power of state propaganda. Both Renmin Ribao and the various provincial organs made Pravda look objective. To decode their accounts, you needed a thesaurus of Mandarin bullshit and a keen eye for what was not said – E.g., the upbeat-sounding “Chengxiang District adopts new production goals for October!” might lead you to dig a bit and discover that poor Chengxiang only made 20 percent of its September production goal, and its former chief executive hadn’t been heard from in a month.
In short, Chinese state run media was, and remains, fundamentally dishonest and manipulative propaganda, just as China’s top political rulers were, and remain, callous butchers willing to sacrifice the blood or lives of millions to achieve what they see as the greater good. The problem, as with all authoritarian regimes, is that inevitably its leaders will confuse their own good with that of the people they allegedly serve.
And so imagine my surprise when readers of today’s print edition of the Seattle Times, while ignoring the content-free front section on their way to reading the latest on the Seahawks, inevitably encountered a full, paid-for special section whose entire content was produced by the People’s Daily.
Remember, the Times is the same reactionary newspaper that, in its editorials and much of its so-called objective reporting, fulminates at every chance on the evils of organized labor. This is the same newspaper that never met a tax it didn’t reflexively oppose. And most especially, this is the same media platform that got, and continues to get, vapors because Seattle elected an actual omigodmoigodOMIGOD SOCIALIST!!!!!!11!!
These same bastions of 1950 Republicanism just took, in all likelihood, tens of thousands of dollars to allow the chief propaganda organ of Communist China, for nearly seven decades one of the most blood-soaked outfits on the planet, to propagandize its readers.
So…the Times ownership and management is adamant that state control, or even regulation, of the means of production is a terrible thing. Unless you pay them a lot of money so you can use world-class propaganda to celebrate it for their readers. Then, apparently, it’s just peachy-keen.
Words in any language don’t begin to describe the hypocrisy. If the Blethens and their functionaries took a lot of money to publish this dreck, as the old saying goes, we know they’re whores – the rest is just haggling over the price. And if they offered their readers up for free, that’s actually even worse.
I can hear the Blethenite justification for this now: “Blah blah trade blah blah Seattle trade blah blah blah.” Even if it were morally excusable, that’s still bullshit. Boeing is not going to sell one more fighter jet (indirectly, of course) to the Chinese army – which is both notoriously corrupt and operates mostly outside the control of the executive branch – because a dying newspaper in the American hinterlands published a special section. More directly, Microsoft is not going to sell its next generation of censorship software to Beijing because some retiree in Newcastle read about the wonders of the People’s Republic. There are only two possible motives for publishing this garbage which wouldn’t, if offered up, be transparent cow patties. One is that they somehow thought it gave their obscure provincial newspaper prestige, in a bizarre, Brave New World kind of way.
The other explanation is pure, amoral greed.
Regardless, when, in a couple of weeks, the Times publishes its inevitable editorial urging readers to vote for Kshama Sawant’s opponent because EEEEEK!!, remember September 23, 2015 – the day when the Blethens took a boatload of money to sell their readers on the glory of a government whose collectivist policies, in many cases, would likely mortify Sawant. But, as the Times can learn from President Xi and his colleagues – or Xi can learn from them – anyone, even the readers of a third-rate newspaper, can be sacrificed for a greater good, even if it gets confused with the greater good of the newspaper’s publisher. | {
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The official complement of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s U.S.S. Enterprise-D is a massive 1,014 people including crew and their families. While the series had a big budget for its time and made a game effort to feature a variety of spaces within the ship (and its efforts to do so are arguably part of why the Enterprise-D is so beloved), no television show could reasonably depict that scope. That’s why it’s always been up to dedicated fans to read the ship’s official technical blueprints and imagine what the aquatics lab might have looked like, or how Captain Picard decorated his Captain’s Yacht.
Enter the Enterprise 3-D Project, a scale recreation of the ship created in Unreal Engine 4 being built by one supremely dedicated fan. Designer Jason B. recently offered users a brief video tour of his work in progress, a virtual walkthrough of the ship from the massive Shuttlebay 01 (only briefly glimpsed in the series due to budget constraints) through the Ten Forward lounge to the bridge, and to other spaces never shown on the television show.
While the video below only covers a small section of the ship, the designer intends to replicate the whole thing from stem-to-stern, optimized for virtual reality through the Oculus Rift. For anyone whose ever dreamed of roaming the decks of the Enterprise, that’s an irresistible proposition. Follow the creator’s progress on his blog. | {
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Up to 250 events have been planned across France to honour Joan of Arc, a heroine of Ms Le Pen’s party, Front National (FN). Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the FN, is expected to lay a wreath at a statue of the French heroine in Paris before he delivers a speech to supporters. Meanwhile Ms Le Pen, who had her father expelled from the party in 2015 over an anti-Semitic outburst, will be holding a rally in the French capital’s northern suburb of Villepinte.
GETTY French police are on extra high alert over potential protests over Marine Le Pen
GETTY Protester marching on May Day last year
More than 9,000 armed police and soldiers are expected to on duty in the French amid fears of an attack similar to the Champs-Elysées killing of a policeman earlier this month. France's main unions are reportedly planning their own marches in the capital city, which has caused fears there may be a clash between the two opposing groups. A police spokesman said: “The demonstration shouldn’t pose any particular problem. We’re just a little worried about radical movements joining in the workers’ celebration to upset events.”
Things you didn't know about Marine Le Pen Fri, May 5, 2017 Marine Le Pen is a French politician who is the president of the National Front, a national-conservative political party in France and one of its main political forces. Play slideshow AFP/Getty Images 1 of 10 Described as more democratic and republican than her nationalist father, she has led a movement of "de-demonization of the Front National" to detoxify it and soften its image
We’re just a little worried about radical movements joining in the workers’ celebration to upset events Police spokesperson
France has remained under a state of emergency since November 2015, when a security alert was issued following the Paris terror attacks. The country was then rocked by further devastation when a lorry ploughed through crowds celebrating Bastille Day on July 14, 2016. Ms Le Pen’s rally will be opened with an address from Eurosceptic, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, whom she has pledged will be her prime minister if she wins the French presidency.
GETTY A destroyed Marine Le Pen presidential campaign poster | {
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L'offre de parkings à vélo sécurisés Véligo devrait fortement s'élargir dans les prochains mois à Paris. Ce service géré par Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM) permet au détenteur d'une carte Navigo de disposer d'une place à l'abri pour sa bicyclette, contre un abonnement annuel de 20 euros.
Valérie Pécresse (LR), la présidente d'IDFM, s'apprête à écrire à la maire de Paris, Anne Hidalgo (PS), sur ce dossier. Fin novembre, la présidente de la région avait annoncé son projet de déployer 7 000 nouvelles places Véligo dans Paris.
Désormais, on en sait un peu plus sur les lieux où ces parkings, d'une capacité de 20 à 500 places, seront implantés. Ile-de-France Mobilités a identifié les 16 sites parisiens où il souhaite les aménager. Les gares de Lyon, Saint-Lazare et Bercy ; les arrêts de tram (notamment le long du T3), les grands carrefours de Paris (Denfert-Rochereau, Nation, Neuilly-Porte Maillot, Porte de Clichy, Château de Vincennes) et quelques gares de RER (Auber et les Halles) sont retenus pour accueillir ces équipements. Aucune date n'est pour l'instant avancée pour leur ouverture.
Les vélostations de la Ville de Paris intégrées à Véligo ?
« Ecologique, rapide, fluide, le vélo est une solution d'avenir pour les déplacements des Franciliens et je souhaite tripler sa pratique en Île-de-France d'ici 2021, déclare Valérie Pécresse. Pour cela, la Région a mis en place un plan vélo doté de 100 M€ et Île-de-France Mobilités a déjà labellisé 8 000 places de stationnement Véligo. En septembre, nous allons également lancer Véligo location, le plus grand service de location longue durée de vélo à assistance électrique du monde ».
A ce jour, Véligo compte seulement 200 à Paris, à Montparnasse, gare de l'Est et Rosa-Parks. Ces sites sont saturés et il est parfois nécessaire de s'inscrire sur une liste d'attente pour en bénéficier.
Les 7 000 nouveaux emplacements parisiens devraient s'ajouter aux 1 000 annoncés d'ici fin 2020 par la Ville de Paris dans la « vélostation » de Montparnasse, ainsi qu'aux 300 places prévues dans celle de gare de Lyon dès 2019.
Newsletter - L'essentiel de l'actu Chaque matin, l'actualité vue par Le Parisien Chaque matin, l'actualité vue par Le Parisien Votre adresse mail est collectée par Le Parisien pour vous permettre de recevoir nos actualités et offres commerciales. En savoir plus
A ce propos, IDFM suggère que « les travaux menés, en partie avec les équipes d'Ile-de-France Mobilités, sur les vélostations parisiennes » puissent « utilement être intégrés au service Véligo » afin de « permettre une lisibilité de l'offre » pour les usagers.
Esquisse de la vélostation de Montparnasse, où la Ville de Paris va créer 1000 places de stationnement vélo sécurisées d’ici 2020. /Mairie de Paris | {
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New Delhi: The budget allocation for health in the five years to 31 March 2017 is less than half the total funds promised in the 12th Plan (2012-17), according to a parliamentary panel report.
The total budget allocation made by the Union government in the five years to 31 March 2017 works out to just 46.5% of the funding originally envisaged for the National Health Mission (NHM) and the department of health and family welfare, according to the report tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
The Planning Commission had approved a total outlay of ₹ 1.93 trillion for the NHM and ₹ 2.69 trillion for the health department for the 12th Plan. However, the total budget allocation made by the centre in the five years is just ₹ 90,001 crore for the NHM, a shortfall of 46.55% and ₹ 1.25 trillion for the health department, which works out to be 46.59% of the funding originally envisaged.
The panel appreciated the high utilization rates of the allocated funds. The overall NHM releases made during 2012-17 were as high as 98%, implying that the allocated amounts are being utilized effectively.
However, the allocation deficit is reflected in the slow progress in infrastructure building. The 12th Plan targeted the construction or strengthening of 300 district public health labs to improve the quality of data and outbreak investigations. However, till February, only 111 labs in 29 states were functional.
“The worst impact of low budget allocation is on human resources. Either the posts remain vacant or employees are hired on contractual basis which adversely effects hospital services," said Bijoya Roy, assistant professor (public health), Centre for Women’s Development Studies.
Similarly, under the 12th Plan, burns units had to be established at 67 medical colleges and 19 district hospitals. But, so far, only 43 burn units, including 13 in district hospitals, have been approved by the screening committee for trauma and burns.
The department of health research is also facing a fund crunch. Though the 12th Plan outlay was ₹ 10,029 crore, only ₹ 3,066.60 crore had been allocated.
Premier institutes such as Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have had to bear the brunt too. Its 12th Plan outlay was ₹ 4,770 crore, which was also the actual cost of schemes and projects approved by the cabinet. However, the ICMR has been given only ₹ 2,591 crore during 2012-17.
The states that have invested the most in health are Kerala, Sikkim, Mizoram, Goa, Meghalaya, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. These are also the states whose public health expenditure per capita is the highest. The states whose public health expenditure as well as per capita health expenditure are low include Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh.
The panel also noted that barring a few states, most have no mechanism in place to ensure that the additional state health financing following the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission indeed gets allocated and spent. While Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Tamil Nadu have been able to effectively implement the new mode of transfer of funds from the state treasury to the state health society, others still have to catch up.
The panel observed that 220 utilization certificates (UCs) amounting to ₹ 3,223.72 crore and 307 UCs amounting to ₹ 4,302.61 crore are pending under the Reproductive and Child Health Flexible Pool and Mission Flexible Pool, respectively. Similarly, the amount involved in pending UCs pertaining to the National Urban Health Mission is ₹ 1,606.32 crore. A delay in furnishing UCs delays transfer of central funds which, in turn, affects capital expenditure to be incurred by states. The panel noted that the oldest pending UC is of the year 2005, which suggests that the problem is endemic.
“India has one of the lowest levels of public financing of health in the world. Central budget allocations have been stagnant for many years, sapping the strength of the health system and keeping many of the country’s health indicators at the bottom even in South Asia. Unless central and state financing of health is stepped up to improve health services, especially in primary care, India’s development journey will hit roadblocks," said Srinath Reddy, president, Public Health Foundation of India.
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Distracted motorists are driving up a spike in tram collisions, with cars crashing into trams three times a day on average and 20 people seriously injured last year.
Collins Street is a particular hot spot, with nearly 80 dangerous crashes there in 2018, followed by Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street, which each had 42 collisions.
This car was hit on Elizabeth Street. Credit:Reddit/@hopefulpenguin
Motorists failing to look out for trams while turning right, performing a U-turn or merging are largely to blame for crashes rising to 1100 in 2018, up from 970 the year before.
The Public Transport Minister, Yarra Trams and the Transport Department are now calling on motorists and pedestrians to look out for trams, with half of the top 10 most dangerous sites in the CBD. | {
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All our flour is stoneground at the windmill from wheat grown in this country and can normally be bought at the mill during visiting times, and at Bakewell Farmers' Markets every month. For more about our flour, click here > | {
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One year after the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, the Las Vegas Review-Journal examined how the 10-minute attack changed the community. And how it didn’t.
Las Vegas police officers are silhouette during 58 seconds of silence in memory of the victims of the Oct. 1 attack, displayed above, during the Best of the Badge gala held by the Metropolitan Police Department Foundation at Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas on Friday, Sept. 14, 2018. Chase Stevens Las Vegas Review-Journal @csstevensphoto
Deb Dailey, president of the EMS Training Center of Southern Nevada, hugs Chris Philippsen at the conclusion of a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Deb Dailey, second from left, president of the EMS Training Center of Southern Nevada, Chris Philippsen and Kristine Schalk discuss the steps of healing at a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Deb Dailey, left, president of the EMS Training Center of Southern Nevada, and Chris Philippsen discuss the steps of healing at a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Deb Dailey, left, president of the EMS Training Center of Southern Nevada, Chris Philippsen and Kristine Schalk discuss their anxieties leading up to the anniversary of October 1 during a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Yvette Archuleta, middle, talks about her lingering anxiety leading up to the anniversary of Oct 1 during a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Yvette Archuleta talks about her lingering anxiety leading up to the anniversary of Oct 1 during a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Deb Dailey, left, president of the EMS Training Center of Southern Nevada, shares a moment with Chris Philippsen during a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Yvette Archuleta talks about her lingering anxiety leading up to the anniversary of Oct 1 during a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Deb Dailey, left, president of the EMS Training Center of Southern Nevada, Chris Philippsen and Kristine Schalk discuss their anxieties leading up to the anniversary of October 1 during a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Deb Dailey, left, president of the EMS Training Center of Southern Nevada, and Chris Philippsen discuss the steps of healing at a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Deb Dailey, left, president of the EMS Training Center of Southern Nevada, shares a moment with Chris Philippsen during a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Kristine Schalk reads a diagram addressing self care during a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Deb Dailey, second from left, president of the EMS Training Center of Southern Nevada, Chris Philippsen and Kristine Schalk discuss the steps of healing at a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Yvette Archuleta, middle, talks about her lingering anxiety leading up to the anniversary of Oct 1 during a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Deb Dailey, left, president of the EMS Training Center of Southern Nevada, Chris Philippsen and Kristine Schalk discuss the steps of healing at a local Route 91 survivors support group on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at Stoney's Rockin' Country, in Las Vegas. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
The Remembrance Wall at Las Vegas Community Healing Garden on South Casino Center Boulevard in downtown Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2018. K.M. Cannon Las Vegas Review-Journal @KMCannonPhoto
After belting out the familiar, moody guitar riff,country music star Jason Aldean reached for his microphone on the final night of the Route 91 Harvest festival.
“Some days it’s tough just gettin’ up,” he said to the 22,000 concertgoers.
Follow the Review Journal Coverage of Oct. 1 Anniversary
As the world now knows all too well, high above him, to the west, a man with 23 rifles shattered a window in his Mandalay Bay suite, beginning an attack that would not end until the shooter took his own life.
Fifty-eight died. More than 800 were injured.
Nearly a year has passed, yet so many questions remain. Las Vegas police couldn’t name a motive. The FBI is still trying to figure it out.
Survivors continue to seek mental health services and struggle with medical bills, even after receiving donation payouts in March.
A new memorial is in the pipeline, but no information has been released about where it will be or what it will look like.
Casino security policies have changed, but they’re not obvious, and officials are guarded about sharing details.
And bump stocks — the devices the gunman used to replicate automatic fire — remain legal in most states, including Nevada.
As the one-year milestone of the worst mass shooting in modern American history approaches, the Las Vegas Review-Journal examined how the 10-minute attack changed the community. And how it didn’t.
Mental health services
On Wednesday evenings, Stoney’s Rockin’ Country is silent save for the grumble of ceiling fans and the “how are you’s” of a hodgepodge of Route 91 shooting survivors.
“How was this week?” Deb Dailey, president of the EMS Training Center of Southern Nevada and the group’s leader, asked four attendees who had gathered on an August evening. “Good stuff? Bad stuff?”
The four are regulars in a group of anywhere from five to 20 survivors who meet weekly at the country music club to connect with others who were there that night.
“I always feel like I’m in a safe place when I’m with another survivor, when I’m in this room,” one attendee said. That day, all declined to share their names because of privacy concerns.
Though therapeutic, the Stoney’s group isn’t technically therapy. Members have access to counselors through partners at Desert Parkway Behavioral Health Hospital, but often they just find solace in the comfort of knowing they’re not alone.
In other parts of the city, mental health professionals continue to help those struggling with the traumas of Oct. 1. Bridge Counseling, for example, cares for people who survived the shooting or were traumatized secondarily, like helping a struggling loved one.
In recent months, CEO David Robeck said, more survivors are coming in, especially first responders who might be feeling less shame or stigma about getting help.
“We’re seeing more people who thought they had it under control but now realize they need help,” Robeck said.
That’s a common trauma response, according to Jordan Soper, a Henderson psychologist and secretary for the Nevada Psychological Association.
“Many people are very resilient and will say, ‘I can do it myself with self-medication and avoidance and distraction,’” Soper said, adding that many people first seek help up to a decade after their trauma. “Over time, those avoidance techniques don’t have the same influence.”
Anniversaries and holidays could cause those feelings to boil over, too, Soper said. She expects more survivors to reach out after this weekend’s memorials and events.
“Being almost a year later, it still shocks me that things still come up,” one survivor said.
In the wake of the attack, UNLV researcher Stephen Benning conducted a study on Las Vegans who both were and were not at the festival.
Six months later, he found that communitywide levels of post-traumatic stress and depression had returned to “normal,” but he couldn’t say the same for attendees.
“About one-third of those in our sample still (showed) post-traumatic stress symptom levels consistent with PTSD,” Benning said.
The venue
A year later, there’s no word on what, if anything, will happen to the Las Vegas Village grounds, where Route 91 took place.
Will the festival ever come back to another location?
Should it come back?
Concert promoter Live Nation and MGM Resorts International, the two companies behind the festival, declined to comment about any future plans.
Events that once took place at the Village, like the iHeartRadio Music Festival’s annual outdoor show in September, have since moved down the Strip to the Las Vegas Festival Grounds, which MGM also owns.
“I’m all for it coming back, especially for the people who truly love that event,” said William King, 39, a Route 91 survivor. “I think it would help out peoples’ hearts and minds.”
Another survivor, Jonathan Watkins, 26, said attending Route 91 again would be no riskier than getting in his car and navigating valley traffic.
“I always rhapsodize about seeing Route 91 return in some form,” he said.
After all, he said, a new tower was eventually built on the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, “and people enter it every day.”
A place to mourn
A sweeping memorial also was built after the the twin towers were destroyed.
In Las Vegas, discussions about a Route 91 memorial remain in the early stages. Gov. Brian Sandoval announced in July that he would chair a committee to create one, but no further details have been released.
Downtown, the Las Vegas Community Healing Garden will remain indefinitely.
The garden was organized and opened within a week of the attack. Since then, a more permanent wall honoring those killed has replaced the original.
A committee made up of landscapers and nursery owners also selected a company, Get Outdoors Nevada, to manage the memorial. The company has experience maintaining parks and trails, Executive Director Mauricia Baca said.
“This is a small project but a very impactful one, so there was an interest in having a group that was experienced,” Baca said.
The previous, temporary wall built out of wooden pallets was saved and stored, part of the collective memory of Oct. 1.
Money, money, money
The Las Vegas Victims’ Fund collected $31.4 million from donors between Oct. 2 and February.
In March, that money was distributed to 532 people, including relatives of those killed and people who were injured.
The Victims’ Fund included money that was donated through GoFundMe, the National Compassion Fund and an account at Nevada State Bank. The fund has since shut down.
Separately, the Nevada Victims of Crime program is helping with everything from medical bills to counseling costs, regardless of where survivors live. The only requirement is that applicants were at Route 91 when the attack occurred.
The program has received more than 5,300 applications for financial assistance related to the Oct. 1 shooting, which accounts for about a quarter of the people who were in attendance that night. The majority of those claims, 4,013, were filed within the first three months of the tragedy.
But it’s not too late: The deadline to apply is 11:59 p.m. on Oct. 1.
“We are still extremely busy and expect to be for the foreseeable future,” program manager Rebecca Salazar said.
California’s victims-of-crime program has been augmenting Nevada’s program, which means California residents were eligible for funding from both state’s programs.
In November, representatives of similar programs in Pennsylvania and New Mexico said they “potentially” would be able to augment Nevada’s program. But no other states ended up assisting, Salazar said.
Changes in casino security
After the attack, the security policies of Strip resorts were scrutinized, and executives grappled with how to enhance guest safety without diminishing the carefree appeal of a resort.
Do you install metal detectors? Inspect bags? Check occupied rooms on a daily basis?
Resort officials do not generally comment on security strategy. But Mandalay Bay and other Strip casinos have made changes, former Las Vegas police Detective Phil Ramos said.
The properties have hired additional security staff, improved training, employed new high-tech equipment and increased ‘’low-level’’ guest profiling, he said.
MGM Resorts also created an emergency response team to address security risks. At least nine former military and SWAT officers make up the new armed rapid-response unit, a study of LinkedIn profiles showed.
Ramos described it as a civilian SWAT team. Caesars Entertainment Corp. also has created such a team.
Strip operators do not inspect arriving guest’s luggage , but some have tightened up policies regarding inspecting rooms if guests leave a “Do Not Disturb” sign on their door for more than 24 hours.
Gun control
In the days following the Las Vegas shooting, lawmakers filed a flurry of bills to ban bump stocks.
The Las Vegas gunman used the devices on 13 of his semiautomatic rifles, allowing them to fire rapidly like automatic weapons.
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans called for an administrative rule change through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to tighten regulations on bump stocks, a measure also endorsed by the National Rifle Association.
A year after the shooting, the ATF has closed a public comment period on the matter and is expected to finalize its review of bump stock regulation by early next year. On Friday, the White House said it is moving forward with a proposed regulation to ban bump stocks.
Bipartisan legislation in the House and Senate to ban or tighten regulations on bump stocks is bottled up in committees, unlikely to be heard in the 115th Congress, which ends in early January when the 116th Congress is sworn in.
By contrast, congressional failure to address bump stocks in legislation has been picked up by states. Eight states have passed legislation to ban the devices. Nevada is not one of them, but some local retailers have stopped stocking them.
Gunshot detection
In November, the Metropolitan Police Department announced it would begin using ShotSpotter, acoustic technology that alerts authorities to gunshots.
The technology was first deployed in northeast valley neighborhoods as part of a pilot program, Capt. James LaRochelle told news media.
He said that the sensor system was not a result of Oct. 1, but that the department would examine the viability of installing similar sensors on the Strip and Fremont Street.
Since then, though, no sensors have been installed at either location, said Metro Lt. Dori Koren, who works in Metro’s technical operations division.
Koren said ShotSpotter is most valuable in neighborhoods with a high frequency of violence, improving police response times.
“In comparison, we are not sure if the technology would be as valuable in preventing low frequency but high impact events such as mass attackers or sniper situations,” Koren said in a statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “These types of events often occur in unique environments that are difficult to assess with any one technology solution. However, we are still evaluating the gunshot detection system, as well as other options for improving our ability to combat all forms of crime.”
Investigation
In August, Las Vegas police released a final report on the wide-reaching investigation, but investigators were unable to determine a motive. The shooter had no known connection or affiliation with any sort of extremist ideology, authorities have said.
The FBI is expected to release its own report sometime after the anniversary. Special Agent Aaron Rouse told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in December that the report will try to surmise motive, “which is what everybody wants to know.”
He said the FBI interviewed more than 400 people who knew or interacted with the gunman. He also said the agency has “various psychological and sociological experts” working the case.
“As I sit here today, I believe that we are learning as much as we possibly can about why the subject did what they did,” Rouse said.
Contact Rachel Crosby at [email protected] or 702-387-5290. Follow @rachelacrosby on Twitter. Contact Jessie Bekker at [email protected] or 702-380-4563. Follow @jessiebekks on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writers Jason Bracelin, Michael Scott Davidson, Nicole Raz, Gary Martin, Mike Shoro and Todd Prince contributed to this report. | {
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De investeringen van het kabinet Rutte-III blijven achter. Voor dit jaar ligt er nog 728 miljoen euro op de plank. De afzonderlijke ministers hebben tot de herfst om te onderbouwen hoe ze het geld willen uitgeven.
Lukt dat niet, dan bestaat de kans dat sommige plannen uiteindelijk op de lange baan worden geschoven.
Uitgeven
Na jaren van crisis wil dit kabinet geld uitgeven. Van defensie tot zorg: vrijwel alle ministeries mogen komen met ideeën. Dit jaar is al 5 miljard euro vrijgemaakt. Voor de hele kabinetsperiode gaat het om een bedrag van 12 miljard euro.
Maar voordat de ministers het geld krijgen, moeten ze een uitgewerkt plan indienen. Dat plan wordt beoordeeld door een speciaal team van het ministerie van Financiën, dat bekijkt of het plan betrouwbaar, effectief en controleerbaar is. Zolang het niet is goedgekeurd, krijgt het ministerie het geld niet.
Zo wacht het ministerie van Justitie en Veiligheid op 159 miljoen euro voor de politie, het oprollen van drugsbendes en het verbeteren van het strafrecht. Bronnen zeggen dat deze plannen later vandaag bekend zullen worden gemaakt. De brandweer- en politievrijwilligers moeten nog wat meer geduld hebben. Daar gaat het om 1 miljoen euro.
De minister van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit moet nog voor 125 miljoen euro aan plannen voor varkenshouders en jonge boeren nader onderbouwen. De minister van VWS is bezig met wijzigingen in een plan voor topsporters (3 miljoen euro).
Personeel
De Belastingdienst heeft al langer problemen met het doen van investeringen. Dit jaar moet de dienst, volgens de begroting, nog voor 39 miljoen euro aan ICT en nieuwe medewerkers uitgeven.
Het vinden van voldoende personeel blijkt ook vaak een knelpunt bij het uitvoeren van plannen. Door de economische groei zijn er meer banen, dus kunnen werknemers kiezen. Vaak kunnen ze elders in de maatschappij meer verdienen. Dit speelt bijvoorbeeld een rol bij de Belastingdienst en ook bij Defensie.
Handig
Mocht het uiteindelijk zo zijn dat sommige plannen geen goedkeuring krijgen voor dit najaar, dan verdwijnt het uiteindelijk in de grote pot. Dat lijkt handig, vooral nu de minister van Financiën extra geld nodig heeft voor het gasbesluit.
Toch kan hij de niet-bestede bedragen niet zomaar voor andere doeleinden gebruiken. Het geld is, zoals dat heet, geoormerkt. Als de politiek heeft besloten dat het extra geld naar sport moet, dan kan dat niet zomaar worden uitgegeven aan snelwegen.
Dit jaar wordt het gasbesluit nog deels gefinancierd door meevallers. Dat is geld dat eerst op de begroting stond van de ministeries van Zorg en Sociale Zaken, maar nu over is doordat er minder patiënten en AOW'ers zijn.
Maar dat is geen langetermijnoplossing voor het gas. Met Prinsjesdag moet duidelijk worden hoe minister Hoekstra van Financiën de gaskosten de komende jaren gaat dekken.
Minister Hoekstra zegt dat zijn collega's heel veel ideeën hebben om het geld te gebruiken. Hij verwacht dat het ook de komende tijd wordt uitgegeven. | {
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Strolling with her son by the lake, she spotted the telltale crown of flyaway hair. Bernie Sanders was sitting at a table with business people, eating an ice cream cone.
Ashley Horton had to say something to the man she calls an inspiration. As a single mother and housekeeper struggling just to pay for food and rent, she felt Sanders gave her bearings in a political universe that seemed abstract and distant before. She knelt next to him and blurted out that she was a huge fan.
Sanders is accustomed to such adulation, and a fair share of grievances, in his adopted hometown, where he navigates without the usual important person’s buffers — no protective entourage or gated, guarded house, not even a hedge in his front yard.
No other presidential contenders have such long, symbiotic relationships with the cities where they live. Burlington shaped Sanders as Sanders shaped Burlington, so much so that it’s hard to consider one without the other.
The Church Street Marketplace is a pedestrian mall and the site of festivals in Burlington, Vt., home to presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
As he drives along North Avenue or College Street in his 10-year-old Chevy Aveo, he sees a city that reflects his worldview, where wealth is modest, public space is cherished, and residents are liberal, engaged and collectively powerful enough to counter big-money interests.
This small city that happens to be Vermont’s largest is far closer to Montreal than to any big city in the United States. Its low-rise blocks of old brick storefronts and clapboard homes can be walked end to end in an hour. With a skyline etched mostly by treetops and steeples, it could be mistaken for many a New England mill town but for a youthful energy and streak of quirkiness, sparked in no small part by the students of the University of Vermont. This municipality of about 43,000 has given the world the band Phish, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and a fiery populist who happens to be one of the nation’s leading Democratic candidates for president.
(Chris Keller / Los Angeles Times)
Here, Sanders, 78, is less the eminent statesman than the neighbor who talked your ear off for years about a rigged capitalist system — and somehow got world famous for his views. He’s the fervent yet frugal revolutionary you might spot one day at a rally for tenants’ rights and the next day at the Ace Hardware store looking for a flange nut.
In 2009, Sanders moved from the working-class South End near downtown to a four-bedroom, vinyl-sided colonial in a more detached, suburban part of the city called the New North End, a neighborhood carved from forest in the 1950s for ranch homes, cul-de-sacs and big backyards.
But he is still seen all over town.
When he shops at Hannaford supermarket near his house, or goes to coffee at the Penny Cluse Cafe on Cherry Street in the city center, he moves with purpose, head down, acknowledging all manner of greetings by throwing out one of his ungainly arms and a thick Brooklyn “hullo.”
His annoyance with glad-handing and small talk is legendary. Even his friends call him “abrasive” and concede he’d be the last candidate you’d want to have a beer with. Horton compares him to a “surly uncle you know has a soft spot.”
Which was why she was so moved that he not only stopped to listen to her, but got up from his table to watch her 4-year-old son, Calai, skateboard on the sidewalk. She feels he truly understands her predicament.
“I’m as small as it gets,” said Horton, 37. “I’m a woman, 100% single parent, below the poverty line. I always feel like he is speaking to me.”
Ashley Horton, who met Bernie Sanders along Burlington’s waterfront several years ago, likens him to a “surly uncle you know has a soft spot.” (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Everyone here seems to have a Sanders memory — and a Sanders impression.
“We talk about six degrees of separation,” said C.D. Mattison, a digital designer from Alaska who has lived in Burlington since 1989. “In Vermont, it’s one or two degrees. We see Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy and Peter Welch walking around town. They are ever-present and accessible. It’s wonderful.” (Leahy is the state’s senior senator and Welch is its sole congressman.)
Mattison has complicated feelings about Sanders, whom she supports for senator but not president. She says the fanatical following he cultivates has muffled political discourse in Burlington, to the point many Hillary Clinton supporters in 2016 felt they had to keep their views to themselves.
“There was an underground,” says Mattison, 54.
While she deeply appreciates how he ignited the progressive movement in Burlington and shepherded that message to the nation, she sees a blind spot that he never reconciled, perhaps because he is grounded in a city that is 83% white (down from 97% from when he was mayor).
“When I hear Bernie talk about race, gender bias and LGBTQ issues, it feels like he’s wagging his finger in my face and waving me off,” says Mattison, who is black and gay. “Bernie’s ‘revolution’ message is that economic justice is the cure and all the rest, everything that is personal to me, is noise.”
Longtime Burlington resident C.D. Mattison supports Bernie Sanders as a senator, but he isn’t her choice for president. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
::
As mayor in the 1980s, Sanders blew up a stodgy Democratic political machine and ushered in a new era of progressive leadership.
In turn, Burlington gave Sanders a moonshot to the national stage, first as a left-wing counterpoint to the Reagan administration, then as an independent congressman and senator, and now, for the second time, as a leading White House contender.
He never had to alter his rhetoric or face losing his popularity here. Neither Burlington nor the rest of Vermont has the deep racial and social tensions that caused the electorate to toggle right or left as it did in larger, more diverse cities — no visceral fights over school segregation, busing, gangs, violent crime, police brutality and racial profiling. Sanders could stay the left course — and largely did — without major blowback. He was reelected to the Senate in 2018 with more than 89% of the vote in Burlington.
“You can take a speech he made in 1980 and recognize everything he is saying today,” says Terry Bouricius, a former City Council member and longtime Sanders ally. “Except the word ‘millionaire’ would be replaced by ‘billionaire’ now.”
(Chris Keller / Los Angeles Times)
Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Sanders landed in Vermont full time in 1968 at age 27, swept up in a back-to-the-land movement of young urbanites swarming the Green Mountains to live in communes, collectives, farmhouses, school buses, tents and tepees. Sanders moved into an old sugar shack in the dirt-road community of Stannard, in the poor, isolated corner of the state known as the Northeast Kingdom.
In a mostly Republican-ruled state of only 400,000 people, these hundred thousand or so newcomers threatened to upend its politics. In 1972, Playboy magazine called Vermont the “dropout mecca of the Northeastern United States” and warned that the “the nation’s alienated young” could “stage a take-over” at the ballot.
What happened was more of a melding as the upstart “flatlanders” were forced to become more practical to survive rural life and harsh winters. After a year or two, many, including Sanders, left the rugged woods for civilization.
In Burlington, Sanders and other New York refugees turned their utopian visions into more practical efforts to improve cities for the poor and working class. Some started food cooperatives or tenant and welfare rights groups. Others launched progressive-minded nonprofits and businesses, such as the eco-friendly household products company Seventh Generation and an ice cream shop called Ben & Jerry’s in a shuttered gas station.
A former lumber port and mill town, Burlington has long been a shipping and rail hub, rising from a bluff along Lake Champlain to a hilltop where the University of Vermont was founded in 1791. It is a city lashed hard to nature. Surrounded by water, mountain and forest, it is buffeted by subarctic winds in winter, when snowdrifts and vast starry nights stir a sense of remoteness. In spring, residents burst from their dens, flocking to the beach and trails and bike paths, gathering for sunset in Battery Park. In summer, neighborhoods flutter with honey locust, silver linden, sugar maple, red oak, white ash and pignut hickory, all ready to ignite in fall with incendiary color.
Bernie Sanders led the push to restore and preserve for public use the area that is now the Burlington Waterfront Park and Promenade on the shores of Lake Champlain. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Burlington long drew working families from French Canada, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Lithuania. Many lived in the Old North End, a densely packed district of sagging cottages, small groceries and corner bars. They worked on the docks, at the rail yard, the Queen City Cotton Co., and later in manufacturing plants making IBM semiconductors, General Electric guns and missile systems, Burton Snowboards.
While there was no big racial divide, the economic one was clear. The lumber and textile barons, the corporate vice presidents and college deans, lived on the hill in big Greek and Colonial revival homes overlooking the city, the lake and the New York Adirondacks beyond. They sailed yachts in summer and rubbed shoulders at the men’s-only Ethan Allen Club downtown. The working class — including Sanders — lived below in rickety apartments and houses surrounding downtown.
About this series Presidential candidates spend most of their time on the road, campaigning from one town to another. But what is the America they see from their own front doorstep? In this series of stories, Times reporters explore the communities that shaped some of the top Democratic candidates and their campaigns.
Sanders moved to a one-bedroom apartment in the Old North End. He produced history videos about New England he sold to schools, and wrote freelance articles. He had broken up with the mother of his young son, Levi, and was figuring out how to make a life for himself.
“He really had to struggle with poverty as an adult,” says Greg Guma, author of “The Peoples Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution,” who has known Sanders for 48 years. “I lived across the street from him. He had trouble paying rent.”
But Sanders’ political ambition was as resolute as a sniper’s shot. As soon as he arrived in Burlington in 1971, he joined the state’s democratic socialist Liberty Union Party. He ran unsuccessfully on its ticket for Senate twice and governor twice within four years. In his final run for governor, he had his best result, winning 6.1% of the vote.
Despite the losses, he had found his life’s passion: campaigning.
Sanders left the Liberty Union party in 1978 and would not join another until last year, when Democratic National Committee rules required him to sign a loyalty pledge before he could make a second run at the party’s presidential nomination.
“He wanted to lead a movement and not be accountable to a central structure,” Guma said.
At the end of 1980, Sanders ran for mayor, and he and his volunteers knocked on doors all over the city. Having been immersed in big national issues like income inequality and tax reform, labor and civil rights and the peace movement, he had to adjust to the pot-hole politics of a small city.
Bernie Sanders’ hometown of Burlington, Vt., runs entirely on renewable energy. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
But he saw his worldview writ in the disparities between the hill and the flatter environs. He noticed how the streets on the hill were well-paved, while his were cracked and cratered, and how after a snowstorm the plows always hit the hill first. The working class might wallow in drifts for days. He listened to residents and small-business owners complain of a good ol’ boy network running the city with little input from ordinary citizens.
This tension all came to the surface in a massive project backed by the longtime Democratic mayor, Gordon Paquette. Developers wanted to turn the industrial wasteland that was the city’s lakefront — shuttered tank farms, mills, docks and rail yards — into a complex of upscale condos and hotels. The progressives in town, and many other residents, wanted that shoreline turned into a public space.
Sanders railed against the project with the slogan “Burlington is not for sale.”
On election day, to the shock of even his most ardent supporters, Sanders won by 10 votes.
When he parked his old beater in the mayor’s parking slot early on, he got a ticket, recalls his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders. “The officer didn’t believe that could be the mayor’s car.”
His opponents, including 11 of the 13 city aldermen, decried his victory, saying he would destroy the economy. They stymied his every move, rejected every appointment he made, and even fired his secretary. He maneuvered around them by creating various mayor’s councils that turned into enduring city services when more fellow progressives swept onto the City Council in subsequent elections.
The city Sanders walks around today is shaped in many ways by the policies he set in motion as mayor, from the tree canopy to the string of parks and bike path along the waterfront.
Bernie Sanders’ mayoral administration started an economic development agency that helped buoy small businesses with loans and lure employers to Burlington. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
While his leftist rhetoric never stopped, his governance was more often practical, occasionally even conservative — rejecting a property tax hike, for instance, or putting the city’s insurance out for competitive bidding.
“He really paid attention to the nuts and bolts of the city government,” says Peter Clavelle, who served as Sanders’ chief of economic development and succeeded him as mayor for 15 years, carrying on his left-leaning agenda.
Sanders’ Arts Council spurred a thriving arts and music scene. His administration started a Little League in the Old North End, a volunteer network that planted thousands of trees, and an economic development agency that helped buoy small businesses with loans and lure employers like Burton Snowboards.
A tribute to the late jazz musician Joe Burrell, a large presence in the Burlington music scene who influenced other local artists, including the band Phish. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
“Bernie is gung-ho about small business,” says Ben Cohen, the Ben of Ben & Jerry’s, which has launched two “Bernie” flavors in recent years, along with Phish Food. “He came in and had this attitude of, ‘What can the city government do to serve the city better?’”
Sanders did not conjure all of these ideas on his own. He listened to community leaders, formed neighborhood councils, hired technocrats he trusted and took their advice.
“One of the strengths that lasted, even to this day, is citizen engagement,” says Brenda Torpy, whom Sanders appointed housing director. “He’d tell us to go to the neighborhoods, go to the organizations and find out what they want and need.”
During his eight years as mayor, council meetings were packed and raucous, and voter turnout surged. In 1979, just over 7,000 people voted in the mayoral election. In 1987, over 12,000 did.
One of his main goals was to rein in real estate speculation and gentrification, to keep the tenants in their homes. In 1984, he established the Burlington Community Land Trust, which started buying and renovating rundown rental properties on the Old North End. The model was to rent them at fixed rates or sell them at low prices, while retaining ownership of the land and sharing in any value appreciation. Now called the Champlain Housing Trust, it is the largest such nonprofit in the nation and has 8% of the city’s housing units.
No nut or bolt was too small. “When the snow fell, he would be out with the plows riding with the driver,” Jane Sanders says.
While he brought free public concerts to Battery Park on the bluff, Sanders also went on a campaign to stop noisy late-night college parties, even accompanying police to dress down the revelers.
Large, old homes line a street in Bernie Sanders’ longtime hometown of Burlington, Vt. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Sanders is credited by many for the success of the city, which regularly lands high on lists of the “most livable” towns in the country — a ranking that forces him to perpetually confront what he sees as a great evil: gentrification. Outside investors and vacation-home buyers see Burlington’s housing stock as a golden opportunity, to his dismay. Sanders has taken his fight for tenants and working-class homeowners to larger arenas.
After his eight years as mayor, he brought his sharp-edged persona to the House of Representatives, where he served as Vermont’s independent congressman from 1991 to 2007, before taking a seat in the Senate that year.
Stu McGowan, a longtime developer of affordable housing on the Old North End, climate change activist and the head umpire of the baseball league that Sanders started, says the senator’s cantankerousness is part of his charm in Vermont, where honesty, frugality and independence are exalted, and polish is seen as pretentiousness.
Stu McGowan, a longtime activist in Burlington, says Bernie Sanders’ cantankerous persona plays well in Vermont, where people aren’t impressed by polish but by honesty, frugality and independence. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
“You’d go to fundraising parties, and he’d just be sitting in the corner and you’d go to talk to him, and he’d do exactly what you see him doing now: He’d lecture you for three hours, and then he’d be like, ‘See ya.’”
McGowan, who is much more whimsical and dyes his hair a color called “electric banana,” says the Sanders the country has gotten to know in the last 10 years is the nicest version he’s seen.
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Falta de estatura, de calidad, precio elevado... Por diferentes motivos, ninguno de los tres centrales brasileños fichará este verano por el Barça.
MARQUINHOS
No es una torre y se parece a Mascherano
Marquinhos se ha hecho un nombre en la Roma este curso como un central de mucho futuro. Cumplió 19 años el 14 de mayo y su cotización ha subido como la espuma. Los informes del brasileño son buenos en Can Barça pero se considera que no reúne la estatura requerida para minimizar una de las asignaturas pendientes en las acciones a balón parado.
Sus 183 centímetros son algo insuficientes teniendo en cuenta que Tito Vilanova quiere un central muy alto. Además, ya dispone de Mascherano, con unas características similares a las de Marquinhos, que destaca por su rapidez en el corte. Las necesidades son otras pero el romanista sigue gustando.
DAVID LUIZ
Ni por precio, ni por calidad
De David Luiz hay informes en el Barça desde hace varios años. En la época del Benfica se le siguió y figuró entre las opciones a reforzar la defensa la pasada temporada pero ni por condiciones ni por su precio ha acabado de convencer para acometer una inversión que no bajaría nunca de los 25 millones de euros.
Mourinho parece haber dado el OK a venderlo pero el Chelsea pagó 30 'kilos' en 2011 y quiere amortizarlos al máximo. Su altura (1,89) cumpliría con lo que desea Tito Vilanova en la retaguardia pero el cuerpo técnico azulgrana, que valora su salida de balón, cree que es algo lento para complementarse con Gerard Piqué, que no tiene precisamente la velocidad como una de sus grandes virtudes.
THIAGO SILVA
Un traspaso alto y una ficha inasumible
Si no hubiera dinero de por medio, Thiago Silva sería la prioridad del Barça de Tito Vilanova para la próxima temporada. El año pasado ya era la prioridad y hubo contactos pero el central brasileño se descolgó con unas exigencias inaceptables en el Camp Nou.
El PSG sí aceptó pagarle 8,5 millones de euros anuales limpios de impuestos, por encima de Xavi e Iniesta y sólo superado en el Barça por Leo Messi.
El club francés acabó pagando 42 'kilos' al Milan. Su traspaso no bajaría de ahí este verano al conjunto azulgrana, que no ha movido ficha ahora. Thiago Silva, a tres meses de cumplir los 29, tampoco está por la labor de bajar su ficha. Por eso no será azulgrana. | {
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Detroit Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy has backtracked on comments he made suggesting NBA referees are biased towards LeBron James.
In an interview with ESPN at the end of the first quarter of the Pistons' 106-101 loss in the opening game of their Eastern Conference playoff series with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Van Gundy expressed frustration at the supposedly favourable calls James received.
"A couple calls have upset our guys," Van Gundy said. "They've got to understand, LeBron's LeBron. They're not going to call offensive fouls on him. He gets to do whatever he wants. They've got to understand that."
However, Van Gundy offered a different view on the officiating after the game, saying: "Look, I thought it evened out really well. But early on, I thought there were two pretty obvious offensive fouls down there on him.
"But it's two calls in an entire game after that. Look, the refereeing had nothing to do with tonight. They did a good job. It went both ways. I thought they did a really good job. It was decided by the players on the floor, as it should be.
"There's some things that I regret, myself. I'm proud of our guys. I thought they competed hard. I think there's some things I got to do to help them a little bit more."
The eighth-seeded Pistons led the top-seed Cavaliers by seven points with just over 11 minutes remaining in Cleveland, but Kevin Love's late three-pointers made the difference in sending the hosts 1-0 up in the series.
Kyrie Irving (31 points) and Love (28) led the way for the Cavaliers as the duo look to enjoy more profitable playoff campaigns having both suffered injuries in last year's postseason.
"Between Kyrie and myself, we've had many conversations about our playoff run being cut short," Love said.
"The way I look at it is an opportunity. I want to come out here, be really aggressive, have a next play type of mentality and just try to be one of the leaders out there and make an impact." | {
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A Georgia sheriff's office says a man robbing a Macon McDonald's accidentally shot himself in the thigh, foiling his escape.
News outlets report the Bibb County Sheriff's Office says an armed man wearing a wig entered the restaurant Saturday night and ordered a manager to take him to a safe. Deputies say the manager complied before fleeing with another employee. It says they then heard a gunshot and saw the thief flee. Witnesses told deputies they later heard a man screaming for help.
Deputies say 26-year-old Donte Sherrod Grayer was found wearing only his boxers and lying near a wig, money and other clothing. Deputies say he was identified as the suspect and taken to a hospital in stable condition. They say he'll be arrested upon his release. | {
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Key Specs What do the dashes mean?
Lenovo - Yoga 730 2-in-1 15.6" 4K UHD Touch-Screen Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 - 512GB SSD - Platinum Silver Dell - Inspiron 2-in-1 13.3" 4K Ultra HD Touch-Screen Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - 512GB SSD + Optane - Black Dell - Inspiron 15.6" 7000 2-in-1 4K Ultra HD Touch-Screen Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB - GeForce MX250 - 512GB SSD + Optane - Black 2-in-1 Design 2-in-1 Design Info Data Not Available — Data Not Available — Data Not Available — Backlit Keyboard Backlit Keyboard Info Data Not Available — Data Not Available — Data Not Available — Screen Size Screen Size Info Data Not Available — Data Not Available — Data Not Available — Touch Screen Touch Screen Info Data Not Available — Data Not Available — Data Not Available — Storage Type Data Not Available — Data Not Available — Data Not Available — Total Storage Capacity Data Not Available — Data Not Available — Data Not Available — | {
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Euro and Australian catalysts lay ahead, making this consolidation in EUR/AUD probably one of the best setups to watch to start the new week.
Intermarket Snapshot
Equity Markets Bond Yields Commodities & Crypto DAX: 12093.75 -0.02%
FTSE: 7350.16 +0.06%
S&P 500: 2893.74 +0.23%
DJIA: 26136.70 +0.18% US 10-yr 2.182% UNCH
Bund 10-YR -0.242% 0.014
UK 10-YR: 0.855% +0.008
JPN 10-YR: -0.131% -0.004 Oil: 52.13 -0.72%
Gold: 1344.20 -0.02%
Bitcoin: 9313.54 +2.97%
Etherium: 273.17 +0.90%
Fresh Market Headlines & Economic data:
Upcoming Potential Catalysts on the Forex Calendar:
U.S. TIC Net Long-Term transactions at 9:00 pm GMT
New Zealand Westpac consumer sentiment at 10:00 pm GMT
Australia monetary policy meeting minutes at 2:30 am GMT (June 18)
Australia house price index at 2:30 am GMT (June 18)
ZEW Economic sentiment at 10:00 am GMT (June 18)
Euro area trade balance & CPI at 10:00 am GMT (June 18)
Canada manufacturing sales at 1:30 pm GMT (June 18)
U.S. building permits & housing starts at 1:30 pm GMT (June 18)
What to Watch: EUR/AUD
EUR/AUD has been in a pretty solid uptrend since the beginning of April, and recently made a strong move higher from 1.6100 to just about retest the 1.6400 ahead. But the pair has been in a tight 50 – 60 pip range over the last three sessions, setting up what could be a consolidation breakout play in the works.
And just ahead, we do have a few potential catalysts to helps support a short-term momentum move: the RBA meeting minutes and housing data from Australia, and a slew of data points ahead from Europe. None of the events are really top tier market movers, but with a big surprise and the right combination of updates, it is possible to get EUR/AUD moving within it’s daily ATR of around 70 – 80 pips, and maybe even break out.
So for the bulls, ideally a retest of the support area around 1.6300 would give the best potential R:R and probability of success if the euro data is positive while Aussie data disappoints. But given today’s move is pretty strong, a break of the 1.6400 area should be considered if the data plays nice with price action.
For the bears, bad euro data or even more dovish commentary could bring in euro bears quickly, and if the market held 1.6400 strong after the Australian data, shorting there gives you a good potential R:R. And obviously, if we see a strong momentum move lower ahead of European session, a break of 1.6300 on weak European data/ strong Aussie data (or even positive trade news) would likely draw in sellers and still give a potentially good R:R given that the next support area may not hit until the May/June support area around 1.6100. | {
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A record proportion of London homeowners are selling up to buy cheaper property in the north and Midlands, using profits made in the capital to splurge on bigger homes.
Research by agents Hamptons International found the proportion of Londoners leaving the capital for northern England or the Midlands had tripled since 2010.
The average Londoner quitting the capital pays £424,610 for their new property, enough to buy a large detached house in a good suburb of Birmingham but which only pays for a two-bed flat above a shop in east London.
Aneisha Beveridge, research analyst at Hamptons, said: “With affordability stretched, more Londoners are moving out of the capital to find their new home.”
Many London leavers were looking for a bigger home or better local schools, Hamptons said. Beveridge added that hefty stamp duty charges were also pushing second-movers out of the capital. “More people are making a bigger move and buying a larger home sooner to avoid having to pay stamp duty on additional moves as they trade up. For many, this means heading further north.”
Britain’s housing market is broken. Here’s how Labour will fix it | John Healey Read more
The average stamp duty bill for buying a detached home in the south is £14,780, compared with £5,358 in the north, Hamptons said.
But the absolute number of London leavers will strike many as surprisingly low. Hamptons said 30,280 Londoners sold their homes in the first half of 2018 to move out of the capital, a rise of 16% over the same period last year but below the level of 2007 and just a tiny fraction of the city’s 8.8 million population.
Most Londoners selling up move to the home counties, but the proportion going further afield has risen markedly in recent years. In 2008 one in 17 headed to the north or Midlands, but now the figure is one in five.
Some local housing markets are deluged by London buyers flush with cash from the capital’s superheated property market. Hamptons said in Bath and north-east Somerset 42% of all homes in the first half of 2018 were bought by Londoners.
Hamptons said the typical London leaver buying in the south-west of England paid nearly £550,000 for a home. It said moves to the south-west were not just about retirement, with evidence that many people are commuting long-distance back to the capital, often staying in London for a few days a week.
Other locations that have had a surge in London buyers include east Dorset, where 25% of homes were sold to ex-Londoners, and Leicester, where one in 10 homes were sold to Londoners in the first half of 2018.
In some towns, such as Hastings, the surge in Londoners is blamed for pushing up prices to levels that local residents cannot afford and creating gentrified enclaves.
Hamptons also looked at first-time buyer patterns. It found that one in three young adults living in London were unable to make their first property purchase in the city. Hamptons said that in the first half of 2018, 31% of first-time buyers living in London ended up buying outside the capital – almost double the proportion in 2013 (16%).
However, that was a slight improvement on last year, with the help-to-buy scheme assisting some purchasers. “But even though more Londoners are buying their first home in the capital than last year, more are being priced out of the south altogether,” Hamptons said.
Separate data released on Monday by Hometrack underlines the gulf between property prices in the capital and the rest of the country. It found that while prices in Belfast, Liverpool and Aberdeen remain below the level they were a decade ago, in London and Cambridge they are more than 65% higher.
It found that house prices in a quarter of the UK’s largest cities are struggling to recover to their level at the height of the financial crisis, with Belfast worst hit. Prices there are still 28% below the level of 2008.
In Liverpool, average prices are 1% below where they were a decade ago, while in Glasgow they are just 1% higher (£121,940) and 3% ahead in Newcastle (£128,641).
In contrast, homeowners in Cambridge have seen the value of their properties rocket by 70% on average, to £432,410.
Richard Donnell of Hometrack, said: “The fact house prices in some of our biggest cities are still recovering from the financial crisis shows how big an impact it had on the UK’s regional housing markets.
“While 2008 was the year when house prices fell at their fastest rate, they continued to fall for a further three to four years in the weaker performing markets as the impact of the recession and restricted credit availability hit the value of people’s homes.”
• This article was amended on 27 August 2018 to clarify that there is a record proportion, not a record number, of Londoners selling their homes and moving north.
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It's enough to put you off your breakfast! Incredible close-up images of everyday foods that are often less than appetising
These bizarre objects are enough to put you off your corn flakes. But in fact your breakfast could well be one of these 17 foods examined up close under the microscope.
The often alien-like landscapes show some of our favourite - and least loved - foods from strawberries and chocolate to broccoli and cauliflower.
Scientists have captured the images in laboratories during research into what makes our daily food.
Would you eat this? A strawberry seen in extreme close up
Crystalline: The same process is used to picture a grain of salt in extreme close up, revealing its regular structure
Rugged terrain: Instant coffee granules look to all intents and purposes like a rock formation in some area of natural beauty The real thing: This curious pitted landscape is actually an extreme close-up view of a coffee bean
Hidden beauty: A broccoli floret seen at such huge magnifications looks like a tulip Twins: On the left is a scanning electron micrograph of a red grape, the right image is of a white grape
Cornerstone of the Mediterranean diet: But tomatoes don't look quite as appetising when viewed at a nearly cellular level Which would you prefer? Sugar seen in an extreme close-up takes a regular crystalline configuration, while aspartame, a popular sweetener seen as the healthier choice, looks disconcertingly like flakes of dandruff
Hot, hot, hot! The open fruit and seeds from a bird's eye chilli pepper Super food: Two scanning electron micrographs reveal the inner structure of a blueberry
Arid: The centre of a dried star anise fruit looks like some kind of sinister deep sea arthropod
One of the most valuable of spices: A coloured scanning electron micrograph of saffron
Carnivore's choice: The fibrous, chewy texture of raw meat is revealed by the strands of muscle from which it is formed, and the fat around it looks as sticky and viscous as you would expect
After the barbecue's done its work... This image shows how meat is transformed by the cooking process
Regular pattern: A coloured scanning electron micrograph of a cauliflower | {
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Did you know that the law in the state of Florida requires two-party consent? This means that both the person recording video and the person being recorded must consent to being recorded when either person has a reasonable expectation of privacy. You know, like at a private fundraiser where the media isn’t allowed.
Furthermore, did you know that the secret video of Mitt Romney the media is currently using to try and destroy his campaign was recorded in Florida … without Mitt Romney’s consent, and when he obviously had a reasonable expectation of privacy?
The reason you don’t know that is because when it comes to protecting Barack Obama, the corrupt media doesn’t get all that wrapped up in the details of what is and isn’t legal or ethical. The Romney video is news; it’s a revealing moment from The Man Who Might Be President, and as a result we’re entering day four of the super-loop the media’s put the video on across every news outlet in America.
While I personally have a number of issues with the way in which the media is hyping the video and using it as a partisan weapon to protect Their Precious One, I do agree with the decision to broadcast the video. The video is news, it is revealing, and the man we’re learning about is pursuing the most powerful office in the world.
You see, in my heart, I’m a small “l” liberal who, above all, cherishes the First Amendment and believes that the media should not be restricted in any way other than the obvious surrounding national security and libel. There’s a bigger moral and ethical world than two party consent, especially when it comes to vetting a potential president.
I hate how the media is using the video, but regardless of the law, agree wholeheartedly that the media made the right decision in making the video public.
Which brings me to the Khalidi tape, where it seems a source is telling the media, specifically the L.A. Times, what can and can’t be told about a 2003 dinner Obama attended celebrating his longtime friend, Rashid Khalidi, a one-time spokesman for terror-leader Yasser Arafat
In an article written by Peter Wallsten during the 2008 election titled, “Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Obama,” we learned of the event, that there was video of the event, and that some of the night’s speakers accused Israel of terrorism and compared Jewish settlers to terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.
There’s also speculation Obama lavished praise on the terror-apologist Khalidi and that Bill Ayers was in attendance. You know, the domestic terrorist Obama says was “just a guy in the neighborhood.”
According to Wallsten, Obama was not one of the speakers hurling hate at the Jews and Israel, but I’d like to see that for myself. And with the Middle East on fire and the President seemingly indifferent to Israel’s upcoming showdown with Iran, the people and influences a then-41 year-old Obama marinated himself in just a year before launching a national political career, is as relevant today as it was in 2008.
And yet, the same media, that as I write this is replaying the illegally obtained and selectively edited ’47 percent’ video of Mitt Romney for the gajillionth time, refuses to release the full Khalidi tape or provide a full description of what the tape shows.
Suddenly the L.A. Times (and the rest of the media that refuses to press the L.A. Times to release the video) is concerned with laws and ethics based on a convenient standard involving journalistic sources. Which makes one wonder if the source involved only allowed the L.A. Times access to the video if in exchange they agreed to write an article complimentary to Obama.
The undercover video of Mitt Romney was taken and disseminated and broadcast illegally. The release of the Khalidi tape, however, would violate no laws and the idea that a source can hand over something and demand that only certain portions be reported upon is the only thing that’s unethical here.
Let me put it this way…
Exact same situation, but instead the video is of Mitt Romney at a celebratory dinner for David Duke.
Tell me we wouldn’t have seen that by now.
The media is covering for, fighting for, and through sins of omission and commission, propagandizing for Barack Obama. This is why Breitbart News is offering a $100,000 reward for the video — in the hopes that someone who believes in the public’s right to know will come forward with the video.
In today’s media environment, there is no greater career sin than violating the left-wing narrative. Therefore, anyone willing to do such a thing deserves to be rewarded.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC | {
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Welcome
Neil Bardal Funeral Centre is the only funeral company in Winnipeg that is owned exclusively the Bardal Family. We're located at 3030 Notre Dame Avenue, just west of Red River College and across from Brookside Cemetery. For those in and near Gimli, we have an office at 82 5th Avenue.
Neil Bardal Funeral Centre and MacKenzie Funeral Chapel (Stonewall, Teulon and Arborg) provide the highest standards of service and support to the families and communities we serve.
We're mobile, with unique content on that site.
You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and our YouTube Channel, where you'll always find something interesting. Take a look. You'd be surprised at what you may find. | {
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Image: CBS
On October 6, 1967, Star Trek delivered an episode that remains the gold standard for parallel universes. Half a century later, “Mirror, Mirror” remains a timeless icon of scifi storytelling, and one of the best episodes of Star Trek, full stop. Because as cool as the premise is, it’s a reminder of what makes Trek’s heroes so noble.
The legacy of “Mirror, Mirror” in 2017 is unquestionable. Beyond Star Trek, Mirror Spock’s sinister goatee created a pop culture icon, the now-standard visual language for communicating an evil alternate version of a character. In Trek, of course, the Mirror Universe was revisited multiple times—on TV in both Deep Space Nine and Enterprise, giving us glimpses of what the Mirror Universe looked like before and after the classic episode, while countless novels and comics have given us new insights through the lenses of The Next Generation and even the Kelvin Timeline movies.
But “Mirror, Mirror” could’ve very nearly been nowhere near as impactful as it came to be. Early drafts for the story only featured Captain Kirk being whisked away to a strange, alternate reality, one that was far less sinister than the Mirror Universe we ended up with—instead of showing us what happened to the Mirror counterparts transferred to the “prime” universe. That’s something that would’ve robbed us of the final product’s greatest success, which was not just throwing a larger cast of the regular characters into the Mirror Universe (in the actual episode Uhura, Scotty, and McCoy all joined Kirk), but seeing their villainous counterparts flung into “our” world, too.
“Mirror, Mirror” was perfectly timed. It’s not an episode that would’ve worked in Star Trek’s first season, when we were just getting to know the Enterprise bridge crew. It thrives on being able to strongly cast its alternate counterparts into such a wildly opposing characterization that seeing Sulu clad in security red, stomping about the place, or Chekov so willingly brazen in his attempt to overthrow Kirk’s command (and the horrifying price he pays for failing to do so—the agony booth!) is so utterly jarring.
For all the familiarity of the Mirror Enterprise’s environs, give or take a few imperial insignia, it’s the character work on display that really sells the premise of just how messed up and cruel this alternate reality is. Our heroes are understandably shocked the minute they appear in the Mirror Universe, because of just how alien the actions on display are to them.
But its most effectively chilling work is with the one character who isn’t so wildly different from their “prime” counterpart: Spock. Kirk jokes at one point that the Mirror Spock “is very much like our own Mister Spock,” but in all seriousness, he’s right. While the rest of the cast has a whale of a time vamping it up as their alternate evil selves, Leonard Nimoy’s performance is wonderfully understated. Facial hair notwithstanding, Mirror Spock is very much like the Spock we know and love, cool and calculatingly stoic; he just happens to have had his moral core completely flipped. And where the other Mirror versions of the crew thrived on that vast difference to their counterparts, Mirror Spock’s eerie familiarity is what makes him such a disconcerting character to watch.
At the end of the episode, Spock Prime informs the returned Kirk and crew that they discovered the bad guys in their midst much more quickly than the crew of the I.S.S. (Imperial Star Ship) Enterprise managed to—because it’s much easier for good people to pretend to be monsters instead of the other way around. But what makes “Mirror, Mirror” such a timeless piece of Trek is the moments where the differences between the two, between cruelty and compassion, between unity in division, are much more difficult to spot.
So many happy returns, “Mirror, Mirror.” Please don a goatee and be an asshole for the rest of the day in celebration, everyone. | {
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A volunteer group of search and rescue workers called the Syria Civil Defense group — better known as the White Helmets — is frequently subjected to unfounded conspiracy theories, such as the claim that the group “stages” various acts of violence using “crisis actors.”
These accusations were superficially bolstered by a set of images which purportedly showed the group staging a chemical attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018. Dean McGonigle, a congressional candidate running for Nevada District 4, helped promote this theory:
Here’s a better look at the images involved in this rumor:
Although these images do feature actors, they are not of the “crisis” variety. These photographs were taken on the set of the Syrian movie “فيلم رجل الثورة” or Revolution Man, and they have been on the Internet since at least 24 February 2018 (more than a month before the alleged chemical attack in Douma) when they were posted to the movie’s Facebook page.
The belief that the White Helmets or similar groups are staging chemical attacks in Syria is not one exclusively held by conspiracy theorists or the uninformed. It is parroting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s line that crisis actors were used to stage a terrorist attack in April 2017 and claims that a photograph of a young child in the aftermath of an airstrike on Aleppo had been forged. Assad’s regime also denied using chemical weapons in Douma.
Revolution Man pushes a similar idea. A news report from Sana about the premiere of the film, which was supported by the Syrian Cultural Ministry, explained that the movie is about a photojournalist who resorts to staging a chemical attack in an effort to win a Pulitzer Prize after he sneaks into Syria to take photographs of the war:
The film revolves around a journalist who enters Syria illegally in order to take pictures and videos of the war in Syria in search of fame and international prizes, and after failing to reach his goal, he resorts to helping the terrorists to fabricate an incident using chemical materials, with the aim of turning his photos into a global event.
In other words, photographs from a film set about a man staging a chemical attack are being used by conspiracy theorists (and Russian state media) as evidence that a chemical attack was actually staged. (Although the controversial film does acknowledge that chemical attacks take place in Syria, it places the blame on foreigners and activist groups — such as the White Helmets.)
Another set of images frequently associated with the claim that the White Helmets were caught staging a chemical attack also made their way around the internet after the incident in Douma:
These images have been online since 2016, and show members of the White Helmets filming a “mannequin challenge” video. A spokesperson for the group told the BBC that the video was never officially sanctioned and that the members demonstrated poor judgement and opened the group up to criticism: | {
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According to findings announced at the recent Goldschmidt geochemistry conference, some bacteria, viruses and fungi that live up to 2.5 km below the ocean floor are extremely long-lived, and these findings give hope in the search for extra-terrestrial life.
Just how long-lived are we talking? Hundreds of years would be impressive, thousands would be amazing, but estimates for the age of these single-celled organisms are currently up to 100 million years old. The ocean-floor sediments they call home — which were used to find out how old they are — settled to the seabed long before Tyrannosaurus Rex ever showed his face on land!
How did these life forms live for so long? Apparently, by eating very, very slowly. There isn't a lot of food in the muck at the bottom of the ocean, so the microbes that live there have to make it last. Researchers estimate the cells themselves only reproduce once every 10,000 years or so, causing some to question whether the bacteria can even be fairly called 'life'.
Dr. Beth Orcutt, a scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine (and leader of the very cool Adopt-a-Microbe program), referred to the cells as being in an "almost zombie-like state."
"The other question we have is that even though we are finding cells," she told BBC News, "is it really true to call it alive when it's doubling every thousands of years?"
It's an interesting point. We thought that drop of pitch experiment took a long time. How do you study something that only really 'does something' every few thousand years?
Still, it seems unfair to move the goalposts of what constitutes life just because they aren't doing it fast enough. Given their numbers, these long-lived deep-sea microbes could be the dominant form of life on our planet! It's not so much how concentrated they are (which is actually fairly low compared to their land-dwelling cousins), but the fact that there is a lot more ocean floor than dry land, and — at least so far — there doesn't seems to be a limit to the depth that these cells can be found.
"The deeper we look, the deeper we are still finding cells," Dr. Orcutt told BBC News, "and the discussion now is where is the limit? Is it going to be depth, is it going to be temperatures? Where is the limit from there being life to being no life?"
[ More Geekquinox: Scientists want to use lasers to make clouds, cause rain and control lightning ]
It might not be only Earth that counts these kinds of microbes as a dominant form of life.
Finding 'life' like this here at home gives hope to astrobiologists looking for life elsewhere. Speaking to The Society for Science & the Public, SETI astronomer Seth Shostak offered the thought that discoveries like this bolster hopes of finding life on other planets, saying: "Earth is prime real estate, but most things in the universe probably live in subprime."
Popular candidates for life in our solar system include Mars and Saturn's moon, Titan, as well as Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus, both of which may be hiding water oceans below their icy outer crust.
Geek out with the latest in science and weather.
Follow @ygeekquinox on Twitter! | {
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A primary form of energy from a nuclear explosion is thermal radiation. Initially, most of this energy goes into heating the bomb materials and the air in the vicinity of the blast. Temperatures of a nuclear explosion reach those in the interior of the sun, about 100,000,000° Celsius, and produce a brilliant fireball.
The fireball shortly after detonation.
Two pulses of thermal radiation emerge from the fireball. The first pulse, which lasts about a tenth of a second, consists of radiation in the ultraviolet region. The second pulse which may last for several seconds, carries about 99 percent of the total thermal radiation energy. It is this radiation that is the main cause of skin burns and eye injuries suffered by exposed individuals and causes combustible materials to break into flames.
Thermal radiation damage depends very strongly on weather conditions. Clouds or smoke in the air can considerably reduce effective damage ranges versus clear air conditions.
Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos, but don't worry, you can download it and watch it with your favorite video player! | {
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The staggering new Netflix documentary series The Keepers is riveting television. But it also speaks in unexpected ways to one of the deep uncertainties of contemporary Ireland: how to deal with the toxic legacy of institutional Catholicism.
The still unresolved question of the ownership of the new national maternity hospital has tapped in to deep wells of anger and hurt. There are many good reasons to object to the handing over of a crucial public facility to a religious order, but there is a lot more than cold reason at work here. There is a deep and justified rage at the cruelty and treachery of an institutional church that thrived on malignant shame and sacrificed children to paedophiles in order to protect itself.
On the church’s side, there is distress and bewilderment among religious orders, a feeling that all the good that any nun or priest or brother ever did is being incinerated in the furnace of that rage. And between these two poles there is a struggle to keep open a civilised space in which we can recognise two truths: the evil of an institution and the good of so many individuals who gave their lives to it.
Good and evil
The Keepers is especially timely in this Irish context because it personifies this evil and this good in two people who were both faithful Catholics in holy orders. The evil at the core of the complex story is a priest, Fr Joseph Maskell, who set himself up as a psychologist and counsellor at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, Maryland, and raped a large but unknown number of pupils.
This side of the story is chillingly familiar in Ireland. Maskell’s reign of terror, and the way the Catholic diocese protected him, has a lot in common with Fr Sean Fortune’s terrible career in Ferns. Indeed, in a detail that is barely glanced at in The Keepers, Maskell actually set himself up in Wexford in 1994 when his crimes in Baltimore were eventually coming to the surface. The diocese of Ferns confirmed to the Sunday Times that it kept files on Maskell from April 1995 to September 1998 and that he seems to have been able to get work as a psychologist with what was then the regional health board.
Irish echoes
Horrifying as all of this is, it is thus very familiar to Irish viewers. Baltimore could be Boston but it could also be Ferns or Dublin or Cloyne. The nexus in which serial child rapists were facilitated by the church and ignored by the police is one we know too well. There was a way of doing things – shaming and intimidating victims, moving perpetrators to another parish when allegations became too loud, using compliant clinics to pretend that the rapists had been treated and cured, deploying heavy legal artillery against survivors – that differed little from diocese to diocese. It was an institutionalised system and it made the whole institution complicit with evil.
But the other side of The Keepers is a young nun who taught English at Archbishop Keough High School, Sr Cathy Cesnik. She disappeared one evening in 1969 after she went out shopping and her body was found months later with her skull bashed in. The suggestion in The Keepers is that she was murdered because she had discovered what Maskell was up to and threatened to expose him.
If we take away her gruesome end, we can also recognise Cathy Cesnik. She was deeply loved by her students. She was a light in their lives – warm, compassionate, radiant. And she was also deeply religious and utterly committed to being a nun. There is a very moving moment in The Keepers when a man who was then a young Jesuit priest speaks of how he fell in love with her and suggested that they both leave their orders and get married. She stayed in the order instead.
Apparent indifference
This is the other face of the Catholic church: a nun who probably died because she tried to protect her students from a rapist. Beleaguered Catholics may well ask why the secular media highlights the Maskells within the church’s ranks while ignoring the Sr Cathys. But we might ask in return why the church protected Maskell and left Sr Cathy to her terrible fate. One of the extraordinary aspects of The Keepers is the church’s apparent indifference to the murder of a nun. Why is the church still so reluctant to claim her goodness?
And what about all the other Sr Cathys? Very few, we hope, were murdered, but how many nuns and priests and brothers were sidelined and humiliated for trying to speak about what they saw and sensed? Why, to this day, have we heard so little from any of them? And why has the church not moved to canonise Sr Cathy who is, after all, a classic Christian martyr, killed for being true to her faith? How many papal medals have been given to the good Catholic families who fought for justice for their kids against the church’s routine intimidation? When the church honours and celebrates the defiant good within its ranks, we can believe that it has come to terms at last with the evil. | {
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Love budget travel? When booking flights online there are a number of tricks and tools you can use to make sure you’re getting the cheapest deal possible. For one, it’s time to stop believing the myth that last-minute flights are cheap ones; your best ally when aiming for cheap fares is time, so book ahead whenever you can.
If that’s not an option, you can still save some dollars. Clear your browsing history before booking. Some sites can tell if you’ve visited before (through cookies) and assume you are more likely to buy the second time round, so they raise their rates. Yes, this makes us angry, too.
Traveling without checked baggage can also save you money if you’re flying an airline that charges for luggage. Or, choose an airline that offers free checked bags.
Finally, always check your flight on more than one site or app — especially the following — to make sure a cheaper version isn’t available elsewhere.
With budget travel in mind, here are some of the best apps for scoring cheap flights:
1. Hopper
Hopper is particularly clever at telling you not only when to fly to get the cheapest fare, but when to book that fare at its cheapest, too. Until somebody can confirm that rumor that the cheapest time to buy is Tuesday at 3pm, six weeks before your flight (can anyone actually attest to this?) we’ll be using this app. Particularly great if you’re flexible with your travel plans and can work your way around the airlines.
2. Skyscanner
A comprehensive search engine, Skyscanner searches across all the airlines offering flights on your route and compiles them into the one page. The app is useful for viewing all your options at once, plus you can ‘search by price’ to send the cheapest options to the top. Our own experience of researching across multiple websites has revealed Skyscanner doesn’t necessarily show you every flight available, so we recommend cross-checking with another service like Kayak (below) to be sure.
3. Cheapflights
Cheapflights is exactly what it sounds like: the bottom line at this app is finding the cheapest deal. It’s a sleek and intuitive app for travelers on a budget, and is particularly helpful if you are flexible with dates or don’t mind stopovers. All these apps are geared at presenting your flight options as clearly as possible, but Cheapflights is the service most focused on price.
4. Webjet
If you’re traveling to, from and around Australia, Webjet is a useful, comprehensive database of all Australian flights and airlines. The interface is clear and easy to use and all flight options are included. However, they take a $30 fee if you book directly with them. So we recommend you use the app to find your flight, and then book it with the airline directly to circumvent that extra fee.
5. Skiplagged
A little bit sneaky, but very clever, Skiplagged is a controversial app with airlines, and a popular one with travelers. Basically, the app works with the pesky fact that it’s sometimes cheaper to book a route in which your desired city is a stopover, rather than a final destination. So if you’re looking to fly from LA to Cleveland, for example, but LA to NYC via Cleveland is actually cheaper, Skiplagged leads you to that elusive LA to NYC flight, and you just get off at Cleveland and skip your ongoing flight.
6. Kayak
Kayak is very similar to Skyscanner (above), with a similarly intuitive interface and much of the same data. But considering their rates and flights can sometimes differ slightly, these two search engines are best used in combination with each other, to ensure you’re finding the best fare on the flight you want.
What are your favorite budget travel apps for finding the best flight deals? Please share in the comments below.
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John D. Sutter is a columnist for CNN Opinion who focuses on climate change and social justice. Follow him on Snapchat , Twitter and Facebook or subscribe to his email newsletter .
"The state of the planet is unraveling all around us because of our addiction to fossil fuels," Xiuhtezcatl Martinez said at the steps of the US Supreme Court this week. "For the last several decades, we have been neglecting the fact that this is the only planet that we have and that the main stakeholders in this issue (of climate change) are the younger generation. Not only are the youth going to be inheriting every problem that we see in the world today -- after our politicians have been long gone -- but our voices have been neglected from the conversation.
"Our politicians are no longer representing our voices."
So, what's a voiceless kid to do?
How about sue President Donald Trump and his administration -- and then march to the White House?
Yes, it's easy to tire of protests in the Trump era, with this rally coming right on the heels of last week's March for Science and not so long after the Women's March. Talk is cheap. But these climate kids deserve your attention.
Photos: Meet the kids suing the President "I chose to join the case because it sounded like something I could actually do," said Nick Venner, photographed in 2016 at age 15, from Lakewood, Colorado. "I think we have a really good chance of winning. It's hard for legal experts to deny the rights of young people. We are the future. They will be long gone before the long-term effects (of climate change) ever hit them. It's about my kids. It's about their grandkids." Hide Caption 1 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President Kelsey Juliana, 20, from Eugene, Oregon, has been involved in legal action over climate change for years. "It's a systems change we're asking for. And who are we asking it for? Everyone on the planet, especially the youth, the most unheard, the most disenfranchised," she said. "Almost all the kids in this case haven't voted ever -- and cannot vote. That's something I certainly think about, as one of the few who can vote." Hide Caption 2 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President "We live on a barrier island," said Levi Draheim, 9, from Florida's Space Coast. "If the sea rises, our (home) could just be underwater. And a couple of our reefs ... they're just almost gone. I can't even go to the beach. It gives me nightmares." Hide Caption 3 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President Tia Hatton, 19, from Bend, Oregon, said she had to convince her family it was a good idea for her to take on the federal government. "I was late knowing about climate change. I lived in a conservative community. It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I started thinking about it when the snow levels dropped in Bend. I'm a Nordic skier. All of a sudden, the puzzle started fitting together." Hide Caption 4 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President "You feel like there's no point in fighting," said Aji Piper, 16, from Seattle. "But you have this knowledge. So you still fight against this because it's the only thing you can do." He said it's frustrating when people think he's only repeating information adults have fed to him. "I'm not regurgitating any of this information," he said. "I'm not stupid. These facts are overwhelmingly in one direction." Hide Caption 5 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President Climate change is "something I worry about," said Avery McRae, 11, of Eugene, Oregon. "If we don't do something now, we have a very bad future ahead of us." Hide Caption 6 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President "I do a lot of outdoor activities that will be affected by climate change," said Zealand Bell, photographed at age 12, from Eugene, Oregon. "I ski, raft, hike -- all sorts of stuff. We go up to Willamette Pass (to ski), and the last few years it's barely been open because of the lack of snow. It does sort of make me mad, but mostly I'm sad. We've affected our climate so much. We've done all of this." Hide Caption 7 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President Victoria Barrett, 17, from New York, said she's involved in the climate change lawsuit because "it's pertinent to literally the existence of humankind." "We're some of the people to be like, 'Yo, cut it out with that.' And if you don't do it, we're going to sue you to do it. ... It's really important to posterity what we're doing." Hide Caption 8 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President Jamie Lynn Butler, 15, from Cameron, Arizona, said her family had to move off of a Navajo reservation because of searing droughts. One of the family's horses died from dehydration, she said. "Because of drought on the reservation and climate change there's less and less water. I don't want the next generation, and this generation, to keep losing things because of how we treat the planet." Hide Caption 9 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President Jacob Lebel, 19, lives and works on his family's farm in Roseburg, Oregon. "As farmers, the drought and heat waves (associated with climate change) make it harder to work. The fire season has just been crazy," he said. "We could lose everything." Hide Caption 10 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President Jayden Foytlin, 13, saw her home in Rayne, Louisiana, flood this year in a deadly storm directly linked to climate change. "I'm being affected, my generation is being affected, Louisiana is being affected by climate change," she said. Hide Caption 11 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President "We are in a climate emergency," Journey Zephier, who lives in Hawaii, said at a press conference in March. "The federal government and fossil fuel industry have known for over 50 years that their actions and the burning of fossil fuels would result in destabilizing the Earth's climate system." Hide Caption 12 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President Isaac Vergun, photographed at age 14, of Beaverton, Oregon, said it bothers him when he sees people driving cars that are bigger than they need. "It hurts me," he said. "Even if they did a little something -- like not buy that car -- that would make a difference." Hide Caption 13 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President Hazel Van Ummersen is from Eugene, Oregon. She and her family "reduce their carbon footprint by gardening, recycling, buying local products, biking, and walking," according to court records. Hide Caption 14 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President "The Arctic is being affected more than twice as fast as the Lower 48" states, said Nathan Baring, 16, from Fairbanks, Alaska. "We have the technology to make the change. It's the politics that's keeping us from it." Hide Caption 15 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President "I've always been interested in my birth country," said Miko Vergun, 15, who was adopted from the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific. She now lives in Beaverton, Oregon. "I want to be able to go back -- but that would be really difficult right now because of climate change. It's possible the island will disappear " because of rising sea levels. Hide Caption 16 of 17 Photos: Meet the kids suing the President "Even though I try to protect my natural resources and the climate system by biking, gardening, recycling, educating others about climate change, and practicing vegetarianism, I cannot protect the climate system for myself, and my family," Sahara Valentine of Eugene, Oregon, said in a court filing.
Hide Caption 17 of 17
Instead of bemoaning the Orwellian satire that has become the American news cycle, these kids are doing something. They're suing on behalf of the future.
Their lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Oregon, initially targeted then-President Barack Obama and his administration. Last year, it survived motions by industry and government to dismiss the case. It has taken on new significance in the first 100 days of Trump's tenure. The President has famously called climate change a hoax, and members of his Cabinet have equivocated on the science, injecting doubt into a long-held scientific consensus that humans are causing the planet to warm by burning fossil fuels and pumping heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere.
The administration's efforts go well beyond rhetoric. Trump ordered a review of the Clean Power Plan, Obama's signature climate legislation. He aims to open federal lands and ocean for fossil fuel extraction. Coal jobs are coming back, he crows. Nevermind that millions of people around the world die each year from diseases linked to air pollution -- much of which comes from coal.
A sign is prepared before the march.
The administration is reportedly mulling pulling out from the Paris Agreement, an international accord designed to push the planet out of the fossil fuel era. Federal monuments and parks are under review; funding for regulators is on the chopping block.
All of this is likely to lead to more pollution and therefore more warming -- more wildfires, longer droughts, rising seas, mass extinction. This is the polluted and dangerous world we are creating, and it's what's chasing activists into the streets.
The climate kids could help change the tide.
They're arguing on constitutional grounds that their rights to life, liberty and property are being violated by runaway climate change. Their attorneys also say these kids and others are being discriminated against as a class of people.
Since they're young, they will live longer into the climate-changed future.
They're people like Levi Draheim, who at 9 years old is the youngest child plaintiff. He's a bubbly kid with wild curly hair who lives on the coast of Florida, a place threatened by rising seas. As the Earth warms, the oceans expand and ice melts. Draheim told me he dreams frequently that his home is underwater. Those dreams have only become more frequent since Trump's election, he said.
The kids suing Trump and his administration are among thousands expected to gather this weekend in Washington.
"It was really highly disturbing to me that (adults) would choose somebody who doesn't believe in climate change -- and is not going to," he said. "It's scary having someone who doesn't believe in climate change being our president and shutting down the (Environmental Protection Agency), or trying to. It is so anti-preventing climate change."
Draheim isn't old enough to vote, of course. But Saturday's march -- and the court case -- give him and other kids a voice. Julia Olson , an attorney and founder of Our Children's Trust, the nonprofit helping to bring the lawsuit, told me she expects the case to go to trial later this year. In court, she told a Washington crowd, "alternative facts are perjury."
Experts in climate law say the suit may be a long shot but remains significant.
"The case is important, in my mind, from a symbolic and ethics perspective," said Deborah Sivas, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School. "It often takes the law a long time to catch up to changing moral sensibilities. It only does so when people are willing to press innovative, outside-the-box arguments. My hope is that we will be able to look back on this case as an early, first mover of a changing jurisprudence."
Stickers supporting the kids' cause.
"After several years with little success, environmental plaintiffs have now won climate change cases in several countries based on constitutional, human rights and international law grounds, as opposed to the more traditional statutory grounds -- the Netherlands, Pakistan, Austria and South Africa," Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, said in an email. "The Oregon case now joins that list, and its symbolic importance has added weight now that Washington is run by climate deniers."
Olson, the attorney for the kids, said the case is not symbolic and can win. Those who say otherwise "are denying the capacity of humans to take care of democracy and take care of the planet," she said.
I spent a couple days this week with the climate kids. I heard about their visits to Washington museums and to see the Constitution. I watched as they sang and danced at DC Metro stops, playing Kendrick Lamar simultaneously on two phones to get twice the experience. I talked to them about their hopes and fears about this case, about why so many American adults -- 47% according to a Yale survey -- don't understand humans are causing global warming. They explained why they're marching and speaking here even at a moment when they worry adults might not listen.
An audience in Washington listens Friday to a presentation by kids suing the Trump administration over climate change.
"Most people know climate change is happening, but they push it aside so they can continue living their lives," said Isaac Vergun, 15.
"It's not their fault," chimed in Zealand Bell, 13. "They don't know better."
Their hope and generosity are infectious. Their parents and attorneys didn't put them up to this. (I've talked with kids who had to convince their parents to let them do this.) The kids are genuinely concerned their generation will inherit an irreparably messed-up world.
The truth is that we adults need these climate kids.
We need them more than thousands of adults marching on Saturday.
We need them as a moral compass.
And we need them to remind us that our actions will echo for generations to come.
"They'll be adults by the time they get to court," Cherri Foytlin, one of their parents, joked as we watched several of the kids speak alongside US senators Thursday at the Supreme Court.
I hope not. But if so, they'll be better adults than most. | {
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“I firmly believe that there exist documents held by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) that would yield important new evidence into the cause and circumstances leading to the death of the Princess of Wales.” | {
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The Isle of Man is opening its doors to entrepreneurs looking to launch initial coin offerings (ICO).
In an interview today, Brian Donegan, head of operations for fintech and digital development at the Isle of Man’s Department of Economic Development, told CoinDesk that the British Crown dependency has created a regulatory framework – dubbed the Isle of Man Registered Designated Business ICO – that it believes will allow for token sales that are compliant with anti-money laundering and know-your-customer regulations.
The Isle of Man’s government has yet to formally announce the development, though it’s been moving in this direction for some time. The framework itself is based on anti-money laundering rules put in place in 2014 and 2015, Donegan said.
While regulators in places like Canada have offered some on-ramps for ICO organizers, the Isle of Man’s move perhaps goes one step further in opening the door to a range of token sales. Adel, a fintech incubator that launched an ICO after incorporating on the island, effectively served as a test-bed for the concept.
As for why the dependency is moving to capitalize on the interest in ICOs today, Donegan’s explanation was simple: there’s a significant opportunity for governments that are early movers in creating accommodative environments for ICO organizers.
Donegan said:
“Our understanding and analysis of the ICO market is that it represents a massive vertical market for us.”
Businesses looking to launch an ICO in the Isle of Man would be required to register with the relevant authorities within the dependency and follow the applicable regulations. That said, officials would play a supportive role for businesses as they move through the token sale process.
The move comes several years after the Isle of Man introduced legislation outlining rules for businesses that handle or exchange cryptocurrencies. The Isle of Man first revealed its plans to put rules in place for cryptocurrency businesses in 2014.
The government there later embraced the tech behind bitcoin for possible public-sector applications, launching a digital registry pilot in May 2015 that was later followed by work in other areas like IoT.
China reaction
This week saw the dramatic move by regulators in China to effectively outlaw ICOs, a decision that’s had an impact on both domestic and international activity around the funding model.
When asked to comment on the move, Donegan said it highlights “a real, absolute need for AML/KYC compliance specifically tailored for ICOs” – something that he believes the Isle of Man can provide.
He went on to reveal that the Isle of Man’s government has already been seeing strong interest from token sale organizers, and that the move to develop a regulatory environment for ICOs was driven in part due to the prevalence of scams in the space.
“I have to tell you, for every 10 applications we’ve had from ICO promoters over the last several months, I’d say only one of those gets through because there’s a lot of scamming going on in the industry,” he said, concluding:
“What we’re about is keeping consumers safe and keeping crime out.”
Image Credit: Kisov Boris / Shutterstock.com | {
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Turkey Syria offensive: Heavy fighting on second day of assault Published duration 10 October 2019 Related Topics Syrian civil war
image copyright Getty Images image caption Turkish-backed rebels from the Free Syrian Army, pictured here crossing the border into Syria, are also involved in the offensive
Heavy fighting is reported in northern Syria on the second day of a Turkish offensive into Kurdish-held areas.
Turkey says it has seized a number of designated targets and killed dozens of Kurdish militants.
Tens of thousands of people are reported to be fleeing their homes, and Kurds report several civilian deaths.
Turkey says it wants to create a "safe zone" cleared of Kurdish militias which will also house some of the millions of Syrian refugees it hosts.
The long-planned Turkish offensive began after President Donald Trump withdrew US troops from the area, which has been held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF have been key US allies in the battle against the Islamic State (IS) group but Turkey regards their dominant Kurdish militias as terrorists.
Many in the US, including some of Mr Trump's Republican allies, saw the withdrawal as effectively giving a green light for Turkey, although Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday denied this. The SDF said they had been "stabbed in the back".
Mr Trump tweeted on Thursday that he was trying to end "endless wars" but added: "I say hit Turkey very hard financially & with sanctions if they don't play by the rules! I am watching closely." He also said he was "talking to both sides".
The offensive has drawn international condemnation. The UN Security Council is due to discuss it on Thursday at the request of its current five EU members - the UK, France, Germany, Belgium and Poland.
One major concern for the international community is the fate of thousands of suspected IS prisoners, including many foreign nationals, being guarded by Kurdish-led forces in the region.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has strongly defended the incursion, threatening to send the Syrian refugees it hosts to Europe if the Turkish offensive is described as an occupation.
What is happening on the ground?
The Turkish-led offensive has struck between the towns of Ras al-Ain and Tal Abyad in the central area of Syria's border with Turkey. A number of villages east of Tal Abyad have been captured.
Turkish-backed Syrian rebels from the Free Syrian Army have also been involved in the fighting. A spokesman for the rebels said Ras al-Ain and Tal Abyad had been surrounded.
The SDF said there had been heavy attacks by Turkish planes and artillery on Ras al-Ain, with casualties among civilians.
Mr Erdogan said 109 militants had been killed, injured or captured in the initial fighting. The SDF said the figure was an exaggeration.
media caption Some residents began to flee as smoke rose over the border town of Ras al-Ain
The UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said at least 16 SDF fighters had been killed and dozens more injured.
An SDF Twitter account said an attack by Turkish forces east of the Jalab river had been repelled, with three military vehicles destroyed and 22 enemy combatants killed.
The Kurdish Red Crescent said at least seven civilians had so far been killed, two of them children, and at least 19 more critically injured, including four children.
The International Rescue Committee aid organisation said that 64,000 people had reportedly fled their homes and if the offensive continued that could surpass 300,000.
Kurdish authorities accused Turkey of shelling a prison holding IS inmates in Qamishli in the east of the border region in a "clear attempt" to help them escape.
The BBC's Orla Guerin also says that at least three rounds of what appeared to be retaliatory Kurdish artillery fire hit the main street of the Turkish town of Akcakale. Two people, including a Syrian baby, were reportedly killed.
What resistance can the Kurdish-led forces offer?
The SDF currently number about 40,000 fighters, with tens of thousands of others in parallel Kurdish security services, Kurdish sources say.
The US joint task force on operations against IS in Iraq and Syria describes them as "tenacious fighters with a degree of basic military training to function as infantrymen".
But they are deficient in heavy weaponry that could be used against tanks or aircraft, though some units may have anti-tank missiles.
In operations against IS, they relied on close coalition air support but in the flat, open country of Syria's northern border they will be vulnerable to air and artillery attack.
Turkey considers the Kurdish YPG militia - the dominant force in the SDF - an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has fought for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey for three decades.
media caption Trump: Kurds "didn't help us in Second World War"
How is the incursion affecting the IS situation?
The SDF say they are holding more than 12,000 suspected IS members in seven prisons, and at least 4,000 of them are foreign nationals. The exact locations have not been revealed, but some are reportedly close to the Turkish border.
media caption "There are different degrees of radicalisation among the women"
Two camps - Roj and Ain Issa - holding families of suspected IS members are inside the "safe zone". It is unclear whether the Kurds will continue to guard the prisons as fighting breaks out.
The two men, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, were part of a British cell nicknamed The Beatles. They have now been removed from a prison run by the Kurdish-led militia in northern Syria.
A senior Kurdish official also told the BBC that some foreign IS prisoners would be relocated within north-eastern Syria.
Are you in the affected area? If it is safe to do so contact us by emailing [email protected]. | {
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How to Make Wine
How to make wine. People have been making wine for about 8,000 years our of grapes and other fruit juices. But how did they do it in ancient times?
How to make Wine
How to make Wine. Did they have the yeast? Did they have sterilized containers to make it in? Did they even know what sterilized meant?
Ancient hieroglyphs in the early Mesopotamian culture indicate that they did have knowledge of how to make wine. But those glyphs go on to tell us a little more…
First of all, grapes that grow in the wild or in vineyards have their own yeast on the outside of the skins. Now isn’t that handy? If you harvest grapes and crush them to get the juice out BUT leave the grape skins in, the mixture will ferment all by itself because of the naturally occurring yeast. In most cases, the natural yeast is NOT the yeast that we would use today but it apparently served it’s purpose back in ancient times.
How to make Wine
How to make Wine. But, if you wanted to, you could make wine the same way our ancestors did and just let nature do the fermentation for you with the naturally occurring yeast. It won’t be as strong in alcohol as it would if you used some currently available commercial winemaking yeast, but it will still do the trick.
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But what about the necessity to have everything cleaned and sterilized before starting? Surely there was no way to accomplish this back in ancient times…
Well – yes and no. It is mentioned several times in many ancient texts that silver has an antibacterial effect. To this day we know that silver kills bacteria or severely inhibits bacterial growth. The ancients could start their wine in large silver lined containers and let it ferment in them.
Once the alcohol content was high enough, the wine itself and the alcohol it contains is enough to keep bugs from growing.
Fast forward to today’s times and we use sulfites to both preserve wine and to keep bugs or other bacteria frowing in the juice while it is fermenting. By the way, sulfites are a LOT cheaper than silver lined containers!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1829081
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Rupert Murdoch is under investigation by Scotland Yard after secretly recorded tapes appeared to contradict public denials that his staff made payments to police officers.
Confirmation that investigators were seeking to obtain the explosive recordings came as the media mogul was ordered to return to Parliament for a second grilling by M.P.s. The last time he gave evidence at a select-committee hearing, along with his son James, Wendi Deng leaped up to foil a foam-pie attack on her husband.
When he returns to answer questions in the autumn, circumstances will have changed: his son is sidelined, the company divided, and his wife will offer no protection.
Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, the senior Scotland Yard officer in charge of phone-hacking and related inquiries, confirmed that the police were actively investigating the tapes, which were recorded during a meeting with his London staff earlier this year.
At his first appearance in Parliament two years ago, Murdoch emphatically said that paying police for stories was “wrong.” However, in a transcript of a secretly recorded meeting with Sun journalists, released by ExaroNews last week, Murdoch claimed that payments to police were “the culture of Fleet Street.” He conceded to his journalists, many of whom had been arrested for alleged bribes to public officials, that it was a practice he “inherited” when he took over the now shuttered News of the World and the Sun paper over 40 years ago. “We’re talking about payments for news tips from cops,” he said. “That’s been going on 100 years, absolutely.”
Dick confirmed, "We are seeking to obtain tapes of the meeting with Rupert Murdoch." According to reports, the police launched a new line of investigation into the revelations last week. An anonymous chief inspector on Operation Elveden, specifically charged with looking at corrupt payments to public officials, told ExaroNews that they wanted to examine the material for “evidence of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office.”
According to the PressGazette, Exaro is now organizing a handover of all the evidence it has, including two digital recordings, to the Metropolitan police.
This is the first time Murdoch himself has been the subject of investigation since the phone-hacking scandal erupted two years ago. Dick also told the Home Affairs Select Committee that Scotland Yard had identified 5,500 potential victims of phone hacking, 419 potential victims of paid leaks by public officials, and 154 allegations of computer hacking. More than 125 people been arrested; 42 of them have been charged. Dick’s deputy, Cmdr. Neil Basu, said the police were “anticipating further arrests ... in the coming weeks or months.”
The senior police officers also confirmed that the Management and Standards Committee, set up by News Corp. two years ago to trawl for evidence of misconduct in over 300 million internal emails, had stopped cooperating with the police on “voluntary requests” for information and that all new requests were being filed through the courts. This seems to corroborate evidence on the tapes. “All I can say is for the last several months,” Murdoch was recorded as saying to his staff in March, “the MSC has told the police, has said, ‘No, no, no—get a court order. Deal with that.’”
As a result of the scandal, Murdoch split his $70 billion media company in two at the end of last month, hiving off the lucrative pay-TV assets into a new company, 21st Century Fox, and leaving a much reduced News Corp. to bundle up the troubled publishing assets. According to SEC filings, it is this rump company which will be left with liability for any crimes.
The company has still to finalize its settlement with the Department of Justice over liabilities under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes corrupt payments to foreign officials subject to heavy fines and potential imprisonment of executives. A write-down of News Corp. stock suggests that this figure could be as high as $1.2 billion, making it the biggest corporate fine since Murdoch’s friend Michael Milken and the Drexel Burnham scandal.
After news of the Murdoch tapes broke last week, Labour M.P. Tom Watson wrote to the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. “Mr Murdoch’s replies,” Watson told Sen. Jay Rockefeller, “demonstrate a significant level of knowledge of the practice and a shocking contempt for the police investigation into it ... Perhaps even more sinister is his confirmation that his organisation will ‘hit back’ at the police because of their investigation,” Watson added.
Labour M.P. Chris Bryant, who also used to sit on the Culture, Media, and Sport Committee, said the parliamentary recall and police inquiries were “long overdue.” “The ‘I know nothing’ defense was blown apart by the secret recordings,” Bryant tells The Daily Beast. “There are several possible areas for charges, including corporate ones.”
Meanwhile, lawyer Mark Lewis, who represents several phone-hacking victims, including the family of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, agreed that “the only surprise is that it has taken this long.” | {
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The main actors of the PNAC
“All warfare is based on deception.” Sun Tzu (c. 544 BC – 496 BC), “The Art of War”
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“World War III will be a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), Canadian thinker
Even though all that follows is public knowledge, it is important to connect the dots if one is to understand fully what has happened in Ukraine recently. Events seem to have unfolded according to a U.S. foreign policy agenda that has been decades in the making within many administrations.
As of now, the key figure of that policy of intervention in the affairs of other nations in the Obama administration is Victoria Nuland (1961- ), an Assistant Secretary of State for European and Euroasian Affairs at the State Department. She has been at that post since May 2013, although she has previously worked with both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Nuland is the wife of historian Robert Cagan, a Council on Foreign Relations member, and one of the co-founders with William Kristol of the infamous “Project for the New American Century” (PNAC) founded in 1997. The PNAC called for, among many things, regime change in Iraq and a strategy for securing global control for the United States.
The PNAC group of neoconservative thinkers has been credited for providing the rationale behind the push for the U.S. to invade Iraq in 2003.
One of its prominent members, Richard Perle wrote, in 1996, a famous report entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm that called for the removal of President Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, as well as other ideas to bring change to the region. The report was delivered to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In 1998, Richard Perle and other core members of the PNAC—Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Elliot Abrams, and John Bolton—were among the signatories of an open letter to President Clinton calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein.
In September 2000, the PNAC published an even more controversial 90-page report entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century. The report listed as Project Chairmen Donald Kagan and Gary Schmitt. They expressed “the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces.”
The “New Pearl Harbor” Controversy
Section V of the 2000 Rebuilding America’s Defenses, entitled “Creating Tomorrow’s Dominant Force”, included a key sentence that reads as follows:
“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor”.
By coincidence or not, exactly one year later, the authors got their “new Pearl Harbor” with the attacks of September 11, 2001, when 3,000 Americans and foreigners were killed.
Their main proposal was for the U.S. to bypass the United Nations, stating that “American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council”, where the U.S. must share a veto with Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom.
Instead, they proposed to enlarge the military alliance that is NATO and turn it from a defensive European alliance into a worldwide offensive military alliance controlled by the United States
In March 2003, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney implemented that foreign affairs policy, in violation of the UN Charter and in using a fake rationale of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq and other subterfuges for public consumption.
The Ukrainian Crisis of 2014
Many reports indicate that Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has been very much involved in the coup d’état in Ukraine. Here is what she said on December 13, 2013:
“Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We’ve [the U.S. government] invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”
She is famous for having issued the infamous statement “F…k the E.U.”, in a telephone interview, on February 6, 2014, with American ambassador in Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt.
U.S. political “investments” seem to have paid off big because anti-government protests intensified greatly in Ukraine, in early 2014, climaxing with the violent overthrow of the elected government of Viktor Yanukovich on February 28, 2014. This followed after snipers had shot protesters and policemen from rooftops in Maïdan square, an event that has resulted with over 70 deaths.
Western officials and western media, and many unaware observers, were naturally quick to condemn the ousted Yanukovich government for the snipers who fired on protesters in Kiev.
However, a taped phone call between EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign affairs minister Urmas Paet on February 25 would seem to suggest otherwise. Indeed, it has been alleged, from ballistic proofs on the victims, that the U.S.-backed opposition was instead responsible for hiring snipers who gunned down protesters and policemen in Kiev and not the deposed government of Viktor Yanukovich, as the U.S. officials and U.S. media have widely claimed.
The entire coup d’état could have been based on a classic “false flag” operation.
If confirmed, that would be another war started with false pretenses, along the Iraq war, that started in 2003 with similar fabrications.
Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is an economist and author, whose last two books are:
The Code for Global Ethics, Prometheus Books, 2010; and The New American Empire, Infinity Publishing, 2003.
To read Dr. Tremblay’s blog, please visit:
http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.htm
The author can be reach at: rodrigue.trem[email protected] | {
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A contestant from California won a six-night stay at Treasure Cove
How much would you bid for a trip to Prince George?
The classic television show The Price is Right on CBS showcased a little bit of Prince George, featuring a trip to B.C.’s northern capital as a prize.
A Price is Right contestant from Placentia, CA won a six-night stay at the Prestige Treasure Cove Casino Hotel in Prince George on the show today (Nov 12).
The contestant also won limo transportation around the city and a $500 dining credit to the Grand Trunk Tavern.
The prize was featured in the episode’s fourth game.
“When producers approached us to participate, it was a no brainer. It’s such a legendary game show to be a part of, and we’re thrilled that the contestant won the prize and we’ll have the opportunity to showcase our beautiful city to him,” says hotel owner Craig Briere in a news release.
Briere says the prize provides huge exposure to the city of Prince George and to the hotel.
The game show is watched by more than 5.4 million Americans every day in addition to Canadian fans.
Treasure Cove is currently undergoing a massive expansion which includes 40 guestrooms, 2700 sq. ft. event space, and a grand penthouse.
The expansions are planned to be finished by summer 2020.
“It’s a very exciting time for us,” says Briere, in the release. “We can’t wait to show off our new property to this prize winner, as well as to all upcoming guests.” | {
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Apple has taken a bite out of one of the most oft-heard wishes of some Houstonians by integrating Metropolitan Transit Authority transit information into the company’s maps for iPhone and iPad.
Rollout of the updated maps with Houston transit information is scheduled for today, according to the company. Houston is the 38th city worldwide where transit has been added to the maps. All of Chinese and Japanese transit is covered. Austin was the first city in Texas.
Apple also integrated Amtrak schedules into the latest map update.
HIGH SPEED: Report: Houston-Dallas bullet train among Trump's priorities
Users can select transit when reviewing direction options between locations. The information includes walking distance and time to the closest bus stop and which routes to take. The frequency of the routes is also listed.
Metro, through its own apps, offers real-time information on bus system use, as do other online mapping systems.
>>>Click through the above gallery to see what a regional bullet train between Houston and other points may look like and areas it would serve. | {
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Sidney North Saanich RCMP are asking the public for help, in finding missing 36-year-old Easha Rayel and 23-year-old James Evans. The pair were last seen on Friday, August 9, and are believed to be together. Police say information has come in that they possibly travelled to the Vancouver area , but investigators have been unable to confirm this. “Ms. Rayel and Mr. Evans have been out of contact for a duration of time that is concerning and out of character,” said Cst. Meighan de Pass, Media Relations Officer for the Sidney North Saanich RCMP in a statement.“We are hoping Easha and James see this and realize their families are worried. They need to contact police as soon as possible.” Rayel is a white woman, who is around Five feet seven inches tall and weighing 120-pounds. She has shoulder length brown hair and green eyes. Evans is a white man, who is around five-feet six inches tall and weighing 140-pounds. He has brown hair and brown eyes. They are believed to be travelling in a dark blue 2002 BMW 325Ci.Anyone with information on their whereabouts is asked to contact Sidney North Saanich RCMP immediately at (250)656-3931. | {
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Bye Hinkie Hello Bryan
Bryan Colangelo, Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations, could put Brown out of his misery and let him go after this season.
Even though Brown signed a contract extension this time last year, it was with the “The Process” master, Sam Hinke’s regime. Contracts can be ripped easily when it comes to the urgency of providing a winning culture (see Jeff Fisher).
Brown has been a wonderful teacher to the young toddlers the Sixers have acquired in recent years. He has done the best job possible to coach up/develop/mature the team. The confidence he earned from both Jerry and Bryan Colangelo proves that no one could ask him to do a better job.
But it is time for these toddlers to graduate from kindergarten and move on to grade school. In order to do that, Brett Brown may be less effective in doing so. Much of Brown’s focus and persona to these rookies through junior NBA veterans has been coaching them up to ignore the pain of losing. Now the team needs a coach that makes losing so unbearable that players break the cycle to avoid the agony of an unhappy coach. Can Brown, the guy who has built up each prospect from their first arrival to the NBA be that agonizing nagging guy?
Likely no.
There are a few coaching options Philly’s front office could look into next season. | {
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Image copyright Reuters Image caption Johnny Depp stars in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Film studio Disney has said hackers have threatened to release one of the studio's forthcoming movies unless it pays a ransom.
Disney CEO Bob Iger told ABC employees about the demand at a town hall meeting on Monday, The Hollywood Reporter said.
He did not name the film, but Deadline reports that it is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
Mr Iger said Disney is refusing to pay, and that the studio is working with federal investigators.
He added that the hackers had demanded the ransom in bitcoin and that they would release the film online in a series of 20-minute chunks unless it was paid.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Disney CEO Bob Iger said the studio would not pay the ransom
It is not the first film studio to be threatened with online leaks.
Last month, a group of hackers uploaded the fifth season of Orange is the New Black after Netflix refused to pay a ransom.
Dead Men Tell No Tales is the fifth instalment of the Pirates franchise and will see Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow return to the ocean alongside Geoffrey Rush and Orlando Bloom.
It is due to be released in cinemas in the US on 26 May.
Mark James, security specialist at IT security company ESET, said: "Anything that has a value will always be a potential victim of theft, either digital or physical. If someone has it and someone wants it then in theory there's a market for it."
Analysis - Zoe Kleinman, BBC News technology reporter
It's not clear how the hackers got hold of this material - did they manage to breach Disney's hopefully robust IT security framework or was it a result of human error?
Either way, the ransom tactic is popular among cyber criminals - just as we have seen with the recent ransomware attack which caused havoc around the world.
The sad fact is that it's easy money for them. People often choose to pay simply because they just want their data back, whether it's a blockbuster movie or those irreplaceable family photos. These days our digital possessions are the new family silver.
However there is no guarantee, even if you do give in to the demand, that the criminals will keep their side of the bargain (they are criminals after all), or that you won't end up on a list of easy targets and be hit again.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]. | {
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If you’re prepared to forgive Bill Murray for being the lone impediment to the progress of Ghostbusters 3, all you have to do is read his speech introducing Sofia Coppola at the National Board of Review Awards last night. The event was full of charming introductions and thank-yous (even Christian Bale came off well — he joked that he’s found his The Fighter role so hard to shake that the actresses he’s about to screen-test opposite for The Dark Knight Rises “will be the first to get to see Dickie as Batman”), but no one had the crowd roaring like Murray, who introduced his Lost in Translation director with a delightfully deranged speech delivered while sucking on candy. Here it is in its entirety. (Also, check out Vulture’s guide to sitting next to Murray at dinner.)
“They told me I have two minutes. I’m going to pop this Red Hot [candy, pops in mouth] so I’ll be finished in two minutes [mumbling with candy in mouth]. Why do you give this award? Why? Because you have to throw a party. Because you have to compete with the Golden Globes. [Cheers.] We all asked that question. You’re able to get out tonight, celebrate — without your relatives — you earned, you deserve it.
But why do you give it to Sofia Coppola? Why? Because you want to encourage her, I think. I think that’s the real reason. Look at her. Look at her! She comes from a family, mother and father both very successful, creating entertainments, amusements and thought-provoking work. She wrote a spec script for The Virgin Suicides. The ambition of these young people! Can you believe it? The ambition! She got the job as the director. She directed Lost in Translation in another country in another language, and got a prize for it. [Pause.] God, this is a hot, hot Red Hot. But I’m not going to quit on you people, because I’ve got another half in my pocket. [Pulls out of pocket and puts in mouth.] I got one-and-a-half in my mouth right now. [Mumbling.]
Then she decided to work in France to do Marie Antoinette, a woman who was beheaded. Not a sympathetic creature, you know what I mean? A lot of directors would pass on that. Who do you root for? You know? She did a beautiful, beautiful movie. And now she did this Somewhere, which takes place … somewhere. I know — it’s the West Coast, Southern California based.
So why do you give this person an award? You give them an award because they need to be encouraged. You look around this room and you can look around the world of film, and you can see people that had great success early in their career. Some earned it, some were lucky, some got it, but at a certain point they live life. They get into life, like Sofia has gotten into life. She’s married. Now she’s got a French lover, [Phoenix front man Thomas Mars]. She has two beautiful children by this French lover. And I, for one, am sick of these directors with the homely kids. I can’t stand it anymore. She’s got beautiful children, and she lives with a man who is the only Frenchman that could play rock and roll, ever. Fuck Johnny Hallyday! [Audience roaring, gasping.] Pardon my French.
So why do you encourage these people? Because now she’s had this success, she’s had this work, she has this life, she has this family, she has this thing going, and now is when people like you have chosen well to say, ‘Let’s give this person another boost, let’s give this person another boost to say keep going, because now life will come to you hard, like it’s come to everyone that’s lived long enough. It comes hard and it gets in the way of your career; it stops your career, it stunts your life — not necessarily your life, but it definitely will make your career go left. You show me an actor doing a shit movie, I’ll show you a guy with a bad divorce. [Audience laughs.] Right? Right? [Looking around the room.] You know who I’m talking about.
I want the best for her because she’s a lady. She acts like a lady, the women in her movies are ladies, they have strength and power and they’re strong. Even the pole dancers in this latest movie have enough of themselves to call the lead actor a moron. As all you women should call your men this evening, I think, pole or not. So we’ll give her a boost to say, go on, you’ve made it this far, push her out into the deep water, push her out into bigger and deeper films, more and more films. She has a beautiful eye. She has great taste in the people she chooses to work with. She’s a kind and thoughtful director and editor and producer. She’s all the things that we hoped we could be when we were like this. She’s been lucky so far, and she’s been strong so far. Let’s keep her going. I appreciate your asking her to receive this award for filmmaking achievement. Ms. Ms. Ms. Sofia Coppola.”
Previously: Dinner With Bill Murray: A Party Reporter’s Guide | {
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One of America's most beloved magazines, Better Homes and Gardens is the legendary source of inspiration for creating a beautiful, comfortable home, enjoying life and staying happy and healthy. Create rooms that will bring joy to your daily life. Decorate cakes and cookies that will delight your neighbors, children, friends and grandkids. | {
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SEATTLE (AP) - Washington’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn is under fire for asking a student about his immigration status.
The Seattle Times reports (https://bit.ly/1U2Qx4u ) that during a visit to Raisbeck Aviation High School on Thursday, Dorn was meeting with students when one mentioned he attended school in Mexico, prompting Dorn to ask the student if he is “legal or illegal.”
After the conversation the student, who is an American citizen, said he thought the question was inappropriate.
Dorn said Friday that he has never asked that question before but that he knew his phrasing was inappropriate. He said he meant to ask how the student came from Mexico to the Tukwila school.
Critics say Dorn’s use of the term “legal” perpetuates the assumption that Latino students are foreign and criminalizes the existence of undocumented students.
___
Information from: The Seattle Times, https://www.seattletimes.com
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Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. | {
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The CIA snitch and leaker who’s trying to pass himself off as a ‘whistleblower’ acknowledged to the Intel Community Inspector General ADDITIONAL anti-Trump bias for a third and previously unreported reason, according to sources who spoke to Fox News.
So far we know this Trump-Ukraine whistleblower is a CIA officer who is a registered Democrat.
We now know the whistleblower previously worked with Joe Biden in the White House when he was Vice President.
Now Fox News is reporting that the whistleblower acknowledged to Mr. Atkinson additional anti-Trump bias.
TRENDING: BREAKING: Multiple Injuries After Car Plows Through Crowd of Trump Supporters in Yorba Linda, California (VIDEO)
The whistleblower at the center of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry acknowledged to the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) that bias against President Trump might be alleged against him or her for a third, previously unreported reason, sources familiar with the ICIG investigation tell Fox News. Fox News has previously reported the whistleblower is a registered Democrat and had a prior work history with a senior Democrat. Though Fox News has learned that an additional element of possible bias was identified by the whistleblower, its nature remains unclear.
Despite the obvious agenda to remove Trump from office, the CIA officer insists his complaint is not politically motivated.
Evidence to the contrary.
The whistleblower conspired with House Intel Chairman Adam Schiff and met with his staffers before the the complaint was even filed.
Schiff even lied about his contact with the whistleblower when he told MSNBC viewers that “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower” prior to the complaint being filed.
This CIA officer has no credibility– no wonder why Adam Schiff is now saying the whistleblower will not be testifying to his Committee. | {
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Super Smash Bros game compatible with the Nintendo 3DS
Battle against newcomers like Mega Man and Little Mac, or create new fighters yourself | {
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CHARLESTON, SC – Two new measures that would decriminalize cannabis and establish a medicinal cannabis program in the state of South Carolina have been introduced by a bipartisan group led by house minority leader James Todd Rutherford.
Medical Marijuana Bill To Allow Safe Access For Patients
House Bill 3140, entitled “Put Patients First Act,” would help qualifying patients with serious ailments to be able to cultivate and possess limited amounts of cannabis. In addition, this bill will establish a system in which registered medical cannabis providers can ensure their patients are able to obtain safe and reliable access to the medicine they need.
Lawmakers already approved a restrictive medical marijuana bill for South Carolina in June of last year. However, the previous bill, (which many called restrictive) only allowed CBD-based cannabis products for those with severe forms of epilepsy, and did not establish a system for patients to actually obtain their medicine from licensed providers.
Just one month later (in July of last year), a poll was released by ABC News 4/Post and Courier that indicated a majority of South Carolina voters support allowing seriously ill patients with qualifying conditions to access medicinal marijuana legally. As many supporters of cannabis reform were not fully pleased with this CBD-only legislation, the poll was an clear indicator that South Carolina may soon be ready for a workable medical marijuana program.
In response, with House Bill 3140, South Carolina patients may soon witness a medical marijuana program where they can access cannabis as an alternative medicine to help treat a wide variety of qualifying health condition(s).
Decriminalization Bill Will Replace Criminal Penalties
However, South Carolina lawmakers are not just putting their feet down for medical marijuana. They want more reform. Mike Pitts, a state representative, republican, and cosponsor of Rutherford’s medical marijuana bill, is also introducing his own decriminalization bill in the state, House Bill 3117.
House Bill 3117 would replace South Carolina’s current criminal penalties for those caught with up to one ounce of cannabis in their possession. Instead, people caught with cannabis in their possession will only need to pay a civil fine (similar to a speeding ticket or parking violation).
As cannabis reform continues to spread throughout the United States, you can bet South Carolina will be watched closely by advocates over the next few months as it is one of the first south eastern states aiming to establish a state-wide medical marijuana program. | {
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There’s nothin’ like the excitement of that first egg….
Unless you’ve been waiting forever- like us.
All we want is our ducks eggs!! But patience is a virtue, right? I suppose. But sadly, it isn’t one of mine.
Ducks are awesomely awesome at hiding their eggs. So good, in fact, I just made up a saying for it (awesomely awesome).
I’d be lying if I said we haven’t scoured the yard, woods, and every nook and cranny lookin’ for eggs y’all. This has been a weekly routine for the last few weeks.
Nope. We don’t go on bear hunts ’round these parts- we go on egg hunts– and it’s not even close to Easter. Although it will look like an Easter basket once the girls start laying. We have all different types of ducks so we will have colorful eggs.
That is what farming is about right? Having fresh, nutritious, wholesome colorful eggs?!?
Every single day I feel like I am a two year old stomping around the farm… I. WANT. MY. DUCK. EGGS… whaaaaa (that’s me crying). Ok. ok. That was a little exaggeration but it is exactly what is in my mind. It’s pretty much in every backyard poultry keepers mind if they aren’t getting eggs…
Instead of stomping around and throwing tantrums on the farm every day (*ahem*)- we just decided to do a simple test to find out if any of the girls were laying/ready to lay.
How To Tell If Ducks Are Laying
You are going to measure the space between the pelvic bones of your duck. In order to do this you will need to pick up your duck and turn her upside down. You will be able to feel the pelvic bones.
A Non-Laying Duck:
Will only be able to fit 2 (possibly 3) fingers in between their pelvic bones
Their pelvic bones will be pretty “stiff”
Pelvic bones are more like the shape of a ‘V’
A Laying Duck:
Will be able to fit 4 or more fingers in between their pelvic bones
Pelvic bones will be somewhat “flexible” (this is what allows them to pass an egg)
Pelvic bones are more like the shape of a ‘U’
Please note: I will give Mountain Man a big ‘ol kiss for ya. He graciously allowed his dirty “man” hands to be photographed. Please note that no animals were harmed during the photo shoot- only Mountain Man- who was pooped on. Multiple times. On multiple places on his body. Now- THAT’S a man….
P.S. Just because their bodies are ready (4 fingers) doesn’t mean that they are definitely laying. There are other factors: stress, weather (is it too cold?), moulting, sunlight, etc. Sometimes a duck’s body is ready, but if they were hatched in the Spring they may wait until the next Spring to start laying.
P.S.S. Naturally, bigger breeds will have more space between their pelvic bones, so it is best to try to compare birds of the same breed (or at least size).
P.S.S.S. Naturally, everyone has different size hands. My hands are pretty small so we use Mountain Man’s average “man” hands to measure. Rule of thumb- the more fingers you can fit between their pelvic bones= higher chance of laying!
P.S.S.S.S. We have some ducks that are possibly laying!!! Now we just need to find their nest since they free range all day (or maybe they will wait until Spring)- but the point is WE HAVE SOME WHO’S BODY’S ARE READY! Whoop whoop.
Happy checking your ducks to see if they are laying!
Standard Legal Disclosure: In order to support my blogging activities I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. I really appreciate y’alls support! Please know that I will only recommend products that I USE, LOVE, or REALLY HAVE A HANKERING FOR.
Shared On: Backyard Farming Connection, Tuesday’s with a Twist, Homestead Barn Hop, Clever Chicks Blog Hop, Simple Saturday Blog Hop, Simple Life Sunday, Simple Lives Thursday, From the Farm, Simple Saturday, | {
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This is a great story. But really, I made it sound way more simple than it really is. You probably have some questions already, if you’re a critical sort of person. Like:If the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Friesians all conquered areas of Celtic Britain, why is it that England is called England (which comes from Angle-land, the Land of the Angles) and not Saxonland or Juteland?If Old English has not been spoken since before the twelfth century, how do we know what it sounded like?When and how did Old English become the modern language that we speak today?Clearly, there is way more to it. Here are some resources that you can use to explore it further:The British Library has many great resources connected with the evolution of the English language and with the earliest complete work of literature in old English, the epic poem Beowulf. Click on this link to hear recordings of Old English and to examine texts in Old Engslish: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/changlang/activities/lang/beowulf/beowulfpage1.html This link will bring you to an interactive timeline of the English language starting in the year 1000: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/timeline/index.html This link contains a wealth of information about the development of English, along with recordings of people reading texts in Old and Middle English: http://www.1066andallthat.com/english_old.asp If you want to read about this subject in depth, I recommend Bill Bryson’s book, English and How It Got That Way, or The Story of English by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. The PBS series entitled The Story of English is also a great resource.This is the quote from Simeon Potter which inspired the visual exercise at the beginning of the lecture: "English and French expressions [in English] may have similar denotations but slightly different connotations and associations. Generally the English words are stronger, more physical, and more human. We feel more at ease after getting a hearty welcome than after being granted a cordial reception. Compare freedom with liberty, friendship with amity, kingship with royalty, holiness with sanctity, happiness with felicity, depth with profundity, and love with charity." (Simeon Potter, Our Language, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950/66, pp. 37-38.)Wiktionary.org provides a lengthy list of English words with French origins. (You can find the list here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:List_of_English_words_of_French_origin ). Spend some time perusing the list; then take a look at this list of modern English words with Saxon origins: http://www.ibiblio.org/lineback/words/sax.htm . Find some sets of synonyms, compare them, and see if Potter’s assessment that the English words feel “stronger, more physical, and more human” seems accurate to you. Which examples prove or disprove his assertion? | {
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Is it true that the language I speak shapes my thoughts?
People have been asking this question for hundreds of years. Linguists have been paying special attention to it since the 1940's, when a linguist named Benjamin Lee Whorf studied Hopi, a Native American language spoken in northeastern Arizona. Based on his studies, Whorf claimed that speakers of Hopi and speakers of English see the world differently because of differences in their language.
What we have learned is that the answer to this question is complicated. To some extent, it's a chicken-and-egg question: Are you unable to think about things you don't have words for, or do you lack words for them because you don't think about them? Part of the problem is that there is more involved than just language and thought; there is also culture. Your culture—the traditions, lifestyle, habits, and so on that you pick up from the people you live and interact with—shapes the way you think, and also shapes the way you talk.
There's a language called Guugu Yimithirr (spoken in North Queensland, Australia) that doesn't have words like left and right orfront and back. Its
speakers always describe locations and directions using the Guugu Yimithirr words for north, south, east, and west. So, they would never say that a boy is standing in front of a house; instead, they'd say he is standing (for example) east of the house. They would also, no doubt, think of the boy as standing east of the house, while a speaker of English would think of him as standing in front of the house. Has our language affected our way of thinking? Or has a difference in cultural habits affected both our thoughts and our language? Most likely, the culture, the thought habits, and the language have all grown up together.
The problem isn't restricted to individual words, either. In English, the form of the verb in a sentence tells whether it describes a past or present event (Mary walks vs. Mary walked). Hopi doesn't require that; instead, the forms of its verbs tell how the speaker came to know the information, so you would use different forms for first-hand knowledge (like I'm hungry) and generally known information (like the sky is blue). Of course, English speakers may choose to include such information (as in, I hear Mary passed the test), but it's not required. Whorf believed that because of this difference, Hopi speakers and English speakers think about events differently, with Hopi speakers focusing more on the source of the information and English speakers focusing more on the time of the event.
Objects are treated differently by the syntax of different languages as well. In English, some nouns (like bean) are 'countable' and can be made plural (beans), while others are 'mass' and can't be made plural (you can have two cups of rice but not two rices). Other languages, like Japanese, don't make this distinction; instead, classifiers like cupof are used for all nouns. Researchers are studying whether this property of the language makes English speakers more aware of the distinction between substances and individual objects.
Here's one more example. Whorf said that because English treats time as being broken up into chunks that can be counted—three days, four minutes, half an hour—English speakers tend to treat time as a group of objects—seconds, minutes, hours—instead of as a smooth unbroken stream. This, he said, makes us think that time is 'stuff' that can be saved, wasted, or lost. The Hopi, he said, don't talk about time in those terms, and so they think about it differently; for them it is a continuous cycle. But this doesn't necessarily mean that our language has forced a certain view of time on us; it could also be that our view of time is reflected in our language, or that the way we deal with time in our culture is reflected in both our language and our thoughts. It seems likely that language, thought, and culture form three strands of a braid, with each one affecting the others.
But people think in language, right?
Much of the time, yes. But not always. You can easily conjure up mental images and sensations that would be hard to describe in words. You can think about the sound of a symphony, the shape of a pear, or the smell of garlic bread. None of these thoughts require language.
So it's possible to think about something even if I don't have a word for it?
Yes. Take colors, for example. There are an infinite number of different colors, and they don't all have their own names. If you have a can of red paint and slowly add blue to it, drop by drop, it will very slowly change to a reddish purple, then purple, then bluish purple. Each drop will change the color very slightly, but there is no one moment when it will stop being red and become purple. The color spectrum is continuous. Our language, however, isn't continuous. Our language makes us break the color spectrum up into 'red', 'purple', and so on.
The Dani of New Guinea have only two basic color terms in their language, one for 'dark' colors (including blue and green) and one for 'light' colors (including yellow and red). Their language breaks up the color spectrum differently from ours. But that doesn't mean they can't see the difference between yellow and red; studies have shown that they can see different colors just as English speakers can.
In Russian, there are two different words for light blue and dark blue. Does this mean that Russian speakers think of these as 'different' colors, while having one word (blue) causes English speakers to think of them as the same? Maybe. Do you think of red and pink as different colors? If so, you may be under the influence of your language; after all, pink is really just light red.
So our language doesn't force us to see only what it gives us words for, but it can affect how we put things into groups. One of the jobs of a child learning language is to figure out which things are called by the same word. After learning that the family's St. Bernard is a dog, the child may see a cow and say dog, thinking that the two things count as the same. Or the child may not realize that the neighbor's chihuahua also counts as a dog. The child has to learn what range of objects is covered by the worddog. We learn to group things that are similar and give them the same label, but what counts as being similar enough to fall under a single label may vary from language to language.
In other words, the influence of language isn't so much on what we can think about, or even what we do think about, but rather on how we break up reality into categories and label them. And in this, our language and our thoughts are probably both greatly influenced by our culture.
But what about all those Eskimo words for snow?
You may have heard it said that Eskimos have dozens (or even hundreds!) of words for snow. People often use this claim to show that the way we view the world and the way we talk about it are closely related. But it's simply not true that Eskimos have an extraordinary number of words for snow. First of all, there isn't just one Eskimo language; the people we refer to as 'Eskimos' speak a variety of languages in the Inuit and Yupik language families. And even if we pick a single dialect of a single language, we won't find much evidence that it has more words for snow than English does. For one thing, there's the question of what counts as a word: In English, we can combine words to get compound forms like snowball and snowflake, and we can add what are called 'inflectional' endings to get snowed and snowing. The Eskimo languages have far more word-forming processes than English does, so a single 'root' word (like snow) could be the basis for hundreds of related words. It hardly seems fair to count each one of these separately. If you only count the roots, you'll find that these languages aren't that different from English. After all, English has lots of words for snow; we've got snow, sleet, slush, frost, blizzard, avalanche, drift, powder, and flurry, and if you're an avid skier, you probably know even more.
So learning a different language won't change the way I think?
Not really, but if the new language is very different from your own, it may give you some insight into another culture and another way of life.
For further information
Nunberg, Geoffrey. 1996. "Snowblind." Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14: p. 205-213.
Pullum, Geoffrey. 1991. The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
By: Betty Birner
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In traditional Chinese culture, qi or ch'i (About this soundqì) is believed to be a vital force forming part of any living entity. Qi translates as "air" and figuratively as "material energy", "life force", or "energy flow". Qi is the central underlying principle in Chinese traditional medicine and in Chinese martial arts. The practice of cultivating and balancing qi is called qigong
The meridian system (simplified Chinese: 经络; traditional Chinese: 經絡; pinyin: jīngluò, also called channel network) is a concept in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) about a path through which the life-energy known as "qi" flows.
Meridian system
There are about 400 acupuncture points (not counting bilateral points twice) most of which are situated along the major 20 pathways (i.e. 12 primary and 8 extraordinary channels). However, by the 2nd Century AD, 649 acupuncture points were recognized in China (reckoned by counting bilateral points twice). There are "Twelve Principal Meridians" where each meridian corresponds to either a hollow or solid organ; interacting with it and extending along a particular extremity (i.e. arm or leg). There are also "Eight Extraordinary Channels", two of which have their own sets of points, and the remaining ones connecting points on other channels.
There are about 400 acupuncture points (not counting bilateral points twice) most of which are situated along the major 20 pathways (i.e. 12 primary and 8 extraordinary channels). However, by the 2nd Century AD, 649 acupuncture points were recognized in China (reckoned by counting bilateral points twice). There are "Twelve Principal Meridians" where each meridian corresponds to either a hollow or solid organ; interacting with it and extending along a particular extremity (i.e. arm or leg). There are also "Eight Extraordinary Channels", two of which have their own sets of points, and the remaining ones connecting points on other channels.
The meridian network is typically divided into 2 categories, the jingmai (經脈) or meridian channels and the luomai (絡脈) or associated vessels (sometimes called "collaterals"). The jingmai contain the 12 tendinomuscular meridians, the 12 divergent meridians, the 12 principal meridians, the 8 extraordinary vessels as well as the Huato channel, a set of bilateral points on the lower back whose discovery is attributed to the ancient physician Hua Tuo. The collaterals contain 15 major arteries that connect the 12 principal meridians in various ways, in addition to the interaction with their associated internal organs and other related internal structures. The collateral system also incorporates a branching expanse of capillary-like vessels which spread throughout the body, namely in the 12 cutaneous regions as well as emanating from each point on the principal meridians. If one counts the number of unique points on each meridian, the total comes to 361, which matches the number of days in a year, in the moon calendar system. Note that this method ignores the fact that the bulk of acupoints are bilateral, making the actual total 670.
The meridian network is typically divided into 2 categories, the jingmai (經脈) or meridian channels and the luomai (絡脈) or associated vessels (sometimes called "collaterals"). The jingmai contain the 12 tendinomuscular meridians, the 12 divergent meridians, the 12 principal meridians, the 8 extraordinary vessels as well as the Huato channel, a set of bilateral points on the lower back whose discovery is attributed to the ancient physician Hua Tuo. The collaterals contain 15 major arteries that connect the 12 principal meridians in various ways, in addition to the interaction with their associated internal organs and other related internal structures. The collateral system also incorporates a branching expanse of capillary-like vessels which spread throughout the body, namely in the 12 cutaneous regions as well as emanating from each point on the principal meridians. If one counts the number of unique points on each meridian, the total comes to 361, which matches the number of days in a year, in the moon calendar system. Note that this method ignores the fact that the bulk of acupoints are bilateral, making the actual total 670.
Acupressure [from Latin acus "needle" (see acuity) + pressure (n.)] is an alternative medicine technique similar in principle to acupuncture. It is based on the concept of life energy which flows through "meridians" in the body. In treatment, physical pressure is applied to acupuncture points with the aim of clearing blockages in these meridians. Pressure may be applied by hand, by elbow, or with various devices.
Acupressure [from Latin acus "needle" (see acuity) + pressure (n.)] is an alternative medicine technique similar in principle to acupuncture. It is based on the concept of life energy which flows through "meridians" in the body. In treatment, physical pressure is applied to acupuncture points with the aim of clearing blockages in these meridians. Pressure may be applied by hand, by elbow, or with various devices.
Many East Asian martial arts also make extensive study and use of acupressure for self-defense and health purposes, (chin na, tui na). The points or combinations of points are said to be used to manipulate or incapacitate an opponent. Also, martial artists regularly massage their own acupressure points in routines to remove supposed blockages from their own meridians, claiming to thereby enhance their circulation and flexibility and keeping the points "soft" or less vulnerable to an attack.
Many East Asian martial arts also make extensive study and use of acupressure for self-defense and health purposes, (chin na, tui na). The points or combinations of points are said to be used to manipulate or incapacitate an opponent. Also, martial artists regularly massage their own acupressure points in routines to remove supposed blockages from their own meridians, claiming to thereby enhance their circulation and flexibility and keeping the points "soft" or less vulnerable to an attack.
Acupoints used in treatment may or may not be in the same area of the body as the targeted symptom. The traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theory for the selection of such points and their effectiveness is that they work by stimulating the meridian system to bring about relief by rebalancing yin, yang and qi (also spelled "chi").
Acupoints used in treatment may or may not be in the same area of the body as the targeted symptom. The traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theory for the selection of such points and their effectiveness is that they work by stimulating the meridian system to bring about relief by rebalancing yin, yang and qi (also spelled "chi").
The framework is portrayed by the analysis of aggravations in the stream of vitality, or chi. Conclusion requires perception, addressing and tuning in, and palpation of heartbeats (Singleton et. al., 1999). TCM originated from understanding one's condition, tolerating man as a result of nature, and tolerating man as unavoidably commonly subordinate with nature. Animals around him, plants, the waterway stream, the sun, the dirt, and the air that he took in and breathed out - man made due by living amicably with his environment. Truth be told, a significant part of the fundamental hypothesis of drug in China is recorded in traditional books that are the two works of therapeutic science and writing. The horde ideas were sorted out and reported by the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine (Yong, et al, 1999). All issue and sicknesses are the aftereffect of awkward nature in the body. Uneven characters, incorporating everything in the universe, are the consequences of the interplaying of the restricting powers known as Yin and Yang . In a nutshell, Yin and Yang are the negative and positive powers that make life as we know it possible. TCM puts much significance on agreement and equalization in our day by day lives by expecting us to focus on what we eat, how we work out, and the manner in which we handle our feelings, sexual lives, work and rest. The adjusting of the Yin and Yang in one's body with the universe makes more vitality and keeps individuals from becoming ill. TCM draws on nature, old learning of herbs and the body's very own recuperating assets. All parts of an individual - physical, enthusiastic, mental and profound are interconnected and associated. Every one of us is a brought together natural body-mind-soul. The operations of the human body was formed by Taoist reasoning, which held that people are a part of nature and thusly, are administered by indistinguishable common laws from the universe. Along these lines, every individual is a smaller than usual universe with analogies to the bigger universe. A TCM expert won't treat one condition without understanding the effect on whatever is left of the body, or what may have caused the explicit manifestation.
Five thousand years after the visitation of the ‘Sons Of Reflected Light’ a man died high in the Italian Alps with a flint tip buried in his back, a severed artery and his hand cut to the bone and while there are many hypotheses about how or why he died there is no doubt that his preservation is one of the most vivid glimpses ever given into our distant past.
Legend tells they took the most intelligent people and trained them in the various disciplines and skills, often for generations, children learning from their parents and so on until some centuries after their arrival the Sons sent their knowledge by way of their pupils out into the world and then they are presumed to have departed since they have not been seen since.
Legend tells they took the most intelligent people and trained them in the various disciplines and skills, often for generations, children learning from their parents and so on until some centuries after their arrival the Sons sent their knowledge by way of their pupils out into the world and then they are presumed to have departed since they have not been seen since.
Where ever they came from they did so to teach mankind and it is said that they brought civilization to humanity in the form of the arts, textile manufacture, metallurgy, alchemy and many forms of medicine.
Where ever they came from they did so to teach mankind and it is said that they brought civilization to humanity in the form of the arts, textile manufacture, metallurgy, alchemy and many forms of medicine.
They were a strange race said to be seven feet tall and wearing clothing like nothing anyone had ever seen before, it reflected light thus giving them their name (Fankuang Tzu). If we were to talk about clothing today that reflects light the first thing most people would think of is space suits so perhaps these beings did literally come from the heavens.
They were a strange race said to be seven feet tall and wearing clothing like nothing anyone had ever seen before, it reflected light thus giving them their name (Fankuang Tzu). If we were to talk about clothing today that reflects light the first thing most people would think of is space suits so perhaps these beings did literally come from the heavens.
According to legend, twelve thousand years ago in western China the Sons of Reflected light came down from the skies.
According to legend, twelve thousand years ago in western China the Sons of Reflected light came down from the skies.
How to use Acu-Frequency to clear energy blockages to accelerate the natural functioning of your body and mind for ultimate health and wellbeing.
He carried with him the top technology of his time, fine arrow shafts and tips, fungi for healing and tender, a flint knife and shaft, exceptionally designed waterproof shoes, snow shoes, and a copper axe set on a finely crafted yew handle, a treasure in his time.
Otzi the Iceman, as he has come to be known, was not without means as his personal goods reveal but he also carried something else that while not as tactile as a beautiful copper axe the presence of which does suggest a level of medical and anatomical knowledge not believed to be in practice for another two thousand years and a continent away; Otzi the iceman is tattooed with fifty seven lines, dots and crosses that mark acupressure and meridian points.
Detailed physiological examination has revealed that the iceman suffered from physical maladies that correspond to the tattooed areas such as arthritic disease processes in his spine, hips, ankles and knees. He also had tattoos marking meridian points used for addressing stomach and abdominal pain which he undoubtedly suffered from due to a nasty infestation of whip-worms.
In short, Otzi’s tattoos were definitely not random and exhibit a sophisticated understanding of the neural and energy pathways in the human body, the marks also display a remarkable resemblance to the trigrams of the I Ching, the ancient book of divination whose symbols are said to be older than recorded history and can be translated as a binary code.
Of course we have no reason to believe that Otzi tattooed himself. In fact, given the location of some of his tattoos it is highly unlikely. So Otzi was most likely tattooed by a shaman or medical practitioner who marked the area associated with his pain in order to treat him.
It is possible that the tattooing process was the original treatment and the permanent marks served as a map for Otzi and anyone close to him to treat his pain with acupressure. It is also possible that the shapes of the marks are also not random and their meaning would assist another practitioner in Otzi’s treatment.
The tattoo session would have probably given more extended relief and then the tattoos could be used as a guide for repeated long term pain management, it is even likely that the tattoo sessions were repeated over time.
Otzi the Iceman is the oldest mummy found to date and he was tattooed for medical purposes so it stands to reason that the practice must have been fairly common unless the one tattooed man just happened to be preserved in ice for five thousand, not very likely.
The real question here is how people barely out of the Stone Age knew the art of acupressure more than two thousand years before it is known to have been practiced in second century China and even more interesting is his treatments connection to the story of the Sons of Reflecting Lights.
When the giants were said to have first appeared in their reflective clothing they had powers unlike any human – they could see the light or aura that surrounds people and they could see the lines of energy or meridians that flowed through the people’s bodies.
The acupressure points appeared to them as tiny points of light, whether this power was within the beings or achieved by some advanced technology we do not know but it allowed them to diagnose problems and cure them by restoring the flow of energy within the individual. The Sons of Reflected Light were said to be able to focus their mental energy on these points of light and heal the person.
In the beginning they did not have to touch to heal but after many years it is said that they needed to actually touch the patient, almost as if some power source had been depleted.
While the organized practice of acupressure is documented in second century China in the Yellow Emperors Classic of Internal Medicine the earliest references to the technique of the practice can be found in much more ancient texts that indicate the technique was practiced in India, Nepal, Tibet and western China dating back at least seven thousand years.
Did practitioners of this art, taught by the Sons of Reflected Light spread out across Asia and Europe healing and spreading the knowledge? Is this how Otzi the prehistoric European was marked with the healing points of an advanced system of pain management given to him by someone who understood the flow of the life force on a level that has been lost to modern medicine at least in the western world?
The legends of healers from the stars occur in cultures all over the world just as the practice of acupressure is preserved in the tattoos of mummies from Egypt, Europe, Siberia, the Aleuts and South America.
For many years mainstream archaeologists, influenced by their modern prejudices against the practice of tattoo have either ignored, minimized the importance tattoos on both natural and man-made mummies or they made up theories of the lifestyles of the tattooed individuals based on their preconceived notions of tattoos.
Perhaps they should pay more attention to the signs etched in the skin and the stories they can tell us about the individuals who wore them and their connections to the mysterious healers from the stars who taught them how to heal with only a touch.
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There’s a preseason match today and nothing in the form of news caught my attention yesterday. Therefore, I chose to just write a match preview. You’re welcome!
WHO: Forward Madison FC, USL League One
WHAT: A preseason friendly
WHEN: Tuesday, February 25, 2020, 3:00 p.m.
WHERE: Thurman Hutchins Park
WATCH: Unfortunately, you can’t. This event is closed to the public because the facility is literally two soccer fields side-by-side surrounded by some chain-link fence. No stream, either, but I’ll do my best to feverishly tweet about it in case the club doesn’t.
WHO, AGAIN? Forward Madison, the darlings of League One. More famous for their social media presence than their on-field performance, Forward Madison is noteworthy because of their absolutely sick home and away shirts, their embrace of plastic yard flamingoes as a mascot, selling branded potatoes online, and a recent Football Manager mod that lets you try to move FMFC through a made-up world where promotion and relegation is the reality in the United States. They really are fun!
On the field, they’re a bit less successful. Madison finished fourth in League One in 2019 and lost their opening round playoff match away to North Texas SC, the eventual champions. They did make it to the third round of the Open Cup. Forward Madison also averaged nearly 5,000 fans per home game in their inaugural season, something New York Red Bulls II would kill for if they cared about such things.
Madison lost their preseason opener on Saturday 3-1 at Memphis 901. They’re still bedding in a fairly new roster and appear to only be returning less than ten players from 2019. Their most notable player, goalkeeper Bryan Sylvestre, went to Miami FC via transfer a few weeks ago. In 2019, Madison gave up 28 goals and scored 33 in a 28 game regular season schedule. They’re not a bad passing team against like competition, but lost the possession battle more often than not.
The ‘Mingoes are coached by Daryl Shore, a guy who has truly seen it all in American soccer. Shore played for five years as a goalkeeper in the league that preceded the USL, the United States Indoor Soccer League. He both featured and managed for the Birmingham Grasshoppers and the New Orleans Riverboat Gamblers. After his playing career ended in 1998, he managed the rebranded New Orleans Storm in 1998, the Lehigh Valley Steam in 1999 and then picked up an assistant job for Chicago Fire under Frank Klopas for about ten years. Shore was head coach of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers during NASL’s late-stage collapse and then joined Real Salt Lake’s staff until taking the Madison job in 1998. I’d love to put him and John Hackworth in a room and just hit record to see the stories they could tell.
This should be a fun, if very wet contest. We’ll let you know more on Wednesday in a recap of undetermined length. VAMOS MORADOS! | {
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tells everyone shes a free spirit also tells everyone how to live their own lives
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Bernie Sanders
Stephen worries that Senator Sanders' call for a redistribution of wealth will overcrowd his yacht club. | {
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Hi there,
So it’s been a while since there was an official rules update, which is why I’m really happy to announce the release of a new army for Grimdark Future, the Dwarf Guilds.
The Dwarf Guilds are a union of all dwarven mining companies found in the Sirius sector, which fight under one banner for the prosperity of their race. Whilst they are short in statute one should not underestimate them, as they use their advanced technology to overcome all their shortcomings and dominate their foes.
If there any other armies that you’d like to see in the game feel free to shoot me an e-mail with your suggestions: [email protected]
You can get the updates for each game here:
Happy Wargaming,
Gaetano | {
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Trump gives an incredible speech to the Economics Club of New York click to watch below.
And the Trump economy continues to break record after record.
Even today after the first full day of the sham impeachment hearing the stock market went UP!
If investors thought there were any chance that Trump would be impeached the stock market would have tanked.
The stock market went up 90 points today — which tells you Schiff's Show Trials were a COMPLETE BUST! #DemsGotNothing pic.twitter.com/XOao9LzE5n — Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) November 13, 2019
TRENDING: HERE SHE COMES! Judge Amy Coney Barrett Seen Leaving Her House with Her Seven Kids and Husband! -- Announcement at 5 PM ET
How could anyone want to impeach this man? | {
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An underwater glow. A fleeting gleam across a field. These lights seem mysterious, but organisms generate them for practical purposes. Bioluminescence fends off predators, lures prey, and attracts mates. Making light is such a useful trait that it has evolved independently at least 40 times. It occurs most commonly in the ocean, where bioluminescence is often the only source of light. Under the right conditions, a bioluminescent flash can be seen a hundred yards away.
(Read more about “Luminous Life” in this month’s issue of National Geographic.)
Click each illustration to see it animate | {
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With "No Drone Zone" signs superimposed on the field and in lights outside the stadium, the message couldn't be clearer. And it's not entirely unwarranted. People are using drones to film more and more sporting events, and while the NFL has an overhead camera system already in place, drones offer cheap aerial coverage for less-well-financed college and high school programs. Not to mention your average superfan. Last year, British police arrested a man for flying a drone over a Manchester City versus Tottenham Hotspurs soccer match. There's a safety concern with drones flying over crowds, but sporting events also have strict rules regarding filming and copyright, so that's probably at play here too. | {
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Any picture of time is a mathematical tool according to the positivist philosophy of science I adopt. In this, a physical theory is a mathematical model. We cannot ask if a model corresponds to reality, because we have no independent test of what reality is. All we can ask is whether the predictions of the model are confirmed by observation. Models of quantum theory use imaginary numbers, and imaginary time in a fundamental way. These models are confirmed by many observations. So imaginary time is as real as anything else in physics. I just find it difficult to imagine. | {
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EMICS AND ETICS:
The Insider/Outsider Debate Edited by Thomas N. Headland, Kenneth L. Pike, and Marvin Harris
Published in 1990. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Inc.
Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN KENNETH PIKE AND MARVIN HARRIS
ON EMICS AND ETICS
Thomas N. Headland
This essay originally appeared as chapter 1 in the book Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate, edited by Thomas Headland, Kenneth Pike, and Marvin Harris (published in 1990 by Sage Publications). It reviews the history and development of the emic/etic concept, the differences in conceptualization of the concept between Pike and Harris, and how the debate between them came about in 1988.
In November 1988 the Program Committee of the American Anthropological Association and the General Anthropology Division, also a part of the AAA, joined together to sponsor an Invited Session at the Association's 87th Annual Meeting on the subject of the history and significance of emics and etics. The hundreds of professional scientists in the audience who sat through that four-hour discussion bear witness to my conjecture that this meeting of two great scholars--Kenneth Pike and Marvin Harris--may go down as one of the significant events of the decade in American anthropology. I introduced the topic and speakers to the audience by reading an earlier version of this present chapter. Five other scholars participated as discussants with Pike and Harris on this panel. These were Dell Hymes, James Lett, Gerald Murray, Nira Reiss, and Roger Keesing. All of them except Keesing revised their papers into chapters for this volume. Subsequent to the Meeting, three other scholars accepted invitations to write papers for the volume: John Berry, Robert Feleppa, and Willard Quine. Their chapters are included herein.
How did this meeting come about? More importantly, how did the terms emic and etic come about, what do they mean today, and why have they become so popular?
My academic career has been heavily influenced by both Kenneth Pike and Marvin Harris. I first studied with Pike in 1958 at the University of Oklahoma, and my wife and I wrote our first two articles under his tutelage at a linguistic workshop he conducted in the Philippines in 1963 (J. Headland 1966; Headland and Wolfenden 1968). My acquaintance with Harris came somewhat later, in the middle 1970s, when Bion Griffin, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii who was trying to lure me from ethnosemantics to cultural materialism, sent me a photocopy of a chapter out of Harris's 1968 book. That chapter was titled "Emics, Etics, and the New Ethnography." Since then, I have read a good bit of Harris's writings; and his ideas, perhaps even more than Pike's, have had a keen influence in the directions of my own research. I never actually studied under Harris, however, and indeed I met him for the first time only in 1987.
Both Harris and Pike are famous worldwide as leading theoreticians, Harris in anthropology and Pike in linguistics. Both men are philosophers, and each has written about 250 articles and 25 books. Both men are founders of important theoretical paradigms: Pike's (1967) Tagmemics in linguistics and Harris's (1979) Cultural Materialism in anthropology. While I do not fully agree with the theoretical schools of thought developed by either Pike or Harris, both theories have aided me in my own studies, and I recognize and appreciate the work of both of them.
Yet the two theories and the two men are so different that one would hardly expect Pike and Harris to meet, let alone show any interest in each other. Pike is a theist; Harris is a naturalist. Though they both share an emphasis on human behavior, Pike takes an idealist position on culture in his studies,1 while Harris holds to a materialist concept of culture in his. Pike's tagmemics was developed in the 1950s as a way of analyzing human languages; Harris's cultural materialism was developed in the 1960s as a way of understanding and interpreting human culture. The concept that brought them together, of course, was emics and etics.
How could two scientists with such different approaches--theories not even within the same discipline--come to use the same concept (emics and etics) as a major tool in their theories? And what happened when these two men finally met together? That is what this book is about.
Readers of this book will, I think, be delighted to find that Harris and Pike take herein what Richard Bernstein calls a "dialogical approach" as they come together. While hardly in agreement on the topic of this volume--indeed, as the reader will soon see, they hold rival philosophic orientations--these two scholars avoid "the adversarial confrontational style" which would prove unproductive to most of us. In fact, Harris and Pike herein reflect a style of argument that Bernstein (1989:16-17) has recently appealed to:
Conflict and disagreement are unavoidable in our pluralistic situation. . . . What matters is how we respond to conflict. . . . [Rather than an] "adversarial" or "confrontational" style of argumentation, . . . [where] the other is viewed as an opponent, . . . [in a dialogical encounter] one begins with the assumption that the other has something to . . . contribute to our understanding. The initial task is to grasp the other's position in the strongest possible light, . . . in which we can understand our differences. The other is not an adversary or an opponent, but a conversational partner. . . . One does not seek to score a point by exploiting the other's weaknesses; rather, one seeks to strengthen the other's argument as much as possible so as to render it plausible, . . . [a] dialogical encounter where we reasonably explore our differences and conflicts.
In the chapters to follow, we will see that Pike and Harris come surprisingly close to the ideal Bernstein is talking about. It is their style of argumentation which makes this volume worth reading.
Pike was the person who first coined the terms emics and etics, and who first used them in print in 1954 (Pike [1954] 1967 ). Harris first used the terms in print in The Nature of Cultural Things (1964), where he cites Pike. I suppose that the terms were a regular part of my own vocabulary by the early 1960s, but it was not until the '70s that I realized how widespread and popular the terms had become among anthropologists. And it was not until the late '80s that I realized that the terms were being used in other disciplines unrelated to linguistics and anthropology.
By the early '80s, in fact, I was becoming increasingly fascinated with the confusion I found in people's definitions of the terms, and the distinctions that those definitions were supposed to produce. I was sometimes surprised to hear anthropologists and linguists explain the terminology to students in ways with which I disagreed. And since in the middle '70s I was running with the "New Ethnography" paradigm, it took me a long time to accept Harris's use of the concept as a part of cultural materialism.
Part of the confusion is that Pike and Harris not only do not use the concept in the same way, but that they differ in their applications and definitions of the terms. This problem will come out clearly in subsequent chapters of this volume. Various authors have criticized Harris (Howard 1968; Merrifield 1968; Burling 1969:826-827; Goodenough 1970:112-114; Fisher and Werner 1978) or defended him (Berger 1976; Marano 1982; Langness 1987:133-136) for his unique applications of the emic/etic notion, while others have attempted to explain the differences between Pike's and Harris's uses of it (Pelto 1970:67-86; Arnold 1971:22; Durbin 1972:384-385; Kensinger 1975:72-73; Jahoda 1977, 1983; Fisher and Werner 1978; Lett 1987; Feleppa 1986:244-245; 1988), including Harris himself (1976, 1979:34-38). I found only one paper (Ekstrand and Ekstrand 1986) that criticizes Pike for the way he defines the terms. Based on their view of the etymology of the Greek roots from which emic and etic are derived, these authors rather boldly claim that Pike is guilty of "false analogy" and "confusion" because he put his own meanings into the terms, which are the opposite of what they should be (p. 5).
Sometimes we dream. As I recall, it was sometime in 1985 that I began to daydream about how I might possibly get Harris and Pike together where I could listen to them hammer out with each other just what they mean by emics and etics. As it turned out, someone beat me to the punch. To add a little more background here, the reader should know that these two scholars never met or corresponded with each other until 1986. In fact, though Pike was aware of Harris's use of the emic/etic idea in the '60s (Pike 1967:34, 54), he had read next to none of Harris's works until 1986. And although Harris had been using Pike's concept for over 20 years, they had never communicated with each other.
Then, when Pike was lecturing in Spain in September of 1985, Gustavo Bueno, a philosopher at the University of Oviedo mentioned to Pike that when Harris had spoken in Spain earlier that year that he (Harris) had mentioned to Bueno that he would like to meet Pike. The following spring Pike wrote to Harris and invited him to come to the University of Oklahoma to meet with him and present a formal lecture to the faculty and student body of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Harris accepted, and the two of them, I am told, had two days of very stimulating and cordial discussion together. That was in June of 1986.
I missed it all. I did not even hear about it until weeks later. (My family and I were just moving back to the States from the Philippines that summer.) I did, however, have the privilege of reading their exchange of letters which followed that eventful Oklahoma meeting.
So we can thank Professor Bueno for first getting Harris and Pike together. One must wonder why it took so long.
When I finally met Harris in 1987 at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago, I asked him if he would consider participating with Pike at a formal symposium at the 1988 Annual Meeting. To my pleasant surprise, he said yes. Maybe, I thought, I will see Pike and Harris in interaction after all. As soon as I got home from Chicago I wrote a formal proposal to both of them, and they accepted it. The rest is history.
The Diffusion of Emics and Etics in Other Disciplines
Let us review here just how widespread the emic/etic concept has become in academic disciplines other than linguistics and anthropology by the end of the 1980s. Today, of course, the terms are found in common usage in the vocabularies of most anthropologists, and the distinction has proved very useful to them. In fact, most practicing anthropologists today use insights about the differing perceptions of reality of different subcultural groups as a principal--if not the principal--conceptual tool of their trade. The emic/etic distinction, then, underlies one of the basic contributions of modern anthropology to the working world (i.e., the ability to understand and interpret other cultures). Many anthropologists, in fact, if not other social scientists, may owe their jobs to their ability to make the distinction between emic and etic.
In the following discussion I make a few statistical inferences about the emic/etic concept, drawing from a bibliography compiled by Stewart Hussey (1989), which consists of 278 titles of published articles and books that use these terms. His bibliography, compiled in a database format, is annotated and includes several fields, some of which are displayed in summary form in the tables of this chapter.2 The reader must keep in mind that the 278 "records" in the database are not a random sample drawn from some library universe, but from a bibliography of all the references using the two terms that were located through personal library research and library computer search services.
A gradual change came in both the use and meaning of the emic/etic terms by social scientists in the 1970s. As one might expect, there has been a geometric increase in the use of the emic/etic terms since Pike first published on them in the 1954 edition of his major work (1967). (See Table 1.1.) What is more interesting is how the terms diffused into other branches of science during the '70s and at the same time became common words in the English language. This trend is reflected in the gradual inclusion of the terms into unabridged dictionaries (see Table 1.2),3 the spread of the terms into the journals of other disciplines (see Table 1.3), a decrease in the number of authors who felt any need to cite Pike, or anyone else, when they used the terms in print (Table 1.4), and an increase in the number of authors who used the terms in print with no definition or explanation, because they assumed their readers knew and understood the words (Table 1.5).
What is so fascinating is how social scientists use the terms, usually as a heuristic device, for so many widely divergent purposes. The concept was a major tool of the ethnoscientists during their heyday in the early '70s, of cultural materialists today, and of lexicographers for the last quarter century. At least one archaeologist (Arnold 1971) has proposed the concept as a tool for reconstructing cognitive systems of a people from physical contrasts in their artifacts. Anthropologists may be less aware, however, of the many specialists in other fields who use the idea. In fact, various uses of the terms may be found in journals of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, folklore, semiotics, philology, medicine, nursing, public health, education, urban studies, and management. A complete bibliography would list hundreds of publications. The popularity of the concept in psychology is especially salient (Table 1.3), not only obvious in the many psychology articles that use the terms (65 out of the 278 references in Hussey 1989), but also in the several articles which discuss them in the authoritative six-volume Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology (Triandis et al. 1980, 1981, 1985).4 The concept had evidently become so common in psychology by the late '70s that one writer in that discipline stated that "currently, the suffixes [of phonetics and phonemics] have nested themselves [so] securely in the jargon of cross-cultural psychology [that they] are hardly ever associated with linguistics by members of the cross-cultural guild" (Lonner 1979:19). Similarly, Alan Dundes (1962) shows how useful the emic/etic model is for analyzing folklore, while Johnson et al. (1981) discusses its usefulness for educational administrators.
It is interesting to note that not only do many of these hundreds of authors neglect to cite Pike or Harris (56% in my sample),5 but that some have cited others as the source of the terms (see, e.g., Hall 1964:155, Richards 1972:97, Adams-Price and Reese 1986, and Olmedo 1981:1081). Smith and Sluckin (1979) in citing another source do credit Harris as the early source. A number of psychology publications--16 in Hussey's (1989) sample bibliography--cite psychologist John Berry's (1969) now-classic paper, and not Pike, in their discussions of emics and etics, thus leading their readers to assume Berry is the source, even though Berry states that "Pike . . . coined the terms" (p. 123). Webster's dictionary supplements (1976, 1983) attribute the origin of the terms to John Algeo.6 Of course, a number of publications--7% in my sample (19/262, see Table 1.4, column 3)--use the terms citing Harris, and not Pike, implying at least to their readers that Harris is the source. For example, in a 1976 article in Current Anthropology (Berger 1976), the author and five of eight commentators use the terms many times, citing Harris's publications frequently, but Pike not at all.
Further, the terms are defined in the literature in many different and--in my view--usually inadequate ways. (See, e.g., the various definitions in the dictionaries cited in Table 1.2.) Some authors equate emic and etic with verbal versus nonverbal, or as specific versus universal, or as interview versus observation, or as subjective knowledge versus scientific knowledge, or as good versus bad, or as ideal behavior versus actual behavior, or as description versus theory, or as private versus public, or as ethnographic (i.e., idiosyncratically uncomparable) versus ethnological (comparable cross-culturally). One linguistic dictionary (Ducrot and Todorov 1979:36) says emic interprets events according to their particular cultural function, while etic characterizes events only by spatio-temporal criteria. An epidemiological study on obesity (Massara 1980) differentiates the emic/etic terms as "informal" versus "formal" research procedures. An article in a medical journal (Weidman 1979) uses the terms 16 times, always in italics, defining them only as "cultural/within" versus "orthodox/without"; the lengthy bibliography in this article cites neither Pike nor Harris. In an education journal, a professor of English (Nattinger 1978) differentiates emics and etics as "soft facts" versus "hard facts." And one anthropologist (Monagan 1985:353) explains the difference as "the ethnographic situation" in contrast to "a grid from the data itself." Another anthropologist (Sindzingre 1988:447) refers to a "version of the emic/etic distinction" as dichotomizing between a writer who agrees with a theoretical perspective (emic) versus one who disagrees with the perspective ("an outside observer," hence etic). Levi-Strauss (1972:20-23) uses the terms, but argues that the meanings of the two words should be reversed: emic should be etic, and etic should be emic!
An example of some of the surprising meanings people give to the terms was brought home to me one day last year when I was driving along with a group of graduate students. One of them pointed out to the rest of us an interesting object in a nearby field. Later when the driver asked us what we had been viewing and talking about, a student said to him, "Oh, you were driving emically, huh?"--meaning he had only been noticing the significant items needed to be observed through his windshield to get us safely to our destination. These students, most of whom were then in my anthropology class, seemed to have no trouble understanding the speaker's adverbial use of the term. But I did not agree with that semantic use; and I suspect Pike never originally intended it to be used that way.
Hymes (1970:281-282) discusses in an early work why the most commonly applied meaning of emic ("native [or insider's] point of view") is inadequate and misleading, namely, that natives normally are neither conscious of their emic system nor able to formulate it for the investigator. (Harris reviews other interpretations in chapter 3 of this volume.)
Common dictionaries do not help us much, either, in our search for the meanings of the terms. The just-published New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary (Webster's 1989) does little for its readers when it defines emic with nothing more than "adj. (linguistics) have structurally significant characteristics," especially since it neglected to define etic at all! The 1989 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary (Simpson and Weiner 1989), the most comprehensive English dictionary ever published, gives inadequate glosses for the terms and attempts to illustrate the meanings with an example quoted verbatim from a 1969 article in the journal English Studies. It says:
One person will shake hands with you by lifting your hand up to about shoulder height and then drop it, another will move your hand less high and then down again, a third will "pump' it up and down two or three times; in Western culture these may be called etic differences and can be viewed as various realizations of the one emic element: "shaking hands' (p. 427; quoted from Siertsema 1969:586).
Admittedly, it would be difficult to write a short dictionary gloss of the terms, but the preceding two examples only complicate the already present confusion among students and scientists as to their meaning. A more satisfactory definition of the words is found in the 1987 Random House Dictionary:
[Emic:] adj. Ling. pertaining to or being a significant unit that functions in contrast with other units in a language or other system of behavior....coined by U.S. linguist Kenneth L. Pike....[Etic:] pertaining to or being the raw data of a language or other area of behavior, without considering the data as significant units functioning within a system (Random House 1987:637, 666).
Perhaps most of these scores of definitions are not incorrect. After all, as we scan through many of these publications, we are forced to recognize how useful the distinction has proven to be for different authors in so many different disciplines, as they try to communicate to their readers.
It is obvious, for example, how heuristically helpful even the simplest and most common definition of the concept ("insider" versus "outsider" view) has become to doctors and psychologists attempting to diagnose illnesses of patients of another culture, or to educators teaching in a cross-cultural setting. What is the norm in the culture of the teacher or examining nurse may have no application in the culture of the patient or pupil. The resulting miscommunication may be especially glaring when the world view of the latter differs from that of the former. In psychology, one author in that field says his colleagues have only recently (in 1979) "become increasingly aware of the desperate need for an emic approach" (Ciborowski 1979:107). Clearly, the emic/etic idea has done much to help psychologists recognize that "much of what we label as cross-cultural psychology [is] essentially centri-cultural psychology" (ibid.).
So perhaps we should not fault writers too quickly who use the terms differently from their original meaning. Though many writers are using metaphorical extensions which go beyond (or restrict) the original meanings of the terms, they, and their readers, find the metaphors useful. In any case, what is certain--and intriguing--is that there are many meanings today for emics and etics.
In current anthropological publications the terms are especially common, and usually appear unitalicized, with no reference to their origin, and often undefined. I was thus surprised to hear Roger Keesing say, in his discussant's comment at the November '88 symposium where most of the present chapters were first presented, that "none of the cognitive anthropologists whose work I have been reading in the last ten years use those terms any more. . . . [The concept] lives on [only] in the periphery. . . . I just don't think emic and etic is a relevant distinction any more." I must disagree with Keesing's view here. Certainly the terms may be found in most current issues of the major anthropology journals (as, e.g., in the latest issues I have received as I write this--in January 1990--of American Anthropologist [December 1989, p. 1089] and of Current Anthropology [February 1990, p. 49]). The terms are also found, of course, as Keesing recognized in his comment, in 50% of the elementary anthropology textbooks for undergraduate students published since 1976 (N=28), here always with some kind of definition. Most of those texts, 72%, cite neither Pike, Harris, nor anyone else in their discussion of the concept, while 28% cite Pike.7 In Hussey's (1989) bibliography, 29% of the publications using the terms fail to cite any source at all (see Table 1.4, column 6).
Perhaps, then, this state of affairs means that by the end of the 1980s the terms have become so much a part of other academic fields, especially within the social sciences, that they now belong to all of us and no longer just to Pike and Harris. I view this as good for the discipline. So do Pike and Harris, I am sure. And as we see from their discussions in the following chapters, both of them are interested in finding out how we can build on the past--not defend it.
One problem remains before us, however. Although we probably should allow freedom in others' definitions and uses of the emic/etic distinction, I feel that the anthropological profession will be hurt if we just sit by and let some of the expressed meanings pass--for example, such extremes as "emic equals sloppy" and "etic equals precise," and other definitions which show a fundamental misunderstanding of the notion. As two anthropologists have pointed out, "Unfortunately, emic and etic have become slogans or catchwords in anthropology, rather than clear-cut concepts" (Crane and Angrosino 1984:125). This hurts our discipline, and we must struggle against such careless uses of what has proved to be one of the most important ideas in social science today.
With that, we turn in the following chapters to the question: Just what is the history, significance, and application of emics and etics today, and where do we go from here?
Table 1.1.
Publication Dates of 278 References Using Emic/Etic dates no. of references no. authored by Pike no. authored by Harris 1954-60 1 1 0 1961-65 9 0 1 1966-70 20 1 2 1971-75 44 0 2 1976-80 83 0 2 1981-85 76 3 1 1986-89 45* 1 2 totals 278 6 10 *The small number of references shown for the years 1986-89 is skewed because many recent publications have not yet been archived into computerized library computer search services.
Table 1.2.
Dictionaries That List Emic and Etic dictionary reference year Cites Pike Cites Harris Supplement Oxford English Dictionary Burchfield 1972 yes no Dictionary of Language and Linguistics Hartmann & Stork 1972 no no Gendai Eigogaku jiten Kotaro et al. 1973 yes no Encyclopedia of Anthropology Hunter & Whitten 1976 yes no 6000 Words: Supplement Webster's 3rd Webster's 1976 no no Ying Hang Yuyanxue Cihui Liu and Zhao 1979 no* no Encyclopedic Dict Sciences of Lang Ducrot & Todorov 1979 yes no First Dict of Ling & Phonetics Crystal 1980 yes no 9000 Words: Supplement Webster's 3rd Webster's 1983 no no Standard Dict of Social Sciences Koschnick 1984 yes no Dictionary of Ling & Phonetics Crystal 1985 yes no Random House Dictionary Random House 1987 yes no Oxford English Dictionary 2nd Simpson & Weiner 1989 yes no New Lexicon Webster’s** Webster's 1989 no no *The Liu and Zhao (1979) dictionary does not cite Pike under "emic" or "etic," but does cite him under their definition for "tagmemics." **This dictionary (Webster's 1989) includes the word "emic," but not "etic."
Table 1.3.
Breakdown of Categories
in the 278 References in the
Sample Bibliography categories no. of references anthropology 74 psychology 65 linguistics 22 cross-cultural research 18 ethnography 17 sociology 14 medicine 13 dictionaries 12 education 12 psychiatry 7 translation 4 management 3 archaeology 2 folklore 2 economics 2 religion 1 English 1 (other) 9 total 278
Table 1.4.
Publications Which Cite Pike, Harris, Others, or No One*
(in their discussions of emics/etics) 1 2 3 4 5 6 dates no. of references % that cite Pike % that cite Harris % that cite P&H % that cite others % that cite no one 1961-65 8 88% (7) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 13% (1) 1966-70 17 41% (7) 12% (2) 18% (3) 18% (3) 12% (2) 1971-75 42 33% (14) 2% (1) 14% (6) 24% (10) 26% (11) 1976-80 81 20% (16) 9% (7) 7% (6) 32% (26) 32% (26) 1981-85 72 21% (15) 10% (7) 7% (5) 31% (22) 32% (23) 1986-89 42** 26% (11) 5% (2) 14% (6) 21% (9) 33% (14) totals 262 27% (70) 7% (19) 10% (26) 27% (70) 29% (77) *N=262 (In this table the 6 publications by Pike and the 10 by Harris are excluded from the sample of 278.) **The small number of references shown for the years 1986-89 is skewed because many recent publications have not yet been archived into computerized library search services.
Table 1.5.
Percentage of References in Bibliography
That Define the Terms Emic and Etic* decade define don't define totals 1961-70 72% (18/25) 28% (7/25) 100% (25/25) 1971-80 63% (77/123) 37% (46/123) 100% (123/123) 1981-89 60% (68/114) 40% (46/114) 100% (114/114) totals 62% (163/262) 38% (99/262) 100% (262/262) *N=262 (In this table the 6 publications by Pike and the 10 by Harris are excluded from the sample of 278.)
Endnotes
Not that Pike is an idealist in the philosophical sense, but rather in the anthropological sense. That is, as Pelto states it, "Pike supports an "idealist' explanation of human behavior. That is, causes of human action are to be found mainly in the definitions, beliefs, values, and ideologies of the actors" (1970:82-83). Harris, on the other hand, "seeks explanations of human action in the environmental, the constraints of the "real world' surrounding human actors" (ibid.:83). The reader who wishes to have a copy of Hussey's (1989) bibliography may order it on three-and-a-half or five-and-a-quarter-inch IBM-compatible diskette. (See address for ordering in the References Cited). The bibliography is in a database format which may be read by any standard database file. A "README" file on the diskette explains the structure of Hussey's database, including the field names and sizes. To my knowledge, the earliest English dictionary to include the terms emics and etics is the 1972 Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (Burchfield 1972). The seven articles I noted in the H.C.C.P. are those by Brislin, by Lonner, and by Triandis in vol. 1, by Berry, and by Naroll, Michik and Naroll in vol. 2, and by Altman and Chemers, and by Davidson and Thomson in vol. 5. This figure is the quotient of the sum of the totals of columns 5 and 6 of Table 1.4, divided by the sample (i.e., 70+77/262=.56). Neither of these dictionary supplements indicate why they printed Algeo's name in their definitions of the terms, nor do they cite any publication by him. Algeo assumes (personal correspondence) that the supplement editors picked up their citation for the terms from one of the two published versions of an essay he wrote on tagmemics (Algeo 1970, 1974). Algeo, by the way, states clearly in those two papers that "Pike was the coiner of the terms" (1974:3). This sample of 28 textbooks came from my own library shelf. Only one of them appears in Hussey's (1989) bibliography. Harris himself does not cite Pike in the later editions of his anthropology texts (1985, 1987), even though he discusses the terms in several places in those books. He does, however, cite Pike in the earlier editions, and in many of his theoretical publications on emics and etics.
References Cited | {
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It looks like the push for collective bargaining in MMA just took an interesting step forward. A new entity has announced their entry into the field of fighter organization with the formation of the Professional Fighters Association, or PFA for short. The group is led by sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, attorney Lucas Middlebrook (notable for representing Nick Daiz against the NSAC), and agent Jeff Borris, who formerly represented Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco and currently works with the Ballengee group (which also happens to represent Diaz).
And it’s not just in the front office that the PFA appears to be bringing some serious muscle. They’re making claims that they have the backing of a number of notable union heads across the North American sports landscape as well. A press release announcing their formation included quotes from the NFL Players Association, MLB Players Association, NHL Players Association, and MLS Players Union executive directors saying that they had “provided PFA with their support of the UFC fighters’ quest to organize and collectively bargain their terms and conditions of employment.”
“As a strong labor Union, the NFL Players Association recognizes the need for a collective voice among athletes and supports the efforts of the UFC fighters to stand together as a team to advance their rights as working men and women,” said current NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith.
And it is notable that the stated goal of the PFA is not to represent all fighters across all organizations, but only those “employed by the Ultimate Fighting Championship.” Which incidentally, right now happens to be technically zero. The first step toward getting a real union together would likely have to involve getting the status of UFC talent re-classified from contractor to employee.
Also of note, in a perhaps coincidentally timed press release, the MMAFA put forth a public statement directed at fighters and their agents. The MMAFA is the most prominent already existing fighters association. At the moment, they’re currently involved in the push to bring the Ali Act to MMA. And they offered something of a warning against “others” offering “to assist in organizing a ‘fighter’s union.’”
“With our success and news of the UFC’s sale we are likely to see others offer to assist in organizing a ‘fighter’s union.’ Of course they will not have similar knowledge of the industry, nor will they have much of a track record looking out for MMA fighters. But they will still be offering their assistance . . . for a price. Further efforts to organize fighters only lead to delays. In the coming days and weeks, you will likely receive lawyer solicitations, union solicitations, and solicitations from your own agents to get involved in organizing efforts. We urge you to politely decline all such requests. Together, in one unified movement, we will succeed.”
The MMAFA has a long history of work inside the sport already under its feet, but the potential backing of the other major North American stick & ball sports behind the PFA looks impressive. It may be the kind of powerful support that draws fighters worried about the backlash of aligning themselves with either organization. Either way, the battle for collective bargaining in MMA is likely going to be a long, difficult process. In the short term however, it appears to have just become a bit more interesting. | {
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Jalal Morchidi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images A woman protests in Marrakesh, Morocco, near the COP22 climate conference on Nov. 13.
In the wake of last week’s election, the gulf between liberals and conservatives has never felt bigger.
The diverging moral values of liberals and conservatives offer an important window into why the two groups differ in their willingness to take action to protect the environment, according to new Cornell University research.
But it’s not as simple as liberal versus conservative or Democrat versus Republican. The study, which was conducted on over 1,000 volunteers and published in the online journal PLOS One on Oct. 19, found that the moral values of compassion and fairness ― and, to a lesser extent, purity ― influenced an individual’s willingness to take personal action to mitigate the effects of climate change.
“As we learn what’s important to different kinds of people with respect to climate change, that information can help us communicate in ways where the problem can be heard,” Dr. Janis Dickinson, a professor of natural resources at Cornell and the study’s lead author, told The Huffington Post. “And I think we may be missing arguments that are important to people if we ignore moral diversity.”
Morality, Neither Liberal Nor Conservative
The researchers found, unsurprisingly, that those who believed in climate change, regardless of party affiliation, were much more willing to act. On the other hand, people who described themselves as conservative, as well as those who were older and male, were less inclined to act.
The study’s investigation of moral values was based on a theory developed by prominent social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, which identifies five “axes” around which we formulate moral reasoning: compassion/harming, fairness/cheating, in-group loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion and purity/degradation.
Previous research has found that liberals value compassion and fairness more highly ― values that are clearly at play in the climate change debate ― while conservatives tend to value purity, in-group loyalty and authority most.
It’s easy to see how compassion and fairness play into other social causes championed by liberals, such as marriage equality and racial justice. On the other hand, a drive toward purity and in-group loyalty seem to play a role in conservative stances opposing abortion and immigration.
Most moral arguments around climate change may inadvertently appeal more to liberals by focusing on its effects on animals, vulnerable populations and future generations.
“Climate change will have its earliest and greatest impacts on nations and people with fewer resources, so it is clearly about both equity and suffering,” Dickinson said. “Inequity aversion and compassion or caring are really what drive us, in the immediate sense, to give up some of what we are attached to for the sake of others.”
““We shouldn’t rule out anyone and we cannot afford to be polarized on this issue, which is going to have a huge impact on current and future generations.””
The values of compassion and fairness are ultimately about relationships, added environmental psychologist Dr. Renee Lertzman, who reviewed the study for The Huffington Post.
“It is relationship here that is at stake — relationships with diverse populations and communities, as well as with the nonhuman lives we share the planet with,” she said.
But it’s important to note that even strong moral values can easily conflict with other values a person might hold, limiting that person’s willingness to make personal choices that benefit the environment. Those conflicts need to be considered, Lertzman added.
“We may value compassion and fairness, but also value being a good provider, which can involves high carbon behaviors,” she said. “We need to find ways to address how values can be in conflict for many — and how we can help people move through those conflicts into action.”
So people profiting from fossil fuel industries, for example, might override their compassionate feelings in favor of preserving their financial stability.
Moving The Dial On Climate Change
Appealing to moral values including purity ― for instance, by emphasizing the “impurity” of destroying natural resources ― may be one way to mobilize individuals of both political parties around environmental issues.
There’s some evidence suggesting this strategy may be effective. A 2013 study showed that framing climate change issues in terms of “pollution and contamination” improved environmental attitudes among conservatives, while other types of moral appeals did not have an effect.
“If communicators, and especially religious leaders, can make use of this understanding of moral diversity by including all three of these moral values in their discussions of climate change, this may prove helpful,” Dickinson said. “We shouldn’t rule out anyone and we cannot afford to be polarized on this issue, which is going to have a huge impact on current and future generations.”
With Trump’s presidency looms the potential of enormous, if not catastrophic, setbacks to humans’ attempts to mitigate climate change. Now more than ever, action and progress on environmental issues must continue. For people wondering about how to support the environment in light of the election, donating to reputable environmental organizations is one place to start. | {
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Such is the carnival of the Trump presidency, it can be tempting – especially for those outside the US – to view it as spectacle, a long-running reality TV show that veers between The Apprentice and House of Cards. But every now and then comes a reminder that, for all the cartoonish absurdity of the central character, the Trump administration is all too real, that its actions matter and that the stakes are lethally high.
A fresh and urgent reminder of that has come today with Iran’s declaration that it will no longer fully comply with the nuclear deal it reached with the US and Europe in 2015, by which Tehran agreed to a 15-year pause on its nuclear programme in return for the easing of economic sanctions. In a televised address this morning – exactly one year after Trump withdrew the United States from the deal – Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, announced a series of moves that would inch the country closer to acquiring the ability to produce nuclear weapons, moves that would only be averted if Europe defied Trump and allowed Iran once again to sell its oil and have access to the international banking system. For the most severe of these steps, Rouhani gave the Europeans 60 days to make up their minds: either resume trade or watch Tehran resume its nuclear efforts.
There’s no mystery why this has come about, even if cause and effect are separated by 12 months. On 8 May last year, Trump dismissed the advice of his own military and security chiefs and broke from what he called the “worst deal in history”. The likeliest explanation is that Trump disliked the deal not because it was ineffective – on the contrary, international inspectors were adamant that Iran was complying to the letter – but simply because it represented the single biggest foreign-policy achievement of his predecessor. Just as Trump has been determined to unravel Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms, so he has been bent on dismantling his international legacy. Laughable though it may seem, Trump’s envy and resentment of Obama and his reputation may well be the key driver of this major geopolitical shift.
The consequences have been direct. Fearing secondary sanctions imposed by the US – heavy US fines on any company that does business with Iran – European firms have pulled out of the country, choking an already ailing Iranian economy. That has led Iranians to demand their leaders hit back. The only surprise of today’s move is that it took so long, as Tehran waited a full year to respond to Trump – all the while continuing to obey the terms of the nuclear deal.
Make no mistake, none of this is to suggest Iran is some paragon. The opposite is true. Along with the Kremlin, the Tehran regime is a blood-soaked ally of Bashar al-Assad, shoring up his murderous rule in Syria. It is a prime funder of terror groups in the region. And its record in crushing domestic dissent is brutal and documented. (An Iranian man was hanged for the crime of having gay sex just a few months ago.)
The regime’s behaviour is abhorrent now and it was abhorrent when the nuclear deal was signed. That agreement did not make any false promises of making it better. All it pledged was to halt the country’s nuclear ambitions for the next decade and a half, to buy some time and open up the space for the kind of cooperation that might make change possible. Like it or not, Iran has kept its side of the bargain, which related solely to its nuclear conduct. By withdrawing from it without cause, it was Trump’s Washington, not Tehran, that behaved like a rogue state.
Now the Europeans face a painful dilemma. If they buckle to Trump, they will watch that limited but valuable 2015 agreement collapse. If they defy him, some of their biggest companies will face crippling fines. They have spent much of the last year trying to construct a mechanism to get around those US sanctions, without success. Perhaps now they will approach the task with more urgency, though it’s not as if European governments don’t have plenty on their plates. (This, incidentally, was an issue in which pre-Brexit Britain was centrally engaged: now, it seems, the country is too distracted and too diminished to have much diplomatic impact.)
Either way, what the Europeans and the rest of the world can no longer deny is that Trump’s antics – his resentments, his decisions based on impulse, rather than evidence, his constant gestures to the Fox News base – may play out like gripping TV drama. But they have consequences in the real world, and some of them are grave.
• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist | {
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Regular backups are the best way to protect your files from loss – whether it's from a hardware failure, ransomware attack, theft, or accidental damage.
To mark World Backup Day, which takes place on March 31, AOMEI is giving TechRadar readers the opportunity to download its premium software AOMEI Backupper Professional completely free.
You must register your software between March 25 and April 1 to take advantage of this special offer, so act quickly.
Download AOMEI Backupper Pro and extract the ZIP archive. Open the readme file and copy the license key. Run the software installer, and click 'Enjoy now' when it's finished. Click 'Menu', then select 'Register' and paste in your license key. Click 'Register' again to finish the process.
Protect your files
With AOMEI Backupper Professional, you can back up anything on your PC – the entire system, a partition, or specific files or folders. You can also clone a whole drive, including your operating system, making it easy to transfer everything to a new hard drive.
Restoring your backed up data is simple too, whether you want everything or just certain files. Everything is explained with clear step-by-step instructions.
AOMEI Backupper Professional also offers tools for checking the integrity of a backup image, creating bootable rescue media (such as a DVD or USB drive), merging multiple incremental backups, and mounting an image to a virtual partition for browsing.
World backup day
World Backup Day serves as a reminder of the importance of making regular backups. It doesn't take much for your important files to be lost, and once they're gone they can be impossible to restore. You never know when disaster might strike.
We store a huge amount of our professional and personal lives digitally, and a regular backup plan is the only way to make sure they're properly protected. | {
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OUR RECENT DESIGN PROJECTS
Goldenline Construction was established in over 20 years ago in Los Angeles and we have done construction and remodeling work all over the Greater Los Angeles Area for both individual homeowners and large corporations. As general contractors, we are a full-service professional company dedicated to preserving the life of your assets with high-quality services. We have earned a reputation as a premier contracting company with an extensive range of capabilities, qualified experience, and trustworthy relationships. Each one of our customers truly appreciates our passion and drive for excellence and their complete satisfaction. | {
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Everything You Need to Know About Staff in WOB
In the official release, we have added market for players, which adds new flavor to WOB. The gameplay of staff is more interesting in this version.
Staff Intro
The staff has five levels, ranging from one star to five stars. Each employee is unique and unrepeatable as it’s an NFT asset. It is created and managed using smart contracts. The recruitment and trading are recorded in the smart contracts. It also has collection value, which is displayed through its appearance and expertise.
How to Get Your Staff
Here are the ways to get started:
Hire with WBT: consume certain WBT and get staff. The attributes of your staff, including appearance and expertise are generated randomly.
Hire through points: dismiss your employees and get points for recruitment. The higher your points are, the better employees you’ll get.
Acquire in the second market: buy employees in the market and pay WBT to sellers.
Get through activities: we will send rewards to players through some activities, such as bounty program and referral programs aperiodically.
Roles of Staff
Staff plays an important role in helping you gain revenue in WOB. You can mobilize your staff in 3 scenarios: development, Dapp and platform.
After the establishment of projects, you need to manage your workforce in Development. In order to gain higher basic revenue for your projects, you’d better meet the requirements in staff number and skills.
When your projects are created, at least one employee is required to do daily tasks in Dapp. The higher the employee’s skill is, the more revenue you’ll earn. Please note that when the quality of your employee is not satisfying, you may suffer loss.
The third scenario is the platform. Only one employee is required to maintain your platform. The requirements for platform employee are lower than the above: 1. Not participating in other projects; 2. Sufficient energy.
Trade Staff in the Market
Market is a place for players to trade NFT assets and buy props. You can top up WBT, buy and sell your staff, and check each employee and transaction record in the market.
Sell your staff
Staff can be traded in the market for WBTs and its price is determined by you. There is no upper or lower limit.
If your staff isn’t sold after a period, it will be removed automatically.
Buy staff
You can buy staff with WBT in the market. In each transaction, a certain percentage of fees will be charged based on the buyer’s transaction price. The transaction is confirmed when it is included on the blockchain.
Check each employee
You can check all of your employees in your account, whether they are sold or not.
Props to Progress Your Staff
You can also buy props in the market with WBT to boost the performance of your staff. There are several props provided, including the training book, ordinary gift and holiday voucher. Each prop has its function and price. Discover the detailed information of the props in the market.
Welcome to our channels
Official website: http://www.wob.games/
Discord: https://discord.gg/bTSC32T
Telegram: https://t.me/WorldofBlockchain_EC
AMA in Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockchainGame/comments/9gr33q/hi_i_am_a_new_webbased_business_simulation_game/ | {
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The under-privileged are bearing the brunt of this — ostracisation, lack of hospital care, loss of wages, homelessness, hunger etc., says Praveen Chakravarty
Praveen Chakravarty, political economist and head of the Data and Technology cell of the Congress party, says India should evolve a strategy of functioning with the idea of coronavirus around for a long time. Excerpts from an email interview:
It’s certain now that the lockdown would be extended by another two weeks but the Centre may allow some economic activity. Reports suggest that the government may partially open up the least affected areas. How do you see this move?
We have to wait and see what the government is going to do exactly. As of now, there are reports indicating that the current form of extreme lockdown will be extended until April 30. If the government is also simultaneously thinking about a gradual “unlock” process, it is welcome. As the Chief Scientist of the WHO, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, has said in an interview to The Hindu today, the disease is going to be with us for a long time and we need to start planning for life with the virus and cannot be in a lockdown and wait for the virus to be eliminated completely, which will take a long time.
You’ve have talked about a ‘targeted lockdown’ instead of a complete nation-wide lockdown. But Congress-ruled Punjab was the second State to extend the lockdown on Friday. Is there a divide within the Congress?
A lockdown in itself cannot be a strategy. It has to be accompanied by measures such as what the State of Rajasthan undertook in Bhilwara. The Bhilwara model is the model for the nation to emulate. Even after 21 days, the Prime Minister and the Union government have not laid out a strategy for the nation to emerge out of this extreme lockdown. So, in the absence of that, it is only natural and wise that State governments will prefer to extend the lockdown and deal with the crisis locally which they seem to be doing very well now.
Are you totally opposed to the current form of lockdown?
The current form of extreme lockdown was an immediate response to an unknown crisis and hence understandable. But it is clear now that the cure is worse than the disease. We run the risk of losing as many if not more lives due to the lockdown. It is not a “rupees vs lives” but a “lives vs lives” issue. The under-privileged are bearing the brunt of this — ostracisation, lack of hospital care, loss of wages, homelessness, hunger etc. This extreme lockdown seems to be a case of the privileged transferring their epidemic risk to the under-privileged
The Centre says if there was no nation-wide lockdown, by now India would have seen more than 8 lakh cases. So, a complete lockdown acted as a circuit breaker.
This is plain rubbish. Anyone who understands basic data and statistics will tell you that it makes no sense to do a linear extrapolation of an early trend to predict a counterfactual. This is like, claiming in cricket, that after a team gets 10 runs in the first over, the team will score 500 runs in 50 overs.
As we test more, we will report more cases. Based on trends from global and Indian data on COVID-19, it now seems clear that the virus is very contagious but not as fatal as some of the initial wild estimates of epidemiologists predicted.
Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi too talked of a ‘nuanced approach’ that takes an India-specific approach. What exactly is it?
It is clear that Mr. Gandhi has been studying and researching on COVID-19 a lot. He was among the first to warn the nation about it. He wrote a letter to the PM arguing for a nuanced approach to a lockdown keeping India’s unique realities in mind. Given India’s vast informal, daily wage labour force, a high density of people living in one room houses, large urban rural divide and a much younger population than the developed countries, he is arguing for a more balanced & humane approach than the current extreme and absolute lockdown.
Both former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and you have argued for a economic package of ₹5-6 lakh crore. With the Economy under a total shutdown now, is it even possible for the Centre to generate this kind of additional resources?
Of course, it is entirely possible. In my piece in The Hindu, I had even detailed where to find the money. The money can be found from a combination of rationalised expenditure, higher borrowing and printing of more money. It is absolutely imperative that the package consists of a “rescue” for the affected workforce. But it is important to remember this is NOT a demand crisis but a supply crisis. So, sustaining MSMEs and other commercial activity is critical. Other economists such as Arvind Subramanian have argued for a ₹10 lakh crore package. | {
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This year's July issue of Kadokawa's Newtype magazine is revealing on Wednesday that the television anime of Kohske's Gangsta. manga will premiere on July 1. The show will air on Asahi Broadcasting, Tokyo MX TV, TV Aichi, BS 11, and will stream on the Bandai Channel and niconico.
The manga revolves around Nick (played by Kenjiro Tsuda) and Worick (Junichi Suwabe), two men who take on jobs from both the mafia and the police in the town of Ergastulum, a rotten town filled with mafia, hoodlums, prostitutes, and dirty cops.
Shukou Murase (Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic, Genocidal Organ) is directing the anime with series composition by Shinichi Inotsume (Hayate the Combat Butler, The Pilot's Love Song), and Koichi Hatsumi (Berserk: The Golden Age Arc I - The Egg of the King, Deadman Wonderland) is credited as series director. Yōichi Ueda is designing the characters for the anime, and Tsutchie (Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo) is composing the music for the soundtrack. Manglobe (The Unlimited - Hyōbu Kyōsuke, Hayate the Combat Butler! Cuties) is producing the animation. | {
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Formula One team Ferrari has reiterated that its decision to race with the flag of the Italian navy on their cars at this weekend's Indian Grand Prix is a gesture of solidarity towards Italian Marines facing trial in India over charges of killing two fishermen.
"First of all, we just wanted to pay tribute to all the Italian Navy which is one of the excellences of Italy and it's just a sign of hope that a solution can be found about the case that involves two Italian sailors," a Ferrari team official said here on Thursday.
"Something which has to be clear that we don't want to say anything in one sense or the another. We have utmost respect for the Indian authorities. We just hope that a solution can be found as soon as possible," he addded.
Ferrari had created a flutter on Wednesday by announcing on its official website that it will show its support for the jailed Italian sailors by racing with military symbols on its cars' livery at the second edition of the Indian GP, to be held at the Buddh International Circuit, from October 26-28.
The Italian team, on their website, had said that they would be paying tribute to the navy as "one of the outstanding entities of our country". The cars will be driven by Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa.
Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, the marines on board the Italian ship 'Enrica Lexie', had allegedly shot dead two Indian fishermen -- Valentine Jalastine and Ajesh Binki -- on February 15 in Kerela's Kollam city, apparently mistaking them for pirates. The Indian sailors, however, had alleged that they had been fired upon without any provocation and given no chance to explain.
They were detained on February 19 and were sent to Central Prison in Thiruvananthpuram. Later on, they were granted bail in June but on condition that they must remain in Indian territory till a final decision in the case. | {
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After previously taking on the likes of the Ozweego 2 and Stan Smith, Raf Simons has customized yet another adidas silhouette, this time giving the Response Trail a makeover to create the Response Trail Robot. Taking cues from NASA’s astronaut suits, the design employs leather and mesh paneling throughout, coupling a predominately white look with an adiprene+ midsole, silver accents and red and blue hardware.
The robotic Response Trail is available now from adidas Originals retailers like Packer Shoes for $550 USD. | {
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Since 2010, Riot House Records has released albums from the likes of EmptyMansions (the solo project of Interpol drummer Sam Fogarino), Spencer Moody of The Murder City Devils, and proto-punk heroes Rough Francis, among many others. Now, the label is making its first foray into film with the forthcoming release of a brand new feature-length documentary entitled Records Collecting Dust.
Written and directed by musician Jason Blackmore (White Mule), Records Collecting Dust “documents the vinyl record collections, origins, and holy grails of alternative music icons,” according to a press release. The film includes interviews with Keith Morris, Jello Biafra, Chuck Dukowski, John Reis, and over 30 of their “underground music comrades,” alongside live performances from Biafra, Big Business, and The Locust.
In a statement, Blackmore said, “I wanted to capture the pre-internet world of finding your new favorite band and record. Before the internet, you didn’t have blogs, Spotify, and YouTube to find new music. You went to your local record shop and many times purchased a record because you liked the cover art. I also hoped to capture the intimacy of sitting down in these people’s living rooms and talking about the records and bands that influenced them. For many of the people featured in our film, it’s not just the music that played a major influence — it’s the process in which they discovered it.”
As an early look, the film’s producers have unveiled a new trailer. The 90-second clip focuses on the record collection of Morris, in addition to a sampling of live performance footage. Check it out below.
Records Collecting Dust will begin a series of nationwide premieres this January, with screenings scheduled through the end of March. In a statement, film producer and Riot House founder Brian Jenkins said there was a conscious push to bring the film to venues outside of larger, more “established” cities.
“Many indie films do a year of theater premieres on the film festival circuit and primarily play in major markets across the country,” Jenkins said. “When I was brought on to this project, Jason and I agreed that we wouldn’t alienate our audience and that we would do our best to make this film accessible to everyone. We’ve got premieres from Los Angeles to Grand Folks, ND scheduled. It’s a film about punk rock records and we wanted to carry that ethic and approach through the filming, editing, and distribution of Records Collecting Dust.”
Consult the full schedule below, followed by the film’s first trailer.
Records Collecting Dust 2015 Showtimes:
01/09 – San Diego, CA @ Digital Gym
01/10 – San Diego, CA @ Digital Gym
01/23 – Los Angeles, CA The Nerdist Showroom
01/27 – Oakland, CA @ The New Parkway Theater
01/29 – San Francisco, CA @ Balboa Theater
01/15 – Washington DC @ The Black Cat
02/04 – Gainesville, FL @ The Wooly
02/06 – Baton Rouge, LA @ Atomic Pop Shop
02/08 – Baltimore, MD @ Otto Bar
02/11 – Portland, OR @ Hollywood Theatre
02/13 – Grand Forks, ND @ Ojata Records
02/16 – Rockford, IL @ Nordlof Theater
02/19 – Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall
02/20 – Sioux Falls, SD @ Total Drag
02/21 – Phoenix, AZ @ Film Bar
02/27 – Richmond, VA @ Black Iris Gallery
02/28 – Santa Ana, CA @ The Frida Cinema
03/07 – Savannah, GA @ Graveface Records and Curiosities
03/08 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop
03/13 – Fort Wayne, IN @ Cinema Center
03/20 – Louisville, KY @ Modern Cult Records
03/27 – Birmingham, AL @ Bottletree Café
03/28 – Chicago, IL @ Reggie’s Rock Club
03/28 – Bowling Green, KY @ The Public Theater of Kentucky | {
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My family is my greatest treasure, teacher and trainer. They have taught me to love deeper, serve more faithfully, persevere more faithfully, and give myself more fully every day. There is no one who has pushed me to be more like Christ like my wife. There are no greater examples of faith and devotion in my life than my boys. My family is an icon of God in so many ways in my life, I am continually humbled by how deeply and truly blessed I am.
As my family challenges and supports me, I find strength to love others. As I am affirmed by my family, I find I have courage to take a stand for what is right. I don’t think I am alone in this. Study after study shows that the biggest influence on a person’s faith, values and principles come from their family.
Because of this I believe that faithful and loving families are the key to having a robust church and a just world, and this is why I am very excited about the upcoming Synod on the Family.
What makes this Synod Extraordinary?
There has been a great deal of speculation on what the Synod will be about. As an Extraordinary synod (as distinguished from an ordinary Synod), this Synod has been convened to bring the wisdom of the church to bear on an issue that impacts the WHOLE of the Church and has a degree of urgency.
This kind of extraordinary synod is somewhat rare (there have only been 2 others called, one in 1967 and another in 1985). They are called to deal with urgent matters and involve the heads of the various Eastern Catholic Churches as well as the presidents of Western bishop’s conferences. What the body is intended to do is help council the Pope as he seeks to find wisdom on an issue that is of great importance at the given time (you can read all about them in the Code of Canon law here). This extraordinary synod, will make way for an ordinary synod a year later, in 2015. The ordinary Synod will include more people and will be able to take steps toward acting on the resolutions of the extraordinary synod.
After each Synod it is typical for the pope to offer a post-synodical exhortation. This is a document that is signed by the pope, but represents the outcomes of the synodical process with the voices of the episcopal college. Post-synodical exhortations therefore are Church documents that carry a great deal of weight. This is why there has been a so much talk about this Synod.
There are few ways, outside of a full ecumenical council or an ex-cathedra decree, that Pope Francis could shake up the Church that would be more impactful and authoritative than through an extraordinary Synod.
So what will Francis and the Synod talk about?
It’s hard to know exactly, but one can find hints of what might be talked about through a Vatican survey that was circulated some months ago in preporation for the synod. According the Vatican document released on the matter there will be discussion on:
– The Diffusion of the Teachings on the Family in Sacred Scripture and the Church’s Magisterium
– Marriage according to the Natural Law
– The Pastoral Care of the Family in Evangelisation
– Pastoral Care in Certain Difficult Marital Situations
– On Unions of Persons of the Same Sex
– The Education of Children in Irregular Marriages
– The Openness of the Married Couple to Life
– The Relationship Between the Family and the Person
(see more on this at Synod In The Modern Church: History and Hope).
What can WE do to prepare for the Synod on the Family?
I think all of these things are incredibly important things to talk about, and all involve difficulties that the Church desperately needs to find wisdom in order to address. The family is an issue that impacts us all, and so I think that it is also important that WE all address too. Here are a few ways you and I can prepare:
– Pray and advocate for Families: There are millions of families in crisis. Today I am particularly heartbroken by the flood of unaccompanied children who are being sent over our boarders by their families in order to seek a better life. As a parent I am shocked to realize how grave the conditions must be that parents are willing to risk the lives of their own children through dangerous crossings in order to remove them from the dangers at home. As we prepare let us raise up our prayers and voices for these families, and the millions of other families that are in moments of crisis around the world.
– Strengthen your family: Most of us have families of one form or another, whether they are made up of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, spouses and children, or simply friends and neighbors. As the Synod approaches it offers us the perfect time to love our families more intentionally. Take time to discern how God might be calling out to better love and serve those in your life.
– Open your family: We live in a world where many are increasingly lonely. There are many people who do not have the love and support of a healthy family in their daily lives. If you have been blessed with a family, consider opening your life together to others. There is great power in giving someone a place to belong.
I pray that as we move toward this Synod the Church will find the wisdom that it needs to handle this crisis of the family that we are going through. Take time to invest in preparing your own heart and lives for the work that the Church will be doing. This synod is a challenge and an invitation to us all to make the family an institution of great hope and love, and a light to the world. | {
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We gaan professoren en ondernemers krijgen, een risicomanager, luchtverkeersleider en oud-brigadegeneraal. Maar het opmerkelijkste lid van de Forum-fractie dat volgende week in de Eerste Kamer aantreedt, is zonder twijfel Loek van Wely.
Terwijl King Loek, zoals de zevenvoudig Nederlands kampioen schaken zich laat noemen, het zich anders had voorgesteld. Hij had wat gepokerd, het schaken was wat weggezakt; tijd voor een mini-comeback. Toernooien her en der, gespeeld in de competities van Baskenland, Frankrijk en Duitsland. Nog drie jaar schaken en dan met een ranking bij de beste honderd van de wereld waardig opstappen – dat was het plan. Van Wely is 46, topfit door het vele trainen en de obstacle races die hij loopt, zwemt, kruipt en klimt. Maar grote toernooien met meer partijen per dag vallen hem zwaar.
‘Baudet is bloedfanatiek’ Beeld ANP
Het liep anders. Forum voor Democratie zette hem op plek 7 voor de Provinciale Staten van Noord-Brabant, en op plek 9 voor de Eerste Kamer. In de luwte, zo leek het eind vorig jaar, toen niemand bij Forum rekening hield met zo’n groeispurt. Van Wely zou rustig kunnen wennen en misschien een paar jaar later alsnog aanschuiven.
Nu is hij Statenlid met de portefeuille natuur en milieu, niet per se het terrein waar Forum op wil uitblinken. En vanaf volgende week is hij senator. Hij moet zich inlezen, dossiers vreten. Wie hem wil spreken moet dat aan de Forum-voorlichting vragen. Voor een vrijgevochten schaker is dat wennen.
Branieschopper, dat is het eerste woord dat Gert Ligterink – schaakmedewerker van de Volkskrant sedert 1983 – invalt bij Van Wely. Hij zoekt graag conflicten op, zegt Ligterink: maakte van Jan Timman z’n grote rivaal, zei dat hij gewed had dat hij hem zou verslaan. Een strijder, geen man van snelle remises. Zijn belangstelling voor Baudet verbaast Ligterink niet. Al in 1998 protesteerde Van Wely tegen twee Bosnische schakers met een dubbel paspoort die meededen aan het NK. Hij rangschikt hem bij de beste vijf Nederlandse schakers aller tijden.
Ik meld me in Oss, waar Van Wely met zijn vrouw, een schaker uit El Salvador, en twee jonge kinderen woont in een heel politiek straatje; even verderop staat het huis van Jan Marijnissen – ze hebben elkaar nog nooit gesproken.
Niet alles van de grote leider gelezen.
Grote, lichte werkkamer, hometrainer in de hoek, kasten vol schaakboeken, drie schaakspelen op het bureau, waarvan één van Lego (1.500 stukjes). Nergens een branieschopper te bekennen, maar dat kan kloppen. Naast King Loek heeft hij nog een persoonlijkheid: de bescheiden, behoedzame Ludovicus.
Met Kees Eldering, schaker en eigenaar van hotels.nl., sprak hij wel eens over een libertarische partij. Het was Eldering die Van Wely in contact bracht met Baudet. Ze schaakten wel eens – ‘hij is bloedfanatiek’ – en eind 2016 kreeg de grootmeester één uur bedenktijd om te beslissen of hij op de Kamerlijst wilde. Grijnzend: ‘Een uur is voor een schaker vrij lang.’ Hij kwam op plek 28. ‘Dat was een soort coming-out. Er kwam commentaar, maar ik ben niet op m’n mondje gevallen.’
Hij verwacht dat zijn schaakkennis van pas zal komen. ‘Politiek is abstracter, maar verloopt ook volgens patronen: drieënhalf jaar je gang gaan, een half jaar mooi weer spelen en na de verkiezingen de kiezer met de gebakken peren laten zitten. Zo’n patroon herken ik. Dat is inspelen op de menselijke zwakte.’
Nog iets: ‘Bij schaken ben je gewend je spel te analyseren. Dat zouden ze in Den Haag ook moeten doen: dat een nieuwe partij twaalf senaatszetels haalt en meer dan 30 duizend leden heeft. Hoe is dat mogelijk?’
Schaker analyseert ook zijn eigen spel,
Zaterdag was hij voor het eerst in de Eerste Kamer. ‘Statig, ook een beetje oubollig.’ Dat was meteen ook de kennismaking met de fractie, mét Henk Otten. ‘Een loose cannon’, zegt Van Wely in pokertaal. ‘Hij weet veel en heeft veel betekend voor de partij.’ Voor diens kritiek op het gefilosofeer van Baudet heeft hij begrip. ‘Maar zoiets hou je binnenskamers.’ Zelf blijft hij op de vlakte. ‘Ik volg en lees niet alles van de grote leider. Dat Houellebecq-essay ken ik alleen van horen zeggen.’
Van Wely staat bekend als offensief schaker, die zijn tegenstander indringend kan aankijken. ‘Soms heb je King Loek nodig om een probleem aan te kaarten. Maar daarna Ludovicus omdat de oplossing niet rigoureus hoeft te zijn. Een beetje multiculturele samenleving, daar is niks mis mee. Als er maar geen invloeden dominant worden die hier niet passen.’
Straks heten de tegenstanders geen Timman of Short, maar Rosenmöller en Jorritsma. ‘Enige bescheidenheid is passend. Maar pas op, King Loek heeft altijd één oog open.’ | {
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Brazil's President Michel Temer arrived in Chapeco on Saturday to bestow honours on the victims of the Colombian plane crash ahead of a memorial.
The president and relatives of the victims looked on as Air Force troops unloaded 50 coffins flown in overnight from Colombia, where Monday's crash killed 71 people and wiped out most of the Chapecoense football team.
Soldiers lined a red carpet in the rain and the president, his aides and family members applauded as the coffins passed.
Grieving family members looked on. Credit: Reuters
At Chapecoense's stadium, an impromptu shrine of fresh flowers and handmade posters has grown ahead of the memorial set to take place later on Saturday.
Some 100,000 fans, about half the city's population, are expected to attend the memorial at the 20,000-capacity stadium, as was Gianni Infantino, president of world soccer governing body FIFA.
Because of the limited capacity, many plan to watch the ceremony on big screens set up outside.
Flowers are prepared at the stadium ahead of the ceremony. Credit: Reuters
Temer, who is deeply unpopular, had been scheduled to greet the planes at the airport on Saturday, but not go to the memorial.
He took power earlier this year after President Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed and was jeered at the recent Olympics.
The President will attend the memorial, his aides said. Credit: Reuters
However, after being criticized on social media and even the father of one of the fallen players, Temer's aides said he would in fact attend the memorial.
"He should come to the stadium. No one would boo," said Osmar Machado, father of dead defender Felipe. | {
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Sony Sues Actor For Trademark Infringement For Looking Too Much Like Himself In Another Commercial
from the if-looks-could-sue dept
Sony Computer Entertainment America filed a law suit against Bridgestone and Wildcat Creek, Inc. on September 11. The claims are based on violations of the Lanham Act, misappropriation, breach of contract and tortious interference with a contractual relationship. We invested significant resources in bringing the Kevin Butler character to life and he's become an iconic personality directly associated with PlayStation products over the years. Use of the Kevin Butler character to sell products other than those from PlayStation misappropriates Sony's intellectual property, creates confusion in the market and causes damage to Sony.
According to a complaint filed in California federal court, the contract between Sony and Wild Creek was entered into on August 7, 2009 and contained an "exclusivity clause" that prevented Lambert from providing his services or his likeness to competing gaming system manufacturers like Nintendo.
According to the lawsuit, "With the intent of unfairly capitalizing on the consumer goodwill generated by 'Kevin Butler,' Bridgestone has used and is using the same or confusingly similar character, played by the same actor, to advertise its products or services in the commercial."
"Mr. Lambert is one of the actors who appeared in the commercial as a Bridgestone engineer," say the defendant. "Bridgestone denies that 'Kevin Butler' appears in the Bridgestone commercial discussed herein and thus denies that he speaks or does anything whatsoever in the commercial."
Bridgestone indicates that it intends to fight the lawsuit by showing that Sony has failed to register any mark on "Kevin Butler," that the character has not acquired secondary meaning and that there is no likelihood of confusion among consumers.
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Just when you thought trademark law couldn't get any stranger, we have a new story that takes it to a whole new level. Most often, trademark law is applied to logos and names of goods and services, yet there is still some untested ground. This is where Sony comes in. Several years ago, in an effort to rebrand its floundering Playstation 3 brand, Sony created a fictional Vice President of the Playstation brand named Kevin Butler. This character and the ads he starred in became a gaming sensation and brought the Playstation 3 back into the limelight. Here is a sample of these advertisements.Such success never lasts, and earlier this year, the contract Sony had with Kevin Butler actor, Jerry Lambert, expired and he has moved on to other contracts. One of these new advertisement contracts is with Bridgestone Tires. Unfortunately, Lambert has starred in one ad that now has Sony up in arms. This ad features Jerry Lambert starring as an unnamed Bridgestone engineer along side two other actors portrayed playing a Nintendo Wii. This ad has resulted in Sony going over the edge, so to speak. The entertainment and electronic giant is now suing Bridgestone and Wildcat Creek , the corporation set up to manage Lambert's advertising career, for a variety of reasons, one of which is trademark infringement. You can view the original Bridgestone commercial at GoNintendo.This statement is a tad confusing on first blush. It reads as if Sony is claiming trademark on the Kevin Butler likeness rather than the character itself. As such, it would seem that Sony is making the claim that Lambert starring in any commercial could cause likely confusion among consumers, resulting in them thinking that Kevin Butler is endorsing another product. This is rather absurd though. Primarily because the character Labert portrays has no name and actors portray many different characters throughout their careers.Thankfully, the Hollywood Reporter has provided some further clarifications on the matter . Here we learn a bit more about the exclusivity clause in Lambert's contract.This part at least makes some sense. A lot of contracts will contain language that prevents an employee or other contracted company or individual from working for a direct competitor for a specified time. However, to claim that the commercial with Bridgestone, a tire company, meets this definition is a stretch, even if the commercial features a Nintendo Wii. Sony then claims that Lambert's work with Bridgestone is a breach of contract, unfair competition and tortuous interference. These are quite harsh accusations and Sony will have its work cut out for it.Next is the claim of trademark infringement.Having seen both a Kevin Butler commercial and the Bridgestone ad featuring Lambert, I find it hard to see the similarities beyond the superficial. The Kevin Butler character plays as an overly-serious and often hyperbolic character to its comedic levels. The Bridgestone ad features an excitable and fast talking character. Aside from that, Kevin Butler was built to be a VP while the Bridgestone guy is merely an engineer in an R&D department.These differences are not going unnoticed by Bridgestone either. It has made the claim that not only are the characters different, but Sony has no actual claim on the Kevin Butler character at all.This is certainly not the first time something like this has happened. Many years ago, Wendy's had a very successful advertising campaign starring Clara Peller as a little old lady asking a generic fast food chain the famous question, "Where's the beef?" She lost her job with Wendy's after she starred in a Prego commercial uttering the phrase: "I found it. I really found it."What these accounts show is that the ownership mentality of many corporations goes beyond logos and phrases, to specific actions, characters and the actors behind them. This is certainly a dangerous line of thought for anyone to take up. While Sony most likely has a vested interest in the Kevin Butler character, claiming that its interest in the character extends as far as the actor himself is certainly going to make Lambert's career more difficult potentially to the point of halting it. If he cannot star in any commercial for fear of looking and acting too much like himself, then what point is there in continuing in an acting career?
Filed Under: actors, characters, jerry lambert, kevin butler, trademark
Companies: bridgestone, nintendo, sony | {
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Forwarded via facebook:
This is getting serious.
It was only a week ago that the Commission on Presidential Debates had ten sponsors for the 2012 debates.
Today, they're down to seven. Phillips Electronics has, as of this morning, pulled their sponsorship.
What does this mean for us?
We're that much closer to seeing and hearing Governor Gary Johnson and Judge Jim Gray on the debate stage this autumn!
I know what you're thinking. "It's entirely too late for the Commission on Presidential Debates to invite Governor Johnson to debate." Fortunately, it takes very little effort to add a podium to a stage. It takes a whole lot of effort, however, to convince a multi-billion dollar corporation that you wield the power to hit them where it hurts worst — their pocketbooks.
Power. That's the key word in this previous sentence. YOU HAVE ALL THE POWER NOW.
Phillips Electronics
BBH New York
YWCA
That's three down, seven to go.
Get to writing those letters, guys! This election cycle, you will CHANGE THE COURSE OF HISTORY. Change it for the better.
Power to the people!!
LIVE FREE,
Crystal Gross
State Director
Georgia for Gary Johnson 2012 | {
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Actress stops by TheWrap for an interview and photo shoot | {
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Mental Escher: cyberfunky radiosity. defn. genius work = mental-escher/cyberpunkradio repeat from -inf to +inf getConnected (www.mental-escher.net) -> brainstream.frontalcortex while endlessly repeated ( listen(again) ) end-of-comment :: lo-x | {
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Swedish actor, who created one of Italian cinema’s most famous moments in Fellini’s 1960 film, dies in Rome after series of illnesses
This article is more than 5 years old
This article is more than 5 years old
Swedish actor Anita Ekberg, star of La Dolce Vita, has died at the age of 83.
Ekberg’s lawyer, Patrizia Ubaldi, confirmed she died in Rome on Sunday morning following a series of illnesses. She had been hospitalised most recently after Christmas.
Ubaldi said that in her last days Ekberg was saddened by her illness and advancing age. “She had hoped to get better, something that didn’t happen,” she said.
Ekberg created one of cinema’s most famous moments, wading into the Trevi fountain in Rome in the 1960 classic La Dolce Vita. Her character in the Federico Fellini film, temptress Silvia, was followed into the waters by Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni after a night of revelry in the Italian capital.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita. Photograph: Pier Luigi
The scene instantly made Ekberg a cinema icon, although she was unable to maintain such a level of success and had few high-profile roles in her later career. She went on to be picked for the 1962 film Boccaccio ’70, along with Sophia Loren, and a year later appeared in 4 for Texas alongside Frank Sinatra.
Malmö-born Ekberg carved out her cinema career after becoming a magazine pin-up and model, winning the Miss Sweden competition in 1950 before seeking fame in the US. She was soon working with Hollywood greats including John Wayne, and in 1956 made the cover of Life magazine. Her move to cinema came the same year with King Vidor’s War and Peace, in which Ekberg acted alongside Audrey Hepburn.
Although Ekberg was seen as basking in the limelight, she took a tough stand against the paparazzi in 1960 when she threatened photographers with a bow and arrow.
But all appeared forgiven when La Dolce Vita secured Ekberg’s place in cinema history. “It was I who made Fellini, not the other way around,” she said of the film’s Italian director.
She was married twice, first to Anthony Steel in 1956. They divorced three years later. Her marriage to Rik Van Nutter lasted from 1963 until 1975. Her love affairs attracted widespread attention and she was once rumoured to be involved with Fiat chief Gianni Agnelli.
Ekberg rarely returned to Sweden, choosing to remain in Italy. In recent years, media reported that she had moved to a care home close to Rome.
Despite global praise for her Trevi Fountain scene in La Dolce Vita, taking a dip at the monument is strictly prohibited. Some film fans have however defied the ban, with one shirtless man diving in last May only to be chased by angry police officers.
The authorities are guaranteed some respite from such antics, as the fountain is undergoing 18 months of restoration funded by fashion house Fendi to the tune of €2.18m (£1.70m). | {
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During the second world war, the government fought a secret campaign against German spies. Now, new letters from the MI5 archive reveal the true story of Jose Waldberg, one of the men who was executed
Early on the morning of Tuesday 3 September 1940, two single-masted French fishing boats, La Mascotte and the Rose du Carmel, slipped across the Channel and approached the coast of Kent. When they were a few hundred yards from the headland of Dungeness, four men clambered from the vessels into a pair of rowing boats, and made their way silently to shore.
The four were Carl Meier, 23, a Dutch-born Nazi party member who had spent a little time in Birmingham before the war; Charles van den Kieboom, 25, a Dutch-Japanese dual national; Sjoerd Pons, 28, a Dutchman; and a 25-year-old who described himself as German and called himself Jose Waldberg.
They were agents of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, and their mission was to reconnoitre England’s south coast for the invasion they had been led to believe was just weeks away. Their supplies of corned beef, baked beans and chocolate were to last for around 10 days, and the small radio transmitters they had brought with them contained valves that quickly burned out.
Officially, they were part of Operation Lena, the codename for the Abwehr’s contribution to Hitler’s invasion plan. Unofficially, their spymasters considered their mission to be so hazardous that they called it the Himmelfahrt: the ascension to heaven.
Just 13 days after Winston Churchill came to power, the Treachery Act became law. It carried only one sentence: death
The tale of what happened to these men has been told before. But one sad and salient element of their story has remained hidden, buried for years in the archives of MI5 in poignant letters that have only now come to light after being transferred to the UK National Archives at Kew, south-west London.
Meier was the first to be captured, after he walked the short distance to the village of Lydd and strolled into the Rising Sun pub to ask landlady Mabel Cole for a bottle of cider. Cole was immediately wary of this young man with a foreign accent, who was unaware that he could not buy alcohol in a British pub at 9am. She was even more suspicious when Meier struck his head on the pub’s traditional low ceiling as he walked out. The police were called, and within hours all four would-be spies had been rounded up.
During six weeks at MI5’s interrogation centre, Camp 020, at Ham, in the south-western suburbs of London, all four were persuaded to make lengthy statements. On 24 October, they were charged under the Treachery Act, brought before magistrates at Bow Street court under conditions of complete secrecy, and told they would stand trial at the Old Bailey the following month.
To describe the Treachery Act as having been rushed on to the statute books would be an understatement.
When Churchill entered Downing Street on 10 May that year, he could not accept that the Germans’ rapid victories across Norway and western Europe could be attributed solely to superior weaponry, tactics and fighting spirit; there must, he concluded, be fifth columnists at work behind the lines. He was also convinced that fifth columnists must be at work in Britain, and wanted them rooted out and destroyed. On being told that any British nationals among them could be prosecuted for treason, but that foreigners probably could not, the new prime minister demanded a new law – immediately.
Winston Churchill in Downing Street, 1941. Photograph: Planet News Archive/SSPL via Getty Images
By 23 May, the Treachery Act, which outlawed conduct “designed or likely to give assistance to the naval, military or air operations of the enemy” had passed through parliament and received royal assent. It carried only one sentence: death.
When the trial of the four spies opened on 19 November, the prosecution asked the judge to make an order under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act banning “disclosure of any information with regard to any part of the proceedings”. By lunchtime, reporters supping in the Bell Tavern, 200 yards from the Old Bailey, in Fleet Street, were aware that something was afoot in court one, but could not get in. They also knew that they would not get any story past the censors at the Ministry of Information.
Waldberg surprised the court by pleading guilty. Meier, Kieboom and Pons denied the offence. Pons told the court that he had assisted the Abwehr under duress: he had been threatened with incarceration in a concentration camp after being caught smuggling gems from Holland to Germany, and insisted he had no intention of doing anything to assist the Germans on arrival in England.
After a trial that lasted four days, the jury took less than 90 minutes to convict Meier and Kieboom, who were sentenced to death, along with Waldberg. The jury accepted Pons’s defence, however. He was acquitted, set free, and immediately detained once more as an enemy alien.
In due course, Waldberg and Meier were informed that they were to be hanged at Pentonville prison in north London at 9am on 10 December. Kieboom was to hang a week later. Still, not a word about the case had appeared in the press or been uttered by the BBC.
Charles van den Kieboom, who was hanged as a German spy.
A week before the first executions, Sir Alexander Maxwell, the donnish permanent under-secretary at the Home Office, began having serious misgivings about the way in which the three men had been prosecuted and sentenced to death in complete secrecy. He set out his concerns in a confidential letter to Viscount Swinton, the head of the Security Executive, a body established by Churchill to manage MI5, and to root out the supposed fifth columnists. “Public opinion and public criticism is the most important safeguard for the proper administration of justice,” he wrote. “To carry out sentences of this kind in secrecy is contrary to all our traditions.”
Not that Maxwell was going to suggest that any future spy trials should be open to the press and public; rather, he wanted to be sure that if such secrecy were to be the cause of any future problems, it would be Swinton and MI5 that would take the blame, and not the Home Office and his boss Herbert Morrison, the home secretary. “The home secretary … may at any time be asked by his colleagues or perhaps by the Lord Chief Justice whether he is satisfied that these unusual steps are really necessary in the interests of the defence of the realm,” he explained to Swinton. “I think he ought to have on the Home Office records a letter from you on the subject. The home secretary should be safeguarded by a full statement from the Security Service.”
Swinton’s reply two days later explained that some enemy agents had already been “turned” by MI5, and played back against their Abwehr masters. Those whose capture members of the public had witnessed – or who refused to play the game – would be prosecuted under the Treachery Act.
In time, this deception operation, known as Double Cross, would be seen as one of MI5’s greatest achievements, and it would become a vital part of the allied strategic deception that also relied heavily on the code-breaking efforts of Bletchley Park. Agents who were turned would send their Abwehr handlers a careful blend of correct and incorrect intelligence. They would also ask for reinforcements, with new code books and radios, and plenty of cash, and these men would also be captured. Before long, German intelligence was unwittingly financing the Double Cross operation that was being directed against it. So great a failure was Operation Lena that one historian has recently concluded that anti-Nazis among the upper reaches of the Abwehr must have sabotaged it.
Swinton explained to Maxwell that Double Cross was vital to the war effort. “The combined work of all the services has built up, and is continually adding to, a great structure of intelligence and counter-espionage. A single disclosure, affecting one individual, might send the whole building toppling. Even in passing sentence, a judge may inadvertently err.”
By the time Maxwell had received Swinton’s explanation, however, it was becoming clear to both the Home Office and MI5 that there was a serious problem with one of the secret convictions. At Pentonville, Waldberg was insisting his name was not Jose Waldberg at all, and that he was not German. His name, he insisted, was Henri Lassudry, and he was Belgian.
Initially, MI5 was inclined to brush aside these claims as the desperate fabrications of a condemned man. The agency’s records show, however, that when interrogating Waldberg about his claims, a French-speaking interpreter was used, as the prisoner’s French was excellent – “like a native speaker” – while his German was weak. Furthermore, when “Waldberg” was given the chance to write a number of final letters to his family, he wrote to his parents, a Mons & Mme Lassudry, at an address in Rue des Colonies, Brussels, and a girlfriend, Helene Ceuppens, in nearby Ixelles.
These letters contain an explanation for the plea that had so surprised the Old Bailey. Lassudry complained that his barrister, a man called Blundell, had advised him to enter a guilty plea, without informing him that he would be sentenced to death as a consequence. Lassudry thought he would have a chance to explain himself to the judge. Had he done so, he would have entered the same defence that had saved Pons from the gallows. He was acting under duress, having been a prisoner of the Gestapo, who threatened to arrest his father if he did not agree to undertake the spying mission to England.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A letter relating to the case of Henri Lassudry, AKA Jose Waldberg. Photograph: National Archives in Kew
In the event, he had no chance to speak to the judge, and his sentencing hearing lasted just three minutes. “J’ai été trompé lâchement,” Lassudry protested: I have been rottenly tricked.
In his final letter, Lassudry told his mother: “God knows when you will get this letter. Maybe in a year, or even two.” There was a postscript: “I shall die on Tuesday December 10th at 9 o’clock. Your loving Henri.”
A senior MI5 officer, Colonel William Hinchley Cooke, went to see the attorney general, Sir Donald Somervell, to inquire whether the belated discovery of the true name, nationality and motivation of one of the men who was due to die in a few days’ time might, in any way, call for a stay of his execution. “I gather,” Hinchley Cooke recorded rather laconically in the agency’s files, “that he thinks it does not.”
Meier went to the gallows first, followed minutes later by Lassudry, who was executed under the name Jose Waldberg. At 9.25am, a two-paragraph communiqué written by MI5 informed Fleet Street and the BBC that the two men had been “apprehended shortly after their surreptitious arrival in this country”, with a wireless set and a large sum of money; that they had been tried and convicted, and hanged that morning. The communiqué added: “Editors are asked not to press for any additional facts or to institute inquiries.”
Seven days later a second notice announced the execution of Kieboom. No mention was made of Pons.
Lassudry’s family never received his letters. The Home Office handed them instead to MI5, along with a covering letter that said the condemned man’s criticisms of the English justice system “would prejudice the letters from our point of view, if there is any question of forwarding them to their destinations”.
MI5 filed the letters away and, in 2005, they were quietly deposited at Kew, where they lay for years, apparently unnoticed. By that time, several histories of Operation Lena, and the capture, interrogation and execution of “Jose Waldberg” and the other invasion spies had already been written.
Does Lassudry’s fate amount to a miscarriage of justice? There is no doubt that he was working for the Abwehr: he had sent three brief radio messages from the beach at Dungeness before his capture. On the other hand, it appears likely that the members of the Old Bailey jury who had acquitted Pons – to their enormous credit, given that the nation believed an invasion to be imminent – would also have shown mercy to Lassudry, had they heard his story.
Between 1940 and 1946, 19 spies and saboteurs were prosecuted under the Treachery Act and executed. A 20th spy – a junior Portuguese diplomat – was sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment following the intervention of the Portuguese government.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Letter relating to the case of Carl Meier and Jose Waldeberg. Photograph: National Archives in Kew
As each case came to court, senior MI5 officers became increasingly concerned that the in camera procedure being used at the Old Bailey was too insecure. They were also troubled by the requirements that notices of execution be posted on prison gates for 24 hours before a hanging, and that a coroner, sitting with a jury, must conduct an inquest into the death of the hanged man. The remedy, one MI5 officer suggested, would be to court martial spies at military establishments and then shoot them. There would be no prying journalists, no need for execution notices, and no coroner’s juries.
The Home Office was uncomfortable about the prospect of mounting courts martial for foreign nationals who were not members of any armed forces, and resisted the idea. However, one spy was dealt with in this manner after he was found to be a former soldier and a reservist in the German armed forces.
Josef Jakobs, a 42-year-old dentist, had been captured in February 1941 after breaking his leg when he parachuted into Huntingdonshire. After a two-day hearing at Chelsea barracks in London, he was driven to an indoor shooting range at the Tower of London, where he was strapped to a chair and shot by an eight-man firing squad from the Scots Guards.
The official communiqué that announced the manner in which Jakobs met his death caused a sensation in Fleet Street. Reporters from the Daily Express tracked down people in Huntingdonshire who had witnessed the spy’s capture, and the newspaper told the official censor that it intended to publish and be damned. Swinton, Maxwell and Somervell met, and agreed that the press should perhaps be given a little more information about the secret prosecutions and executions, to ensure there was no further breach.
The Treachery Act was suspended in 1946, and repealed a few years later. During the war, MI5 could never be sure exactly how many of the Abwehr’s agents had been captured and either prosecuted and executed, or turned and run under British control. After the war, the agency established that just one Abwehr agent had operated without detection, and he had shot himself in an air raid shelter in Cambridge after running out of money and food.
The “great structure of intelligence and counter-espionage” that Swinton had described in his letter to Maxwell, and the wider allied campaign of strategic deception of which it had been a part, had been a remarkable success; possibly one of the finest in the agency’s history.
• Ian Cobain’s study of official secrecy in the UK, The History Thieves, is published by Portobello Books on 1 September. | {
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BERLIN, GERMANY - FEBRUARY 04: A supporter of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan unrolls a poster at a rally at Tempodrom hall on February 4, 2014 in Berlin, Germany. Turkey will soon face parliamentary elections and Erdogan is vying for the votes of expatriate Turks. Berlin has the highest Turkish population of any city outside of Turkey. (Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images)
There's a new tradition on online platforms in Turkey. On the online community Eksi Sözlük, people add "PS: I'm not an AKPer" at the bottom of their posts. It's an attempt to clarify that they're objective and that they do not support Erdogan's Justice and Development Party.
I'm going to do the same here: No, I'm not an AKPer and I'm not a follower of Erdogan's. Just because I'm a religious Turkish woman, just because I find the comedian Jan Böhmermann's remarks about Erdogan pathetic, just because I call for a more refined perspective on the topic of Erdogan, and, finally, just because I opposed the military coup on the July 15, doesn't automatically mean that I'm an Erdogan supporter.
And even if I were a devoted follower of Erdogan's, that shouldn't be a problem. But it is. "Erdogan" has become a swear word in Germany. Erdogan followers are immediately called out whenever people are protesting in front of one of the Gülen movement's education centers -- it's as if they have a picture of Erdogan pinned to their lapels. The imams who came from Turkey, or "Erdogan's imams," are considered to be paid directly out of Erdogan's pocket.
The general sentiment is that the Turkish community in Germany, which still hasn't managed to integrate in the way the right-wing leader Frauke Petry would have liked, is waiting for Erdogan to snap his fingers before they move to occupy Germany's streets. Erdogan's ideology, Erdogan's vice-regents, Erdogan's mouthpiece, Erdogan's Turkey, Erdogan's regime, Erdogan's dictatorship, Erdogan's long arm... Erdogan is there, Erdogan is here. Erdogan is everywhere.
Even my friend's neighbor shouted: "Shitty Erdogans, go back to Istanbul!" as she was being detained by the police after threatening and insulting my friend's family.
Erdogan has become a kind of insult. A projection for old prejudices. An undying enemy. He's everything for which there's no place in Europe. Sometimes, he symbolizes the Turk who is resisting integration and lives in a "parallel society."
It seems to be completely legitimate to stigmatize someone as an "Erdogan follower" and rob them of their rights.
Sometimes, he's the chauvinist who abuses his wife, forces his daughter to cover her head, and takes her out of co-ed swim classes. Sometimes, he's the North African who harasses German women on New Year's Eve. Sometimes, he's the sultan who's trying to conquer Europe. Social and political nuances are wiped out. Often it feels like the only explanation for all the world's evil is Erdogan.
Even worse: After the creation of this monstrous image, it seems to be completely legitimate to stigmatize someone as an "Erdogan follower" and rob them of their rights.
The word "Erdogan" has a magical effect on German society. If you say "Erdogan," everything becomes clear. Foreign imams? It is a fact that other religious communities also import their spiritual leaders from other countries -- but when it comes to Erdogan, it seems that you have to intervene.
Freedom of opinion? If someone expresses their opinion of Turkish politics and praises Erdogan, it stops being free expression and becomes Erdogan propaganda that should immediately be banned. Freedom of assembly? Protesters who support Erdogan are simply Erdogan's long arm, and should have their German citizenship revoked, many people believe.
Erdogan serves as a litmus test for the German public. German politicians are suddenly concerned about the civilians killed during the attempted coup. German politicians, who don't have anything to say when it comes to the violation of human rights in Egypt, African-American victims of police violence in the U.S., or unjust water distribution between Israel and Palestine, are suddenly staunch defenders of the much-touted "European values."
When I insist that the opinions of Erdogan supporters from Turkey are not being fairly presented by the German media, I'm not talking about the Lügenpresse or "lying press." No, that's not how the media works. Behind media outlets are perfectly normal people, who look at political events from their personal perspective and try where possible to put aside their own prejudices.
Journalists can cling to their own beliefs. It's even possible that they're simply not interested in presenting another perspective. Some German journalists seem convinced that this evil man just isn't worth the effort of calling their own perspectives into question.
But the conversations in the Turkish community are different from those presented in the German media. Anyone of Turkish origin who looks at both the German and the Turkish press immediately notices that some topics are reflected totally differently in the German and in the Turkish media. In this way, a mental chasm opens between "there" and "here."
In German media, nobody showed the CCTV footage from the streets of Istanbul and Ankara, or the bombardment of the Turkish parliament. Many Germans didn't circulate videos in which you could see bombs and tanks coming face to face with the civilian population.
Many Germans have tried to discredit the opponents of the coup and belittle the coup itself. But Turks expected respect for people who were killed by tanks, bombs, and bullets.
In addition, most Germans don't have any relatives in Turkey and have not had the experience of getting a Whatsapp message from a relative that reads: "There was an explosion just now," before losing the connection to that relative, and having thousands of people die by the time the connection is reestablished.
Germans of Turkish ethnicity watched the massacre on the night of the 15th of July unfold second by second. What's more, because it was vacation season, many Turks from Germany were there on the streets of Istanbul and Ankara and joined the resistance to the coup, and in many cases, stood at the vanguard.
For Germans of Turkish origins, the position taken by some Germans -- after reading a few wire stories -- that this was all just theater, was borderline offensive.
Many Germans have tried to discredit the opponents of the coup and belittle the coup itself. But Turks expected respect for people who were killed by tanks, bombs, and bullets. They expected unconditional solidarity, before the German politicians started expressing their thoughts on the human rights situation in Turkey.
When German Turks go out on the streets to protest, they do so not because they're acting for Turkish interests, and not because they're conducting "Erdogan's propaganda" -- they're thoroughly convinced that Turkey is the only other option for them should they one day experience attacks in Germany.
Turkey is a safe haven for Germans of Turkish origin who are discriminated against in schools and at work on a daily basis, and who are represented as "Islamists" and as "refusing to integrate" by certain outlets in media. This is why people find it outrageous that some of their schoolmates and work colleagues seemed almost disappointed that the attempted coup failed.
An unarmed civilian who waves the Turkish flag and stands in the way of a tank isn't an "Erdogan supporter," but rather someone who is risking their lives to protect their country from the dangers of an anti-democratic coup.
How can Germans overcome their obsession with Erdogan? The answer is simple: Take off your ideological goggles and try to understand things not by way of imagined nightmare scenarios, but by common sense. People who are waving Turkish flags on the streets of Germany aren't doing it because Erdogan instructed them to do so. Foreign imams aren't in Germany because Erdogan sent them. Other factors play significantly larger roles here.
This post first appeared on HuffPost Germany. It has been translated into English and edited for clarity. | {
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President Trump Donald John TrumpFederal prosecutor speaks out, says Barr 'has brought shame' on Justice Dept. Former Pence aide: White House staffers discussed Trump refusing to leave office Progressive group buys domain name of Trump's No. 1 Supreme Court pick MORE said Tuesday that he does not know Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman Alexander VindmanImpeachment witness Alexander Vindman calls Trump Putin's 'useful idiot' The Hill's Morning Report - Sponsored by The Air Line Pilots Association - Trump, Biden renew push for Latino support Strzok: Trump behaving like an authoritarian MORE, the White House national security official testifying in connection with the House impeachment inquiry, and said he would let others make up their minds as to his credibility.
“I never saw the man. I understand now he wears his uniform when he goes in,” Trump told reporters at the White House during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday when asked if Vindman was credible, tacitly questioning Vindman's decision to dress in his military uniform. “No, I don’t know Vindman at all. What I do know is that he said the transcript was correct.”
“Vindman, I watched him for a little while this morning, and I think he — I’m going to let people make their own determination,” Trump, who last month called Vindman a “Never Trumper,” continued.
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His remarks came as Vindman testified on Capitol Hill about a July 25 phone call he listened in on between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“I don’t know, as he says, Lieutenant Colonel. I understand somebody had the misfortune of calling him 'mister' and he corrected them,” Trump said, referencing a moment during Tuesday’s hearing during which Vindman corrected Rep. Devin Nunes Devin Gerald NunesOvernight Defense: Stopgap spending measure awaits Senate vote | Trump nominates former Nunes aide for intelligence community watchdog | Trump extends ban on racial discrimination training to contractors, military Trump nominates former Nunes aide to serve as intel community inspector general Sunday shows preview: Justice Ginsburg dies, sparking partisan battle over vacancy before election MORE (R-Calif.), one of the president’s Capitol Hill allies, when he misstated his title.
Trump's comment about Vindman's uniform came after Rep. Chris Stewart Christopher (Chris) Douglas StewartAtlanta Wendy's 911 call the night of Rayshard Brooks's death released Tyler Perry offers to pay for funeral of Rayshard Brooks Current, former NHL players form diversity coalition to fight intolerance in hockey MORE (R-Utah) asserted at the hearing that Vindman was wearing his uniform on Capitol Hill despite normally wearing a suit to work — amplifying reports in conservative media suggesting he was doing so for show.
“I’m in uniform wearing my military rank. I thought it was appropriate to stick with that. The attacks that I’ve had in the press and Twitter have marginalized me as a military officer,” Vindman responded to Stewart.
Trump on Tuesday also sought to distance himself from other witnesses, including State Department officials William Taylor and George Kent, both of whom testified last week.
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“I don’t know any of these people, other than I have seen one or two a couple of times,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t know who Kent is. I don’t know who Taylor is.”
The July 25 call — during which Trump asked Ukraine for investigations into 2016 election interference as well as former Vice President Joe Biden Joe BidenFormer Pence aide: White House staffers discussed Trump refusing to leave office Progressive group buys domain name of Trump's No. 1 Supreme Court pick Bloomberg rolls out M ad buy to boost Biden in Florida MORE and his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings with a Ukrainian gas company — is at the heart of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into Trump.
The president has insisted that the call, a rough transcript of which has been released by the White House, was “perfect” and that he did nothing wrong.
“What is going on is a disgrace and it’s an embarrassment to our nation,” Trump told reporters Tuesday, calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Nancy PelosiDemocratic senator to party: 'A little message discipline wouldn't kill us' Overnight Health Care: New wave of COVID-19 cases builds in US | Florida to lift all coronavirus restrictions on restaurants, bars | Trump stirs questions with 0 drug coupon plan Overnight Defense: Appeals court revives House lawsuit against military funding for border wall | Dems push for limits on transferring military gear to police | Lawmakers ask for IG probe into Pentagon's use of COVID-19 funds MORE (D-Calif.) “grossly incompetent” and accusing her of focusing on impeachment instead of passing the new United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA).
Witnesses like Taylor, however, have described an effort by Trump administration officials to use a White House meeting and aid to Ukraine to press Kyiv for investigations sought by the president.
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Vindman, who told lawmakers on Tuesday that he never had any contact directly with Trump, said that the call was “improper” and that he reported it to the National Security Council’s top lawyer out of a “sense of duty.”
“I was concerned by the call. What I heard was improper, and I reported my concerns to Mr. [John] Eisenberg,” Vindman said Tuesday. “It is improper for the president of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen and political opponent.”
“It was also clear that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the 2016 election, the Bidens and Burisma, it would be interpreted as a partisan play. This would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing bipartisan support, undermine U.S. national security and advance Russia’s strategic objectives in the region,” Vindman continued.
Vindman, who also testified privately in connection with the inquiry last week, is one of several officials slated to testify this week about the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine.
Trump has questioned the credibility of witnesses as well as the whistleblower who filed a complaint about the call that alleged Trump used his office to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election.
Trump criticized Vindman as a “Never Trumper” in a tweet last month before his closed-door testimony and has launched similar criticisms against Taylor. Trump has at times sought to distance himself from other witnesses like U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland Gordon SondlandGOP chairman vows to protect whistleblowers following Vindman retirement over 'bullying' Top Democrat slams Trump's new EU envoy: Not 'a political donor's part-time job' Trump names new EU envoy, filling post left vacant by impeachment witness Sondland MORE.
Trump’s remarks Tuesday on Vindman were muted when compared to his statements about ousted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch Marie YovanovitchGrand jury adds additional counts against Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and and Igor Fruman Strzok: Trump behaving like an authoritarian Powell backs Biden at convention as Democrats rip Trump on security MORE, who at a public hearing on Friday recounted a smear campaign she faced from Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani Rudy GiulianiThe Hill's Campaign Report: GOP set to ask SCOTUS to limit mail-in voting CIA found Putin 'probably directing' campaign against Biden: report Democrats fear Russia interference could spoil bid to retake Senate MORE.
Trump lashed out at Yovanovitch on Twitter, claiming that “everywhere” she went as a foreign service officer “went bad.” Democrats quickly accused the president of witness intimidation.
--This report was updated at 2:48 p.m. | {
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- First came the iPhone. Then, there was the "iFart" flatulence noise download. Now, there's "Pull My Finger" -- and next could come the lawsuits.
A Florida-based company has accused a Colorado competitor in federal court of trademark infringement and unfair business practices over the phrase "Pull My Finger."
The dispute began after the makers of iFart began using phrase "pull my finger" in advertisements for their products.
Air-o-Matic, based in Jacksonville, Florida, and Colorado-based InfoMedia, Inc., both offer a range of competing software applications, or "apps," that subscribers can download into their multitasking cell phones. Users can make calls, listen to music, browse the Internet and play games on the devices.
Individual "apps" cost a dollar and up, and can be used to get directions, read restaurant reviews and make funny noises. Enter the flatulence sound app, which both companies offer to customers.
Air-o-Matic says its app, "Pull My Finger" has a unique brand identity that its competitor has infringed. It wants $50,000 from Infomedia to settle the dispute and may sue in federal court.
In a formal complaint filed in a Denver, Colorado, federal court, however, InfoMedia says the phrase is a common "descriptive" term used in its advertising and cannot be trademarked.
The company wants a judge to step in now, before any lawsuit is filed, and allow it to continue to use the phrase.
According to InfoMedia's legal filing, its iFart app "boasts a number of unique features including a built-in security system designed to aurally surprise and discourage iPhone theft. iFart also features a "Sneak Attack" function using a timer that emits the sound of flatulence when it goes off, the company says, and can also be used as a prank to an unsuspecting person.
Joel Conn, founder of Infomedia, said on his own blog that his app is a "cultural phenomenon."
The company claims there are about 75 different flatulence simulation software applications.
There was no word on when a judge might rule on the complaint.
All About Apple iPhone | {
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The number of EU passengers flying in and out of Manchester Airport could drop if the government fails to strike an interim deal to secure open access to European skies post-Brexit, according to a new study.
Commissioned by leading British airports - including Manchester and Heathrow - it claims passenger numbers in the EU could fall by as much as 41 per cent if no holding deal is struck between the UK and the European Union by October 2018.
The report claims flights could be grounded and Britain’s economy would be hit, without a guarantee of future access to the EU’s single aviation market.
An early deal is essential to reduce uncertainty as many air passengers book months in advance for travel post-Brexit, it says.
(Image: PA)
The worst case scenario is that passenger numbers fall by 41 per cent at Britain’s biggest airports between March 2018 and March 2019, according to the leaked report penned consultancy WPI Economics.
“The risk of no deal creates uncertainty for the industry,” it reads. “Although an eleventh hour deal may prevent planes from being grounded, damage to the aviation industry and the wider economy would have already been done.”
Writing in the M.E.N. before the UK voted to leave the EU, Manchester Airports Group (MAG) chief executive Charlie Cornish stated: “In 1992, the introduction of ‘open skies’ across the EU sparked the low-cost revolution, and unleashed a wave of competition into a market that had been heavily state controlled up to that point.
“As competition has strengthened, airlines have become more efficient, air fares have fallen, and choice has increased.
“The end result is that more British passengers can now afford to fly. No government acting on its own could have come close to achieving anywhere near as much.”
(Image: Manchester Evening News)
Commenting on the leaked report, a MAG spokesperson said: “MAG believes that it is critical that post-Brexit all airlines retain liberal access to the continent’s skies and we are urging the EU and UK Government to prioritise an interim deal on aviation as soon as possible.
“Other sectors are able to plan on the basis of WTO fall-back arrangements, but the aviation industry is at a distinct disadvantage because in the event that the UK leaves the EU without a deal, it doesn’t have the same sort of ‘safety net’.
“Tickets will soon go on sale for flights in a post-Brexit world and both airlines and passengers need assurance from the EU and UK Government to enable them to plan for the future.” | {
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(Photo: Nintendo/Microsoft)
It felt like the developers, execs and other talking heads at E3 2017 could barely make it through a sentence without making mention of 4K gaming. Between the continuing push for the PlayStation 4 Pro and the newly-unveiled Xbox One X, ultra-HD games were very much on everybody’s mind.
The only company not hyping up 4K was Nintendo, because, well, they don’t have a 4K-capable system. The Nintendo Switch can do 1080p, but 4K simply isn’t possible on the system.
So, why has Nintendo forsaken 4K? Do they plan to support it any time soon? Don’t count on it – in a recent interview with The Verge, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime deemed 4K too niche to be worth the company’s time and effort:
“The Nintendo mission is to reach as many consumers as possible and to have them engage and have fun with our intellectual property. That’s what we try and do. So inherently, we go for a more mainstream audience. Inherently, we want our products to be affordable. We want our products to be easy to pick up and experience, low learning curve. We want our IP to shine as we deliver these experiences. That’s the way we approach it. And so, what that means is, a sweet spot of $300 for the Nintendo Switch, a platform that has Mario and Zelda and Splatoon. Going against a more limited consumer pool, a higher price point, requiring investments in other ways — 4K TVs, what have you — that is a strategy that for us, candidly, is a bit too limited.”
It’s a hard point to argue against. Yes, more and more people are buying 4K TVs, but that’s only because it’s the main technology available now. Most people don’t really care about the difference between 1080p and 4K. The number on the price tag is definitely more important than resolution.
You can check out WWG’s latest Nintendo Switch coverage here.
[via The Verge] | {
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Lotus flower seeds University of Kent
**Warning, this post contains images which might cause feelings of intense disgust. All images were collected as part of the University of Kent's study into trypophobia**
Look at a bubble. Round, aerated, generally mysterious. But when do bubbles become nauseating?
From bubbles in a hot cup of coffee, to holes in a sponge or plaster, while the common appearance may seem innocuous it has been known to trigger intensely anxious responses. And that response has a name: Trypophobia.
What is Trypophobia and what causes it?
Trypophobia, characterised as the fear of holes, has also been linked to a more generalised aversion to circular shapes such as bubbles. But what makes bubbles so disgusting? The answer may be found lurking just under the skin.
Read next Gallery: The clean tech meltdown Gallery Gallery: The clean tech meltdown
Boy's hand with smallpox scars University of Kent
Previous evidence suggested that the fear of bubbles stemmed from the clusters of round shapes found on poisonous animals, such as snakes and the blue-ringed octopus. But a new theory from psychologists at the University of Kent suggests our innate suspicion of rough circular shapes could, in fact, be linked to a history of human illness.
Foot with cluster marks University of Kent
Tom Kupfer, of the University's School of Psychology, noted that many infectious diseases result in clusters of round shapes on the skin: smallpox, measles, rubella, typhus, scarlet fever etc. Similarly, many ectoparasites, like scabies, ticks and botfly also lead to clusters of round shapes on the skin. In other words, if your skin starts popping, it's probably a bad sign.
Drilled holes in a wall University of Kent
Read next The clean tech meltdown The clean tech meltdown
Kupfer recruited 300 trypophobia sufferers from various support groups, as well as 300 university students with no known history of the condition. Both groups were given 16 cluster images of real objects related to a diseased part of the body. Eight pictures were focused on images of illness - including but not limited to such nauseating sights as a cluster of ticks and a circular-shaped rash in the centre of someone's chest. The other eight images were unrelated to illness or disease, such as drilled holes in a brick wall, or lotus flower seeds.
A cluster of ticks on a dog's ear University of Kent
Both groups found the disease-related images to be unpleasant, whereas only the trypophobia sufferers found the non-disease related images to be extremely unpleasant. These findings suggest that individuals with trypophobia have heightened responses to bubble aversion, even in images with no underlying scenes of illness. But unlike most phobias, trypophobia results in intense feelings of disgust more often than fear.
Drilled holes in a tree University of Kent
Kupfer and his team then asked trial participants with trypophobia to describe their feelings when looking at cluster images. Analysis of these responses revealed that the majority of individuals with trypophobia experienced disgust or disgust-related feelings like nausea or the urge to vomit, even towards the disease-irrelevant cluster images like a sponge or bubbles. Only a small proportion described feeling fear or fear-related feelings.
Man's chest with a rash University of Kent
In addition to disgust, trypophobic individuals frequently reported feelings like skin itching, skin crawling or even the sensation of 'bugs infesting the skin'. This skin response suggests that people with trypophobia may perceive cluster stimuli as if they are cues to ectoparasites, even leading some to feel as if they are infested.
Waterbug with eggs on back University of Kent
Kupfer states that, "these findings support the proposal that individuals with trypophobia primarily perceive cluster stimuli as cues to ectoparasites and skin-transmitted pathogens".
Scrolling through the images, it's easy to see why these bubbles created such strong responses. If you've actually managed to pay attention to my words instead of the bulbous ticks and scars before you, congratulations. You can go throw up now. | {
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Lili en Howick mogen blijven, zo werd dit weekeinde duidelijk. Een opmerkelijke uitkomst, nadat premier Rutte vrijdag nog duidelijk had gezegd dat zijn regering de geldende procedures zou volgen. We vroegen u of de toekenning van deze verblijfsvergunningen een ongewenst precedent schept. Lees hieronder enkele reacties.
In de rubriek Lezersreacties lichten we een aantal reacties uit. Alleen reacties die onder eigen naam zijn achtergelaten, komen hiervoor in aanmerking. Bekijk alle reacties op de Stelling van de dag
Henn Rensenbrink schrijft:
Jawel, natuurlijk heeft dit besluit precedentwerking. Asieladvocaten zullen er wel weg mee weten. Tevens heeft de casus een uitstekend concept geleverd voor andere asielzoekers. Uitgeprocedeerd ? Traineren, dreigen, onderduiken, kinderen verstoppen, mediacircus opstarten en…….BINGO !
G.M.H. Steens schrijft:
Wie kan mij vertellen hoeveel er nog op de wachtlijst staan? Dan weten we wat ons nog te wachten staat. Het beste is misschien deze lijst in een keer een pardon geven. Dat scheelt weer proceskosten. Wie dan nog binnenkomt, uitzetten en in zijn thuisland afwachten.
Jos Merks schrijft:
Inderdaad verbijsterd. Je gelooft je oren en later je ogen niet als je zaterdag het uiteindelijke besluit hoort. Met list en bedrog 10 jaar lang op kosten van de belastingbetaler allerlei rechtszaken voeren. Geld dat voor veel betere doeleinden had kunnen worden ingezet. Alle goede bedoelingen ten spijt.
Overigens petje af voor degenen die als mediale genieën de publieke opinie hebben bewerkt. Dat kan geen gerenommeerd reclame- of
pr-bureau ze nadoen.
Maar het kan niet zo zijn, dat de hardste schreeuwers hun zin krijgen en degenen die bescheiden zijn de verliezer zijn. Dat is rechtsongelijkheid. Let maar op wat een nasleep hier weer van gaat komen. De 2e kamer zal er wel weer druk mee zijn. Gelukkig blijven die kosten gelijk. Maar het circus dat nu op gang gaat komen met honderden anderen in min of meer gelijke positie en derden die hier weer misbruik van gaan maken inclusief misschien wel tienduizenden andere liegende nieuwe gelukzoekers zullen onze maatschappij nog heel wat problemen en kosten gaan geven.
Jos van Deventer schrijft:
Hier is aangetoond dat die hele asielprocedure een farce is. 400 kinderen in ‘vergelijkbare’ omstandigheden? Ha, ha. Geef ze allemaal asiel en overmorgen heb je nog 40.000 kinderen in ‘vergelijkbare’ omstandigheden, en een week later opeens 400.000. Het enige wat duidelijk is, is dat je moet drammen, liegen, niet doen wat de overheid zegt, desnoods een tijdje ‘illegaal’ zijn, maar uiteindelijk mag gewoon iedereen blijven. Er bestaat helemaal geen asielprocedure. Het is één grote geldverslindende komedie.
Eva. M Kellerman schrijft:
Het wordt tijd dat de wetten waardoor deze situaties kunnen ontstaan worden aangepast. De asielzoeker doet niets verkeerd, hij/zij gebruikt de wetten die door de regering worden aangereikt. Asielzoekers uit diverse niet-gevaarlijke landen moeten binnen één maand Nederland verlaten hebben. Tot die tijd moeten zij worden opgesloten.
Richard Akkerman schrijft:
Dat de kinderen niet verenigd worden met de moeder lijkt mij ook niet goed. Tien jaar onderhandelen is een schande en wat heeft dat de gemeenschap wel niet gekost! De rechterlijke uitspraak negeren vind ik ook een schande maar we weten niet wat er zich achter gesloten deuren heeft afgespeeld. Bedreiging van de staatssecretaris gaat ook alle perken te buiten. De sociale media en al dat populistische linkse gepraat op tv, dat zou eens aan banden gelegd moeten worden. De kinderen lijken blij maar ik vraag mij af of gezinshereniging wellicht meer aandacht had moeten krijgen. Bovendien: illegaal is en blijft illegaal en daar moet men zich aan houden.
Marjoline van der Jagt schrijft:
Vanaf het moment dat staatssecretaris Harbers met de dood was bedreigd, had hij niet meer bevoegd mogen zijn om het besluit te nemen. Die bevoegdheid had dan naar een hogere autoriteit moeten gaan. Van Harbers kon onder de omstandigheden niet meer worden verwacht dat hij onpartijdig zou zijn. | {
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A principal is being sued for $5 million over comments she made regarding a student’s sexual assault allegations. (Photo: Welles Enterprises/Getty Images)
In a week that has seen President Trump and Fox News host Tucker Carlson calling out women who don’t immediately report sexual assault comes news of a lawsuit filed by a female high school student who did just that — only to be shamed by her principal.
As the Washington Post reports, the teenager and her mother — who are not being publicly identified, and have not commented to media on the matter — are taking legal action against Aqueelha James, principal at Roosevelt High School in Washington, D.C., over comments caught on an audio recording during a meeting to discuss the alleged assault.
According to the lawsuit, on June 13, 2017, a male classmate pushed the young woman into a school bathroom and groped and kissed her without her consent. She filed a police report the next day, and set up a meeting to address the incident with James and other school officials, including the dean of students, Reginald Stevens. Stevens was reportedly not physically present but listened in over the phone.
At one point, the girl became upset and fled the room. Her mother rushed off to comfort her, leaving behind her cellphone in the process. Unbeknownst to James and the others present, the mother had been using the cellphone to make an audio recording of the meeting.
The phone captured the conversation that took place in the family’s absence, during which James made derogatory remarks about the girl and threatened to “embarrass her a**.”
“This … is going to compromise her,” James says on the recording. “And that’s why I’m going to go the extra mile and call MPD [the Metropolitan Police Department]. That’s why I’m going to do all of this … because I’m sick of her. … So I’m going to call MPD, I’m going to have a long, drawn-out email just so that I can embarrass her.”
In what appears to be an aside to Stevens over the phone, she reportedly made a comment critical of the student’s attire.
“You should see the dress she’s got on,” James said.
Those comments — along with claims that James and the school failed to take the girl’s allegations seriously — have resulted in a $5 million lawsuit. The local D.C. government is also named in the suit.
Story continues
Meanwhile, District of Columbia Public Schools has issued a statement saying it “took action” over the sexual assault allegation, but declined to say whether anyone was reprimanded.
“DCPS does not tolerate sexual misconduct or harassment in our schools,” the statement reads. “We take the safety and security of all of our students seriously, and while we cannot discuss the specifics of personnel matters, when the issue at Roosevelt was brought to our attention we launched an investigation and took action.”
James is still principal at the high school, according to its website.
Under D.C.’s wiretapping law, one party’s consent is required to record a conversation. While the girl’s mother would qualify because she was involved in the meeting, defense lawyers may argue that her exit from the room meant that she was no longer a party to the conversation.
Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:
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Barbara Bowen Ballard, who considered her greatest success to be as a wife to Mormon senior apostle M. Russell Ballard, mother to their seven children and wise adviser to her 43 grandchildren, died Monday at her home.
She was 86.
In recent years, Ballard battled several health issues, including Alzheimer’s disease, according to a news release, with her “characteristic grace and sense of humor.”
(Photo courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Members of the Ballard family playing a game in 1980. Barbara Bowen Ballard died Oct. 1, 2018.
The socially adept woman had myriad friends from her days as a student at the University of Utah, through her connections in the community and while working in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints alongside her husband, especially when he was a mission president in Toronto.
“The missionaries adored her and looked forward to her attending meetings and conferences as much as they did President Ballard,” the release said. “She loved them equally in return.”
Barbara Ballard was named Exemplary Woman of the Year in 2002 by church-owned Brigham Young University–Idaho “for her dedication to family and her unselfish work in the church and her community.”
(Photo courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Wedding photo of M. Russell Ballard, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and his wife, Barbara, Aug. 28, 1951.
She was born Jan. 5, 1932, in Salt Lake City. She was a student body officer for two years and graduated from South High School as valedictorian. She also attended the University of Utah, where she met her future husband. The two married Aug. 28, 1951, in the Salt Lake Temple.
Article continues below
“I married the right daughter of God,” M. Russell Ballard, the Utah-based faith’s acting president of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, said in the release. “Without the help and direction of Barbara, our family relationships would not have been as happy and fulfilling as they were. Barbara is a treasure for our family forever. We honor her for her constant love, good judgment and counsel.”
Funeral services will be held Monday, Oct. 8, at noon in the Monument Park LDS Stake Center, 1320 S. Wasatch Drive, in Salt Lake City. A public viewing will be held the Sunday before from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at the same location. | {
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The inner sanctum of the Bank of England was penetrated by a “powerful criminal network” linked to money laundering, terrorism, and contract killings, according to explosive intelligence that the police and MI5 tried to keep secret.
The details of the covert operation – which uncovered a suspected gangland plot so audacious detectives feared it could “destabilise” the British economy – are revealed for the first time in secret police files seen by BuzzFeed News and interviews with several well-placed sources.
The infiltration was discovered when detectives tapped the mobile phone of a Ferrari-driving businessman suspected of laundering money “on a vast scale” for organised crime gangs and reported hearing him receiving secrets from inside the Bank.
The major national security breach has been kept tightly under wraps by police chiefs and spies at MI5 for more than 16 years, shielding those implicated in the highly embarrassing scandal from public, parliamentary, and judicial scrutiny.
Although police warned senior bankers that a mole was passing inside information to a businessman connected to organised crime, the leaker was never identified, no one was sacked, and the businessman remains at large.
The Bank of England is now facing serious questions about how gangsters gleaned Britain’s most closely guarded financial secrets and how the public can be confident no such breach will occur again.
In 1998, as part of a major probe codenamed Operation Beregon, the detectives reported that they had eavesdropped on a high-rolling young stockmarket speculator receiving highly sensitive information about the bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC).
The committee meets in private each month to set Britain’s base rate of interest, which affects every aspect of the country’s economy, and the confidentiality of its deliberations is sacrosanct. Policymakers are made to sign a “declaration of secrecy” and are subject to “strict purdah rules” before decisions about interest rate changes are announced publicly. It is not suggested that the leak came from a member of the MPC.
But the businessman was believed to be exploiting a sexual relationship with the wife of a Bank of England insider to garner tip-offs about upcoming changes that could be used to gamble on the financial markets.
The threat to national security was deemed so severe that the investigation was swiftly taken over by spies at MI5, and the affair has remained a closely guarded secret for years.
A Bank of England source confirmed that in 1998 it was alerted to sensitive police intelligence that “two people were talking about inside access to the Bank’s information”.
The source said: “Leaking monetary policy stuff would have been, and still is, a hanging offence,” and an immediate internal inquiry was launched. But it failed to identify where the leak was coming from, so no action was taken and the case was closed.
However, some details of Operation Beregon are known to be contained in legal documents filed at the High Court last year by the lawyers of a former senior detective involved in the investigation who is now suing Scotland Yard. | {
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Thursday, May 30 — Bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and Ripple (XRP) are down as the crypto market sees a major correction following this morning’s rally. Nearly all of the top 50 cryptocurrencies are in the red at press time, according to data from Coin360.
Market visualization courtesy of Coin360
After peaking at a 52 week high of over $9,000, BTC is down by 3.91% on the day, and is trading at $8,333 according to CoinMarketCap. The leading cryptocurrency currently has a market cap of $147.8 billion at press time.
Bitcoin 24-hour price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
The altcoin ETH is currently down by 4.75% and is trading at $257.53 at press time. Ether has followed BTC’s rally and subsequent correction, and is trending up by 5.40% this week overall.
Ether 7-day price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
Ripple’s token XRP, the third largest coin by market capitalization, is down by 5.28% and is trading at $0.421.
XRP 24-hour price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
Some cryptocurrencies that have evaded today’s downward movement include Dogecoin (DOGE), USD Coin (USDC), Bytecoin (BCN), Cosmos (ATOM) and Tether (USDT) as seen on Coin360.
At press time, total market capitalization is over $263 billion. The top three cryptocurrencies — BTC, ETH, and XRP — are at approximately 57%, 10%, and 3% dominance, respectively.
Total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies 7-day chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
According to data provided by MarketWatch, gold remains in the green at press time, trading at $1,295.40 and trending up by 0.22%. The S&P 500 also remains unaffected by the crypto market’s downward trend on the day, with a closing price of $2,788.86, up by 0.21% on the day.
As reported earlier in the day by Cointelegraph, an unnamed buyer purportedly approached crypto investment firm Dadiani Syndicate saying they wanted to acquire a quarter of the current 17.7 million BTC in circulation.
As per the report, Dadiani founder Eleesa Dadiani said that in order to do this, the buyer would significantly affect the BTC market, which she suspects only sees active circulation of about a third of the listed amount: | {
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NILAND, Calif. – El Centro Sector Border Patrol agents working at the Highway 111 immigration checkpoint arrested a man suspected of smuggling narcotics Tuesday morning.
The incident occurred at approximately 10:30 a.m., when a 57-year-old man driving a green Ford F-150 truck approached the checkpoint. Agents sent the vehicle to secondary inspection for further investigation after a Border Patrol K-9 detection team alerted to the vehicle.
Agents discovered a stash of meth behind a
truck's cab.
While in secondary inspection, Border Patrol agents discovered packages hidden inside of the cab wall and at the head of the truck bed. Agents determined that the packages contained a substance that was consistent with the characteristics of methamphetamine.
The total weight of the narcotics discovered was 63.5 pounds of methamphetamine with an estimated value of $127,000.
The man, a Mexican citizen, the narcotics and vehicle were turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). | {
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