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Pembrokeshire coastal path reopens after 60 years Published duration 13 January 2018 image copyright Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority A Pembrokeshire coastal path has been reopened, after being shut to the public for 60 years. The route, running from near Herbrandston along the Milford Haven Golf Club boundary, was closed in 1957 by an act of parliament. This was to allow construction of the former Esso Oil Refinery on the site. However, it is now a liquefied natural gas terminal and its owner agreed with Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority to reopen it. The company, South Hook LNG, has now handed it over to be used by walkers as part of the 870 miles (1,400km) Wales Coast Path.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Now back to our regular feature: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) yells at someone who disagrees with him. In case you missed our last episode, Christie was yelling at a nurse who didn't have Ebola because she didn't want to live in a tent. Before that it was, what? Probably Rand Paul. Before that, a teacher. A few people back, some dude on the Jersey Shore. In New Jersey, residents set their watches when they hear a Christie bellow. The latest iteration came Wednesday as Christie prepared to talk about the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy. Christie has several advantages in this confrontation. First, he has a lot of fans in the audience and a couple of beefy dudes at his sides. But most importantly, he has a microphone, making it very hard to hear precisely what the gentleman with the sign is saying. (That his back is to the camera doesn't help.) We know what the protester is mad about, since he had the foresight to face the sign backward. He is angry about the pace of restoration following the storm. We also know that at one point he tells Christie to do his job, because Christie says, "You do yours, too." And he apparently asked Chris Christie to dinner? Christie: "There's about a thousand things I'll do tonight. Going to dinner with you is about 1,001." (Christie likes this joke; he smiles a bit afterward.) Also in the background is Christie's wife, Mary Pat. She's to Christie's right, our left, next to one of the beefy dudes. Is that awkwardness? Discomfort? She's squinting a bit, which makes it look like she's wincing. Is it the light? If it's any indicator, Mary Pat was there when Chris was yelling at the teacher, too. And the rally ends, inevitably, with Christie arguing with a teacher pic.twitter.com/YyLsoJVTWQ — Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) November 2, 2013 Every marriage is different, I guess. Anyway. Stay tuned for the next episode of Chris Christie yells at someone who disagrees with him, in which Christie yells at a tiny little puppy.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
You may have seen headlines earlier this week about a planet found wandering alone, without a star to orbit. Although that aspect of the new planetary find seems to have grabbed the headlines, it's actually one of the least interesting features of the new find. The body in question awkwardly straddles the border between near-stars called brown dwarfs and giant super-Jupiter class planets, and its features suggest it may have formed through a process identical to one that creates stars. The alternative—that it was ejected from a system of planets that formed orbiting a star—would suggest interstellar space is teeming with rogue planets. Rogue planets, those that aren't gravitationally bound to a star, have been identified previously through surveys looking for a phenomenon called "microlensing." This occurs when the planet acts as a gravitational lens, briefly brightening a star in the background as the planet passes between the star and Earth. A survey of microlensing objects identified a number of possible planets that mapped to points in space where there were no stars in the neighborhood. But in this case, the authors managed to directly image one relatively nearby (less than 140 light years away). It happened while they were looking for something else: brown dwarfs. These bodies are large enough to have ignited deuterium fusion (over 13 times the mass of Jupiter), but not large enough to have kicked off sustained fusion of hydrogen. Anything below the brown dwarf cutoff is considered a planet (with the largest of these gas giants typically termed "super Jupiters"). Although that makes for a nice, exact definition of what constitutes a planet, it actually may obscure a more relevant distinction. Normally, we think of stars as forming through the collapse of a gas cloud; planets form through an aggregation of material within the disks that typically surround a star. But as the authors note, that distinction is being challenged by a number of rogue, sub-stellar objects likely to have formed through a process similar to how stars are produced. When the authors came across CFBDSIRJ214947.2-040308.9 (CFBDSIR2149 to its friends), it first looked like a brown dwarf gradually losing its heat after having ended fusion a while back. But a careful analysis of the light emitted by the object suggested a possible alternative: it was small, too small to have ever undergone fusion. Instead, the heat given off by the object was residual energy from the gravitational collapse of its formation. Further supporting a young age, the researchers found the object appeared to be associated with a small cluster of stars that were all relatively young, between 50 and 120 million years of age. Based on the composition of the stars and the object's atmospheric properties, the authors conclude it's probably only four to seven times the mass of Jupiter. That's far too small to have ever initiated fusion. Because it's not associated with any stars, the authors were able to get some detailed information about its atmosphere, spotting indications of methane and potassium in its gaseous envelope. They suggest further observations could use CFBDSIR2149 as an example exoplanet to prepare for the direct imaging of objects orbiting nearby stars. The details we get from those studies could also help us refine the models we have of exoplanet atmospheres. Given its young age and lack of clear association with any other stars, the authors conclude it probably formed through the collapse of a star-forming gas cloud, rather than within a planetary disk. And if that's the case, they suggest we might want to revisit a lot of the other objects that were initially described as brown dwarfs. It may turn out that some of these actually fall into the planetary mass range. There have been a couple other reports of planet sized objects that formed this way, but we haven't really incorporated this into our models for star formation (the paper suggests that the same sort of fragmentation of gas clouds that leads to binary systems can take place on a smaller scale). The alternative explanation for this class of object (which the authors call an isolated planetary mass object, or IPMO) is ejection from a system of planets formed from a planetary disk. Models of orbital dynamics suggest this is possible, either due to interactions among planets or the influence of a nearby star. But it should be much harder to eject a super Jupiter-sized planet. So if these large IPMOs are common, smaller ones should be much, much more common (a trend enhanced by the fact smaller planets form in larger numbers). "This would mean," the authors conclude, "free-floating, frozen-down versions of Jupiters, Neptunes, and perhaps Earths are common throughout the Milky Way interstellar ranges." Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2012. DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201219984 (About DOIs).	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
ALL-ACCESS G-PASS Subscribe And Get It All For One Low Monthly Rate Get instant and unlimited access to over 40,000 lessons, tabs & more!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
I don't always see something I want to watch But when I do, it's on a channel I don't subscribe to. 138 shares	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Schwerin. MV-Innenminister Lorenz Caffier (CDU) schließt nicht aus, einzelne Mitglieder oder Gruppierungen der AfD vom Verfassungsschutz beobachten zu lassen. Für die Gesamtpartei lägen allerdings zur Zeit keine Erkenntnisse vor, die einen solchen Schritt rechtfertigen, sagte er am Donnerstag bei einer Konferenz der Innenminister der fünf norddeutschen Bundesländer in Schwerin. Auch der niedersächsische Innenminister Boris Pistorius (SPD) äußerte sich ähnlich. Zuvor war auf Bundesebene von mehreren Politikern eine solche Beobachtung gefordert worden. Begründung: Teile der AfD bewegten sich ins rechtsextreme Spektrum. Thema bei der Konferenz war auch der Umgang mit den sogenannten Reichsbürgern, die die Bundesrepublik und deren Gesetze nicht anerkennen. „Waffen gehören nicht in die Hände von Extremisten. Deshalb ist es unser Ziel, nach Einzelfallprüfung Reichsbürgern und Extremisten die waffenrechtliche Erlaubnis zu verwehren beziehungsweise zu entziehen“, so Caffier. Verfassungsschutz führt 25 Verfahren gegen Reichsbürger Laut dem Ressortchef gibt es in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 28 Personen, die vom Verfassungsschutz als Reichsbürger eingestuft wurden und die über einen oder mehrere Waffenscheine verfügen. In 25 dieser Fälle haben die Behörden bisher die Feststellung der Unzuverlässigkeit eingeleitet. Abgeschlossen sind die Verfahren aber noch nicht. Der Dauerbrenner Flüchtlinge beschäftigte die Nord-Innenminister naturgemäß auch: Voraussichtlich 2020 soll das gemeinsame Abschiebehaft-Zentrum im schleswig-holsteinischen Glücksstadt eröffnet werden, hieß es. Dort stehen dann MV, Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein je 20 Plätze zur Verfügung. „Freiwillige Rückkehr hat grundsätzlich Vorrang vor staatlichem Zwang“, so Caffier. Fehle es jedoch an der Freiwilligkeit oder sei aus Gründen der öffentlichen Sicherheit eine Überwachung erforderlich, müssten die Behörden eben zwangsweise handeln. Weiteres brisantes Thema: Mehr und mehr machen internationale Banden, die sich auf Wohnungseinbrüche spezialisiert haben, den Sicherheitsbehörden zu schaffen. Zugleich sinkt aber bundesweit die Zahl der Einbrüche. Die Innenminister führten das auch auf die intensive Ermittlungsarbeit der vergangenen Jahre zurück. Dennoch gelte es, nicht nachzulassen. Eine Kooperationsvereinbarung der Nord-Länder, die unterzeichnet wurde, soll dabei helfen. Vereinbart wurde ein intensiverer Informationsaustausch, länderübergreifende Ermittlungen ebenso wie gemeinsame Auswerte- und Analyseprojekte, um mobile Täter zu identifizieren. Auch bei erkannten Einbruchsserien oder Gruppierungen soll gemeinsam ermittelt werden.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
but did they discuss brielle and kroy's love child? Reply Thread Link Is this a real rumor? Reply Parent Thread Link lol apparently Reply Parent Thread Link nnn that entire situation is sf weird Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Nene bashing Kim on Watch What Happens Live for 9 minutes straight is life! Reply Thread Link that's the most hysterical thing I've ever watched lmfaaaaaao trashy trash box close your legs to married men wig bye boo s c r e a m i n g Reply Parent Thread Link Andy was LOVING this, lmao! Reply Parent Thread Link RIP OG NeNe. Reply Parent Thread Link “Who are you in the Bahamas with?” “Somebody’s husband” I die! Reply Parent Thread Link Omg. It’s 9 min but it went by so fast. The best use of my time all day tbh Reply Parent Thread Link Wow i was cackling HARD omg Reply Parent Thread Link I never liked her but I like anyone who drags kim Reply Parent Thread Link Andy has aged like hell Reply Parent Thread Link lmfao this is so beautiful Reply Parent Thread Link Andy:Kim, who are you in the Bahamas with? Nene: Somebody's husband. I died!! Reply Parent Thread Link Lmao Reply Parent Thread Link Nene used to look so much better here. gotdamN Reply Parent Thread Link Why did they let her back and why do people think Kim would be ok with a Kroy/Brielle love child? Are her and Kroy estranged now? Or is this a joke that's being lost on me? Reply Thread Link I'm assuming it's a joke, because no one has ever brought receipts. Reply Parent Thread Link There's a whole thread on LSA about it. But the Brielle/Kroy rumours go back to last year(?) when Brielle sent a snap meant to be private wearing Kim's shirt, captioned "Still want to fuck me in this, daddy?". According to LSA, Brielle gained weight and stopped posting full body pics on social media for a few months until recently. There was also another "accidental" snap where Kim is talking about pregnancy, directing it towards Khloe Kardashian - prior to her announcing her pregnancy. At one point, Kim says something about how huge Khloe's boobs are going to get and tells Brielle to "show her" and Brielle flashes the camera, leading people to think Brielle was pregnant. Now Kim is posting pics/videos of her with a baby all over social media. Reply Parent Thread Link eyebleach at that first one, jesus christ Reply Parent Thread Link "There's a whole thread on LSA about it. But the Brielle/Kroy rumours go back to last year(?) when Brielle sent a snap meant to be private wearing Kim's shirt, captioned "Still want to fuck me in this, daddy?"." What in the actual fuck. Reply Parent Thread Link Lsa is a bunch of brain dead people though, the daddy thing is such a stretch lol Reply Parent Thread Link itswhatshedeserves.gif what was the point of bringing her back when the only thing she does is leave while her flop husband waits for her in a car 🙄 Reply Thread Link Andy likes her and she’s friends with the lead producer. Ratings and viewership for RHOA have been down, I guess they thought Kim would bring some. Reply Parent Thread Link Nene has had some really great one liners over the years. Reply Parent Thread Link She also has the best interview moments Reply Parent Thread Link She has. She had some seasons where she was overexposed but her iconic lines remain iconic. Reply Parent Thread Link the best! Reply Parent Thread Link LOL that is one of my favorite RHOA moments. Reply Parent Thread Link I can’t stand Nene but anyone dragging Kim is a friend of mine. I can’t believe Kim has allowed Brielle to destroy her face like that. Her 15 yr old is on the same path. That woman truly has no reedeming qualities. Reply Thread Link Kim thinks she looks good, she thinks Brielle looks good. They're both delusional. But it's this tired excuse from Brielle that has me laughing: "There’s only 2 reasons people hate u. You’re either a threat to them or you have something they don’t." No bitch, there's a third reason and that is that you've done something stupid/ridiculous that you deserve to be dragged for. They never take responsibility for their own actions. The eternal victims. Reply Parent Thread Link Legit came here to comment on that. I read that and immediately rolled my eyes. Like, what? No, honey. You were raised to think that by your Mother who has never done legit work to make money, has leeched her fame and fortune off others, and is a racist, entitled piece of garbage with botched surgery and godawful hair. It's easy for rich people who have never had to face really hard times to think everyone is jealous of them, and that's the ONLY reason they can be hated. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Kim and Brielle really believe they're on the Kardashian / Jenner level of fame and success just because they posed for a picture. they're broke and kroy is an uber driver. Reply Thread Link lmaoooo Reply Parent Thread Link Omg lmaooo @ uber driver Reply Parent Thread Link LMAO @ Uber driver Reply Parent Thread Link LOL Reply Parent Thread Link What are you smoking? Reply Parent Thread Link lool Reply Parent Thread Link Not Uber driver. lmao Reply Parent Thread Link It’s very on brand of Kim to start some mess and then play the victim when she loses. I cannot wait for the reunion. Edited at 2018-03-16 10:30 pm (UTC) Reply Thread Link the way kim always comes to every event with a red solo cup in hand is so weird. and she's so thirsty w all of her repetitive comments on every single kardashian instagram post Reply Thread Link Kandi mentions in her interview about their fight that Kim has a drinking problem. Reply Parent Thread Link I hate the "you only hate so and so because they're a threat or you want to be them" mentality. No, there sooo many more reasons to hate someone. Reply Thread Link I really hate this way of thinking Reply Parent Thread Link It's a self preservation thing. "people couldn't possibly hate me for legit reasons, they have to be irrational or jealous". And they end up projecting that. I'm sorry but not liking someone's personality is a legit reason to dislike them, learn how to handle it. Edited at 2018-03-16 10:37 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link Right, like her being a racist asshole isn't a good enough reason. Reply Parent Thread Link im convinced the "you guys are haterz" mentality is part of why Trump was elected Reply Parent Thread Link This. Making yourself into a victim instead of taking responsibility for the shit you've done is so tiresome. People have legit reasons to dislike you and Kim, Brielle. You're not in some position where you're envied and you're not a threat to anyone. We're not jealous of your tragic lip injections. Reply Parent Thread Link Good. I can't stand Kim. Reply Thread Link Well this both sucks and is creepy I just submitted the same exact post with the same exact line up! Reply Thread Link I hope Kenya and NeNe tagteam her ass into oblivion. Reply Thread Link I was sick of Kandi but if these reports are true, I'm a new fan. Reply Thread Link	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Sklarbro Country #224.5 Randy, Jason, and guest Matt Gourley, start off the show with a nostalgic reflection on the genesis of improv, old comedy troupes, and how they have surfaced in the world of podcasts today. Then, Daniel Van Kirk walks us through a play by play adventure of finding a cell phone, in which we meet Maurice, the Joker of boyfriends. Then, the group breaks down the power of free bread sticks, perhaps enough to spark a new religion? Lastly, Doug Buffone, Chicago Bear’s leading interceptions holder at the position of linebacker, stops by the show to field some phone calls and asses the value of porcelain Beanie Baby’s.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
india Updated: Sep 07, 2019 20:45 IST After several news reports suggested that a study on skeletal remains of Harappan-era inhabitants at Rakhigarhi has revealed that there is no evidence about large scale migration to corroborate the Aryan invasion theory, author Tony Joseph dismissed it as misreporting. Joseph, author of ‘Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From’, tells Hindustan Times in an interview that the findings only show that there is no indication of Aryan ancestry in the ancient DNA of Harappan citizens, which means that the Arya were not present during the Harappan Civilisation, and came after it. How significant is the finding of the traces of Harappan civilisation in Rakhigarhi which was unveiled by Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH)? Does it change the perception as well as the understanding of our evolution? There are two studies that were released today. One, an updated version of ‘The Genomic Formation of South Asia and Central Asia’ with more ancient DNA data that was published in Science Journal, and the second, the first genetic study based on the ancient DNA of a Harappan citizen who lived some 4,600 years ago, that was published in Cell. Put together, both studies reaffirm earlier genetic findings with more robust data. These findings were essentially three: One, the agricultural transition or revolution in northwestern India that began around 7000 BCE, and the Harappan Civilisation that followed a few thousand years later, were spearheaded or built by a mixed population of First Indians (or the out-of Africa migrants who were the first modern humans to reach India around 65,000 years ago) and another group related to west Asians from the Zagros region of Iran. Two, there was a migration of central Asian Steppe pastoralists into India in the first half of the second millennium -- that is, between 2000 BCE and 1500 BCE -- who brought Indo-European languages to India. Three, there is no indication of a Steppe ancestry in the ancient DNA of Harappan citizens, which confirms the conclusion that the Arya were not present during the Harappan Civilisation, that they arrived after the Harappan civilisation declined, and that Harappan Civilisation is pre-Arya. The Science study also argues the case for why the language of the Harappan Civilization was likely to have been Dravidian. So to put in a nutshell, with much stronger and robust ancient DNA evidence, the newly published studies reconfirm earlier genetic findings about who the Harappans were and when the Arya migration happened. The Indian far right says that the Aryan theory was used by the British to demean Indians, as a people who could have not written the Vedas. Do you agree? Absolutely not; the Opposite is the case! According to the Arya migration theory, the Arya arrived at the end of the Harappan Civilization. In other words, India had the world’s largest civilisation of its time, both in terms of area and population (it was as large as the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilisations put together!), BEFORE the Arya arrived!! So to suggest that the British invented the Arya migration to ‘demean’ India is perverse. If anything, the Arya migration suggests that the newly arrived migrants, the Arya, have to explain why it took more than a thousand years after they arrived, for towns and cities to rise up in India again! Also, the new genetic evidence shows that both Europe and South Asia were at the same level - both were recipients of mass migrations from Central Asia that affected their demography. It doesn’t put the Europeans on a higher pedestal by any stretch of imagination! It is also necessary to keep in mind that all large populations in the world today - Europeans, Americans, East Asians, West Asians - are all the result of multiple mass migrations in prehistory. There is nothing surprising, shocking or unique about the fact that Indian population is also the result of multiple migrations in prehistory. In fact, it would have been surprising if it were not so! In your opinion, is there anything from today’s findings which debunks existing theories about Indians from religious texts? Now we know from genetic evidence that the Indian population is the result of mainly four major migrations in prehistory: the Out of Africa migrants who reached here around 65,000 years ago, whom my book calls First Indians; the West Asians who mixed with First Indians to spearhead the agricultural revolution and then the Harappan Civilization; the East Asians who arrived around 4000 years ago, bringing Austro-Asiatic language to India; and the central Asian Steppe pastoralists who arrived between 2000 BCE and 1000 BCE, bringing Indo-European languages with them. We also know that the Harappan Civilisation, the largest civilisation of its time, has left a large mark on the Indian civilisation as it is today, and that the Harappans are the ancestors of both North Indians and South Indians, and also that they were pre-Aryan. Therefore, what we can definitely say is that we are a multisource civilisation, not a unisource one.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Long before Donald Trump ever nominated Gina Haspel to run the CIA, a memoir from a former CIA top attorney contained a line with the power to do serious damage to her chances. Haspel’s informal nomination ran into immediate jeopardy last month over her 2002 supervision of the agency’s first secret black-site prison, located in Thailand, where two early detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, were tortured. (She directly ran the black site, though after Zubaydah’s most intense period of torture that year.) But in his 2014 book, John Rizzo, a longtime senior CIA lawyer, indicated that Haspel was responsible for the incommunicado detention and torture not of two men, but of dozens, potentially. Former intelligence officials interviewed by The Daily Beast have portrayed Haspel’s experience similarly. Rizzo, in his memoir, Company Man, looked back on his time in a Langley controversy he likened to “a big turd dumped on my desk”: the fateful November 2005 decision, made by Haspel’s then-boss Jose Rodriguez with her support, to destroy 92 videotapes depicting the 2002 torture of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. Rizzo wrote that Rodriguez’s then-chief of staff—who was Haspel, though he didn’t name her, as her identity was then an official secret—was deeply involved in the agency’s torture program. “Jose installed as his chief of staff an officer from the Counterterrorist Center who had previously run the interrogation program,” Rizzo wrote. That’s a substantially broader declaration than the history already dogging Haspel, the agency’s deputy director, whom the White House formally nominated as its next CIA director late on Tuesday. It would be years before Rizzo’s passage caused any controversy. The CIA did not challenge it when it was published. (The book went through the CIA’s pre-publication review, though that only inspects for classified information and isn’t a fact-check.) But asked about it on Wednesday, with Haspel’s role in interrogations still a high-stakes official secret, the agency disputed Rizzo’s characterization. “Much of the public narrative about Deputy Director Haspel’s career is inaccurate, including this specific claim,” said CIA spokesperson Ryan Trapani. “Gina Haspel is one of the most qualified persons nominated to be CIA Director. She’s a tested and respected leader who will lead consistent with our mission, expertise, values, and the law.” Rizzo, who was acting CIA general counsel during much of the time the torture program occurred, insisted that the passage was correct then—and is still right today. “All I can say is that I stand by everything I wrote in my book about the tapes episode, and no one from the Agency has asked me to correct anything I wrote,” Rizzo told The Daily Beast. He did not answer follow-up questions. The sudden dispute underscores the precariousness of Haspel’s potential directorship. Haspel, a three-decade CIA officer, faces enormous obstacles in the Senate, where intelligence committee members are demanding substantial disclosure of her involvement in post-9/11 renditions, detentions and interrogations. Much of Haspel’s background during the torture program, as well as her specific role in it, remains classified. “ To the best of my understanding, she ran the interrogation program... Her becoming director absolutely terrifies me. Once I heard her name, I immediately thought, ‘Oh, God.’ ” — former CIA official “[T]he more we review the classified facts, the more disturbed we are,” three key Democratic senators on the panel, Dianne Feinstein—who led the committee’s years-long torture inquiry—Ron Wyden, and Martin Heinrich wrote to CIA Director Mike Pompeo on Monday (PDF). They said they were disturbed “both by the actions she has taken during her career and by the CIA’s failure to allow the public the opportunity to consider them.” Wyden followed up in a USA Today interview Tuesday charging the CIA with a “cover-up” of Haspel’s torture record, adding that his concerns about her are “are significantly broader than what has been alleged in the press.” Declassified documents and Daily Beast sources indicate that Haspel joined the agency’s Counterterrorism Center shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Rodriguez, then the self-proclaimed “chief operations officer” who began running the center in May 2002, writes in his book of taking over a “superstar” woman to whom he assigned the cover name “Jane.” Rodriguez “had her head one of our earliest ‘black sites,’” he writes in his 2011 memoir, Hard Measures. In a biographical detail that corresponds to the public record about Haspel’s career, “later she became my right arm as chief of staff when I led the clandestine service.” That was in November 2004, when Rodriguez became the CIA’s deputy director for operations, a job that got a name change to head of the National Clandestine Service. While it’s not exactly clear when Haspel left the Counterterrorism Center to rejoin her mentor, Haspel remained at the Center in 2003 and 2004, the period during which CTC was most intensely involved in torture. Rodriguez did not respond to messages seeking comment about Haspel. His co-author, Bill Harlow, a former senior aide to CIA Director George Tenet, said he had “no reason to disbelieve anything [Rodriguez] wrote.” But Harlow added he wasn’t in a position to discuss Haspel’s agency tenure. “I’m not specifically aware of the exact timing of her various assignments and couldn’t talk about it if I were. As far as I know the agency hasn’t declassified it,” Harlow told The Daily Beast. But the specifics of Haspel’s involvement in interrogations is now a frontburner issue for the Senate intelligence committee, and a test for both the committee and the agency about the legacy of torture now that Donald Trump, who has expressed enthusiasm for torture, is president. This isn’t the first time that legacy has been a problem for Haspel. In 2013, she was unable to take her old boss Rodriguez’s position in 2013. At the time, a knowledgeable former CIA official recalled, there was confusion and surprise that someone with Haspel’s background in torture could have been a credible candidate for such a senior position. “To the best of my understanding, she ran the interrogation program,” the official said. “Her becoming director absolutely terrifies me,” continued the former CIA official. “Once I heard her name, I immediately thought, ‘Oh, God.’” Back then, in a story first reported by The New York Times, Feinstein—then the Senate committee chair—made it clear to then-director John Brennan that she objected to Haspel leading the CIA’s clandestine service. Brennan chose another chief. But by 2017, those obstacles to Haspel had shrunk, apparently. Trump tapped Haspel to be deputy director of the CIA. And despite an attempted deposition of her by two contractor psychologists who designed the torture program, the opposition to that elevation was relatively muted. “ [T]he more we review the classified facts, the more disturbed we are... both by the actions she has taken during her career and by the CIA’s failure to allow the public the opportunity to consider them. ” — Three Democratic senators Over the past month, the CIA and its senior alumni have attempted to redefine Haspel after her impending nomination saw a wave of critical coverage over her role in torture. The agency permitted the release of saccharine biographical details to reporters, like her affinities for Johnny Cash and University of Kentucky basketball, while shedding no light on her history with renditions, detentions, or so-called enhanced interrogations. The agency portrayed her as a gender pioneer whose thwarted ambition to attend West Point, at the time closed to women cadets, would be avenged by her ascension as the agency’s first women director. Its public-affairs department blasted this out to reporters with the subject line, “CIA Introduces Gina Haspel to the American People.” Haspel, if confirmed, would be the first director to rise from the CIA’s operational ranks with uninterrupted service since William Colby in 1973 , which helps explain her depth of support from within the agency. But she’s also the first potential director from the CIA generation involved in post-9/11 torture, making her nomination inescapably a referendum on a dark period of history that the agency wants definitively resolved and human rights advocates say demands vastly more accountability than it’s received. (That’s another uncomfortable parallel with Colby’s tenure.) “If Ms. Haspel is confirmed, it will send a terrible message to the world broadly, and to the officers of the CIA more superficially,” a former U.S. intelligence official said. “The CIA, and its former officers, are pushing so hard for Ms. Haspel to be director because if she’s confirmed, it essentially exonerates her, the CIA and all of these former senior CIA officials from their involvement in or their defense of the torture program.” UPDATE 5/9/18: In an email to The Daily Beast after the publication of this story, Rizzo wrote, “Upon further reflection, I want to make clear that I never intended to suggest in my book that Gina Haspell [sic] was in charge of CIA’s interrogation program. She was not. I have nothing further to say on this subject other than to stress that I fully support her nomination to be CIA Director.” Rizzo would not say why his mind had suddenly changed, or whether there were other parts of his book that he was now abandoning. During her Senate confirmation hearing, Haspel said, “I did not run the interrogation department. In fact, I was not even read into the interrogation program until it had been up and running for a year.” But that statement defies plain logic. Haspel was in charge of a secret prison while torture took place—not even the CIA disputes that. How could she not have known about a program that she helped execute?	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A man who waited more than a year for a Domino's pizza delivery has sued the company for $1,200. Lawyer Tim Driscoll ordered $40 worth of food, including three pizzas and sides, 18-months ago on Anzac Day to his Wollongong home but his order didn't arrive. And after being knocked back for a refund the 30-year-old took the matter to the courts, winning $1203.27 over the $37.35 order, according to Daily Telegraph. Cheesed off: Tim Driscoll waited over a year for a Domino's pizza delivery that never arrived Pizza his mind: The 30-year-old called his local Fairy Meadow Domino's store but never received a refund 'They kept saying they were looking into it but after 12 months of fobbing me off with 'we'll get back to you', I thought I had to bring it to a head,' Mr Droscoll said. 'I took the extreme step of going to court.' He had ordered the meatlovers' pizza, vegetarian pizza and Hawaiian pizza plus two garlic bread and two 1.25 litres of coke for a party. After calling his local Fairy Meadow Domino's store the manager said he would be refunded for his order, however they once again failed to deliver. Mr Driscoll initially requested $9000 damages but was satisfied the verdict covered his legal fees and the cost of the order. He has now asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to take further action against the pizza giant for breaching consumer laws. Domino's failed to attend court on Tuesday and said they will apply to have the judgment overturned. Hungry for justice: The 30-year-old took the matter to the courts, winning $1203.27	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Author's notes: Okay, so I've done writing in the past, but am really out of practice. I'm not really good at grammar or spelling so I'm working on that. Don't really think I need to explain that I don't actually own any of these characters, but I'm throwing it out there anyways. That all out there, here we go. Chapter 1: Divergence Naruto adjusted his forehead protector, trying very hard to forget about what just happened. He and Sasuke had an unspoken agreement to never ever bring up what just happened again. Sakura, who was sitting next to Naruto and his bitter enemy, who really didn't care much about his hatred. Iruka walked into the classroom, tapping some papers together in his hand. He raised an eyebrow at the somewhat beaten up Naruto, but shook his head as he realized what he thought was bruises were just his eyes playing tricks on him, "Beginning today all of you are real ninjas, but you are still merely rookie, genin," stressing the word to let them know they had a lot to prove, "The hard part has just started. Now... you will soon be assigned duties by the village, so today we will be creating the three-man teams, with a jounin sensei." Naruto resisted his chin on his hand, I hope I'm on the same team as Sakura... and then anyone else, except Sasuke. He glanced at the people on his left, Sakura had her eyes dreamily checking out Sasuke, who in turn looked bored with it all. Iruka continued, "You will follow that sensei's instructions as you complete the assigned duties," he held up the papers for the class to look at though with the fine writing only a few could actually see it well enough to read the teams, "We tried to balance each team's strength, however," he smiled at his favorite student, "Someone was determined to mess with us even in graduation!" Naruto beamed, "Had to go out causing one last head ache, didn't you?" Iruka called out all the teams, Naruto paid half attention, he didn't care about the other teams as much as he knew he should have, but he was focusing on two names, his own, and the girl next to him, "Next, Team 7..." Iruka paused flipping through the pages, Naruto glanced up long enough to see the ink blots on the page, "Haruno Sakura," Naruto perked up, "Aburame Shino, Uchiha Sasuke, under Kakashi." "WHOOHOO!" Sakura shouted. Naruto let out a sigh, and slumped in his chair, Figured I wouldn't be so lucky. Iruka continued ignorant of, or simply choosing to ignore, Naruto's displeasure at Sakura being on a different team, let alone with her idol, "Team eight, Hyuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, and Uzumaki Naruto!" "Seriously?" someone said from the back, "That's balanced?" Naruto looked back, it was Kiba who had spoken. Iruka sighed, "I said we tried, Naruto... threw a wrench in the works to say the least." "Bah," he said contemptibly, but he grinned at Naruto, or possibly bared his teeth. Looked more friendly but Naruto wasn't too sure. His dog, Akumaru, was sitting on the desk in front of Kiba, Naruto could tell that at least the dog was happy to be on his team. "You three will be under Kurenai," Iruka finished, he looked at Naruto and swiped at his nose, Naruto recognized it as his see-me-after-class signal. Yeah yeah, I get it, Naruto thought. He put his chin on the desk, and as he glanced about the room. His quick glance as Sasuke didn't reveal anything new, Sakura on the other hand was giggling. She looked very happy about her arrangement. He rolled his head over and saw a few other classmates, but one stuck out from the rest of the class, mostly because she was very red. Hinata was focusing very intently on her fingers which were pushing together in a nervous twitch. He'd seen her use it a lot, of course when he mentioned to any one else they had no idea what he was talking about. Iruka ran through the last few names and said, "All right! Class dismissed to meet with your new teachers!" Everyone got up except Naruto. Kiba heartily pounded him on his back, "Hey wake up! Time to move!" Naruto coughed and looked at the wild man, who had his canine partner situated in his jacket. Iruka had already approached Naruto and waved Kiba off toward the door, "Wait outside a moment, I gotta talk to Naruto." Naruto sighed, "Lecture?" "Nope, just wanted to explain something." Iruka said calmly sitting down, in front of Naruto, "Got all the lecturing done already." "What?" Naruto said leaning back in his chair and placing his feet on the table. Iruka batted the feet off, making Naruto temporarily lose his balance, "We were having trouble placing you..." he paused for a moment, "Well... I was." Naruto only tilted his head quizzically, "It's because of your... extra passenger," he added, "A few of the jonin out there are more like Mizuki than me. I wanted to make sure you got a good one, that and it was hard to add you, we had already decided the teams." "So why with Kiba and Hinata?" Naruto asked. "Well, Hinata's a nice girl, and Kiba, well... He's sometimes a jerk but he's generally a good guy" Iruka said with somewhat of a half-smile on his face, And will hopefully help keep you out of trouble, he thought then added, "And I trust Kurenai, so I don't think she'll treat you unfairly." Naruto nodded emphatically, happy that his now former mentor had put so much effort into placing him into a good team. "Okay, not get out there. Your team is probably waiting on you." Naruto ran outside and looked down the halls, he ran toward Kiba who was waiting, "That was quicker then expected," he said smirking, "Expected him to lecture you quite a bit." "Me too," Naruto admitted. "Uh... umm..." Naruto turned around, he had ran past the shy Hinata without realizing, "Oh! Hey," he said smiling, "Sorry to keep you both waiting." "It's fine," she said looking down, "I hope we can work together..." Naruto turned toward Kiba, "So... uh... where's our leader?" Kiba's smirk disappeared, "Ain't here yet," he said, the dog in his jacket let out a bark, "I think she's coming." Naruto looked down the hall, "I don't see anyone," after a couple of seconds passed, Hinata silently nodded agreement. "Neither can I, but I can smell something." "Glad to see your senses live up to your family name," a female voice said from behind them. They turned around and saw a tall woman standing next to Hinata. She smiled at them, "I'm Kurenai," she placed a hand on Hinata's shoulder and looked at the three of them, "Let's go somewhere else shall we?" With that she silently led the way to another building and brought them to the roof. She leaned against the railing. She indicated the mountain that they all lived under. The stone carved faces looking over the village, "I suppose I don't need to ask you all if you know who those people are do I?" She turned toward Naruto, "One of you got a great lecture from Iruka about them. And I'd assume the rest of you did too." Kiba sat down and let Akumaru out of his jacket, "Yeah, yeah, the great hokages." Hinata said in a soft voice barely above a whisper, "The hokages are our leaders, some like the fourth laid down their lives to protect the village, they are the best ninja this village has to offer." Kurenai nodded appreciatively, "Very good, Hinata, I can see why you got great scores on written exams." "What about them though?" Naruto asked crossing his arms. "Well, their goals were to protect the village, or to learn and so became great leaders like our current hokage. What about you? What are your goals?" Naruto pointed up at the faces, "I want to be the greatest hokage ever!" A small smirk appeared on Kurenai's face, "Well, hopefully others won't get the idea to smear graffetti over your face when it gets up there," she turned toward Kiba, indifferent to Naruto's blank look of shock, she didn't dismiss his claim like many others had, outwardly at least. Kiba thought for a moment, "I think I want to be the strongest as well," he looked at Naruto to gauge his indirect challenge, "I want to raise Akumaru into the best nin-dog there is." Kurenai laughed sweetly, "It seems we already have a bit of a rivalry going here," she looked at Hinata, who immediately turned red, "And now Hinata it's your turn." She began to push her fingers together in a nervous twitch, Naruto turned toward Kiba to see if he was indeed seeing it, Kiba shrugged at Naruto's unspoken question, "Uh... Well..." She glanced toward Naruto, who had brought his attention back to her, "I guess... to umm..." Kurenai smiled , "To get stronger as well, right?" She said folding her arms and resting her chin in her hand, Hinata looked up at her and slowly nodded, "Great, then all three of you already have something in common, you all want to get stronger." Kiba laughed, "Of course we do!" "Which leads me to my next question," Kurenai said standing up right, "How do you go about that?" Kiba stared at her for a moment before looking back at the others, "Training?" he said, it seemed obvious enough. Kurenai shook her head, "Yes, that's true, but that's not where your strength will be. It's in your team," she indicated the hokages, "Every hokage got where he was because he had friends he could rely on. So our first task, starting tomorrow and for the next few days we are going to be training together and living together." Naruto looked at her, "I understand the training but why living together?' Kurenai folded her arms, "If you three can't live and work together then there's no purpose in me training you guys," she sighed and walked up to Naruto and put her hands on his shoulder, "I really want all of you to be my students, Iruka spoke very highly of all of you, but if you can't live together, then you can't fight together." Naruto nodded, and Kurenai looked about Kiba's expression told her he understood. She supposed he had experience with making sure he had a suitable partner in Akumaru, she then turned toward Hinata, who was staring at her fingers, red as a beet. She then looked at Naruto, "Okay, meet at the gate tomorrow, at one o'clock, thirteen hundred hours." Naruto nodded and she let go of him and he started walking away. She caught Hinata by her shoulder, "Please wait, I'd like to go meet with your father tonight." Hinata nodded, "Okay," she said quietly. Kurenai's lips twisted into a small smile, "You're as shy as Iruka said," she said wrapping her arm around Hinata, "I know it's putting you on the spot, but how about we get dinner tonight? Before going to your father's?" "You... want to?" Hinata said with some surprise in her voice. "Of course I do," Kurenai said reassuringly, "I do plan on sitting down with all of you during the next couple days, but I feel like us girls should spend a little more time together." Hinata nodded and for the first time Kurenai had seen her smiled. Kurenai lead the way to a local restraunt, Hinata thought she knew the owner's kid but couldn't be sure. They sat down and Kurenai waived away the menu, she turned to Hinata, "They have very good red bean soup here, I believe Iruka said that was your favorite?" "Yes!" Hinata said, as soon as she realized her voice was raised she began to blush and looked down at her hands. "Great!" Kurenai said just a little bit louder smiling at her, she looked at the waiter, "Two shriuko's, a small bit of saké for me and water for her," he nodded and ran back to relay the order, "Oh! And some pickled radishes," the server turned and nodded with a smiled. She turned toward Hinata and placed her elbows on the table, "So Hinata, I know a bit about you, but I want to hear about you from you." "I don't know what you mean..." Hinata said looking around the restaurant and seeing that indeed not everyone was staring at them because of their outburst, looked back at Kurenai. "What are your interests, hobbies, wishes?" Kurenai said as the waiter returned with drinks. "Well..." Hinata said taking the cup in her hands, it was cool to the touch as she ran her fingers about the rim of the cup and she watched the water swirl inside, "I like pressing flowers..." "That's interesting," Kurenai said pouring herself a bit of saké, "How often do you do that?" She shook her head, "Not often." "Too bad," Kurenai lifted the cup to her lips and stopped, she held it out to Hinata, "Want to try?" She held up her hands, "I can't! I'm-" "Underaged? Well, you're old enough to fight for Kohona, you're old enough to have a drink, it's up to you though." Kurenai said leaning back trying to let her know there was no pressure. Hinata stared for a moment, and reached out her hand, Kurenai placed the cup in her hand and Hinata took the sip, she coughed and made a face. Kurenai laughed, "Not your thing, huh?" Hinata shook her head violently, as Kurenai handed her a pickled radish, which she devoured quickly to get the taste out of her mouth, "I do not believe so." Kurenai shook her head, "You don't need to be so formal, Hinata, relax." Hinata nodded, "Sorry, sensei." Kurenai thought for a moment, "I know it's a breach of conduct, but you can just call me Kurenai when we're alone," Hinata looked up at her, "I don't want you to think of me as just a mentor. Think of me as a friend," Hinata nodded, "Speaking of friends," Kurenai said, "Iruka said you had a couple at school?" "Sakura and Ino..." Hinata said with a nod. "How about the guys? Are you friends with Kiba and Naruto?" Hinata nodded, "And about Naruto?" Kurenai said with a very big grin, she had read Iruka's reports. Hinata looked up at Kurenai, and turned as red as Kurenai had ever seen. Hinata looked down at her hands and muttered a few words. Kurenai laughed openly, "I'm just curious, what is it you see in him?" The food came as Hinata slowly found her voice again, "I admire him... I like that he's always smiling, always trying... he's got so much self confidence..." "Hey," Kurenai said quietly, when she didn't look up she repeated herself, "Hey, if that's the reason why," Kurenai began when Hinata looked her in the eyes, "Then you picked a good guy." Hinata turned more red then normal.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Penari dan pemusik Sanggar Kesenian Aceh (SAKA) UGM Yogyakarta foto bersama usai menerima hadiah juara umum dalam International Folklore Dance and Music di ibu kota Perancis, 4-5 Mei 2018 Laporan Subur Dani \| Banda Aceh SERAMBINEWS.COM, BANDA ACEH - Sanggar Kesenian Aceh (SAKA) di Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) Yogyakarta, berhasil meraih juara umum dalam kompetisi taria dunia yang diselenggarakan di Paris, Perancis, 4-5 Mei 2018 lalu. SAKA yang beranggotakan beberapa penari dan pemusik tersebut, membawakan tarian kolaborasi tari tradisi rapai geleng dan tari kreasi ratoeh jaroe. Para penari SAKA berhasil menghentakkan panggung International Folklore Dance and Music “Etoiles de Paris”. Baca: Wisatawan Mancanegara Antusias Pelajari Tarian Aceh Penampilan tarian Aceh itu berhasil mengundang decak kagum para penonton dari belahan dunia yang hadir. Menurut ketua tim, Almira Zarfano, tarian yang dibawakan SAKA berhasil mendapatkan grand prix (juara umum). Menurutnya, even internasional itu diikuti oleh 15 negara. "Ada Malaysia, Rusia, Kazakhstan, Perancis, Turki, Tunisia, Indonesia, Bulgaria, dan beberapa negara lainnya," kata Almira. Baca: Likok Pulo, Saman dan Sejumlah Tarian Aceh Lainnya Diajarkan di Dua Perguruan Tinggi di Singapura	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
He and Ed Skrein shouted out the underdogs while accepting their trophy for Deadpool Ryan Reynolds Recalls Being Naked In A Fire While Winning Best Fight At The Movie Awards X-rated superhero antihero flick Deadpool was bound and destined to win Best Fight at the 2016 Movie Awards. Not only does it tout some of the most wicked action sequences of the year, but it also has something else going for it: a nude tussle involving noted sexy dude Ryan Reynolds. What could top that?! Apparently, no one knows that better than Reynolds himself, who -- while accepting the Best Fight trophy at Saturday night's show -- deadpanned that his and Ed Skrein's fiery throwdown was "ripped right out of the pages of my childhood." Jokes aside, though, he and Skrein thoughtfully took the opportunity to shout out the underdogs and to tribute the "incredible" fight coordinators and stunt doubles who make their jobs look easy. True... but at the end of the day, it was Reynolds who bared his bod for our cinematic pleasure. And that's worth a trillion Golden Popcorn trophies. Check out all of the Golden Popcorn winners celebrating:	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
In a 2004 interview on Larry King Live, Donald Trump explains why he decided not to run for president and puts to rest several myths about his unique hairstyle.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Efter flere indbrud blev en hoteldirektør så frustreret, at han til sidst filmede indbruddet og fangede tyven selv. Men politiet kom ikke. Ole Andersen har i over 15 år været hoteldirektør på Hellerup Parkhotel og aldrig har han oplevet så mange indbrud på hotellet, som der er øjeblikket. - Alene i sidste uge var det fire indbrud, hvor man hver gang brækker ting op, lyder det fra hoteldirektøren til TV 2 Lorry. - Det seneste år er det virkelig kulmineret. Ifølge Ole Andersen skyldes de mange indbrud, at en mindre romalejr har slået sig ned i området. - Det er vi ret sikre på, fordi vi har videoovervågning over alt. Og hver gang der har været indbrud kan vi jo se på overvågningen, hvem der har været der. Gentagende gange har han uden held kontaktet politiet og bedt om hjælp - derfor valgte han for to uger siden selv at fange en af tyvene, som ifølge hotellets overvågningskameraer, havde sneget sig ind via bagindgangen, brudt en dør op og smuttet ud med stor sæk tomme flasker. - Vi lod ham begå indbruddet og lod ham tage tyvekosterne med ud, hvor så nattevagten og jeg gik hen til ham og sagde, at nu var festen slut. Igen ringer Ole Andersen til politiet, men de reagerede noget anderledes end han havde forventet. - Politiet siger til min store forbløffelse, at det kunne de desværre ikke tage sig af. De havde ikke noget mandskab, de kunne sende ud. Mens Ole Andersen har politiet i røret, stikker tyven af og det har ifølge politiet afgørende betydning for, hvorfor de vælger ikke at rykke ud. - Situationen er ikke truende eller personfarlig længere og derfor har vi valgt at sige, at den kan vi godt samle op på senere, siger Finn Bernth Andersen, Vicepolitiinspektør hos Nordsjællands Politi. På trods af adskillige kameraer afskrækker det ikke hoteltyvene, som udover flasker, også stjæler mad og inventar fra hotellet. - Det er klart, at det krænker ens retsbevidsthed en lille smule. Jeg kan sagtens forstå politiets situation, men man skal også passe på, at man ikke skaber anarki i Danmark og det her kan meget let udvikle sig til anarki, siger Ole Andersen og forsætter: - Da jeg fortalte romaen, at jeg ville ringe efter politiet var han jo nærmest ved at knække over at latter og tog det meget, meget afslappet. Hos Nordsjællands Politi erkender man, at der er lidt færre ressourcer i øjeblikket på grund af terrorbevogtning med videre, men de mener stadig, at borgerne kan føle sig trygge. - Og vi rykker altså ud til det, som vi mener, er det mest alvorlige, runder Finn Bernth Andersen af. Men den virkelighed har Ole Andersen svært ved at leve med. - Det hjælper jo ikke, at politiet bare siger nej. Det nytter jo ikke. Så vi skal have fundet en løsning.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Your favorite fake Black woman Rachel Dolezal recently told The Guardian that she is currently on food stamps and is on the verge of homelessness without a job. She also claims that she is struggling to take care of her children. In a recent interview, she said that despite her book deal and upcoming memoir, In Full Color, she is still living in a current state of poverty. And despite her issues, she is “not going to stoop and apologize and grovel” for the events that led up her national controversy two years ago: “Today Dolezal is jobless, and feeding her family with food stamps. A friend helped her pay this month’s rent; next month she expects to be homeless. She has applied for more than 100 jobs, but no one will hire her, not even to stack supermarket shelves. She applied for a position at the university where she used to teach, and says she was interviewed by former colleagues who pretended to have no recollection of having met her. The only work she has been offered is reality TV, and porn. She has changed her name on all her legal documents, but is still recognized wherever she goes. People point at her and laugh.” The former Spokane, Washington, Branch President of the NAACP and African-American Studies professor also stressed that she doesn’t see anything wrong about being untruthful about being Black. “No, I don’t. I don’t think you can do something wrong with your identity if you’re living in your authenticity and I am. If I thought it was wrong, I would admit it,” she insisted. Dolezal also admitted that she tried to sell her book to three dozen publishers, who all rejected her before she was given a deal. She hopes that In Full Color will be a catalyst for a much-needed conversation about race in America. “[I wrote it] to set the record straight. But also to open up this dialogue about race and identity, and to just encourage people to be exactly who they are.” OK girl. Good luck with that. RELATED NEWS: Rachel Dolezal: ‘I’m Equally Hated By The KKK And Black Feminists’ 5-Year-Old Recreates Iconic Photos Of Notable Black Women For Black History Month Auntie Maxine Is Not Playing Games: Calls Trump’s Administration ‘Scumbags’ For Ties To Russia Also On HelloBeautiful:	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A view of a partially frozen Lake Michigan. Credit: Ann Brummitt It started as a joke and grew to a Facebook page daringly called: "Drive or bike across Lake Michigan?" On the ice, all the way from Milwaukee to Muskegon. It's still basically a joke, but also a conversation among friends of a quest they would love to try if only the lake would cooperate. "Are you in?" posted page co-creator Marty Weigel. "Four-wheel-drive cars for sure. Snowmobiles, motorcycles, bikes or even a plane to help scout a route would be good. 90-ish miles one way. I'm just saying, if it freezes, and you miss this chance, when will it happen again?" Seventy-five people, including me, have clicked the button saying we're going, even though we're not really going. Not this year at least. Problem No. 1: Only 66% of the lake is covered in ice, even though we all agree it's been a brutally cold winter. I'll get to the other obstacles in a minute. First, let's hear some details of what Weigel calls more of a thought experiment than a solid plan. "We'd send out guys on bikes with a cordless drill. Every five miles they could stop and drill a hole and see how thick the ice is, radio back to people in cars, whoever is brave enough to risk it," said Weigel, 54, who is a biking enthusiast, owner of Benno's Genuine Bar & Grill and a West Allis alderman. And don't forget the chain saws to hack through icy ridges that block the way. Inflatable rafts would come in handy to traverse open water, though you probably don't want to put your car into one. "You could actually kind of water ski behind cars on snow skis, you know a rope with a handle off the bumper of the car," Weigel said. "Now would you want to do that for 90 miles?" People have water skied clear across Lake Michigan in the summer. I found an account of a guy from East Lansing named Victor Jackson who crossed in a motorized bathtub mounted on pontoons on Aug. 24, 1969. So there's plenty of crazy out there. But I have not found anyone who drove a car, biked, snow skied or snowmobiled over the frozen lake the way Weigel and his friends picture it. The main photo on the Facebook page shows what an idealized ice road across Lake Michigan might look like. It's smooth as glass and even has curbs and gutters. You expect to see a sign saying, "Rest area, one mile on the right." The photo is one he found on Google and apparently is actually somewhere in Antarctica. In a perfect world, the ice crossers could tailgate on the way and whip out the brooms for some curling, Weigel said. This could be fun if you don't fall through the ice into the frigid water or watch your car sink 200 feet down to the bottom. Speaking of cold water, that's exactly what George Leshkevich, a lake scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Ann Arbor, throws on this idea. "I wouldn't recommend it," he said. Even if the lake were completely covered in ice, as it was in 1936, 1963 and 1979, it's not the kind of ice you see in the Olympic arena, though the average thickness on the lake is now about 10 inches, Leshkevich said. Give us the reality check, sir. We can take it. "You're likely to encounter cracks, polynyas, which are little holes or open water areas. The ice can be ridged where you have pressure pushing the ice up. Or you can have grafting of the ice sheets. You can have areas of brash ice or what we call rubble fields, which are pieces of ice likely broken by the wind and wind-generated waves and piled up on itself. It's very angular. It's like plate glass. It would be very hard to get a vehicle of any kind across that. It would be very hard to walk on that type of ice. These ridges..." OK, that's enough. I'm unclicking the "I'm going" button. Wait. Leshkevich still isn't done. "The ice is very dynamic. It can change rapidly, especially if there's wind," he said. "Some areas you can walk on and some areas you better not walk on, and they don't have to be that far apart, either." Safety, of course, would be the No. 1 concern, Weigel said. But nobody gets hurt by merely imagining a crossing. Marianne Greco posted on the Facebook page: "I'm trying to imagine how the conversation will go. The one that starts with, 'Hey Mom, can I borrow your 4-wheel-drive car to drive across Lake Michigan?'" Zeke Stanis wanted to know if this would be a ride or a race, to which David Snyder replied, "If the ice starts to break up, THEN it's a race." Dave Schlabowske, deputy director of the Wisconsin Bike Fed, would love to pedal across Lake Michigan. He has been riding around on it this winter, but only inside the breakwater. He and some friends also biked up the Milwaukee River from North Ave. to Good Hope Road and back. Weigel admits the ride won't be happening this year, and he's OK with that. "Secretly, I'm kind of glad it's warming up," he said. "I talked to my insurance guy and he said, well honestly, if I drop my car in the lake, my insurance would cover my vehicle. But my insurance company would probably drop me after that." I guess they just don't understand us dreamers. Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at [email protected]	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
The decline of the Church of England may have been arrested by a rise in patriotism, according to a report by a professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. Professor Stephen Bullivant’s report notes that: “The proportion of self-describing Anglicans in Britain has more than halved, from 40 per cent in 1983, down to 17 per cent in 2015.” However, analysis of British Social Attitudes Survey and European Social Survey figures show there has been a modest rise from the 2009 low of 16.3 per cent to 17.1 per cent in 2015. “If talk of even a modest Anglican revival would be premature, one certainly can speak of a newfound stability,” Professor Bullivant wrote. The academic speculates that the precipitous decline of Anglicanism in Britain can be attributed in part to the efforts of anti-theist campaigner Richard Dawkins, and credits its partial recovery to an increased sense of national pride. “People see Christianity as an expression of Englishness. There has been more rhetoric around Britain being a Christian nation,” the professor observed. “People are looking for ways to connect with others. I suspect a larger proportion of people who do say they are Anglican tend to be patriotic.” He added that: “After decades of bad news, this is certainly welcome for the Church of England. If I was in the Anglican Church I would be celebrating this.” Commenting, the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool, welcomed the “gentle increase in the number of people who see themselves as Anglicans” which the report describes. “In Liverpool, where I am bishop, we say that we want more people to know Jesus and more justice in the world – a message of personal relationship and community action. In my experience that message remains attractive to people in this increasingly self-centred and lonely world,” he told The Telegraph.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
At the outset of this piece, I need to make one point clear: Bryan Singer was under no obligation to talk to me about this subject, but he did so willingly, offering up his views of Superman Returns from the vantage point of today.Naturally there are going to be haters in the comments section, but this won’t be allowed to turn into a Bryan Singer bashing session. It would be appreciated if comments could be constructive no matter what your views of Superman Returns may be, and that responses be geared more towards what’s being presented in this interview. Now with that out of the way….VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Were you surprised by people’s reaction to the film?BRYAN SINGER: It’s hard for me to assess it. My gut response is, “It didn’t do THAT bad.” You know, summer’s a tricky time – I know it’s hard to blame the time, but there’s a bit of an expectation for a summer movie. I think that Superman Returns was a bit nostalgic and romantic, and I don’t think that was what people were expecting, especially in the summer. What I had noticed is that there weren’t a lot of women lining up to see a comic book movie, but they were going to line up to see The Devil Wears Prada, which may have been something I wanted to address. But when you’re making a movie, you’re not thinking about that stuff, you’re thinking, “Wow, I want to make a romantic movie that harkens back to the Richard Donner movie that I loved so much.” And that’s what I did…VOICES FROM KRYPTON: But focusing on the romantic side of things, especially in a superhero movie, is NOT what people would have expected from you.BRYAN SINGER: Right, because I was known for the X-Men Pictures, which had been more realistic and edgier. That I think was a big piece of what it was. Plus you had that complicated relationship between the Richard White character and Lois Lane that might have thrown people off. Quentin Tarantino and I had a big conversation about it — he has a fascination with this film and he wrote this whole essay about it, but the Lois Lane part of it has always been a stickler with him. This is me extrapolating, but the relationship in the Donner film was so black and white and here it was complex. Adding to that, of course, was the child that was involved. Again, I really do think I was making the film for that Devil Wears Prada audience of women who wouldn’t normally come to a superhero film.That’s a tricky thing when you’ve built an audience that likes your comic book films and you deliver a certain tone, and then you bring this completely different tone to them…. You know, I haven’t really talked about this in depth, so I’m just thinking about this off the fly. It’s hard, because I’m proud of it for what it is. I mean, there are a bunch of movies I’ve made where I’m, like, “Yuck, that was weak” or “That could’ve been better,” and I can see why. But with Superman Returns…. If I could go back, I would have tightened the first act. Maybe open with the plane or something.QUESTION: Truthfully, as much as I love Superman: The Movie, it felt like maybe you were paying too much of an homage to it and Richard Donner.BRYAN SINGER: Oh, absolutely. What’s interesting is that people know I’m a big Trekkie, and they’re always saying, “Why don’t you do a Star Trek?” and I say, “You know, I think I’m TOO big a fan of Star Trek. You’d feel like you were watching Wrath of Khan again." So with Superman, again, it was romantic and nostalgic and NOT a high octane summer movie like Transformers or something like that. I think people would’ve wanted that from me, knowing what I did with the X-Men, where I shed all the comic-ness and tried to make it real. Here, though, I embraced the comic-ness and made this alternate, bucolic Metropolis. Then there was the music and the whole thing. But I am very much in love with the Donner picture, and for me the journey was exciting because I got the chance to reprise those images and explore it. When you’re fascinated by something and you love it, part of making the movie is trying to please everyone and make a successful movie, but part of it is an experimental kind of thing.QUESTION: One final point I’d like to make is the fact that Luthor stabs and nearly kills Superman, but it seemed wrong to me that the two characters never came back together again; that there was no comeuppance for Luthor.BRYAN SINGER: I’ve always felt that the origin of Superman is the story of Moses – the child sent on a ship to fulfill a destiny. And this was a story about Christ – it’s all about sacrifice: “The world, I hear their cries.” So what happens? He gets the knife in the side and later he falls to the earth in the shape of a crucifix. It was kind of nailing you on the head, but I enjoyed that, because I’ve always found the myth of Christ compelling and moving. So I hoped to do my own take, which is heavy shit for a summer movie. But definitely the nostalgic, romantic aspects of it worked against people’s expectations of it in the climate. And if I was going to do another one, it would be a reboot. I would go back and redo the original, but I only thought of that recently. It would be a much less romantic, more balls-to-the-wall action movie. It would be a very different pace than Superman Returns, which I can say at this point because I have distance from it now.Please share your feelings about the above.But above all else — and to quote Woody from Toy Story — play nice!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Dès ce mardi 1er septembre, la gratification des stagiaires passe de 3,30 à 3,60 euros, soit environ 9%. Cela représente un passage de 479 euros à 523 euros par mois, pour un plein-temps. La mesure est issue d'une proposition de loi qui a définitivement été définitivement adoptée en juin 2015. Temps de présence des stagiaires alignée sur celui des salariés Le texte comprend d'autres dispositions: le temps de présence des stagiaires est aligné sur celui des salariés et l'accès au restaurant d'entreprise, le bénéfice des titres restaurant ou le remboursement des frais de transport, dès lors qu'ils existent pour les salariés, sont étendus à tous les stagiaires. Le texte exonère par ailleurs de l'impôt sur le revenu la gratification des stagiaires, et renforce les moyens d'identifier et de sanctionner les abus éventuels des entreprises. Le texte prévoit également l'instauration de quotas de stagiaires dans les entreprises en fonction des effectifs, afin de limiter l'abus de recours à des travailleurs moins chers. Le décret d'application prévoit un plafond fixé à 15%, croit savoir le journal Les Echos. Qui précise que le décret passera en septembre devant le Conseil d'Etat, et que le plafond de 10% prévu pour les entreprises de moins de 30 salariés devrait également être relevé.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Story highlights "We hope this is the beginning of a better time," says Salah The cease-fire agreement calls for "total cessation of all hostile activity" from Gaza Israeli soldiers at the Gaza border pack up and leave; nearby Israelis skeptical After eight days of bone-shattering bombardment, Gaza was calm Thursday and Friday as residents of this battered land sought to return to their daily lives. North of Gaza City, the Abu Khusa family was preparing to move to a rented house until they can repair their home's roof, which was blown off. In the meantime, they said, they were hoping the peace would hold. "God willing, it will last 100 years, 200 years, for the sake of our children," said Shadia Abu Khusa. In Gaza City, thousands of people took part in a celebration that was not so much of a military victory as a psychological one. For impoverished Gaza, whose 1.7 million residents were massively outgunned by Israel's military, to survive was to triumph. "I think people feel now that the only way to push Israel to give concessions is resistance," said Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, who cited Israel's agreement to Wednesday's cease-fire as vindication of Hamas' struggle. "Because President Abbas spent about 20 years in negotiations, but they got nothing from this," he added, referring to Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the rival Palestinian Fatah group, which governs the occupied West Bank and is considered more moderate than Hamas. This new reality may embolden Hamas to push for even more. After the cease-fire ended the flareup between the Palestinians of Gaza and the Israel Defense Forces, Hamas can claim credit for extracting important concessions from Israel, including its promise to loosen Gaza's isolation from the outside world. Map: Israel JUST WATCHED Hope and calm in Gaza after cease-fire Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Hope and calm in Gaza after cease-fire 02:39 JUST WATCHED Analyst: Killing Hamas chief was mistake Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Analyst: Killing Hamas chief was mistake 02:42 JUST WATCHED Celebratory gunfire in Gaza Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Celebratory gunfire in Gaza 01:00 Hamas has also shown that its rockets have improved and that it is not as vulnerable to Israeli airstrikes as it was during the "Cast Lead" Operation four years ago, when more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed. Its international stature grew as it gained popular and official Arab support. Israel's military also claimed success, saying on Wednesday that it had destroyed "significant elements" of Hamas' rocket-launching capabilities. And its "Iron Dome" missile-defense system proved able to intercept numerous attacks from the south. Netanyahu, who is looking forward to elections in January, also showed himself to be an effective military leader. Polls say the vast majority of Israelis supported the operation. Palestinian leaders sought to cast the cease-fire as a catalyst toward uniting their divided factions, while Israelis said they were happy for quiet after the shelling and counterstrikes. In Gaza City, supporters of Hamas and Fatah gathered near the Parliament in a rare display of unity that included yellow Fatah flags and green Hamas banners flapping in the breeze alongside Palestinian flags. The mood was celebratory and militant. The leader of Islamic Jihad, a party to the truce that was brokered by Egypt and that took effect on Wednesday night, called for more weapons to maintain resistance against Israel. "We should be ready through our unity, through our resistance, to keep the perseverance and steadfastness of our people," Mohammed Hindi said. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh declared in a televised speech that Israel had "raised the white flag." He described the fighting as "preparation to liberate Jerusalem" and the al-Aqsa mosque located on the Temple Mount. Haniyeh, who heads the governing party of Gaza, said the cease-fire showed the United States had been forced to soften its stance in the region in the wake of the Arab Spring. "The victory of Gaza is a solid truth, not a phenomenon," Haniyeh said. "The era of Egypt and the region has changed, and America has now begun learning to listen to a new language." The violence left more than 160 Palestinians dead, many more injured and thousands homeless. At least six Israelis were killed, including a soldier who died Thursday of wounds suffered Wednesday just before the cease-fire took hold, the Israel Defense Forces said. For the first time, Israel experienced rocket attacks from Gaza on its main cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. JUST WATCHED Clinton: Critical time for the region Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Clinton: Critical time for the region 01:18 The truce negotiated by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy followed a visit to the region by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a series of phone calls from U.S. President Barack Obama to the main players. However, it was unclear if the latest events would lead to a resumption of long-stalled negotiations on a broader peace agreement or serve simply as a respite, as has occurred in the past. "New dynamics in the Middle East potentially could make this time different," the independent International Crisis Group said Thursday in a report. The report said Morsy's government had demonstrated pragmatism in negotiating the cease-fire and presented Israel and Hamas with the opportunity to reset expectations because it had credibility among Islamists. "Ultimately, as the dust settles and guns turn silent, much more will be known about the new regional map -- how it works, who sets the rules, how far different parties will go, whether the obstacles continually encountered in the past can be overcome," the report said. But it minced no words about the victims. "This short war has been, as President Obama might put it, a teachable moment," it said. "A pity the education came at such a high price. And that, once more, all the wrong people -- the civilians on both sides -- were asked to foot the bill." Over the eight days of conflict, Palestinians counted 163 dead and 1,225 wounded in the wake of 1,500 Israeli strikes, Gaza's Health Ministry said. Hamas' military wing, the al Qassam brigade, said it fired 1,573 rockets toward Israel during the hostilities, including three shot toward Jerusalem. In addition to the six Israeli fatalities, 200 others were wounded. A spokesman for Netanyahu told CNN on Thursday that Hamas' stance toward Israel harms the ability to negotiate. "You must remember, Hamas, unfortunately, is the enemy of peace," said the spokesman, Mark Regev. "Hamas doesn't want to negotiate. Hamas says that any Palestinian who negotiates with Israel is a traitor to the Palestinian cause." At the same time, Regev said Israel has called on Palestinian leaders to restart peace talks and was hoping for a positive response soon. At the Gaza City rally, Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath of Fatah blamed Israel for the division of loyalties between the two groups. He called for unification to thwart "what the enemy is wanting to do" and passed on greetings from Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. Photos: Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv Photos: Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv – Emergency services at the scene of the explosion on a bus with passengers onboard. Hide Caption 1 of 6 Photos: Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv – Emergency services rush to the scene of an explosion on November 21 in central Tel Aviv. Hide Caption 2 of 6 Photos: Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv – An injured woman is helped from the scene after the explosion. Hide Caption 3 of 6 Photos: Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv – Emergency services attend the scene after a bus explosion in central Tel Aviv. Hide Caption 4 of 6 Photos: Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv – Emergency services gather at the scene of an explosion on a bus with passengers onboard. Hide Caption 5 of 6 Photos: Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv Bus bombing shakes Tel Aviv – A general view of the scene after an explosion on a bus in central Tel Aviv. Hide Caption 6 of 6 "Thank God, through you, we were able to push back this naked aggression that targeted Gaza and its people," Shaath said, adding that "we should crown this victory by ending the division and expanding the national unity." Egyptian politician Sayyed al-Badawi, president of the moderate Wafd Party, also congratulated the crowd, saying, "You have broken the will of the Zionist entity -- you have made them feel uncertain and insecure." The agreement calls for both sides to move toward opening border crossings to facilitate the movement of people and goods. On Thursday, some of the Israeli soldiers who had been moved to Gaza's border for a potential ground invasion packed their gear to leave. Residents of Ashkelon, within rocket range of Gaza's border, expressed skepticism about whether the cease-fire would hold, noting that similar agreements have proved short-lived. Some said they would have preferred that Israel's military stage a ground invasion to destroy the militants' rocket capabilities. Under the cease-fire, talks were to begin Thursday on easing economic restrictions on Gaza. Since the cease-fire was declared, three rockets have been launched from Gaza into Israel, the IDF said Thursday. Two of the three landed in open areas, and Israel's defense system intercepted the third. Israeli officials' earlier assertions citing five to 12 missiles were incorrect, the IDF said. A senior Obama administration official said Morsy had been "very constructive" and "very pragmatic" in his dealings with his U.S. counterpart. He and Obama developed a "relationship of trust and were able to work through some of these issues," the official said. The cease-fire calls for Israel to halt all acts of aggression on Gaza, including incursions and the targeting of people, according to Egypt's state news agency. It also calls for the Palestinian factions to cease all hostilities from Gaza against Israel, including the firing of rockets and border attacks. Gazans could see an easing of border restrictions. Regev said the agreement calls for "complete and total cessation of all hostile activity initiated in the Gaza Strip." "For us, that's victory. That's what we wanted," he said. The fighting was ignited by the November 14 assassination by Israel of Ahmed al-Jaabari, the head of Hamas' military wing. Israel said its intent was to end rocket attacks on southern Israel from inside Gaza by degrading Palestinian capabilities. On Friday, Gaza was quiet again. But no one, on either side of the border, was beating their swords into ploughshares.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
MOSCOW/ANKARA (Reuters) - Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani has flouted an international travel ban and flown to Moscow for talks with Russia’s military and political leadership on Syria and deliveries of Russian missiles, sources said on Friday. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander Qassem Soleimani (L) stands at the frontline during offensive operations against Islamic State militants in the town of Tal Ksaiba in Salahuddin province March 8, 2015. Picture taken March 8, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer The main purpose of his visit was to discuss new delivery routes for shipments of Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, sources said. Several sources also said Soleimani wanted to talk about how Russia and Iran could help the Syrian government take back full control of the city of Aleppo. “General Soleimani traveled to Moscow last night to discuss issues including the delivery of S-300s and further military cooperation,” a senior Iranian security official told Reuters. Soleimani met Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Friday, one source said. A Kremlin spokesman said a meeting with Soleimani was not on Putin’s schedule. Asked about Soleimani’s visit, the Iranian embassy in Moscow said it had no information about it. U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Secretary of State John Kerry raised concerns about reports of Soleimani going to Russia in a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday, but added that Washington was not in a position to confirm the visit. Kirby said U.N. sanctions on remained in effect, “so such travel, if true, would be a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, and we believe, then, a serious matter of concern to both the U.N. and the United States.” A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the United States would continue to insist that Russia and other countries comply with U.N. obligations “and prevent the international travel of Soleimani.” “We also intend to continue to raise the issue in New York,” the official said, referring to the United Nations. Soleimani’s visit is likely to be seen as a sign that the tactical alliance of Russia and Iran over Syria remains strong despite some reported differences over battlefield strategy. “Soleimani’s most likely meetings would be with (Russian) military leaders – Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, among others, although the possibility of meeting with President Putin cannot be ruled out,” said Yuri Lyamin, a Russian security analyst who follows Russian-Iranian military developments. Iranian media reported on Monday that Russia had delivered the first part of the S-300 missile system, providing technology that was blocked before Tehran signed a deal with world powers on its nuclear program. Soleimani, the commander of foreign operations for Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, flew to Moscow in July last year to help Russia plan its military intervention in Syria and forge an Iranian-Russian alliance to support Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. He helped reactivate the stalled S-300 deal, which Russia had put on ice in 2010 under pressure from the West. Russia, despite withdrawing some of its fast jets, still maintains a significant military presence in Syria, providing air support, advice and training to the Syrian army. A senior regional source told Reuters last year that Russia’s military intervention in Syria was set out in an agreement between Moscow and Tehran that said Russian air strikes would support ground operations by Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces. Iran has committed troops to help prop up the Syrian army, sometimes sustaining heavy losses, and Soleimani has been reported to be spending time in Syria, where he is thought to have helped coordinate operations. He remains subject to an international travel ban by the U.N. Security Council. Washington has also designated the Quds Force, the unit of the Revolutionary Guards that Soleimani leads, as a supporter of terrorism. The U.N. ban remains in place despite implementation of a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers that triggered sanctions relief for Tehran.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
John Dean, the former White House counsel to President Nixon, on Monday mocked an assertion by 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's lawyer of having an "insurance" policy against Trump, calling it evidence of Trump's inner circle working as a "Mafia" crime family. ADVERTISEMENT Dean tweeted Monday that 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's reference to possible compromising information related to Trump amounted to blackmail of the president of the United States. "So Rudy owns The Donald. Blackmailing the President of the United States on Fox News is fitting! Does America really want a POTUS owned by Rudy Giuliani. Wonder if Rudy has a guaranteed pardon if Lev or Igor turn on him in the SDNY? Trump’s presidency is like a Mafia soap opera!" Dean wrote. So Rudy owns The Donald. Blackmailing the President of the United States on Fox News is fitting! Does America really want a POTUS owned by Rudy Giuliani. Wonder if Rudy has a guaranteed pardon if Lev or Igor turn on him in the SDNY? Trump’s presidency is like a Mafia soap opera! https://t.co/3kpsp1SSYx — John Dean (@JohnWDean) November 25, 2019 Giuliani's comments about an "insurance" policy came during an interview with Fox News's Ed Henry, during which the former New York City mayor said it would be "ridiculous" to imagine Trump throwing him under the bus. "I’ve seen things written like he’s going to throw me under the bus. When they say that, I say he isn’t, but I have insurance," Giuliani said Saturday. "This is ridiculous," Giuliani continued at the time. "We are very good friends. He knows what I did was in order to defend him, not to dig up dirt on [former Vice President Joe] Biden." The former mayor previously made similar comments during an interview with The Guardian, though at the time his lawyer jumped in to assure the interviewer that Giuliani was "joking." "I do have very, very good insurance, so if he does, all my hospital bills will be paid," Giuliani said earlier this month.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
The Overwatch Fan Festival is taking place for 2 days, from August 22nd to 23rd, in Seoul, South Korea, to celebrate the release of the Busan map and the animated short, “Shooting Star” which features D.Va and her backstory. Not only does the festival include several entertaining events, such as a cosplay contest, talk shows with the developers and voice actors, and an event match between pro gamers, it also provides photo booths where fans can get their pictures taken with their favorite Overwatch heroes, freebies event, Overwatch stores & personal markets where Overwatch merchandise and handmade goods are sold, and much more. The festival also features special guests from Blizzard such as Jeff Kaplan, the game director for Overwatch and vice president of Blizzard Entertainment, as well as senior game producer Matthew Hawley, and principal designer Scott Mercer; additional guests include concept artist David Kang and Overwatch project director Ben Dai. The following is our interview with Scott Mercer and Ben Dai. ▲ Scott Mercer & Ben Dai The situation D.Va is placed in is not the same as outsiders see it. It’s strange that there seems to be only a few number of soldiers in the force. Ben: There are more in the force protecting Busan, although we didn’t get to show the rest of the force in the animated short due to limited budget and time. Also, the MEKA force stops the omnics every single time at the frontline. Also, how the news showed D.Va’s situation in a different light than how it actually is like was done on purpose. It was to show D.Va succeeding in protecting the city for a good public image; although she pays a big price every time she goes into battle, it is made to look easy on the surface because she is a hero. At the beginning of the short, the rest of the squad was down because their mechs were under repair. She was the only one available at the time the omnics attacked. The new Gridironhardt skin for Reinhardt has different voice lines from other skins, which created a balance issue in Competitive play. What are your thought on this? Scott: We’ve heard about this just recently. This is a critical issue and some people at the office right now are looking into it. It was unfortunate that there weren’t details on the process she went through to become a soldier from a pro gamer. Will the fans be able to see more of it in future? Ben: This was Michael Chu’s idea. The members of the MEKA force were selected from a group of people with special talents, not just esports stars. D.Va was picked for her fast APM and good hand-eye coordination. It was important for D.Va to protect her country and she was proud to provide her service. Did you only consider Busan because of D.Va, or did you consider other places when developing the new map. Scott: There were many locations that would be great to make into maps in Overwatch, although the main reason we chose Busan was because the storyline was about omnics attacking from the coast. Busan is also a very beautiful place so it seemed natural to choose it. What did you hope to show players in the Busan map during its development? Scott: That traditional Korean culture is beautiful; on the other hand, we tried to also reflect modern Korea as it takes place in the future. We chose Busan because it was the MEKA base, but I think there are small details which D.Va fans will be able to enjoy. The ‘Gwui-shin‘, the omnics from the animated short look similar to sentinels from the Matrix, although it goes well with the image that comes with the word. What was the concept you had when developing the ‘Gwui-shin’? Ben: First, it was hard to decide the name. We chose ‘Gwui-shin’ because it means ghost in Korean, which we thought was nice because they are sneaky and stealthy. They didn’t show up on the radar until they came up close in “Shooting Star”. Also, the omnic factory is located underwater so we asked the concept artist to draw something that has an aquatic design, from which the small flying ship that looks like a squid caught our eyes. It may seem similar to the sentinel from the Matrix because of the tentacles but it’s different as it can transform into a battle mode and a flying mode. Scott: We wanted to make D.Va’s skills look amazing in the animated short during the making of “Shooting Star”, and one of the skills was D.Va’s Defense Matrix. So we had to have the ‘Gui-shin’ omnics shoot missiles, which influenced the outcome of its design.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
B1 This Is Your Life 3:41	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Warner Bros. MONDAY 7:38 AM: Warner Bros./China Gravity’s The Meg isn’t finished eating, dollars that is. The studio reports this morning that the shark’s opening is looking more like $45.3M, higher than expected at 4,118 after a Sunday that was down 23% from Saturday’s $16.3M for $12.5M. Better than expected. The Meg easily represents a record opening for director Jon Turteltaub, beating Disney’s 2007 title National Treasure: Book of Secrets ($44.7M). Meg remains the best solo debut for Jason Statham, out of his ensemble pics Furious 7 ($147.1M) and Fate of the Furious ($98.7M). As of today, we’re still in a safe zone at the box office in regards to the school calendar with only 74% being out according to ComScore. That’s down from last Monday’s 91%, but that number will drop to 47% next Monday, and 30% off on August 27. Colleges remain 93% off. Related Story 'Meg's Opening Grows To $40M...But Is It Big Enough? What The Shark Movie Means During Trump's Trade War With China Warners looks to have another hit again this weekend with Crazy Rich Asians expected to clock around a $20M five-day; the Jon M. Chu directed movie opens Wednesday. Opening on Friday is STX Entertainment’s Mile 22 with between $13M-$19M for the weekend and Sony’s Ice Age adventure pic Alpha, expected to draw between $6M-$8M. SUNDAY 7:15 AM UPDATE: Warner Bros./China Gravity’s co-production The Meg is swimming in with an opening of $44.5M at 4,118 theaters, per Warner Bros. — the second-widest August release after Suicide Squad (4,255 locations). Rival studios also sees the three-day around that number as well. For our previous box office update from Friday and Saturday, click here. This is to be commended. Tracking, the industry nor Warner Bros., ever thought that another shark movie, specifically one with a 49% Rotten Tomatoes score, had the potential to open at this level. Forecasts had Meg in the mid-to-high $20M range. One Warner Bros. insider heralded Meg as “the largest live action shark movie opening ever at the box office.” (That’s true — while the legendary Jaws franchise was released at a significantly smaller run of theaters back in the ’70s and ’80s, the previous biggest shark opening at the B.O. was Warner’s own Deep Blue Sea at $19.1M). Meg rallies for several reasons: It’s a popcorn movie that arrives at a time when the summer audience is under-served, plus the pic’s campaign sold how hysterical the movie was instead of another Jason Statham action film that looked like another Jurassic World. Audiences went in and left pleased, and a lot of this has to do with Warner Bros. marketing going into overdrive over the weekend, pushing various demos on digital, and triggering walk-up business. Among talent records: Meg is director Jon Turteltaub’s second-biggest opening after National Treasure: Book of Secrets ($44.7M), and for Statham, it’s his best solo debut outside of his ensemble plays Furious 7 ($147M) and Fate of the Furious ($98.7M). Meg held fantastically well on Saturday with $16.3M, -1% from Friday’s $16.5M, which, remember, includes $4M of Thursday previews. Technically, Saturday is really +30% over Friday, which means that Meg wasn’t front-loaded like a genre movie. The Meg drew $4.1M from Imax auditoriums. Even Imax boss Greg Foster was in awe of the shark’s sales, “When I call a sampling of our theaters, I hear the same thing: Audiences are having fun with the movie, especially the ooohs and aaahs of the shared experience.” Given how high Warner’s has opened Meg here off a B+ CinemaScore, they can certainly get the movie past $100M stateside. The grade carries a 3.2 multiple, which puts Meg at around $144M. But Warners has propelled these cinematic Asian exports like Pacific Rim ($37.2M opening, $101.8M domestic) and Rampage ($35.7M, with a domestic that we’re told will ultimately cross $100M) to lofty heights before in the U.S./Canada. Meg’s over-indexing bodes quite well for this year’s August box office, which collapsed last summer, delivering a 20-year low of around $657.7M. ComScore reports that weekend ticket sales are at $146.7M, up a huge 25% over the same period a year ago. Annual B.O. to date is currently counting $7.79 billion, 8.4% ahead of the 2017 period of Jan. 1-Aug. 12. Those under 18 (15% on CinemaScore) loved The Meg the most with an A-. 52% males and 48% females gave it a B+, with those over 25 giving it a B. Profitability is a whole other topic when it comes to Meg, and we’ll assess that in the days to come. Warners says this Sino-Foreign co-production cost $130M net, while we’ve heard from people who have knowledge of the production cost that it’s $178M. The latter number isn’t out of the realm for what these types of Chinese co-productions cost; read The Great Wall ($150M), Warcraft ($160M), etc. We examined in our last post how global profit lies around $400M (we’ll keep reassessing), and what this Sino-Foreign co-production means to Hollywood at a time when President Donald Trump has escalated a trade war with the PRC. The upside is that Warners is getting 43% of the China box office back because it’s a Sino co-prod versus the regular 25%-27% which comes with a standard Hollywood export to the country. Sony Elsewhere among the fresh fare, Sony’s Slender Man is coming in at $11.3M at 2,358 in fourth place, which isn’t scary enough to keep moviegoers flocking. The movie received a D- CinemaScore. On CinemaScore, 56% females turned out for this PG-13, while males repped 44%. Both sexes gave it a D-. But there were a lot of F’s mixed in the CinemaScore reporter card, including 18-24 demo (30%), 25-34 (13%), 25+ (26%), and 50+ (3%). Screen Gems claims the movie isn’t related to a real-life Wisconsin ‘Slender Man’ stabbing from four years ago. Two years ago, the studio acquired the rights to this Internet meme from Mythology Entertainment, Madhouse Entertainment, and No Dream Entertainment. Focus Features Focus Features’ BlacKkKlansman improved over the weekend, with FSS now at $10.8M at 1,512 after a Saturday that was $4.1M, +14% over Friday’s $3.6M. BlacKkKlansman‘s three-day bests the debuts of The Birth of a Nation ($7M) and Detroit‘s second weekend wide break in 3K theaters ($7.1M). CinemaScore crowds gave the Spike Lee movie an A- CinemaScore, with PostTrak crowds saying that the pic has a great 67% definite recommend and 85% overall positive score. The 50+ CinemaScore crowd at 38% gave this movie an A, along with the 77% over 25. Males at 51% graded BlacKkKlansman an A-, while females at 49% gave it an A. Per Focus, 23% of the audience was African-American; 13% Latino; 55% Caucasian; and 6% Asian, with 59% of overall moviegoers being over 35. Top markets were New York, Los Angeles, DC, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Philly, San Diego, Baltimore, and Austin. Says Focus Features distribution boss Lisa Bunnell, “We went wide with this movie instead of platforming because it was really important to get this message out to the country; an urgent wake-up call for everyone, an issue that effects everyone. Spike felt it was important for the whole country to go out and see this film.” The movie’s release was timed to the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville, VA riots, and indeed, BlacKkKlansman was booked there at the local Alamo Drafthouse, Regal and Violet Crown. Social Media convo, per RelishMix: “This latest effort from Spike Lee definitely has sparked some very intense and controversial online discussion. There are fans of independent film, the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Lee, and cast members like Topher Grace and Adam Driver – and they’re shouting that they’ll be coming out this weekend. There are also folks that are dismissive of these kinds of controversial films, who hold more conservative viewpoints, and feel their cinema dollar is better spent elsewhere.” Another win for Focus Features this weekend: Its Mr. Rogers doc Won’t You Be My Neighbor? crossed $21.69M, becoming the No. 12 documentary of all-time, passing Bowling for Columbine. “People in America really want to feel like we are all neighbors,” says Bunnell about how the doc has resonated with summer crowds, “It’s cathartic for the times that we’re in, and the response we’ve received from this movie is overwhelming.” LD Entertainment’s comedy Dog Days went to the dogs despite winning over Wednesday night crowds with an A- CinemaScore. The $10M-budgeted pic had box office scraps of $2.6M over three days and $3.6M over 2,442. RelishMix said there weren’t any notable social media efforts to push Dog Days, though the cast, such as Vanessa Hudgens (51.3M followers), Nina Dobrev (28.7M), and Eva Longoria (18.3M) were. In regards to the chatter, RelishMix saw that “Moviegoers don’t care who’s on the poster. If it’s about dogs, they’re just not going to see it. They find comedies involving pets cheesy and they don’t find the humor that pet owners do.” Top 10 movies per studio-reported Sunday morning figures:	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Le déficit n’est pas de 3,4%. Il est de 27,7%. A moins que la France n’ait vocation à embrasser le communisme, l’Etat français ne dispose pas de l’intégralité de l’économie. Il dispose de « rentrées fiscales » c’est-à-dire nos impôts. Le gouvernement de l’ex-président s’était engagé à ramener le déficit public à 2,8 % du PIB pour 2017. Il atteint 3,4 % en 2016, soit 4 points au-dessus du pacte de stabilité et de croissance (PSC) qui impose aux Etats Membres de l’Union Européenne (UE) que leur déficit ne dépasse pas 3 % du PIB. Le dernier rapport de la Cour des comptes, tombé le 29 juin dernier, évalue à 81 Mds€ le déficit de la France pour 2017. Initialement prévu à 69,3 Mds€ puis voté à 72 Mds€, le déficit culminerait finalement à 81 Mds€ après l’audit réalisé par la Cour des comptes qui a qualifié le budget d’insincère. Effectivement, mais l’arbre ne doit pas cacher la forêt. Parler de déficit public par rapport au PIB est une tromperie Si vous demandiez à Madame Michu ce que représente le déficit de la France et de définir le PIB, elle serait sans doute embarrassée… Nous pensons qu’elle le serait d’autant plus si nous lui demandions de nous expliquer pourquoi le déficit est exprimé par rapport au PIB de la France. Et elle aurait bien raison ! Le déficit public tel que défini par l’Insee « correspond au besoin de financement des administrations publiques ». « Le besoin de financement […] intègre non seulement les dépenses courantes de fonctionnement et les opérations de redistribution, mais aussi les dépenses en capital […] ». En clair, bien que la France soit numéro 1 de la pression fiscale dans le monde (et dans le top 3 depuis 2006), nos impôts ne suffisent pas à nourrir nos administrations publiques. Il manquera 81 Mds€ sur l’année 2017. Le dernier budget à l’équilibre remonte à 1974, comme en atteste le graphique ci-dessous. Rappelons que le PIB est la somme des valeurs ajoutées sur le territoire, pour simplifier à l’extrême, la taille de l’économie. La convention qui consiste à rapporter le déficit budgétaire au PIB est trompeuse. Cela implique que l’Etat puisse accaparer la totalité de notre PIB ce qui n’est pas encore vrai. L’Etat français ne contrôle – directement ou indirectement – que 56,2% de notre PIB. Le principal des recettes de l’Etat provient des recettes fiscales, c’est-à-dire, des impôts que nous payons chaque année. Un budget sincère et honnête Le déficit sincère et honnête doit se présenter en proportion de la recette fiscale. Ainsi, sur l’année 2016 : Les recettes nettes fiscales étaient de 284,1 Mds€ Le déficit public : 75,9 Mds€ Pour l’année 2017, avec les prévisions de recettes nettes fiscales (292,3 Mds€) et le déficit revu par la Cour des comptes (81 Mds€) on obtient 27,7 % de déficit. Pour combler un budget en déficit, l’Etat emprunte. Chaque déficit vient s’ajouter à notre dette (96 % du PIB à fin 2016). Comment rééquilibrer un budget en déficit ? Vous, moi, madame Michu, le savons : pour rééquilibrer son budget, à moins de pouvoir gagner plus, on dépense moins. Mais l’Etat ne « gagne pas » d’argent, il le prend sous forme d’impôt, en exerçant son monopole de violence légale (je vous rappelle que si vous ne payez pas vos impôts vous finissez en prison). Ce n’est pas le rôle de l’Etat de gagner de l’argent et d’être profitable. Il serait malsain de prétendre que police, justice et armée doivent être des services dégageant des bénéfices. Augmenter les recettes en augmentant nos impôts diminue d’autant la part du secteur privé qui lui est profitable. Car le capitalisme et la loi de la concurrence font que ce qui ne gagne pas d’argent meurt. Combler le déficit par l’impôt conduirait, en gros, à augmenter nos impôts de plus de 27 %. Le statut d’enfer fiscal de la France serait ainsi confirmé et ses possibilités de croissance totalement étouffées. L’Etat doit réduire ses dépenses. C’est la seule façon d’avoir un budget sincère. Cette solution n’est jamais sérieusement débattue, comme le confirment ces pompeux « Etats généraux des comptes de la Nation». Ce choix reposerait bien entendu sur la justification, le bien-fondé des dépenses publiques. C’est un sujet différent de l’amélioration de l’efficacité de l’Etat dans telle ou telle prestation, par de simples bricolages. Pour cela, il faut admettre aussi que la route de la servitude par l’assistanat n’est pas le chemin de la prospérité collective. Il faut admettre que seul le secteur privé est apte à gagner de l’argent. Il faut accepter que l’Etat doive maigrir. Il faut lire le dernier rapport de l’OCDE qui en novembre 2016 indiquait qu’au-delà de 36% de part de l’Etat dans le PIB, la croissance s’étouffait. 56,2% contre 36% : l’Etat doit lâcher 20% du PIB, le rendre au secteur privé. C’est une Révolution mentale qu’un Président de la République et un Premier Ministre doivent faire et non pas tenir les « Etats généraux des comptes de la Nation ». Mais « mord-on la main qui vous nourrit ? » ; des énarques sont-ils bien formés pour faire cette Révolution ? Simone Wapler et Florian Darras	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Picture your Dream tank, with all the bells and whistles, and your dream list of equipment and livestock from all your favorite vendors and manufacturers from around the world. Now think BIG, like over $25,000.00 worth of equipment and livestock BIG! Now imagine getting all of this for free, and shipped to your door. Sound good? Of course it does, but wait It gets better. Now imagine a chance at all of this, while Helping Kids Fight Cancer. Does this sound like a Win, Win? Well, that's exactly what this is. You're not dreaming, no need to pinch yourself. This is real, this is happening: this is the 2015 Dream Tank Giveaway! The 2015 Dream Tank Giveaway is not sponsored by St. Jude Children's Hospital, it is sponsored by Reef Savvy and the many other vendors listed on this flyer, to benefit St. Jude Children's Hospital. We do this because we love St. Jude, and because we're grateful for our children and our families. Your donation goes directly to St. Jude Children's Hospital through the fundraising page, St. Jude has setup for us. We never see, or touch a dollar from any of the donations made. We care, we love, we give. Sincerely, Felix Bordon & The Aquarium Industry	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Amidst rampant confusion as to what Russia's official policy towards gay athletes and visitors to the Sochi games would be come February 2014, the Russian Interior Ministry seems to have clarified that the nation's anti-gay laws will in fact be enforced during the twenty-second winter Olympiad. According to Ria Novosti: "Russia's Interior Ministry, which controls the police force, confirmed Monday that the country's controversial anti-gay law will be enforced during the Sochi 2014 Olympics." "The law enforcement agencies can have no qualms with people who harbor a nontraditional sexual orientation and do not commit such acts [to promote homosexuality to minors], do not conduct any kind of provocation and take part in the Olympics peacefully," said an Interior Ministry statement issued on Monday. It warned against this approach being mixed up with discrimination against gay people. "Any discussion on violating the rights of representatives of nontraditional sexual orientations, stopping them from taking part in the Olympic Games or discrimination of athletes and guests of the Olympics according to their sexual orientation is totally unfounded and contrived," the statement added. The head of Russia's National Olympic Committee Alexander Zhukov stated it plainly. "If a person does not put across his views in the presence of children, no measures against him can be taken," Zhukov said. "People of nontraditional sexual orientations can take part in the competitions and all other events at the Games unhindered, without any fear for their safety whatsoever." IOC President Jacques Rogge previously said he would seek clarification and proper "translation" of Russia's laws from the Russian Federation before the IOC took a more definitive stance on the subject. With that clarification now seemingly upon us, it is unclear how Rogge and for that matter other members of the IOC as well as individual National Olympic Committees will respond. One IOC member, Gerhard Heiberg of Norway (pictured right), who helped organize the 1994 Lillehammer games, spoke out last week, issuing something of an ultimatum to Russia, according to Pink News. Heiberg remarked, "They have accepted the words of the Olympic Charter and the host city contract, so either they respect it or we have to say goodbye to them." Reports have also emerged that the IOC is currently seeking a special suspension of Russia's anti-gay laws that would only last for the duration of the Olympics (approximately two weeks). While it is unclear whether the IOC's attempt to temporarily nullify Russia's anti-gay laws pre-dates the statement issued from the Interior Ministry, LGBT activists have been quick to attack such a temporary suspension. LGBT groups Queer Nation, #DumpRussianVodka and Rusa LGBT issued a press release denouncing the IOC's plan and invoked the fiery words of Russian LGBT activists in addition to those of Harvey Fierstein, a recent critic of the Russian regime: “My family is being driven out of Russia because these laws allow the government to step in and take away the three children my partner and I are raising together,” said Masha Gessen, lesbian activist, journalist and the author of The Man Without a Face, the 2012 biography of Vladimir Putin. “Suspending these laws in Sochi for two weeks won’t help ordinary gay men and lesbians in the rest of Russia once the Olympics leaves town. The IOC is saying, in essence, that it is willing to work with a fascist government as long as international visitors are protected. This is a profoundly immoral position.” Alexei Davydov, a Moscow-based activist whose friend, Gleb Latnik, was kidnapped and beaten nearly to death after organizing a protest against the laws in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s third-largest city, described the circumstances as dire. “To be gay and Russian is to live in fear,” Davydov said. “We are being harassed, arrested, jailed, attacked, and murdered merely for being gay.” Actor Harvey Fierstein, whose July 22 editorial in The New York Times was among the voices that launched the global Boycott Russia movement, called for the repeal of Russia’s anti-gay law in a statement to Queer Nation. “Finally the IOC realized that the Games cannot go on while these anti-gay laws stand. But suspension of these laws for two weeks is not enough,” he said. “Our lives, our families, our freedom are endangered while laws like these are tolerated anywhere in the world. We demand the repeal of Putin's propagandistic legislation. We now put the world community on notice that we are no longer available to be your scapegoats. Enough.” While Fierstein praised President Barack Obama for his recent supportive rhetoric, he slammed world leaders, including Obama, for their inaction. “I was glad to see President Obama upset by the abuse the LGBT community is suffering at the hands of the Russian government, but outrage is not enough,” Fierstein said. “These are not bullies saying unkind things in a schoolyard. These are heads of state enacting a national policy of bigotry aimed at limiting the freedoms of an entire minority.” Previously, President Obama expressed his concern over the human rights abuses in Russia but stated his belief that a boycott of the games themselves was not the best way forward. While others like British PM David Cameron concur, notable dissenters such as Stephen Fry have also made their opinion known. (Photo of Gerhard Heiberg via Pink News)	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Levi Summit Levi is a fell located in the Finnish part of Lapland. The place is famous for being the largest ski resort in the country, with the peak of which is at elevation of 531 meters (1,742 ft). On top of that, there are 43 ski slopes suitable for both beginners and experts and 27 different kinds of ski lifts. Because of its’ size, location and services it provides, Levi was chosen as the best domestic skiing resort in Finland four times. The skiing and snowboarding season in Levi with our webcam is fairly long, often lasting from October to mid-May.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Infinite member L joins Joo Sang Wook and Lee Min Jung in MBC’s new Wednesday-Thursday drama “Cunning Single Lady.” This is his return to the small screen after last year’s hit “Master’s Sun,” playing So Ji Sub’s younger counterpart. In “Cunning Single Lady,” Joo Sang Wook plays male lead, “sexy and single” Cha Jung Woo, while Lee Min Jung will play female lead Na Ae Ra, the afore-mentioned “cunning single lady.” L will take on the role of Cha Jung Woo’s secretary, Gil. Secretary Gil was once a PC-bang part-timer who has stayed loyal to Cha Jung Woo since the days before he became a chaebol. The drama is a romantic comedy, in which a divorced man and his former wife meet once more and learn the meaning of true love, true partnership and real marriage. Na Ae Ra is the single-again cunning lady, who decides to seduce her ex-husband, now a rich chaebol, while Cha Jung Woo is the now-successful ex-husband who wants revenge against her. The drama promises to be a delightful watch, as it chronicles the maturation process and eventual reconciliation of these two ex-lovers. “Cunning Single Lady” will be directed by Go Dong Sun (“Me Ri, Dae Gu’s Attack and Defense Battle,” “Queen of Housewives“), while the script will be in the hands of writers Choi Soo Young and Lee Ha Na. “Cunning Single Lady” will follow after currently airing “Miss Korea.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
I was pulling everything out of my bag this morning to get situated at work. One, two, three… four… five! I found five notebooks in my bag and realized that maybe I had too many notebooks going at one time. Then I started thinking about it and my Zenok leather Field Notes cover actually hides two notebooks so the total is up to six?!?! I also realized that several notebooks have overlapping purposes: personal notes vs. work notes (x 2) each. I need to start streamlining. Okay, I can be excused on one of the six. The Leuchtturm 1917 in lime is a “to review” notebook I’ve been toting around but everything else is in active use.But everything else…? I had intended to have the Zenok be my all-the-time notebook with one Field Notes for work notes and one Field Notes for personal notes. But its a bit too bulky to fit in a pocket so I started using the Pen & Ink Sketchbook for personal notes, to-do lists and such. The larger Palomino Blackwing Notebook was for personal project planning, longer thoughts and the like. And the Paperblanks had become my meeting notes notebook at work. So, they all have information in them that either needs to be consolidated or I need to keep working in this “lug a whole New York phonebook with me everyday” method. So, how many notebooks is too many? How do you organize your personal notes? Do you separate personal notes from work notes? With back-to-school on the horizon, I’d like to feel all put-together and organized for the fall. Does the whole back-to-school make you want to “start fresh” too? Share via: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Tumblr Pinterest Reddit Email	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Kenyan Nollywood actress and producer Connie Kabarry has won two awards in Nigeria. She won in the categories of Nollywood Pan African Film Maker of The Year (East Africa) and Nollywood Actress Of The Year (East Africa) during the Nollywood Excellence and Leadership Awards (The NELAS) 2018 held in Abuja State on September 30. Connie had previously said that she passed through hell before she finally got herself in Nollywood, and to where she is today. She had tried her hand in acting in Kenya but many producers turned her down. But last year she got her break in Nollywood. “I know so many people are passing through the same because I was getting messages from so many people who wanted me to help them explore their talents,” she said during the launch of her Connie Kabarry Productions in Kisumu a few weeks ago. She also started Team Connie Kabarry for people interested in the film industry but who have not gotten the opportunity to showcase what they can do. The members registered so far exceed 58 members. They launched their first movie as a team, The Devil You Know, in Kisumu and Nairobi on September 7 and 8, respectively. When leaving for the awards on September 28, she had indicated that a lot more was in store, including preparations for a television series which would be a collaboration of Kenyan and Nigerian cast and crew. “I am overwhelmed with what God is doing in my life and I am so grateful for the new Nollywood family that God connected me with… My intention is to introduce as many Kenyans as possible to Nollywood. I can’t wait to see Riverwood and Nollywood working together,” she said. Connie will jet back into Nairobi at 2am on Friday. Her welcoming party will be at Club Platinum, in Kenya Cinema, Nairobi, from 8pm on Thursday, as her Team Connie Kabarry counts down to her arrival with the awards she bagged. Connie is the wife of benga musician Dola Kabarry.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A Texas woman is suing Olive Garden, claiming the restaurant chain’s stuffed mushrooms caused severe burns to her throat after eating them. OLIVE GARDEN WAITRESS PRAISED FOR SAVING CHILDREN FROM ABUSIVE HOME Danny Howard of Fort Worth filed the lawsuit in Tarrant County District Court Friday, Fox 8 reported, alleging that the restaurant did not warn her about the mushroom’s temperature before she ate them. Howard claims she visited a local Olive Garden on Aug. 11, 2017, and ordered the stuffed mushroom appetizer. She states in the lawsuit that the server did not warn her the “mushrooms were particularly hot” or that there was a “risk to cause severe burns,” before she ate them. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS After taking a bite, the mushroom immediately burned her mouth, she claims, Fox 8 reported, before becoming lodged in her throat and causing her to choke. Howard alleges she stopped breathing while she was choking on the mushroom and “frantically shuffled through the restaurant in need of help.” Eventually, Howard managed to relieve the mushroom from her throat and threw up in a kitchen station. After the incident, Howard drove herself to the emergency room, but on the way she claims she felt her throat begin to close and called an ambulance to take her to the hospital. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Howard was then taken to the Burn Unit of Parkland Hospital in Dallas, the lawsuit stated, Fox 8 reported. The woman is seeking $200,000 to $1 million in damages, claiming that Olive Garden and its staff were negligent in not warning her about the temperature of the mushrooms. Olive Garden did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
996 people planning to enter the Church in Metro Detroit this Easter DETROIT — Baked potatoes verses mashed? Jet’s Pizza versus Little Caesars? Should the Detroit Tigers get rid of their manager?Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron posed many questions to the congregation at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament on March 5 during the Rite of Election. All are examples of the choices we make each day, Archbishop Vigneron noted, “But the one you make today is very significant, a big choice: The choice to follow the will of God. ”As 996 new Catholics prepared for the final stretch on their journey to full communion with the Catholic Church, Archbishop Vigneron said saying yes to God is similar to what Jesus did in while being tempted in the desert by the devil. “Today, we need to think about the choices Jesus makes in the Gospel,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “Jesus decides not to bribe, wow or control the Jews. He could have turned the stones into bread; wouldn’t that be a great thing for a king to have? But that’s not the kind of king Jesus knows Himself to be. ”Jesus’ “yes” to God is what sets him apart from Adam, and by saying “yes,” Jesus sets the example for others to follow in trusting God’s promise, Archbishop Vigneron said. Archbishop Vigneron likened the “yes” Jesus gave in the desert with the “yeses” hundreds of Catholics will give in affirming their desire to join the Church. “Tonight, your decision is ratifying a desire to share in the decision of Jesus Christ,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “By coming here, you’re saying that you want to share in the life of Jesus Christ. You are saying, ‘My life means I know by self-sacrifice, by the cross, I will conquer. ’”As the catechumens preparing for baptism, confirmation and Communion put their names in the Book of Life, they came from varied backgrounds and told different stories of coming to faith. In total, 391 catechumens, 377 candidates (Christians baptized in another denomination) and 228 Catholic candidates (those baptized Catholic but not confirmed) will plan to enter the Church in Metro Detroit this Easter. Ryan Borst of Ste. Anne de Detroit Parish stood with his sponsor, Annette Hauswirth, in affirming his desire to join the Church. “My mom was raised Catholic, and (my fiancée) Mary and I were both raised Christian,” said Borst, who was baptized in the Christian Reformed Church. “I talked to my Catholic grandparents, had a good conversation with my grandfather. We talked about the most important things, being involved. ”Borst said the RCIA process has been vital in seeing the similarities — and differences — between the Roman Catholic and Christian Reformed traditions. “It’s been really interesting learning about the similarities and about the differences, but I’m most interested in the similar basic principles. The most important thing is accepting Christ, saying that ‘yes’ to everything. I think it’s very exciting, building up to Easter and the Resurrection,” Borst said. That desire to say “yes” to everything is what inspired George Defenthaler of St. Thomas a’Becket Parish in Canton to join the Catholic Church. After going to Mass for a year, and RCIA classes for seven months, Defenthaler, sponsored by Lindsay Boucher, is set to be baptized, confirmed and receive the Eucharist this Easter Vigil. “It seems like I’m still learning, just absorbing as much as I can,” Defenthaler said. “Knowing that Jesus said yes to everything, He’s showing us the same path. I’m really looking forward to being baptized. Growing up, I wasn’t much involved in the Church. But in the back of my mind, getting baptized has been something I wanted to do. ”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
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SØREN KIERKEGAARD A DANISH PHILOSOPHER OF WORLD RENOWN A Website course Dear Reader. Around the world many arrangements are made in the name of Kierkegaard. But who was he, and what did he do ? Here is for you the opportunity of a free course in the work of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55). You can follow his life and thought by short day-to-day readings of a choice of Kierkegaard's texts, set in the framework of his biography and his philosophical system. The course is progressive in chronology and in the philosophical development of Kierkegaard. Still texts are sometimes inserted out of time sequence, in order to better illustrate his work. There is great interest in Kierkegaard here and abroad. But many people are a bit afraid of approaching his work, because they find it very difficult. This I have tried to get around, and long teaching experience to different publics has shown that people can grasp Kierkegaard's thoughts when these are presented plainly and properly. If you are not a Quaker, then Kierkegaard was not either. If you are, you will find related thoughts in his work. Kierkegaard was not only a deep and great philosopher, but also an artist with a keen observation and a wonderful command of language, its words and rythm. I have tried, in translating, to preserve that rythm. So sometimes you will find the language form a bit strange, until you get used to it. The lengthy, uninterrupted periods are his. He thought, and wrote, like that. It is unwise to try to rush him, skim or jump. Kierkegaard wrote in a different age, with another, more leisurely tempo. He recommends that he be read aloud, or at least slowly. You will tolerate that some names and words are given in Danish (with translation or in obvious context). So the name Copenhagen is rightly spelt København. Denmark is Danmark. All person names of course are Danish. They hopefully add to the atmosphere, along with the portraits inserted in appropriate places. The course has been prepared by me, Hans Aaen, an M.A. of Nordic Literature and Philology, and a member of the Danish Quaker YM. The translation has been done for this Website course. I am sole responsible for any errors. So let us get started! (2) KIERKEGAARD 'S PHILOSOPHIC SYSTEM "Geniuses are like thunderstorms: they go against the wind, scare people, purify the air. The Established has invented several thunder conductors. And they succeed. Yes, indeed it is a success; they succeed in making the next thunderstorm more serious still." Søren Kierkegaard (SK) worked in the Danish tradition of practical philosophy, as opposed to the German speculative philosophers. But in his method he is influenced by German philosopher Hegel, in that SK adopted his dialectic way of thinking. SK takes it that human beings must make their choice in life. Each person has many roles to act: person of social standing, married man, captain of the popinjay. But the only one you can choose to be is yourself. Without a choice, one is just a bourgeois philistine, living just so. But choices go to three stages of living, The Aesthetical The Ethical The Religious Between three are two confiniums, Irony, (A to B) and Humour (B to Religious) There is no harmonious development leading from one stage to another, but a jump or even despair. For each of his Stages SK invented pseudonyms, fictive authors of his books, and for each he creates its own style coherent with the chosen way of living . The fictitious form was chosen "in order to betray People to Truth", leading them to their own stand without personal regards for or against the author, who is SK in hiding. A then is THE LIFE-AESTHETIC. He wishes to enjoy. So there can be no regularity, no obligations, no repetitions of an enjoyment, but instant joy and ecstasy, expressed in jubilant soliloquies or cunning splitup diaries, gnomic prose, but no system. The ETHIC has system and cohesion, but no passion. Fulfilment comes in the RELIGIOUS stage, discovered later than the other two after a personal deep crisis, where SK now unfolds his arsenal of style and invention. A's Papers, in Either-Or (1843) deal with the Aesthetic. He can be pure ecstatic seduction, innocent in his demony, as Don Juan, who can really only be met in Mozart's music; he is pure musical lust. He can be demonic as the Modist, who loves to spy on the women customers in his shop, when they put on a new hat or shawl in front of his mirror, and he can mirror their ecstasy of themselves. K. says that he is demonic unto despair. Or he can be fresh in his feeling of life, as the Young Person. Before we close for today, let us have a few of the Aesthetic's aphorisms, called Diapsalmata or Interludes. They belong to the times when he cannot have his life's fullness: to enjoy. Then he goes bitter. "Let others complain that the time is evil; I complain that it is measly; for it is without passion. The thoughts of the people are thin and frail like lace; they themselves pitiable as the lace maker girls. The thoughts of their hearts are too measly to be sinful. For a worm it might be considered a sin to have such thoughts, not for a human who is made in the image of God. Their lusts are sedate and lazy, their passions sleepy; they do their duty, these mercenary souls, but allow themselves like the Jews to file off the coin just a little; they think that even if Our Lord keeps ever so orderly book,one may get away with cheating him a little. Pfui over them ! Therefore my soul always returns to the Old Testament and to Shakespare. There one feels that human beings are speaking; there they hate, there they love, murder the enemy, damn his offspring through all ages, there they sin" This person obviously wishes Life to be an artistic experience. So he may be called the (Life)Aesthetic. But there is more: "It happened in a theatre that the coulisses caught fire. The Clown was sent to inform the public. It took this as a joke and applauded; he repeated; they jubilated even more. Thus I think that the World will perish under general jubilation from witty heads believing that it is a witticism." "I prefer speaking to children; for of them it can be hoped that they will grow into reasonable creatures; but those who have become so - Lord Jemini!" We shall have some more of A's aphorisms later on. (3) ENTER THE SEDUCER The Aesthetic of course, in his relations to woman can only be the Seducer. Here Johannes the Seducer comes in with his Diary of the Seducer. This easily read book is modelled on other Copenhagen novels at the time, ridiculing among other things the endlessly long engagements to be married. The main character and diary writer Johannes mirrors himself in the women, and has developed amusing and extremely cunning techniques. In one part of the Diary he uses social and personal influence to seduce a servant maid. In another part of the Diary he surprises a young bourgeoise girl in the country road, scheming at once against her, making her comfortable with him and at the same time somewhat uncertain, curious and restless. That is for a start, and as he says, he has his force in the opening manouvres. Once the woman is conquered, having yielded everything to him, she loses his every interest. This man enters the life of young Cordelia, and we know how this will end., from her desperate parting letters set at the beginning. She is lured into his embrace along many twisted ways, but having given herself she loses any interest, but for the possible psychologic manouvering that could make her believe that she broke with him, uncertain of what really and fully happened. Thus Johannes stands as the past master of women-hunt, but at the same time doomed to begin all over again with each new conquest. He never gets any further. And the Ethic (B's papers of course) reproaches him violently and connects him to the emperor Nero. Here are two of the letters he writes to Cordelia. My Cordelia! In old tales we can read that a river fell in love with a girl. Thus is my soul like a river, which loves you. Sometimes it is tranquil and lets your image mirror itself deep and unmoved in it, sometimes it has the illusion of having caught your image, then its wave curls in order prevent you from escaping again; sometimes it softly curls its surface and plays with your image, sometimes it has lost it, then will its wave become black and despairing. So is my soul; like a river that has fallen in love with you. Your Johannes." "My Cordelia! Is an embrace a strife ? Your Johannes." Let us stop for today. (4) "GUILTY?" - "NOT-GUILTY?" The Diary of the Seducer has a religious counterpart, called "Guilty ?" - "Not-Guilty ?" where a man, called Quidam (Mr Somebody), who is (keep your ears stiff) an invention of another invented SK.pseudonym Frater Taciturnus (The Silent Monastery Brother) as a psychologic experiment of the Frater. This Frater lives in the confinium of humour, lacking the intense passion of the Religious stage. And he knows it. But he invents Quidam, who has broken engagement (as SK.himself did) in order not to load his depressive mind on to a guiltless woman,thus ruining her life. But now Quidam has to relive, each midnight, in memory, what she said and did just one year ago. He never gets to know whether it was right or wrong of him to break, and not realize in practice the human common venture of marriage. So contrary to Johannes he is driven by a sense of guilt,more than Ethic, his despair drives him to the Religious stage. Behind this of course are experiences of SK. himself. But in between the midnight remembrances are set observations and memories of another mood. Here is one. Quidam writes in his diary for June 7, at midnight: "When I was a child, a small peat-pond was to me my All: the dark treeroots here and there that stuck out into the deep darkness, were vanished realms and countries, every discovery important to me as those before the Deluge to the naturist. Events were there enough, for if I threw out a stone, what immense movements did it not produce, one circle bigger than the other, until the water was again still; and if I threw the stone in another fashion, then was the movement different from the former, and in itself rich in new diversity. Then I lay at the edge and looked out over the surface, how the wind began, not until in the middle, to curl up the water, till the rifled billows vanished among the sedge on the opposite side; then did I mount the willow-tree bending over the pond, sat as far out as possible, loaded it down a little to stare into the dark, then came the ducks swimming to foreign countries, climbed on to the narrow strip of land which ran out and made a bay with the sedge, where my punting boat was at harbour. But should now a wild duck fly from the woods over the pond, then its cries awakened deep and dark memories in the heads of the slow ducks, they began to beat their wings, to fly wildly along the surface: then also a longing awakened in my breast, until again I stared myself content at my little peat-pond. This is how it always goes, so merciful, so rich is existence: the less you have, the more you see. Take a book, the poorest one ever written, but read it with the passion that it is the only one you will read: you end up reading everything out of it, that is: as much as was in yourself, and more you would yet never read to you, even if you read the best books." Next time we shall go with Quidam from book to woman. (SK by Zeuthen 1843) (5) QUIDAM ON ONE WOMAN ("Guilty?"-"Not Guilty?") Today Quidam moves his text from Nature (the peat pond) via books (take a book, the poorest..) immediately to the human world, the girl to whom he was engaged, but broke. Not a very gifted girl, but even so the more lasting impression: "Childhood times are now long since passed, so I may perhaps not have so much to give as regards imagination, thus am I changed. But the object of my observation has not grown much bigger in relation to what an elderly person has otherwise. There is one person, a single one, around which Everything turns. I stare and stare so long at this girl, until I produce that out of myself, which I might otherwise never have got to notice, even if I had seen ever so much; for from this did not follow that my inner life had been transparent to me. Had she been uncommonly gifted in spirit, then she would never have worked so on me. She is enough to me even in the responsability, and the responsibility is again mine, and still she is the one, who in this responsibility brings me my inner life to consciousness. I was much too much, and much too definitely developed for her, relating, to influence me,and neither was she equipped to enrich me spiritually with new contents. But in order to, in the last instance, understand oneself, the thing is to place oneself in the right situation. In this she has, in the responsibility, been helpful to me. In this respect my suffering is an outright favour. The testing silence of responsability teaches one to have to help oneself by virtue of spirit; feats, action, activity, so often praised, and deserving that, could easily have an extra ingredient of distraction, so that one does not get to know, what one can do by the power of spirit, and what the manifold outward impulses help one to achieve; one is also free of many a terror, which does not get the time to reach one, but to get away from it is not to have overcome it nor to have understood oneself. In the responsibility she will in future help me, for I shall not have finished, where she." The contrast to the Seducer will be apparent. To him, lasting things, repetition and responsibility, even guilt, will be a town in Outer Mongolia. Tomorrow we shall go back to SK's early life with is father.. Kierkegaard said: I am not so difficult to read. Just remember to read me slowly. (6) SK'S EARLY LIFE: THE FATHER. Søren Kierkegaard's life is remarkably void of outer events: a university career, a philosophic doctorate, a broken engagement, journeys to Berlin, newspaper feuds. But inside it is boiling with passion for philosophy and wish to clear the way for that single person, whom he repeatedly calls "with gratitude - my reader." Which way ? - that will come much later. SKs life begins in a double sense with his father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard. Michael was sent out as a little boy on the moors of Jutland to tend sheep. One day, cold, hungry and wet, the 8 year old got up on a hillock, stretched his blue fist to heaven and cursed the God who let a small boy suffer a life like that. A few days later he was sent to København to a wealthy merchant relative to learn the trade of clothes, and he was very gifted and successful. But he never forgot the curse, and took it for granted that it would fall back on himself, like a doom, from God in Heaven. Michael waited, it seems, for God to act. The year 1813 came, and as a consequence of the Napoleonic wars, Danmark went state bankrupt. It is possible that Michael then expected God to settle with him and strike him down into poverty. But no. He had placed all his fortune in state bonds, which was the only valuable excepted from writing down to zero, because of the trade with countries abroad. So Michael found himself stone rich, while compatriots were broke. He will have concluded, out of his almost pathologic melancholy, that God waited for a deeper strike, that as in the Old Testament a curse from God would mean that he was to be the last of his family, that their "name should be altogether erased from this earth." Then, as Søren later wrote,"I was born in the year 1813, the year where so many a false money bill saw daylight." There is a deep and sad secret behind his birth,but that came later to his knowledge. As a child, he lived with his father in a comfortable flat in Central København, and Søren often saw guests, even university people,.who came to discuss with the rich clothing merchant, as if to whet their wits on him. In "Johannes Climacus" he gives a description: "When then on some occasion the father entered into dispute with someone, then was Johannes all ears, and the more so as everything passed with an almost festive order. The father always let the opponent speak to the point, asked him carefully if he had more to add, before he himself started his replique. Johannes had followed the counterpart's dis-course with tense attention, was in his way cointerested in the outcome. The pause came, the father's answer followed, and lo! in the turning of a hand everything was different. How that happened, was a riddle to Johannes, but his soul amused itself by this theatre. The counterpart again spoke, Johannes was even more attentive to really hold on to everything; the opponent ended, Johannes could almost hear his heart beating, so impatiently did he wait for what might well happen. - It happened; in a moment all was turned upside down, the explicable made inexplicable, the certain dubious, the contrary evident. When a shark is about to seize its prey, it must throw itself on to its back, becasuse its mouth is on its belly; it is dark on the back, silvery white under the belly. It is said to be a wonderfuld sight, to see this change of colour; at times it is said to flash so strongly that it almost hurts the eye, and yet it is amusing to look at. A similar change did Johannes witness, when he heard the father in dispute. He again forgot the words said, both what the father and the counterpart had said, but this shivering of the soul he did not forget. Analogies to this, his schoollife did not let him miss; he saw how a word could alter a whole sentence, how a subjunctive in the middle of an indicative sentence could throw a change of light upon it all. The older he got, the more the father engaged himself in him, the more attentive did he grow to that incomprehensible thing, as if the father was in a secret understanding with what Johannes would say, and therefore by a single word could confuse everything. When then the father did not only take the opposition, but himself discoursed on something, then he saw, how he managed, how he successively arrived where he wanted. He had a hunch, that the reason why the father could with one word turn everything about, must lie therein, that he himself in the succession in which he had the thought, must have forgotten something." The shark is not easily forgotten, I think. Here not only a philosopher is speaking, but an image artist. Tomorrow we shall see how father and son had their outings together. (7) SØREN AND HIS FATHER. . THEIR OUTINGS TOGETHER A lengthy, but famous, text from Johannes Climacus or De omnibus dubitandum est (Everything Is To Be Doubted). The text reflects Søren's boyhood experience of his outings with his father. His home did not offer much diversion, and almost never going out, he was early wont to occupy himself with himself and his own thoughts. His Father was a very strict man, seemingly dry and prosaic, whereas under this rough coat he hid a glowing imagination, which not even his old age could dull. When Johannes sometimes asked for permission to go out, then he was often refused; whereas the Father in return sometimes proposed to him, by his hand to walk up and down the floor. This was at first glance a poor substitute, but nevertheless it went with that like the rough coat, it concealed something quite different inside. The suggestion was accepted, and it was left entirely tó Johannes to decide, where they were to go. They then went out of the door, to a nearby leisure castle, or to the beach, or around the streets, all as Johannes wished it; for the Father had the power to do anything. While they thus walked the floor, the Father told about everything they saw; they greeted the passers-by, the carts thundered by and deafened the Father's voice; the cake woman's fruits were more inviting than ever. He told everything so exactly, so live, so present unto the minutest detail, known to Johannes, so explicit and visual what was unknown to him, that he, after an hour's walk with his Father, was so overwhelmed and tired as if he had been out one whole day. The conjuring of the Father, Johannes soon learned from him. What was before an epic event, now happened dramatically; they spoke together on the walk. Did they take well known roads, then they watched for each other, that nothing was overlooked; if the road was unbeknown to Johannes, then he combined, while the Father's almighty imagination was able to shape all, to use every childish wish as an ingredient in the drama that went on. To Johannes it was as if the world was created during the conversation, as if the Father was the Lord, and himself was his favourite, permitted to mix his foolish flash of ideas into it as merrily as he wished; for he was never refused, the Father never disturbed, everything was included and always to Johannes' full satisfaction. Tomorrow we shall continue the tale of SK's father. (8) MORE OF MICHAEL PEDERSEN KIERKEGAARD. At the age of 40, Michael did an unusual thing. He retired from business altogether, and for the rest of his life he was occupied by reading and exploring philosophical and religious issues. His wife had died childless in 1796 , and he married again with a girl from his home district, Ane, who had been for some time a servant in his home. They married in April 97, and their first child was born in September. In all they had seven children, Søren being the youngest.Some of these children died young, one became a bishop, one a famous philosopher, one a merchant like his father. It is important in order to understand the relations between Søren and his father, to know two things. The first relates to childhood. Described in "Guilty?"-"Not-Guilty ?" Jan 5. "Once there was a father and a son.A son is like a mirror, in which the father sees himself, and to the son the father again is a mirror, in which he sees himself in time to come. Still they seldom looked this way at each other, for an exalted lively merriment of conversation was their daily life together. Only it happened just few times, that the father stood before the son with his sad face, looked at him, saying, "Poor child. You go around in quiet despair." There was never further talk of, how this was to be understood, how true it yet was. And the father thought that he was to blame for the son's melancholy, and the son believed that he was the one who caused the father's sorrow - but never was a word exchanged about it." Søren became a student, with brilliant results, and started an easy-going life,which the father did not like. They had a few serious confrontations. After 1822 the mother and 4 sisters and brothers died, one brother married, and Søren was left alone in the home with his father. He sensed that the father carried around on some deep sense of guilt, saying that he was no good, and that his only wish was to find a place in a mild institution. Søren now had to face life on his own. He wanted "to find the idea for which I shall live and die." He published some minor writings. And after traveling in North Sjælland, he returned one day and found the father near despair. Søren understood in his way, that Christianity was of no help in this dark abyss. The second thing is that at a mature age Søren one night overheard his father praying aloud to God, once more confessing the sin of imposing himself on his servant girl. SK describes this shock in a sort of myth, Solomo's Dream. Søren continued his life as a sort of little rowdy,got drunk several times, woke up regretfully, and sought the same bad company. One night it seems more than likely that they ended up in a brothel. Søren never knew what happened, but this event or non-event haunted him for many years later. One of the haunting thoughts was that through his sinful drunken behaviour he might have fathered a child, who would surely have a miserable life. In Stages there is a short story called A Possibility, where a bookkeeper (symbolic title) walks around daily in a certain district of København, looking intently into the face of every child he meets. The possibility of becoming a father in this crooked way is his life's occupation and terror. But that is a later text. Kierkegaard writes in his diary now: "I have just come from a party, where I was the life and soul, jokes streamed out from my mouth, everybody laughed and admired me - but I went ---yes, that streak should be as long as the radii of the earth's course -----and wanted to shoot myself." We shall have Solomo's Dream tomorrow (9) SOLOMO'S DREAM SK again. This almost eventless life, which could be told in ten minutes, must needs be set in several portions here. Each link has a bearing on his work, since like a spider he spins it out of himself, his experiences, his reactions to them, and his enormous reading. Now for SOLOMOS DREAM.(Solomo was king of Israel after his father David, later than 1000 B.C.) Stages on Life's Way 2. ”Solomo's dream is enough known, it has enabled to separate truth from deceit, and to make the judging person famous, as the wise prince, his dream is less well known. Is there any torture in sympathy, then it is to have to be ashamed of one's father, of the one, whom you love most and to whom you owe most, to have to approach him with face turned away, not to see his shame. But what greater bliss of sympathy is there, than to dare love as the son wishes it, and when the happiness is added, to dare be proud of him, because he is the only chosen, the strength of a people, the pride of a country, the friend of God,the promise of future, praised in life, highly laudable by his memory! Happy Solomo, this was your lot! ---- Then the youth once visited his royal father. In the night he wakes up by hearing movement, where the father slept. Terror seizes him, he fears that an evildoer is about to murder David. He sneaks closer - he sees David in the contrition of his heart, he hears the scream of despair from the soul of the repentant. Deeply tired he seeks again his bed, he slumbers, but he has no rest, he dreams that David is an infidel, rejected by God, that the royal Majesty is a God's wrath over him, that he must wear the purple as a punishment, that he is doomed to rule, doomed to hear the people's blessing, while the justice of the Lord concealed and secretly holds judgment over the guilty one; and the dream intimates that God is not the God of the pious, but of the ungodly, and that one must be an ungodly to become God's chosen One, and the horror of the dream is this contradiction. --- ”And Solomo became wise, but no hero; he became a thinker, but not a praying; and he became a preacher, but he did not become a believer; and he could help many, but he could not help himself; and he became voluptuous, but not a repentant; and he was contrite, but not raised up again, for the strength of the will had outlifted itself on what was beyond the strength of the youth. And he tumbled through life, thrown in turmoil by life, strong, supernaturally strong, that is womanly weak in the daring enchantments of imagination and wonderful inventions, clever in the explanation of thought. But discord was set in his mind, and Solomo was as the weakened one who cannot carry his own body. In his harem he sat as a feeble old man, until lust awakened and he cried: Beat the tambourines, dance to me, ye Women. But when the Queen of the East came to visit him, lured by his wisdom, then was his soul rich, and the wise answers flowed from his lips like the costly myrrha, flowing down the trees in Arabia." These two examples of the diversity of SK's mind, that from yesterday, and this one, are necessary to understand what followed in his life. So tomorrow we continue his biography. (10) SK in the 30es Now we must bring SK up through the 1830s. As may be easy to understand from the previous, Kierkegaard never makes reference to his mother. The matter may have been too painful, and the nice and plain woman can never have measured up to the gifted children .But she cared well for them, no doubt. Søren now lead a life as a rich man's young son. He was seen in theatres, at concerts (there), in café life, and was in a somewhat dubious company at nights, as we know. His father warned him against this too leisurely life and cut down on his allowances. SK continued his studies, but in opposition to the father. No real literary production, just sketches and small newspaper articles. Then came a mental breakthrough, during one of his beloved trips to North Sjælland, and later followed by a Christian revival. He reconciled himself with his father, who had gone back on his decision to set Søren on small fare. SK was allowed to move into a flat of his own, and the father gave him an annual allowance of 500 rigsdaler. Then the debts were paid: 1262 daler in all. 381 for books. Tailor 280. Cafe 235. Tobacco 44.Some small debts from private sources. May 19,1838 the religious breakthrough came, in an wave of deep joy as converts can feel them. 'And then in the night of August 8th, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard died. That was a thunderbolt. SK felt that his father had died for him, and that the prophecy of the father outliving all his children, several of whom were now dead, was broken. At least SK will have thought that he would live for 33 years, the generation time, that is until 1847. He began to work seriously.. His doctorate thesis was in Danish (not Latin! and that was a sensation) "On the Concept of Irony, with Continuous Reference to Socrates " The Socratic irony consists in a method, which Socrates called his maieutike, midwife technique. Socrates' mother had been a midwife. In his famous dialogues, related by Plato and Xenofon., So. poses as the ignorant, but curious person, asking searching questions, which gradually lead the other person to bring truth out of his own mind. The contrast between So.s professed ignorance and his skilful questioning is called Socratic irony. Here of course is a forewarning of SK's manifold authorship,with fictive persons who are active authors, in order to keep SK's own person away from the message. Still, in his religious discourses, he used his own name all the time. The disputation, which was hoped to bring him the professorate in Philosophy, did not do that. But of course he was observed in the right circles. And then - he had met Regine. Let us not go romantic too early We have to back to catch up on Either-Or, tomorrow.. SK by N.C.Kierkegaard 1838 (11) A DEMONIC AUTHOR IS INTRODUCED ! Today we go back to Kierkegaard's Enten-Eller (Either-Or) and the Aesthetic. As may be remembered, in his relations to women he can only be the Seducer. He has something to say about music and seduction. But before that, Kierkegaard invents a person, Victor Eremita (He Who Wins in Loneliness) who one day in haste to find some money in his secretary (a sort of writing desk) opens a secret room, and there finds papers by unknown persons, one in loose order, some scraps of paper with short aphorisms on them: the Diapsalmata; others more coherent, and lastly Diary of the Seducer. Victor ranges the papers so and so by degrees of coherence,and calls the author A. Then he finds another person's papers, much more orderly in his writing, a judge called Assessor Wilhelm, whom Victor calls B. Victor reads these papers in loneliness, on the sly, and is fascinated by A. A. only calls himself the publisher of the Diary of the Seducer, not the author. Here you will see how Kierkegaard uses chinese boxes, one inside the other, all the time picking at our curiosity. Victor, in his readings at night, senses a sort of anguish in A's preface to them. This sentiment gets himself too. "It is no wonder to me, that A has gone through this; for even I, who have nothing to do with this tale, yea, even is removed by two tiers from the original author, even I have sometimes become queer in my mind, when in the silence of the night I have handled these papers. It was to me, as if the Seducer, like a shadow, crossed my floor, as if he cast his eye into the papers, as if he was fixing his demonical gaze upon me, saying:"Well, you will publish my papers! That is, by the way, imprudent of you; you do chase an anguish into the dear girls. Still, quite understandably, in return you make me and such as me harmless. There you are wrong; for I just change my method, then are my conditions even more favourable. What influx of small girls, running directly into my arms,. when they hear the demonic name : a Seducer! Give me half a year, and I will produce a story, more interesting than anything I have experienced until now. I imagine a young, forceful ingenious girl getting the idea of revenging her sex on me. She believes that she will be able to force me, to let me taste the pain of unfortunate love. See this is a girl for me. If she does not herself find out that idea deeply enough, then I shall be her helper. I shall writhe like the eel of the Molboer ((stupid farmers, explanation below)). And having brought her to the point I want, then is she mine." But I may already have misused my position as a publisher to burden the readers with my observations. The occasion may speak in my excuse; for it was because of the improper in my situation, caused by the fact that A only mentions himself as a publisher, not as author of this tale, that I let myself be carried away." So far Victor. (The Molboer are inhabitants of part of Jutland nearAarhus, who were at the time renowned for their supposed stupidity. It is told that one day they caught an eel in the moist grass, where eels will sometimes go to reach another watercourse, and they decided to drown it. They got a boat, and setting the eel down into the sea, which is its right element, they commented on its writhings:"Yes, Death is hard to go at". By this allusion A of course means that when the girl thinks she has him in pain, he is really in his element.) (12) ENTER DON JUAN Kierkegaard had a great love for music, and especially for Mozart's Don Juan. He would go to the Royal Theatre, sit there during the Ouverture, and then hasten home to write. Here he lets Victor Eremita find among A's papers, a dissertation on The Immediate Erotic Stages or The Musically Erotic. A finds that the really sensually seductive force resides in music. And here he finds Mozart's Don Juan supreme. "Now Don Juan not only has his luck with the girls, but he makes the girls happy and - unhappy, but queer enough, this is the way they want it to be, and she would be a miserable girl who did not want to be unhappy for once having been happy with Don Juan. So if I persist in calling Don Juan a seducer, then I do not think him to me as insidiously projecting his plans, cunningly calculating the effect of his intrigues; that by which he seduces is the genius of sensuousness, whose incarnation he seems to be. Wise consideration is not his; his life is foaming as the wine that fortifies him, his life is mobile as the tones that accompany his glad meal, always is he triumphant. He needs no preparation, no start, no time, for he is always at the ready, the strength being always in him and the desire, and only when he desires is he in his element. He sits at table, glad as a god he wields his beaker - he rises, napkin in hand, ready to attack. If Leporello were to wake him up in the middle of the night, he wakes up, always sure of his victory. But this strength, this power words cannot express, only music can make us imagine it; for it is unspeakable to the reflexion and the thought. An ethically determined seducer's cunning plan I can clearly put into words, and music would in vain dare to solve this problem. With Don Juan it is the reverse. What power is it ? - Nobody can tell, even if I asked Zerlina about it, before she goes to the ball: what is the power by which he captivates you ? - then would she answer: it is unknown; and I would say: well spoken, my child! You speak wiser than the sages of India, richtig, das weiss man nicht; and the misfortune is that I cannot tell you either." Victor and his A and Don Juan will be coming back tomorrow. Kierkegaard is building up to something. (13) DON JUAN IS STILL AROUND. Kierkegaard now goes on. Or, shall we say, Victor does. When approaching the climax and finale of the exposition, he uses the exclusive method elsewhere employed by Kierkegaard: not this - not this either - but this. Toward the end of the text the accellerated rythm of the sentences seem to be inspired by the music. "This vigour in Don Juan, this omnipotence, this life only music can express, and I do have no other expression for it, than life-abundant merriment. So when Kruse ((probably a libretto translator)) lets Don Juan say, entering the stage at Zerlina's wedding,"Merry, Children! Indeed you are all dressed up as for a wedding!" then he says something quite right and furthermore something more than he may have thought of. The merriment, he himself carries it with him, and as for the wedding, it is not without significance that they are all dressed as for a wedding; for Don Juan is not only man for Zerlina, but he celebrates with play and singing all the young girls' weddings in the whole parish . What wonder then that they flock around him, the glad girls. And they are not disappointed either, for he has enough for all of them. Flattery, sighs, daring glances, soft pressing of hands, secret whisper, the dangerous closeness, the tempting removal - and these are still only the minor mysteries, gifts before the wedding. It is a joy to Don Juan to look out over such a rich harvest, he takes on the whole parish, and yet it may not cost him so much time, as Leporello uses in his office. ((making the lists of DJs conquests)). "By the matter here developed the thought is then again led on to what is the real object of the review, that Don Juan is absolutely music. He desires sensuously, he seduces by the demonic power of sensuality, he seduces everybody. The word, the line is not his due; then he will at once become a reflecting individual. So he has no real stability at all, but he hastens by in an eternal disappearing, even as the music, about which it is true that it is over as soon as it has ceased to sound, and is only recreated when it sounds again. If I would here, then, put the question, how does Don Juan look, is he beautiful, young or older, how old might he be, then this is only a concession on my part, and what can be said about this can only expect to find room here in the same meaning, as a tolerated sect finds in the State Church. Beautiful he is, not quite young; if I were to suggest an age, then I should suggest 33 years, being the generation age. The risky thing about letting oneself go into such an investigation lies therein, that one easily lets go of the totality, in dwelling upon the particular, as if it was by the beauty of that one thing , or whatever one might mention by the way, that Don Juan seduced; then one sees him, but hears him no longer, and therefore he is lost. So if I now would, as if possibly help the reader to an idea of Don Juan, say: see, there he stands, see how his eyes flame, his lip lifts in a smile,so sure he is of his victory,consider his royal look, demanding what is due to the emperor, see how light he treads into the dance, how proudly he stretches out his hand, where is the happy one to whom it is offered; - or I would say: see, there he is in the wood shadows, he leans upon a tree, he accompanies himself on a guitar, and see, there a young girl vanishes among the trees, anguished as a scared game animal, but he has no haste, he knows she is seeking him; - or I might say: there he rests at the banks of the lake in the clear night, so beautiful that the moon stops and relives the love life of its youth, so beautiful that the young girls of the village could give much to dare sneak up and use the moment's darkness, while the moon is rising again, to kiss him - if I did that, then the attentive reader would say, nay, there he has spoiled it all for himself, there he himself has forgotten that Don Juan shall not be seen, but heard. So I will not do it either, but I say: hear Don Juan, that is,if you cannot by hearing Don Juan form an idea of him, then you never will. Hear the beginning of his life; as the lightning unwields itself from the darkness of the thunder cloud, thus he breaks forth from the depths of seriousness, quicker than the pace of lightning, more unstable than this, and still as steady in rythm; hear how he plunges into the manifold life, see how he flungs himself against its firm dam, hear these light violin tones, hear the beckoning of joy, hear the jubilation of lust, hear the festive bliss of enjoyment, hear his wild flight, he bolts past himself, still faster, still more incessant, hear the unbridled demands of desire, hear the rush of love, hear the whisper of temptation, hear the whirl of seduction, hear the moment's quietness - hear, hear, hear Mozart's Don Juan." (14) MOZART IN THE STREET This morning also has Mozart according to Kierkegaard. We are still in A's papers in Either-Or part 1, these Diapsalmata that we started out with.The observation is A's, but may well reflect SK's personal observation in a København street. The ouverture mentioned is of Don Juan . "These two well known violin strokes! These two well-known violin strokes at this very moment, in the middle of the street. Have I lost my mind, is it mine ear that out of love for Mozart's music has ceased to hear, is it a reward from the gods to give to me unhappy person, sitting as a beggar at the temple door, an ear, which itself performs, what it hears itself ? Only these two violin strokes; for now I hear nothing more. As in that immortal ouverture they break forth from the deep chorale tones, so they here disentangle from the roar and noise in the street, with the full surprise of a revelation. - Still, it must be here somewhere near; for now I hear the light tones of dancing. - So it is to you, unhappy artist couple, that I owe this joy. - One of them might be some seventeen years old, clad in a green coat with large bone buttons. The coat was much too large for him. He held the violin close to his chin; the cap was pressed down over his eyes; his hand hidden in a glove without fingers, the fingers red and blue with cold. The other one was older, wore a chenille. Both were blind. A little girl, probably their guide, stood in front, putting her hands under the scarf. We assembled by and by, some admirers of these tones, a postman with his bundle of letters, a small boy, a servant maiden, a pair of day workers. The aristocratic carriages rolled noisily past, the work wagons drowned these tones, which came out in glimpses. Unfortunate artist couple, do you know that these tones in them hold all the glories of this world. - Was it not like a love rendezvous.-" So far A . Or SK's observation during a street walk. His father's early training was not in vain, walking around the table and telling, describing. (15) A RIDE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE WITH CONSTANTIN Yes, Don Juan. But there are girls and girls. Today's text is from The Repetition (Gjentagelsen,1843) An Attempt in Experimenting Psychology by Constantin Constantius. Another of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms, or rather invented author persons. It is about a common encounter in the countryside, but which becomes unusual through the way in which the girl handles the situation. Today she would have had a ride in his Mercedes. One old Danish Miil is 7½ kilometers. "He who has had some occasion to observe young girls, to sneak in upon their conversation, will often have heard these formulas: "N.N. is a good man but he is boring; but on the contrary F.F. he is so interesting and piquant." Every time I hear these words in the mouth of a little virgin I always think: "You should be ashamed; is it not sad that a young girl speaks like that." If a man had run wild in the interesting, who then should save him, but just a girl ? And does she not sin in that ? Either the person in question is unable to do that, and then it is indelicate to demand it; or he can, and then ..., for a young girl should even be so careful as never to coax forward the interesting; the girl who does that, she always loses, ideally seen; for the interesting never lets itself be repeated; she who does not, she always gets the victory. Some 6 years ago I was traveling some 8 Miil in the countryside, and pulled up at an inn where I had dinner. I had eaten a pleasant and tasty dinner meal, was a little exalted, just then stood with a cup of coffee in my hand, huming the perfume of it, when at that moment a young beautiful girl, light and graceful, passes by the window, turns into the courtyard of the inn, from which I drew the conclusion that she would enter the garden.One is young - so, I swallowed my coffee, lit a cigar and was just about to follow fate's beckoning and the girl's traces, when there is a tap on my door, and in comes - the young girl. She curtsies in a friendly way to me, asks me if it could be my carriage standing in the courtyard, if I was going to København, whether I would allow her to come along. The modest and still genuinely feminine dignified way in which she did that, was enough at the same moment to let me lose the interesting and piquant out of sight. And still it is far more interesting to encounter a young girl in a garden, to drive 8 Miil with her alone in one's own carriage, with coachman and manservant, having her quite in one's power. Nevertheless it is my conviction, that even a person of lighter morals than I would not have felt tempted. The confidence with which she let herself into my power, is a better shield than all a girl's cleverness and cunning. We drove together. She could not have felt more secure, if she had driven with a brother or a father. I kept silent and retired, only when she seemed about to make a remark, then I was attentive. My coachman was ordered to make haste. We rested 5 minutes at every station. I got out, hat in hand I asked whether she commanded any refreshment, my man was behind, hat in hand. When we approached the capital I let the coachman drive along a sideway; I got out there, walked half a Miil to København, so that no encounter nor suchlike thing should disturb her. I have never enquired who she was, where she lived, what might occasion her sudden journey: but she has always to me been a pleasant memory, which I have not permitted myself to offend even by an innocent curiosity. - A girl who wills the interesting, she becomes the snare in which she herself is caught. A girl who does not want the interesting, she believes in Repetition. Honour to the one who was originally like that, honour to the one who became so through Time."	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
It’s 50 years since the anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner gave the 1968 Boyer Lectures — a watershed moment for Australian history. Stanner argued that Australia’s sense of its past, its very collective memory, had been built on a state of forgetting, which couldn’t “be explained by absent-mindedness”: It is a structural matter, a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape. What may well have begun as a simple forgetting of other possible views turned under habit and over time into something like a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale. His lectures profoundly influenced historians partly because of the image he captured: for a practice based on documentation, archiving and storytelling, silence is a compelling idea. And a whole-scale silence — a “cult of forgetfulness”, no less — indicated a bold re-imagining of a national historiography on Stanner’s part. As Stanner insisted, this sort of silence was no “absent-mindedness”: the occlusion of Aboriginal people from Australian history wasn’t inevitable. In the wake of his lectures, influential Australian historians conceived of their own historical awakening in these same terms. In an autobiographical essay, historian Marilyn Lake described the prevailing historical view in her small rural town: “Growing up in the former colony of Tasmania we did our fair share of forgetting too.” And in his evocative memoir, Why Weren’t We Told?, Henry Reynolds famously pondered that shift away from silence as people endeavoured to write in Indigenous perspectives from the 1970s onwards. It’s a common refrain. I remember my dad describing how he also “hadn’t been told” about Australia’s Aboriginal history when Reynolds’s book came out. And a colleague and friend recently recounted visiting Myall Creek as part of a Sunday school picnic in the 1980s: no-one mentioned its dark history as the site of an infamous Aboriginal massacre in 1838. Yet the move from “great Australian silence” to historical “truth-telling” isn’t quite as clear-cut as Stanner’s description might suggest. “Too often it is taken to imply a kind of historiographical periodisation where there was no Aboriginal history before Stanner’s own lecture and an end to the silence after it,” writes Ann Curthoys. Yet that doesn’t capture the whole picture: “there is neither complete silence before 1968, nor was it completely ended afterwards”. While we now have important interventions into Aboriginal history that amplify Australia’s uncomfortable past, such as Lyndall Ryan’s massacre map and the Uluru Statement from the Heart, those reverberations continue to cause anxiety. Lucy Hughes Jones/AAP The Statement from the Heart called for a “truth-telling about our history” but still awaits bipartisan support. Meanwhile, online commentary in response to the release of Ryan’s massacre database shows the persistence of historical refusal in Australia. ‘Black crows’ The “great Australian silence” is also historically a little more complex. I’m writing a history of history-making in Australia and have been struck by the detailed interest in Aboriginal life as well as the often graphic accounts of frontier violence in works from the early and mid-19th century. For want of colonial history “texts”, I’ve also been reading travelogues and emigrant’s guides. While these books and pamphlets are largely observational, they also frequently present historical narratives and interpretation. Many of them didn’t hold back in their tales from the colonial frontier, cataloguing extensive episodes of violent conflict between Aboriginal people and colonialists. Have a look at this description of the 1838 Myall Creek massacre from Godfrey Charles Mundy in his travelogue, Our Australian Antipodes, published in 1852: … they captured the whole of them, with the exception of a child or two; and having bound them together with thongs, fired into the mass until the entire tribe, 27 in number, were killed or mortally wounded. The white savages then chopped in pieces their victims, and threw them, some yet living, on a large fire; a detachment of the stockmen remaining for several days on the spot to complete the destruction of the bodies. It is graphic historical writing. The horror of Mundy’s Myall Creek account is paradoxically eclipsed by the chilling official silence he observes after most attacks: Reprisals [against Aboriginal people] are undertaken on a large scale – a scale that either never reaches the ears of the Government, which is bound to protect alike the white and the black subject; or, if it reaches them at all, finds them conveniently deaf. National LIbrary of Australia James Demark’s Adventures in Australia Fifty Years Ago, from 1893, similarly reports a structural and deliberate deafness in response to the violent, eerie echoes across the frontier: “The settlers retaliated in their own way”, he writes, and “there were no Government regulations to check these irregular proceedings”. Even self-described histories, such as those by James Bonwick and John West, explicitly link frontier violence with Australia’s colonisation. West’s History of Tasmania, first published in 1852, even uses the terms “black hunts” and “black war” to describe the first 50 years of Van Diemen’s Land. West was an abolitionist, and a tone of historical injustice inflects his writing about the Tasmanian Aborigines in volume 2. Take this excerpt, where he relates the perverse logic of colonial expansion: It was better that the blacks should die, than that they should stain the settler’s heath with the blood of his children. And this one, where he mourns the destruction of Tasmanian Aboriginal society in only two generations: At length the secret comes out: the tribe which welcomed the first settler with shouts and dancing, or at worst looked on with indifference, has ceased to live. Bonwick’s 1870 history of Tasmania is similarly full of sentiment. In a tone curiously analogous to Paul Keating’s Redfern Park speech 120 years later, Bonwick offers this lament on the effects of colonisation on Tasmania’s Aboriginal people: We came upon them as evil genii, and blasted them with the breath of our presence. We broke up their home circles. We arrested their laughing corrobory. We turned their song into weeping, and their mirth to sadness. Bonwick also reveals the ease with which colonial discourse accounted for murder. During his time in Tasmania, Bonwick writes, he had heard several people explain that “they thought no more of shooting a Black than bringing down a bird”. He went on: “Indeed, in those distant times, it was common enough to hear men talk of the number of black crows they had destroyed.” Those recollections of euphemistic colonial vernacular hint at some of Bonwick’s method as a historian. In the introduction to his history and in an 1895 talk to the Royal Colonial Institute in London, he gives a more detailed explanation of that approach. It was not a hunt through blue books [government records], that provided the source material for his research, he explains. Rather, it was conversation and hearsay, from sly-grog sellers, ex-bushrangers and colonial gentry alike, that furnish his historical narrative. How else could you write about hunting crows? National Library of Australia Alongside those histories was a humanitarian public discourse that anguished over frontier violence. Media commentary, public debates and lectures, as well as letters to the editor from the frontier that related specific episodes of violence, are explored in detail by Henry Reynolds in This Whispering in Our Hearts. Likewise, poetry such as The Aboriginal Mother (1838) by Eliza Hamilton Dunlop reveals a form of popular and creative history-making in response to colonisation that can be seen in the work of writers such as Judith Wright and Eleanor Dark a century later. So why was that reverberation replaced with euphemism and omission? Partly the silence was a fear of punishment, as Bain Attwood argues in a recent essay on historical denial. Especially after the successful prosecution of the Myall Creek massacre perpetrators, colonial front lines and allegiances became a little murkier. “There were good reasons to be silent,” historian Tom Griffiths has similarly insisted. Mundy’s 1852 account of his “ramble” through the Antipodes confirms Attwood’s and Griffiths’ explanation, and reveals how stories quietly murmured along the frontier provided a catalogue of violence. He writes: Dreadful tales of cold-blooded carnage have found their way into print, or are whispered about in the provinces. And although there be Crown land commissioners, police magistrates, and settlers of mark, who deny, qualify, or ignore these wholesale massacres of the black population, there can be no real doubt their extirpation from the land is rapidly going on. ‘Historia nullius’ It wasn’t simply a case of an uncomfortable frontier that came to characterise the silence Stanner identified in his Boyer Lectures, however. The historians Stanner named in his lectures (such as M. Barnard Eldershaw, Hartley Grattan, Max Crawford and Brian Fitzpatrick) were largely silent on Aboriginal policy and history in their mid-20th-century histories — despite being written after the 1930s, a decade that Stanner notes for its influence in shapeshifting on Aboriginal policy. Yet this form of history writing had begun in the late 19th century. At a time when Australian nationhood and national identity were being formed around Federation, the historical discipline was moving into a particular form of narrative writing oriented towards (non-Indigenous) Australian exceptionalism based on democratic and economic progress. Wikimedia Commons As Australia’s national consciousness emerged, it required a historical consciousness of its own origin. Education departments commissioned history texts and universities appointed history professors. As history became increasingly professionalised, “blue books” and official archives were in; hearsay and poetry out. So what did disciplinary “silence” look like in Australia? It saw History (with a capital “H”) arriving with colonisation: “She alone of all the continents has no history,” proclaimed journalist Flora Shaw in a presentation about Australia to the Royal Colonial Institute in London in 1894. She offers the introductory chapter of a new history and bases her claim to the attention of the world upon the future which she is shaping for herself. Lorenzo Veracini has described that settler-colonial vision of the Australian continent as a sort of historia nullius, where “Australian history” only existed thanks to the selective creation and curation by colonial historians. For Australian historians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the silence of pre- and post-contact Indigenous experience occurred because it existed outside the Whiggish historical narrative of imperial progress. “The federation of (white) Australia and the birth of ‘national’ historical consciousness thus represent … a moment of disciplinary origin,” historian Leigh Boucher asserts. In his 1916 Short History of Australia, Ernest Scott described “vast tracts of fertile country which had never rung under the hoof of a horse and where the bleat of a sheep had never been heard”. In these texts, silence is counterposed against the ringing of axes and “industry”. Wikimedia Commons Scott writes that Australia “begins with a blank space on the map, and ends with the record of a new name on the map, that of Anzac”. It’s worth dissecting this quote here, to unpack that form of history writing: the inevitability of historical progress and national formation is telling. We shouldn’t assume that this early national history writing was completely silent on Indigenous matters: Coghlan and Ewing’s 1902 Progress of Australasia in the Nineteenth Century described the “invasion” of parts of southern Australia by the colonists, and related in some detail the colonial massacre of Aboriginal people at Risden Cove in Tasmania; and Scott’s 1916 short history included ghastly and violent accounts of murder on the colonial frontier, as well as the deliberate planting of arsenic in flour destined for Aboriginal people. Nevertheless, Stanner gave voice to an emergent idea about silence that understands history as a method that changes over time and place, rather than an objective interpretation of the past. It reminds me of what narrative psychologist Jerome Bruner explains as the “coherence” we “impose” on the past, to “make it into history”. In other words, the 1930s histories that Stanner identified in his Boyer Lectures exist in a historical structure where Indigenous perspectives have been locked out. As Stanner himself articulated, We have been able for so long to disremember the Aborigines that we are now hard put to keep them in mind even when we most want to do so. Still a work-in-progress Stanner’s point raises an important question: if “History” itself is tied to the process of colonisation, can it accommodate perspectives outside its colonial apparatus? Stanner sensed that history would overcome its own silences, but doing so would require major methodological shifts, such as the incorporation of Aboriginal Studies and oral history: In Aboriginal Australia there is an oral history which is providing these people with a coherent principle of explanation … It has a directness and a candour which cut like a knife through most of what we say and write. His predictions played out, and such approaches, applied by Indigenous and non-Indigenous historians such as Hobbles Danyari, Heather Goodall, Peter Read, Paddy Roe and Deborah Bird Rose, overturned Aboriginal historiography in Australia. The murmurings have since turned into a groundswell: Indigenous histories have become increasingly prominent and Indigenous perspectives are now mandated across school curricula. Conspicuous public and political debates over Australian history are further indication of how this counter narrative has become a significant historical lens. “I hardly think that what I have called ‘the great Australian silence’ will survive the research that is now in course,” Stanner anticipated. And, to a large degree, he was right — a substantial historical revision has taken place in Australia. If anything, that change has accelerated since Stanner’s death in 1981. Yet in university history departments, Indigenous historians still remain vastly underrepresented. Indigenous perspectives have increasingly informed, critiqued and revised historical approaches. But Indigenous histories are often relegated to “memoir”, “story”, “family history”, “narratives of place” or “political protest”, rather than acknowledged as part of a disciplinary practice. And with the possible exception of oral history and pre-history/deep time, there is still a marked absence of Indigenous historiography in Australia’s historical “canon”. We may have developed new critical approaches and a growing understanding of the genealogy of historical “silence”. Yet the meaning and the consequences of that understanding are still a work in progress.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Over recent years, many modern varieties of tomatoes have lost their original taste as selection for flavor has been over looked in favor of selection of qualities such as firmness and size for shipping purposes. Genetic analyses has now pinpointed which genes are required to reinstate the original rich flavor of tomatoes, now absent in the varieties of this fruit on many grocery store shelves. Denise Tieman and her colleagues set out to identify the flavor infusing genes that have been lost. To achieve this, they sequenced the whole genomes of 398 wild, heirloom, and modern varieties of tomato. A consumer panel also rated 160 tomato samples representing 101 varieties on qualities such as flavor intensity and overall liking. As a result, dozens of chemical compounds of interest were identified by the consumer analysis. The researchers used this information to isolate 13 chemical compounds associated with flavor that were reduced considerably in modern varieties relative to heirloom varieties. They then applied genetic sequencing data to identify the corresponding lost genes. Among other results, Tieman’s group found that smaller fruit tended to have greater sugar content. This indicates that while selection for bigger tomatoes allowed domesticated tomatoes to grow bigger, it reduced both the sweetness and flavor. The study was published in the journal Science.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
With close friend Caroline Wozniacki competing for her maiden grand slam, seven-time Australian Open champion Serena Williams went to bed, “too nervous to watch”. This is not the first time Williams has publicly admitted to “turning the channel” on a tournament she has made her own, but this time the inference could not have been more different. The irony is that in this case Williams missed a classic; an epic all the more impressive given her sizeable absence. After all, publicity for the 2018 women’s draw began with Craig Tiley doing his best to hype Williams’ possible return, at one point promising there was “no question” she would be back, despite the fact that Williams was reportedly bedridden for six weeks following an emergency C section. In their enthusiasm to hype Williams’s unlikely return, one wondered if Tennis Australia prescribed to the notion that no Williams was equivalent of no Australian Open – at least from a women’s perspective. Caroline Wozniacki wins Australian Open title after epic battle with Halep Read more By Saturday night, any such questions were well and truly redundant. While Serena couldn’t watch, the rest of us were transfixed. Those who bought tickets or tuned in were treated to a stunning match of tennis full of brilliant rallies and breathtaking winners, neither combatant giving an inch. When it was finally over, Wozniacki visibly shook with all the tension, drama and emotion of a final for the ages. It was a fitting conclusion to a tournament in which the women’s draw arguably provided more excitement than the men’s – perhaps with the exception of the emergence of cult hero Hyeon Chung. Wozniacki’s win is a remarkable tale in itself. In officially reclaiming the No1 ranking on 29 January, she will do so six years to the day since she last held the coveted position – the longest time a WTA player has taken to do so since computer records were introduced in 1975. The woman she takes the record from is none other than Williams herself, demonstrating just how long Wozniacki has managed to stay thereabouts at the top of the game, a feat all the more impressive given her ranking dropped as low as No74 in August 2016. Since then she has shown phenomenal determination to turn her fortunes around, winning more matches than any other player since 2017 (at 71 wins). Coming into the Australian Open, Wozniacki was one of no fewer than six players competing for the No1 ranking, with all of Gabrine Muguruza, Elina Svitlona, Karolina Pliskova and Jelena Ostapenko also in the running to take the title from the now dethroned Simona Halep. Thus while an injury-free Nadal and timeless Roger Federer may arguably have the men’s draw stitched up (as they did in 2017), this is a sign of how open the women’s has become in Williams’ absence. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Serena Williams hugs close friend Caroline Wozniacki after their women’s singles final match at the 2014 US Open. Williams won 6-3, 6-3. Photograph: Alex Goodlett/Getty Images This has certainly been to the benefit of the game. In so opening up, several stars have been able to emerge. Although Halep, for example, may have been voted the WTA’s fan favourite in 2017, she surely won a new legion of admirers in 2018. Australia has had its fair share of adopted internationals (Kim Clijsters, who denied Wozniacki the 2009 US Open, remains perhaps the most loved) and on Saturday night, an unlikely suitor emerged when the Rod Laver Arena crowd at one point chanted “Si-mo-na, oi-oi-oi”. Perhaps it’s the association with Australian Darren Cahill, but there’s also the fact of Halep’s emergence as a spiritual underdog, clad memorably for the duration of the tournament in the same plain red dress she chose online and had made by a seamstress in China. It is farcical to think that a world No1 could go unsponsored for the duration of a grand slam (surely only something that could happen in the women’s game), and that a corporation would chose to part ways with her only two months after achieving the feat. 'Focus on something green': how Hyeon Chung rose to prominence \| Kate O'Halloran Read more After all, this is the woman who played the Open final with two busted ankles (both now requiring an MRI), heat exhaustion and cramp after more hours on the court than any other player. Not that, at the end of a heartbreaking defeat, she would use that as an excuse: “Caroline was better,” she said simply and graciously. Halep was also a participant in several of the best matches of the women’s tournament: the final of course, but also a thrilling and courageous victory over another star of the women’s game in Angelique Kerber, and arguably the match of the tournament against the US’s Lauren Davis which eventually ended at 15-13 in the third. That game if any was an exhibition for the depth of talent in the women’s draw, with the 24-year-old stunning Halep and audiences alike, and proving she could yet be a rising champion. And, like any game in a state of abundant health, there is plenty emerging talent to get excited about. Japan’s Naomi Osaka, who had the misfortune of ousting Australian Ashleigh Barty, plays in idol Serena Williams’ mould, with blazing groundstrokes that can wipe worthy opponents from the court. Tellingly, Barty, a star of the game in her own right, was at times made to seem meek in her wake. On the local front, Destanee Aiava also offers plenty. Compared to Williams by Halep, Aiava had the runner-up on the canvas at 5-2, while she also had two set points in their eventual first set tiebreak, none of which she was able to convert. At just 17 she has already said she would benefit from a break from a game she aims to rise No1 in, and the respective journeys of Wozniacki and Halep show just how much mental fortitude it takes to make a grand slam final, let alone win one – a pressure compounded when competing for a country arguably in need of new hope. Ashleigh Barty survives fierce Aryna Sabalenka test at Australian Open Read more In this, she could do worse than follow Wozniacki’s example. Asked after her maiden title what it felt like to have the hopes of a nation riding on her, the Dane said: “It has always been normal for me. I’m very proud to represent my country. I think they’re proud of my achievements.” That she should “think” they are proud is telling, because the attitude shift that granted Wozniacki her belated major was arguably a shift to pride in herself; regardless of outcome or external opinion. “At the end of the day, I think getting older, [being] more experienced, really believing in your abilities, I think that’s definitely helped,” she said in response to what had helped her finally win a grand slam title. That her efforts this time proved enough for a breakthrough win, she said, was the icing on the cake to cap off her CV. “Nobody knows how much work, dedication you put into it. All I could tell myself was, you know what, you’ve given it everything you can. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. If not, then at least you know you’ve given it everything you’ve got and you can be proud of any achievement.” And so should women’s tennis be proud, for it has proved an overwhelming success at the 2018 Australian Open, with a new champion and challengers to be proud of.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Congratulations to Debra Dubois, the winner of the June PowerBuy Cue of the Month!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
New media and publishing dynamics have changed the economics for magazines to the extent that it is simply not possible to continue with existing models. Much of the issue is that magazine publishers are misidentifying their problems, striving to find new ways to distribute their packages without acknowledging that those very packages are fast becoming relics, a testament to a time past, when publishers had the power of platform and could demand that readers come to them. The latest figures prove that approach is no longer tenable. In the first half of this year, magazine newsstand circulations dropped 10 percent, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. “When 10 percent of your retail buyers depart over the course of a year, something fundamental is at work,” wrote David Carr in his New York Times media column yesterday. Just as bad, advertising is down 8.8 percent compared to the same time last year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Lest you think this is just a paper problem, keep a close eye on what’s happening with tablet-only magazines. If publishers thought tablets were going to be the saviors of their industry, they must be really bummed out by recent news that The Daily is cutting a third of its staff and the Huffington Post has decided to stop charging for its iPad magazine after just five issues. Working on the principle that three events equal a trend and two pass for a story, AdWeek last week asked “Are Tablet-Only Publications Dead?”. It’s far too early to say they’re dead, but there’s good reason to believe that the very idea of “tablet-only” has limited purchase. Magazine content might not want to be free – it costs too much to want to simply give itself away – but it certainly wants to flow freely to wherever the readers are. Ten years ago, those readers were on the bus, on the couch, in waiting rooms, and on the beach – places where paper could dominate, and where PCs and even laptops couldn’t offer competitive longform reading experiences. Today, tablets and smartphones accomplish what paper owned in those years, but with added benefits – no pages that flutter in the wind, instant access to information from all over the world, supreme portability, and the ability to immediately share content with friends. On tablets and smartphones, though, the package no longer makes sense. We humans still love to read – and since getting a Kindle, and then an iPhone, and then an iPad, I now read more magazine journalism than ever – but we want to do it on our terms. We will always need editors to commission and shape strong stories, but we don’t need them so much to bundle disparate pieces of content into one immutable chunk. Instead, many of the most savvy readers prefer to consume magazine journalism piece by piece, taking note of the source from which it sprung, but not necessarily paying heed to whatever else happened to be placed alongside it in that source that particular week or month. Often what is more important is who wrote it, what it’s about, or when it happened to fall into view. I haven’t got a focus group to prove this, but I would bet that anyone who uses reading apps such as Longform, Instapaper, Readability, and Pocket prefers those content delivery mechanisms to bundled magazines. These platforms allow readers to select and sort content in a way that works for them, from disparate sources, without having to deal with cumbersome digital magazine files and swathes of packaged content that simply isn’t relevant, or of interest. Defenders of the bundle insist that “discovery” and serendipity are vital aspects of the magazine reading experience. And I agree. But I don’t agree that the package is the best way of delivering on that discovery promise. Twitter, Facebook, Flipboard, and Pulse all do a better job at delivering “discovery,” because, when used well, they expose us to a wider range of tastes and interests than the editorial boards of specific publications. And actually, they also accommodate the tastes and interests of those editorial boards, because magazines like the New Yorker and Newsweek and Vogue and whoever else can take full advantage of those platforms to drive people to their content. What magazines have to get used to is that they’re now competing against other, leaner and sometimes more digitally savvy, curators and publishers in the content marketplace. Many in the latter group are willing to give their content away for free, and none insists – or relies – on a bundled product that is sold on a newsstand, be it virtual or otherwise. Set-ups like Longform, Longreads, Brain Pickings, Dave Pell’s NextDraft, and Conor Friedersdorf’s Best of Journaliam take care of interest arousal and curation, all while directing traffic to traditional publishers. These experiences don’t require hefty apps or heavily designed products – most of the time, they point to or present content that is basic text and pictures. They satisfy the need to read and be informed without demanding that readers commit to downloading a heavy package every week or month. Traditional magazine publishers have to both take advantage of and compete with these services. Ultimately, they will lose the bundling aspect of their model that has in the past sustained their businesses. They will have to adapt to, and capitalize on, a new environment in which their core editing and curation strengths are in demand, but in which they can no longer determine the mode of delivery. In the future, magazine brands will be producers, endorsers, commissioners, curators, designers, and promoters – but they won’t primarily be bundlers. The bundle may still exist, but it will be a much smaller piece of the magazine business than it is today. The printed product, for instance, might ultimately be a prestige item distributed occasionally as a supplement to, or showcase of, the brand’s best work according to a particular theme or period of time. It’s difficult to envisage a printed product that in 10 years will be profitable when produced on a weekly or monthly basis. This is bad news for magazines, but it's not end news. Publishers are now coming to the realization that their current models are unsustainable in the tablet and smartphone era. People are going to lose jobs, magazines are going to close down, and the world will be poorer for quality content. But the game isn’t over for journalists and editors – it’ll just be leaner and different. They will have to produce content that can move easily outside the borders of pages and apps, content that can be shared – even purchased – at the click of a button, content that can live on the strength of its reporting and writing. The good news is that journalists and editors today are already producing a ton of content that qualifies according to those parameters. The challenge that remains is how to most effectively deliver it to readers while still extracting a dollar from their product. That may be done with micropayments, or it might be done – as I have suggested before – via a Netflix-style all-you-can-eat model. That reality might mean magazine publishers will ultimately preside over businesses that are just a shadow of their former selves. But the other option is likely even less palatable. The period of time in which magazines can get away with losing 10 percent of their newsstand circulation is extremely limited.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
With 19 games across Week 14 in the 2017 USL regular season, there were plenty of quality strikes to choose from with 61 goals scored across the week’s action to take the league past 550 goals for the season. Now it’s your turn to select the best of the five selected for this week’s USL Fans’ Choice Goal of the Week award. Voting will continue through 9 a.m. ET on Thursday, June 29 USL Fans’ Choice Goal of the Week – Week 14	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
NFL Now, a streaming video service that will allow football fans to receive NFL updates tailored to the teams and players they're interested in, will be available this summer on Xbox One ahead of the 2014 NFL season, Microsoft announced today. Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, unveiled NFL Now during a press briefing in New York earlier today. The service will stream NFL video through the web to computers, as well as via apps on Windows, iOS, Android and Xbox One. NFL Now won't stream NFL games; instead, it will offer news, highlights and analysis from every NFL team as well as NFL Films, NFL Network and fantasy football. Users of NFL Now will be able to set their favorite teams, players and video, and then receive updates about those subjects through the app. NFL Now isn't just for updates on the latest NFL news, however: According to Microsoft and the NFL, the service will also deliver "access to the deepest vault of on-demand NFL video content available anywhere." "The growth in video consumption habits on internet-connected devices, whether smartphones, tablets, PCs or consoles, makes the creation of NFL Now the logical next step in the evolution of NFL Media," said Brian Rolapp, chief operating officer of NFL Media, in a press release today. NFL Now will be available in an ad-supported free version as well as through a monthly subscription, NFL Now Plus, the details of which have yet to be revealed. Last year, Microsoft and the NFL announced a partnership, reportedly worth $400 million over five years, that made the Surface the league's official tablet and the Xbox One its official gaming console. The deal also provided for the NFL on Xbox One app, which already delivers a wealth of NFL content to Xbox One owners. Interested parties can sign up for more details at the NFL Now website, and watch an introductory video here.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Some of the art I started doing since I started microdosing. Q- Have you Notice Any Difference in your thought patterns? A- Definitely. Since microdosing, I am living much more in my heart space. I am finding compassion and empathy on an entirely new level, and also seriously disassociating myself from extreme emotions. I’ll try and be more specific: I am a very passionate person, and subjects like the fact we are being poisoned by Monsanto, fast food companies, pharmaceutical companies, vaccines, fluoride in our tap water, etc REALLY used to make my blood boil. I’d go on these rampages rants fuelled by rage because the world is so absolutely fucked up, and I needed people to know. It made me frustrated that people were so blind to the reality, and that they wouldn't take charge of their lives and implement change. I couldn't fathom how or why people we’re incessantly self-sabotaging their lives, why people were not investigating vaccine safety, or why the government wasn’t banning GMO’s. It made me pretty mad. I find since I began to microdose that I find compassion for the deep levels of unconsciousness that envelops humanity. I’m realizing that everyone is on their own journey, and that anger or frustration is absolutely not the path to helping anyone. Instead of getting frustrated at insert way people destroy their mind/ body, I just feel empathy for their struggle. I have never been a very judgemental person, but more than ever I am deeply empathic to people’s struggles. Basically, I’ve mellowed-the-fuck-out. My passion is as strong as ever, but my methodology is more fine tuned. I have to be honest in saying that this transformation is two-fold, because I started microdosing about the same time I went back to school, and this post-grad degree in holistic reproductive health is seriously shaping me into a compassionate future-practitioner. My mentor in the course is constantly reminding me to check-in with myself, my intention, and the narrative going through my head. A major part of the course is critical thinking, transference dialogue, and Carl Jung’s “active imagination”. So basically I am incessantly being prompted to examine the dynamic between myself and my thoughts. This process has seriously impacted the way I navigate the world, and my ability to disengage/ be the observer is a combination of my mentor’s guidance, and the microdosing. I’m not sure if that makes total sense, it’s pretty difficult for me to convey in words. Other than that, I find myself really focused and driven- more than ever in my life. Again, another force at play is that I recently turned 27 years old, and the concept of “saturn return” is widely known. It’s a intense year for me, and my life and my priorities are really falling into place. I feel, however, that microdosing is really tightening everything up, it has allowed me to really channel my energy into pursing my passion and remaining in almost a permanent flow state. I think that pursuing your passion and microdosing go hand in hand, you get that light, clarity, focus, and flow that are normally generated by chasing your dreams anyways. But combining the psilocybin with this transformative time in my life has made me feel absolutely unstoppable. The other thing is that microdosing is like a relationship, and is constantly growing and evolving. Despite these powerful, deep, instantaneous realizations (particularly on a dose day), psilocybin is also working on a much deeper aspect of my inner psyche, and my relationship with the outer world. I am more than ever having little “aha” moments, which I intuitively attribute to a degree to microdosing. As I integrate lessons and realizations, there are always other portals unlocking to an even greater more expanded consciousness. Q: Did you ever have to work while on a dose day? It’s something I’ve been interested in doing for a while but am not finding I have a spare day to myself. A- I’ve definitely touched on this to this throughout the article, but I’ll answer it specifically. In short, yes. In following Dr. Fadiman’s protocol I would dose on whichever day dose day was and go about my day completely as normal. That is truly the key to mircodosing- it shouldn’t interfere in any way because the dose is sub-perceptual. I do suggest trying to find a day-off for your very first dose, just because it may give you peace of mind- but know that either way this first dose should be extremely small. As I mentioned earlier- I did my first dose at 0.1 grams, and felt absolutely nothing. The next dose day (3 days later), I increased to 0.15 and then 3 days later hit my “sweet spot” at 0.2, where I still currently dose at. Even at 0.2, there are absolutely no effects associated with a typical “trip” dose (no hallucinations, etc). Just clarity, focus, flow state, energy… basically I’m myself having a really good day. The other thing is that to embody the benefits of a microdosing protocol, it shouldn’t be a one-off experience. Because the dose is sub-perceptual, the work is done over a period of time, and truly it helps reshape your mental processes, the way you look at the world. But it does this slowly. You aren’t going to figure it all out on your first microdose (actually, spoiler alert you’re never going to figure “it” out… ever), but the key is sticking to a regiment and going about life as usual. Fadiman’s study using psilocybin for problem-solving lasted 10 weeks, and many people suggest 10 weeks is a good commitment as a self-experiment as well. Q- I think insert person would really benefit from microdosing, how can I get them to start? A- You’re not going to like this answer… but: you can’t. I have experienced many things in life that I think other people need to try, but the reality is that everyone finds things at the exact time when they need to. We are all along our individual paths, and one of the most important factors in growth is that you decide to take the steps in that direction. How annoyed are you when people who “know better” try and tell you what to do? It doesn’t matter that the information might be coming from a place of love- people need to make mistakes and learn from them to find their place in the world, and to grow at their own pace. This one is very difficult for me, especially with things like diet and exercise. I want the people I love most to take care of their bodies, to eat organic and not drink tap water… I want them to be healthy. I think this actually comes from a semi-selfish place of wanting the people we love to be around so that we can have them in our lives, but either way: everyone is on their own journey. A great personal example would be alcohol; my parents told me from a young age that alcohol was poison, but I had to experience it, go through it, and come out the other end, by myself to truly implement a lifestyle change. Same goes for incorporating a habit (like microdosing), the best thing you can do to inspire change in anyone is to just Be. “Be the change,” is so unfathomably powerful. There is an ancient story that goes something along the lines of a man going up to the enlightened guru and asking him a question; the guru denies him the answer, and this process repeats itself over and over, with more and more persistence fro the man, until finally he gives up. It is at this point that the guru sits the man down, and gives him the answer. “Why didn’t you just tell me from the start,” asks the man, and in short, the guru responds that when people ask for advice, rarely are they ready to implement change; someone should be begging you for the answer, and only at that point should you share with them, because then you know they are truly ready to walk the path. I wouldn’t necessarily take that advice literally- but as a metaphor it’s powerful to realize that dishing out advice willy nilly is rarely going to produce the wanted outcome. In fact, more often than not, it creates resistance within the person because they will feel judged, and a subconscious reaction to being judged is to justify ones behaviours- which might actually cement-in their behaviour even more. Be the change, live your best life, and when people seek out help: be there waiting with open arms. Also, psychedelic drugs like anything else can be misused, and abused. Pushing someone else to take psychedelics is pretty reckless, because most people who are in need of “help” probably aren’t ready to dive into their inner self as a solo-mission. The biggest part of psychedelic growth comes from integrating the lessons learnt, and for most people this would be overwhelming, confusing, and scary. I recently interviewed Dr. Cole Marta, the head researcher in the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy studies to treat PTSD (HERE), and the key to the success of these studies is the guidance of a professional. I am all for self-experimentation because I believe it is your right as a human being to explore your life, but what is right for you at one stage of your life does not extend itself to everyone around you. Q- How do I get psilocybin or LSD? A- Common brah, I can’t help you with this… but I included the question because I do have something to say about acquiring psychedelics, having psychedelics experiences, and life in general. I don’t believe we find mystical experiences, I believe they find us. It may sounds woowoo, but I genuinely think that the experiences we are meant to have will find us in perfect divine timing. When we force things, we are going against the flow of life, and that resistance equates misery. If you want a certain experience, make your intention known (with the universe) and open yourself up to it. This may include clearing space (cutting ties from things and people not serving your highest good), in the same way that you would clear out your garage before bringing a new car home to park in it. Do good, tell the truth, and trust that what is meant to find you, will. Also, because these substances are illegal, you will never truly know their quality unless you’re picking mushrooms yourself (and even then). Understand that like any drugs (included the ones you buy on shelves at the store, pharmaceutical or holistic) they can be, and often are, tainted with other substances. Only seek out psychedelics from a genuinely trust-worthy source, don’t be a dumb dumb. Q- How do you measure it? A- I use psilocybin and so I use a small scale that I ordered from Amazon. The scale is very sensitive and for small quantities, so it’s perfect. Funny story: before I bought this scale, I had acquired mushrooms and was preparing my self for a macro-dose, but didn’t yet have a scale. So I brought my bag of approx. 25 dried grams of psilocybin to my local health store and tried weighing it in the scale sitting in the produce section with no success (it was too big). So I went to the fish shop across the way and asked them if they could use their scale to divvy-up my bag into 2.5 gram quantities, they said sure, and everyone died of laughter whilst I went about my business. This was fine for a larger dose (although I don’t recommend it…), but when it comes to a microdose you really need a small, sensitive scale. For LSD, you can dissolve the tab in a set quantity of water, and then divide the millilitres of water by the total milligrams in the tab to know how many ml’s of water you should drink per dose. I don’t recommend cutting a tab into 10’s (or whatever) because you don’t know how evenly the LSD is spread out across the tab, nor will you likely cut it evenly. Q- What kind of mushrooms would be good for microdosing in Australia? A- I am no expert in this field. As I mentioned in the question above, I rely heavily on setting an intention for an experience, and then trusting that by surrounding myself with the right, trust worthy people, that the right experience will come. When I started microdosing, I didn’t even know the strain of mushroom I was taking, it was information that didn’t really matter to me because A) I trusted the source that was supplying my psilocybin, and B) a microdose is highly individual, so no matter which strain it was, it would be up to me to tailor the right quantity for my body. I don’t think any one strain is better than another, so long as your mushrooms are well sourced and reliable. Tailoring the particular mushroom to your own body (finding your “sweet spot”) is something only you can do. I personally take Psilocybe Cubensis (the most common type) but to learn more on different strains, click HERE. Final Note: I hope this article helped shed some light on a subject that is still very much entangled with the taboo from the War On Drugs. Microdosing has had a powerful and profound impact on my life, and my wish for you is that you make educated, empowered decisions along your journey. What do you want out of this life, and how will you get there in the most loving, and compassionate way? I would love to hear about your personal experiences, or any follow-up questions in the comment section below.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Jane Huang can't remember the crash that changed her life forever. On May 8, 2014, a freight train travelling 46 km/h smashed into her grey Mercedes at a rail crossing in Langley, B.C., slamming her car into a ditch. "I was told I was hit by a train. I thought I was in a dream," Huang told CBC News, recalling waking up paralyzed two weeks later in hospital. Doctors told her she'd been airlifted from the scene at the Smith Crescent crossing and had suffered a traumatic head injury and that her spinal cord was partially severed and she'd struggle to ever walk again. "How could this happen to me? I was the person always driving carefully," said the mechanical engineer with an MBA and certification in project management. Huang was leaving her work near the Smith Crescent crossing when her car was struck by a passing freight train. (RCMP — from Huang lawsuit court file) Huang says her disbelief turned to anger after she discovered that for more than 25 years Transport Canada officials repeatedly identified safety problems along the rail corridor, including at the Smith Crescent crossing, but together with Canadian Pacific Railway and the Township of Langley did little to fix them. Dangerous crossing In 2016, CBC News identified the Smith Crescent rail crossing as one of the 25 most dangerous in Canada based on crash records collected by the Transportation Safety Board. Since 2000, the site has seen five serious train accidents, including one that killed a pedestrian. Cars on Smith Crescent that stop to turn onto busy Glover Road are forced to partially block the train tracks. (Dave Seglins/CBC News) The crossing has no automated bells, lights or gates to warn of oncoming trains. Instead, the rail line is marked with a stop sign, a white "X" and a caution sign that says, "No Stopping ON Tracks." The crossing is also positioned only a few metres from Glover Road, a busy provincial highway. The track, which runs parallel to Glover, is so close to the highway that motorists approaching on Smith Crescent have no choice but to stop and partially block the tracks while they wait for a chance to pull out. Reporter Dave Seglins takes a look at the rail crossing in Langley, B.C., where Jane Huang was badly injured in 2014. 0:42 Huang launched a $5-million lawsuit against Canadian Pacific, which owns the rail line, and CN Rail, which was operating on the track the day she was hit. The civil trial begins today in Vancouver. She acknowledges she may have failed to fully stop before the crossing, but she says the markings are confusing and that having just started a new job nearby two weeks earlier, she assumed the rail line was possibly abandoned given the lack of lights, bells or gates. Timeline of trouble Transport Canada has been aware of problems at the Smith Crescent crossing since 1990, when it conducted a safety evaluation and concluded the crossing lacks adequate space for cars. Four years later, Transport Canada wrote to CP, the Township of Langley and B.C.'s Ministry of Transportation and Highways recommending the closure of the Smith Crescent crossing. That never happened. In late 2002, a gravel truck blocking the crossing was struck by a freight train, causing a major derailment. Transport Canada ordered the municipality to prohibit large trucks from using the crossing, and the township quickly put up signs redirecting trucks. Transport Canada also called on the province to install traffic lights on Glover Road and recommended CP put in automated signals at the rail track. But neither of those things ever happened. In 2007, after another accident at the crossing, CP, the township and the province agreed to install automated gates, warning lights, bells and a traffic light at the highway intersection at a cost of roughly $280,000, and secured 80 per cent of the funding from Transport Canada's Grade Crossing Improvement Program. Ten years later, none of that's happened either. It was postponed amidst a yet-to-be-realized plan for a larger redesign including four other nearby crossings along the Glover Road corridor that have experienced similar crashes due to the rail line's proximity to the highway. In 2015, for example, an ambulance was hit by a train as it was stopped and partially blocking the tracks at Crush Crescent, killing an 87-year-old patient on board and injuring two paramedics. Video shows a train hitting an ambulance at the Crush Crescent crossing in Langley, B.C., in 2015. The crash killed an 87-year-old patient and injured two paramedics. 0:50 "Everyone agreed that [the Smith Crescent crossing] needed to be upgraded," Huang's lawyer, Stephen Gibson, told CBC News. "But you amass all of this evidence, it just became clear that what happened to [Huang] … was eventually going to happen to someone. It just happened to happen to [her]." Gibson says studies show the installation of bells and lights at rail crossings reduce the number of accidents by nearly 100 per cent. He also says CP has posted record profits in recent years and questions why some of that money hasn't been spent on safety improvements repeatedly recommended by Transport Canada. Following Huang's 2014 accident, there was another near identical crash at Smith Crescent in late 2015, where again a car forced to block the track before pulling out onto Glover Road was hit by a train. In that case, no one was hurt. The crossing remains largely as it was in the 1990s, only with the addition of street signs prohibiting large trucks and some brush cleared away. One of the allegations in Huang's lawsuit, none of which has been tested in court, is that vegetation at the crossing made it impossible to see oncoming trains. This photo from August 2011 shows bushes at the Smith Crescent rail crossing. (Google Maps) In a court document obtained by CBC News, Canadian Pacific's own police officer who investigated the crash noted the blackberry bushes nearby were so dense that a driver "must proceed to within a metre of the rail in order to see down the track." Other documents reveal that two days after Huang's accident CP arranged to have the brush cleared around the crossing. This photo from July 2014 shows what the crossing looks like after the bushes were cut back. (Google Maps) 'Not an ideal situation' Despite making repeated recommendations over the past 27 years, Transport Canada, the regulator of federal railways, has never issued any orders against CP to redesign the crossing. In a statement to CBC News, officials said crossing safety and design are the responsibility of the railway and the road authorities. Despite its own warnings to CP and the Township of Langley, Transport Canada says it has inspected the Smith Crescent crossing and found it to be "compliant with applicable requirements." The Township of Langley declined to comment for this story. The municipality was originally named in Huang's lawsuit, but the two parties recently settled out of court. Neither Huang nor the township will discuss the settlement. CP's court filings deny any negligence and argue the crossing is marked with appropriate warning signs. CEO Keith Creel declined to discuss the specifics of the case during an interview with CBC News last week. "I'll take a look at it. I'll tell you that," Creel pledged when shown photos of the space on Smith Crescent where motorists are forced to stop between the track and the busy highway. Canadian Pacific CEO Keith Creel takes a look at photos of the Smith Crescent rail crossing in Langley, B.C. (CBC News) "I think when society grew, that railroad track was there. When they put [the crossing] there they should have taken that into account. I think this setup, this scenario … is not an ideal situation." 'Strong desire to gain my life back' Huang says she can no longer work and is fighting to regain her mobility. "I have a very strong desire to gain my life back. I don't like depending on other people. I feel now I've become the burden to the society. I just feel so depressed," she said. She says she hopes her lawsuit will force CP to make changes, in addition to paying damages for her health-care costs and lost quality of life. "I feel this crossing is unbelievably dangerous," she said. "I just hope at least they can upgrade the crossing ... The second wish I have is that the railway company could upgrade the railway system for all the crossings in the whole country because this could happen to other people." (Timeline of safety issues at Smith Crescent crossing)	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A RADIATING THANK YOU. 〜(^∇^〜）（〜^∇^)〜 We will laser cut your names into the acrylic on the first model off the production line. Your names will radiate our walls forever. Less	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
One of the biggest surprises during our recent hands-on with Diablo III was the changes that had been made to the game's skill system. In Diablo II, each character class had several skill trees, and players activated – then strengthened – their abilities by allocating points as they levelled up. No more. Instead, a new active skill is unlocked automatically with almost every level gained until players hit the high 20s. Players are free to try all the skills out, with the restriction being the number they can have hot-keyed at once. At the start of the game only two skills can be used, then a new hotkey opens up at level 6, 12, 18 and 24, so that players eventually have access to six skills simultaneously. Each skill can be modified with one of five runestones, and three passive skill slots also open up as players level, letting them choose from a number of additional perks. The+Wizard.+Not+to+be+confused+with+the+Fred+Savage+film+of+the+same+name. Loading It's a massive overhaul and – as much as we liked the old system - hugely promising. We asked Jay Wilson, Diablo III's "One of the pieces of feedback we got during the internal alpha was that skill points as an element of our skill system didn't really suit the game," he told us. "It created a lot of conflict in terms of what the players would choose to do. So what we had is this system that has these six – it used to be seven, now six – slots, that implies that you should have six skills, but a system with skill points? Well, you really want to dump every single point into one skill."We also have a system based on progression, so unlike a game like World of Warcraft, [where] if you get fireball at level one, you're likely using fireball at level 85… Diablo's not like that. You get Magic Missile at level 1, and certainly, we have ways that we've tried to make Magic Missile viable in the end game, but that's not the reaction players have. They get a higher level skill and they replace that [old] skill, so what we were finding was that people were re-speccing massive amounts of points out of early skills into later skills, and that felt really terrible. So we decided to ask ourselves how much we really felt skill points added, and in surveying a lot of the people who played the game most of them didn't feel like they added very much..."I feel that in a lot of ways the current system has more choice involved in it because that finite limit of how many skills you can take versus the number that you have means that you have to make a very restrictive choice, so we focused a lot more on restricting the number of skills you have and having that be the interesting choice, as opposed to skill points, which are really commitments before you even know what you're committing to."So exactly how do the skills level up? Did the team consider having the skills level up in line with how much the player used them? "They do level up with you, so as you level up they get more powerful," he told us. "They don't level up just purely through use. Having a system where they level up through use is kind of taking the 'power choice' and changing it from the one choice – one big powerful choice: 'I want this skill,' and turning it into eight million tiny little choices, of 'I want this skill, I want this skill, I want this skill' every time I use it. And really, what we've found from a design standpoint is, the general instinct is that players always want more, but more choices just dilutes the quality of those choices, so we really wanted to focus on - okay, let's get the right number of choices, so that those choices feel really significant and powerful."The alternative, as he sees it, is more likely to only offer an illusion of choice. "What you probably did," he says, "was go up on a website and find out what the optimal build was, because there's just too much math involved for you to really get involved in it. A small number of players will go in and do the math… but the majority of players will go 'I don't know, I guess I'll just put it in whatever I already have'."The game design is all about the balance between having an array of options at the same time as "hardcore restrictions," like the six active skill/three passive skill limits. A good example of what that means for the player is in the battle mage build that Wilson ran through during the presentation component of our time at Blizzard."When I was building the battle mage," he explained, "I'm not kidding when I say I rejected, like, seven other skills that would have been viable. And not just those seven skills, but all the rune choices for those skills, which is another 35 choices on top of that, and then also the rune choices I rejected for the ones that I took. There's a lot of restrictions within the system, but those restrictions are not a 'I'm going to commit to this and I'm committed forever' [choice] because really, that's just a penalty. To us that was not the way we wanted to go. What we wanted to say is - you can play around as much as you want, but we're going to give you really really dense systems. Yes, they're simple on the surface – that's the point though, they're supposed to be simple on the surface - but when you dig into them there's a lot more depth. We really feel that when you combine those skill slot restrictions with runes… the in-game process of making builds will be far more engaging than it was in the previous games."Are you a hardcore Diablo fan? What do you think about the new gameplay systems? Let us know in the comments below. 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New Delhi: In a rare instance of one media house going to court to restrict the press freedom of another, the Dainik Bhaskar group on Thursday obtained an ex-parte order from the Delhi high court restraining Cobrapost from releasing an incriminating documentary showing how Dainik Bhaskar and around two dozen of the country’s leading media houses had apparently agreed to an undercover reporter’s business proposal offering money for news coverage designed to polarise voters in favour of Hindutva. The web portal, which had scheduled the release of its investigation at a press conference for 3 pm on Friday, May 25 was served the order issued by Justice Valmiki J. Mehta on Thursday evening. The order states: “In view of the arguments urged by the planitiff [Dainik Bhaskar], till further orders unless varied by the court, the defendants [Cobrapost] are restrained from in any manner releasing in public domain the documentary ‘Operation 136: Part II’ in any manner including at the Press Club of India on 25.5.2018 at 3.00 pm.” Cobrapost was also restrained from releasing the contents of an email it had sent to the Bhaskar group on May 10, 2018 “and other related telecommunications”. Cobrapost editor Aniruddha Bahal told The Wire that the email referred to was the detailed questionnaire sent to Dainik Bhaskar seeking their response to various statements its senior management officials had made to the portal’s undercover reporter. In the first part of its exposé, Operation 136, Cobrapost’s reporter, Pushp Sharma, posed as a religious activist, Acharya Atal, claiming to represent an unnamed “sangathan”, or organisation, whose goal was to help the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls by promoting Hindutva through the media, polarising the electorate, and maligning the BJP’s rivals through slanted stories. Several media houses were caught on camera agreeing to ‘Acharya Atal’s’ proposal for communally slanted paid news. The number ‘136’ in the title of the documentary is a reference to India’s poor ranking in the world press freedom index. As per the terms under which reporters had an opportunity to review the material gathered by Cobrapost for the second part of its exposé prior to the court’s injunction, The Wire is not in a position to reveal in advance the names of the organisations or individuals who are seen succumbing to the temptation of offering news space for money. What is clear, however, is that the creme de la creme of the media industry appears compromised. ‘No urgency because Bhaskar group waited to move court’ In granting an injunction without giving Cobrapost a chance to be heard, Justice Mehta appears to have accepted Dainik Bhaskar‘s claim that failure to restrain the release of the documentary would cause “irreparable loss and injury” to the newspaper. While Cobrapost said in a press release issued late on Thursday night that it intends to challenge the injunction on Friday morning, it added that in the event the stay is not vacated, it would be unable to hold its press conference as originally scheduled. Bahal accused the Bhaskar group of acting in a mala fide manner by seeking an ex-parte injunction on the evening before a press conference that had been announced a whole week earlier. “If they really felt there was danger of irreparable loss to their reputation, they could have moved for an injunction when we announced our intention to release our documentary on May 18. In fact, they could have moved the court as soon as they received our email of May 10, which laid out the details of what we had established about them.” Had they moved the court earlier, said Bahal, there would have been no question of them getting an ex-parte injunction. “At the very least we would have got the chance to argue why this sort of prior restraint is not warranted.” HC order a “threat to free speech” Legal experts also expressed surprise at the high court’s decision to grant the Bhaskar group an injunction. “Ex-parte judicial injunctions are amongst the most serious threats to free speech in India today,” Gautam Bhatia, a lawyer and author of the 2015 book, Offend, Shock or Disturb: Free Speech Under the Indian Constitution. “Because of the long time it takes to decide cases, such injunctions often end up distorting the marketplace of ideas. In an elaborate judgment in 2011, the Delhi high court made clear that injunctions on speech were to be granted in the rarest of circumstances, when it was clear that the defendants had no case at all. However, as today’s order shows, that judgment is honoured more in the breach.” Karuna Nundy, a Supreme Court advocate who has actively litigated on free speech issues, told The Wire the injunction granted to Dainik Bhaskar was a “worrying departure” from norms laid down by the Supreme Court. “A full bench of the Supreme Court held in Brij Bhushan’s case in 1950 that pre-censorship of a journal is a restriction on the liberty of the press which is an essential part of the right to freedom of expression,” she said. At stake then was the right to publish of the RSS-backed publication, Organiser. “The Supreme Court there was hearing a case of national security. The stakes here are much lower – alleged defamation of a company. The high court’s interim stay order is a worrying departure from the Supreme Court’s well established principle. It could have asked the company to find its remedies in law after publication,” she added. Conversations hold the key Though Cobrapost has not made any public statement about any specific media house in connection with the second part of its expose, it is evident from the high court order that Dainik Bhaskar is one of the organisations that might have been compromised by the sting operation. Indeed, it’s lawyers argued in court that statements made by employees should not be seen as coming from the group itself: “It is also argued on behalf of the plaintiff that it is not necessary that any and every talk of an agent or employee or staff of the plaintiff company necessarily should be taken as that of the plaintiff company itself and which has a separate and independent existence apart from individuals who may be holding different positions in the plaintiff company”. This suggests at least some of its employees might have been recorded making offers or statements at variance with the ethical standards expected of the media. As for the Faustian bargain that the undercover reporter was offering – and which Dainik Bhaskar‘s representatives might have warmed to – the judge recounted the newspaper’s convoluted arguments thus: “It is also argued that essentially either the stand of the defendants will be of fake news being generated or news generated which would reflect a particular ideology whereas the fact of the matter is that there does not arise at all any issue of any fake news, with the fact that having an ideology which is not illegal cannot prevent, assuming for the sake of arguments such a situation existed, to have a particular ideology.” Though it is very hard to make sense of Justice Mehta’s prose, what the Bhaskar group’s counsel, Neeraj Kishan Kaul, appears to be saying is that the Cobrapost‘s exposé will incorrectly suggest their newspaper was prepared to engage in fake news or news reflecting a “particular ideology”. Kaul also appears to have argued that when a newspaper subscribes to an ideology that is not illegal – the presumption here is that he means the ideology of the ruling party and of Hindutva – then it may very well publish material in consonance with that “particular ideology”. In Part I of Operation 136, Cobrapost had reported how several media house managers had told their undercover reporter they supported the BJP’s ideology and would be happy to run paid news on its behalf. In all cases, of course, a hefty fee was also discussed.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A British scientist claims Allied spies considered spiking Adolf Hitler's food with female hormones in a bid to make him less aggressive. The plan to sneak oestrogen into the Nazi leader's food never went beyond the planning phase. It is one of several hare-brained schemes revealed by Professor Brian Ford in his book, Secret Weapons: Technology, Science And The Race To Win World War II. Professor Ford, a fellow at Cardiff University and pioneer of popular science, revealed the British Government was serious about giving Hitler a sex change. He says he uncovered the scheme while looking through stacks of recently declassified files from World War II. They have come to light now because of the recent publication of documents not previously seen because of their sensitive nature. Professor Ford says the UK also considered dropping boxes of poisonous snakes on Nazi troops, and bombing them with glue in an attempt to stick them to the ground.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
The UK has broken ranks with the UN and will keep funding “closed” Rohingya camps inside Myanmar despite fears that doing so may entrench “apartheid-like” conditions in the country, the Guardian has learned. Internal briefing documents as well as interviews with UN and humanitarian agency officials in Myanmar showed the British government was maintaining a policy of providing aid and other support to displaced people living in camps in Myanmar’s Rakhine state that have been slated for closure since 2017. The facilities have been criticised for being squalid, unsanitary and entrenching the segregation of Rohingya and other Muslim minorities, who in most cases are prevented from leaving. Myanmar: UN threatens to withdraw aid over 'policy of apartheid' against Rohingya Read more The UN took a stand in June that they would withhold support “beyond life-saving assistance” to camps officially “closed” by the Myanmar government – many of which are in reality still operating as before – and others in the process of being closed, until the Rohingya and other minorities were given greater freedom of movement. The UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) declined to explain its reasoning for not adopting the UN’s stronger stance but said it supported the same broad goals. “The UK supports the UN’s position that displaced people must have the freedom to move, seek out livelihoods and access services like health and education,” a spokeswoman said. A senior humanitarian official in Myanmar said the unwillingness of a major donor such as the UK to back the UN’s stand would “completely undermine” efforts to present a united front to pressure the Myanmar government on the issue. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aung San Suu Kyi attending a hearing at The Hague in case alleging genocide against the Rohingya. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters The UK’s position emerged as Myanmar’s highest civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, travelled to The Hague to offer the most high-profile defence yet of her country’s treatment of the Rohingya and other minorities. A filing to the Hague-based international court of justice last month accused Myanmar of committing crimes against humanity including genocide against the Rohingya and other groups. More than 128,000 Rohingya and Kaman Muslims have been housed in camps in Rakhine state since fleeing their homes in a 2012 outburst of violence against their communities. For the past six months the UN and its partner agencies have been preparing to reduce their activities and begin a gradual withdrawal of support from the camps. Announcing the policy change, the UN’s highest-ranked official in Myanmar at the time, Knut Osby, said working as normal in the camps risked “entrenching segregation”, and said future support would be linked to “tangible progress made on the fundamental issue of freedom of movement”. Though the camps have been in the process of being closed for the past two years, internal UN assessments seen by the Guardian and accounts from humanitarian agencies on the ground have shown that conditions have barely changed. Residents of camps that have been closed have been moved to newly built facilities, some on the same site as the old ones, where conditions are still poor and freedom of movement remains restricted. 'We cannot go back': grim future facing Rohingya one year after attacks Read more In a briefing document produced by DfID in June, the department considered the new UN policy of cutting all but life-saving aid to these camps but said it would not adopt it. “We will provide aid according to need and without conditionality (regardless of government’s action or inaction, though we call for the government to take responsibility for all its people),” the note read. The document argued that “generations are being lost” inside the camps and that health and educational support is necessary to stem the damage to those living in them. It adds that people in the camps should be consulted on the approach they think would be best. Neither the UN nor DfID are understood to have substantially changed their positions since the note was circulated. Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Rohingya have had their movement severely restricted in the coastal state of Rakhine. Photograph: Ye Aung Thu/Getty Myanmar rejects allegations it is committing crimes against humanity in Rakhine state, and has initiated a domestic inquiry into the latest outbreak of mass violence against the Rohingya in the summer of 2017, which led to more than 700,000 people fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh. A UN review of its own performance published in June was scathing of the organisation’s “obviously dysfunctional performance” in Myanmar, arguing that senior staff were unable or unwilling to find common ground between factions who wanted to constructively engage with the government and others who wanted to advocate against what they saw were grave human rights abuses. The lack of a common position was exploited by the Myanmar government to forward its own agenda, the report said. A humanitarian specialist based in Yangon, who asked not to be identified, said aid providers had “no good options”. “Even cutting down to lifesaving aid will have an impact [on the lives of people in the camps],” the specialist said. “However, continuing to facilitate what are essentially apartheid-like conditions is not an option either.” They added that those on the ground who supported the UN’s stance on withholding aid felt “frustration with DfID, since they’re perceived to be undermining the whole process”. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Camps in Rakhine state have been criticised for enforcing apartheid-like conditions. Photograph: Phyo Hein Kyaw/Getty Concerns the UK is advocating a softer line on Myanmar than others in the international community extend beyond the camps. The Guardian understands from several sources that London has been proposing the establishment of a “hybrid court” to deal with alleged crimes against the Rohingya and other minorities. “The issue was raised [by British government representatives to the UN] many times in 2018 and this year as recently as October,” a source familiar with the process said. “The Tatmadaw [Myanmar’s army] is unlikely to agree with it if there’s the slightest possibility that it will be effective.” A hybrid court would involve alleged offenders being tried in a court overseen by a team of international and domestic judges. The proposal was criticised by the reports of a UN fact-finding mission investigating the situation in Rakhine state, which said the hybrid court would be unlikely to meet international standards. A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “The UK wants to see accountability for atrocities committed in Myanmar, but it is not UK policy to pursue a hybrid court.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Senior Republican calls on president to prove extraordinary allegation that his predecessor tapped phones in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign This article is more than 3 years old This article is more than 3 years old Senior Republican John McCain has told Donald Trump to either present evidence proving Barack Obama was involved in wiretapping his phones or retract the claim. McCain’s demand came after the House intelligence committee asked the president for evidence that phones at Trump Tower were tapped during the campaign. Trump’s wiretap paranoia and the reality of modern surveillance Read more “I think the president has one of two choices: either retract or to provide the information that the American people deserve, because if his predecessor violated the law, President Obama violated the law, we have got a serious issue here to say the least,” McCain said. Trump asserted in a tweet last week: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” He continued the allegation against Obama in other tweets but offered no evidence. The committee’s request for evidence by Monday was made in a letter sent to the justice department by the House committee chairman, Republican Devin Nunes, and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff, a senior congressional aide said on Saturday. The aide wasn’t authorised to discuss the request by name and requested anonymity. Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has said that nothing matching Trump’s claims took place. Despite the denial, Trump has asked Congress to investigate. During the past week, Schiff said the committee would answer the president’s call to investigate the claim. He also said he would ask the FBI director, James Comey, directly when he appears later this month before the full committee, which is investigating Russian activities during the election. On Sunday, Schiff said he doubted there was any evidence of wiretapping but that Comey and others called to testify at the upcoming hearing “would be in a position to have to know”. “I think on March 20 if not before we’ll be able to put this to rest,” Schiff told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week. “I don’t think anyone has any question about this, George. The only question is why the president would make up such a thing.” McCain said Trump could “clear this up in a minute” if he were to call “the director of the CIA, director of national intelligence and say, ‘OK, what happened?’” The president had an obligation to provide evidence that Obama broke the law or retract his claim, the Arizona Republican said. “I do believe on issues such as this, accusing a former president of the United States of something which is not only illegal, but just unheard of, that requires corroboration. I’ll let the American people be the judge, but this is serious stuff,” McCain said on CNN’s State of the Union. Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to the president, said on Sunday on Fox News Channel’s MediaBuzz that the House and Senate intelligence committees had agreed to investigate and “we’ll make a comment after those findings are complete”. Nunes has said that so far he has not seen any evidence to back up Trump’s claim and has suggested the news media were taking the president’s weekend tweets too literally. “The president is a neophyte to politics — he’s been doing this a little over a year,” Nunes told reporters this past week. The president is a neophyte to politics. Devin Nunes Other lawmakers also have asked for evidence. Declaring that Congress “must get to the bottom” of Trump’s claim, senators Lindsey Graham and Sheldon Whitehouse asked Comey and the acting deputy attorney general, Dana Boente, to produce the paper trail created when the justice department’s criminal division secures warrants for wiretaps. Associated Press contributed to this report	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Netflix may soon be forced to increase its number of European productions \| Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images Commission wants to hit Netflix with movie tax The proposals would also curb child viewing of ads for salty, fatty, sugary and alcohol products. The European Commission wants to tap streaming video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime to fund the production of European movies and TV programs, after intense lobbying by France to help protect its industry. A draft of the regulation obtained by POLITICO says, "member nations may require providers of on-demand audiovisual media services ... to contribute financially to the production of European works." On-demand-video streaming services would also have to ensure that at least 20 percent of their catalogs for EU viewers were European productions. There is currently no quota. According to the Commission's new plans, member nations would be able to "impose financial contributions [direct investments or levies allocated to national film funds] to on-demand services in their jurisdictions," according to the 32-page draft of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive states. The plan falls short of France's bid to erase country-of-origin rules, which would potentially expose businesses to laws of all 28 European Union countries, regardless of where they are headquartered. Currently, companies need only comply to the laws in the European country where they are based. The draft reforms are part of the Commission update of audiovisual media laws for a market that is increasingly moving to online internet platforms and mobile devices. The plans are a cornerstone of the Digital Single Market, which seeks to create a seamless economy for online activities by removing national barriers to streaming, online delivery, copyright and networks. The proposals will also curb child viewing of ads for salty, fatty, sugary and alcohol products, according to the document, which didn't provide details. The Commission also wants to switch advertising caps for a daily limit of nearly 3.5 hours between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. — so more interruptions during news shows and films. The European Commission estimates 315 million Europeans use the internet daily and a Digital Single Market would add as much as €415 billion to the EU's collective economy.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Mark Thomason A former newspaper publisher and his attorney have sued a North Georgia judge, claiming she used her power to throw them in jail on trumped-up charges as they dug into her use of public funds. In June 2016, Appalachian Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Brenda Weaver asked her law clerk to research Georgia code sections, hoping to find ways to charge Mark Thomason and Russell Stookey with crimes. She succeeded. Weaver forwarded advice from her clerk to District Attorney Alison Sosebee, emails show, and Sosebee pursued charges against the men. In the preceding months, Thomason had unsuccessfully tried to get copies of canceled checks from Weaver's and another judge's publicly funded bank accounts. Weaver told him the checks were exempt from open records. Then, in the middle of a related lawsuit against a court reporter, Stookey tried to get the records through a subpoena. He, too, was unsuccessful. A grand jury then indicted Thomason and Stookey on charges of identity theft and making false statements, prompting outrage among First Amendment associations. The advocates believed Weaver and Sosebee were attacking a reporter in the middle of an investigation. At Weaver's request, Sosebee dropped the charges two weeks later. On Monday, attorneys for Sosebee and Thomason sued Weaver in U.S. District Court, claiming her actions amounted to "malicious prosecution," "retaliatory prosecution" and conspiracy to violate their First and Fourth Amendment rights. Weaver has previously said she was acting as a victim of a crime with no more influence than any other Blue Ridge, Ga., resident. She believed Thomason and Stookey had acted illegally as they tried to get records from her bank account. She reached out to the district attorney and tried to offer helpful information, like any other resident could. But Thomason and Stookey's attorneys argue she used the privileges of her position to get the men arrested. In particular, they point to the emails that show Weaver received help from her clerk. They also say Weaver held sway over Sosebee, who herself once served as Weaver's clerk before working in Weaver's husband's law firm. Emails show that Weaver told Sosebee who to bring in for questioning, as well as what questions to ask. And then there is the grand jury indictment. According to the lawsuit, the grand jury initially declined to charge Thomason and Stookey. Weaver then "improperly influenced Sosebee and several grand jurors in the hallway of the courthouse, outside of the grand jury proceedings to return a true bill." Jeffrey Filipovits, an attorney representing Thomason and Stookey, declined to tell the Times Free Press in an email how exactly he knows Weaver "improperly influenced" grand jurors. "We have witnesses but are not at liberty to disclose them at this point or what we expect their testimony will be," he wrote in an email. Laura Lones, an assistant attorney general, will represent Weaver in the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for the state agency said Friday "it is not our policy to comment on pending litigation." The feud between Thomason and some public officials began shortly after he launched the Fannin Focus, a weekly newspaper that covered Blue Ridge. In April 2015, he quoted multiple witnesses who said Judge Roger Bradley used the N-word while telling a story from the bench. This prompted a Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission investigation, and Bradley retired months later. However, witnesses also told Thomason that sheriff's deputies in the courtroom played along with Bradley's story, using the N-word themselves. A transcript of the court hearing did not reflect this. Thomason requested the court reporter's audio recording of the hearing. The court reporter declined to give it up, saying the recording was exempt from the open records act. Thomason then sued. He was still unsuccessful. The court reporter, in turn, sued Thomason. She said he defamed her by writing that witnesses believed her transcript was inaccurate. She later dropped her lawsuit but wanted Thomason to pay for his attorney's fees. Thomason and Stookey, who was representing him, said they heard Weaver paid for the reporter's lawyer with public money. Thomason said this was unethical. The court reporter is not a county employee. That's what prompted his open records request in 2016, as well as Stookey's subpoena. In the emails, Weaver's law clerk advised that Stookey did not follow proper procedure in issuing the subpoena. According to the indictment, his action was identity fraud. In the middle of the scandal, Weaver resigned her post as chair of the JQC, the state agency that oversees judicial misconduct. In its own investigation of Weaver, the JQC cleared her of any wrongdoing. "The evidence appears to show a personal dislike of the Judge," a member of the agency wrote in September. "The complaints are nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to enlist the JQC in their fixation." Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Boston Dynamics is letting its first major robot out of the lab. Since June, the company has been talking about a public release for its Spot robot (formerly SpotMini), and today, it finally gave some details about what’s in store. The Spot isn’t going on sale exactly, but if you’re a company with a good idea (and some money), you’ll be able to get one. That also means, for the average person on the street, that the odds of seeing a Spot in the wild just got a lot better. The capabilities are more or less what the company showed off in June, but it’s still impressive to see them in person. The Spot can go where you tell it, avoid obstacles, and keep its balance under extreme circumstances — which are all crucial skills if you’re trying to navigate an unknown environment. The Spot can also carry up to four hardware modules on its back, giving companies a way to swap in whatever skills the robot needs for this particular job. If it’s checking for gas leaks, you can build in a methane detector. If you need connectivity over longer distances, you can attach a mesh radio module. Boston Dynamics is already outfitting units with LIDAR rigs from Velodyne (a favorite component for self-driving car projects) to create 3D maps of indoor spaces. Since the Spot is designed to work in the rain, outdoor spaces are on the table, too. Grid View Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge There are also the Spot’s dance moves, which usually come programmed into an offboard computing module. You might think the “Uptown Funk” routine was just PR, but entertainment is shaping up to be one of the biggest markets for the Spot. Boston Dynamics is already working with the innovation lab at Cirque du Soleil to see what it might be like to use the Spot onstage. During our tests, we were instructed to stay two meters away from the Spot to keep from being pinched by its joints. We also gave it a wide berth when it was climbing stairs to make sure no one would be hurt if it lost its balance and fell. Both measures seemed to be more about Boston Dynamics being careful rather than the Spot being hazardous, but it’s a reminder that the robot simply wasn’t designed to interact with humans. For now, Boston Dynamics is focusing on uses in closed and controlled spaces, so it’s unlikely you’ll see a Spot wandering around your local mall anytime soon. “We don’t want to see Spot doing anything that harms people, even in a simulated way.” The company was also quick to say that it’s not interested in using the Spot as a weapon, despite the company’s military origins. “Fundamentally, we don’t want to see Spot doing anything that harms people, even in a simulated way,” says Michael Perry, VP of business development at Boston Dynamics. “That’s something we’re pretty firm on when we talk to customers.” (Boston Dynamics is still marketing to police departments, but it says the Spot would be limited to disposing of bombs and other hazardous materials, along the lines of existing police robots.) The Spot is still a long way from anything like full autonomy, despite the impression you might get from the videos. One popular demo from last year shows the Spot opening a door by carefully turning the handle, pulling back the door, and propping it open with one leg to keep it from closing as the robot passed through. Some of the robotics researchers I talked to were fascinated by this demo: did it mean that the Spot could recognize doors, find handles and open them in the wild? Asked to navigate a path, would the Spot recognize which obstacles were walls and which were doors to be opened? The real answer turns out to be simpler. The video shows the Spot’s “handle” protocol, which the controller initiates by navigating the claw toward the door and identifying the handle. Actually opening the door requires deft navigation of the physical forces involved, bracing the Spot’s body in a way that’s nearly impossible for a human operator to replicate — but it’s all athletic intelligence, not interpretive intelligence. The Spot isn’t in the business of recognizing doors or responding to cues from the physical world. In fact, the Spot’s model of the world around it is pretty shallow, consisting mostly of obstacles, footholds, and preprogrammed routes. That’s the opposite of what many academic roboticists focus on, and Henny Admoni, who works on Human-Robot interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, told me it was an understandable but tricky trade-off. “Boston Dynamics has always been strong in mechanics and controls, like being able to shift the robot’s weight properly,” Admoni told me. “But robots operating in human environments won’t really have the option of avoiding humans. Integrating Human-Robot Interaction skills into development at an early stage is probably going to lead to greater success than trying to retrofit human interaction into existing systems.” That’s not the path Boston Dynamics has taken, and the Spot’s interactions with human beings remain a major question mark for the project’s future. For now, the company is hoping that there’s enough work to do in human-free spaces. Still, there’s a lot the Spot can do that simply wasn’t possible before, and it’s easy to see why Boston Dynamics is excited. The last 20 years have seen huge advances in automation, but it’s still largely confined to the digital world. If the platform takes off, the Spot could offer a new way for computer programs to interact with the physical world, a power that could have an enormous impact on technology and society at large. We’re still at the beginning of that process, but teaching a robot how to walk could turn out to be the most important step.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Over 8 million Malawians have been saved fromthe risk of contraction trachoma which was there in 2014 but now the risk has been eliminated. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, Dr Astrid Bonfield disclosed this Thursday during Trachoma Elimination in Malawi Progress Update held at Sunbird Capital hotel in Lilongwe. She said the intervention that were put in place enable the vast majority of people not be at risk of losing their sight through the disease. Bonfield commended Malawi government through Ministry of Health and Population for implementing the World Health Organization (WHO) for endorsing Surgeries, Antibiotics, Facial cleanliness and Environmental improvement (SAFE) Strategy to address the threat. The CEO said the SAFE strategy prongedapproach consisting of surgery to correct in- turned eye lashes and prevent further damage to the eye. She said antibiotic distribution reduced the spread of infection and promoted facial cleanlinesspractices. Bonfield said communities were sensitized on how they could improve their environmental to prevent transmission from person to person and keep the disease at bay. “The newly released figures show that to date, the trachoma initiative in the country has delivered vital antibiotics to more than 12.9 million people to stop the spread of infection,” the CEO explained. She said the initiative provide people with more than 4,800 pain-relieving andsight saving surgeries. World Health Organization (WHO) Country Representative to Malawi, Dr Fabian Ndenzako said the country would be a third to eliminate trachoma in Africa after Gambia and Ghana. He said Malawi’s feat requires validation process to be done by WHO in 2020 to prove that the country is no longer recording any cases of trachoma. “Malawi is within the last mile in order to be declared Trachoma free and all efforts and achievement need to be sustained so that people should be out ofdanger of contacting the disease further,” Ndenzako noted. He said as a country, Malawi need to strengthenits surveillance system to monito r progress and enhancecollaboration in the implementation of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) initiatives in order to complete the last mile. Head of Department for International Development (DFID), Dave Beer promised to continue monitoring progress on intervention to contain the spread of trachoma in the country. He said there need to join hand in to eliminate the resilient cultural norms which promote the spread the disease within communities. Country Director for Sightsavers in Malawi Bright Chiwaula said his organization conducted a lot of surgeries in order to overcome the trachoma problem He cited districts like Nsanje, Chikwawa, Kasungu, Mchinji, Nkhotakota Karonga, Salima and Lilongwe where cases of trachoma were on the increase. The intervention supported the installation of 1,610 hand and face washing stations at 145 schools to help stop the spread of the disease. It trained more than 12,500 case finders to locate people in need of treatment and direct them to services. The Trust’s Trachoma initiative is working towards the elimination of trachoma in 12 Commonwealth countries seven of which are in Africa namely, Malawi,Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia. In January 2020, the trust will have successfully completed its time limitedprogrammes and will cease as a grant making organization and achieved a significant, sustainable reduction in avoidable blindness acrossCommonwealth, saving millions from losing their sight and created and developed a cadre of remarkable young leader as a legacy in honour of her majesty The Queen as Head of the Commonwealth. Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV : Sharing is caring!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Daisy-Daisy/Getty I do not regret our conversation about gun safety. Saying nothing, hardly an option with our children’s lives at stake. I somehow knew my decision to question the unlocked weapons in your home would be the turning point in our relationship. Another tragic shooting became headline news and the lockdown at my daughter’s high school that week became the impetus for conversation on our brisk morning run. I recall emotions of anger, fear and frustration as our feet pounded the trail that sunny morning in mutual commiseration for our children’s safety. When did the killing of human beings with weapons of mass destruction become everyday conversation? My racing heart skipped a beat when you divulged your husband’s weapons hidden in your bedroom that children didn’t enter. “Your guns are not locked in a safe separate from the ammunition?” I carefully inquired, fully aware of the topic’s sensitivity, and confused by the inaccessibility of a parent’s bedroom. Confirming that fact, you assured me you would address gun security, though you seemed apprehensive broaching the conversation with your husband. The pistol your son chose for an iPhone screen saver stunned me like a deer in the headlights. The harsh metal image illuminated on my kitchen counter by your text, I cannot erase the image from my mind. The apparent idolatry of this weapon by an 11-year-old boy intensified my desire to act. Shaking in fear, my temperature rising, I dialed your number. Our friendship was that of mutual respect and I believed you’d hear me out, though I never imagined need for further discussion. “We respect you and your right to own firearms,” I began cautiously. “The safe storage of guns is the minimum level of safety required for our children to play in another home but your son is always welcome at ours.” Repeating my words back to me, it seemed you, my friend, understood. Weeks later, the tenor of your husband’s phone call was alarming. He felt judged, angry and accused. My husband spoke calmly in a manner of which I was incapable, describing the safe storage of guns, yet shaking his head afterwards in disbelief. It was never about you. With thoughtful consideration, we crafted an email to eliminate further confusion. Our heartfelt sincerity was met by your husband’s glib, offensive retort reverberating my entire being, like the discharge of a loaded weapon. His response hardly a joke as he claimed, after all this was not a laughing matter. Your complicity was equally hurtful. You de-friended me on Facebook. Our friendship disintegrated. Future play dates at our house became awkward, our boys insisting your son would never show anyone the guns in your bedroom. Forced to explain the safety and security of unlocked weapons had nothing to do with the boys’ level of responsibility, I became aware my adult conversations were a one-way street. Parenting is hard without support in your village. After school last week, my 11-year-old son burst through the front door furiously crying, knowing he’d be forced to decline your son’s sleepover birthday party invitation, nothing changed. My heart ached for both boys. My son previously admitting they’d entered your bedroom last year. Eight Children Are Accidentally Shot Every Day With Unsecured Weapons In The Home, the headline read, though statistics won’t convince my son his parents made the right decision. Yesterday your son announced on the playground he could no longer come to our house, his father angry I told another mother about your unlocked weapons. Evidently a safety concern for her son as well. Real mature, I thought as my anger swelled within. I felt sorry for my son’s experience. Hell yes, I’d admit the truth to anyone who asked why my son was not allowed in your home. Parenting gun safety was never about us versus you. Silence would be regrettable.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Beef. It took me a lot of effort to write this post. You’d think, for someone like me who has been vocal on social media, it shouldn’t be difficult. Right? Penning that first word itself has put me in a lot of dilemma, whether writing this was a bad idea in the first place. I eat Beef. So do many others around the world. And so do many in India. Almost all muslims in India, have at some point or the other eaten it as well. I know for many of you it might be offensive to even hear me say that I do this. Frankly, I’m not sorry. In many parts of the country, terms like “Bade ka Gosht”, “Bhakkad” and the likes are used instead of bluntly referring to it as, Beef. Over decades we took special care not to be offensive. When friends would ever ask, whether you eat Beef? The answers would be vague enough to not show that we do. Yes, at some point or the other, our parents have told us to try not to openly say it to others. But that time has gone. It went off when an old man was killed for eating Beef. Oh sorry, on rumors of eating beef! Forget just that, for than the shameful act of actually killing the person, it is the people who are actually trying to justify the act. Trying to find reasons on blaming the family by labeling them as thieves?!! The world might laugh on hearing this news, but we in India, “The beef eating Muslims”, aren’t. we cannot. Be prepared to add another clichéd label on your next vilayat visit, where you’ll happily enjoy alongside other beef eating people, who aren’t Muslims!! Beef is offensive to you? Alcohol, pork and many of the religions which have anything to do with idol-worship might be offensive to many, if they don’t come from the same thought school as you do. Would you also help us get rid of all these? Many out there are nothing but hypocritical fools, who won’t eat beef but are okay with showing off their leather jackets or their new branded bags. Where do you think leather comes from? From the vegetable skin that you eat? The idea to call a beef ban is not to ensure that it doesn’t offend religious sentiments, but to try and show power that now the fringe can do what they feel like. They want to show that we, the minorities are at their mercy. But sorry, that ain’t gonna happen. We won’t back down, if you think we would. Our Idea of India is not a Hindu nation. We have fought for it’s freedom too. Are my fears of how the nation is going to be, before the elections, coming true ? You are completely okay if you don’t want to eat beef, and we do try not to offend you to. No one goes and sets a slaughter house near a temple or in a densely populated population which doesn’t eat meat. It is mostly located in muslim ghettos far from the comfort of your homes. The fact that a lot of our population is depended on this trade, their livelihood and the three square meals their families get, are depended on it, makes it more important than anything else. If any of us, tries to shove beef down your throat, or try to show disrespect to your values, then I’d be sorry. But, I’m definitely not sorry for eating beef.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Of all the technological achievements of the Star Wars universe – faster-than-light space travel, antigravity, blue milk – the one that seems most ubiquitous is probably holography. Holographic projectors are all over the place. So why are they so crappy? Let me clarify a bit: why is the image quality of the vast majority of Star Wars holograms so sucky? Most holograms we see have a heavy bluish cast that washes out any color that may have actually made it into the image, they flicker and distort, they have huge scanlines—they suck. The image quality is almost exactly like the 1979 12" Montgomery Ward CRT television I found on a curb off Wilshire Blvd., except with holograms, I could walk around and see how shitty the image quality is from 360° glorious degrees. The question is, why? The Star Wars universe is filled with incredibly advanced technology that seems to work pretty flawlessly, even in less-than-ideal conditions. Anti-gravity suspensors on beat-up old landspeeders still manage to keep things hovering nice and steady, without jumping and flickering on and off all the time, for example. The technicians and scientists in that universe have mastered faster-than-light travel and the insanely vast energy requirements of that, and even with all the wear and tear we see, things generally seem to work pretty well. We’ve seen the sort of abuse an astromech droid like R2-D2 can take, and still get valuable work done while having an essentially-sentient robotic mind – clearly, quality standards mean something important to Industrial Automaton, R2's maker, so why doesn’t anyone give a shit about the fact that holograms can’t display color as well as a 40 year old Sylvania, or display anything like legible text? At first I thought maybe it was because of the vast transmission distances involved – holograms seem to be much, much faster than light, so perhaps we can forgive the shitty quality, right? Wrong. Wrong from the very beginning – the first hologram we see in any of the movies, Leia’s plea to Obi-Wan, is stored locally, on some sort of media, right in R2-D2! It’s not transmitted from anywhere. R2 plays that file from a local data storage whatever, and it suuuuuuucks. It flickers, there’s a visible top-to-bottom refresh pulse, huge vertical scan lines, the image breaks up into static, the color fidelity is awful – come on. R2 is way too good a droid to be saddled with some half-ass holoprojector/recorder system, right? How many times has some Imperial commander yelled to a holographic stormtrooper “I CAN’T TELL WHAT THE HELL IT IS YOU’RE SHOWING ME! IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE HOLDING A GLOWING BLUE SNAKE EATING A HOAGIE!” I bet lots. As far as exactly how these holo-projections are transmitted so far, so fast, I have an idea, loosely based in science. Maybe the recording/playback system for SW-universe holograms is like a 3-dimensional CCD: a 3-sided open box made of a grid of light-sensitive cells, and these capture light, via some sort of holographic prismatic lens or something — to store a 3-dimensional array of volumetric pixels — voxels. Now, let’s say each of the individual sensors on the grids that make up the 3-dimensional array are actually light-sensitive quantum particles that are quantum entangled with particles on a matching display 3-dimensional array at the other end. Quantum entanglement is, absurdly simplified, when two or more quantum particles share a quantum state, and that state changes as a unit for all the particles, no matter how close or far they are. So, if we pretend quantum state was a color, and we had two red entangled particles, let’s say we have the means to change that quantum state to blue. If I send the signal to change the state, it would change instantly on both, no matter if they were next to each other on a table, or across the galaxy from one another. That’s insanely simplified, but it gives you the general idea of what this could do. Many holographic receivers and projectors could be entangled the same way for wide broadcasts, or individual sets or groups could be entangled for private communications. Quantum entanglement seems to be an odd loophole around space-time, so if they somehow have a way to manipulate that, then that could be the basis of how they can communicate so far, so quickly. But that doesn’t explain why they look so shitty. Or, maybe more importantly, why everyone seems okay with how shitty they look. You’d think a control freak like Darth Vader would have flipped out at some point and wondered why the fuck he can’t get a hologram of the Emperor that doesn’t look like a glowing blue dildo is talking to him on a table. Why was this acceptable to everyone? What did the poor bastards who had to sell holoprojection systems do? Or worse, what about the poor bastards who worked in the call centers, and had to deal with irate rich people on Naboo bitching about how they can barely see what the queen is wearing? This is probably a fruitless exercise, wondering about this shit. No one in the Star Wars universe seems to be able to email anything, either, having to send secret plans and messages and crap via robot and spaceship, so maybe shitty hologram playback is pretty far down on their list of technologies to finally figure out. As always, I welcome your thoughts. Don’t be afraid to remind me it’s fiction and none of this matters!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Nyamuk dari spesis Aedes aegypti adalah pembawa virus denggi, deman kuning, Zika dan chingkungunya. Ia boleh ditemui di negara beriklim tropika seperti Malaysia. Oleh sebab itu pelbagai teknik digunakan untuk mengawal pembiakannya bagi mengelakkan berlakunya epidemik yang boleh membawa maut. Kajian terkini yang melibatkan penyelidik dari Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak dan Universiti Sains Malaysia Pulau Pinang mendapati lagu yang dihasilkan oleh Skrillex boleh mengawal populasi Aedes aegypti. Di dalam kajian bertajuk The electronic song “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” reduces host attack and mating success in the dengue vector Aedes aegypti mendapati populasi nyamuk yang terdedah kepada lagu “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” adalah lebih rendah berbanding populasi nyamuk kawalan. Nyamuk betina dari kumpulan ini juga didapati tidak menggigit mangsa pada kadar yang lebih rendah. Adalah dipercayai muzik genre dubstep Skrillex mengganggu komunikasi di antara nyamuk jantan dan betina untuk mengawan. Muzik yang berubah frekuensi dari tinggi ke rendah secara berulang juga mungkin menimbulkan keresahan pada Aedes aegypti sehingga kurang selera untuk mencari makanan. Selain penyelidik dari tiga universiti tempatan, kajian turut melibatkan Mosquito Research and Control Unit, Grand Cayman, Fukuoka Universiti, Universitas Lambung Mangkurat dan Mahidol University, Thailand. Kertas kajian akan diterbitkan di dalam jurnal Acta Tropika, bilangan 194 pada Jun ini.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Working on coloring, I added a quick bg instead of leaving it transparent this time. Playing with lighting.ink on paper and sai for color.Check out my new online store here: 57media.storenvy.com/ You can see my webcomic here: 2littlebastards.com 2LittleBastards.com	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Et frikvarter fra konen, kæresten eller bare den grå hverdag. Flere syd- og sønderjyske kirker har de seneste år oprettet mandeklubber og fællesskaber for mænd, og det går strygende med at få medlemmer. I Haderslev startede domkirken en mandeklub for et halvt år siden. Klubben er på seks måneder vokset fra at have tre besøgende til nu at have 12-14 medlemmer. Det er det uforpligtende fællesskab, der trækker, mener Poul Erbs, som var med til at starte mandeklubben i Haderslev. - Mænd er ikke så gode som kvinder til at komme ud og blande sig og få et socialt samvær. Så jeg tror, der går mange mænd rundt, som har brug for at komme ud og få et netværk, siger Poul Erbs. Læs også : Kirken er blevet for feminin: Lav pilgrimsture kun for mænd Mandeklubben tager for eksempel på virksomhedsbesøg og udflugter til museer og lignende. I begyndelsen var klubben tænkt som et samlingssted for enlige mænd, men det blev hurtigt lavet om. - Behovet er der bredt. Så nu siger vi, at det er for alle. Jeg plejer at sige i sjov, at det også er for mænd, som har en kone, men som har brug for et frikvarter, siger Poul Erbs. I Kvaglund Kirke ved Esbjerg har mænd i en årrække fundet sammen i en mandeklub. Her bliver der ugentligt spillet spil, sunget sange og snakket over en øl. Klubben tæller 24 mænd, og der kommer løbende nye til, fortæller tovholder Kai Kaus.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
I don’t know how to write. Which is unfortunate, as I do it for a living. Mind you, I don’t know how to live either. Writers are asked, particularly when we’ve got a book coming out, to write about writing. To give interviews and explain how we did this thing that we appear to have done. We even teach, as I have recently, students who want to know how to approach the peculiar occupation of fiction writing. I tell them at the beginning—I’ve got nothing for you. I don’t know. Don’t look at me. I’ve written six books now, but instead of making it easier, it has complicated matters to the point of absurdity. I have no idea what I’m doing. All the decisions I appear to have made—about plots and characters and where to start and when to stop—are not decisions at all. They are compromises. A book is whittled down from hope, and when I start to cut my fingers I push it away from me to see what others make of it. And I wait in terror for the judgements of those others—judgements that seem, whether positive or negative, unjust, because they are about something that I didn’t really do. They are about something that happened to me. It’s a little like crawling from a car crash to be greeted by a panel of strangers holding up score cards. Something, obviously, is going on. I manage, every few years, to generate a book. And of course, there are things that I know. I know how to wait until the last minute before putting anything on paper. I mean the last minute before the thought leaves me forever. I know how to leave out anything that looks to me—after a while—forced, deliberate, or fake. I know that I need to put myself in the story. I don’t mean literally. I mean emotionally. I need to care about what I’m writing—whether about the characters, or about what they’re getting up to, or about the way they feel or experience their world. I know that my job is to create a perspective. And to impose it on the reader. And I know that in order to do that with any success at all I must in some mysterious way risk everything. If I don’t break my own heart in the writing of a book then I know I’ve done it wrong. I’m not entirely sure what that means. But I know what it feels like. I do no research. Given that I’ve just written a book that revolves around two London Met police detectives, this might seem a little foolhardy. I have no real idea what detectives do with their days. So I made some guesses. I suppose that they must investigate things. I tried to imagine what that might be like. I’ve seen the same films and TV shows that you have. I’ve read the same sorts of cheap thrillers. And I know that everything is fiction. Absolutely everything. Research is its own slow fiction, a process of reassurance for the author. I don’t want reassurance. I like writing out of confusion, panic, a sense of everything being perilously close to collapse. So I try to embrace the fiction of all things. And I mean that—everything is fiction. When you tell yourself the story of your life, the story of your day, you edit and rewrite and weave a narrative out of a collection of random experiences and events. Your conversations are fiction. Your friends and loved ones—they are characters you have created. And your arguments with them are like meetings with an editor—please, they beseech you, you beseech them, rewrite me. You have a perception of the way things are, and you impose it on your memory, and in this way you think, in the same way that I think, that you are living something that is describable. When of course, what we actually live, what we actually experience—with our senses and our nerves—is a vast, absurd, beautiful, ridiculous chaos. So I love hearing from people who have no time for fiction. Who read only biographies and popular science. I love hearing about the death of the novel. I love getting lectures about the triviality of fiction, the triviality of making things up. As if that wasn’t what all of us do, all day long, all life long. Fiction gives us everything. It gives us our memories, our understanding, our insight, our lives. We use it to invent ourselves and others. We use it to feel change and sadness and hope and love and to tell each other about ourselves. And we all, it turns out, know how to do it. Related: Read Keith Ridgway’s interview with Cressida Leyshon about his short story “Goo Book,” which appeared in the April 11, 2011, issue of the magazine. Illustration by Richard McGuire.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A new video released by the so-called Islamic State's affiliates in Libya purports to show the killing of two groups of Ethiopian Christians. The 29-minute video shows two groups of captives held by the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL), described by onscreen text as "followers of the cross from the enemy Ethiopian Church." It says one group is being held by an ISIS affiliate in eastern Libya and the other in the south of the country. Each group has about 15 captives. READ MORE: Egypt eyes revenge after ISIS executes 21 Copts, releases video A spokesman for the Ethiopian government said he cannot confirm his country's citizens were the ones killed in the video."We have seen the video but our embassy in Cairo has not been able to confirm that the victims are Ethiopian nationals," Redwan Hussein told Reuters. "Nonetheless, the Ethiopian government condemns the atrocious act." In the video, a masked fighter brandishes a pistol, threatening Christians must convert to Islam or pay with their lives. He describes Christians as crusaders whose goal is to kill Muslims. The footage then shows both groups of captives being killed by the terrorists, one group is beheaded and the other shot dead. The new video bears similarities with another one, released in February, where militants beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians. Both videos were stamped with the logo of Islamic State's media wing, Al-Furqan. IS managed to gain a foothold in Libya amid the chaos and infighting following the end of Muammar Gaddafi's regime. They have been using the internet to spread their message, often in the form of videos showing the killings of those they deem "enemies." The militants are also active in social media, and have hackers operating on their behalf.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Get all the very latest news in Ireland straight to your email every single day Sign up! Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email A perverted pastor killed his 12-year-old lover after she ended their two-year affair for a teenage boy, police have said. Christian minister Jose Baltazar Hernandez Molina, 31, moved into the town of Maclovio Rojas, in the north-western Mexican state of Baja California, after being deported as an illegal alien from the United States. He was able to become pastor of the local church and later seduced 12-year-old Adriana Sanchez Beltran, investigators say. The pair had a two-year affair but the relationship ended when Adriana refused to let him move into her home and that she wanted to see someone her own age. When Molina found out she was seeing a teenage boy, he flew into a jealous age, police say. He tracked her down in his pick-up truck and dragged her into the vehicle where he attacked her and then killed her by breaking her neck. A post-mortem exam found the young girl's body was entirely covered with bruises where he had beaten her before finally killing her. Yet when arrested Molina claimed it was an accident and he had not meant to hurt her. Mexican Deputy Against Organised Crime, Miguel Angel Guerrero, said that the priest had admitted killing her in a jealous rage and now felt sorry about what happened. He said: "He has been charged with murder and rape because the girl was underage. We are also investigating who else knew about his relationship and why they did nothing." If convicted, the priest faces up to 50 years in jail.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
The first season of a Castlevania animated series will be coming to Netflix this year, the streaming service announced today. Loading Loading As part of its slate of new premiere date reveals , Netflix also revealed Castlevania Season 1, Part 1 will be arriving this year, though no specific date was revealed. Netflix's website lists the series as a four-part season, with each episode running for approximately 30 minutes.According to Netflix's official description of the series, Castlevania will focus on the game franchise's Belmont clan, as it follows "the last surviving member of the disgraced Belmont clan, trying to save Eastern Europe from extinction at the hand of Vlad Dracula Tepe himself."IGN spoke with producer Adi Shankar following the announcement, and he confirmed that the show will indeed be an adaptation of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, but could not give further plot details at this time."This is very much Castlevania done in the vein of Game of Thrones," Shankar said of the project, noting that Warren Ellis , who wrote the series and is on board as a producer, "added so much depth to the material." Dracula's Curse followed Trevor Belmont as he fought to stop Dracula from ravaging Europe in the 1400's. Those fighting with him included Alucard, Dracula's son."[The series is] going to be R-rated as f*," Shankar said of the series' level of violence, as many entries in Konami's game series were rated M for mature due to blood and violence. Shankar's discussion of the series' more adult aims reconfirms a 2015 interview in which he said the show would be "America's first animated series for adults." At the time, Shankar, who has produced Dredd, The Grey, and more, said Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Young Justice were among the series inspiring the Castlevania series' art design.Speaking to whether the franchise is aimed at the franchise's longtime fans or newcomers to the material, Shankar discussed his high hopes for the project, saying "this is going to be the best f***g video game adaptation we've had to date."IGN has reached out to Netflix and Konami for more information regarding the series.Shankar also discussed the project's current state on his Facebook page , saying Season 1 will come this year and that a second season, which was not mentioned in Netflix's announcement, will follow in 2018. Shankar is executive producing alongside Ellis, Kevin Kolde, and Fred Seibert. while Seibert's Frederator Studios is behind the animation. Jonathon Dornbush is an Associate Editor for IGN, and he is fell in love with the GBA and DS Castlevania games. Find him on Twitter @jmdornbush.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
新型コロナウイルスの感染拡大に伴い、全国の小中高校や特別支援学校を一斉に臨時休校にするよう、安倍晋三首相が要請したことを受け、兵庫県内の教育現場には驚きと戸惑いが広がった。卒業式など行事の中止や内容変更を、各学校で検討していたさなかに下された極めて異例の措置。児童、生徒にどのような影響が出るのか、関係者は不安の中で対応に追われている。兵庫県教育委員会の職員たちは首相の要請を報道で知り、資料を集めるなどし、想定される事態の洗い出しを始めたほか、夜遅くまで関係者への連絡などに追われた。「ちょっと待ってよ」。一報を聞いた西宮市教委の幹部は困惑を隠せない。「卒業式や修学旅行の方針を決めようとしていたところ。遅くとも２８日には態度を決めなければならず、時間がない。早急に再度会議に入り、検討する」と慌てた様子。ほぼ全ての行事を中止にする意向を示す県南部の公立中学校の校長は「（決行予定の）卒業式もマスク装着を徹底して合唱は控えるので、感動的な雰囲気にならないだろう。従来通りの卒業式を望む保護者らの声にどう対応したらいいのか」と困惑する。高校受験シーズンを迎えており、この校長は「最後の踏ん張り時に学校に来られなくなる受験生が、不安を感じさせないようにしたい」と強調。現在は県内公立高一般入試の出願期間中で、県教委職員は「願書の受け付けは予定通り続けるし、入試もやめられない。ただ、休みの間に教科書で学べなかった部分を、どうフォローすればいいのか」と懸念する。阪神間の特別支援学校の校長は「ぜんそくなど基礎疾患がある児童生徒も多く、必要な措置」と理解を示す一方、「共働きの家庭が多く、いっときも目を離せない子どももいる。保護者に大きな負担を強いる」と苦しい胸中を吐露した。神戸市内で中学３年を担任する４０代の男性教諭は「卒業式はどうなるのか。明日（２８日）で生徒と会うのは最後になってしまうのだろうか。代わりの授業をいつ行い、通知表はどう渡すのか。どの学校もひどく混乱するのは間違いない」と動揺していた。（佐藤健介、長谷部崇、井上駿、初鹿野俊）	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Can you believe it! It's finally here! Of course, without some hiccups to be felt but hey, we're not all perfect. The Goal: I wanted to keep the look simple, clean and well organized. Lots of handy features are to be had everywhere from key-bindings to action-bars and easy one click buttons. Easy install. Plenty of help for any issues. http://reddit.com/r/SyUI Class coloring everywhere! Possibly more to this list later... Some addons are missing currently, but hey this is still only version 1.0! No longer any PowerAuras or any WeakAura layouts included. No longer any Bossmods. No longer any Bag Addons. Few extremely old addons but they're still friends, just old and tired yet still beautiful in their own way. Possibly more to this list later... This UI is a remake of my old "The Ultimate Shaman UI" a.k.a. TUSUI which has quite a different layout to the current SyUI setup. Some things are right where you left them, some things are missing, but whats important is the original goal of the UI.Things to expect:Things to worry about	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Warm Bodies Chapter 4 Comic collaboration by Feverwildehopps on tumblr and I.Please check out her other art on tumblr!: feverwildehopps.tumblr.com/ Read the chapter here--> kungfufreak07.deviantart.com/a…	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); }); Video courtesy: www.facebook.com/newsilBorder Police officers stopped a suspected potential terrorist attack on Sunday, by arresting a man at a West Bank junction they said was carrying an explosive device in his car.The Border Police said midday on Sunday that the man pulled up to a checkpoint near Betar Illit in the West Bank and almost instantly the officers found something suspicious.They asked the man, who apparently was wearing a wig, large sunglasses, and acting “in a strange manner” to stop the car, but he refused.One of the officers then reached inside to grab the keys from the ignition, at which point the man stepped on the gas and started driving off, while the officer was still hanging halfway out the window, according to the Border Police.The officer, however, managed to pull his gun and cock it, ordering the man to stop, at which point he managed to pull the man out of the car and they rolled to the side of the road.The man was arrested and handed over to the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) for questioning. Inside his car officers found pipe bombs, gas canisters, explosives and a detonator, according to a statement put out by the IDF after the incident. The officer who arrested the man said the back seats of the car had been removed and the entire area was full of gas canisters rigged with electric wires.The incident caused massive gridlock as police shut down traffic in both directions from the junction in order to send in sappers to handle the explosives.As of press time it was unclear where the man was taking the explosives, though one working assumption is that they were meant to be used for a terrorist attack in Jerusalem.The officer who stopped the suspected bomber, Insp.Yeshurun Tzoran, described how he and the other officers in his region have been instructed to be on high alert during the IDF operation in Gaza, due to the assessment that terrorist groups will try to carry out an attack in Israel.Therefore they set up the temporary checkpoint and began stopping cars.On Sunday afternoon, Tzoran said he “couldn’t feel better. We feel that we saved many lives in Israel, and this is our duty.”Israel Police Insp.-Gen.Yohanan Danino spoke to Tzoran on Sunday, and afterward put out a statement saying that he and his fellow Border Police officers at the checkpoint “acted heroically” and saved lives.After the incident, Judea and Samaria Police secured a gag order on the case, which is in the hands of the Shin Bet.On July 10, Defense Ministry security guards stopped a Palestinian car with two passengers carrying a bomb on Highway 5 at a checkpoint near the Sha’ar Shomron junction close to the town of Oranit, northeast of Tel Aviv. The car, with Palestinian plates, was stopped after it “drew the suspicion of security guards,” according to police. Like in the incident on Sunday, the security guards found a gas canister that had been rigged as an explosive device.Both suspects were taken into the custody of the Shin Bet.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
How To Get Lost Love Back Black magic is an art which is used for self benefit. This Term is also Called As Kaala-Jaadu. It is term of astrology but it is used for specific purpose or for gaining profit. black magic astrology help you to get your ex and lost love back. By using this You can remove every kinds of sorrow to your life. There are many kinds of spells that are used for some specific purpose. We have experts in sorcery they have excellent knowledge about this and they can solve your every love related problems. black magic to get your ex back is also used to get control over mind of any person whom you want to control. When you get the control over mind of any person you can do whatever you want to do from that person. It helps you to get your beloved. 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There are several reasons could be responsible for the misunderstanding in any relationship, but the important thing is that how to recover your love relationship from such disputes and make it happier. Love gives you positive strength in your life thus, you can achieve your goals with the love of your beloved one. Apart from it, couples those are actually facing lost love issues in life and they even cannot survive without their true love they can meet black magic to get your ex back who is renowned in fixing your every love difficulty and make your partner loved you as you want. Our Astrologer Moulana Rafi Ud Din Ji is eminent in such services and he will provide online services for long distance people, so feel free to consult your all kind of worries in love with our experts who give you better results and make your life more easier. There are thousands of love cases which are perfectly solved by our love expert and maximum of them are living a happy life. Astrologer will analyze your weakness in relationship and guide you about the perfect solutions as well as he will mentor you some magical techniques and crafts which could be more successful in recovering your love stress. Do not wait for anything just pick your phone and call them and you may mail us for getting online services of black magic. Our Astrologer provide the astrological services all over the world and deliver you satisfactory results. You will soon get your love within 72 hours because he is master in love problems solutions in quickly manner. Get best consultations by Moulana Ji and make your life blessed with pure astrology.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
P.E.I.'s gas prices plunged 5.5 cents Wednesday night, bringing the price between 83.9 and 85 cents per litre — the cheapest it's been since 2009. The last time the minimum price of regular unleaded gasoline dipped below 84 cents a litre was March 15, 2009, when the prices was between 82.2 and 84.3 cents a litre. Before that price adjustment, on March 1, 2009, the price was between 81.2 and 83.3. According to the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission, the unscheduled drop was due to a decrease in the wholesale price of gas last week. "Demand for gasoline is relatively low," IRAC said in a written statement. "Against this backdrop, gasoline production has been at an all-time high, resulting in historically high inventory levels." In contrast, the highest gas prices seen in that time frame were on May 1, 2014, when prices hit between 141.9 and 143.1. The second highest was on Sept. 1, 2013, at 140.3 to 141.5. This is the first time the price of premium unleaded gas has dipped below 90 cents a litre in 2016. But prices could go even lower on Monday, thanks to IRAC's next scheduled price adjustment.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
In the face of continued media interest, Hibernian Football Club can confirm that Scott Allan has today handed in a written transfer request. This comes on the back of two unwelcome and uninvited approaches from Rangers FC regarding Scott, the first for £175,000 and the second for £225,000. Hibernian FC has refused both bids because the Club has no wish to transfer a valuable player to strengthen a major rival in the battle to win the Championship and gain promotion to the Premiership. Hibernian’s position has not changed. The player will not be sold to Rangers.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
高齢になって心身の活力が落ちた「フレイル」と呼ばれる状態の人が、国内に少なくとも２５０万人はいるとみられることが、日英の研究チームの解析でわかった。フレイルの人は介護を必要とする状態に近いが、栄養や運動の改善などに早めに取り組めば元気を取り戻しやすいといわれる。研究チームは対策につなげて欲しいとしている。フレイルは「虚弱」を意味する英語「ｆｒａｉｌｔｙ（フレイルティー）」からきている。健康と要介護状態の中間的な位置づけで、主に体重の減少や握力の低下といった項目がある米国の基準で判定されてきたが、日本人の実態はよくわかっていなかった。児島剛太郎・ロンドン大客員研究員（老年病学）らが、これまでに発表されたフレイルに関連する約１５００本の論文のうち、６５歳以上の日本人の割合について述べた５本を解析したところ、入院せずに地域で暮らす人の７・４％がフレイルという結果だった。児島さんは「分析した集団は比較的健康な人が多いと推定された。実際には、フレイルの人はもっと多いはず」としている。総務省の人口推計（今年７月）で６５歳以上の人口は３４７７万８千人おり、その中の少なくとも２５０万人が該当するとみられる。欧米人を中心に調べた研究では、フレイルの割合は９・９％。追加調査で日本人を年代別に分析すると、フレイルの割合は６５～７４歳では海外に比べて低く、８０歳以上では高かった。研究チームの一人で、日本老年医学会理事長の楽木宏実・大阪大教授は今回の結果について「国や自治体の担当者がフレイル対策に取り組むための基礎データとして活用してほしい」と話す。フレイルの人が元気を取り戻すためには、肉類も含めてしっかり食べて日常的に運動をするほか、社会活動に積極的に参加することなどがすすめられている。（編集委員・田村建二）	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Last year, the Honda TT Legends crew worked with Britain’s ITV4 television station to produce an eight-part documentary that followed the factory Honda road racing team. Featuring the John McGuinness, Simon Andrews, and Cameron Donald, “TT Legends” follows the team through six races: the Bol d’Or, Le Mans 24 heurs, Suzuka 8-Hour, North West 200, Isle of Man TT, and Oscherselben 8hr. The series was a delight for British racing fans, though sadly wasn’t rebroadcasted for us Yanks — unless you employed less-than-legal means, that is. Well that’s about to change, as Honda Pro Racing will be hosting the series on its YouTube channel, one episode each week, starting on January 12th. It’s a great series, and well worth keeping up with, if you have the time. We’ll bring you each installment here on Asphalt & Rubber, as they become available. Until then, whet your appetite on the trailer. Source: Honda Pro Racing	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
via Dalhousie Survivors of sexual assault at Dalhousie may only have until November 3 to call the university’s helpline. The Dalhousie Student Union says right now it can only offer the sexual assault and harassment phone line service for the first eight weeks of classes after being offered inadequate funding from the university’s administration. Students at Dalhousie started the phone line for survivors of sexual assault last September—a 24-hour service offering support and information for students affected by sexualized or gender-based violence. It began as a pilot project funded primarily through the DSU and community groups. Dalhousie eventually offered $22,500 in funding to see the project through until April. The service was put on hold this summer as the DSU requested a full $60,000 operational costs in funding for the upcoming school year. Rhiannon Makohoniuk, DSU vice president internal, says the group also presented Dal with a bare minimum request of $30,000 to allow the service to continue. Makohoniuk claims the university returned with an offer of $15,000 in new funding. The DSU turned that money down. “If we took the money, it would mean we wouldn’t be able to hold them to account,” she says. “This is something that we really wanted to partner with the university on. This is something that the students and administration should be working together on, and it’s really unfortunate that they decided to underfund and not support this project.” Janet Bryson, senior communications manager at Dalhousie, writes via email that “after reviewing the actuals of the operating costs of the hotline and considering the results of a report of usage and successes/challenges, the university agreed to renew funding at the same level as the previous year (one half of the $45,000 expense to operate), for one more year.” That $22,500 includes $7,500 in funds from the original request last year, and $15,000 offered in new funding. Makohoniuk couldn’t provide figures on how many calls the helpline took last year, but says its importance to Dalhousie isn’t solely measured by those numbers. “It’s measured by training over 100 people on campus in things like active listening and responding to sexualized violence,” she says. “It’s in promoting a culture of consent on campus, and raising consciousness and capacity on campus, for things like combating rape culture and combating sexualized violence.” This news comes at a time where students and faculty are voicing outrage at the university’s choice to foot the $300,000 (US) bill for nine Nova Scotian business figures to participate in a Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in October. The union has chosen to run the phone line on its own for the first eight weeks of the school year, with the help of student levy funds. It will be a “condensed”service, operating from noon until midnight, seven days a week and lasting from September 3 until November 3. This covers what Makohoniuk says is the “the critical eight-week period at the beginning of the school year with the highest incidences of sexual assault on campus.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
On October 11th ESA denied the accusation that the Agency had missed opportunities to place Envisat, the Earth observation satellite, in a disposal orbit instead of using the remaining fuel to continue its mission. Envisat, and its relevance to the topic of space debris, was called to the attention of the International Astronautical Congress held in Naples, Italy during the first week of October, where an International Institute of Space Law (IISL) paper claimed that ESA could be liable if the disabled satellite were to damage an operating satellite. ESA refuted the allegation, saying that “Envisat was planned and designed in 1987–1990, a time when space debris was not considered to be a serious problem and before the existence of mitigation guidelines, established by the UN in 2007 and adopted the next year by ESA for all of its projects.” Envisat is widely seen as a serious collision threat due to its populated orbit and large size. Envisat was equipped with sophisticated instruments and delivered ten years of critical remote sensing data that contributed to environmental and ocean studies. Launched in 2002, the eight-ton and eight meter behemoth of a satellite failed to maintain communications and orientation as of April 2012 as was declared lost in May. The satellite was operating in a sun-synchronous orbit at 780 km altitude and provided a global coverage of the Earth in one to three days. In 2010, ESA maneuvered the observation satellite into a lower and not so crowded orbit at 768 km, which allowed Envisat to continue its observation. The fact that ESA extended the operational lifetime and did not put more effort into reserving fuel to prevent Envisat from becoming space debris in polar low earth orbit has been reviewed and was criticized in the legal sessions in Naples. ESA reminds the community that Envisat was not designed to lower its orbit to an altitude of 600 km, an altitude that would enable the spacecraft to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere within 25 years. Since the UN principles on space debris mitigation were adopted in 2007 ESA launched the 2011 ERS-2 satellite into an orbit of approximately 570 km which allows for a controlled re-entry of this spacecraft within the 25 year limit. The atmosphere at that altitude creates a drag force which slows the spacecraft until its altitude is lowered to the point that it must re-enter. The altitude optimal for such a maneuver depends on a variety of factors. ESA restated that it contributes to and supports international cooperation in the monitoring of space debris in aftermath of the criticism. For future satellite missions, ESA is investigating new technologies and designs to deorbit debris in a controlled manner. Below, a retrospective of Envisat’s mission:	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Data retention ruling is not an invitation to governments The Pirate Party renews its calls for the Government to abandon the pursuit of mandatory data retention following comments from the Attorney-General that data retention is under “active consideration”[1]. The Attorney-General also stated that data retention is “the way western nations are going.” Pirate Party President Simon Frew commented: “What the Attorney-General has essentially said here is that everyone else is doing it, therefore Australia should too. This is abysmal reasoning in light of the thorough criticism provided by the Court of Justice of the European Union earlier this year, in a judgment that overturned the EU’s Data Retention Directive. The Court overturned the Directive precisely because it violated fundamental rights. That was not an invitation for law makers to find a different way of implementing a similar regime. The failure of the Data Retention Directive should serve to deter governments from implementing mandatory data retention: that level of indiscriminate intrusion into people’s privacy is unacceptable. “The Attorney-General has also stated that privacy intrusions for the purposes of law enforcement should not be disproportionate[2]. We put it to the Attorney-General that data retention is disproportionate. How on earth could it be considered proportionate to store all information about who is contacting who, when they are speaking, for how long, and where they are? A society under constant surveillance is not an appropriate goal. “The Government and its various agencies continue to draw a false distinction between so-called “metadata” and “content” to reassure people that the content of their communications remains private. Content is useless without knowing who sent it and who received it. On the other hand, knowing who is talking to who allows the Government to map out complex webs of relationships. Locational data allows them to track patterns of movement. We shouldn’t kid ourselves about who is accessing this data either: current requests for stored data are not limited to police forces and intelligence organisations. Access to stored metadata is provided to a myriad of Government agencies, including the Taxation Office, the Department of Human Services, the former Department of Immigration and Citizenship, and even local councils[3]. And they are doing this now without obtaining a warrant. These agencies, but in particular law enforcement and intelligence, now want that data to be stored by telecommunications providers for a minimum of two years. “We also put it to the Attorney-General that his role, and the role of his department, is not to act as a lobby group within government for the benefit of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The Attorney-General’s Department exists to regulate these agencies and ensure that their powers do not exceed what is genuinely necessary for the prevention of crime. We have seen too frequently in recent years the Attorney-General, whoever they are at the time, stand up in Parliament as a mouthpiece for the very agencies they are meant to regulate. “As stated: the ruling of the Court of Justice should serve to outline the limits of appropriate privacy intrusion. Giving ASIO, the AFP, and other agencies this power in Australia is entirely disproportionate, and the Attorney-General should not be advocating this course of action on their behalf.” [1] http://www.zdnet.com/au/data-retention-is-the-way-western-nations-are-going-brandis-7000031658/ [2] http://www.zdnet.com/au/australian-govt-says-data-retention-wont-be-like-failed-eu-directive-7000031537/ [3] http://www.ag.gov.au/NationalSecurity/TelecommunicationsSurveillance/Documents/TSLB-GAPSTIAActAnnualReport2012-13.pdf	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
En Sinaloa tiene hambre el que es flojo, dice el gobernador Mario López En Sinaloa “tiene hambre el que es flojo”, dijo el gobernador Mario López Valdez, ya que en el estado “el que se va al mar agarra un pescadito, el que se mete a una parcela agarra un elote, el que se mete a una huerta agarra un mango o una guayaba o agarra una rama y se prepara un quelite”, por lo que las mediciones del INEGI, según su opinión, no reflejan la situación real de la pobreza.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
The Pokémon Company has evolved the mobile gaming economy. Pokémon Go, the Google Maps location game where players catch pocket monsters by walking around the real world, is making $10 million in revenues daily from iOS and Google Play worldwide, according to intelligence firm App Annie. Analyst Sameer Singh, who tracks the App Store and Google Play, called this an “unprecedented success” in the $36.9 billion mobile gaming industry. For reference, Puzzle & Dragons — a highly successful puzzle game in Japan — shocked the industry by generating $3.75 million every day in 2013. And Supercell, the developer of Clash of Clans and Boom Beach, made around $6.3 million every day last year from all three of its games combined. Singh also pointed out that Pikachu isn’t stealing away that market from other apps. Instead, it is bringing in new spending that never existed before. “Interestingly, it appears that Pokémon Go’s impact has been largely additive to the app economy,” Singh wrote. “According to data from App Annie Intelligence, Pokémon Go has not had a sustained and meaningful impact on the daily revenue of other games on iOS and Google Play. Daily revenue for Games other than Pokémon Go did see a brief dip in the U.S. shortly after the game’s launch, but quickly climbed back to previous levels in a few days.” Image Credit: App Annie App Annie’s data claims that Mobile Strike, Clash of Clans, and Candy Crush Saga have not seen significant declines in their daily revenues. “On the whole, this isn’t particularly surprising as the majority of game revenue comes from a small minority of users,” wrote Singh. “And these players are unlikely to be deeply engaged across a multitude of top-grossing games.” Finally, Singh points out that developers can learn a couple of lessons from Pokémon Go phenomenon. The app uses smartphone cameras to put digital creatures into the real world using an offshoot of virtual reality called augmented reality. App Annie claims that these creatures have popularized this tech, and that opens up new opportunities. Additionally, businesses are seeing the potential of AR games. Restaurants and more are all looking for ways to get Pokémon Go-player foot traffic, and that has them spending money on certain in-game items and begging to buy sponsorships from The Pokémon Company. While developers may try to rush into the AR space and fail because they don’t have Pikachu and Mewtwo, Pokémon Go has proven the value of putting a digital world on top of our real one. And someone else is likely going to figure out a way to capitalize on that as well.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Police are responding to an active shooter situation and bomb threat at a children’s hospital in Miami, Florida. No injuries have been reported, and the hospital later said that the report of a shooting was a false alarm. Officers from the Miami-Dade Police Department blocked off at least one entrance to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital on Friday, responding to a bomb threat and an active shooter situation on the premises. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue confirmed bomb threat and active shooter situation at Nicklaus Children's Hospital was reported. No injuries so far. — Victor Oquendo (@VictorLocal10) July 8, 2016 Police arrived at the hospital around 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. No injuries have been reported so far. #BREAKING Bomb threat reported at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami https://t.co/3GLTb2TrnUpic.twitter.com/d6n0KA0Oq3 — WPLG Local 10 News (@WPLGLocal10) July 8, 2016 Law enforcement rerouted local traffic away from the scene. Police sources tell NBC 6 they are heading to West Miami and Children's Hospital to a call of an active shooter or bomb threat. @nbc6 — Willard Shepard (@WillardNBC6) July 8, 2016 There's a gunmen in Miami Children's and my aunt is there — A (@lyssaDiazz) July 8, 2016 She's locked in a room with a cop and she's still there waiting for the shots to end — A (@lyssaDiazz) July 8, 2016 The hospital later said that no shooting occurred on campus, WPLG reported. The premises was partially evacuated as law enforcement searched the campus. Miami-Dade police are calling the response a precautionary measure. Miami-Dade police told RT that they are investigating the reports, but would not give any further details. The hospital could not respond to request for comments. Nicklaus Children’s Hospital is South Florida’s only hospital exclusively for children, and has a staff of more than 650 physicians and over 130 pediatric specialists.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A short informative review of the LOVR project, focused on the team, technology and token analytics. All information is valid on April 18, 2018. Webpage “Latest news” section contains articles on Medium written by LOVR: In the “As seen on” section only ICObench rating at the top and ICO buffer icon leads to the rating page, the rest leads to LOVR homepage. Pop up window with sold LVR is a random javascript generator. Community (as of April 18, 2018) ~3,150 members on Telegram ~9,000 followers on Twitter ~1,000 followers on Facebook Bounty program. Technical solution There’s an MVP in the form of the Booking web portal. MVP is not connected to the Ethereum blockchain. Special Ethereum token used only for discreet services, every transaction will be visible on the blockchain and have a discreet purpose. Token running on Ethereum network will always compete with other dApps for transaction processing, that might lead to delay or increased costs of transactions. GitHub activity https://github.com/lovrnetwork LVR Token Contract is in GitHub. LVR Token Contract is not deployed (deployment planned latest on May 1, 2018). ICO Smart Contract not available. ICO metrics LVR token; base token price: 0,15 €; 550,000,000 tokens for sale; $55,000,000 ICO hard cap. Pre-sale ETH contribution address: 0xf5EB0d61AE3e2F97B7D23b61d7B7480584CEb65c (personal address, not a smart contract). Pre-sale BTC contribution address: 17wxnKxaqnTX1SgKyGEsiHaXdqPg2U6CFF Pre-sale: token price: unclear ~0,1 € (50% bonus according to the whitepaper / 40% bonus according to the website) minimum investment: 100 € token distribution: latest May 1, 2018 March 1, 2018 - May 31, 2018 Main sale: 1st phase: 0,115 € (30% bonus); July 1, 2018 - July 30, 2018 (what about July 31?) 2nd phase: 0,125 € (20% bonus); August 1, 2018 - August 31, 2018 3rd phase: 0,136 € (10% bonus); September 1, 2018 - September 20, 2018 Additional KISS token will be created: token used for voting or advertisement Generated weekly based on optional LVR lockup: 1, 3, 6 or 12 months lockup (or 2 weeks, 1, 3 or 6 months, it is not clear from the whitepaper) equals 0.25%, 0.3%, 0.5% or 1% of locked tokens. 1 KISS = $1 for advertisement Information above is unconfirmed due to missing Token Smart Contract and ICO Smart Contract. Team (based on LinkedIn profiles) There’re different team members on the webpage and in the whitepaper; their positions are also different. Website information is taken for this analysis. Robin C. Attig (CEO / CTO) LinkedIn link leads to unavailable profile. joined LOVR in September 2018 Currently active also as an IT Consultant in Bluecarat AG and IT Consultant in IT Consulting Robin Attig. prev. experience: Entrepreneur, Software Engineer Hannah Smith (Head of Design) joined LOVR in January 2018 Currently active also as an Advisor for Conduent, Owner/Curator/Product Purchaser in Stitches and Stones Boutique, Graphic and Web Designer in measureANDscale prev. experience: Bar Manager, Bartender, Graphic and Web Designer, Event Coordinator, PR Consult Kai Lüdecke (Head of Marketing) No link to LinkedIn profile — unconfirmed. Johannes Schönborn (IT Security Specialist) No entry regarding LOVR in LinkedIn profile — unconfirmed. Artur Stöber (Backend Developer) Empty LinkedIn profile — unconfirmed. Zeus Stavrou (UX Designer) No entry regarding LOVR in LinkedIn profile — unconfirmed. Advisory board Dimitri Werner LinkedIn link doesn’t lead to LinkedIn. No link to LinkedIn profile found— unconfirmed. Chris Grey No link to LinkedIn profile — unconfirmed. Davit Svanidze Link leads to unsecured webpage. No link to LinkedIn profile, no entry regarding LOVR in LinkedIn profile — unconfirmed. Marco Wolff No link to LinkedIn profile. No entry regarding LOVR in Xing profile — unconfirmed. Dominik Strzoda No link to LinkedIn profile. No entry regarding LOVR in LinkedIn profile — unconfirmed. Menderez R. Opielka Link leads to LinkedIn profile of “Adam Greetis” Untraceable person or company — unconfirmed. Missing information How will the users get Ether in the LOVR wallet for settling transaction fees (gas) on the Ethereum network? Given that LOVR wants to create its own wallet, how will the users define how much gas should be used for their transaction? Higher amount of gas means that the transaction will be processed by the Ethereum network with a higher priority; it’s important when there’s a high load on the Ethereum network. What will happen with unsold tokens? How will the platform handle disputes when customer pays for the service but doesn’t receive it? Who are the key partners for closed alpha? Disclaimer: The above is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
IF you’re looking to travel on the cheap then public transport could be the way to go. Transdev bus drivers are set to offer fare-free rides on the Transperth services it is contracted to operate from Wednesday until Friday, with the fight over EBA negotiations kicking up a level. As part of the industrial action, drivers won’t accept cash fares or enforce tagging on. Operating under contract with the State Government, Transdev supplies drivers to run general Transperth bus services in the Fremantle, Rockingham, Mandurah and Joondalup regions Drivers walked off the job earlier this month, deciding to act after their calls for an annual three per cent pay rise, a one per cent boost to superannuation, an extra week of annual leave and secure job pathways went unanswered. Transport Workers Union WA branch secretary Tim Dawson said their latest move was about ensuring Transdev drivers were on an equal footing with other contractors operating Transperth bus services. “Our message to the public who catch a Transdev bus is to make the most of fare free days; Wednesday, Thursday and Friday,” he said. “Fare-free days mean our drivers will not take cash fares and will not enforce tagging on when people catch the bus. “This fight will continue until Transdev and the Puplic Transport Authority are reasonable and give our drivers a fair go.” Transdev managing director Ben Smith said said only about a quarter of its 1000 drivers had taken part in industrial action so far and warned not all will be offering fare-free journeys over the coming three days. “It’s disappointing the TWU is continuing to put its energy into industrial action rather than on finalising a new enterprise agreement for our drivers,” he said. “We are calling on the TWU to commit to further talks at the Fair Work Commission to resolve the outstanding issues as quickly as possible and with as little impact and cost to the community.” The TWU said fare-free days would likely continue next week between Wednesday and Friday. In a newsletter to Transperth passengers the PTA said most would be expected to pay a fare when travelling. “The majority of bus services as well as train services are unaffected so passengers should purchase a cash ticket or tag on as normal on these services,” the authority said. “Primary and secondary students are reminded that access to the 70 cent student fare is only available by tagging on to the SmartRider system. “If paying cash, students must purchase the appropriate zonal concession ticket, as well as provide their SmartRider card as proof of concession.” The following routes may be affected: Northern Suburbs Routes 352, 354, 365, 370, 372, 384, 385, 386, 389, 390, 391, 450, 460, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471, 473, 474, 480, 481, 482, 483, 484, 490, 491 and 970. Southern Suburbs Routes 111, 114, 115, 148, 150, 158, 160, 500, 501, 502, 503, 504, 505, 510, 511, 512, 513, 514, 520, 522, 525, 526, 530, 531, 532, 534, 535, 536, 540, 541, 542, 543, 548, 549, 550, 551, 552, 553, 554, 555, 556, 557, 558, 559, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 565, 566, 567, 568, 584, 586, 587, 588, 589, 591, 592, 593, 594, 597, 598, 600, 604, 605 and 910.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Uma pesquisa de opinião feita pelo Instituto Paraná Pesquisas, por encomenda do jornal O Dia, revelou números preocupantes para as escolas de samba. Segundo o levantamento, 78,5% dos ouvidos, cidadãos do Rio de Janeiro, concordam com o corte da verba da Prefeitura para as agremiações; outros 19,8% discordam e 2,7% não sabem ou não souberam opinar. Mais: Chaves e Chapolin viram enredo no Carnaval de São Paulo Com a marca de Paulo Barros, enredo da Vila se inspira em “De volta para o futuro” A pesquisa ouviu 1.020 pessoas, todas habitantes do Rio de Janeiro, com idade a partir de 16 anos, entre os dias 17 e 20 junho, com grau de confiança, segundo o instituto responsável, de 95% e margem de erro de 3%. Questionados sobre eventuais perdas para o Rio caso os desfiles não aconteçam, 65,9% dos entrevistados acreditam que a cidade não perde muito. A Liesa já anunciou que as apresentações de 2018 estão suspensas até que as partes cheguem a um acordo, e tenta, sem sucesso, um encontro com o prefeito Marcelo Crivella. Já 62,2% acham que as escolas devem buscar ajuda somente na iniciativa privada, contra 34,3% que defendem a permanência de alguma subvenção. Leia também sobre o corte da verba: Vereador diz que Carnaval é culto a orixás com dinheiro público e fonte de lucro para tráfico e prostituição Carnaval SP: Doria sinaliza redução de verba da prefeitura, mas garante recursos Site fala em ‘profecia’ feita por cantora gospel: ‘Carnaval vai falir’ Alcione: ‘nesse país os caras roubam na Petrobras e a culpa é do samba’ Secretário de Crivella sugere corte de 100% da verba para escolas e critica Paes Veja algumas perguntas feitas pela pesquisa e os resultados: Concorda ou discorda do corte de 50% da verba da Prefeitura para as escolas de samba? Concorda: 78,5% Discorda: 18,8% Não sabe/não opinou: 2,7% O corte vai impossibilitar os desfiles? Não: 74,1% Sim: 21,4% Não sabe/não opinou: 4,5% Se não tiver desfile, a cidade perde muito? Não: 65,9% Sim: 31,5% Não sabe/não opinou: 2,6% Concorda ou discorda do remanejamento da verba para as creches? Concorda: 78,2% Discorda: 18,4% Não sabe/não opinou: 3,4% Prefeitura deve continuar ajudando as escolas ou estas devem buscar recursos na iniciativa privada? Devem apenas buscar recursos privados: 62,2% Devem receber recursos públicos: 34,3% Não sabe/não opinou: 3,5% Entenda o caso Crivella anunciou que pretende cortar em 50% a verba destinada às escolas de samba para investir em creches. O valor em 2017 foi de R$ 24 milhões, sendo R$ 2 milhões para cada agremiação. Como em 2018 serão 13 escolas no Grupo Especial, a expectativa era que o montante chegasse a R$ 26 milhões. Mas, conforme a Riotur (Empresa Municipal de Turismo do Rio de Janeiro), responsável por organizar a festa, já confirmou, o valor ficará mesmo em R$ 13 milhões. A Liesa (Liga Independente das Escolas de Samba) anunciou que, sem os R$ 13 milhões, os desfiles ficam inviáveis em 2018, e decidiu suspender as apresentações até que as partes cheguem a um acordo. A entidade espera conseguir um encontro com o prefeito, algo que vem tentando há meses, sem sucesso. A Riotur disse, em nota, que o Carnaval está garantido e afirmou que vai buscar na iniciativa provada os recursos para as escolas. Mas confirma que as creches são prioridade. Em resposta, sambistas realizaram um protesto. O grupo se concentrou em frente ao edifício administrativo da prefeitura, na Cidade Nova, e caminhou até a Marquês de Sapucaí. O prefeito de Duque de Caxias, Washington Reis, se prontificou a ajudar e ofereceu levar os desfiles para a cidade da Baixada Fluminense. “A festa traz receita, movimenta a economia. Tem dinheiro para tudo. Se puder levar a Sapucaí para Caxias, eu banco. Vai dar lucro, traz turistas, é importante para a cidade”, disse Reis ao jornal Extra.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
In the last few years, it has become standard practice for NBA franchises to bestow gifts upon their season ticket holders. The era of one-to-one transactions of money for tickets is long gone. Teams now show their appreciation with keepsakes, doodads, and whatsits, small tokens of gratitude for people who spend their hard-earned money to support a team that's usually not a title contender. Typically, these items are pretty unimpressive: a miniature basketball, a bag, a thermos, a mousepad, etc. The Utah Jazz, though, have gone above and beyond expectations with their latest gift. From the team's official statement (via The Salt Lake Tribune's Jazz blog): We are recognizing and thanking our current season ticket holders by offering them an exclusive Utah Jazz waffle iron. The gift is available to season ticket holders only and will be distributed Saturday, Feb. 23 from 1 a.m.-1 p.m. in the Fan Relations office at ESA. For those unable to attend, the gift will be held in their name for later pickup. The organization has provided annual thank-you gifts to season tickets holders, including autographed jerseys, framed photos and other collectibles in past years. The waffle iron that makes an imprint of the Utah Jazz logo is a unique and creative gift and encourages our fans to "have breakfast and start their day with us." The fine folks behind @Utah_JazzNation scored an image of the waffle iron, and it's a beauty: I cannot support this idea enough. If I had my druthers, I would eat breakfast for every meal, and waffles would be a big part of that experience. With this waffle iron, Jazz fans can now infuse their days with basketball, bringing the joy of players like Gordon Hayward and Al Jefferson to their morning routine. It's an experience none should pass up. It bears mentioning that the NBA has ventured in the world of logo-burning breakfast appliances before with top-loading toasters that char an image into the center of a piece of bread. Unfortunately, top-loading toasters are perhaps the most useless kitchen appliances. (A friend who's a Warriors season ticket holder claims that he was once given a logo branding iron to be used specifically for hamburgers, but I think he is lying to me, because that product can't be real.) We can only hope that the Jazz's decision to embrace breakfast products catches on. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that the Memphis Grizzlies haven't packaged their own brand of hominy. Grits and Grind! NBA video from Yahoo! Sports: Other popular content on Yahoo! Sports: • Watch: Chase surprises to expect in 2013 • Alfonso Soriano waits on rebuilding Cubs • Quarterbacks won’t star at NFL combine or draft • Obama on golfing with Tiger Woods: ‘He’s on another planet’	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
While Israel fears a new Holocaust from a nuclear armed Iran , President Barack Obama seems to only be worried about a preemptive attack on Iran or the talk of war raising oil prices and thereby harming the US economy and his re-election campaign. Despite his reassurances at the AIPAC conference that he “won’t hesitate to use force to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” he is in fact bluffing to woo Jewish voters and stop an Israeli unilateral attack on Iran. Less than two days after his AIPAC campaign speech, he already backtracked from his commitment. When asked what he meant by his comments that “we have Israel’s back,” the president answered that “it was not a military doctrine that we were laying out for any particular military action.” Israel should realize by now that Obama will never attack Iran or support an Israeli attack before the elections because a war in the oil-rich region would send gasoline prices even higher than they are now, exacerbating the economic situation and hurting his chance for reelection. The price of gasoline has been rising daily in the past month, averaging $3.79 a gallon. Since 1976, there has been a correlation between rising oil prices and falling presidential approval ratings in the US. Jimmy Carter lost the presidency when gas averaged $3.37 per gallon when adjusted to the current value of the dollar. Although Obama has been taking credit for the “crippling” sanctions against Iran and asking the Israelis to wait a few months to allow them to take effect, he has in fact tried to weaken the sanctions. In December 2011, the Kirk-Menendez amendment passed by a rare 100-0 vote in the Senate directed the Administration to take punitive measures against foreign entities that do business with Iran. However, the Administration tried to pressure top ranking Democrats, thankfully to no avail, to delay the implementation of the sanctions by a few months, arguing that the amendment could raise oil prices and hurt the US economy. Israel alone in this fight? Moreover, Obama failed to begin enforcement of the sanctions on February 29 as the law intended. The nightmare scenario for the president would be the revelation, in the midst of economic recovery, would be an Iranian nuclear breakthrough in the next eight months, forcing him to either act or back down and then be judged by the voters. The only scenario under which Obama will attack Iran is if he believes he has a chance of losing the election because the economy deteriorates, unemployment rises and the chosen Republican presidential candidate is gaining in popularity. If re-elected, President Obama, in his second term, will not attack Iran even as a last resort. Not needing Jewish votes or reelection and true to his ideology of appeasement, he will re-adopt his “containment policy” of useless diplomacy, eventually leading to a nuclear Iran. By then, the Middle East will be an explosive powder keg, waiting for the Iranian trigger. Israel‘s only deterrence option to stop Iran from attacking would be the threat of retaliation through total annihilation using the Jewish state’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Watching Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s AIPAC speech , it seems clear that he realized after talking to Obama that Israel is alone in this fight. Israel’s only remaining hope is that Obama will lose the election and be replaced by the Republicans. The only time when the extremist Iranian leadership decided to suspend its nuclear program was 2003, after the US invaded Iraq, because Tehran truly believed a Republican president‘s warnings that it will be attacked next. Shoula Romano Horing was born and raised in Israel. She is an attorney in Kansas City and a national speaker. Her blog: www.shoularomanohoring.com	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Amazon’s Fire Phone went on sale July 25 for $199 on-contract or $649 at full retail. The device hasn’t even been available for a full two months yet the company announced today that it has discounted the 32GB model to $0.99 on-contract and $449 at full retail. Reports of the device being a flop circulated almost immediately after it became available, something that didn’t surprise us at all. The device is filled with decent-but-not-high-end specs in many areas and is basically a hand-held Amazon store with a few gimmicky features. In fact, the best part of the Fire Phone is arguably the free year of Prime you get when purchasing one. At least it went a month and a half before Amazon and AT&T threw in the towel. The HTC First aka “Facebook phone” didn’t even make it a month before its price was cut to a dollar. Amazon Link Via: Amazon	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
This is Part Four in the series on the upcoming referendum and the voting systems we can choose. To recap briefly, the referendum this fall will offer us a choice between staying with our current system of voting, usually called First-Past-the-Post (FPTP), or moving to a system of Proportional Representation. People who want to move to Proportional Representation criticize FPTP because it so often results in a party gaining a majority of the seats in the Legislature with a minority of the votes. (People who want to stay with FPTP like it for that very reason – if they think “their” party is likely to be the one holding all the power based on a minority of the votes.) The ballot this fall will ask two questions: the first will be which system voters would like to use in future – FPTP, or a Proportional Representation (ProRep) system. The second question will be, if we do move to a system of ProRep, which of three choices voters prefer. Voters are not required to answer both questions. This series is intended to help people understand the differences between the three systems of ProRep that will be on offer. The three systems will be: · Dual Member Proportional (described in Part Two), · Mixed Member Proportional (described in Part Three), and · Rural-Urban PR (described in this part. Please read on!) Rural-Urban Proportional Representation seeks to use two different systems: Single Transferable Vote (STV) for the geographically smaller but more densely populated urban and semi-urban electoral districts that would elect more than one member -- up to seven MLAs for a district -- and Mixed Member Proportional for the larger, more sparsely populated rural districts, with one seat per district elected by FPTP, with some top-up “list” seats to achieve proportionality regionally. STV was the system recommended for BC by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform before the previous referendum. It has a ballot that is simple to fill out – on which voters rank the candidates – but the ballot-counting process is more complex and involves a calculation of the “Droop quota” which is recommended for this system. On the ballot, candidates would be grouped by party, in random order within the party grouping, and the parties would be listed in random order. Under STV, the total number of valid ballots cast is first counted, then the number of first-choice votes required to elect a candidate is calculated. When a candidate gets that number of first-choice votes, that candidate is declared elected. What gives me pause about the STV system and its “Droop quota” is this line in the Wikipedia explanation: “The Droop quota does not absolutely guarantee that a party with the support of a solid majority of voters will not receive a minority of seats.” Since I’d like representation in the Legislature to reflect the total votes received, that line troubles me. The proposed STV system for the urban districts would distribute “surplus” votes using the Weighted Inclusive Gregory system, and, dear readers, I have perused a number of on-line explanations of this system to find one that is relatively easy to understand by non-electoral system experts. What I could gather is that it provides a more accurate method for translating voters’ rankings into representation than some of the earlier methods for counting and transferring votes to second-choice candidates. What gives me pause about this dual-system proposal is the admission in the Attorney General’s Report and Recommendations that rural areas would have less proportional results than the urban areas. On the other hand, with Rural-Urban PR the rural areas would have a simple ballot, and could vote directly for their local MLA, and could possibly also vote directly for the “top-up” candidates by way of open lists which enable voters to choose candidates from those lists, rather than the parties’ ranking taking precedence. But then, that’s also true of the other ProRep systems. The total number of MLAs in the province would, as with all the methods proposed, be between 87 and 95. For the urban STV districts, voters would be required to mark their first choice on the ballot, but would not be required to rank second or third (or more) choices if they prefer not to. For the rural MMP districts, there would be no need for the 5%-of-the-vote threshold, because the relatively small number of top-up or “list” seats means that the effective threshold would be higher than 5%. If this Rural-Urban PR system is chosen by the voters, then the Electoral Boundaries Commission will have to decide on the number and the boundaries of the STV districts, and the number and boundaries of the MMP districts, and to define the rural regions used to allocate list seats to achieve proportionality. For those who would like to look through the Attorney-General’s Report and Recommendations, which is a clear and readable document, here’s a convenient link: https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/271/2018/05/How-We-Vote-2018-Electoral-Reform-Referendum-Report-and-Recommendations-of-the-Attorney-General.pdf To sum up, in my view the Rural-Urban PR system has the advantage of treating the urban and rural areas differently – and they are different; and it has the disadvantages of potentially less proportionality for the rural areas, and a very complex method for counting voters’ choices on the ranked ballots for the urban areas. In Part Five, we’ll look at a summary of the differences between FPTP and the ProRep systems, and a summary of the three ProRep systems that will be on the referendum ballot this fall – what they all have in common, and how they differ from each other.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick didn’t have to say a word to gently chastise Fox Sport’s Erin Andrews for doubting his team. After the 49ers’ 28-17 season opening win over the Dallas Cowboys, Andrews was greeted by a smiling Kaepernick in the postgame. “I’ve still got beef from the preseason,” he tells her. Andrews, as she admits, was one of the (many) people who criticized the 49ers’ sluggish offensive showing in the preseason. But, at least on this day, Kap got the last laugh. He went 16-for-23 with 201 yards and 2 touchdowns. You can see the full interaction in the video above.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
[UPDATE: Some may note we upped our list from 10 entries to 11. While we can't include every single notable fight scene from 2015, we realized we had overlooked a cool Arrow sequence from a recent episode that we'd initially meant to include. Let us know your favorite TV fight scenes of the year in the comments! Marvel's Agents of SHIELD: Skye/Daisy vs. HYDRA Arrow: Speedy vs. Andrew Diggle Supergirl: Supergirl vs. General Astra The Flash: Flash vs. Zoom Marvel's Daredevil: Matt vs. Nobu Holy cow, 2015 was no slouch in the action department! The Era of "Peak TV" meant more superhero shows, more kung fu, and more overall badassery for your viewing pleasure. Marvel gave us a gritty and complex Daredevil series filled with amazing stunts, AMC went full wire-work choreography with Into the Badlands, Jon Snow faced down a vicious White Walker, Will Graham and Dr. Lecter teamed up to take down a monster, and - well - so much more!Here's a look back at the year's best TV slugfests, swordfests, gun fights, and basic brutal brawling. Beware! Some of these videos are NSFW and full of extreme gore (looking at you, Banshee!) so check 'em out with caution.We'll start off simple(ish) here, with Skye's epic takedown of a room full of HYDRA agents - back before she began calling herself Daisy Johnson all the time. Not so much a true back and forth fight as much as a well-choreographed killshot scene, this sequence from the tail end of Agents of SHIELD's second season expertly showcased the young agent's new lethal skill set.Another long-take, another demonstration of a pupil's rise through the ranks of badassdom. Here, Thea Queen, in Speedy gear, takes on a masked Andrew Diggle in a fun, ferocious fight that extends into an elevator and beyond. A nice bit of cool choreography from the first half of Arrow: Season 4.Kara Zor-El's first encounter with her evil Aunt/Mommelganger Astra was quite the super-powered throw down. Two Kryptonians going toe-to-toe, fist-to-fist, and Kara having to learn from her training to use a stronger opponent's force against them.Unlike Supergirl, The Flash was not so lucky during his first meeting with the alternate reality speedster Zoom. Barry tried just about every trick he'd learned during the first season to take down the evil Earth-Two menace and BOY did it backfire. Zoom broke Barry's back and then rag-dolled him all across town like twisted trophy.Here's a formidable blind, super-enhanced martial artist... mostly getting his ass whooped. Though barely eking a win, Matt Murdock (simply the "Devil of Hell's Kitchen" at this point) managed to overcome expert Hand operative Nobu in one of 2015's coolest, cringe-worthy battles. Yes, another notable Daredevil fight scene became more famous this year (more on that later), but we didn't want you to forget this one. Hannibal, Jessica Jones, Game of Thrones and more on Page 2...	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
I support research-based initiatives shown to improve success rates. I'm not personally bothered that some sections of the course at Moraine Valley are available only to black students. However, I'd have to learn more about the course to find out how a class with only African-American students is able "to develop an appreciation for diversity," as the course description states.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
James Martin/CNET Apple may be getting into semiconductors in an even bigger way. The company may make its own iPhone power management chips as soon as 2018, according to a report from Nikkei. Currently, Apple relies on supplier Dialog Semiconductor for those processors, which are important for making sure an iPhone charges correctly and doesn't consume too much energy. One of Nikkei's unnamed sources said Apple could replace about half of its chips next year, while another source said the change could be delayed to 2019. The potential processors from Apple "would be the most advanced in the industry," the publication said, and would give Apple devices better performance while consuming less power. Power management chips are one of the priciest components after the main application processors that act as the brains of a device, modems and memory chips, the publication said. Apple already makes its own application processor, but it relies on suppliers like Qualcomm and Intel for its modems and Samsung for its memory chips. Shares of Dialog, which derives the majority of its revenue from Apple, tumbled 18 percent to €30.46 in Europe after the report. Dialog said in a statement that "the level of visibility into the design cycle of our leading customers remains unchanged, and the business relationships are in line with the normal course of business." Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Apple, which has designed the brains for its iPhones and iPads for years, has made moves to make even more of its components on its own. The Apple-designed W1 Bluetooth chip pairs its AirPods to an iPhone, while the A11 Bionic processor boosts the iPhone's artificial intelligence capabilities. Apple is believed to be working on a chip for Mac laptops that would take on the functionality handled now by Intel chips. And it's also reportedly working on its own graphics processors. The move to make more chips on its own reduces Apple's reliance on suppliers and helps it control costs. By designing its own processors, Apple also has more say over features and can set its own timeline. And it can find ways to further differentiate itself from other smartphone makers. Samsung and Huawei are two other companies who design their own chips, as well as their phones. Update at 3:15 p.m. PT with Dialog comment. The Smartest Stuff: Innovators are thinking up new ways to make you, and the things around you, smarter. iHate: CNET looks at how intolerance is taking over the internet.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Annette Funicello, who won America’s heart as a 12-year-old in Mickey Mouse ears, captivated adolescent baby boomers in slightly spicy beach movies and later championed people with multiple sclerosis, a disease she had for more than 25 years, died on Monday in Bakersfield, Calif. She was 70. Her death, from complications of the disease, was announced on the Disney Web site. As an adult Ms. Funicello described herself as “the queen of teen,” and millions around her age agreed. Young audiences appreciated her sweet, forthright appeal, and parents saw her as the perfect daughter. She was the last of the 24 original Mouseketeers chosen for “The Mickey Mouse Club,” the immensely popular children’s television show that began in 1955, when fewer than two-thirds of households had television sets. Walt Disney personally discovered her at a ballet performance. Before long, she was getting more than 6,000 fan letters a week, and was known by just her first name in a manner that later defined celebrities like Cher, Madonna and Prince.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Ciudadanos nos engañó, no en cualquier mamarrachada, sino en crueles crímenes de guerra. Afirmó en diciembre del año 2015 que no se opondría a juzgar a Aznar por crímenes de guerra, pero ha cambiado muy rápido de opinión, pues el pasado 3 de noviembre votó junto al Partido Popular en contra de algo mucho menor que un juicio: una investigación del Congreso de los Diputados. Una posición, a todas luces, contra la justicia, la transparencia y la verdad. La propuesta de Joan Tardá y Esquerra Republicana, muy acertada, pretendía crear una comisión de evaluación independiente sobre los aspectos políticos, militares, comerciales y de cooperación. En esencia, lo único que se perseguía con esta investigación era conseguir algo parecido al 'Informe Chilcot' sobre la participación del Reino Unido en la guerra de Irak. Un informe que certifique, de una vez por todas y de forma más o menos oficial, lo que sabemos hace mucho, que José María Aznar es un mentiroso y un criminal de guerra. Pero España no da para ni para justicia política. La primera mutilación provino del infame PSOE. Siempre el PSOE. De comisión de evaluación independiente se pasó a un informe elaborado por el propio Gobierno. Algo así como pedirle a un asesino que detalle su propio crimen. Así está el PSOE y su estándar de decencia, ambos olvidados en el almacén de los sacos de cal. La segunda, y definitiva, ha sido ejecutada por Ciudadanos al votar junto al PP en contra de la ya tullida propuesta. Ni cercenada le valió a Ciudadanos. Por lo visto, la España de la moderación, los hombres de talante y las personalidades de Estado quiere pasar a la historia como cómplice de una gran mentira que se ha llevado por delante la vida de millones de personas. Poco les importa que en Irak, Afganistán y Pakistán hayan muerto cuatro millones de personas en los últimos 25 años, una masacre equiparable a otros episodios negros de la historia, y que España haya sido partícipe de ello. Ni que decir tiene que los grandes medios de comunicación guardaron un infame silencio al respecto, ellos son más de retransmitir en directo la guerra y aumentar las audiencias con ello. La verdad, si acaso, para otro momento. Ciudadanos tiene un enorme compromiso adquirido en los mítines electorales y más le valdría cumplirlo si no quiere desaparecer antes de lo previsto. UPyD lo cumplió, y aun así murió, aunque será recordado por su enorme contribución a la lucha contra la corrupción, entre otras muchas aportaciones. Sin embargo, si Ciudadanos se mantiene en el incumplimiento sistemático y en la genuflexión al Régimen (ya sea PP o PSOE), muy probablemente, ni siquiera goce del recuerdo. Mientras tanto, Aznar, sigue esquivando a la justicia al tiempo que imparte lecciones magistrales y espléndidos análisis, aunque sería conveniente que no olvidase que el tiempo le condenará como criminal de guerra por mucho que hoy le proteja la indecencia de PP, PSOE y Ciudadanos. Luis Gonzalo Segura, exteniente del Ejército de Tierra. En la actualidad sobrevivo gracias a las ventas de Código rojo, ¡CONSÍGUELA AQUÍ FIRMADA Y DEDICADA!. "Código rojo no deja títere con cabeza. Se arriesga, proclamando la verdad a los cuatro vientos, haciendo que prevalezca, por una vez, algo tan denostado hoy en día como la libertad de expresión" ("A golpe de letra" por Sergio Sancor). Tal vez te puedan interesar las novelas "Código rojo" (2015) y "Un paso al frente" (2014). Puedes seguirme en Facebook móvil, Facebook internet, luisgonzalosegura.com y Twitter (@luisgonzaloseg).	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
O “Programa Raul Gil” exibido neste sábado (29) recebeu Carlinhos Vidente no quadro “Elas Querem Saber”. Além de falar sobre a vidência e sua família evangélica, ele fez diversas previsões para o Brasil, artistas e políticos. “A política começa a melhorar do mês seis para o mês sete. Terá novas eleições”, afirmou Carlinhos, que também disse que “[Michel] Temer cai”. “Do mês seis, deste ano, em diante começa a mudar o Brasil praticamente em tudo”, completou ele sobre o assunto. Ainda sobre política, o médium contou que o ex-presidente “Lula vai pagar caro e vai ser preso” e que “dois ou três delatores da Lava Jato perderão a vida” nos próximos meses. Na sabatina, o vidente falou sobre um acidente envolvendo os cantores Leonardo e Eduardo Costa – que fazem turnê com o show “Cabaré”. “Eu via o Leonardo e o Eduardo Costa bastante machucados em um acidente saindo de um show de uma cidade pequena e indo para uma cidade grande”, revelou. Sobre o futebol brasileiro, Carlinhos garantiu que “o Brasil vai ter um dos melhores times que ele já teve nos últimos cinco anos. Tite vai fazer um time de jovens, mas não ganha Copa do Mundo, quem leva de novo é a Alemanha”. Ele também previu que Neymar terá uma filha com Bruna Marquezine. Assista ao vídeo:	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Review: Moon Shot Moon Shot Director: Orlando von Einsiedel Executive Producer: J.J. Abrams Nine parts, total running time approx.. 62 minutes Free on YouTube and Google Play The Google Lunar X PRIZE, announced eight and a half years ago, is now entering a critical phase. The competition at its peak had 29 teams registered to compete, but only 16 remain today. Those teams have until the end of this year to submit a launch contract for verification by the X PRIZE Foundation; so far, only two teams, Moon Express and SpaceIL, have done so. The teams that do submit launch contracts have to complete the requirements of the prize—land on the Moon, travel at least 500 meters, and return high-definition video and other data—by the end of 2017. The focus of the short episodes is very much on the people involved, not the technology. In an effort, perhaps, to drum up broader public interest in the competition, Google funded the development of a documentary series about the competition and its teams. The result of that is Moon Shot, a series of bite-sized segments released last week on the Google Play store and YouTube, at no charge. While Google and X PRIZE played up the association with J.J. Abrams, director of recent Star Trek and Star Wars films, he served as executive producer; the day-to-day work on the series was led by director Orlando von Einsiedel, who directed the Oscar-nominated documentary Virunga. Seven of the nine episodes, which each run for six to eight minutes, focus on individual teams. An eighth episode looks at a companion educational program, called Moonbots, through the eyes of a young Mexican girl. The final episode is something of a wrap-up, offering an opportunity for most of the rest of the remaining teams to make cameos (the one team of the remaining 16 that appears to be omitted from the entire series is Team Italia.) The focus of the short episodes is very much on the people involved, not the technology. Other than the final episode, each one focuses on one, or at most a few, people involved in each team, telling their story in their own words, rather than that of a narrator. For example, the first one, about Astrobotic, is largely about Red Whittaker, the robotics pioneer who founded the company in 2007. One about Team Indus, an Indian team, focuses on one of its engineers, Deepana Gandhi, who describes the challenges she faced as a woman trying to earn an education, and seek a career, in a technical field. The segments don’t discuss in detail each team’s specific plan for winning the prize: there’s little mention of lander or rover technology, selection of launch vehicles, or other elements critical to winning the prize. The hardware plays a secondary role, at best, in the series. In the episode about Moon Express, we see work on its lander only briefly near the end. Most of the episode is about one of its founders, Naveen Jain, and both his rags-to-riches story and his motivation for doing Moon Express: solving the world’s energy problems by returning helium-3 from the Moon. (Nevermind that fusion reactors that can use helium-3 are likely many decades in the future.) That focus on people, rather than technology, is both a strength of the series as well as a flaw. The series makes clear that teams are motivated to participate for different reasons. While Jain has a vision of using lunar resources for energy, Japan’s Team Hakuto sees its rover as a first step towards eventual human settlement there, a hedge against calamities that threaten life on Earth, illustrated in that episode by the earthquake and tsunami that devastated regions of Japan five years ago. Israel’s SpaceIL, meanwhile, is motivated more by a desire to get students interested in science and engineering careers. Such dreams, though, while perhaps necessary to enable these missions, are clearly not sufficient: otherwise, we would be zooming across the cosmos today. Far less is said about the technical and financial challenges the teams face that have slowed their progress over the years. The documentary doesn’t mention, for example, that the competition’s deadline has been extended several times. How seriously should we take someone like Canada’s Plan B, largely a father and his adult son working in a Vancouver condo who, even if they have the technical expertise, likely lack the fiscal resources needed for their rover? “Things that are worth doing,” Whittaker says in the first episode, “are usually tougher than they look and take whatever time they take.” Moon Shot, then, is much more about the vision of the Google Lunar X PRIZE than the substance. “If they succeed,” each episode’s opening credits state, “it will redefine what is possible.” That is true by definition, since no private entity has yet landed a spacecraft on the Moon. Whether they succeed or fail, though, will have little to do with their dreams and motivations that are at the heart of the series. No one doubts that everyone involved has a desire, and perhaps life-long dreams, to go to the Moon. What is less certain, though, and what is less explored in the series, is whether any of the teams can round up the money, and overcome the technical challenges, to get there. There is always a chance that the competition’s deadline could get extended once again, giving teams more time to raise money and build their spacecraft. “Things that are worth doing,” Whittaker says in the first episode, “are usually tougher than they look and take whatever time they take.” The Google Lunar X PRIZE, in retrospect, was likely tougher than it looked when it was announced in 2007, and is taking longer than what they envisioned at the time. Moon Shot, though, shows that for Whittaker and others involved, it has not diminished their enthusiasm to achieve their dreams. Home	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
When veteran safety Eric Weddle told The Athletic last week that anybody who thinks the Ravens have a quarterback controversy needs to “come out and watch practice,” he wasn’t needlessly propping up long-time starter Joe Flacco or putting down exciting rookie Lamar Jackson. He was simply reiterating what’s been obvious throughout the summer and the first week of training camp. In a year where jobs are on the line and the Ravens need to win, a healthy and engaged Flacco gives the organization the best chance to immediately do that. That isn’t a revelation, but it is worth repeating, given the amount of attention being paid to the Ravens quarterback situation and the enthusiasm Jackson has generated since he was taken with the final pick of April’s first round. Many fans want to see Jackson on the field. Media members are intrigued by how the ultra-talented former Heisman Trophy winner will do at the NFL level. Flacco represents the...	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Overpass is CS:GO’s first completely new defuse map designed with competitive play in mind. Since its release in December 2013, Overpass received seven updates based on feedback and data. Below, we’ll discuss some changes we’ve made to the map, explain our thinking behind them, and give you some insight into what goes into creating and maintaining a map. An Experiment In defuse maps, the bombsites are the centers of attention. In Overpass, we experimented with a somewhat different setup: Counter-Terrorists were encouraged to defend Bombsite A away from the site. Bombsite B, conversely, functioned in a more traditional way, with most of the action being centered on the site itself. Bombsite A Retaking the site from the A tunnels was originally very difficult, because defenders could keep tabs on the area from many angles. Several changes were made to address this issue. The CT vehicle was moved to provide better cover for players entering from the A tunnels. The red car was removed because it gave defenders an unfair advantage, allowing them to hold the site while only exposing their heads. In addition, the truck (the Terrorist’s target) was moved to make hiding players stand out, and the fences defining the outer limit of the area were pushed back to give some more space to maneuver. In the latest version, the concrete hut was opened up, giving a lone defender a safe but isolated spot to hold the site. Bombsite B As mentioned above, the bombsites in Overpass are quite different from each other. Though we predicted that bombsite B would be prone to rushes, we found that the Counter-Terrorists had trouble getting to the site in time, often arriving just as the bomb was planted. This encouraged the Terrorists to continue to rush B, causing Counter-Terrorists to stack the site in an attempt to prevent an easy win. The first update to the map addressed this issue by moving and reworking the bombsite layout, and also by adjusting the spawn positions of both teams to give the Counter-Terrorists time to set up. The cover in the site was simplified and moved closer to the walls, improving readability in the area and making defensive positions more predictable. These positions can now be countered by smokes or flashes prior to moving into the site. The layout of the canal area used to be very open, leading to situations where a Counter-Terrorist could push forward with relatively low risk, potentially getting the drop on unsuspecting Terrorists attempting to take the site. Combat was unpredictable, with no clear front-line. The area was sectioned off, allowing the Terrorists to work the site with their back against the wall (and having safe areas to fall back on), and also allowing Counter-Terrorists to better predict where combat would occur and properly prepare for it. Interior spaces At the time of release, interior spaces were tight. They have since been widened, allowing teammates to move freely without bumping into each other or level geometry. The added space also allows players to safely navigate around corners to get a clear overview of the environment. Faster Rotation Thanks to player feedback, we learned that once players decided to attack a site they felt locked into that decision due to long rotation times. In response, we added two new connectors to the map. One connects the bathrooms near Bombsite A to the upper park, enabling a single Counter-Terrorist to keep tabs on both areas and providing the Terrorist side with more options when attacking the site. The second new route was added between the tunnels near Terrorist spawn and the Terrorist side of the Canals. The new connector cut down the time to move around the map, allowing greater flexibility in tactics. Overpass, evolved Overpass is still new, and there’s so much for everyone to learn. Even before the most recent updates, players were starting to find creative smokes and flashes to attack the revamped bombsites: What have you discovered? What strategies have you developed? Make your mark on Overpass and let everyone know!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Benfica: João Teixeira convocado, Carcela e Taarabt de fora Rui Vitória chamou vinte jogadores para a receção ao Moreirense, mas deixou dois reforços de fora	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }

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