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SINGAPORE: The new passenger terminal at Seletar Airport which costs S$80 million will be operational by the end of 2018, said Changi Airport Group (CAG).
The two-storey, 10,000 sq m terminal can handle 700,000 passenger movements a year - about 26 times more than the number of passengers it saw in 2016, according to CAG.
The departure area will house four check-in counters, six immigration lanes, two security screening stations and a gate holdroom that can accommodate 200 passengers.
Artist's impression of Seletar Airport check-in counters. (Image: Changi Airport Group)
“This new terminal will provide Seletar Airport with the capacity it needs to handle the upcoming growth in aviation activities in the years ahead,” said Mr Khoh Su Lim, Deputy General Manager of the airport.
“It's going to provide our passengers with a more efficient process flow for both scheduled as well as non-scheduled passengers."
Managed by CAG, the terminal will also have three aircraft parking stands next to it.
That will increase the efficiency and convenience of boarding the planes, the management team said.
A private area, known as the Seletar Business Aviation Centre, will also be set up for those travelling on chartered business flights and private jets.
But the terminal will not have any retail outlets, except for one food & beverage stall.
Malaysian carrier Firefly will shift its operations from Changi Airport to Seletar when the terminal opens.
It will continue running its 20 daily turboprop flights – to and from Subang, Ipoh and Kuantan.
Changi Airport Group said relocating these “smaller and slower aircraft operations” to Seletar would help “optimise the use of resources to meet growing capacity demands” at Changi.
Observers say that this move would benefit certain segments of the market.
“Some consumers who fly between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur will benefit as they might appreciate the convenience of a very small airport that’s easy to go through,” said Mr Brendan Sobie, Chief Analyst at CAPA Centre for Aviation.
Another plus for consumers is that fares could go down if more players enter the market.
“We expect competition on the route, which hasn’t been possible until the opening of this airport. Malindo Air may now be able to compete with Firefly on the market - which should drive down the fares, which are relatively high between Changi and Subang. What that will do is potentially stimulate initial demand,” added Mr Sobie.
However, he also said that the new terminal may not move the needle on Singapore’s passenger arrivals. Its capacity is about 1 per cent the size of Changi Airport’s 62 million passenger arrivals last year.
The upgrade marks the latest step in the redevelopment of Seletar Airport which started in 2008.
Since then, the airport has undergone several enhancements, such as the lengthening of its runway and the construction of a new control tower and fire station. | {
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Monday, September 3: crypto markets are mixed today, with scattered corrections on a minor scale, as Coin360 data shows.
Market visualization from Coin360
Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at around $7,255 at press time, down a fraction of a percent on the day to consolidate its freshly won gains, according to Cointelegraph’s Bitcoin Price Index.
Having reclaimed the $7,000 mark August 31, the top coin has been solidly rising to a yet higher price point, now pushing $7,300. Bitcoin is trading $525 higher than its value at the start of its weekly chart, bringing its 7-day gains to a strong 8.32 percent. On the month, Bitcoin is now also in the green, up 3.62 percent.
Bitcoin’s 7-day price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
Ethereum (ETH) is trading around $287 at press time, seeing a 2.27 percent loss on the day. After a volatile week, the top altcoin yesterday came tantalizingly close to reclaiming the $300 price point — soaring as high as $298.32 — but has today failed to break through.
Last week’s reports that the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) plans to launch ETH futures by the end of 2018 hardly budged the asset’s price, although Ethereum has nonetheless seen some growth over a week of market-wide green. On its weekly chart, Ethereum is now up a solid 5.15 percent, with monthly losses closed down to 29.86 percent.
Ethereum’s 7-day price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
The top ten coins listed on CoinMarketCap are mostly seeing minor percentage changes — both green and red — of within a 1-2 percent range. The exception is Monero (XMR), now ranked 10th by market cap, which has soared 8.34 percent on the day to trade at $130.63 at press time. After a brief dip to as low as $97 August 30, Monero has seen a strong, if jagged, ascent over the past several days.
Monero’s 7-day price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has more or less consolidated its major September gains, down just 2.36 percent on the day to trade around $624 at press time. After a stagnant week circling the $560 range, BCH saw a major boost in price performance following its successful stress test September 1.
Bitcoin Cash’s 7-day price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
Dogecoin (DOGE) has kicked back against yesterday’s hefty correction, during which it lost close to 20 percent on the day. DOGE is today up 2.2 percent and is trading around $0.0051 at press time.
Since August 30, the altcoin has skyrocketed upwards, and even after yesterday’s dent has sealed a 112 percent gain on its weekly chart. Crypto commentators have attributed DOGE’s startling price performance to an impending infrastructure development for a project dubbed Dogethereum, the demo for which is set to take place Sept. 5.
Dogecoin’s 7-day price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
Total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is around $236.5 billion at press time, up almost $18 billion on its weekly chart.
7-day chart of the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies from CoinMarketCap
Today, September 3, iPR Daily — a media outlet specializing in intellectual property — released a report that revealed that China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba and tech conglomerate IBM top the global rankings for filings of blockchain-related patents to date. The report further showed that Mastercard, Bank of America, and China’s central bank, People's Bank of China (PBoC), are all global leaders in patenting blockchain-related innovations. | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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Decides it's time to study Spends 7 hours on Reddit OH GOD | {
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Editorial: State Senate gets drive toward a graduated income tax off to a rocky start
Democrats who want Illinois to move to a graduated income tax in 2020 will do well to remember that the campaign to persuade voters will turn not on a complex series of tax brackets but on one simple concept: trust.
In that regard, state senators did their movement no favors Wednesday when, along strict party lines, they voted to put a constitutional amendment on the November 2020 ballot, then almost immediately approved a tax schedule for a series of income levels that increases taxes from the schedule Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the proposal's driving force, has been promoting for weeks.
Since even before Pritzker won election last November, opponents to a graduated income tax have decried the change as a grand "bait-and-switch" scheme in which lawmakers will get voters to free them from the yoke of a constitutionally mandated flat tax, then run rampant adjusting a graduated income tax schedule however the mood suits them to meet ever-increasing spending goals.
On Wednesday, senators demonstrated that not only is that a legitimate fear but they're willing to do the switching even before the bait has been taken.
True, the complaint about lawmakers running amok with taxes under a graduated system ignores the fact that they could just as easily run amok with the existing flat tax. And, true, the changes approved Wednesday were not comprehensive; they accounted for only a small fraction of a percentage point in the middle to upper regions of the income scale. But, let's be real, lawmakers have been playing fast and loose with the flat tax since installing a "temporary" increase in 2011, letting it expire in 2014, then hiking it again in 2017, this time to 4.95% and permanently.
And, the hit in the new schedule does push the highest tax burden ever closer to the middle range of income -- requiring single filers earning $350,000 a year to pay the same 7.85% that joint filers earning up to $1 million will pay and single filers earning $750,000 to pay the same 7.99% that $1 million joint-filing earners face and this on all their income, not adjusted according to the rates at each lower tax bracket. Pritzker's plan maxed out the tax rate for all filers at $1 million.
And the broader point, on which opponents seized immediately, is that the rates already are being changed to bring in more revenue, making lawmakers appear all but indifferent to the fears and misgivings of taxpayers.
The Senate actions also added promises of a property tax rate freeze and elimination of the estate tax if the constitutional amendment passes. But, given the circumstances, which do these promises sound more like, an adjustment to achieve tax fairness or a cynical, unreliable bribe? We're guessing not too many Illinoisans, whatever their opinions of a graduated income tax, tilt toward the magnanimity of lawmakers.
The Senate bills now have to go to the House. Assuming they pass muster there, Pritzker has already shown his support. Then, lawmakers will have a year and a half to persuade taxpayers they can be trusted with a new, more flexible process for taxing income.
With a start like this, they're going to have their work cut out for them. | {
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Yakuza Kiwami will launch both physically and digitally for PlayStation 4 on August 29 in the Americas and Europe for $29.99 / £29.99 / €34.99, publisher Sega announced.
Pre-orders and limited first run copies of the physical version will come packaged in a SteelBook.
Sega has also launched the Yakuza Experience website, which features a Yakuza series interactive timeline and character map, as well as the first issue in a 10-part digital comic series called The Dragon’s Path. The comic will recreate iconic moments from the franchise between Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 6, with some “surprises” to be expected.
Here’s an overview of Yakuza Kiwami, via Sega:
About Being retold in Kiwami is the nascent character arc for Yakuza – the game begins with series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu getting sent to prison for the murder of his family patriarch (which he didn’t commit). To make matters worse, during the 10 years of his imprisonment, not only does Kiryu’s clan expel him from the yakuza, but ¥10 billion (~$100 million) goes missing from the clan treasury. Worse yet, Kiryu’s childhood sweetheart is also nowhere to be found, and with the entirety of the Japanese underworld on the hunt for the missing cash, Kiryu is all but lost until he finds the orphan girl Haruka, searching for her aunt who shares the same name as Kiryu’s missing love. What follows from there is a web of betrayal, underworld politics, and redemption as nothing will stop Kiryu from regaining his honor. Features A Family Patriarch’s Ransom of New Content – “Kiwami” literally translates to “extreme,” and the game was named that for good reason. Not just a simple graphical upgrade, Kiwami adds nearly 30 minutes of cutscenes alone, providing all-new insight into the game’s plot and creating common threads with series prequel Yakuza 0. There’s also added distractions (Pocket Circuit car racing, MesuKing: Battle Bug Beauties, new hostesses, and more), side quests, combat updates, re-recorded Japanese dialogue, and more to bring the original Yakuza game into the latest console generation.
– “Kiwami” literally translates to “extreme,” and the game was named that for good reason. Not just a simple graphical upgrade, Kiwami adds nearly 30 minutes of cutscenes alone, providing all-new insight into the game’s plot and creating common threads with series prequel Yakuza 0. There’s also added distractions (Pocket Circuit car racing, MesuKing: Battle Bug Beauties, new hostesses, and more), side quests, combat updates, re-recorded Japanese dialogue, and more to bring the original Yakuza game into the latest console generation. A Place for Newcomers and Veterans – Yakuza Kiwami is the ultimate bridge in the series: newcomers or those whose Yakuza experience started with Yakuza 0 will have familiar, exacting controls, top-notch Sega localization, and a solid starting point for entering the Yakuza franchise fresh. Veterans will experience a familiar Kamurocho and plot, but with new levels of story depth and graphical polish.
– Yakuza Kiwami is the ultimate bridge in the series: newcomers or those whose Yakuza experience started with Yakuza 0 will have familiar, exacting controls, top-notch Sega localization, and a solid starting point for entering the Yakuza franchise fresh. Veterans will experience a familiar Kamurocho and plot, but with new levels of story depth and graphical polish. But it was me! Majima! – Completely new to Kiwami is the “Majima Everywhere” system, where the series’ deranged, one-eyed maniac will constantly surprise and challenge Kiryu to combat when he least expects it. We’re talking “popping out of a goofy costume” levels of surprise, so players must stay on their toes and be ready to defend themselves from Kiryu’s chief rival.
– Completely new to Kiwami is the “Majima Everywhere” system, where the series’ deranged, one-eyed maniac will constantly surprise and challenge Kiryu to combat when he least expects it. We’re talking “popping out of a goofy costume” levels of surprise, so players must stay on their toes and be ready to defend themselves from Kiryu’s chief rival. Extreme Revitalization – Kiwami is rebuilt from the ground up with all new HD assets, exclusive Japanese voice audio re-recorded by the series cast, and more; optimized for the PlayStation 4 and running in 1080p/60fps. And following suit with Sega’s commitment to the Yakuza series, the game will release in both physical and digital formats in the west.
Watch the story trailer below. View a set of screenshots at the gallery. Visit the game’s official website here. | {
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Research shows that NFL quarterbacks play better when they have beards, a statistic that seems to have influenced Marcus Mariota's current facial hair.
Recently, the Heisman Trophy winner showed up at Disneyland sporting a hefty 5-o'clock shadow, likely in hopes that it will help him vanquish the Florida State Seminoles in tonight's Rosebowl.
While Mariota has science on his side, his beard does have one major detractor—his mom. We'll have to wait until game time tonight at 5 P.M. to see if his beard survived mom's wrath.
This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
[H/T Pac 12.com
Andrew D. Luecke Style Editor, Esquire Digital Before coming to esquire.com, Andrew D.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io | {
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A contractor-led role in Afghanistan would confirm the narrative that America wants perpetual warfare and to rob the country of its riches.
The New York Times reported on July 25, 2017 that U.S. advisors and Afghan officials are trying to use Afghanistan’s mineral wealth potential—once estimated at $1 trillion—to sell President Donald Trump on a war he understandably has little enthusiasm for.
This new sales strategy is dangerous as it aims to exploit Trump’s cartoonish views on global intervention, which meld the minds of a medieval emperor and a modern-day businessman.
Trump has on several occasions said that the United States should “take the oil” in conflict zones like Iraq. His explications have varied in focus, but “take the oil” appears to rest on two basic principles: what is theirs becomes ours once we invade; and foreign wars should at least pay for themselves, if not become profitable ventures.
No Good Strategy
Those who seek a long-term U.S. presence in Afghanistan are now desperate because the president has rejected the war strategy put forward by his bureaucracy and political appointees. According to POLITICO, the National Security Council Principals Committee meeting last week chaired by Trump was a “sh*tshow” that ended with the president sending back the Afghanistan strategy presented to him, further delaying a review that has already been extended twice.
Within the White House, the McMaster camp has tried to make the hardest sell: doing away with timelines, pressuring Pakistan, and abandoning reconciliation with the Taliban—a recipe for endless war in a landlocked, impoverished, and factionally divided country.
Earlier this year, McMaster reportedly showed the visually dependent Trump a slideshow of Afghanistan in 1970s—presumably the same pictures of local women in miniskirts and hippy tourists that make their rounds on social media every month or so. Trump apparently did not bite McMaster’s superficial attempt to make the case that the country has a relatively more liberal and peaceful past that can be realized once again.
Afghanistan’s Minerals Miracle Fails to Materialize
Since Trump came into office, Afghan officials, including President Ashraf Ghani, have tried to quell the U.S. president’s Afghan-skepticism by talking up the country’s mineral potential.
In 2010, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon identified vast deposits of copper, gold, iron, lithium and other minerals in Afghanistan. Media-savvy Gen. David Petraeus spoke of great prospects of Afghanistan’s mineral industry and a Pentagon memo provided to the Times described the country as a potential “Saudi Arabia of lithium.” Afghan officials claimed that the mineral wealth provided the country with a path away from donor dependency.
But the case of the Mes Aynak copper mine demonstrates the false promise of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth being a short-to-medium term positive game-changer.
In 2007, Kabul granted a consortium led by the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) a $3 billion, thirty-year lease to mine Mes Aynak, home to Afghanistan’s largest copper deposits. Ten years later, extraction of copper has yet to begin on the site. The project is at a standstill as security concerns grow and the MCC looks to revise the terms of the contract, not only lowering Kabul’s royalty rate, but also eliminating some components of the project, including a coal power plant and railway line. Similarly, an Indian consortium that was awarded a concession five years ago at the massive Hajigak iron ore mine continues to hedge and reportedly never signed a final contract with Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum.
Enter the Dark Prince
The leading American proponent of a resource-driven war in Afghanistan is Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Inspired by the British East India Company, Prince has called for replacing U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan with private mercenaries who focus on securing Afghanistan’s resources, including its vast mineral deposits, instead of its people, rejecting the population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine that has become part of the Beltway orthodoxy since the Iraq surge.
Prince has multiple connections to the Trump camp. For example, his sister is the U.S. education secretary. But, more importantly, Trump advisor Steve Bannon appears to be a kindred spirit. Not only has Prince appeared multiple times on Breitbart’s radio channel and website, but Bannon also brought Prince to meet with Defense Secretary James Mattis this month. The Bannonites are cultural and economic nationalists averse to nation-building and protracted military deployments abroad, but they are not anti-war or anti-imperialism. Prince’s private-sector-led, resource-driven neoimperial approach notionally—and only notionally—resolves the Afghanistan dilemma for the Bannonites of how to combat jihadists in Afghanistan without expending large amounts of American blood and treasure.
Also advising Trump on the resource-driven war in Afghanistan is Stephen Feinberg, the owner of the massive U.S. military contractor DynCorp International. Even if Afghanistan’s minerals industry continues to languish, Feinberg and Prince would profit off of providing logistics and other services, including securing supply lines. And for Prince, who has gone from being a veritable arm of the CIA to a business partner of the People’s Republic of China, it would fuse his old and new lines of business.
Prince’s Frontier Services Group (FSG), based in Hong Kong, is positioning itself as a major contractor for China’s Belt and Road Initiative. According to China’s Global Times, FSG will open up training bases in China’s Xinjiang region bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pandora’s Box
Afghanistan’s maladies are many, but a hasty push on exploiting its mineral wealth would add another: “the resource curse.” It is already a narco-state in which its power elite and Taliban insurgency are sustained by the drug trade and illiterate warlords become overnight millionaires by securing U.S. supply lines. America has done enough to create a warped, conflict-dependent economy in Afghanistan.
As the Trump administration dithers, the situation in Afghanistan is dire. The insurgency is gaining control over more and more territory and Afghan security forces are dying at record numbers.
At the same time, Afghanistan’s inter-ethnic tensions are perhaps the highest they have been since the fall of the Taliban, driven in part by Ghani’s failure to fulfill his responsibilities as part of the National Unity Government agreement. The ethnic divide will strengthen as parliamentary and presidential elections, scheduled respectively for 2018 and 2019, near and the various factions wrangle over electoral procedures and overall fairness.
Without political stability and reconciliation with the insurgents, large-scale mineral extraction in Afghanistan is more likely to fuel conflict in the country than empower the incumbent government to establish its writ. Afghanistan lacks the governance framework and overall rule of law to manage its mineral resources. Mining legislation is inadequate.
But, more fundamentally, the country’s elite has one foot out the door and simply would like to suck as much money from the foreigners while they have a chance. Afghanistan is a country in which frontline army officers steal funds meant for purchasing food for their soldiers, letting them fend for themselves or starve. Foreigners only enable Afghanistan’s looter baron social pathology.
Furthermore, a U.S.-military contractor-led role in Afghanistan’s minerals sector literally confirms the presently latent narrative among Afghans that the United States has ulterior motives; that it seeks an excuse—perpetual warfare—to remain in the country and rob the country of its riches.
Even if Afghans are initially receptive to U.S. investment in the country’s minerals sector, they are likely to develop unrealistic expectations of what the supposed $1 trillion in mineral wealth can do for them. And when their hopes are dashed, America’s reputation will take a massive hit. It is more prudent to let other countries assume the financial, political and security risk from investment in Afghanistan’s minerals sector. Doing so also indirectly serves U.S. aims, broadening the set of stakeholders invested in Afghan stability.
There is also the problem of logistics. Minerals extracted from Afghanistan, even if processed in the country, would have to be transported out of the country. They would require new rail or road networks to be built inside Afghanistan. And, given that Afghanistan is landlocked, the raw minerals or mineral products would have to be shipped out to other markets through neighboring states. U.S. companies would have to choose between China, Iran, Pakistan or Central Asian states in Russia’s sphere of influence. Not an easy choice.
Not Losing Requires Hard Work
Premature exploitation of Afghanistan’s mineral resources potential could fuel another generation of conflict in the war-torn country. Agriculture is the backbone of the Afghan economy, serving as its largest direct and indirect employer. When it comes to the Afghan economy, America’s focus ought to be on increasing the efficiency and diversity of Afghanistan’s agricultural output, helping it manage its water resources, and developing cold storage logistics and value-added industries.
Mineral resources presently serve as a distraction, creating the false impression that Afghan self-sufficiency can be attained overnight and without hard work or institutional development. Tendering for large concessions should be postponed until Afghanistan has the requisite stability and governance framework to enable a transparent bidding process and equitable distribution of royalties. That end state is contingent upon bringing an end to the nearly sixteen-year Afghan war—a war that can only be resolved through political settlement with the Taliban anchored by a regional diplomatic solution, including not just Pakistan, but also China, Iran and Russia. The Obama administration never fully embraced a diplomatic solution. And no stakeholder in the Trump administration appears to be prioritizing it. | {
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Get over 50 fonts, text formatting, optional watermarks and NO adverts! Get your free account now!
Becomes the sworn knight of the man she respects, reveres, and yes, loves above all others - hours before he is killed by a magical shadow monster
Check out all our blank memes | {
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Last updated on .From the section Football
Jonjo Shelvey could be unavailable until Newcastle's game against Rotherham on 21 Janaury
Newcastle United midfielder Jonjo Shelvey has been banned for five games after he was found guilty of using racially abusive language by an independent panel.
He has also been fined £100,000 and ordered to attend a Football Association education course.
Shelvey, 24, had a personal hearing to challenge the charge after an incident with Wolves' Moroccan midfielder Romain Saiss in 17 September's 2-0 defeat.
The player has seven days to appeal.
Newcastle said in a statement external-link they will wait to see the FA's written reasons "before making any further comment on the matter".
The FA's sanctions will be set aside pending consideration for an appeal.
What happened?
Newcastle were losing to Wolves in their Championship match at St James' Park, when in the 87th minute an incident occurred between Shelvey and Saiss.
The breach, according to the FA's charge against the former Liverpool and Swansea player, related to Rule E3(1), and was an "Aggravated Breach as defined in Rule E3(2), as it included reference to ethnic origin and/or race and/or nationality".
BBC Sport's Pat Murphy said the matter was brought to referee Tim Robinson's attention by one of Saiss' team-mates immediately after the game.
What will Shelvey miss?
If Boxing Day's visit of Sheffield Wednesday becomes the first game of the suspension, the England international will miss four league games and the FA Cup third-round tie at Birmingham.
Newcastle boss Rafael Benitez would next be able to name him in the squad for the Championship game against Rotherham on 21 January.
Five games a 'minimum' punishment
FA guidelines, which were revised in 2013, state any player found guilty of racially abusing an opponent or discriminating on religion, sexuality or disability, should be banned for at least five games.
Prior to that, Chelsea's John Terry was handed a four-match ban and a £220,000 fine for racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand, while Liverpool's Luis Suarez received an eight-match suspension and a £40,000 fine for his abuse of Manchester United's Patrice Evra - both in 2011. | {
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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Tuesday the largest voluntary recall of medium- and heavy-duty trucks following the finding of faulty emissions control systems.
The recall of roughly 500,000 trucks made from 2010 to 2015 by Cummins Inc. will be to replace a defective emissions control component that the EPA found causes excess emissions of nitrogen oxides. The emissions lead to smog and collect in the atmosphere.
ADVERTISEMENT
The recall is not connected to the "defeat device" systems previously found in Volkswagen cars meant to permanently mask emissions, which ultimately lead to a multibillion-dollar settlement with the EPA.
The administration hailed the recall as an effective partnership between the EPA and the private sector.
"Today’s recall is a great example of how government and industry work together to protect health and the environment.” said Bill Wehrum, assistant administrator of the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation.
“This is the way it’s supposed to work. Our follow-up testing seeks to make sure that pollution controls work throughout an engine’s useful life. And, if they don’t, then companies step up to set things right.”
The EPA has faced strong criticism from Democrats and environmentalists for being too industry-friendly and for lacking transparency under previous its administrator, Scott Pruitt Edward (Scott) Scott PruittJuan Williams: Swamp creature at the White House Science protections must be enforceable Conspicuous by their absence from the Republican Convention MORE.
The agency's new acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, on Monday sent a staff-wide memo laying out steps the agency is taking to increase transparency, a move that's seen as an effort to differentiate himself from his predecessor.
Cummins is already involved in another recall of nearly 232,000 Dodge Rams. In total about 770,000 trucks will be recalled. | {
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen during trilateral talks with his counterparts Hassan Rouhani of Iran and Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in Ankara, Turkey September 16, 2019. Sputnik/Alexei Nikolsky/Kremlin via REUTERS
ANKARA (Reuters) - Russia is ready to help Saudi Arabia following attacks on the Saudi oil industry if needed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after talks with leaders of Turkey and Iran in Ankara on Monday, and proposed Russian weapons for purchase.
“We are ready to provide respective assistance to Saudi Arabia, and it would be enough for the political leadership of Saudi Arabia to make a wise government decision - as the leaders of Iran did in their time by purchasing S-300 and as (Turkish) President (Tayyip) Erdogan did by purchasing the latest S-400 ‘Triumph’ air defense systems from Russia,” Putin said.
These Russian weapons would protect any infrastructure facilities of Saudi Arabia, he added. | {
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Democrats may not want to hear that another older white guy is the best shot they have against Donald Trump in 2020.
But demographics are still facts, and Brown, from battleground Ohio, has the best shot to appeal to white, working men who abandoned Democrats in 2016, and now appear open to hearing from someone besides Trump.
Let’s look at the numbers: The 2016 presidential election was decided by about 77,000 votes out of than 136 million ballots cast. Put another way. 0.06 percent of the total votes for president tipped the electoral college in favor of the reality TV billionaire.
Trump won Pennsylvania by 0.7 percentage points (44,292 votes), Wisconsin by 0.7 points (22,748 votes), Michigan by 0.2 points (10,704 votes).
If Hillary Clinton — who won the popular vote by 3 million votes — had won all three states, she would have won the Electoral College 278 to 260.
And the Trump era would have been only speculation, not reality.
Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan was a big shift from 2012, when Barack Obama won Michigan by 9.5 points, Wisconsin by 6.7 points, and Pennsylvania by 5.2 points.
So, why did Clinton fail to replicate Obama’s success?
Simple. A handful of middle-and low-income Democratic white voters stayed home or voted for Trump. Clinton received less votes from white voters than Obama did, and white resentment remains as significant a driving force in American politics as ever.
The goal for Democrats in 2020 should be to flip the Midwest firewall states back blue. Do that and Supreme Court nominees are back under your control.
So who can best lead the ticket in 2020?
Of all the perspective Democratic nominees, Sen. Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s senior senator, makes the most sense.
Let’s look at facts:
Brown is about to be reelected in a big battleground state Trump carried easily two years ago.
Brown has raised $27.1 million for his re-election campaign, an Ohio record (even more than fundraising juggernaut Rob Portman’s historic $25.8 million haul in 2016).
Brown is an old-school progressive who has been unapologetic his entire career to advocate for liberal causes.
Brown has been vetted. He’s been around a long time, but doesn’t seem to be ancient (like other candidates we will not name).
Brown is a scrappy campaigner, with his loose tie and sleeves rolled up. Comfortable in front of big crowds and small.
Brown doesn’t want to run for president, making him even more appealing.
Brown is from Ohio. If Democrats win Ohio in 2020, they move the Trump’s out of the White House.
Not sold yet?
This is what I wrote about Sherrod Brown in my book Front Row Seat at the Circus:
“In fact, of all the politicians I’ve known through the years, Brown has the distinct honor of being the one who is easiest to detect telling a lie. Most senators and governors are highly skilled in being able to look you directly in the eye and tell you something you know for a fact is not accurate. John Kasich telling me over and over again he had no interest in running for president in 2016 comes to mind. Brown, on the other hand, will squirm in a chair and start sputtering his sentences, which is a dead giveaway for reporters.”
That’s right.
Brown will never lie to us, because Brown is incapable of lying to us.
That may be a good thing, or bad, but there will never be much guessing on what’s really going on.
Yes, true, I also advocated that Brown be on Hillary Clinton’s ticket in 2016. It made sense then, it makes more sense now.
He made Clinton’s short list for vice president and, as it turned out, it’s a good thing for him that she didn’t pick him.
Brown also has another golden thing a candidate needs in today’s social media world.
From my book:
Brown is a scrappy longtime Ohio politician who had this fearlessness with the press. Even when things got tough—like when reporters learned he was more than four months delinquent in paying taxes on his Washington, D.C. apartment— Brown was always accessible.
Brown instinctively understands that when you get into a little political trouble, it’s best to be accessible and honest about it, and let political reporters move on to the next story.
Once in Ohio, before I interviewed Brown, he looked at me and asked, “Jim, how do you live life as a moderate?”
“You guys in the middle of the road are just going to keep getting hit by cars from both directions,” he said with a chuckle.
I’ve always loved that question coming from Brown because, while a very civil man, he has never apologized for being firmly on the left.
Even when “liberal” became a dreaded word for most politicians, Brown wore it with a badge of honor.
If progressives are truly interested in nominating someone in 2020 who can flip the firewall back to blue, they should be on the phone with Brown next month urging him to toss his hat in the ring. | {
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Wendy Saltzman reports. WPVI
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- The key to one of the most contentious presidential elections in history could be right here in the Keystone state.Republican candidate Donald Trump has made allegations of fraud at polls in the City of Philadelphia.So, Action News dug through a decade's worth of election and death records to see if there was any truth to the claim.Some of what Action News investigation found was stunning.Rita A. Pezzano, who passed a decade ago, was found listed as an active voter. Her daughter-in-law was shocked when we shared the news."I was about seven months pregnant when she died," said Audrey Marchiano."So she has been dead about 10 years now?" asked Investigative Reporter Wendy Saltzman."Yes," said Marchiano.Pezzano passed in 2006. But state voting records show the South Philadelphia native still listed as an "Active Voter" who cast ballots in 2008, 2012, 2014, and the 2016 primary election.Wendy Saltzman asked Marchiano if there was any way Pezzano could have voted in 2016."Not if she was dead," Marchiano replied. "So no."Our investigation also found Joseph B. Haggarty resting peacefully in a Bucks County cemetery. His grave marker confirmed he died in 2010, but records show he voted five years after his death."Any chance he voted in 2015?" Wendy Saltzman asked a neighbor."I'm sure he didn't, personally. God rest his soul, he's long gone," he replied.Action News also found Paul Bunch, who died in 2006, also cast a vote in this year's primary which was nearly ten years after death records show he died.Wendy Saltzman asked Bunch's former neighbor if that seemed impossible."I believe so. It sounds like it, unless he is coming back from the dead," he said.Action News also visited the former neighborhood of Concetta Gallara. Records show she died in 2009, but voted in 2013.When asked if there was a way Gallara could have voted, her former neighbor Jeanie Pizzo told Saltzman, "I don't know, it's awfully funny. Unless a dead person came out of their grave."Action News took our findings to election watchdog, The Committee of Seventy.President and CEO David Thornburgh said, "There's going to be some error and some level of petty fraud and we should have no tolerance for that."We also asked Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, who is a Republican, about our findings. His office is in charge of overseeing Philadelphia's elections."It is certainly an irregularity, there is no doubt about that," Schmidt said.Commissioner Schmidt's office also checked some of the names Action News provided them. Schmidt said in the small sample-check he did, his office found no clear evidence of fraud."We do have one guy that is questionable, definitely," he added.Schmidt also said that most of the issues he found would be considered human error. He cited things like poll workers scanning the wrong name, a person who would have signed in the wrong spot, or a son with the same name who may have voted in his dead father's place instead of his own.Saltzman also asked Schmidt about how people like Timothy Turner could still be an active voter in Philadelphia."Timothy Turner died in 2006. How is he still on the voter roles for somebody to vote in his place in 2016?" asked Saltzman."He would be removed if the Department of Health knew about it at the state level and then the state notifies us," Schmidt said.Schmidt also said deceased voters would remain on the election rolls if Philadelphia County wasn't informed of their death.We told Turner's son about his father's "vote from the grave". He told Saltzman he wasn't happy about it."I figure whoever is running the voter registration ain't doing their job, for them to still have my father's name and for him to have been deceased for 10 years," said Darryl Turner.The Committee of Seventy also cautions that intentional fraud is a tiny fraction of the one million votes cast in the City of Philadelphia."Clearly dead people shouldn't be casting ballots," added David Thornburgh.Thornburgh and Schmidt both agreed that the number of inaccuracies uncovered by Action News couldn't sway the election.Saltzman asked if it could however fuel critic's questions on the legitimacy of Philadelphia's voting process."Doesn't that open up the voter rolls to the possibility of fraud?" Saltzman asked Schmidt."It definitely makes it so that there is an opportunity for it," Schmidt replied.Schmidt also said the dead voters we uncovered will be removed from the rolls.Like Investigative Reporter Wendy Saltzman on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wendy.saltzman/"The Department of State is committed to assisting the counties in maintaining the most accurate and up-to-date voter rolls possible. The Department supports all 67 counties in completing the annual list maintenance activities to address voters who have moved. We provide the counties lists of voters who have died several times per month.""The Department was unable to verify the data comparison provided by ABC 6 because the counties keep the original polling place records that are necessary for full verification. Our understanding is that an examination of the actual records by the Commissioners' Office revealed no evidence of impropriety but rather clerical errors like voters signing the wrong line or workers scanning the wrong code inadvertently. Given the millions of votes cast in the past decade in Philadelphia, this is a very small error rate, but there is absolutely no evidence that any votes were cast illegitimately. We salute City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, for his commitment to the integrity of elections and his work to get to the truth on this matter.""Philadelphia County....[is] required to use the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Department of Health death notifications, which are transmitted electronically the first and third weeks of each month. We only use these notifications to cancel a voter's record due to death. We also do a door canvas of those individuals who are designated as deceased, when the Election Board makes a notation in the Poll Book discrepancy sheet. If a Philadelphia registered voter dies in another state, the death certificate is issued in that State. It is my understanding that the State where the death occurred may or may not notify the State of the deceased... In the past when these incidences have been brought to our attention, the findings are always the same. Human error on the part of a Board Worker is usually the case. Especially in high turnout elections, a voter may sign in the wrong spot or a father/son, mother/daughter may sign in the wrong spot also, without the Election Board noticing or correcting the error at that time. Furthermore, when we are updating the voter histories of those who have voted in an election, our personnel use wand scanners to update the voter history. Occasionally and because of the quickness in which they are scanning the barcodes, they may scan a barcode of a voter who may not have voted; or if a voter signed in the wrong spot and our personnel do not catch the discrepancy, they erroneously scan the barcode of that voter too.""The Department of Health is prohibited by the Vital Records Act of 1953 from confirming or denying the information you are looking for. Death certificates, and confirmation of that those records exist, are not subject to right to know laws. Only a legal representative of the decedent's estate; an immediate family member; an extended family member who indicates a direct relationship to the decedent; or a power of attorney can request these records, The records become public 105 years after the date of birth or 50 years after the date of death of the individual. As I noted earlier, validated records are sent to local, state (including PennDot, and Department of State) and federal agencies on a monthly basis. DOH has been releasing current death information to the Department of State (DOS) in order to satisfy their data needs and meet the DOH legal requirement to share data with DOS. The releases have occurred twice a month, on the first and third Tuesday of each month. In addition to these regularly scheduled updates DOH created special data programs that allow us to provide an entire year's worth of death information to DOS to assist them in achieving their goals leading up to primary and special election periods. We have performed three special data runs (October 2014, March 2015, and August 2015) each at the request of DOS." | {
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(CNN) Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, 50 years ago on April 4, 1968, setting off a period of mourning, reflection and anger that gripped America. He was in Memphis to rally support for striking sanitation workers, who were protesting unsafe working conditions, and while on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel (now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum), he was shot once and fatally by James Earl Ray , from the bathroom of a nearby boarding house.
By the age of 39, King had become a primary leader of the civil rights movement and had been active since the 1950s as a minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was an instrumental figure in protests (in Montgomery, Washington, Selma and elsewhere) and in the passage of landmark civil and voting rights legislation. He had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at 35. In the last years of his life, King faced criticism from some African-American activists who wanted him to employ more confrontational strategies for change. At the same time, he had become more outspoken on issues of poverty and the need to end the war in Vietnam, significantly in the " Riverside Church " speech, delivered in New York a year to the day before his death.
The assassination reverberated powerfully around the world, especially in American cities, where the tragedy sparked unrest in Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City, Missouri, and elsewhere. The following week, riots broke out in dozens of cities, in multiple instances warranting the intervention of the National Guard.
King's death (like that of Malcolm X only a few years earlier) radicalized some activists who saw futility in his strategy of nonviolence. At the same time, widespread public mourning for King was key in the passage -- only days after his assassination -- of the Fair Housing Act , the final significant civil rights legislation of the era. President Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill creating a national holiday in King's name in 1983, and King's vision remains the foundational lexicon of the fight for racial equality in the United States.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his assassination, CNN Opinion asked a diverse group of activists, academics, public figures and artists: What do you see as the most applicable part of King's legacy? On this occasion, what do you most want to say about him?
The views expressed here are solely those of the authors.
King's place in history is still unfolding
Sherrilyn Ifill: King's work remains unfinished, but the democracy-building work continues
A decade before his shocking assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on behalf of the Montgomery Improvement Association, sent a thoughtful letter and a $1,000 check to Thurgood Marshall, then director-counsel and founder of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), the civil-rights organization I'm now blessed to lead.
King wrote that the purpose of the letter and the modest contribution — which he wished wasn't so modest, perhaps because he knew the real costs of legal representation in the trenches — was to express his "deep sense of gratitude" for our work "for not only the Negro in particular but American Democracy in general."
"You continue winning the legal victories for us and we will work passionately and unrelentingly to implement these victories on the local level through non-violent means," King wrote, singling out our legal assistance in his organization's struggle to help desegregate the Montgomery bus system.
This was no ordinary civic-legal partnership. If Brown v. Board Education spelled the doom of "separate but equal," the lesser known Browder v. Gayle, which we helped litigate in Alabama just two years later, was the doctrine's coup de grâce — a unanimous Supreme Court declined to disturb a lower-court ruling invalidating a series of Jim Crow-era statutes and ordinances that provided for racially segregated buses.
What's most touching to me about King's letter to the LDF is that it came in response to legal victories that were, as he put it, victories for "American Democracy." The rulings were a recognition, at long last, that the Fourteenth Amendment meant what it said when it was ratified in 1868. That the Constitution's promise of equality — the command that no state could "deny to any person ... the equal protection of the laws" — was meant for all of us, regardless of skin color. That exclusion of anyone on account of race could not be tolerated.
And yet, we're still fighting to make our Constitution's true meaning real. We're still fighting to make sure no one's vote is suppressed. We're still suing to ensure that the Fair Housing Act, a law enacted in the very wake of King's death, is enforced to its fullest extent. We're still fighting school districts that believe a segregated education is in children's best interests. We're still fighting so that police departments that brutalize communities of color are held to basic principles of constitutional policing. We're still fighting so that immigrants aren't targeted for expulsion from this country.
JUST WATCHED MLK assassination 50 years later Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH MLK assassination 50 years later 03:26
Worse yet, when it is the president of the United States himself who is pushing an unconstitutional vision of America — by casting this struggle for basic dignity and equality as a political tool to denigrate black and brown people, all the while stoking white resentment and victimizing himself — it is clear that we're far from living up to King's ideals.
Today, 50 years since his death in Memphis, we're in a moment. A moment when I truly believe we are being driven to confront that rot at the foundation of our democracy. A rot we have papered over for too long. It is weakening every pillar of our democracy — up to and including the highest office in our land.
Just a month before King's death in 1968, Jack Greenberg, our second director-counsel after Marshall, met with Dr. King to discuss our next partnership: our representation of participants in the Poor People's Campaign to advocate for fair wages, better jobs, employment training and more — the next logical step in King's vision of true equality. That he was killed while leading such an effort among striking sanitation workers in Memphis is a tragic testament to what was destined to be the next phase of his legacy.
But to this day, I'm heartened as I look back on that civic-legal bond we shared, and his insight that our connection was "the most powerful and constructive avenue" to bring African Americans to their full measure as citizens. That much is still true today, or else we would've given up the fight a long time ago.
King's work remains unfinished, but the democracy-building work continues — with lawyers and activists working hand in hand to reach the promised land that King saw but couldn't yet enter.
Sherrilyn Ifill is the president & director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund Inc.
Joseph J. Ellis: The dialogue among Jefferson, Lincoln and King continues
Though it is only a conceit, I like to believe there is an ongoing dialogue on the Mall and Tidal Basin among Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. Jefferson started the conversation with the magic words of American history: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." He clearly intended the words to mean that slavery was wrong but never acted on that intention as a statesman or slave owner.
Joseph J. Ellis
Lincoln did act, in a very big way called the Civil War. But Lincoln failed to take the next step by endorsing a biracial American society.
That was King's mission. He believed that the meaning of Jefferson's magic words had expanded to include blacks as well as whites. Though he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, he claimed he was collecting on a "promissory note" written by Jefferson.
Whether Lincoln would have felt upstaged by the Jefferson reference can never be known. It is possible that Lincoln heard King's words in the "I Have a Dream" speech as an updated version of his own words in the Gettysburg Address, where Lincoln described "a new birth of freedom," believing that his own words also had an expansive meaning.
Jefferson's response to King's speech is more difficult to imagine. In his own lifetime Jefferson was a truly visionary statesman who could endorse the complete separation of church and state as well as the global triumphs of democracy. But race was his blind spot.
Even though he watched four of his own biracial children by Sally Hemings grow up at Monticello, Jefferson went to his grave believing that blacks and whites could never live together in harmony in the United States. And if and when they did, the result would be the pollution of the Anglo-Saxon race, in his view.
In that sense, King's dream was Jefferson's nightmare. The white racist who shot King on the balcony in Memphis could claim to be acting in Jefferson's name with as much plausibility as King himself.
On the other hand, Jefferson was a firm believer in what he called "generational sovereignty." Though there surely were external truths, each generation needed to rediscover those truths for itself and not be held hostage to the past. History moved forward along a gradually ascending path that Jefferson described as "the progress of the human mind."
JUST WATCHED Civil rights icons remember MLK 50 years later Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Civil rights icons remember MLK 50 years later 02:25
King had his own way of describing the same idea. He borrowed the words from Theodore Parker, a 19th-century theologian and anti-slavery advocate: "The arc of the moral universe bends upward toward justice." With these words in mind, I can easily imagine Jefferson smiling from his perch on the Tidal Basin when the Martin Luther King Memorial went up, welcoming him as the third and final member of America's trinity.
In this uplifting version of American history, all three icons nodded their approval when the Museum of African American History and Culture was dedicated in 2016.
Anyone who toured the new museum, however, would be forced to confront the self-evident truth that Jefferson chose to omit from the Declaration of Independence, though he was candid enough to acknowledge it in his correspondence. Lincoln and King knew it too, and both of them were killed by men who felt it in their very bones.
Namely, American society rests atop a deep pool of racial prejudice that has defined the relationship between blacks and whites for most of American history. It is still there and always will be. The conviction that we can and should become a truly biracial society is a recent, mid-20th-century idea.
King was the chief apostle for that idea, which is the reason we honor him with a place on the Mall. But he knew that he would not live to see the Promised Land.
He also knew, as Jefferson and Lincoln knew, that the upward arc of the moral universe was constantly being pulled back to earth by the gravitational force of racism. Every step forward produces progress that generates a backlash.
We currently occupy one of those backlash moments. As I listen to Jefferson, Lincoln and King discussing Trumpworld, that is what I hear them talking about, in worrisome tones.
Joseph J. Ellis is an American historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for "Founding Brothers." He is the author of the forthcoming "American Dialogue: The Founding Fathers and Us."
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial joined the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials on the National Mall in Washington.
Peniel Joseph: Radical citizenship is King's lasting legacy
We too often posit Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, with its attendant outpouring of shock, grief and threats of racial war, as the beginning of the decline of the civil rights movements -- as a major force for social change in American society. This is exactly wrong. More people demonstrated, organized, protested, voted and took to the streets in search of racial, political, social and economic justice in the 1970s than during King's lifetime.
King's greatest legacy stems from his willingness to speak courageous truths to powerful interests that made up American society. King denounced racial and economic injustice -- whether they came from presidents, business leaders or clergy -- as political and moral evils that disfigured American democracy and robbed the nation of its boundless potential.
Peniel Joseph
King's claim that young children risking physical assault and voluntary arrest in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 were carrying the nation back to "those great wells of democracy" resonated around the world as a transcendent message that made the particular struggle of black folk in America universal.
In so doing, King expansively redefined the very meaning of the term "citizen." King's visit to the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles against the backdrop of the city's urban rebellion, sparked less than a week after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, profoundly altered his understanding of citizenship.
After Watts, King came to realize that in addition to voting, true citizenship began with a good job, a living wage, decent housing, quality education, health care and nourishment. Full citizenship meant equitable treatment from all institutions in American society, most notably the justice system, local, state and federal governments, private businesses, churches and civic and secular organizations.
King worked toward this goal until the day he died in Memphis, a working-class, segregated city whose sanitation workers were engaged in a grueling strike for a living wage and safe working conditions. King's time in Memphis with black garbage workers, alongside Mexican-Americans, poor whites and Native Americans, formed the core of his final crusade, a mission for economic justice that continued long past his death.
He reimagined America by placing racial justice at the core of our national values and conceptualizing a compassionate democracy capable of resisting the triple threat to humanity -- militarism, racism, materialism -- that he spent his final year railing against.
Remarkably, King's dreams of a radical citizenship that allowed America to, in his inimitable words, "be true to what you said on paper," resonates even more now than at the time of his death.
The litany of social movements for Black Lives, to end gun violence, eradicate sexism and misogyny, and protect the rights of immigrants and Muslims, all reflect King's most revolutionary legacy: the realization that the myths of American exceptionalism needed to be replaced by what he called a "bitter and beautiful struggle" for the very soul of the nation.
That is to say citizenship meant, according to King, more than the absence of the negative structures of oppression he spent his life fighting. His greatest legacy is his demand for an active citizenship capable of guaranteeing justice for all.
Peniel Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor of history. He is the author of several books, most recently "Stokely: A Life."
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: Nothing in the last 50 years has changed King's calculus
Martin Luther King Jr. was a man disliked by a variety of people along the political spectrum when he died 50 years ago. His popularity began its precipitous decline after he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. King's pivot from the battle to end Jim Crow and secure the right to vote for African-Americans in the South gave way to a much harder struggle to confront the depths of racism and discrimination that left black citizens in the worst jobs, housing and schools.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
King's battles in the South brought him into conflict with an array of powerful white racists, but the struggles against housing discrimination, school segregation and police brutality produced a different set of combatants, many of whom were protected by Democratic Party machines and black political operatives who acted as gatekeepers in black communities.
In King's final months, he made preparations to organize a massive campaign of civil disobedience in Washington to bring attention to the persistence of poverty and to demand government action as a result. As King pointed out, "Our experience is that the federal government, and most especially Congress, never moves meaningfully against social ills until the nation is confronted directly and massively."
King's very public plans for "massive disruption" within the nation's capital provoked the ire of both federal officials and liberals. Roy Wilkins, the national secretary of the NAACP, wrote an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times criticizing King's plans for civil disobedience as "not freedom of speech, but mafia-like dictatorship."
King's politics had moved further and further to the left as he confronted the recalcitrance of the federal government and as he connected the oppression and exploitation of ordinary people at home to the country's war in Vietnam. The political conclusions reached by King during the liberal administration of Lyndon Johnson meant that the "racism, militarism and materialism" that lie at the core of the crisis in the United States was not simply a partisan issue. That these issues were systemic in nature led King to the conclusion that only a "radical reconstruction" of American society could solve them.
It was a position that earned him scorn across the narrow political spectrum of mainstream politics. But nothing in the intervening 50 years since his assassination has changed King's calculus: both in the strategies he pursued and the political conclusions he reached.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an assistant professor at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of "From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation" (Haymarket Books, 2016).
Artist Al Hornsby marches with a portrait of King during the Kingdom Day Parade in Los Angeles in 2015.
Jason Sokol: King knew when to break an unjust law
Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy of nonviolence and civil disobedience lives on today in those Americans who continue to practice civil disobedience in the face of injustice: the black athletes who have knelt peacefully during the National Anthem, the hundreds of thousands of youths who took to the streets in the March for Our Lives, and those in the Black Lives Matter movement who are waging nonviolent protests after the killing of Stephon Clark. King himself was often more disruptive and confrontational than these modern-day protesters have been.
Jason Sokol
King's legacy also remains applicable for the untold numbers of immigrants who came to our land seeking a better life, and now seek only to keep their families together amid the increasing threat of deportations. In his 1963 " Letter From a Birmingham Jail ," King declared: "Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds." He went even further in a 1967 speech in New York calling for "a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation."
In a recent dispute over "sanctuary" cities, Thomas Homan, the acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, cited his agency's devotion to "federal laws that ICE is sworn to uphold." King heard the same arguments from law enforcement officials in the South, and he challenged them -- day after day, year after year. When Southern officials brutalized and imprisoned African-American protesters, as Bull Connor, the segregationist public safety commissioner, did in Birmingham in 1963, they claimed that they were only upholding the law. King responded that these laws were unjust: "An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself." King explained that Americans had a duty to resist such laws. He repeatedly broke unjust laws himself and was often scorned as an agitator.
History has valorized King. In turn, those who zealously enforce the laws -- without regard for whether those laws are just or humane -- risk becoming known as the heirs to Bull Connor.
Jason Sokol is the Arthur K. Whitcomb Associate Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of " The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. " (Basic Books, 2018).
Steven Levingston: King was the rare man who could change a president
Decades ago, many African-Americans proudly displayed three portraits on a wall at home: Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy. There was little question why Jesus or King had a place of prominence. But how Kennedy joined the wall of honor is a complicated story.
Kennedy has long been regarded as a champion of civil rights. It is true that he pushed forward the movement for black equality, but it is also true that his path was slow and hesitant. When he came into office in January 1961, Kennedy was not a strong civil rights advocate; he was more concerned about his political agenda than the struggles of 20 million black Americans. It took him 2½ years to come around.
Steven Levingston
So, what changed him?
You could say he had a guiding spirit, an angel on his shoulder. The deeper you look into those 2½ years, the more carefully you look, everywhere you look stands King: his preaching, his reasoning, his leadership and most important, his moral authority. King was instrumental in guiding Kennedy toward his awakening on civil rights -- a transformation that was crucial to desegregation and the eventual passage of landmark civil rights legislation.
King challenged Kennedy, instructed him, urged him to think about the legacy of slavery and the meaning of inequality in America. Finally, after 2½ years of bus burnings, beatings, children's protests, riots and arrests, Kennedy had an epiphany and announced plans for civil rights legislation.
On June 11, 1963, the President told the nation : "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution." He spoke of black hardship in empathetic terms. "If an American, because his skin is dark ... cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color if his skin changed and stand in this place?"
King never claimed credit, but it was he who showed Kennedy the path to his own conscience. What King taught Kennedy remains relevant today. In times of crisis, we need leaders who listen and learn and evolve in office, leaders who have courage, compassion and tolerance for all Americans. But as King observed in Look magazine in 1964: "It's a difficult thing to teach a president."
Gilbert King: Both faith and strategy define King's legacy
In May 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. came to Tallahassee, Florida , to call attention to a little-known case that he hoped would shine a bright light on the inequalities of the criminal justice system.
Two weeks earlier, Betty Jean Owens, a 19-year-old coed at the historically black Florida A&M University, was abducted and raped at gunpoint by four white men. When deputies arrested the men, they laughed and joked their way to the police station, seemingly confident that the rape of a black woman wouldn't land them in much trouble.
Gilbert King
In Florida, rape was punishable by death unless a jury recommended mercy, but white men rarely faced charges for sexual assaults on black women. (Since 1924 the state had executed 37 black men convicted of raping white women.)
The students at Florida A&M had confidence of their own, encouraged by their victory in the Tallahassee bus boycott . They urged the nation to pay attention to the case, and their protests caught the attention of King, who praised the students for their demonstrations, which, he said, "awakened the nation."
"If the court fails now Florida will be condemned in the eyes of the nation," King said , citing the case as an opportunity for the South to prove that it didn't adhere to a double standard of justice. "I don't believe in capital punishment," King added, calling simply for "punishment suited to the crime."
King said he had two reasons for not calling for capital punishment. The first, he said, was because "it might be possible to reach the hearts and souls of some of the white people" who might view the executions as "payback for all of the injustices that have been heaped upon us."
The second, he said, was less nuanced. "I sincerely believe that capital punishment is wrong."
In June 1959, a jury of 12 white men found the defendants guilty with a recommendation of mercy, and the judge handed down life sentences. Blacks were grateful for the verdict, but many scoffed at the recommendation of mercy because the jury claimed they had found, according to a report in the Baltimore Afro-American, "no evidence of brutality" when Owens was raped seven times.
King believed it was wrong "to do the same thing to the white man that he has done to us over the years," and that it was his "Christian ethic of love" that guided his dealings in racial inequalities and injustice. In doing so, King profoundly demonstrated not only the Christian beliefs that define his legacy but also a nuanced strategy regarding capital punishment and the pursuit of equal justice in the Jim Crow South
Gilbert King won a Pulitzer Prize for "Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America." He is also the author of " Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found " (Riverhead Books, 2018).
Eddie Chambers: How King's life and death shaped the arts, then and now
The traumatic assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 was a pivotal moment in the manifestation of racial politics but also in the development of the arts in America.
In the wake of King's murder, a significant number of traditionally conservative arts institutions immediately altered their programs to accommodate a variety of tributes. Perhaps one of the most significant was the Museum of Modern Art's rapidly organized exhibition , "In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King."
Eddie Chambers
Taking place just seven months after King's murder, the New York exhibition consisted of works by many leading artists of the time, the sales of which benefited the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an African-American civil rights organization for which King served as its first president. It was the first time the museum held an exhibition to benefit another organization, and participants included legendary black artists such as Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence but also white artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Mark Rothko.
In responding to King's assassination, white-controlled arts institutions in particular, from theaters to art galleries to museums, realized that their programs had to work harder to recognize the importance of diversity. Black playwrights such as Adrienne Kennedy, Ntozake Shange, Douglas Turner Ward, George C. Wolfe and August Wilson were able to have their work presented at theaters across the country. Of course, the range of African-American-led arts organizations across the country reacted to King's murder with similar initiatives, pointing to the urgent need for a shared, cathartic response. While some may be exasperated by the inconsistency with which major arts organizations responded to the challenges of enacting diversity even to the present day , when we see African-American art(s) in the institutions around us, we can often trace such programming back to a 1968 moment.
The year that changed the world For more coverage on the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination and other history-making events, watch CNN's original series event "1968," coming Memorial Day weekend.
Today, given the challenging nature of these times, some people feel nostalgic for the exigent messages conveyed by the art of the 1960s, most notably after King's assassination. Several institutions recently hosted an exhibit, "Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties." Taking its cue from the passing of the Civil Rights Act 50 years earlier, " Witness " struck a chord with gallery-going audiences and was widely celebrated in its reviews . The 1960s are, after all, remembered as a time of dramatic social, political and cultural upheaval across the country. Equally as important, the '60s were a time in which many of the nation's artists responded to the urgency of their times by making some of the most principled and engaging work of the modern and contemporary era.
It is, arguably, the duty of arts organizations to respond to seismic moments in our nation's history, and it was King's untimely passing 50 years ago that gave, within the arts, a pronounced fillip to manifestations of cultural diversity and the struggle for racial equality.
Eddie Chambers is a professor of art and art history at the University of Texas at Austin.
King's assassination played a pivotal role in the development of the arts in America.
King's activism was built for future generations
Bree Newsome: What's old is new again
On this solemn occasion of reflection 50 years after King's assassination, it's most important to recognize that King's mission of peace and justice was actively undermined by the FBI and others during his lifetime before he was killed by a sniper's rifle. Too often in our modern day we see an ahistorical narrative being applied to the civil rights movement that imagines it as having ended in triumph, its primary objectives accomplished with the end of forced segregation and the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. But King himself made clear that the passage of these acts represented only part one of his mission. In fact, shortly after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Watts riots broke out in Los Angeles following an incident of police brutality.
Bree Newsome
And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has not survived intact. It was gutted by the US Supreme Court in 2013, leading to ongoing legal battles in Southern states such as North Carolina , where Republican-controlled legislatures have sought new methods to suppress black voter participation. In 2015, instead of celebrating 50 years of the Voting Rights Acts, the nation was reeling from a series of police killings of unarmed black people, uprisings in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore and a white supremacist opening fire and killing nine people at a historically black church in South Carolina.
Like many in my generation, I was raised to view myself as inheriting rights and privileges for which the previous generations had struggled and sacrificed. The expectation that we should have equality and the realization that we still didn't have it led to black millennials rising up in mass protest during the latter half of the Obama administration.
Access to public accommodations is the only civil rights issue of the 1960s for which we aren't still actively organizing and protesting. Voting, education, police brutality, housing and wealth inequality remain central issues of modern civil rights and black liberation. Understanding that King's mission was violently interrupted in 1968 is key to understanding where we find the nation in 2018: deeply divided along racial lines with great unrest, multiple social justice movements occurring and a government openly hostile to black protest. What's old is new again.
Bree Newsome ( @breenewsome ) is an artist and human rights activist who drew national attention in 2015 when she climbed the flagpole in front of the South Carolina Capitol and lowered the Confederate battle flag.
Marc Morial: We are at a crossroads, but all roads lead to justice
As a child of civil rights activists who worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., I remember my mother's despair over King's fatal shooting 50 years ago this week. But what influenced me even more was my father's stalwart response to her despair: The movement will go on, he told me. It must.
As one of the civil rights leaders who has the honor of speaking at the official Day of Remembrance in Memphis this week, I can attest both to the achievements that have been reached since King's murder and the failures to uphold his legacy.
Marc Morial
When King went to Memphis in April 1968 to support the sanitation workers' strike, President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty was only 4 years old, but King had already concluded the government's approach was " piecemeal and pygmy ." King advocated for an aggressive approach to ending poverty, including a commitment to full employment, a guaranteed basic income and construction of affordable housing.
King's Poor People's Campaign floundered in the wake of his death, and Johnson's War on Poverty seems to have become, in the hands of later presidents, a War on the Poor. Income inequality has skyrocketed since the 1970s, and the buying power of the minimum wage has sunk.
Now, a new generation of activists has revived King's vision, and the Poor People's Campaign, led by the Rev. William J. Barber, has begun a series of rallies and protests. Young people across the nation have risen up to protest gun violence -- in a sense, echoing King's condemnation of the Vietnam War.
Fifty years after King's death, we may be at a crossroads, but to paraphrase a favorite line of his: I do believe all roads lead, eventually, to justice.
Marc Morial is the president of the National Urban League and the former mayor of New Orleans.
Carol M. Swain: Racial oppression is changing; we need new appreciation for King
Martin Luther King Jr. was the imperfect prophet who called upon our better angels. Using religion and philosophy, King appealed to American values and principles, while seeking to connect with like-minded people. He was the right man at the right time in history to change hearts and minds across America and the world.
Unfortunately, Generation Z (1995-2012) and some millennials (1980-1994) don't appear to be much interested in learning about King, his tactics or his legacy.
Carol M. Swain
In my conversations with black students, it sometimes seems as if King's contributions are seen as something to be endured during Black History Month without practical relevance for today.
George Santayana famously said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." We should not allow King's legacy and the lessons he taught us to lie buried beneath mounds of grievances.
Blacks have achieved enormous success in many areas. Some of the problems that remain are related to social class and culture. Racial oppression is changing, bringing with it new victims, new forms of victimization and a lack of unifying, prophetic voices.
At this 50th anniversary of King's assassination, we need to reflect on what we can do to instill a fresh appreciation of his vision in those who have not grasped the significance of his life.
Carol M. Swain is a former associate professor of politics at Princeton University and former professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. Her forthcoming book is " Debating Immigration: Second Edition " (Cambridge UP, July 2018). Facebook: Profcarolmswain . Twitter: @carolmswain
Tami Sawyer: King taught my generation not to ask for consensus but to make it ourselves
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "A genuine leader is not a searcher of consensus, but a molder of consensus."
In the beginning of 2017, Confederate statues in Memphis were not a major focus of anyone's political agenda. By the end of that year, the statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis were removed from their pedestals of prominence in our city's public parks. Beginning in May, a movement, which I titled #takeemdown901 after a sister movement in New Orleans, began.
Tami Sawyer
Throughout the year, #takeemdown901 received many criticisms. While the most obvious ones came from white supremacists and Confederate apologists, the more surprising one came from moderates who did not agree with our methods for change. Their advice to me and the members of #takeemdown901 was to be a bit quieter and have a lot more patience. Studying King, I knew that it was the methodology of the moderate to take more umbrage with the type of protest than the reason behind the protest. So we continued to push with fervor and urgency.
Knowing that the 50th anniversary of King's assassination was approaching on April 4, 2018, #takeemdown901 set that day as the deadline for the removal of Memphis' Confederate statues. King was assassinated less than five miles from both Confederate statues and their parks. It would have been extremely hypocritical for our city to launch a wide-scale commemoration for the 50th anniversary of King's assassination and still allow the statues of slaveholders to stand in positions of honor. There were many who felt we didn't take the right tenor with our boisterous social media outreach, protests, petitions and traditional media campaign, which called out our city and state for their complicity in the statues remaining. But when we stood outside Health Sciences Park on December 20 and watched the removal of the statue of Forrest, we knew we had made the good kind of trouble to achieve our end goal.
There are many systemic issues, such as extreme poverty and educational segregation, which are unacceptably the same in Memphis as they were in 1968. Promisingly, there is a growing movement of political and grass-roots leaders who are no longer seeking only a consensus. We are molding the consensus into the change we want to see in our city. Because we did not wait for approval of our methods, #takeemdown901 was able to ensure that the physical landscape of Memphis is different as we commemorate King's legacy.
Policy and leadership in Memphis urgently require great change in the near future. I believe that this change will come from the consensus molders that we see stepping up in greater numbers to answer King's call for the radical economic and political redistribution that is necessary for true equality.
Tami Sawyer is the director for diversity and cultural competence at Teach for America Memphis and a social justice advocate. Named by The Tennessean as one of 18 Tennesseans to watch in 2018, Sawyer founded #takeemdown901, the successful movement to remove Confederate statues in Memphis. She frequently speaks and writes about the continued movement for social justice and racial equity in the South. Sawyer is currently a candidate for Shelby County Commission.
Students and activists hold placards to protest for tighter gun laws during the March For Our Lives rally in Washington.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: I'm not sure at all that I do King's memory justice imagining that today's civil rights issue is mass incarceration
My mother, barely a grade-school student in 1968, remembers Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. But I came up in a different era. By the time I'd reached middle school, King had become only a holiday. Streets and schools commemorated his life. And each year, though at some point during the month of February, a teacher would tell us that he led the Montgomery bus boycott, he was more myth than man. But what's worse is that for me, born 12 years after King's assassination, by the time I'd become a man, the issue confronting my peers and me had stopped being civil rights and had become keeping black and brown people out of prison.
Reginald Dwayne Betts
A little over 10 years ago, one Sunday morning, I sat inside of a packed African Methodist Episcopal church just outside of the nation's capital. Back then, I'd just begun dating my wife, and every moment of every day, it seemed, was about impressing this intelligent college student who had taken a chance on a guy who still carried the funk of jail cells in his pores. I'd read King's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" while incarcerated in a similar cell and that morning, I thought about how different it was to go to prison for robbing someone, as I had, than to go for marching.
The pastor asked for each man in the sanctuary 26 years old or better to stand up. I was a jail-weary 26 and stood with the sea of black men who rose, and if there was a sound we made it would have been thunder. You know the moment, when everyone feels like by standing they belong, that's where we all were, feeling like we belonged. Then the pastor went on to explain that at 26, King led the bus boycott. And we all started wondering how we'd pilfered so much of the time we'd been given.
We're 50 years after the assassination of King, and I'm not sure at all that I do his memory justice imagining that today's civil rights issue is mass incarceration. So many of us, young and old men and women of color, have walked into jail cells and prisons with the memory of crimes we committed. I just don't know how to juxtapose the fight to integrate the public school system with wanting parity in drug sentencing laws and police enforcement. Some days, I stare at my sons and wonder how we messed it all up, how we went from engaging in an irreproachable fight for justice to just wanting our crimes to count for less.
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, memoirist and graduate of Yale Law School. He is an Emerson Fellow at New America, working on a book that examines the criminal justice system through his experience as a formerly incarcerated person working as a public defender.
N.K. Jemisin: I pray it won't take another 50 years
In 1963, as Martin Luther King Jr. sat in solitary confinement in Birmingham, he lamented the failures of white moderates, who at the time seemed to prefer "a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."
It must have seemed clear to King that even white people who claim to support equality are unreliable allies -- willing to talk the talk and walk a few steps, but only if their own anxieties are put first.
N.K. Jemisin
Which is why the civil rights movement made what progress it did by effectively shaming white moderates into doing the right thing. This makes me wonder what America is to do in 2018, when our society daily endures a shameless embarrassment of a President, abetted by his shameless party and the shameless media -- and when, too often, some white liberals and moderates openly wonder if there's some way to ease tension between themselves and ... fascists.
I have no solutions to offer, other than to survive and to try and help as many others survive as possible. It saddens me that we've progressed so little in the 50 years since King's death. I pray it won't take another 50 years for all of us to know the presence of justice at last.
N.K. Jemisin is an author of speculative fiction. In 2016, she became the first black to win the Hugo Award for best novel for "The Fifth Season." In 2017, she won Hugo for best novel again, for "The Obelisk Gate."
Kevin Powell: I still have faith because he had faith
I was born in the late 1960s and have no memory of Martin Luther King Jr. What I recall is being in kindergarten in the 1970s, at a predominantly black grade school, and our well-meaning teacher introducing us to King's life in an animated film -- and it ended with his death. That troubled me for years, and so did his final "Mountaintop" speech, the eeriness of it.
Kevin Powell
I thought of this last week as I visited the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where he was assassinated 50 years ago. I stood on the balcony outside Room 306 in the spot where he was struck by a single bullet. I cried and prayed for his soul, I cried and prayed for America's soul. More than 1 million Americans have lost their lives to gun violence since King was killed. Yes, we have made some progress in America.
Because of King and the civil rights movement, a poor black boy -- me -- got to college, whereas my single mother has an eighth-grade education and my maternal grandmother could not read or write. But as long as there is racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, a hatred of immigrants and a reckless disregard for the disabled, King's "beloved community" remains but a dream deferred. I have faith, because he had faith. However, this anniversary of King's death should not simply be a reflection but also a call to action that we must do better, Americans, human beings, for the sake of us all.
Reshma Saujani: Our young people are the drivers of change
Earlier this year, Barack Obama reminded us all that Martin Luther King Jr. was only 26 when the Montgomery bus boycott began. He was 28 when he and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was only 17 when The Atlanta Constitution published his letter to the editor, "Kick Up Dust," in support of equal rights.
Reshma Saujani
As we commemorate and celebrate King's legacy on the anniversary of his death, we should remember that our young people are drivers of change, that they are the ones who will set us free. They are leading movements against gun violence, sexual harassment, discrimination and more.
King would be proud of our kids. I know I am. I've seen, through Girls Who Code , what our kids are capable of achieving. They will create the world that King dreamed of, a world where we are judged not the by the color or our skin but by the content of our character.
Reshma Saujani is the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code.
Tess Taylor: I'm raising my son with King's vision of hope, but also this reality
A few years ago, on a trip to visit family in Virginia, we passed through Appomattox. My 7-year-old son was 4 then, and it had been a busy trip, and since I hadn't known we were planning to visit Civil War battlefields, I felt unprepared to brief him on the whole history of the war. I had not yet found words to talk about slavery or enslavement with my white child.
Tess Taylor
I was equally unprepared, when, storming the museum, perhaps in search of free screen time, my son made a beeline for the movie theater and arrived in the middle of the historic park's documentary. He opened the door and slid in just moments before the sound of Lincoln being shot. Almost immediately, my son was in tears. Why would they do that? he asked. What was it really about? Those are questions we can spend lifetimes answering. I don't remember the exact words I used, but I do remember telling my son that yes, that had happened, and yes, there is also a wider history of sadness and violence at the heart of our country. Yes, it did erupt then; yes, sometimes it still does erupt; no, that violence is not yet fully over; and yes, it is OK, and even necessary, that we allow ourselves time to grieve it.
On this 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death I find myself thinking about that summer visit to Appomattox again. This time I am preparing myself to talk actively with my son about both the importance of King's work to our country, and planning some time to dwell in the troubling sadness of his too-early death. Taking this time feels like part of my responsibility as a parent. Talking about America's painful racist legacy with our children is hard for all of us, and I am sure that as a white parent it is easier for me not to have to have conversations with my son about skin and skin color, about how race gets lived in America. But to me, talking about race -- as it's been lived in the past, as it gets lived in the present -- is a critical part of helping my children understand our American journey -- our aspirations, our shortcomings and the work we have ahead.
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Now that my son is older, we've talked more explicitly about the strange paradox that we live in a country that was born celebrating ideas of freedom but also keeping other people from it. We've talked about living in a country that in its best incarnation dreams of fairness but does not deliver that fairness equally to all people. And we've talked about the amazing work of King in helping us dream and work toward a more just future.
I know that my son's life will be one of expanding reckonings. My son's grandfather's great-grandfather enslaved humans; his grandfather grew up in segregated schools in the South. My parents and husband and I -- all of whom are watching my son grow up -- know full well that the work of changing that legacy is not yet finished. We know that we can't turn away from our painful history but must work forward through it. We owe it to our children to help them understand the complex country they are inheriting.
King's vision was ultimately one of hope -- that one day we will reach a more perfect union together. I also want to honor that hope. I know that I deliver my son a beautiful and also deeply imperfect world, and I also hope that he'll help be part of a generation that pushes our great American dream of living in justice further toward reality. "Not one piece of this is your fault, honey," I have said to him, "but it is our responsibility to work to make better."
Tess Taylor is the author of the poetry collections "Work & Days" and "The Forage House."
In good times and bad, how to embody King's legacy
Kristen Clarke: Today, the collective power of the vote still matters
Martin Luther King Jr. fought many battles but his work to ensure access to the ballot box occupies a special place. On March 25, 1965, he led thousands of nonviolent demonstrators on a 54-mile march from Selma to the steps of the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery on a campaign for voting rights. A turning point in these efforts was Bloody Sunday, a day when state troopers unleashed dogs, billy clubs and tear gas on peaceful demonstrators in a gut-wrenching display of violence that was telecast on black-and-white TV screens across the globe.
Kristen Clarke
Shortly after Bloody Sunday, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which led to progress in many places. But a 2013 Supreme Court ruling gutted a core provision of that law, fueling voter suppression efforts across the country. Today, efforts to restrict access to the ballot box are simply unrelenting and carried out, as the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals aptly described, with " almost surgical precision " to impede the rights of minority voters.
In his speech, " Give Us the Ballot ," King talked about the transformative power of the vote. He saw the movement for voting rights as a way to bring lawmakers of goodwill to the table, as a way to confront white supremacy and a way to ensure the election of judges who could be fair and impartial. As of February, there are 63 restrictive bills that have been introduced or carried over in 24 states that all seek to make it harder for people to vote.
If he were alive today, King would be incensed by the old and familiar tactics used to suppress minority voting rights. He would have been deeply offended by this administration's launch of the President's Election Integrity Commission -- an unprecedented attempt, despite its eventual failure , to lay the groundwork for promoting voter suppression policies across the country. He would also have expressed dissatisfaction with a Justice Department that is shifting course on voting rights . Today, civil rights lawyers and activists are engaged in a spirited struggle to safeguard access to the ballot box against ongoing threats. As new movements develop across our country to address gun violence, police brutality and women's rights, the centrality of the right to vote remains undeniable. Just as King realized, one of the most important tools in the arsenal of social justice movements continues to be the collective power of the vote.
Kristen Clarke is president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law , a national organization founded in 1963 that works to address voting rights, education, fair housing and is working to end mass incarceration.
A woman whose home was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina exits a voting booth after casting her ballot.
Cornell Brooks: Our lives, black lives and the life of King
Following Passover and Easter, people of all faiths are commemorating both the death and life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as an apostle of nonviolence. It is precisely because King did not give up on nonviolence as both a practical strategy and principled philosophy that he became a target for an assassin's bullet.
Fifty years after his assassination, we honor the legacy of King amid an American era of gun violence. And yet the words and work of King offer lessons today.
Cornell Brooks
The story of King's last days in Memphis of 1968 is an American story about violence -- from beginning to end. The Memphis sanitation workers, without bargaining rights, were treated like human trash, working on a dangerous job at what King called "starvation wages." These workers were subject to routine occupational violence; on February 1, 1968, Echol Cole and Robert Walker were crushed to death sitting on the back of a trash truck reeking with filth -- as they sought refuge from the rain. Even, today solid waste workers still have one of the riskiest jobs in the country.
For King, initially Memphis was an unplanned diversion, not a planned destination. Not only did he go to Memphis to address the workers, he also promised to return to support them with a march. King subsequently led what was to be a peaceful on March 28, but things quickly disintegrated into window-breaking and a police response with mace, tear gas, batons and brutality. Dozens of people were injured, mostly black; a 16-year-old black child, Larry Payne , was shot to death. Hundreds were arrested, and National Guardsmen were mobilized.
King, forced to leave because of the violence, was blamed both for abandoning the march and the ineffectiveness of its intended nonviolence. Canceling a planned trip abroad, King again agreed to return to Memphis to persist in the nonviolent advocacy of workers' rights.
King was shot on April 4, 1968, and this was followed by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that June. King's beloved mother, Alberta Williams King, was also shot to death six years after her son -- as she was playing the organ in church. She was gunned down less than 100 yards from where her son was buried.
America marks the occasion of Martin Luther King's death during an ongoing era of gun violence that only underscores how important his philosophy of nonviolence is today. America's gun violence is embodied by both civilian mass shooters and police officers who have killed unarmed black and brown men, women and children (as well as some whites). Last year, according to data gathered by the Gun Violence Archive , 987 people were killed at the hands of the police, while there were 15,549 people killed by guns in the United States.
America's gun violence problem is symbolized by both the March for Our Lives and the Movement for Black Lives. Student activists, whether they be from Parkland, Florida, or Ferguson, Missouri, city or suburb, are all young practitioners of democracy who deserve the same moral empathy and the same media attention. King did not teach us to empathize with the victims of violence by race, region or ZIP code.
King's philosophy of nonviolence was based on the Imago Dei, namely that every person is created in the image of God and has inherent value. To honor King's life on the anniversary of his death means we must value the beauty, dreams, hopes and humanity of all victims of gun violence. The innate worth of every person not only undergirds King's philosophy of nonviolence and the insistence of the American Declaration of Independence that we all have God-given rights but also that black lives matter.
Cornell Brooks is a former president and CEO of the NAACP. He is visiting professor of ethics, law and justice movements at Boston University School of Law and School of Theology, senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and a senior research scholar at Yale Law School.
William J. Barber: Nothing would be more tragic than to turn back now
Dorothy Day said , "Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily." America would do well to recall her words as we honor her contemporary on this 50th anniversary of his martyrdom, for in celebrating him we risk missing his call to each of us.
It is too easy to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of black and white together but forgetting that the March on Washington was a call for jobs and economic justice. It is tempting to remember King's last sermon in Memphis as only a bright and glorious vision from the mountaintop. A preacher in the prophetic tradition, King knew he could never proclaim hope without lifting people up. But to separate his word of inspiration from his prophetic instruction is to risk reducing him from prophet to motivational speaker.
William J. Barber
Anyone who wants to honor King this week must go back to the beginning of his speech on April 3, 1968, at Mason Temple. There King stated his theme, a summation of what he had learned from 12 long years of fiery trial in the freedom movement: "Nothing would be more tragic than to turn back now." After demonstrating the power of nonviolence to challenge Jim Crow in Montgomery, the movement had linked up with young people in the sit-ins and Freedom Rides to compel the federal government to uphold the 14th and 15th amendments through the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. But King always knew that reconstructing American democracy required both political and economic empowerment. The Poor People's Campaign was about pressing on in truth and love to become the America we had never yet been.
Together with Ella Baker and Bayard Rustin, Fred Shuttlesworth and Fannie Lou Hamer, King experienced what the hymn says: "Just when I thought I was lost/my dungeon shook and my chains fell off." Their movement was always up against great odds. But Gandhi had showed them the pattern: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win. In a struggle for justice, resistance is your confirmation. The money, violence and lies waged against you are a measure of your power. Or, as they used to say in the South African struggle against apartheid, "Only a dying mule kicks the hardest."
As unprecedented sums of money are poured into politics and voter suppression tactics proliferate , we need to hear King afresh: Nothing would be more tragic than to turn back now. Racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and a distorted moral narrative have intersected to undermined democracy over the past 50 years. Any of us who would honor King must resolve to go forward together, not one step back. We must reach down into the blood of the martyr, take up his baton and run the next mile of the way. In the face of extremism, people in 39 states and the District of Columbia are committed to 40 days of coordinated direct action this spring as part of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival . We will be living King's legacy in action.
The Rev. William J. Barber II is co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and President of Repairers of the Breach. He is author of "The Third Reconstruction."
U.S. President Barack Obama helps paint a mural depicting Martin Luther King Jr.
Amy Liu: King's understanding of economic justice should shape the 21st century
I was born after key victories of the civil rights movement, such as the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So when I visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis recently, I received a powerful re-education that left me with pride and shame at this period of our nation's history. It was also hard to escape mirrors of today's struggles -- police brutality in cities, marches (in Charlottesville, Virginia, and elsewhere) that protest integration, and the slow cultural acceptance of equal rights and access. The museum tour ends at the room and balcony in which Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 50 years ago, adding to the sense that the work to advance racial equality remains undone.
Amy Liu
The failure to address de facto segregation is not simply bad for humanity, it's also a major risk to American competitiveness. The strength of the modern economy depends on our collective ability to achieve innovation and inclusion in an era of rapid digitalization and demographic change. Yet, black and Hispanic workers are currently underrepresented in the fast-growing tech sector in nearly every metro area in the country, particularly in computer and math occupations, while a majority of Americans under the age of 18 will be nonwhite by the next presidential election.
Given these challenges, employers, business leaders and economic developers are finding their way in the 21st century to the table long ago set by social justice advocates, neighborhood activists and educators such as King. Their engagement is critical as they hire, make investments and influence the priorities shaping community life. Motivated not by compassion -- although that is crucial -- these relative newcomers are driven by the imperative to foster continuous invention, seize new market opportunities and stay globally competitive. And a growing number are realizing that an economy that excludes people and perpetuates inequalities carries deep market costs, resulting in billions in lost regional income , insufficient talent and entrepreneurs to fuel local industries, and outmigration of firms and people to other regions.
What's encouraging is that across the country, from San Diego to Indianapolis , and Chicago to Minneapolis , business leaders are embracing inclusive economic growth, leading or convening diverse coalitions to advance regional priorities that help under-represented people gain relevant skills, start and grow new businesses, and afford homes in neighborhoods with good jobs and schools. These regional commitments are key to ensuring that American prosperity comes not from the fruits of the few but from the untapped potential of more people, more firms and more communities participating in economic success.
Just weeks before his death, at a rally for sanitation workers in Memphis, King recognized that the achievement of equal rights under the law had not resulted in economic equality when he exclaimed, "What does it profit a man to be able to eat an integrated lunch counter if he doesn't earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?" Fifty years later, we still struggle to see economic inclusion as a shared value, rather than a program, that must permeate individual mindsets, organizational missions, broader collaborations and systemic reforms. But that is what's required if the United States is to live up to its aspirations of being a place of widespread opportunity and cutting-edge innovation.
Amy Liu is a vice president at the Brookings Institution and director of its metropolitan policy program.
Gerard Robinson: The path to the mountaintop isn't always straight
Fifty years ago, this week, America lost a prophetic voice to a gun shot in the city of Memphis.
And the lingering psychological wounds require our care and attention still today.
For some, there is temptation to claim that little progress has been made in 50 years since the assassination of King. For example, community responses to the police killings of young black men from Sacramento to Baton Rouge, Baltimore to Minneapolis in the past few years have been compared to the Klan's Birmingham bombing that killed four little girls and the martyring of King in Memphis. The temptation is to suggest that, then as now, black lives still do not matter in America.
Gerard Robinson
The presidential election of Richard Nixon in 1968 ushered in a "tough on crime" mantra that is consistent with the playbook President Donald Trump is using today.
On the education front, in a case argued just the day before MLK's assassination, Green v. County School Board of New Kent County , the Supreme Court held that "freedom of choice" plans which failed to desegregate public education are inconsistent with Brown v. Board of Education.
Today, public or private "choice" programs are in place in more than 40 states at a time when white students are a minority, and the complexion of 50 million public school students is becoming browner and poorer.
And the beat goes on.
However, as we consider the meaning of our post-April 4, 1968 world, we must consider what America was like before MLK fell.
The notorious practices of red-lining and whites-only deed transfers begot systemic and legal discrimination and segregation in housing, creating black ghettoes and isolation. LBJ signed the Fair Housing Act later in 1968, outlawing those practices.
Blacks were also demonstrably poorer. In 1968, 35% of blacks lived in poverty. Although stubbornly and disproportionately high, black poverty has fallen by more than a third overall while today the poverty rates for married two-parent black families, the norm for black families in 1968, are only slightly above whites and in the single digits.
Average black earnings have risen by 43% , even faster than that of whites. High school graduation rates for blacks mirror white attainment, and college graduation rates have more than doubled.
In a survey conducted in the past few months by Gallup for my organization, blacks in "fragile communities" -- that is high poverty with limited opportunities and social mobility -- are more hopeful about the future, value college education more, and want to start their own businesses at higher rates than similarly situated whites.
But the "good news" is colored in America by persistent gaps between blacks and whites.
One distressing new study shows that for a black boy, born rich or upper middle class, staying there is harder than for his white counterpart. Reaching the rags-to-riches success of the American Dream is more nuanced than we know.
But one exemplar of the American Dream, Barack Obama, noted , "Progress isn't always a straight line or a smooth path." In terms of what King might say about the current state of black America, it is not as much a crooked path but what mountain climbers call a "false peak" -- the point you realize that you must go back into the valley to reach our shared, final destination.
MLK's last public speech sums it up well , "I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead...I just want to do God's will...I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land."
In that Memphis speech, as King figures himself as Moses on the mountain, black America -- really all people in America -- should see themselves as Israelites in the desert -- wandering but not lost.
Though a man of God, Martin was also a believer in our American scriptures: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
Those laws and wisdom should guide our next steps as people of all races and faith traditions acknowledge both the growing pains and the possibilities that are endemic to our American republic. Only then can we go down into the valley and come out on top, together.
Gerard Robinson is the executive director of the Center for Advancing Opportunity, a research and education initiative created by a partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the Charles Koch Foundation, and Koch Industries.
Nina Turner: King would want us to find our beautiful selves
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, and five decades after his death, we are still pondering what our country might look like were he alive today.
King fought for racial and economic injustice. During his time, society was largely divided along racial lines, when blacks and whites had separate lunch counters, and where other people of color were rarely acknowledged. Since the civil rights movement, there has been tremendous progress along racial lines, but sadly, we are falling short in other areas. While some barriers have been lowered, others have been erected.
Nina Turner
In the 21st century, one of the biggest barriers to progress is idolizing political ideology. With each passing election cycle, political affiliation becomes a bigger identifier for American households. With each passing election, we appear to look less on what King described as the content of a person's character and more on the "D" or "R" beside their names.
Rather than discovering the shared experiences that unite us, we obsess over the political labels that divide us. Rather than discovering our beautiful selves, we obsess over who's in our camp and who's outside of it.
This obsession with political affiliation has inspired a "win at all costs" mindset. Most of us can barely stand to be maligned in the comments section of news stories, or in social media threads, but King withstood so much more. He famously said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that; hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." He withstood his share of hate, but he did not allow it to make him bitter nor did he allow it to alter what he envisioned as possible for the future.
I wonder what he would think of the cruel, politically motivated attacks that have become synonymous with campaigning in the 21st century.
We have hit a fault line in this country. We can't get people to see our point of view by calling them names or insulting their intelligence. We can't inspire people who think differently from us to open their minds, if we attack them.
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If we refuse to recognize and respect someone else's humanity -- even in the thick of the fight -- we will be consumed by the same hate and backwardness that King and those who strive to follow his example oppose. For instance, when high school students made the decision to sit in at a Woolworth counter in North Carolina, they knew they wouldn't be greeted with "Do you take cream and sugar," but rather with people yelling at them and beating them, but they remained seated, knowing they were really taking a stand for change. They did not return blow with blow. Even though fighting back would have been a natural physical response, they knew their cause required more.
Today, many of us not only refuse to withstand challenges, we turn into the same type of bullies we rail against.
It may be tempting to think that discovering our beautiful selves is about refraining from fiercely advocating for what we believe in. It's not. It's about following King's example and operating from a place of radical love and a belief in our shared humanity | {
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Five Illinois Cops Are Caught Lying On The Stand When Defense Produces A Recording Contradicting Their Testimony
from the liars-apparently-still-trustworthy-enough-to-run-a-desk dept
Cops lie. Citizens know this. Defense attorneys know this. Prosecutors know this. Most importantly, judges know this. But rarely does it have any effect on the outcome of the case at hand. But in what has been described as a "Perry Mason moment," five Illinois police officers were caught lying on the stand. (h/t to Trevor Debus)
A seemingly routine suppression hearing in a suburban Chicago courthouse last month took an unexpected dramatic turn when video from a police car was introduced that disproved the testimony of five police officers.
They had said Joseph Sperling was arrested after officers who pulled him over in a traffic stop smelled marijuana, searched the vehicle and found nearly a pound in a backpack lying on the back seat of his car. But the Glenview police video showed the search occurred only after Sperling was taken from his car, frisked and handcuffed, reports the Chicago Tribune (sub. req.).
"All the officers lied on the stand today," said [Judge Catherine] Haberkorn, who herself is a former prosecutor, at the March 31 hearing. "So there is strong evidence it was conspiracy to lie in this case, for everyone to come up with the same lie."
Joseph Sperling says in his suit that Chicago police asked Glenview officers at the scene of his arrest last June to turn off their squad car dashcams. At least one Glenview officer didn't, resulting in video footage that persuaded a Cook County Circuit Court judge to grant a motion to suppress seized evidence, because police testimony contradicted what the camera showed.
After a cocktail or two, Harold talked about how his experience as a judge changed him. Case after case, defendant after defendant, victim after victim, made it all a blur. Sure, cops lied. Everybody knew cops lied. Everybody knew cops lied in every case. That was the game. It was their job to put the bad guy away, and the way to win the game was to speak the magic words that the system accepted as necessary…
What was he supposed to do, Harold asked? They may not all be guilty, but they all were guilty. No one could pluck out the one in a hundred who didn’t deserve to be there, and he wasn’t going to cut everyone free because he couldn’t tell who was who. […] He had a job to do, to keep the cattle moving toward the slaughter. Harold could be a rather charming guy, personally. As a judge, he was utterly despicable.
I am a shitty judge of credibility. Truly, I am. See here for what happened when I believed a defendant and it blew up in my face with an editorial cartoon and the whole nine yards. Thus, when forced to judge between a cop and a defendant it is safer to believe the cop than the defendant particularly if a judge cares about his or her reputation. While pleading the subconscious in mitigation, there was a period of time when I really thought I might make it to the Circuit if I were a good little boy. See what happened to Judge Baer when he “screwed” up.
It’s not just about the trials. Jurors don’t want to sit, don’t understand the instructions and cannot consider what the sentence should be. They cannot tell if a person is lying or not and tend to believe those who look like them or wear badges, despite instructions to the contrary. It’s not about did the accused did it or didn’t do it, most of the time. It’s about the penalties, the sentences, and the lack of a future when one tries to put a life together after doing time. It’s about judges who need to move calendars, jailers and bailiffs, court reporters and clerks who depend on a steady stream of defendants for their livelihood ...
[M]ost of all it’s the Judges who sit silently, listening to the bartering, accepting the stories for fear that they will be removed if they question, dismiss or offer justice. Break my hear[t], they did.
A comment I made, “cops lie all the time,” was introduced as evidence at my removal hearing and served as the basis for finding me biased. I couldn’t have been the only judge who believed that, could I?
Yesterday I met with our new police chief (city of 250,000) I I told him I was getting tired of not having video or audio recordings of defendants statements. I said I felt juries disbelieved the rendition by the officer (especially a narcotics officer). I added, I was not sure I was going to believe another citizen consented to the search of his vehicle unless I had a written signed consent to search (which they have). The Chief looked like I had kicked his dog. I said “Hey, the jurors expect this in this age of technology.” We will see.
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I suppose once the film rolled, there was little the judge could do but address it. It's one thing for a cop to lie in the courtroom and have it discovered months, weeks or even years later. It's quite another when the testimony is rebutted by video evidence during the same hearing.The officers, currently on desk duty, apparentlyconspire to lie about the specifics of the search, at least according to the lawsuit filed by the arrestee shortly after this suppression hearing went sideways This case has obviously provoked quite a bit of discussion as to how often cops lie and what the final arbiters -- the judges -- do when they take this knowledge into consideration. The answers, unfortunately, are depressing. Even if these temporary desk jockeys manage to retain their jobs, one would think their days as credible witnesses are over. Nothing could be farther from the truth.Scott Greenfield talks about one judge he heard discuss why he kept on pushing defendants into the maw of the prison system , even while knowing those on the law enforcement side weren't necessarily any better when it came to truth-telling.Judge Richard Kopf, prompted by Greenfield's post, offered his own thoughts as to why he finds cops credible witnesses, despite loads of evidence otherwise . It's a bracing read and admirably soul-baring, but it's not going to make anyone feel any better about their odds against a lying law enforcement officer. While he makes several points that indicate he's still more careful in his selection process than the Judge Harold mentioned above, he does make the following indictment of his own beliefs and behavior.Will Baude at the Volokh Conspiracy, who originally questioned whether these five cops would be unable to offer believable testimony in the future , gathered some notable comments from Judge Kopf's post that lend credence to the belief that everyone in the courtroom knows cops lie , but there's very little anyone's actually willing to do about it, partly because the system destroys judges who refuse to play along.Lorin Duckman, a former New York judge, noted how the system lends itself to accommodating lying cops, if only to keep the system moving at the pace that pleases most of those involved.But Duckman also points out that judges have their own livelihoods to consider, and speaking aloud about the fact that cops lie on the stand tends to short-circuit their futures.The system is broken all the way up and all the way down. These five cops were very possibly only called out because it was unavoidable. Their punishment for being caught perjuring themselves has been desk duty, something that may seem tedious compared to pulling people over and illegally searching their vehicles, but can hardly be considered a true punishment. It's not as though the facts are disputed. The cops are being "investigated" after lying in court in front of a judge and several witnesses. There's literally nothing to "investigate."This is just two police departments (Glenview and Chicago) buying time until they can weigh possible punishments and outcomes. As few judges are willing to confront the fact that cops lie with the same frequency as other human beings, just as few PDs are willing to terminate officers (partly due to pushback from officers' unions), no matter the wrongdoing.But before all hope is destroyed, another judge (Alabama's Judge Joseph Johnson) commenting at Kopf's blog noted the status quo is changing , at least in his courtroom.Looking at this and another set of isolated incidents -- the pushback by two judges against overly-broad search warrants -- gives a modicum of hope that law enforcement will be finally forced to play by the rules that have been existent since shortly after the founding of this nation. It's too little, far too late and it's marked by outliers rather than exceptions to the rule. But at least it's. And the more the public is informed about the routine abuse of civil liberties by law enforcement, the less those tasked with handling the intersection of cops and civilians will be able to ignore the reality of the situation and blithely (and blindly) believe badges denote a more trustworthy class of human.
Filed Under: illinois, lies, police, recordings | {
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The Supreme Court said Tuesday that part of President Trump’s travel ban could remain in effect, in a move that temporarily keeps some 24,000 refugees from being able to enter the U.S.
In a brief order, the high court said it was continuing a stay of a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that had tried to force Mr. Trump to limit his refugee ban.
The stay means that refugees whom the U.S. has assigned to a resettlement agency, but who haven’t been admitted yet, can be blocked.
Earlier in the day Hawaii had asked the court to uphold the 9th Circuit ruling, saying that refugees who have had their cases assigned to resettlement agencies now have a “bona fide” relationship with an entity in the U.S. That, Hawaii said, should qualify them for an exemption to Mr. Trump’s travel ban.
The 9th Circuit ruling had been set to take effect Tuesday.
The Trump administration has for months been battling to defend the president’s executive order, which was intended to pause for 90 days all entry to the U.S. from six countries identified as high risks for terrorist travel and for 120 days all refugee admissions.
After a lengthy battle in lower courts, which saw judges repeatedly block the travel ban, the Supreme Court ruled in June that much of the ban could go into effect.
But the justices did say that would-be immigrants and visitors who have a “bona fide” relationship with people or entities in the U.S. had rights that must be accounted for. They said the administration couldn’t prevent their travel to the U.S.
The justices declined to define what constituted such a close relationship, setting off a new round of litigation.
The administration said that when it came to family relationships, only parents, spouses, children and fiancé relationships counted as “close” enough to qualify for the exemption.
That was overruled by a judge in Hawaii and then by the 9th Circuit, which said grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins all qualified.
The 9th Circuit also said refugees whose cases are being worked on by resettlement agencies in the U.S. must be admitted. The ruling would have paved the way for about 24,000 refugees to enter the U.S.
Hawaii’s attorneys argued that the refugees had a right to enter at this point, since their cases were far enough along in the process.
“The lower courts have simply applied this Court’s standard to protect vulnerable refugees and the American entities that have been eagerly preparing to welcome them to our shores,” the attorneys wrote.
They encouraged the Supreme Court to leave the 9th Circuit ruling in place, arguing that the question under review will become moot after the court hears broader arguments on the legality of the travel ban on Oct. 10.
⦁ Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
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Four-star senior running back Lyn-J Dixon of Taylor County High School of Butler, Ga., announced Saturday afternoon on his Twitter account that he has decommitted from Tennessee.
The 5-foot-10.5, 178-pound Dixon had been committed to the Vols since June. He made his decision known shortly after Tennessee's 15-9 loss to South Carolina on Saturday amid increasing speculation about Vols coach Butch Jones' future.
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"I have made the Decision to re open my recruitment to all Schools," he tweeted. "I prayed and thought hard on it and talked to my family before making this Choice.. ~Respect my Decision."
I have made the Decision to re open my recruitment to all Schools ,I prayed???? and thought hard on it and talked to my family before making this Choice..?? ~Respect my Decision~ — Lyn-J Dixon...™?? (@im_Next23) October 14, 2017
Dixon is ranked the No. 288 overall prospect and No. 6 all-purpose back in the 247Sports Composite for the 2018 class.
(What's next for the Vols? Make sure you're in the loop — take five seconds to sign up for our FREE Vols newsletter now!)
He holds offers from more than 15 other schools, including Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, LSU, Michigan, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia Tech.
Tennessee now is left with 22 known commitments in the 2018 class, including one running back: three-star Anthony Grant of Buford (Ga.) High School. | {
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I start to see things I recognize. It’s being very respectful of first two films. Then all of the sudden, it just swerves. And now I’m going on a journey. I feel like the franchise has been reinvigorated, like this is a renaissance.
If you look at why the films became classics, they had characters that you liked. The new film, which, in my mind, I think of as the third film, we see Arnold take the character even farther.
The idea of taking John Connor and flipping him to the bad guy. It’s pretty cool, because you got a rift against expectation. It’s all about the twist.
Next month’s Terminator Genisys readies an intense retroactive reinvention of the classic franchise. Just as much a throwback to classic moments as it is a showcase of new elements, the film just got a big endorsement. The writer/director of the first twofilms, James Cameron, saw the new movie and gave it glowing feedback.In an interview with Yahoo , Cameron, having just watched, bestowed upon it what might be considered the most important endorsement that the series can get: praise from its creator. Not being involved in any way with the Alan Taylor-directed franchise revival, Cameron confesses that, "I’m just a fanboy." Likewise, his review of the film was more than positive. According to Cameron:Praise from Cameron is especially auspicious when considering just how much he has distanced himself from the franchise following his 1991 action classic,. As recently as last year, Cameron openly criticized the ensuing entries, 2003’sand 2009’s saying that they didn’t live up to their potential. He was hardly alone in the criticism of those films, especially with. Star, Christian Bale admitted the film didn’t work, and recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger bluntly said , "it sucked." However, it seems thatmay prove to be an exception in the post-Cameron era, at least going by his own words. Cameron continues:Of course, the events oftake the series’ traditional time-travel tropes and alters the franchise to its very core. Reinventing the timeline, we see Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) we once again see her in 1984, but depicted as not the mousy damsel we originally met. This is due to the fact that the timeline was changed when an aged version of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 was sent back to protect her as a child from a later/earlier attempt on her life and has been watching over her ever since. Now, traditional roles get reversed as Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), who still shows up, sent back to 1984 to save Sarah from the 1984 movie’s Terminator, now finds himself not quite knowing what’s happening as dangerous new threats arrive like Byung-hun Lee’s new T-1000.also contains a radical plot "twist" that might have been considered a spoiler, had it not been included heavily in the film’s recent marketing . It seems that John Connor (Jason Clarke) will also make a trip to 1984 to reunite with Sarah and Kyle (his parents). However, as we eventually learn, he’s not quite himself, having been transformed into some bizarre Terminator/human hybrid with bad intentions. Addressing the severely spoiled storyline swerve, Cameron expresses approval when he states:Originally looking to be just another cash-grab reboot brandishing thebranding and little more, it’s now starting to become clear thatmight be more poignant than the naysayers may have thought. The film has certainly come a long way in changing perceptions, just in the last few months and this fantastic feedback from Cameron is bound to whet the appetites of fans looking to see the series restored to past glory. We shall see if the hype is real whenbring its time-bending madness to theaters on July 1. | {
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San Francisco’s towers and Silicon Valley’s sprawling tech campuses have long overshadowed downtown San Jose in the Bay Area. But developer Erik Hayden says the time has finally come for the city -- thanks, in part, to a Trump-era tax break meant to help low-income communities.
He and his partners at Urban Catalyst just unveiled their latest purchase in the city: a $24 million deal for a shuttered movie theater, which they plan to convert into an office development called Paseo.
Urban Catalyst has plans to create office space at a former movie theater in San Jose Source: Urban Catalyst/Mayberry Workshop
In just a few months, Urban Catalyst has become one of the most-active developers in California’s third-largest city, laying out plans for apartments, offices, a Marriott-branded hotel and even a senior-living facility -- much of it just steps from where Google is planning a new campus for 20,000 workers.
And they have more coming as part of an effort to raise as much as $250 million to tap generous new federal subsidies for investing in areas designated as “opportunity zones.”
“We definitely would not have as much interest in San Jose, especially in downtown, were it not for the opportunity zone,” Hayden said. “It was crucial.”
That assertion is at the heart of a debate over one of the most controversial incentives in the tax package that President Donald Trump signed into law in late 2017: Would investment in opportunity zones have happened were it not for the tax breaks?
Read a QuickTake: Will opportunity zones help rich or poor?
Critics of the program have pointed to zones in areas that were already up-and-coming to argue they’re a waste of tax dollars. Proponents, meanwhile, have highlighted investments that have come together faster, and bigger, because of the incentives. Teasing out who’s right may never be possible, said Nate Jensen, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, who studies economic development incentives.
“The bottom line is we are not going to be able to evaluate this, even if we had all the project-level data,” he said.
San Jose makes for an interesting case study. Long a bedroom community for Silicon Valley, the city has been trying to flip the script by bringing jobs and businesses downtown to bolster its tax base. Transit upgrades years in the making are moving forward. Roughly three years ago, Google began snapping up properties for its eventual campus.
It’s all had the effect of spurring projects. Almost no new office space was finished in San Jose’s central business district in the past 10 years, according to research from CBRE Group Inc. In the coming decade, however, developers may deliver nearly 14 million square feet. And that doesn’t count the as much as 7.3 million square feet Google is planning.
Construction costs remain high, so the opportunity zone benefits are “without question” important for some new developments, said Erik Hallgrimson, a broker with Cushman & Wakefield in San Jose.
The real estate boom has provoked a backlash, with many residents worried that the arrival of thousands of tech workers will put housing out of reach in one of the more affordable parts of the Bay Area. Median home prices in the city almost touched $1.2 million in the spring of 2018, before moderating. They were $938,000 in October, according to Redfin Corp.
Read more: Google’s growing empire seen transforming San Jose
Hayden estimated his developments will contribute about $25 million toward affordable housing, enough to create more than 120 below-market units. Urban Catalyst’s projects will also add $100 million to local coffers in property taxes through 2030, he said, more than the tax breaks his investors will likely reap because of the opportunity-zone benefits.
Hayden’s fund has also allowed investors who’ve made money in tech to parlay some of their capital gains into redeveloping San Jose -- something they might not have done absent the tax benefits. More than half of the $42 million Urban Catalyst has raised to date has come from the sale of stock, including from executives at Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc.
“This is the whole impetus of the program -- get money off the sidelines and invest in lower-income areas,” he said. | {
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GNOME 3.12 hit the download servers earlier today, but among the reams of changes on offer what are the highlights to look out for?
We don’t expect you to trawl the changelogs to find out. As is tradition around these parts, what follows is a list of our favourite bits cropping up in the latest stable milestone. This list is not exhaustive, so be sure to share your favourite changes with us in the comments.
The Whole Folder Thing, Sorted
Borrowing a leaf out of the “things we should’ve included sooner” handbook, GNOME finally brings the ability to create custom folders of apps to the Activities Overview.
Now, this isn’t especially new; GNOME 3 has had a few app folders in the past (‘Sundry’ and ‘Utilities’), but this marks the first time that users can create their own without resorting to hacks.
GNOME Videos
Of all the app overhauls in this release none are as dramatic as that of the application formerly known as ‘Totem’.
GNOME’s video player has been rejigged in both look, feel and purpose, with an all-new playback view for both windowed and fullscreen modes and floating HUD controls that only appear when you need them.
It’s also no longer primarily a means for viewing local videos and now offers up content from a bunch of online sources, including Apple Movie Trailers, Blip.tv, Pocket, and Guardian Videos.
GNOME is making it super easy for developers to add new channels, so don’t be put off by the limited selection for now. Big things are coming.
[one-half]
Get This, Gedit?
Developers among you will find a new-look Gedit included in 3.12. The visual overhaul won’t please die-hards, and there will be a bit of a learning curve involved in transitioning as many features have been jigged about a bit.
But with the end result being a bigger, more spacious viewpoint to work in, and more intuitive ways of accessing common options, I doubt few will mind.[/one-half][one-half last=”y”]
Terminal Changes
Another tool of the developer, GNOME Terminal has been updated. Lines are now automatically wrapped and there’s the choice of a ‘dark theme’ as default for new windows.
For those who prefer a more colourful terminal, the 16-colour strong Solarized hue palette is now included by default. Just enable it through the Colour Settings pane.
[/one-half]
HiDPI Is Easy On The Eye
While the previous release went a long way to improving the look of GNOME on high-resolution displays (like that found in the Retina MacBooks) it’s only with this release that HiDPI support has been rolled out to include core parts of the desktop, such as the Activities Overview, lock screen and system dialogs.
Set Up Wizard
Getting GNOME up and running is made easier in this release with the introduction of a new-look initial setup wizard. Now, the Ubuntu GNOME users amongst you won’t be familiar with this, but those of you who have installed the DE on Fedora or OpenSUSE likely will be.
Changes include separate steps for selecting a language and region (because you may not be a native speaker of where you are, for example) and a larger map for more accurate timezone selection.
Facebook Photos
The video player isn’t the only app to get seamless integration with cloud services. Hook up Facebook through the Online Accounts pane and all of your drunken selfies, holiday snaps and blurry cat photos will be available to peruse through the Photos app on the desktop.
In a similar vein, photos stored on Flickr can be set as the desktop background through the wallpaper picker.
Web Made Better
The default web browser ‘Web’ (also known as ‘Epiphany’) receives another round of interface improvements for 3.12.
Chief among them is a new address bar design which replaces the traditional URL bar with the page title when the former isn’t needed. While I can foresee this approach confusing some there’s no denying that it looks pretty cool in action.
Elsewhere, ‘Private Browsing’ windows sport a new style, per-tab processing is introduced, and the speed dial, a staple of any self-respecting modern web browser, also sees some minor adjustments made to it.
Misc Theme Fixes
The sheer number of theme improvements featured in this release could justify their own rundown. The design team has refined everything from tabs – which now make the most of the screen space available, support backgrounds, and have a new shape – to softer separators, button backgrounds and floating toolbars.
The arrival of pop-over menus is also another highly notable inclusion.
Elsewhere, window snapping animations, symbolic icons and various GTK header bars have all been tweaked to create a more pleasing and intuitive experience.
Preview Apps
With Software now out of preview, there are some new preview apps to play with. While these aren’t fully formed, stable or finished, they’re included to garner feedback and testing. And let’s face it, who can resist an advance hands-on with new stuff?
[one-half]
Polari IRC Client
GNOME’s stunning new IRC client Polari is included in this release as a preview. While it’s not yet as robust as existing alternative apps like Smuxi, it is by far one of the nicest looking desktop clients available natively.[/one-half][one-half last=”y”]
Sound Recorder
For those times you want to record some thoughts or quickly nab an .ogg of the ambience around you, the new Sound Recorder utility will help.
Simply designed and with support for playing back previous recordings within the app, it’s a significant improvement over older versions.
Logs
Alright, few of us ever need, much less want, to trawl software logs stored on our computers. So while this new utility app won’t be of much use to non-developers, I can appreciate that it does a stellar job of presenting the information collated by crashes and the like in a less intimidating, more accessible fashion.
[/one-half]
Note This Down
This one is minor, but boy will it make a difference to those of us with fat fingers: the default GNOME notes app (also known as ‘Bijiben’) now includes a trash can to prevent the accidental deletion of notes.
In addition, it now allows notes to be opened in a new window — handy for multitasking tasks and todos!
Way Away Wayland
Finally, this list would not be worth compiling were we to not mention the progress made in Wayland support. Some significant changes have landed, including a brand new ‘libinput’ library and better handling of session management.
While not default, developers and curious users can test GNOME Shell under Wayland by running a terminal command.
gnome-session --session=gnome-wayland
Not every application will run on Wayland, and the stack as a whole should not be considered wholly stable. For more information about GNOME on Wayland visit this wiki page. | {
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The system is composed of three parts: the drone itself, the "Airbase" robotic base station and the command software. It uses an "Optimus" UAV that can carry a 1-kilogram payload for up to 30 minutes. When the UAV finishes its patrol, it will land atop the base station whereupon a robotic arm will automatically swap out its battery and payload. All of this is controlled by the integrated software which enables users to pre-program flight paths as well as view real-time video and data feeds. The Airobotic system will likely find use in the mining and oil and gas industries as an aerial mapping platform, though it could easily be applied to any repetitive delivery or flyover task. | {
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Today we have a new clip, sixteen images and two posters for AMC's upcomingTV series.Based on' comic series of the same name, the show tells the story of a Texas preacher () who embarks on a journey to combat the supernatural evil that just decimated his Texas hometown with the help of his ex-girlfriend (), and an Irish vampire ().Created byand, the series also starsandwill premiere on May 22nd. | {
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If you have yet to do so, take a minute to look through the highlights of the 27-page design brief explaining the thought and design process that brought you the new Pepsi logo.
You’ve probably seen the logo everywhere — tops of taxis, subway stops, billboards — and wondered if it was inspired by the Obama “O.” Would that it were so benign.
The design brief currently making the rounds of the Web, suggests that, if done right, the new Pepsi logo will likely lead to The Rapture that Evangelicals promise is coming. It also illustrates the extreme disconnect between the marketing world and the real world.
The presentation, by the Arnell Group (also responsible for the botched design of the Tropicana orange juice carton) contains visual representations of and comparisons with the following: the golden ratio, the Mona Lisa, the Parthenon, the Gutenberg Bible, the earth and its magnetic fields, and the solar system/universe. None of these things have anything to do with soda.
In a modest moment, the authors titled the presentation/pitch “BREATHTAKING”.
Every page of this document is more ridiculous than the last ending with a pseudo-scientific explanation of how Pepsi’s new branding identity will manifest it’s own gravitational pull. But the craziest thing is that this pitch worked! Pepsi bought it — reportedly for several hundred million dollars — and now we have “the emoticon of a new generation.” | {
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Scientists at Brown University’s Center for Capture and Conversion of CO 2 have discovered that copper foam could provide a new way of converting excess CO 2 into useful industrial chemicals, including formic acid.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A catalyst made from a foamy form of copper has vastly different electrochemical properties from catalysts made with smooth copper in reactions involving carbon dioxide, a new study shows. The research, by scientists in Brown University’s Center for the Capture and Conversion of CO2, suggests that copper foams could provide a new way of converting excess CO2 into useful industrial chemicals.
The research is published in the journal ACS Catalysis.
As levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continue to rise, researchers are looking for ways to make use of it. One approach is to capture CO2 emitted from power plants and other facilities and use it as a carbon source to make industrial chemicals, most of which are currently made from fossil fuels. The problem is that CO2 is extremely stable, and reducing it to a reactive and useful form isn’t easy.
“Copper has been studied for a long time as an electrocatalyst for CO2 reduction, and it’s the only metal shown to be able to reduce CO2 to useful hydrocarbons,” said Tayhas Palmore, professor of engineering and senior author of the new research. “There was some indication that if you roughen the surface of planar copper, it would create more active sites for reactions with CO2.”
Copper foam, which has been developed only in the last few years, provided the surface roughness that Palmore and her colleagues were looking for. The foams are made by depositing copper on a surface in the presence of hydrogen and a strong electric current. Hydrogen bubbles cause the copper to be deposited in an arrangement of sponge-like pores and channels of varying sizes.
After depositing copper foams on an electrode, the researchers set up experiments to see what kinds of products would be produced in an electrochemical reaction with CO2 in water. The experiments were performed by Sujat Sen and Dan Liu, graduate students in chemistry working in Palmore’s lab at Brown’s School of Engineering.
The experiments showed that the copper foam converted CO2 into formic acid — a compound often used as a feedstock for microbes that produce biofuels — at a much greater efficiency than planar copper. The reaction also produced small amounts of propylene, a useful hydrocarbon that’s never been reported before in reactions involving copper.
“The product distribution was unique and very different from what had been reported with planar electrodes, which was a surprise,” Palmore said. “We’ve identified another parameter to consider in the electroreduction of CO2. It’s not just the kind of metal that’s responsible for the direction this chemistry goes, but also the architecture of the catalyst.”
Now that it’s clear that architecture matters, Palmore and her colleagues are working to see what happens when that architecture is tweaked. It’s likely, she says, that pores of different depths or diameters will produce different compounds from a CO2 feedstock. Ultimately, it might be possible to tune the copper foam toward a specific desired compound.
Palmore said she’s amazed by the fact that there’s still more to be learned about copper.
“People have studied electrocatalysis with copper for a couple decades now,” she said. “It’s remarkable that we can still make alterations to it that affect what’s produced.”
The work in the study is part of a larger effort by Brown’s Center for the Capture and Conversion of CO2. The Center, funded by the National Science Foundation, is exploring a variety of catalysts that can convert CO2 into usable forms of carbon.
“The goal is to find ways to produce some of the world's largest-volume chemicals from a sustainable carbon source that the Earth not only has in excess but urgently needs to reduce,” said Palmore, who leads the center. “This is a way for us as scientists to begin thinking of how we produce industrial chemicals in more sustainable ways and control costs at the same time. The cost of commodity chemicals is going nowhere but up as long as production is dependent on fossil fuels.”
The Center for Capture and Conversion of CO2 is a Center for Chemical Innovation funded by the National Science Foundation (CHE-1240020). | {
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People have been asking why President Obama did not go to Congress about Libya but is willing to do so with regard to a much less robust action in Syria.
The answer is a pragmatic and not a legal or constitutional one. Obama did not need Congress in the case of Libya. He had the Arab League, the UN Security Council, and NATO, along with the 60-year history of the post-WW II imperial presidency, in which all wars are police actions and can be initiated by presidential fiat. Some argued that US treaty obligations under the United Nations treaty obligated military action both in Korea in the 1950s and in Libya in 2011 (Congress wasn’t involved either time).
But as I have been trying to explain in the past few days, President Obama did not have a favorable international climate for a Syria strike. As time went on, he became more and more isolated. The Arab League declined to call for intervention even though it condemned Damascus for chemical weapons use. Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and other Arab countries forthrightly denounced the idea of foreign military intervention in Syria, a very different stance than many of them took in 2011 with regard to Libya. The fall of the Muhammad Morsi government in Egypt, and the stigmatization of the Muslim Brotherhood, led to a 180 degree turn in Egyptian policy, with the military junta now more or less supporting the Baath Party in Damascus and hostile to the rebels, who are mostly adherents of political Islam.
Then NATO declined to get involved, with Poland, Belgium and others expressing reluctance. Poland explicitly cited its bad experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then the British Parliament followed suit. It was as though Europe viewed Washington as like the Peanuts cartoon character Lucy, who set up the football for Charlie Brown to kick and then always pulled it away at the last moment, leaving Charlie flat on his back. Europe was saying it wasn’t falling for the unhealthy US obsession with Middle East conflict any more, that some problems can’t be resolved militarily.
Then Obama’s own intelligence links cast doubt on whether President Bashar al-Assad had actively ordered the chemical weapons attack of August 21, which seems more likely the action of a local colonel who either went rogue or made an error in mixing too much sarin into crowd control gases. The Ministry of Defense seems to have upbraided him.
So by Friday, Obama had painted himself into a box with repeated statements that he had to attack Syria because of the gas attack. But as he looked behind him, the troops he was leading had thinned out faster than Custer’s at the Little Bighorn.
With regard to domestic politics, Obama would be pilloried on Capitol Hill if he backed down as his international support (and elements of his case) collapsed. If he went forward with a unilateral strike, he would be alone and exposed, and risk extreme reputational damage if the operation went bad. (What if a cruise missile went astray and hit a village, killing women and children? What if the missile strikes riled up radical Shiites in Iraq and US facilities in that country were attacked).
Obama made a clever political calculation. The Tea Party and the GOP in general had been demanding that he submit the Syria file to them. So he obliged them. If they say ‘no,’ as the British parliament did, then Obama is off the hook. If they say ‘yes,’ then they are full partners in any failures that result. Either way, the issue is taken off the agenda of the 2016 election and Democrats are held harmless.
Those who think a ‘no’ vote will make Obama an early lame duck do not reckon with how all the votes have been ‘no’ for some years now. Nothing will change in that regard.
Will Congress authorize a missile strike on Syria? I think the odds are fifty-fifty. It is not impossible that the Libertarian Republicans and the left wing of the Democratic Party will ally to defeat the resolution. They came close to derailing NSA spying, after all. And feelings against entanglements in Middle Eastern wars are far more inflamed than on the issue of domestic surveillance.
It is remarkable how important the Iraq experience has been in the debates on Syria, and how decisive. Even if the US goes ahead with the strike, it is likely to attempt to keep the action narrow and symbolic, and to avoid troops on the ground, and indeed, generally to stay out of the conflict thereafter as long as no more chemical attacks are launched. Whether it is possible to bomb Syria and then walk away like that isn’t clear; but it is the maximal Obama plan. The minimal one is to be able to blame the Tea Party for isolationism and cold disregard of the regime’s violation of international law. | {
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So, you want to be feminized, do you?
Do you fantasize about being made to dress like a woman, look like a woman, think like a woman, and act like a woman? Have you imagined yourself as each of the beautiful women on the gallery pages? Do you like the humiliation of being made to wear women’s things in public when you’re still obviously a man? You’ve come to the right place, sissy. Below, you will be given a series of assignments and sissy tasks that will take you on a journey through humiliating sissyness and on towards your total feminization.
You want to be feminine, don’t you? To hear the clicking of your stiletto heels as you walk, feel the swish of pantyhose as your nylons rub together on your smooth thighs, beneath your tight, lined miniskirt which slides over your ass, your heavily-styled hair and heavy earrings brushing your neck, your shoulders feeling the pull of heavy breasts in your bra, tasting lipstick on your lips and smelling your perfume, makeup and hairspray. You want it, more than anything, don’t you? One day, sissy, one day.
Follow the assignments and tasks here. Even if you are an experienced sissy with your very own, feminine wardrobe and you dress regularly, the discipline of having your femininity enforced by these assignments will still be thrilling. So, are you ready?
#1 Your first pair of panties
This is your first step on your journey into femininity. A journey that will change your life. You will be humiliated and embarrassed. Most of all, you will be feminized. If you don’t intend to follow all of these assignments to the letter, then turn away now.
Your first assignment is to buy yourself a pair of panties. Be sure to measure your hips before you set off. You will go to a smart department store or, better still, a specialist lingerie shop. How exciting – a whole shop dedicated to women’s underwear – bras, panties, suspenders/garters, slips, camisoles, nighties, negligees, peignoirs, stockings, pantyhose. Every customer is after one thing; lingerie. No doubt you’ll be the only man in there. Everyone will wonder if you’re shopping for yourself. Well you are, aren’t you sissy?
Don’t buy cheap underwear. This is an investment in your femininity, so buy quality that will last. Study all the available choices of panties. Chose a pair of white, brief-style panties, but try to find a pair with a lace front panel. Make sure they are your size. Don’t forget, you are a man and you need to make room for your pathetic cock and balls, so don’t buy panties with a narrow gusset unless you want to be squirming and fiddling all the time.
Take them home and put them in your underwear drawer. Do not wear them… yet. Tonight, when you undress for bed, throw away those nasty, male undies you are wearing. You have a new pair of panties to take their place now.
Tomorrow, you will wear your panties all day. If it’s a workday, try to imagine which of your female colleagues might have prettier panties than you.
Hand wash your panties each evening and wear them every day. Discard a pair of male undies for each day you wear panties.
Do not proceed to your next assignment until you have worn panties for at least one week.
#2 Start wearing pantyhose
How is my little panty-wearing sissy coming along then?
Your second assignment requires some more shopping. You will return to the same store as last time. How humiliating. Perhaps the assistants will remember you bought some panties recently. Maybe they’ll be wondering if you’re wearing them right now.
You will buy a second pair of satin panties; this time a thong. Try to find one in pink. You will also buy 7, yes seven, pairs of pantyhose. Don’t cheat and buy multipacks; buy seven separate packages in a variety of brands. If they aren’t ‘one size’, be sure to check they will fit. Purchase at least one pair in black and one in nude. Buy only 5, 7, 8 or 10 denier; no opaques or semi-opaque, no patterns and definitely no fishnets. Opaques are sweaty and dull and fishnets are for tarts. You are a sissy, not a tart. Sissies want to be feminine. Sissies wear sheer. You will be feminine. You will wear sheer.
When you go to the checkout, the assistant will have no doubt that you are buying pantyhose for yourself. You’re not going to buy seven different pairs for your girlfriend, are you? Don’t be embarrassed; relish the thrill of being in the presence of a woman who knows you are a sissy. Be in awe of her; you are just starting out, learning to be feminine, trying to be more like her. Even if she is plain, she is more feminine than you will ever be.
You will have guessed why you have bought seven pairs of pantyhose. You now have a different pair for every day of the week. You will always wear pantyhose from now on – at home, at work, in bed, at the grocery store, at the gym, at a nightclub – wherever you go you will always feel the caress of nylon against your legs.
Discretely, look at the legs of every woman you meet. Is she wearing pantyhose or stockings? Is she wearing the same shade as you? Is she wearing the same denier as you? After a while, you will have enough experience of hosiery to be able to answer these questions. And don’t dismiss a woman just because she’s wearing trousers. Some women even wear pantyhose under their trousers; after all, you do, don’t you, sissy?
From now on, you will wear your pantyhose 24/7 except to bath or shower. In fact, you can also wear them in the bath or shower if the mood really takes you. You will be tormented by the sensation of your legs brushing against the sheets as you try to sleep. If you ladder a pair, you will buy a new pair to replace them. You will handwash each soiled pair every day.
Your new panties will be alternated with your old pair. Discard all your male undies now. You will not keep any. Even if you have to go to the doctor, you will do so in panties. There is no going back.
Do not proceed to your next assignment until you have worn pantyhose for at least two weeks.
#3 Subscribe to a women magazine
Are you used to wearing pantyhose? Don’t they feel great on your legs? Do you get a new thrill looking at women’s legs? Do you wonder about being discovered?
So far, all you have changed is your clothes. In the next few assignments, you will change your attitude.
What defines you as a man? Your cock does, no matter how puny and pathetic it is. A cock is not a feminine thing. From now on, you will call it your boyclit. I bet you’ve jerked off in your panties as you’ve enjoyed the silky, slinky feel of sheer pantyhose on your thighs. Not any more. From now on, you may only cum when you have permission to cum. You are free to masturbate, in fact, you must masturbate regularly, but you will not cum without permission.
The other problem with your boyclit is that it enables you to pee standing up. Not any more. From now on you will sit down to pee like a proper girl. Pull down your trousers, pull down your pantyhose, pull down your panties and pee. Wipe yourself when you’ve finished. You want to be a clean, sissy girl, don’t you? Every time you pee, you will drop your panties. No popping your boyclit out over the top, okay, sissy?
Your main task this time is to purchase four women’s magazines. One must be a glossy, fashion monthly, one dedicated to hair and beauty, one aimed at 20-somethings, with sexy, superficial questionnaires and one a trashy weekly. Buy them all from the same shop in one visit, so it’s obvious they are for you.
You will read everything in all of them, but pay particular attention to hair, makeup and fashion advice. Soon you will need this advice. You will complete all the questionnaires. Find three hairstyles, three faces and three outfits that you like and masturbate over each, imagining you are the featured model.
Do NOT cum.
Which magazine had the majority of chosen pictures? You will get every issue from now on. You will subscribe to that magazine so that it’s delivered to your door with your name on the packaging.
Do not proceed to your next assignment until you have read all your magazines and sent off your subscription.
#4 Practice sucking a dildo
In this assignment, you will continue to change your attitude.
I hope you are still wearing panties and pantyhose, sissy. Have you cum since your last assignment? Did you find some pretty pictures to look at? If you are a good girl and doing as you are told, you will have been wanking furiously without release. Are you frustrated? Is your boyclit standing to attention? Don’t worry, you will get to cum. But you might not want to.
You will buy a dildo, either online or from a good old-fashioned sex shop. It MUST be realistically detailed and it must have a pair of balls at its base. It must also be thick.
It needs to be realistic because you are going to suck it. Yes, you’re going to put it in your mouth. And suck. The more realistic the dildo, the more realistic your experience of cocksucking. You want it to be realistic, don’t you? You are going to learn to be a good, sissy cocksucker.
First, you will kiss the tip. Then you will lick the tip, then down the shaft. Get it slick with your saliva. Then you will open your mouth and slide that juicy, fat cock between your lips, gently at first, then deeper and deeper until you feel it touch your throat. You may find you gag the first few times, but you will keep going until the balls are banging against your chin and your mouth is stuffed full of cock.
Now masturbate. Imagine you are totally feminized, sucking a real man’s cock. Imagine you are the cocksucker in the picture below. Work that cock in and out of your mouth. Do NOT cum. Smear your pre-cum over the dildo, make it taste like a real cock. Keep going for 15 minutes. Do not cum.
Do this every day for three days. After your third fifteen minutes, you may cum, but collect all your cum in a small glass and smear your dildo with it, making sure there is plenty on the head. Now suck your dildo again for a further five minutes. Make sure you have licked your dildo completely clean and you have emptied the glass. Savor the taste of cum. Imagine it is a real cock; a real cock you have sucked to orgasm and licked clean. How humiliating. A real man would never do that. But you’re not a real man, are you, sissy girl?
Repeat this cycle three times before proceeding to your next assignment. Yes, that’s right, you can cum every three days until then. From now on, you will drink every last drop of your cum.
#5 Lipstick time
You are a panty-wearing, cocksucking, cum-eating, sissy slut. Say it. Are you proud of yourself?
I hope you’ve been doing your homework. Do you enjoy sucking cock? One so realistic you can feel the head slide over your tongue? Do you like the taste of your cum yet? Do you find it humiliating? Well, your cocksucking is going to be even more humiliating from now on. Firstly, you are to increase your cocksucking practice to twice a day, morning and night. Secondly, you are to watch yourself sucking cock in a mirror. Thirdly, you are going to wear lipstick. Not just any lipstick. Bright, fiery red lipstick.
What could be more exciting than watching a pair of glossy, red lips swallow a thick cock? And what could be more humiliating than knowing they are your bright, red lips swallowing a large and very realistic cock. Your lipstick will be smeared over your face and down the shaft of the dildo. You will taste lipstick, intermingled with the rubbery taste of dildo and the taste of pre-cum.
As this will be very arousing for you, you must restrict your orgasms to once every five days. This means you must put on lipstick and suck cock in a mirror ten times before you spurt. Is that clear? Will you be able to stop yourself cum? You must.
But first, you must buy your lipstick. Don’t forget; buy quality, you are investing in your femininity. The color lipstick you choose must have ‘fire’, ‘blaze’ or ‘hot’ in the name, so you can’t just rush up to a display and take the first one you see. You will have to read the labels carefully. Uncap your new lipstick. Wind up the phallic column of pure color. Face your cocksucking mirror. Run the firm, waxy stick across your top lip. Press your lips together and see the color transfer to your bottom lip. Drag the lipstick across your bottom lip, backward and forwards until the color is thick and creamy.
Make sure both lips are fully covered, right into your mouth, but not on your teeth. Blot your lips by pressing a tissue against them, then paint them again. This will make the color last longer. Now begin your cocksucking ritual. Kiss the tip and look at the feminine, red lip marks you have left. You are such a slut! Suck that cock for all you’re worth. Do not cum. Every five minutes, renew your lipstick. Continue cocksucking for at least 15 minutes. You will do this twice a day, every day, including work days, so you’d better start getting up early. You may cum three times, once every five days, so do not proceed to your next assignment for at least fifteen days.
#6 Extending your wardrobe – a bra!
Only your sixth assignment? Yet you have already come a long way, haven’t you, sissy? You only wear women’s panties and you wear pantyhose all the time. You handwash your delicates every night. You’ve bought and read a selection of women’s magazines, one of which you get delivered as a subscriber. You sit down to pee and you’ve become a regular, lipstick-smearing cocksucker. You may well be pleased with your progress, but you could reverse all of this if you changed your mind tomorrow. To ensure you don’t falter, some more enduring changes are required.
You may have looked adoringly at your nyloned legs and wondered how they would look and feel if you shaved them, like a real woman. Well, my little sissy, you are about to find out, because for this assignment you are going to shave your legs. But that’s not all. You are going to shave off your pubic hair and shave your underarms. Lastly, you are going to pluck out your chest hairs. I hope you don’t have too many.
Your legs are going to look and feel so much more realistically feminine in your sheer pantyhose. You won’t believe the new sensations without all that hair in the way. If you’ve enjoyed it so far, you’re in for a treat.
You are removing your chest and underarm hair in preparation for your first bra. Oh yes, not only are you going to shave your body like a woman, but you are going to start wearing a bra.
You are going shopping again. You will return to your lingerie store and buy a black, lacy, underwired bra and matching panties.
Make sure the bra will fit you. Don’t guess your size, ask to be measured. Don’t forget, the assistants already know you wear lingerie, so there’s no need for any new embarrassment. Buy three more pairs of panties to expand your collection.
You will also buy two nighties; one a very short, babydoll style, one at least knee length. Both must be silk, satin or a polyester mix so they will be slippery on your skin and over your pantyhose.
Wear your new bra and panty set one working day each week.
Continue to wear panties and pantyhose every day.
Wear one of your nighties with pantyhose and panties every night.
Increase your cocksucking practice to three times a day, always wearing lipstick.
You may only cum once a week.
Shave your legs, pubic and underarm hair every two days. Pluck your chest hairs every week.
This is a lot of new work. To make sure you are well settled into your increasingly feminine regime, you may only proceed to the next assignment when you have successfully completed four weeks homework.
#7 Shopping again and some shopping mall fun
I hope you are doing this properly.
To get this far, you have shaved your legs at least fourteen times, put lipstick on over a hundred times and sucked cock so often you are a pro. You own at least six pairs of panties and a bra, which you’ve worn to work at least four times, and you should still have seven pairs of pantyhose if you’ve been replacing all the damaged pairs.
And that happens so easily, doesn’t it? Pantyhose are so delicate, especially the sheer pairs you are forced to buy. But it’s worth it, isn’t it? Have you worn five deniers on your shaved legs yet? Deliciously feminine, aren’t they, sissy? But so delicate. By now, you’ve almost certainly had to wear a damaged pair for hours on end. Not any more.
From now on, you will be more ladylike and always carry a brand new pair of pantyhose with you, in their packaging, no matter what you are doing. You will also start carrying your lipstick around with you, too. You never know when you might need it. Soon you will need a handbag for all the things you will be made to carry around with you, just like a real woman. (A handbag is a purse to you, Miss American sissy.)
You are going shopping again, sissy. To prepare for your trip, make sure your body is very smooth. Wear your bra and panties and your sheerest pantyhose. You can choose the color, but make sure you are carrying spare pantyhose and your lipstick. You will also take your dildo. I guess you’ll be needing some kind of bag. See how useful a handbag is?
Wear a white shirt, a suit and tie and a pair of shoes. Don’t wear socks. Don’t wear an overcoat, even if the weather is poor. Your black, lacy bra will be visible through a white shirt won’t it, sissy? Nevertheless, you will do this.
Park well away from the shops.
The first thing you must buy is a handbag (purse in the US). Something that will never be mistaken for a man’s bag. Something quite dainty, but large enough for all the things you will soon be carrying at all times, like your spare pantyhose, a makeup bag, pantyliners and your dildo. Buy a nice, little, zip up bag to keep your make up in, too.
You are going to buy nail polish because from now on you are going to be painting your toenails. Shaved legs, painted nails and pantyhose. How erotic, how feminine. No real man does that. You must be such a sissy. Imagine how you’d feel if someone saw your feet.
You will buy three bottles of nail varnish; one clear, one clear but glittery and one bright red. Don’t forget some remover, some toe spreader sponges and little cotton wool balls.
Make sure you buy a new, red lipstick to match your nails; that old one must be nearly worn out.
You will also buy a very subtle lipstick in a color called ‘nude’ or ‘birthday suit’ or something similar. Again, remember to buy quality, you are investing in your femininity.
You will buy a little compact mirror. Every girl has one in her handbag for checking her make up. You will so enjoy checking your make up in public.
Lastly, you will buy a pack of pantyliners, the type with wings. Make sure they are heavy duty.
You will then go to the nearest men’s room and put in your first pantyliner. Position it in the gusset of your panties and tuck your cock between your legs, against your pantyliner. Bend the wings over the edge of your panties to hold the liner in place.
Put on your new, red lipstick in your new, compact mirror. Blot and reapply three times. Make yourself pretty, because you’re going to cum, but it’s the last orgasm you’ll have for a long, long time.
You want to look your best for such a memorable occasion, don’t you?
Suck your dildo, looking at yourself in your compact. Now cum in your panty lined panties, you cocksucking, panty-wearing, feminized, sissy girl. Make it a good one, because it’s your last. Don’t clean any of it up. Pretend you’re a slut who’s just sucked her boyfriend before he fucked her in the toilets and his cum is now leaking into her panties.
Remove your red lipstick and replace it with your new, nude lip color. Walk back to your car in your cum-soaked panties.
Do not move on to your next assignment until you have done this. If you don’t think you can do this, you certainly won’t manage the next assignments. And you do so want to be feminine, don’t you sissy? Your eighth assignment is beckoning…
#8 Continue building your slutty wardrobe
Have you REALLY completed your seventh assignment?
No cheating, please. Go back if you haven’t done exactly what you were told.
You are an eager, sissy cocksucker, aren’t you? Did you enjoy your walk-in cum-soaked panties? Did you feel feminine? Did you feel warm between your legs? Did your heavy-duty pantyliner hold it all, or did some of your cum run down your leg, inside your pantyhose, leaving a dry crust? Did you feel dirty?
From now on, things are going to get harder. Except for your boyclit, that is…
You bought three bottles of nail polish, didn’t you? Now you’re going to start using them. From now on, your toenails will be permanently painted. You will give them three coats of red, then one coat of clear. Every four days, after your shaving ritual, you will remove and renew your nail varnish. Your feet will look so pretty; shaved smooth, with bright red nails inside sheer pantyhose. You won’t want to hide them away for long. You’ll need some delicate, strappy, high-heeled sandals to wear so everyone can see your pretty feet. You will also have to start looking for pantyhose with a sheer, sandal toe when you next buy a pair, won’t you?
It’s about time you expanded your wardrobe.
You will need to get ready for your little shopping trip. You will make sure your body is smooth and hairless. Your toenails will be immaculate in red. You will paint your fingernails. Not red; at least, not this time. Use glittery polish. See how girlish it makes them look. Subtle, yet obvious. This must be one of the most frightening, sissyish things you have done, don’t you agree?
You will wear your black bra and panty set and black pantyhose. You will wear a white tee-shirt, a jacket, a pair of jeans and a pair of shoes. To make sure you expose your black, nylon ankles, you will fold a 2″ turn-up into your jeans. Don’t forget your handbag, either.
Apply three coats of your nude lipstick. Don’t forget to carry it with you, along with your spare pack of pantyhose. Now you are ready. Visible hints of lipstick, nail varnish, bra, pantyhose, and a handbag. Quite humiliating for you, isn’t it, girl? Every woman will know you are a sissy. Some men will probably notice, too. But teenage girls are the worst… very observant and very cruel. Let’s hope you don’t meet too many.
You should know your sizes in women’s clothes now. You are going to buy a pair of women’s slacks. Again, remember to buy quality. You are investing in your femininity. Buy a black pair with a non-elasticated waist and a side or rear fastening.
You will also buy a blouse. Look for a delicate, floral print, short sleeves, and a feminine collar. Try to get a rear or shoulder, fastening.
Next, you will buy a pair of high-heeled sandals. These are so trendy you will find them everywhere whatever the season. Unless you are blessed with small feet, you may have to compromise on the ‘buy quality’ rule to get whatever you can. However, you should be able to squeeze into a sandal one or two sizes too small if you can’t find your size. A lot of cheap shoe stores have a good range, so you can afford to experiment…
imagine these are your feet, sissy. Soon, soon…
Look for wraparound ankle straps, so the heel is ‘open’; tall, slender heels; no platform soles. The sole should be thin and delicate, with just a few straps attached to it. The sandals in the picture above are exactly what you are looking for. Go for pink, red or black. Do not buy white. You are a sissy, not a tart.
Your feet will look like this by the end of this assignment…
Don’t forget, your appearance will scream ‘sissy’ to any women, so don’t be embarrassed to ask to try something on. The assistants will probably expect you to ask, or even suggest it to you. Just imagine taking off your shoes to expose your bright red toenails, encased in black pantyhose.
Lastly, buy a pair of nude, knee-high stockings and a bag of millet or similar birdseed.
By now, you should be carrying a collection of bags from women’s stores, adding to your sissy appearance. Go to the nearest men’s room. Pour a good handful of birdseed into each stocking, twist the stocking and fold it over itself, then tie a knot. Remind you of something? You’ve just made your first pair of breasts. Fit them inside your bra, so that the knots are pointing out like erect nipples. You may need to adjust your bra straps to allow for this new weight. Does it feel good to have your first pair of breasts? Change into your new blouse and slacks. You will walk back to your car like this.
You have now completed your eighth assignment.
You will continue to masturbate but you will not cum.
but you will not cum. You will continue your cocksucking practice three times a day.
practice three times a day. You will always wear panties and pantyhose , like a good sissy. You will wear an unfilled bra at least once a week.
, like a good sissy. You will wear an unfilled bra at least once a week. You will continue to keep your body smooth and hairless and your toenails painted .
and your . You will wear your new shoes around the house every waking moment.
#9 Make sure you have everything a women needs
Now that you have bought yourself a nice, casual, feminine outfit, you have the perfect costume for another shopping trip.
Yes, you are going shopping again and this time it’s going to be very special.
You will be completely, freshly shaved. Your toenails will be red, your fingernails will be glittery. You will wear black bra and panties, nude pantyhose, your floral blouse and black slacks and subtle lipstick. You can wear men’s shoes, even though they will look so out of place. You will carry your compact mirror, both your lipsticks, spare pantyhose, your high-heeled sandals, your dildo and your breasts. Aren’t you glad of your handbag, sissy girl?
Copy out the following shopping list in your own handwriting –
Delicate, feminine watch (this need not be expensive)
Two pieces black suit – long-sleeved jacket, short skirt. Must be lined.
Skimpy, white vest top
Good quality perfume. Try a few and find one you like.
Makeup kit. You want products to match your skin tones and skin type. Most – department stores will do a selection of makeup in a gift set, which will make your life easier, but you must buy : Liquid base Powder foundation Blusher A selection of eyeshadows Black and brown mascara Black and brown eye pencil Eyebrow pencil Set of applicators Eyebrow tweezers Eyelash curlers
You are going to look so hot.
When you have completed your shopping, find a quiet restroom, maybe in a department store. You know what’s coming next don’t you, girl? I hope your hair isn’t too masculine or this will be really humiliating.
perhaps this is how you’ll look?
Hang your new suit on the back of the door. Put your sandals on the floor. Take off your shoes, slacks, blouse, and lipstick. Fit your breasts into your bra cups. Spray a little perfume on your wrists and rub them together. Spray behind your ears, between your breasts, and between your legs, too. Isn’t it good to smell like a woman?
Put your vest on. Does it emphasize your cleavage? Now put your suit on. Relish the sensation of that slippery lining on your pantyhose. Let’s hope your boyclit doesn’t stick out too far, girl. Maybe you can tuck and a liner will prevent any nasty stains. Put your sandals on. You will be thankful for all the heel practice you’ve had at home.
Do you look hot or what?
Now it’s time for your make up. It’s your first time so you’re not going to use much. Less chance to make a mistake that way. Press a little of the powder all over your face, using a rolling motion with the pad. Position the eyelash curlers at the base of your upper lashes and squeeze for a few seconds, then release and gently squeeze again a little further out.
Hold the mirror at your chest so you are looking down into it. Now apply mascara to the outer two-thirds of your top lashes. Next, apply a coat of red lipstick and blot. Now a second coat of mascara, then a second coat of lipstick and blot. Now do your bottom lashes whilst looking up at the mirror. Add a third coat of lipstick, for luck.
See how long and feminine your lashes look. Don’t your eyes look sexy, sissy girl? And that’s without eyeshadow or pencil. You won’t be using them today because they take practice. Don’t worry, girl, you’re going to get lots of practice.
Put your watch on. Despite what you’re wearing, does that not make you feel even more of a sissy?
Now pack up your stuff and present your ‘smart office girl’ look to the world. How long do you think it will be before you are dressing like this for work?
You will not cum.
Go to a bookstore and buy a book on hair, makeup and beauty. You are going to read this from cover to cover when you get home.
EMAIL your report. You must have a lot to tell…
From now on you will wear a bra, panties, and pantyhose on your shaved body every day and sandals every moment at home.
You will maintain red toenails and will also wear clear polish on your fingernails. Always. Hopefully, you have been using your initiative and letting your fingernails grow.
You will apply your new perfume to your wrists and chest every morning.
You will continue your cocksucking, but only once a day now. Every evening you will wear one of your two female outfits and apply full makeup before sucking cock. This will give you daily practice at doing your make up. Believe me, you will need it. Most real girls have been experimenting with makeup since long before puberty, so you have a lot of catching up to do. Try a different look every day. Remember, you are a sissy, not a tart. This goes for makeup more than anything. A girl must learn to have a light touch.
Satisfy yourself that you can make yourself up proficiently before you progress to your next assignment. This is very important.
#10 Work on your look
Welcome, sissy girl.
This will be short and sweet. Two simple tasks with the most enduring consequences of any of your assignments so far.
One
You will hire a sunbed, one that will tan you both sides at once, like a piece of bread in a toaster. Twice a day, you will dress in a bikini or panties and a filled bra and build up a delightful, feminine tan on your sunbed. Be careful to position your bra straps in the same place every day so that the outline is crystal clear. Do not even consider returning the sunbed to the store until you have done this for a week and have very obvious, sissy tanlines, front and back.
Two
Pluck your eyebrows. Follow the advice below to get a pretty arch.
How feminine do you dare go? Delicate, pencil-thin arches will make your face much sexier. Much more room for eyeshadow, too. Do it, sissygirl.
From now on you will pluck your eyebrows every week. Don’t forget to continue your makeup, cocksucking, shaving, heels and underwear routines as well.
Do not cum.
#11 Let’s start to work on Hello, my bra-tanned sissygirl. Stand naked before a mirror and look at that indelible lingerie burnt onto your skin. What more humiliations can be in store for you, sissy?
Are you bored of cocksucking yet? Does it need spicing up a bit?
You are going to buy a new toy. You are going to a sex shop to buy yourself a buttplug. The reason you are going shopping and not buying it online is that you are going to be dressing up, but you probably guessed that, didn’t you? Clever girl.
You are going to be shaved and perfumed and in bra, panties, and hose, as you are every day. You need not to fill your bra. You will wear your choice of male clothes and shoes. You will also wear foundation, lipstick, mascara, eyeliner and at least one shade of eyeshadow. The choice of colors is up to you.
Take your sissy, feminized self to a sex shop and buy not one but three buttplugs in different sizes. You’ll also need some lubricant.
Back home, you’re going to start buttfucking yourself. Pull down your pantyhose and panties. Smear some lubricant against your hole and slowly work a greased finger inside. Fuck yourself with your finger. Does it feel good, sissy butt-boy?
Get the smallest plug and slowly fuck yourself with it. Once you’re past the widest part it will suck itself in until it’s base is nestled tight up against your hole. Do you feel full? Remember, that’s the smallest one.
Start sucking your dildo and masturbate. Notice how your sphincter tightens around the plug as you play with yourself. Do you feel hot? What a shame you aren’t allowed to cum.
Keep your plug in for at least an hour.
Increase your plugging time by an hour a day. Once you’ve managed six hours, move up to the next size plug and start again at one hour. Repeat until you’ve worn your largest plug for a full day at work before moving on.
Imagine a full working day – shaved, perfumed, bra, panties, pantyhose, nail varnish and now a buttplug. No real man would even dream of doing this. You are such a sissy.
#12 Time to show your sissy self to the world
Has anyone else noticed how much of a sissy you are these days? Your work colleagues, for example?
Plugged, shaved, plucked, tanned and perfumed, you wear a bra, panties and hose all the time and your fingernails are growing longer and sport clear varnish. I bet the women you work with have noticed something, even if they haven’t said anything. They will certainly be curious about what you get up to away from work.
After this assignment, they will know for sure.
By coming this far you consider yourself adept at applying makeup, don’t you, girl? I hope this is true because the ‘sexy office girl’ is having another outing.
Get out your phone directory and check out ‘beauty salons’ and ‘beauticians’.
Yes, that’s right. You are going to get a professional makeover. You’ve done very well to get this far. You owe it to yourself.
Start ringing round. Ask if they would accept a male customer and if they have any objections to you arriving dressed as a woman. You’re employing other people in your feminization now, so it’s best to make sure they won’t be offended.
When you are successful, book an appointment. Take a day off work for this. It’ll be worth it. You will ask for:
hairstyling and coloring
manicure
pedicure
eyebrow shaping
a makeup lesson
ear piercing, if they offer this.
This is your assignment. Are you ready? There will be no going back.
For your appointment, you will wear your ‘office girl’ outfit with your best attempt at makeup. As it’s a special occasion, you will wear your sheerest pantyhose, your largest buttplug and red polish on your fingernails, even though the nail technician will take it off again at the salon.
You will ask them for the most feminine style they can create with your hair. You will give them total free reign. They may want you to help by choosing something from a magazine. Be true to your self. Don’t go for something androgynous. You must also get it colored. Obviously, this will depend on your current color, but there is little to touch a strong henna red or a soft, chili purple for outright femininity.
You will be offered a huge choice of colors for your nails. Choose the best, dark red to go with your new hair. I hope you’ve been letting your fingernails grow out. If they are not at least a quarter-inch beyond your fingertips, you must get half-inch glass fiber extensions to punish yourself.
And can you picture yourself getting ready for your pedicure? Unfastening the dainty buckles to step out of your high-heeled sandals, hitching up your tiny skirt and rolling down those delicious nylons you wear 24 hours a day. Then having a nail technician remove your nail varnish and add a new, dark red polish? Don’t forget, you must not cum.
Get a single piercing in each ear. Choose pearl studs; they’re more attractive and feminine than gold or silver.
Leave the style and extent of your eyebrow shaping to the experts. Just ask for something suitable for the shape of your face and your hairstyle and more feminine than what you have done already. Maybe you’ll end up with pencil-thin arches, maybe not. Won’t that be exciting?
For your make up lesson, tell them you want an evening makeup, no matter what time of day it is. This usually translates as ‘glamourous’ (or tarty, depending on your viewpoint). Listen to the beautician as she describes everything she’s doing in great detail. Remember: do not cum.
When you leave the salon, linger at the local stores. Go for a coffee. Show the world the glamorous sissy you have become. After all, if you can’t pass now, with all this professional help, you never will.
Get out your little compact mirror and study the new you. Do you like what you see? Play with your earrings. They feel good, don’t they? You paid a professional to do your face, nails and hair. Don’t you look fantastic? You can remove the cosmetics but you’ll never pass off your new hair as ‘male’. Nor those eyebrows. Maybe you need to stop pretending and out yourself as the true sissy you really are. You’d rather be a woman, anyway. That’s what you’ve been training for, isn’t it? That’s why you’re so good at making up your face and sucking cock; why you have a bikini tan and wear a bra, panties and pantyhose 24/7; why you shave your legs and paint your nails; why you haven’t let your pathetic boyclit spurt for so, so long. That must be so difficult when you look so gorgeous.
Undo your jacket. Look at the way your breasts stretch your top. Look down at your lap. A miniskirt barely covers your nylon-clad thighs and your professionally- painted toenails glint back at you past the delicate straps of your high-heeled sandals. Wiggle your toes. Don’t you just love that sensation as they gently stretch their nylon prison? You are nothing but a feminized sissy girl. Give up your last pretenses at manhood and start living as a woman – full-time.
If that’s what you decide, then good luck and farewell. These assignments have helped you find your true self. You can now graduate. EMAIL your final report.
Or is this too much for you? Do you prefer the humiliation of being a secretly feminized man, ‘forced’ to do things against your will? Perhaps you need some more assignments, then.
#13 Sexy outfits need sexy figure
You’re not superstitious, are you, sissy?
So, you are seeking forced feminization humiliation and what you’ve done so far isn’t enough, is that it?
Was your last assignment too much? Were you not able to do it? There can be no other reason for you wanting more assignments. If you had done it, you would now be so obviously feminized that everyone would know. And once everyone knows you are a sissy, you can no longer be ‘found out’.
You’re here because you want to explore humiliation without going all the way to total feminization. Very well, sissy. I hope you have done everything else, though; shaving, painting, tanning, clothing, sucking, chastity. If not, go back and start from the beginning.
You are going to join a dance aerobics class at your local gym/health club/sports center. Obviously, you will want to fit in with all the ladies there, so you need the right outfit. Go to your nearest dancewear shop. Look it up in the phonebook if necessary.
As a special reward for your devotion to these assignments, you have free reign on your outfit for this trip… but you might want to be feminine.
You will buy a pink leotard. Ask for one with a scooped neck and back and 3/4 length sleeves which is cut high on the thighs. Buy a pair of nude, fishnet pantyhose. If they have them, buy Danskin dancers’ fishnets. These are very expensive but superb quality and have cotton soles for comfort.
You also need a pair of ladies’ trainers in your size (if at all possible), a powder pink sweat or jogging suit and matching pink lipstick. Lastly, some pink grips for your hair. Wouldn’t want it flopping in your face as you exercise, would you, girl?
Try on your new outfit at home. Wear a pair of thong panties underneath everything to protect your balls from the grip of the fishnet. Don’t wear your bra.
How do you like fishnets?
Do your red toenails look good?
Your leotard reveals lots of thighs, doesn’t it?
Does the scoop neck reveal your bra tan? Check your back in the mirror. Does your tan show there?
You’re going to an aerobics class like this. In front of dozens of women. Is that humiliating enough? No. What will be more humiliating is turning up in your pink sweats, showing just a hint of nude fishnet, which might go unnoticed, then stripping down to this. prepare for a lot of sniggers, sissy girl. Even this is not enough. you will apply your lipstick in front of everyone. Now, is that humiliating enough?
You wimped out of your last assignment, but you WILL do this. The idea tantalizes your sissy mind, doesn’t it, girl? What are you waiting for? Email your report.
#14 Let’s get trashy and cheap
Was your aerobics class fun?
Have you made any new friends?
Did someone offer to do your make up, or say she wished her husband would do something like you?
You love to be humiliated, don’t you, sissy girl?
This time, you’re going to a print shop to get some slogans printed in big letters on white, skinny-rib, ladies tops. Choose two from the following –
Is there a run in my pantyhose?
Would you like to see my pretty, red toenails?
I’m wearing panties.
Please feminise me.
Please put make up on my face.
Yes, I am wearing a bra.
Needless to say, you are going to wear your new tops, over your bra, every time you go out of the house, except to work.
DO NOT try to cover your top with a coat, jacket or sweater. Is that clear?
Have a good time…
#15 Humiliate yourself in public
You’re going out again. It’s going to be humiliating.
From the head down, you will wear :
your hair in a masculine style
no make up
no jewellery
a shirt and tie
men’s, three piece suit (if you have one, otherwise a two piece will have to do)
black bra, panties, sandal-toe pantyhose
red fingernails and toenails
high-heeled sandals
Now go and do your regular grocery shopping.
You will be so humiliated as your heels click-clack up and down the aisles, reaching out for grocery items with your feminine hands. Pay by credit card, sissy, so you have to sign your male name whilst holding the pen between those pretty, feminine nails.
#16 Jewelries are sissy’s best friend
You’re going on another long and embarrassing shopping trip. You need to expand your sissy wardrobe and you need jewelry.
You will, of course, wear your regular bra, panties, and pantyhose, with a shaved body, painted toenails, perfume, ladies’ watch and handbag. Your fingernails will be glittery. You will wear your women’s slacks and a white, collared shirt, with the top three buttons open, so you risk exposing your bra when you lean forward. For now, make do with your male shoes.
Wear your best ‘nude’ make up look. I’m sure you are experienced enough to know this does not mean ‘no makeup’. You will wear foundation, powder, eyebrow pencil, eye pencil, eyeshadow, mascara, blusher, and lipstick, but in subtle colors that, from a distance, make your face look unpainted. Of course, up close, any woman will notice, but that’s what you want, isn’t it, sissy? Besides, they will notice your nails and your bra and your perfume and the side zip on your slacks, so why be embarrassed about a little makeup?
First stop is a jeweler. Jewelry stores offer great scope for sissy humiliation. They always offer such personal attention. Try to go at a quiet time so you get this attention. Ask to look at ladies’ rings. You will almost certainly be offered a seat, which means you will expose your ankles in their pantyhose. Then you will have to point out your choices on a selection of trays, drawing attention to your painted nails. The ring you are looking for is a solitaire; a thin band with a single stone, possibly an engagement ring. When you have made your choice, you will be asked the size. You must tell the jeweler it is for your own ring finger. Unless your fingers are disgustingly pudgy (in which case, why aren’t you trying to make yourself slimmer, you slut?), they should be able to stretch it to fit. You will then wear your ring.
You also want an ankle chain which you will put on in the shop over your pantyhose. Won’t that be humiliating? Drawing attention to your shaved legs and nylons. If they offer to engrave, ask for your sissy name to be added. In the future, you will wear your anklet under your pantyhose, next to your skin. You will never take it off.
You also want a bracelet. Choose the most delicate chain available, something a real man would never wear.
Your next purchase is a necklace. Not gold or silver this time, but a string of fake pearls (unless you can afford the real thing). Wear them now, too. They will look lovely with your open shirt.
Finally, a pair of earrings. You did do as you were told and get your ears pierced, didn’t you? If not, you will do it today. Buy a pair of delicate drop pearls (fakes are permitted unless you’re wealthy) and put them on.
Now you have pretty jewelry, you can do the rest of your shopping.
Next, you’re going shoe shopping. Sadly, it won’t be as much fun as this…
…but you need shoes. It must be very frustrating for you to have to wear men’s shoes when you go out on these assignments. You’re going to buy some black loafers with a raised, block heel. The unobservant eye might see them as men’s shoes, but anyone taking a second look would know. You MUST ask to try them on. Don’t forget, you are dressed, perfumed, made up and now even bejeweled like a woman; the shop’s staff will know the shoes are for you, so you might as well make sure they fit. After all, you’re going to spend a long time in them.
Slip off your male shoes to expose your red toenails behind the reinforced toe of your pantyhose, your anklet glinting at you. Taste your lipstick as you bite your lip in shame. Slip your feet into the new shoes. Walk in them. Does it feel good to be back in heels?
You will also buy a pair of court shoes with a mid-heel of two to three inches.
Aren’t they comfortable? Of course, sissy. Why do you think so many sensible women wear them?
Wear your loafers for the rest of your shopping. Apologies to those of you with enormous feet. You will have to do your shoe shopping online and miss all this humiliation.
The rest of your shopping list is :
Three pairs of ladies’ slacks in light colors with side or rear zips and no elasticated waistbands. Try to choose fabrics not used for men’s trousers.
A pair of ladies’ shorts (this could be tricky if you’re trying this in winter). Again, side or rear zip, non-elasticated waist, pastel color.
Three white blouses, cut like shirts but with the buttons on the ‘wrong’ side for a man (but the right side for you, sissygirl).
A roll-neck top in a bold colour.
A pair of opaque (60+ denier) pantyhose/tights in the same colour as your new top.
Can you guess what’s coming next? Not your sissy boyclit, that’s for sure!
Go to your favorite sissy changing room (aka public bathroom). Strip down to your bra and panties. Now would be a good time to put your ankle chain in its proper place. Put on your thick tights. They give your legs a good, strong color, but they’re so lifeless after sheer, aren’t they? Don’t worry, you won’t be wearing them regularly.
Put your roll-neck top on. Now your new shorts and your loafers. This is the look you are aiming for.
shorts and opaques for you, sissy
Are you ready to go out like this? Perhaps you should refresh your make up. You did bring it with you, didn’t you, sissy? Redo your eyes with some darker shadow and a black pencil. Run your favorite red lipstick over your girlish mouth. Put on lots of blusher. Now go for it, sissy.
From now on, you will wear all your new jewelry 24 hours a day, EVERY day.
You will wear your loafers to work. They are you new work shoes, sissygirl. Wear them with pride. And a little sway in your step. I hope you look a little like Catherine at work.
Catherine exposes her ankles
#17 Lingerie Lingerie Lingerie
You have been deprived of a lingerie experience, haven’t you, sissyslut?
Now you are very, very well used to pantyhose, you’re going to have a change.
Stockings.
You may have worn them before you started these assignments after all most men are fascinated by them, even though most women don’t wear them. But you’re not a man or a woman, so you’re going to wear them 24 hours a day for the next month.
But you have to earn them.
And you have to buy them. For your shopping trip, you will wear; your largest buttplug, your cock tucked in your tightest panties with a pantyliner, an unfilled bra, a white blouse, black pantyhose, ladies’ slacks, court shoes, red nail polish, all your jewelry, no makeup. Take your handbag.
You must dress like this for your trip, or you will not get to wear stockings. And you do so want to, don’t you, sissy? To feel the tug of taut nylon on your suspender straps (garter straps, American sissy) as you walk and sit, the stretched strap sliding over your hips as you move, the slightly sagged stocking top rubbing your inner thigh, the teasing femininity of buckles and clips under your hands as they rest in your lap, the visible bulges of lingerie on your thighs.
To experience all of this, you must first humiliate yourself. In your pretty outfit, your new court shoes will look very feminine and make it obvious you are wearing nylons. Your bra will be obvious, as will all your sissy jewelry. But you will be rummaging through racks of stockings with painted nails. That will be deliciously embarrassing. And all with no makeup to hide behind. Did you ever think you’d wish for the extra humiliation of makeup? Perhaps you did, you naughty little sissy.
Go to your favorite lingerie store, where you buy your bras and panties. Treat yourself to a complete set of matching bra, panties and suspenders. A good tip is to look for metal buckles on your suspender straps because of these grips much better than cheap plastic. As ever, invest in your femininity. Also, look for a belt deeper than just a single hook and eye at the back because these can be uncomfortable and unless you have good, sissy hips, won’t stay up as well. You may well learn to your cost how much of a nuisance this is.
You will also buy a basque. Buy on bust size, but check for the quality of all the straps and fastenings. There will probably be some matching panties for you to buy, too.
Now go to your hosiery supplier and buy fifteen (yes, 15) pairs of stockings in a variety of styles and shades. You may indulge yourself with lace-tops if you wish. You may buy hold-ups (thigh highs, I believe you Americans say) but you must still wear them with suspenders. This is actually quite a sexy feeling; because the stockings are fixed in position, the suspender straps tense and relax much more when you walk. Don’t buy fishnets, don’t buy opaques, don’t buy multipacks.
You are such a good sissy for wearing such a humiliating outfit for your lingerie shopping. You might think your purchases are their own reward, but no! You will give yourself an even greater reward. Go to a coffee bar and order a drink. Slide the plugin and out your ass with the pressure of your buttocks. Discretely, beneath the table, stroke yourself like a girl, gently, with one of your painted nails. Stroke your aching boyclit. It probably won’t take much to make you cum, will it? It’s so long since you’ve been allowed to cum, isn’t it, slut? You’re going to explode in your pantyliner. Cum before your drink arrives. Feel the hot semen fill your liner and maybe leak out into your panties. Maybe your shorts will be wet, maybe your pantyhose will be wet below the hem of your shorts as your cum leaks away. Maybe there’ll be a little crust on your thighs before you leave. That would be humiliating, wouldn’t it?
Wear stockings every day and night for a calendar month. Wear your basque and your three-piece set on alternate days. Remember, wear your panties over the suspender straps so you can pull your panties down when you sit to pee.
Do not cum, no matter how horny you feel. Save one pair of stockings for a special purpose in your next assignment.
#18 Teach yourself to be a cumslut
Have you enjoyed your month in stockings? Not nearly so thrilling when you wear them every day, are they? Hopefully, you’re now cured of your fascination for them and are longing for pantyhose.
You may have been wondering why you had to save a brand new pair of stockings. Get them out now. You also need a condom and two clothespins (clothes’ pegs) and an (empty) ice cube tray. Strip naked. Naked except for your jewelry, perfume, nail polish and full, heavy makeup, of course. And your biggest buttplug.
Masturbate until your boyclit is hard. You may want to suck your trusty dildo if you need inspiration. You know how horny that makes you feel. Put your condom on. Now bunch up one of the stockings and put this over your boyclit, like a large, nylon condom. Pull it right down over your sissyballs. Twist the stocking behind your sissyballs and pass the bunched nylon back over your balls. Twist again and pass this, much tighter, pocket of nylon back over your balls. You now have your boyclit covered in latex and nylon and three layers of nylon compressing your sissyballs.
Does it feel good? Is it tight?
Masturbate slowly. Tease yourself. Do not cum. Attach the clothespins to each of your nipples. Feel them bite into your tender flesh. Have you ever experienced a sensation like that?
Do not cum. Now put your bra on and fill the cups. The extra pressure on your nipples will heighten the sensation. Now choose your silkiest pair of panties and a pair of slippery, high-lycra pantyhose. Your boyclit and sissyballs are very prominent, aren’t they, slut? Choose a blouse and a pair of slacks and put your sandals on. You may not hide behind an overcoat or sweater.
It’s time for a walk, just around the block will do. You should look quite passable, apart from that prominent bulge in your slacks. If the weather is cool, your nipples will be rock hard, making those clothespins bite even harder. When you get back home, suck your dildo while you pull on your tightly constrained sissyballs through your clothes.
Now you may cum, the release you’ve been dying for.
But when you have spent your disgusting sissy mess you will carefully remove your condom, collecting as much cum as possible from your boyclit, then pour your cum into the ice cube tray and put it in the freezer.
Repeat this exact ritual every day until your cube tray is full.
You already dread your next assignment, don’t you, sissy cumslut?
#19 fulfill your cum needs
Was it nice to be allowed to cum so much?
Well, that’s all over now. Back to chastity, for you, sissygirl.
There is a tray full of frozen cum in your freezer. What are you going to do with that?
Read on.
Every working day, just as you leave the house, you will put a cumcube in your mouth and suck it until it has all melted down your throat. You will NOT use gum, breath freshener, toothpaste or any other subversive means to undermining the humiliation of arriving at work with the smell of cum on your breath and the taste in your mouth all morning. A shaved and perfumed sissy wearing lingerie, jewelry and nail polish, complete with the smell of fresh cum on her breath.
And not just once, but for days on end, until you have used up all your cumcubes. Deliciously humiliating.
It should take you at least two weeks to use up your cumcubes. If you enjoy the taste of your cum after your cocksucking training, then you may find your first, frozen cumcube thrilling, but two weeks later you will be wishing you never started this. But you must do it, because this is the cost of your sexual release from now on.
#20 Get makeup demo in public
Cumcubes.
Does the word fill you with dread now?
Did anyone notice your cum-breath?
Congratulations on reaching your twentieth assignment. As a special treat, your new task involves going to the cosmetics section of a large department store. Start masturbating now, sissygirl.
First, you need wardrobe advice, don’t you sissy?
Start with your basque and a pair of black stockings. Bind your boyclit and sissyballs with one of your special stockings. Don’t wear any panties. This way, your unsightly bulge will be more prominent and you risk a wet mark in your slacks as your boyclit becomes slick with pre-cum. Wear your palest slacks and a sissy blouse.
Is your bound boyclit embarrassingly visible?
Are you worried that your basque is very obvious?
If so, you may wear the jacket from your ladies’ suit over the top. Wear perfume and jewelry as usual. Wear your loafers. Wear glittery polish on your fingernails. Don’t wear makeup. You won’t need makeup…
Go to a large department store. Make a few circuits of the makeup area. Establish who is offering makeup demonstrations. Chose the demonstrator you think is wearing the sexiest makeup. They are always heavily made up but some look better than others.
Compliment her on her makeup.
Tell her you would like to be able to copy the way she has done her eyes (or lips, if you prefer).
Ask what products she used.
By now (particularly if she has noticed your sissy appearance), she will probably have guessed where this is going and, if she is obliging, she may offer to demonstrate on your face.
If not, suggest she could do so.
If she refuses, thank her, apologize for inconveniencing her and try another store.
Otherwise, perch your sissy ass on her stool and prepare for the thrill of being made up in public by a willing female.
Thank her profusely. Buy everything she suggests. Wear your pretty, new makeup with pride as you go to the checkout to pay for your cosmetics.
#21 Plan your life as a doll
Right, you slut, you’ve had it all too easy so far. You want to be forced to dress as a woman, don’t you? From now on, you’re going to be fully dressed as a woman all the time.
That means a MINIMUM standard of –
– fully shaved with plucked eyebrows
– perfume
– feminine hairstyle (baldies must wear a wig)
– feminine watch, ring(s), bracelet, anklet, necklace, earrings
– polished fingernails and toenails
– panties and filled bra
– pantyhose (or stockings and suspenders if you must)
– skirt and blouse/top OR a dress (I hope you’ve been using your initiative to expand your wardrobe, especially skirts and dresses, otherwise you will be wearing your ‘office girl’ suit out!)
– high heels (minimum 2.5″/6.5cm)
– carry a handbag, clutch bag or (in USA) purse containing spare pantyhose, makeup bag and pantyliner
– full makeup.
The MINIMUM standard for makeup is –
– foundation
– powder
– blusher
– eyebrow pencil
– eyeliner
– mascara
– two shades of eyeshadow
– lipliner
– lipstick.
When asleep, the minimum standard is –
– face cream
– hair, nails, perfume, shaving as before
– anklet and ear studs
– underwear and hosiery as before (i.e. FILLED bra)
– babydoll nightie (you may go without your bra if this is underwired)
Print this page out so you have a permanent copy of your dress code.
Better spend your drabtime wisely. Grocery shopping? The gym? Buying replacements for your snagged pantyhose? These will probably take up your entire week’s allowance. Looks like you’re going to have to go out as your true, feminine self a lot more. If you use more drabtime than you are allowed, you must EMAIL the Station Mistress for your forfeit.
If you have to go out to work, you may (for now, at least) wear drab from when you leave your house until your return. Calculate how many hours this is each week and add it to your drabtime allowance. It goes without saying that if you work from home, you don’t get any extra allowance.
I suggest you carry a timer with you – find one that will countdown the required number of hours and has an alarm. Set it to your total drabtime at the start of your week and start the counter the moment you are improperly dressed (as a man). It would be embarrassing to have to explain what the alarm was for if it went off in public, wouldn’t it, slut?
DON’T CHEAT. You are only cheating yourself. I have a mental picture of hundreds of sissies running red lights to get home before their drabtime allowance runs out – racing home to get into a dress and heels and put their make up on as soon as possible. Delightful! Don’t disappoint me, sissy. Just don’t get a ticket. The police probably wouldn’t find your excuses acceptable!
#22 Commit
Drabtime. Is it joining the list of words that occupy your mind, but you can’t tell anyone about? Like cumcubes? Boyclit? Sissystation? Or even cosmetic companies, hosiery firms, lingerie brands, nail varnish colors. Have you casually mentioned something in conversation and realized you read it in one of your women’s magazines? Have you overheard a group of women talking about blowjobs and wanted to comment on your own experiences? If so, you should be congratulated on being an advanced sissy.
Are you completely dressed as a woman, as required in your last assignment? If not, I hope your drabtimer is running. That’s a good name for it – ‘drabtimer’. While you’re sitting at your computer, make a nice, printed label for your new clock of shame. Then you’ll have to explain what a ‘drabtimer’ is to anyone who sees it. What a secretive life you lead, sissygirl.
You’ve put yourself through some enduring changes to your body, haven’t you, sissy? You shave like a woman, paint your nails, pluck your eyebrows, got your ears pierced and even got a bra tan which lasted a long time.
This time – well, let’s get you dressed first.
This assignment will take you over your drabtime allowance, so you will have to dress as a woman – the minimum standard applies, of course. You see, you’re going to a tattoo parlor to get a pretty tattoo. A pretty, feminine, sissy tattoo to advertise to anyone that sees it ‘here is a sissy’. And you’re going to go dressed as a woman. Face it; the tattooist will see your sissy body and feminine underwear, so what does it matter?
A tattoo is for life, so choose wisely (grin); not just the design, but the artist. Make sure they meet your nation’s standards for hygiene. You can choose from three locations for your sissy tattoo – shoulder, buttock or pubic area (where you are neatly shaved). Your design should be something like a flower (but not a rose) or a butterfly or, for the particularly brave, the word ‘sissy’ or ‘slut’.
While you’re there, get your navel pierced. Very slutty. At least, it is on you.
Don’t forget – drabtime. The rules apply 365 days a year. No arguments.
#23 Living
This is your most serious, ‘real world’ assignment yet. Are you ready for it?
Do you realize you spend more time dressed as a woman than as a man? At least, if one is generous and includes your nights. I bet you hate wearing drab to work. It seems a shame to waste all the emotion, energy, money and time that has gone into your femininity by just sitting around at home in a dress and hiding your feminized body in dull, male clothes. You must get another job in your free time.
As a woman.
Or rather, dressed as a woman; you wouldn’t want to defraud anyone, would you?
Do not read on if this idea hasn’t already crossed your mind. You’re not ready.
Buy a local paper (remember: drabtime!) and check through the ‘situations vacant’ columns. What would fit around your current work commitments?
Healthcare worker?
Cleaner?
Chambermaid?
Waitress?
Maybe even Saturday assistant in a hair or beauty salon? If you have qualifications, why not try for a more skilled job? Don’t deny your fantasies about being an office girl; smart suits, heels, lots of makeup and flirting with guys.
But for now, concentrate on the more menial jobs listed above. These are likely to require you to adhere to a female dress code or even wear a uniform.
Oh, yes. A uniform. Even the word has you tenting your panties and touching yourself, doesn’t it, slut. Uniform. Your uniform. It formalizes your feminization. A dress code even stricter than that to which you have been subjected in these assignments. It is the thought of wearing a genuine, women’s uniform to work that will, ultimately, drive you on to complete this assignment. You know it’s true.
You will ring up about a few potential jobs; find out about the hours and typical work if the ad isn’t clear. Be realistic with what you could commit yourself to. This is FOR REAL and other people’s livelihoods could depend on your actions. You must ask if there would be any objections to you dressing as a woman at work; after all, this is what you want. You could explain you are contemplating gender reassignment without stretching the truth too much. Perhaps it’s a second job to earn money for breast enhancement. You’ve probably thought about it, haven’t you, girl? After all, no real man would do any of the things that make up your daily routine. But you’re not a real man, are you, sissy? True, you’re not a real woman either, but you’re trying hard.
In this politically correct world, you probably won’t be surprised at how many places will consider you for work and send out an application form. You may be excited that someone is willing to consider you working for them dressed as a woman, but in reality, you’re just another pair of hands. Yours just happen to have long, painted nails.
If you get an interview, go dressed appropriately. You don’t need to be told what to wear at this stage, do you, sissy? Take your interview seriously. Do not waste their time. If a post is offered, accept it. Take rejection gracefully, even if your interview was clearly only for their entertainment and very humiliating. Remember you have more to lose than your employer does; they know who you really are. Besides, you like humiliation, don’t you, sissy? That’s why you’re reading this.
When you finally accept a post, DO THE JOB, at least for the minimum trial period.
EMAIL your proposed career (with details), interview date and proposed interview outfit. Truthful reports only, please. I grow weary of fantasy bullshit.
Good luck and enjoy it; a nyloned, spike-heeled foot in the door of feminine employment; honest but menial work.
A word of warning. You must NEVER touch your boyclit while wearing your uniform, even in the safety of your own home. If you do it once you will be tempted to do it again, subconsciously at work. Your colleagues will think you are a pervert and your employers will not tolerate it, so be ladylike and keep your hands off. You have been warned.
#24 Practice, practice, practice…
#25 24/7, you are what you need to be
Are you enjoying your new job? Do you have a uniform? Is it pretty and feminine or plain and functional? Do your new colleagues accept you? Do they treat you like a man or a woman (although you are neither)? Have you thought more about having a sex-change for real, now you’ve had to pretend you want one? Would you like to be rid of that boyclit and those nasty sissyballs and have a pussy of your very own? Maybe you’d like a pair of real breasts, too?
It’s time to stop beating about the bush. You are not a man, you never were a man and you never will be a man. You are a sissy and you yearn to be accepted as a woman. For your 25th assignment, you will stop wearing male clothes.
Completely.
Forever.
Not even to meet your family or any other flimsy, avoidant excuse you can come up with. Your drabtime rules still apply, but from now on ‘drabtime’ refers not to ‘male outerwear’ but to any outfit of women’s clothes that don’t meet the minimum, feminine standard. You remember the minimum standard, don’t you? You should have it memorized by heart. Recite it out loud now.
If you have to go to work in drabtime, you will have to dress completely in women’s clothes, but this does not have to meet the minimum standard. For example, a blouse and slacks, bra and panties, hose and loafers would be a pretty, feminine outfit which does not meet the dictated standard, but may well be suitable for work. If your ‘male’ workplace dictates you wear a uniform of some description, you will have to be creative, or face a massive tally of forfeits. Alternatively, there may be a female uniform you could wear.
You may think I am joking; I am not.
You WILL wear women’s clothes 24/7.
Now, obviously this will take some planning, so you have one week to buy a more extensive wardrobe of women’s clothes. One week from today, you will collect EVERY LAST ITEM of your remaining male clothes into bin bags and take them to a charity shop where you will donate them. Make sure you are nicely dressed, sissy. After all, you wouldn’t want to waste your drabtime on such a simple chore, would you? Perhaps you (a well-dressed woman) could explain they are the clothes of a male friend who has left your life forever. That would be true enough, wouldn’t it? | {
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On January 20, the Golden State Warriors were scheduled to play a road game against the Chicago Bulls. In the hours before the game, the official Twitter account of ESPN’s flagship show SportsCenter posted a video of Warriors point guard Stephen Curry. But the video wasn’t of Curry's famed pre-game warmup routine, or highlights of the 35 points he'd scored against the Cleveland Cavaliers two nights previous. It was a 10-second clip of Curry dancing in his warmup jacket—looped to run for a full hour.
Not a GIF. Not a Vine. Sixty straight minutes of Curry smiling and bobbing his head overlaid with some disco music.
Ever since last season's NBA championship run, Curry’s visibility has increasingly moved beyond on-the-court highlights to include his family life. Cultural archivists dug up the old Burger King commercials Steph appeared in as a little kid alongside his father Dell while he played for the Charlotte Hornets. His wife Ayesha—once upon a time a Hannah Montana guest star—runs a food and lifestyle YouTube channel called Little Lights Of Mine that regularly features the couple away from sports. From a viral video about olive oil inspired by a Drake line to re-enacting a song from Frozen, the Currys get shared even when there’s no tangible basketball connection. And then there’s daughter Riley, who became the NBA’s Baby In Chief with her playful antics throughout the playoffs and [beyond](http://(https://youtu.be/izB8P8oyhJk?t=4m15s).
Every part of Curry’s life now gets amplified by a mass of fans whose reach extends beyond basketball. Maybe it's fans Photoshopping Riley together with her MVP Baby predecessor, Derrick Rose’s son PJ, in a toddler version of shipping. Maybe it's sports commentator Bomani Jones using a picture of Riley to reference the Death Row/Bad Boy Records rap feud of the early 1990s. The recontextualization of Curry and his family mirror the way fans of television shows obsessively pick apart images, repackaging and repurposing them to suit any comedic need.
And according to Paul Booth, an associate professor of Media and Cinema Studies at DePaul University, those two fandoms are growing closer together as digital communication advances. “We’re seeing a lot of fandoms merging technologies and practices in the digital age,” he says. "Fans who participate in multiple fandoms use the same kinds of methodologies. So what they might make for an X-Files fansite, they also might make for Steph Curry.”
Of course, Curry is still a conventional charismatic sports hero as well. When the NBA released a list of the top-selling jerseys of 2015, there he was at number one. And just like fellow superstars LeBron James, Blake Griffin, Chris Paul, and countless others, Curry is now an ever-present pitchman.
But there's something different going on here. Part of it, certainly, is that Curry maintains a public character with an emphasis on family, including his wife, daughter, father, and mother, which may help to explain why he’s becoming well-known and shareable to casual basketball fans who are usually more invested in other mediums. But he's also comfortable with the conduits of the day—the same ones that carry snippets of his on-court exploits far and wide.
While just about every player has a Twitter and Instagram account, Curry can go from posting a #womancrushwednesday picture of his wife Ayesha to using a photo of North Carolina rapper Petey Pablo to congratulate the Carolina Panthers on making it to the Super Bowl. He's fluent and recombinant and friends with Drake, culture's other great smiley-happy meme machine, and it all helps make him something we haven't seen before: a post-sports sports hero.
The worlds of sports and television fandom have always had some crossover; it’s not like fans of The Walking Dead can’t also love the NBA, or vice versa. But as broadcasting has expanded and the second screen has gained equal footing with the first, those two worlds have moved closer together. Between TV, websites, and social media platforms, people all across the country—even the world—could be watching the same game, episode, or highlight reel at the same time.
Online fan communities used to be mostly walled off into forums, where people could discuss theories for The X-Files or Lost, but never jump out into mainstream conversation. “In the past, fandom was something you might participate in within a small community,” says Booth. “It was geographically bound. People would go to games or fan conventions, but it was intended to be a much smaller affair.” With Twitter or Facebook, a chain of followers and shares can take a video about a basketball player’s family and move it into the orbit of someone who couldn’t tell you what city the Golden State Warriors are based in. (Oakland.)
And each one of those shares might just mean another jersey sold. | {
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"To me, it didn't make sense to consider legislation when we didn't know what the current status of daily fantasy sports is in Illinois," Drury said. "Now that we know, according to the attorney general, that it's illegal, we can make a serious attempt to address the issue." | {
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Quite some good progress today! Let’s dive into it.
The lazer spinner design was nothing short of temporary. It was laggy to boot. Today I spent a great deal of time realising flyte’s newer design in full detail. Take a look at it isolated:
and in a map:
Note that due to some deficiencies in our framework regarding how glows are rendered, the colours are not correct and not final. It will look much more vibrant once these issues are addressed:
Other things
Moved all pause logic into a new container, improving reliability and cleaning up the code a lot #783.
Fix and simplify pause logic and possible race conditions #782.
Fix song select reverting to first difficulty of current group on entering #778.
Fix global hotkeys not always working #780.
Fix channels being unnecessarily recycled on disconnect #774.
The log overlay now works as intended #721.
New release available
2017.518.0 is now available from github releases (or via auto-update if you already have lazer installed)! | {
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[This January dividend and expense review may contain affiliate links for which I receive a commission at no cost to you. I only recommend products I use and trust.]
Welcome to the first dividend and expense review of 2019. It’s a new year and I’m combining the two posts! We’re getting crazy up in here. For a time, I stopped tracking my expenses but feel like I should get back to it. I think it’s relevant since a few of my annual goals are savings rate based.
These dividend and expense review posts will still happen monthly. They may also dive into more detail on either dividends or expenses, depending on what I find more interesting that month.
For example, most of my big dividend months are quarterly making these off months less exciting. However, I think with the combined post structure, I can delve into my expenses in more detail when that occurs.
Let’s start with dividends. I’m coming off a great year that saw my dividends grow 28.7% to a new annual record of $10,702. That’s a great number and I’m eager to beat it handily this year.
Last year’s January brought in $80.14 and was my last sub $100 month.
January Dividends
January’s total comes in at $161.49. That’s more than double last year’s total and a 101.5% growth rate.
It’s also the biggest January since 2016, a year where I owned Disney stock which paid out in January. The growth this year is driven by three things.
First is an overall increase in bond yields. My bond funds(primarily VBTLX) are the only shares I own that pay monthly and adding shares to that total or an increase in yields will mean an increase in monthly payouts.
The second is an overall increase in cash yields. I still hold some cash with an eye on additional investments. Said cash is now paying nearly 2% so it’s not dead money anymore!. That cash yield really started to jump as the year progressed and was still quite low in January 2018.
Third is my M1 Finance account which started to see an influx of cash throughout the year. In that account, I own a bevy of individual stocks that pay monthly. Those dividend totals are still low($4.16 in January) but they’ll start to be more significant as more money flows into those accounts.
Overall, I can’t complain about this level of growth. January is still a small month in relation to the quarter ending months but $161 is nothing to sneeze at guys! That money reinvested at my average portfolio yield will add an additional $3.71 in forward annual income.
The other good news is that Steve, my dividend employee is almost on the verge of breaking $1/hr every month. Steve made $0.97/hr this month and it’s possible it’s his last month under $1/hr if things keep increasing. January has historically been my lowest month of the year so things are looking good for Steve.
The overall growth is great and I’m eager to see how the below graph looks once we start getting into the bigger months.
It’s clear that the compounding effect is happening and I’m seeing big jumps every year. I’m excited to see those blue bars and how they look in March and June and onward.
January Total : $161.49
2019 Total : $161.49
Portfolio monthly hourly wage : $0.97/hr
Portfolio annual hourly wage : $0.97/hr
Savings Rate and Expenses
This wouldn’t be a dividend and expense review without the expense side of things.
January is typically a relatively good savings month for me. It’s cold up in the northeast and we typically stay in and snuggle rather than go out. It’s winter hibernation season y’all!
That means more expensive grocery bills but lower restaurant and entertainment bills.
On top of that, the 401k and HSA resets in the new year means I can bump up my automatic contributions back up to 20%+ and save more! There’s also the automatic benefit of seeing a lower check and subconsciously wanting to spend less. I don’t know if that’s actually a thing but maybe.
One of my goals this year was to hit 50%+ savings rate in as many months as possible. I was close to that last January with a 49.06% savings rate so let’s see where I fell this year.
My savings rate came in at 51.4% this year, a proper good total if I say so myself. Adding in employer contributions brings that total up to 58.1%!
On a gross income basis(including taxes), my savings rate was 40.5% or 45.87% with employer contributions.
It’s month 1 and I’m well on my way to my 50%+ goal with a 100% hit rate so far! February is usually a pretty good month too due our yearly bonus payout as you can see below!
On the expense side of things, as I mentioned groceries were up quite a bit. That included a few visits to Trader Joe’s and a Costco visit. Honestly, I was a bit surprised by the grocery total and how many times I went to Trader Joe’s during the month(like 6). I don’t even remember why I went so often or what we needed!
The second big cost driver besides rent was health insurance. I am newly married and am now covering my wife under my plan. Her work offers insurance but it’s a pretty bad plan so we made the decision to cover her under mine.
That took my monthly cost from $84/month for single coverage to almost $500/month for the two of us. That’s quite a jump! It’s clear that my job doesn’t subsidize spousal coverage at all!
The worst part is that it’s not even a great plan. It has a family out of pocket max of $11,000 so if both of us get sick, we’re paying $500/month and potentially have to cover $11,000 in medical bills. I realize the huge impact medical costs can have on someone now, even with insurance. When I was single and paying $80/month, it wasn’t that bad but $500/month is rough. I can’t even imagine what people with families are paying at my job!
I’m lucky in that part of my insurance is subsidized by my employer but $500/month is a big change from what I was paying last year. I still haven’t combined our finances in terms of tracking everything and I’m not sure when I will but this change will certainly impact my savings rate in a big way in the meantime.
Gifts were a layover from Christmas. I had to contribute my part towards the gifts my wife purchased for everyone. She does most of the shopping in that area and luckily we’re part of families that don’t go crazy on the gift side of things. We mainly buy things for the kids and tiny trinkets for the adults.
Beyond that, there weren’t many new expenses. My Amazon Prime annual membership fee and Netflix were all the entertainment expenses. Winter is an indoor time for us and when we did go out, it was to play board games with friends. I highly recommend Scythe, a new board game we tried.
We’re lucky in that we’re happy just staying indoors when it gets cold. It’s not an all year thing and as soon as the weather picks up, we’ll be day tripping everywhere. However, until then, winter is time for hibernation!
Overall, this month was a solid one. I doubled my dividends for the month(yay for Steve) and hit 50%+ in my first savings rate of the year. There’s still plenty of work to do to hit my goals but this is a pretty great start.
February is likely to be a good savings rate month assuming I get a decent bonus. However, I already have a few expenses lined up including a root canal I have to get started tomorrow. I am not looking forward to that!
Thanks for reading and let me know how your month went! | {
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100%
Drop by my house so I can eat your pussy
35:35 | {
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District Collector Tanvi Soundriyal said there is nothing wrong if students do such jobs.
An inquiry has been ordered after reports of two students cleaning the toilet of a government school in Madhya Pradesh's Khandwa district surfaced today.
Some reports claimed that the students had been promised additional marks.
According to local sources, a family member of a student shot a video on Monday when he found two boys cleaning the toilet of the school at Sihada village near Khandwa.
One of the students allegedly told him that the school principal had asked them to clean the toilet, promising them additional five marks in the examination.
District Education Officer JS Raghuvanshi said an official has been sent to the village to conduct an inquiry.
District Collector Tanvi Soundriyal, however, said there was nothing wrong if students did such jobs. "It would have been wrong if the teacher had asked students from a particular community to clean up the toilet. There is nothing wrong if all the children are doing it," she said. | {
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Sen. Patrick Leahy calls out President Trump's Lies
Sen. Patrick Leahy called out President Trump for his 'two to three thousand lies.'
AKI SOGA/FREE PRESS | {
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شركة مكافحة حشرات في الجرف اكبر الشركات المسئولة عن مكافحة وطرد الحشرات والقوارض في الجرف، تعتبر الحشرات من أسوأ ما يتعرض له المنزل، باختلاف أنواع الحشرات، فجميعها تسبب الأمراض والحساسية، خاصة الأطفال، وتقوم الشركة باستخدام أفضل المبيدات للقضاء على الحشرات الموجودة في منزلك، مع ضمان عدم عودتها مرة ثانية إلى منزلك لفترة تتحدد على حسب حالة المنزل ونوع الحشرة وحجم انتشار الحشرات في المنزل.
إن الحشرات من الممكن أن تنتشر في مختلف الأماكن والأركان بالمنزل، ولذلك فيجب الحفاظ على المنزل بشكل دائم ضد تلك الحضرات، فالحشرات منها ما يضر الخشب ومنها ما يأكل في المفروشات والستائر والكنب، وبالتالي فيجب أن يتم الحفاظ على المنزل من دخول مختلف انواع الحشرات، حيث أن تلك الحشرات تكون دائما هي السبب أيضا في نقل الأمراض، ولكن التخلص من الحشرات بالشكل الطبيعي قد لا يأتي بالنتائج الصحيحة، ولذلك فمن الأفضل أن يتم الاستعانة بمختلف شركات التنظيف التي تعمل على التخلص من جميع الحشرات من خلال الوسائل المجربة والتي تم استخدامها في أكثر من مكان، إليكم أفضل شركة مكافحة حشرات في الجرف.
افضل شركة مكافحة حشرات في الجرف
تنتشر في المنازل في المعتاد أنواع مختلفة من الحشرات نتيجة للرطوبة، من أهمها الصراصير والنمل الأبيض والفئران والقوارض والبعوض، وسوف نعرض لكم طرق مكافحة كل نوع من الحشرات على حدا.
مكافحة الصراصير في المنازل في الجرف
تعتبر الصراصير من أكثر الحشرات التي تسبب إزعاجا لأصحاب المنازل، ويوجد منها عدة أحجام وأنواع، لعل من أسوأها الأنواع التي تعيش داخل الثلاجة، بالإضافة إلى بعض الأنواع الأخرى التي تقوم بتلويث أواني الطهي، تختفي الصراصر بالنهار وتظهر ليلا، وتوجد عدة طرق للقضاء على الصراصير الموجودة في المنزل، لعل من أهمها استخدام المبيدات الأمنة، وهذا ما تقوم الشركة بتقديمه لعملائها، حيث أننا نقوم بالقضاء على الصراصير فور ظهورها باستخدام أفضل أنواع المبيدات المستوردة من الخارج، والتي ليس لها أي رائحة، وتقوم بالقضاء نهائيا على الصراصير، يتم رش أماكن مخابئ الصراصير وكافة الشقوق التي من المحتمل أن يوجد فيها الصراصير.
مكافحة النمل الأبيض في الجرف
يعتبر النمل الأبيض من أخطر أنواع الحشرات التي تزعج الإنسان، فالنمل الأبيض لديه القدرة على تدمير منزل كامل، وللأسف أن اكتشاف وجود النمل الأبيض يستمر لوقت طويل، وللك دائما يجب على قاطني المنازل الانتباه لوجود النمل، فهو يعيش داخل التجويفات والثقوب الموجودة في الخشب.
للقضاء على النمل الأبيض، يمكنك أن تقوم بإخراج أثاث منزلك بالكامل في الشمس على أن يتم تركه لمدة يومين كاملين، فالنمل الأبيض يعيش في الظلام ويموت من الشمس.
يعتبر حمض اليوريك من أهم الوسائل التي تستخدم للقضاء على النمل الأبيض، فهو أحد أنواع مبيدات الحشرية، يتم رشه على الأماكن المتوقع وجود النمل الأبيض فيها.
يجب أن يتم إغلاق كافة الشقوق والفتحات، لمنع دخول النمل الأبيض إلى المنزل بعد التخلص منه، حتى لا يتعرض المنزل إلى الهجوم مرة ثانية.
مكافحة الفئران في الجرف
تعتبر الفئران من القوارض الغير مستحب وجودها في المنازل، فحينما تقترب الفئران من منازل البشر، يكون هدفها الأساسي هو الحصول على الغذاء، وهي حيوانات ذات حركة سريعة.
تتسبب الفئران في نشر الجراثيم في المنزل، وإلى عذاء أصحاب المنزل، كما أنها تقوم بإفساد قطع الأثاث الخشبية والملابس بأسنانها الحادة، تتكاثر الفئران بسرعة، لذلك يجب الانتباه إلى وجودها في المنزل، والذي عادة ما يتم اكتشافه عن طريق فضلاتها، التي يجدها أصحاب المنزل منتشرة في أرجاء المنزل.
يفضل أن يقوم أصحاب المنزل النصاب بالاستعانة بشركة متخصصة للتخلص من الفئران بطرق أمنة، ولعل أفضل الطرق هي استخدام الموجات الفوق الصوتية للتخلص من الفئران في أرجاء المنزل، فالذبذبات لا تؤثر على الإطلاق على الإنسان، ولكن أذن الفئران لا تتحملها، فتخرج من المنزل بلا عودة.
تمتلك الشركة أفضل الأجهزة التي تقوم بإصدار ذبذبات الموجات الفوق صوتية، والتي تجعل الفئران تفر هاربة من منزلك، كما أنها تقي المنزل من أن تقترب الفئران من منزلك.
شركة مكافحة العثة في الجرف
تعتبر حشرة العثة من الحشرات الصغيرة، التي تتطفل على الأغطية والملابس والسجاد، ويسبب وجودها عددا من الأضرار بالأشياء التي تتطفل عليها، كما أن لها تأثيرات على صحة الإنسان، فقد يؤدي ذلك إلى إصابة الإنسان بالجرب بالإضافة إلى عدد من أمراض الجهاز التنفسي.
عند القيام بمكافحة العثة يتم استخدام أنواع مختلفة من المبيدات، وذلك حسب نوع العثة الموجودة في المنزل ومدى إنتشارها في المنزل، وأماكن وجودها، حيث يقوم المتخصص بعد الفحص بطرح عدد من الإقتراحات للتخلص منها، ويقوم العميل باختيارك ما يناسبه منها.
مكافحة البعوض في الجرف
يعتبر البعض من الحشرات المزعجة، والتي تقوم بنقل الأمراض بسرعة كبيرة، فهي تقوم بلدغ البشر الموجودين في المكان، من أهم الأمراض التي تقوم بنقلها هي الملاريا، كما أنها تسبب حساسية لبعض الأشخاص، لدغتها مؤلمة إلى حدما كما أنها تعتبر العدو الأول للنوم، يكثر تواجد البعوض في الأماكن التي يوجد بها مستنقعات مياه غير نظيفة أو مقالب قمامة، ويفضل للقضاء نهائيا على هذه الحشرات أن تستعين بشركة متخصصة في هذا المجال للقضاء على البعوض نهائيا لحماية أسرتك وأطفالك من انتشار الأمراض.
لماذا تتصل على شركات مكافحة حشرات في الجرف
تعتبر شركتنا هي الأفضل في مجال مكافحة الحشرات في منطقة الجرف لعدة أسباب منها
تمتلك شركتنا أمهر العمالة المتخصصة في مجال رش الحشرات والتعامل معها، واكتشاف أماكن اختبائها والقضاء تماما على الجحور.
تقوم العمالة برش النوع المناسب من المبيدات حسب نوع الحشرات أو القوارض الموجودة في المنزل.
تتميز المبيدات التي يتم استخدامها بأنها جميعها مستوردة من الخارج، وجميعها حاصلة على تصريح من وزارة الصحة أنها أمنة على صحة الإنسان، بالإضافة إلى أنها فعالة حيث تقوم بالقضاء على الحشرات باختلاف أنواعها خلال ساعات قليلة.
لا يحتاج الرش إلى مغادرة منزلك على الإطلاق فهي أمنة حتى على الأطفال.
يتم تنظيف المنزل من آثار الحشرات بعد القضاء عليها.
شركة رش مبيدات في الجرف
يمكن تقسيم المبيدات حسب المواد الكيميائية المستخدمة في مكافحة الحشرات إلى نوعين
مبيدات عضوية
يتم صناعتها من جذور النباتات البقولية
مبيدات غير عضوية
تصنع من بعض مركبات الفلورين مثل مركب فلورين الصوديوم، أو مركبات السيانور ومن أهمهم مركبات سيانور الرصاص والكالسيوم، بعض مركبات الكبريت والزئبق والنحاس.
كما يمكن تقسيم المبيدات المستخدمة تبعا لطريقة امتصاص الحشرة لها كالتالي
مبيدات تعمل بالملامسة: وهي تتغلغل داخل جسم الحشرة عن طريق جلدها أو القشرة الداخلية لها.
مبيدات معوية: تقوم الحشرات بابتلاعها وتقوم بإصابة الجهاز الهضمي للحشرة، ولذلك يفضل في هذه الحالة أن تم إضافة المبيد إلى نوع من الطعام المفضل للحشرة.
مبيدات دخانية وهي تعتمد على قتل الحشرات بعد استنشاقها له.
مبيدات طاردة للحشرات وتتميز بأنها ذات رائحة كريهة فتبتعد الحشرات عن مكان انتشاره.
مبيدات جهازية: ويتم استخدامها في رش الحقول.
مبيدات مبخرة ومن أهمها النفتالين وهي تدخل إلى جسم الحشرات عن طريق الفتحات
مبيدات تجذب الحشرات: وهي مبيدات ذات روائح محببة للحشرات تتجمع الحشرة حولها فيسهل قتلها
عروض ارخص شركة مكافحة حشرات في الجرف
تقوم شركة مكافحة الحشرات بعمل عروض لعملائها الكرام، بخصومات كبيرة على أنواع معينة من المبيدات، كما نقوم الشركة بعمل خصومات كبيرة في الأعياد والمناسبات.
تقوم الشركة باستقبال كافة استفساراتكم حول مكافحة الحشرات في الجرف عبر الخط الساخن للشركة، وذلك على مدار 24 ساعة، ويقوم بالرد على كافة استفساراتكم بواسطة متخصصين في هذا المجال.
بعد أن تقوم بالاتصال بنا عبر الأرقام الخاصة بنا، يتم تحديد موعد لمعاينة المنزل المصاب، وفي الموعد المحدد يصل فريق من الخبراء إلى منزلك، ويقومون بتحديد الحشرة الموجودة وطرق العلاج المتاحة لها، وعقب الاتفاق مع العميل يتم تحديد الموعد المناسب للقيام بعملية الرش.
لمزيد من خدماتنا شركة تنظيف براس الخيمة | {
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Giovanna was born in Rome, Italy and currently resides in South Salem, New York. In her free time, she likes to cook with her children and grandchildren.
The focus should’ve been the baseball game at the College World Series matchup between the TCU Horned Frogs and Coastal Carolina Chanticleers in Omaha on Saturday night, but one little boy in the crowd had ESPN sports anchors and viewers at home howling with laughter.
When the young fan noticed ESPN’s live cameras had panned in his direction, he snapped to attention. His reaction is so good, it seems like he’s spent his entire life preparing.
“How long can he go?” one of the anchors ponders aloud a mere 10 seconds into the boy’s hilarious reaction. As it turns out, the kid manages to draw out his comedic performance for a full 90 seconds.
The best part of all is that his mom, who appears to be the lady in the purple tank sitting next to him, seems too enthralled in the game to notice that her own son is stealing the show.
What would you do if you were this little guy’s parents?
Please SHARE with everyone you know who has a sense of humor! | {
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} |
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Disney World Special Events, Festivals and Parties
This page covers Walt Disney World special events and annual festivals in the theme parks, Disney resorts and Disney Springs.
Notes:
This is an UNOFFICIAL listing of Walt Disney World special events and activities, and while we make our best effort to keep it updated, complete and accurate, Disney changes things constantly. Be sure to call ahead before making any major plans based on the information below!
For recurring Disney World special events (e.g., Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival, Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party) we update new information as it becomes available, but we do not remove the previous year’s information until the new year’s information becomes available . We do this so that you can get a general idea of what has been offered in the past, and the range of dates when it was offered.
. We do this so that you can get a general idea of what has been offered in the past, and the range of dates when it was offered. Information on events that have already happened are colored gray. Once we get details about the next occurrence of that event, we update our information and change the text to black again.
Walt Disney World Special Events, Festivals & Parties
Jump to:
January-May Events
June-August Events
September-December Events
New Year’s Day
Christmas decorations remain up throughout Walt Disney World through New Year, and generally several days past the first of the year.
There are special meals available at certain restaurants on New Year’s Day. You can reserve holiday meals up to 180 days in advance by calling (407) WDW-DINE (939-3463).
Note that “holiday pricing” (i.e. higher prices) will be in effect for some restaurants (particularly the buffets and character meals) from mid-December through the first few days of January (holiday season). Other restaurants may charge a premium on New Year’s Day, so be sure to ask when booking reservations.
For New Year’s Day 2020, Topolino’s Terrace – Flavors of the Riviera, located at the top of Disney’s Riviera Resort, offered a New Year’s Day Character Brunch from 9:00 am – 2:00 pm. The cost is $59 per adult (age 10 and up) and $37 per child (age 3-9), tax & gratuity included. The Italian tradition is to wear red as a festive way to ring in the New Year, so accents of red are highly encouraged.
Chinese New Year
Each year in January or February the China Pavilion in Epcot has a Chinese New Year celebration. Usually there are Chinese acrobats and special activities for kids.
Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend
In 2021, the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend will be January 6-10. Registration opened May 12, 2020 at 10 am ET.
The Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend is an entire running weekend at Walt Disney World Resort. Other highlights include a Half Marathon, Goofy’s Race-and-a-Half Challenge, a Family Fun Run 5K and Kids’ Races.
In 2020, participants in the marathon ran through Blizzard Beach Water Park and spent more time running inside Epcot, and less time on the roads outside the parks.
Walt Disney World Annual Passholders, Disneyland Annual Passport holders and DVC members are able to register ahead of the general public for some runDisney events. Check the Annual Passholder or DVC member website for details closer to the public registration date.
For more information or to register, go to the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend page. Don’t wait too long to register; the races reach full capacity very quickly!
Epcot International Festival of the Arts
In 2020, the Epcot International Festival of the Arts was held January 17 – February 24.
The Epcot International Festival of the Arts celebrates the visual, culinary and performing arts. There are art exhibits of Disney artists and musical performances throughout the Festival — from local bands to Broadway stars. Feast on artistic dishes with a Disney twist at themed food studios, eateries and dining events. You can also attend professional workshops and seminars to improve your own artistic skills. Usually, Annual Passholders and Disney Vacation Club members get a discount on select experiences.
Purchase any 5 menu items from the Wonderful Walk of Colorful Cuisine locations and collect a stamp in your Festival Passport. Once you have all five, bring your stamped Festival Passport back to Decadent Delights in Epcot by February 24, 2020 for a colorful culinary prize.
Along with the visual arts, Disney Theatrical brings a showcase of music and Broadway talent to the America Gardens Theatre stage. Disney on Broadway shows are included in theme park admission and takes place daily at 5:30, 6:45 and 8:00 pm. You can also book a Disney on Broadway Concert Series Dining Package that includes breakfast, lunch or dinner and a guaranteed priority seating at one of 3 concerts held the same day.
2020 Disney on Broadway Concert Series (schedule subject to change):
January 17: Kissy Simmons and Alton Fitzgerald White
January 18-19: Heidi Blickenstaff and Gavin Lee
January 20-21: Kissy Simmons and Alton Fitzgerald White
January 22-23: Heidi Blickenstaff and Gavin Lee
January 24: Kissy Simmons and Alton Fitzgerald White
January 25: Kissy Simmons, Heidi Blickenstaff, Alton Fitzgerald White and Gavin Lee
January 26: Kara Lindsay and Kevin Massey
January 27: Liana Hunt and Adam Jacobs
January 28-29: Kara Lindsay and Kevin Massey
January 30-31: Liana Hunt and Adam Jacobs
February 1-2: Kara Lindsay and Kevin Massey
February 3-4: Liana Hunt and Adam Jacobs
February 5-6: Kara Lindsay and Kevin Massey
February 7-8: Liana Hunt and Adam Jacobs
February 9: Kara Lindsay, Kevin Massey, Liana Hunt and Adam Jacobs
February 10: Ashley Brown and Josh Strickland
February 11: Syndee Winters and Michael James Scott
February 12-13: Ashley Brown and Josh Strickland
February 14-17: Syndee Winters and Michael James Scott
February 18-19: Ashley Brown and Josh Strickland
February 20-21: Syndee Winters and Michael James Scott
February 22-23: Ashley Brown and Josh Strickland
February 24: Ashley Brown, Josh Strickland, Syndee Winters and Michael James Scott
For kids, there is Figment’s Brush with the Masters Scavenger Hunt; maps and stickers are available for purchase at various retail locations in Epcot. Kids search for artwork with Figment in the picture and add the location sticker to their map. Turn in the map to a Cast Member at a retail location to pick up a surprise.
For more information, visit the Epcot International Festival of the Arts page.
Disney on Broadway Concert Series Dining Package
The Disney on Broadway Concert Series Dining Package is available for breakfast, lunch or dinner at participating Epcot restaurants, as part of the Disney on Broadway Concert Series at the Epcot International Festival of the Arts. Cost will vary depending on restaurant and mealtime selected.
Dining packages include an appetizer, entrée, dessert and non-alcoholic beverage or one full buffet, where applicable, and guaranteed priority seating at one of 3 concerts held the same day. Dining reservations must be at least 2.5 hours prior to showtime.
Annual Passholders get 10% off Disney on Broadway Concert Series Dining Packages.
2020 Disney on Broadway Concert Series Dining Package reservations opened on November 14, 2019. For more information or to make a reservation, go to the Disney on Broadway Concert Series Dining Package page or call (407) WDW-DINE (939-3463). Please note: admission to Epcot is required and is not included in the price. Advance reservations are highly recommended.
Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is February 14 every year. Walt Disney World does not generally have any special events or activities for Valentine’s Day, but we have plenty of tips and ideas for adding some romance to a Walt Disney World trip.
Disney’s Princess Half Marathon Weekend
In 2021, the Disney’s Princess Half Marathon Weekend will be February 18-21. Registration opened June 16, 2020 at 10 am ET.
This annual event includes Disney’s Princess Half Marathon, a Family Fun Run 5K, and Kids’ Races.
Walt Disney World Annual Passholders, Disneyland Annual Passport holders and DVC members are able to register ahead of the general public for some runDisney events. Check the Annual Passholder or DVC member website for details closer to the public registration date.
For more information or to register, go to the Princess Half Marathon Weekend page. Don’t wait too long to register; the races reach full capacity very quickly!
Mardi Gras
In 2021, Mardi Gras will be February 16.
A little-known event on Mardi Gras is the mini-parade through Disney’s Port Orleans Resort. Several departments of the resort build floats on golf carts. The floats are judged and then parade through the grounds. During the parade they throw New Orleans-style trinkets (beads, candy, doubloons) to the guests who line up to watch. If you will be at Port Orleans Resort on Mardi Gras, be sure to ask at the front desk when this event will take place.
Several Disney Springs eateries, such as House of Blues and Maria & Enzo’s, celebrate Mardi Gras (or Carnevale, the Venice version of Mardi Gras) with special meals or menu items. Usually these special meals and menus are offered for several weeks.
Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival
In 2020, the Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival was scheduled to be held March 4 – June 1.
During the Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival, Disney punches up their landscaping at Epcot with additional topiaries, display gardens, wildlife habitats (including a butterfly garden) as well as offering some special tours. Outdoor Kitchens feature foods & beverages from the garden and grill. Garden Rocks concerts, featuring popular bands, rock the open-air America Gardens Theatre every night at 5:30, 6:45, and 8:00 pm and are included with admission to Epcot.
Garden Rocks Dining Packages are available for breakfast, lunch or dinner on select days at a number of Epcot restaurants.
For kids, there is Spike’s Pollen Nation Exploration a springtime scavenger hunt. In each garden, search for the plant Spike has pollinated, identifiable by Spike himself and a Spike’s Pollen Nation Exploration plant stake. Once you find him, add the corresponding sticker to your map. Maps and stickers are available for $7.44, tax included, at Port of Entry (at the entrance to World Showcase). After your search is complete, return your map to pick up a surprise.
Annual Passholders get 15% off the Behind the Seeds and Garden of World tours.
More information is on Disney’s Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival page. The festival, including all gardening programs and exhibits, is included in regular Epcot admission.
MouseSavers.com reader Carrie B offers this tip: “Festival merchandise usually gets marked down 50% off one full week before the end of the Flower & Garden Festival.”
2020 Garden Rocks Concert Series (schedule subject to change):
March 4-5: Peabo Bryson
March 6-9: The Orchestra, starring former members of ELO
March 10-12: The Guess Who
March 13-16: Simple Plan
March 17-19: STARSHIP featuring Mickey Thomas
March 20-23: Mark Wills
March 24-26: The Spinners
March 27-28: Sister Hazel
March 29-30: The Pointer Sisters
March 31-April 2: Former Journey Lead Vocalist Steve Augeri
April 3-4: Blood, Sweat & Tears
April 5-6: Exposé
April 7-9: Berlin
April 10-11: A Flock of Seagulls
April 12-13: TBA
April 14-16: Tony Orlando
April 17-18: High Valley
April 19-20: Rick Springfield
April 21-23: Christopher Cross
April 24-27: Plain White T’s
April 28-30: Don Felder, formerly of The Eagles
May 1-2: Don McLean
May 3-4: Casting Crowns
May 5-7: Ambrosia with Peter Beckett
May 8-9: Thelma Houston
May 10-11: The Allman Betts Band
May 12-14: Air Supply
May 15-18: Herman’s Hermits starring Peter Noone
May 19-21: Mike DelGuidice & Big Shot
May 22-23: Claudia Leitte
May 24-25: Daughtry
May 26-28: Marshall Tucker Band
May 29-30: Crowder
May 31-June 1: Survivor
Garden Rocks Dining Package
The Garden Rocks Dining Package, available for breakfast, lunch or dinner on select days, is offered during the Garden Rocks Concert Series. Dining packages are available at select Epcot restaurants. Cost will vary depending on restaurant and mealtime selected. Dining packages include an appetizer, entrée and dessert—or one full buffet or family-style dining, where applicable—along with a non-alcoholic beverage and a guaranteed seat at one of 3 Garden Rocks concert performances later that day. Dining reservations must be at least 2.5 hours prior to showtime.
Annual Passholders get 10% off Garden Rocks Dining Packages.
2020 Garden Rocks Dining Packages went on sale to Annual Passholders and DVC members on December 18, 2019 and to everyone else on December 19, 2019. For more information or to make a reservation, go to the Garden Rocks Dining Package page or call 407-WDW-DINE (939-3463). Please note: admission to Epcot is required and is not included in the price. Advance reservations are highly recommended.
Easter
In 2021, Easter Sunday will be April 4.
Magic Kingdom
In 2019, there was a meet and greet with Mr. & Mrs. Easter Bunny in Bunny Lane Garden early April through April 21 near the Town Square.
Epcot
For 2020, the Easter Egg-stravaganza scavenger hunt was scheduled to be held March 27 – April 12. Maps and stickers will be available for $7.44, tax included, at the following locations in Epcot: Pin Central (Future World), Disney Traders (at the entrance to World Showcase) and World Traveler (International Gateway). Return the map to Disney Traders in Epcot to pick up a surprise.
Hotel Events
Some of the Disney hotels offer egg hunts, egg decorating, characters in Easter costumes, etc. to their guests on Easter morning. If you are staying at a Disney hotel, inquire at the front desk when you arrive.
Grand Floridian Resort pastry chefs usually display elaborate edible Easter Eggs in the lobby. In 2019, the Easter Eggs were on display April 1- 27.
Special Meals & Meal Pricing
There are special meals available at certain restaurants on Easter Sunday. An Easter Brunch is usually held each year at the Epcot World ShowPlace located between Canada and the United Kingdom pavilions. Regular Epcot admission is required. You can reserve holiday meals up to 180 days in advance on the Walt Disney World dining page or by calling (407) WDW-DINE (939-3463).
Note that “holiday pricing” (i.e. higher prices) will be in effect for some restaurants (particularly the buffets and character meals) for the two weeks on either side of Easter. Other restaurants may charge a premium on Easter Sunday, so be sure to ask when booking reservations.
Religious Services
In the past, services have been held on Easter Sunday only in the Fantasia Ballroom at the Contemporary Resort. Catholic Mass is at 8:00 am and 10:30 am. A Protestant service is held at 9:15 am. If you plan to attend, it is best confirm the time and location with the front desk or concierge.
You may not park at the Contemporary for these services, so to get there, you must do one of the following:
take the Monorail to the Contemporary
take a boat to the Contemporary
take resort transportation (monorail, boat or bus) to the Magic Kingdom and transfer to a shuttle bus serving the Contemporary resort
Star Wars Rival Run Weekend
In 2021, the Star Wars Rival Run Weekend will be April 15-18. Registration opened August 11, 2020 at 10 am ET.
This event includes a 5K, 10K, kids races and half marathon; runners can choose which side of the Force they will run for.
Runners can register for two special challenges. There is the Star Wars Rival Run Challenge, which involves running the 10K and the half marathon during the race weekend. There is also the runDisney Kessel Run Challenge, where runners complete the Star Wars Rival Run Half Marathon at Walt Disney World and run the Star Wars Virtual Half Marathon at home.
Walt Disney World Annual Passholders, Disneyland Annual Passport holders and DVC members are able to register ahead of the general public for some runDisney events. Check the Annual Passholder or DVC member website for details closer to the public registration date.
For more information or to register, go to the Star Wars Rival Run Weekend page. Don’t wait too long to register; the races reach full capacity very quickly!
Earth Day 50th Anniversary Party at Animal Kingdom
In 2020, the Earth Day 50th Anniversary Party was scheduled to be held April 18-20.
Animal Kingdom will host special entertainment and activities throughout the park – culminating in an all-day extravaganza on Earth Day (April 22). Each day of festivities includes a lineup of expert speakers and entertainment; behind-the-scenes tours; specialty food and beverage; limited-edition merchandise signings; character greetings; photo opportunities; special Wilderness Explorers activities for kids – and more.
Throughout the week, in the Wild by Nature Speaker Series, you will get to hear from some of Disney’s Animal Kingdom’s animal experts, educators and conservation “Heroes” at the park’s Theater in the Wild. National Geographic Explorers and Photographers will share their stories from the front lines of their explorations as well as wildlife photography and video techniques. They will join the roster of the Wild by Nature Speaker Series, and Disney will debut National Geographic merchandise at Disney Parks that week as well.
At the Animation Experience at Conservation Station, learn how Disney animators bring favorite characters to life using real life animals as inspiration. There will be special Disney characters featured for the Earth Day Celebration.
Walt Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde, will give his Tiffins Talks featuring a four-course meal and discussion on Joe’s research trips and personal exhibitions from a life dedicated to exploration. In 2020, the Tiffins Talks was scheduled to be offered April 19, 20 and 22 from 11:00 am – 1:00 pm. The cost is $211.94 per person, tax included. Please note: Animal Kingdom admission is required and is not included in the price of Tiffins Talks. For more information or to purchase a ticket, go to the Walt Disney World Tiffins Talks page. Advance reservations are recommended.
New for 2020, as part of their Earth Month activities, Animal Kingdom was scheduled to offer a “A Path Less Traveled Tour” on select dates March 29 – May 2 at 8:00 am. During this 2-hour walking tour you’ll learn more about the details, construction and design of the park. You’ll also meet with animal care experts and learn how they care for the animals in the park and what work is being done to save wildlife species worldwide. The tour costs $73.49 per person (age 10 and up), tax included. Admission to Animal Kingdom is required and is not included in the price. Advance reservations recommended.
Cinco de Mayo
Cinco de Mayo (5th of May) is a celebration of Mexican heritage and commemorates a Mexican victory in the 1862 Battle of Puebla. There is a relatively low-key Cinco de Mayo celebration centered on the Mexico Pavilion at Epcot, tied in with the International Flower & Garden Festival. It usually features some sort of special activity for families.
Mother’s Day
In 2021, Mother’s Day will be May 9.
On Mother’s Day, the second Sunday in May, some Walt Disney World Resort restaurants offer a special brunch menu.
For more information about Mother’s Day meals or to make a reservation, go to the Walt Disney World dining page or call (407) WDW-DINE (939-3463).
Disney Channel Fan Fest
New for 2020, the Disney Channel Fan Fest was scheduled to be held on May 16-17, 23-24 and 30-31.
The Disney Channel Fan Fest takes place at Epcot. During this fan-focused day there will be activities such as Disney’s “QUIZney” trivia challenge; “Descendants” and “ZOMBIES”-themed dance parties; and learn-to-draw sessions with creators from Disney Television Animation. In addition, there will be a cavalcade down Main Street, U.S.A. at Disneyland Park featuring Disney Channel stars and Disney characters.
Cast members from popular Disney Channel shows will be available for meet and greets for fans with a wristband. Please note: Wristband distribution is on a first come, first served basis, beginning when the park opens, while supplies last.
Disney H20 Glow Nights at Typhoon Lagoon
In 2020, Disney H20 Glow Nights was scheduled to be held at Typhoon Lagoon on most Wednesdays and Saturdays from May 27 through August 29, from 8:00 pm – 11:00 pm (except Saturday, June 13 and Wednesday, July 1). Due to health & safety concerns, this event was cancelled for 2020.
On select summer nights, special lighting effects transform Typhoon Lagoon Water Park while Buzz, Woody and Jessie throw a Beach Party inspired by their friend, “Partysaurus” Rex. Activities include dancing on the beach, party games, and meet ups with Buzz, Woody and Jessie, plus, all attractions will be open. Guests can arrive as early as 6:00 pm.
Tickets purchased in advance cost $69.23 per adult (age 10 and up) and $63.90 per child (age 3-9), tax included.
Tickets purchased the same day cost $79.88 per adult (age 10 and up) and $74.55 per child (age 3-9), tax included.
Annual Passholders and Disney Vacation Club members can purchase discounted tickets in advance only: $62.84 per adult (age 10 and up) and $57.51 per child (age 3-9), tax included.
Please note: Disney H20 Glow Nights are a separate ticketed event and the party is not included in daytime admission.
2020 tickets for Disney H20 Glow Night went on sale January 15, 2020. Tickets can be purchased through Undercover Tourist (there’s a small discount), or at full price direct from Disney via the Disney H2O Glow Nights page or by calling (407) 939-1872. Please note: this ticket does not include daytime admission to Typhoon Lagoon.
Independence Day (July 4)
Magic Kingdom offers a special Independence Day fireworks show on July 3 & 4 in the Magic Kingdom above Cinderella Castle. There are also dance parties in Tomorrowland and Frontierland during the fireworks show. These activities are included in regular park admission.
At Epcot, on July 4 Disney characters are dressed in patriotic attire throughout the day at the American Adventure Pavilion. Voices of Liberty, the eight-part a cappella group, has a special performances at the American Gardens Theatre at 5:30, 6:45 and 8:00 pm. These activities are included in regular park admission.
In the past, on July 4 there was a special Independence Day version of the Epcot evening spectacular.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom does not offer fireworks since they would disturb the animals.
If you plan to visit one of the theme parks on July 4 (particularly if it falls on a weekend), be aware that it is one of the most popular days of the year. The parks may reach full capacity at some point during the day, and you may not be admitted (or re-admitted) to the parks until the crowds die down again, usually around dinner time. (This can happen even if you have a ticket, even if you’re staying at a Disney resort and even if you have dining reservations in the park. If the park is full, it’s full — Disney has to follow fire codes!) For that reason it’s best to arrive first thing in the morning and stay in the same park all day, or if you plan to leave, don’t plan anything (like dinner reservations) that would require you to re-enter in the afternoon. Bring any items you may need later and stow them in a locker when you arrive (the lockers will also sell out). Get FastPasses right away if you think you will want to ride anything, because the lines will be very long by noon.
Special Meals
For 4th of July in 2019, Disney offered Woody’s Roundup Barbecue Buffet at Disney’s Contemporary Resort on July 4-6 from 6:15 pm – 9:15 pm in the Fantasia Ballroom at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. In addition to a barbecue buffet, there were character meet and greets, camp-style carnival games, a Make-Your-Own Toy Station, a Buzz Lightyear playtime zone and more. At the end of the night, guests could head to the Porte Cochére to view the Magic Kingdom nighttime spectacular. Tickets are $149 per adult (age 10+) and $99 per child (age 3-9), tax and gratuity included. Space is limited. Reservations can be made online or by calling (407) 939-3463.
Bastille Day
On July 14 the France Pavilion in Epcot celebrates Bastille Day, which commemorates the beginning of the French Revolution. This is a low-key event, but there are special activities for kids and adults.
Gay Days
In 2021, Gay Days will be held June 3-6.
In 2020, Gay Days will be held October 27-November 2.
While this is not a Disney-sponsored event, it is a very well-attended one.
Gay Days originally began in 1991. At the time it was “Gay Day in the Magic Kingdom,” a single day when the gay and gay supportive community was encouraged to “Wear Red and Be Seen” while visiting the world’s most popular theme park. Over the years it has grown to a week-long event. Visit GayDays.com for more info.
Epcot International Food and Wine Festival
The 2020 Epcot International Food and Wine Festival will be held July 15 through the fall; an end date has not been announced.
Each fall, Epcot hosts the International Food and Wine Festival, a several-weeks-long celebration that includes both “free” (i.e. included in Epcot admission) and separately ticketed events such as Party for the Senses, food and wine pairings, specialty dinners, culinary demonstrations and wine/beverage and cheese seminars. Epcot guests can enjoy the flavors of more than 25 international marketplaces dotting the World Showcase promenade. Tapas-sized portions of regional specialties run $3 to $8 each; recommended wines and/or beers pairings are available at each kiosk as well.
Due to new health and safety measures, there will be some modifications to the 2020 Epcot International Food and Wine Festival event. Eat to the Beat concerts will not be held in 2020. Local Epcot entertainment such as Mariachi Cobre and the JAMMitors, will perform at America Gardens Theatre throughout the day.
New for 2020, a digital Festival guidebook will be available on the My Disney Experience app.
Annual highlights include:
The Festival Welcome Center, with a wine bar, tasting seminars and free sessions with cookbook authors and hands-on workshops.
Some 270 chefs, including Disney chefs and guest chefs from across the country conducting culinary demonstrations and hosting dinners and tasting events.
The Party for the Senses grand tasting event with tempting bites from eminent chefs, more than 50 wines and beers and live entertainment.
Disney Wine & Dine Half Marathon – work off some of those extra calories!
For kids, there is Remy’s Ratatouille Hide & Squeak, a search throughout the World Showcase for Remy statuettes and the ingredients he needs to make his signature ratatouille. Maps and stickers will be available for $9.95 plus tax at the following locations in Epcot: Disney Traders, Festival Center, Pin Central and World Traveler (International Gateway). Return your map to the redemption location by the last day of the Food & Wine Festival to pick up a surprise.
For more information, go to the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival page.
A Few Tips
Go on a weekday (Monday through Thursday) for the lowest crowds. Friday nights, all day/evening Saturday and all day Sunday are the busiest times, because locals come when they are off work.
(Monday through Thursday) for the lowest crowds. Friday nights, all day/evening Saturday and all day Sunday are the busiest times, because locals come when they are off work. Arrive right at opening (11:00 am) and eat your way “around the world” at the marketplace booths for lunch. It’s cooler, the crowds are much lighter than in the evenings.
(11:00 am) and eat your way “around the world” at the marketplace booths for lunch. It’s cooler, the crowds are much lighter than in the evenings. If you are on a dining plan, you can use your snack credits for the food items (but not alcoholic beverages) at the Food & Wine marketplace booths. This is a great deal because normally snack credits are good only for individual snack items priced under $4, but some of the booth items cost $8 or more. Qualifying items are marked on the marketplace booth menus with a Dining Plan logo.
(but not alcoholic beverages) at the Food & Wine marketplace booths. This is a great deal because normally snack credits are good only for individual snack items priced under $4, but some of the booth items cost $8 or more. Qualifying items are marked on the marketplace booth menus with a Dining Plan logo. The Disney Food Blog Guide to the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival e-Book can help you get the most out of this fantastic annual event. It offers 160 pages of tips, information, and advice to help you enjoy every minute of your time, including a full schedule of daily events, menus and photos from every World Showcase booth and customized touring strategies.
It offers 160 pages of tips, information, and advice to help you enjoy every minute of your time, including a full schedule of daily events, menus and photos from every World Showcase booth and customized touring strategies. MouseSavers.com reader Carrie B offers this tip: “Festival merchandise usually gets marked down 50% off one full week before the end of the Food & Wine Festival.”
Eat to the Beat Concerts
Due to current health and safety measures, Eat to the Beat Concerts will not be held in 2020. Local Epcot entertainment such as Mariachi Cobre and the JAMMitors will perform at America Gardens Theatre throughout the day.
Enjoy musical evenings during the Food & Wine Festival with the “Eat to the Beat” concerts scheduled August 29 – November 19, 2019 at 5:30, 6:45 and 8:00 pm on the America Gardens Theatre stage.
Please note: In 2019, the Eat to the Beat Concert series ended a few days earlier than the Food & Wine Festival in order to prepare for the Candlelight Processional.
Enjoy musical evenings during the Food & Wine Festival with the “Eat to the Beat” concerts on the America Gardens Theatre stage. On Sundays through Thursdays, performances are at 5:30, 6:45 and 8:00 pm. On Fridays and Saturdays, performances are at 6:30, 7:45 and 9:00 pm.
You can make FastPass+ reservations for the Eat to the Beat concert series. Normal FastPass+ booking guidelines apply. You can also book an Eat to the Beat Dining Package that includes breakfast, lunch or dinner and a guaranteed seat at the Eat to the Beat concert held on the same day.
2019 Eat to the Beat Concert Lineup (schedule subject to change):
August 29-31: Plain White T’s
September 1-2: Sawyer Brown
September 3-4: MercyMe
September 5-6: Grace Kelly
September 7-8: Zach Williams
September 9-10: Lauren Daigle
September 11-12: Jimmie Allen
September 13-15: Tiffany
September 16-17: Smash Mouth
September 18 through 19: Everclear
September 20-22: STARSHIP featuring Mickey Thomas
September 23-24: Post Modern Jukebox
September 25-26: Blue October
September 27-29: Mark Wills
September 30 – October 2: Sugar Ray
October 3-4: Taylor Dayne
October 5-6: Melina León
October 7-9: 98°
October 10-11: Boyce Avenue
October 12-13: Southern Avenue
October 14-15: Kenny G
October 16-17: 38 Special
October 18-20: Baha Men
October 21-22: Billy Ocean
October 23-25: Sheila E
October 26-27: High Valley
October 28-30: Hanson
October 31 – November 1: Sheena Easton
November 2-3: Kris Allen
November 4-6: Boyz II Men
November 7-8: The Hooters
November 9-11: Big Bad Voo Doo Daddy
November 12-14: Joey Fatone and Friends, featuring Chris Kirkpatrick and Ryan Cabrera
November 15-16: BBMak
November 17-18: Spanish Harlem Orchestra
November 19: DCappella
Eat to the Beat Dining Package
Due to current health and safety measures, Eat to the Beat Concerts will not be held in 2020.
The Eat to the Beat Dining Package, available for breakfast, lunch or dinner, is offered during the Eat to the Beat Concert Series. Dining packages are available at 14 Epcot restaurants. Cost will vary depending on restaurant and mealtime selected. Dining packages include an appetizer, entrée and dessert—or one full buffet or family-style dining, where applicable—along with a non-alcoholic beverage and a guaranteed seat to the Eat to the Beat Concert held on the same day. Dining reservations must be at least 2.5 hours prior to showtime.
2019 Eat to the Beat Dining Packages went on sale May 15. Go to the Eat to the Beat Dining Package page or call (407) WDW-FEST (939-3378). Please note: admission to Epcot is required and is not included in the price. Advance reservations are highly recommended.
Halloween at Walt Disney World (Overview)
In 2020, Magic Kingdom will have Halloween-themed decorations, food and merchandise from September 15 – October 31. There will also be a Halloween-themed cavalcade with Mickey, Minnie, Pluto and pals wearing their favorite Halloween costumes. Look for other Disney characters dressed up and riding the horse-drawn trolley down Main Street, U.S.A.
New for 2020, guests of all ages can wear costumes in Magic Kingdom between September 15 and October 31. A reminder: costume masks are not permitted for adults; only children younger than 14 years old are permitted to wear costume masks. In addition, all guests are required to wear approved face coverings during their visit. Check Walt Disney World’s costuming guidelines for more details.
Normally, Halloween decorations start going up in the Magic Kingdom in late August (generally before Labor Day weekend) and are complete in time for the first Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.
In 2019, the Mexico Pavilion in Epcot celebrated the Day of the Dead (el Día de los Muertos) with Mariachi Cobre Presents the Story of Coco. The show took place four times a day on October 31 – November 2.
If you are staying at one of Disney’s resorts over Halloween, ask the front desk concierge whether any special events are planned. Frequently the resorts do offer some kind of festivities.
Disney Springs offers live entertainment such as music, storytelling, a dance party, stilt walkers and/or magicians on Halloween.
New for 2019, Typhoon Lagoon offered some Halloween activities and food on October 31 only. At the Clock Tower Stage there was a DJ Dance Party. And near the Clock Tower there was a meet and greet with Mickey and Donald in their pirate costumes. There were Halloween crafts, such as tie-dye projects, coloring pages and mini-pumpkins to decorate. There were 3 spots to go trick or treating: Typhoon Lagoon’s front entrance, Singapore Sal’s and Safe Harbor. Singapore Sal’s had a carved pumpkin display. Happy Landings Ice Cream, served the I-Scream Cone, made with Orange Dole Whip Soft Serve, a sandwich cookie waffle cone, Halloween sprinkles and a white chocolate surfboard.
Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party
Due to current health and safety measures, the 2020 Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party has been cancelled.
In 2020, Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party was scheduled to be held August 13*, 18*, 21*, 25*, 28*; September 1*, 4*, 7*, 11*, 13*, 15*, 18*, 20*, 22*, 25*, 27*, 29*; October 1*, 2*, 4*, 6*, 8*, 9*, 12*, 13*, 15*, 16*, 18*, 20*, 22*, 23*, 25*, 27*, 29, 31 and November 1*.
Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party is held on select nights in August, September and October each year from 7:00 pm to midnight, after the regular closing of Magic Kingdom, and requires separate admission. (You don’t have to have paid admission on the same day to the Magic Kingdom in order to attend the special after-hours event.) Guests with Not So Scary Halloween Party tickets are admitted to the park as early as 4:00 pm. You will need to get a wristband that allows you to stay in the park after the party begins.
Admission to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party includes trick-or-treating for adults and kids, costume parades for little ones, character meet-and-greets, fortune tellers, Halloween riverboat ride, two performances of Mickey’s Boo-to-You Halloween parade and a fireworks show: the Disney’s Not-So-Spooky Spectacular. Plus, most of the major attractions are open. You can purchase tickets to one of the Halloween Fireworks Dessert Parties, which include access to a reserved viewing area for the fireworks show. You can purchase tickets to Cruella’s Halloween Hide-a-Way at Tony’s Town Square, which includes access to a reserved viewing area for the parade.
Attendees can wear costumes (subject to a few rules based on safety and appropriateness), but guests ages 14 and older are strongly discouraged from wearing layered costumes or costume props that surround the entire body. They may be subject to additional security screening. Check Walt Disney World’s costuming guidelines for more details.
Hocus Pocus Villain Spelltacular, performed on the Castle Forecourt Stage, features the mischievous Sanderson Sisters from Disney’s Hocus Pocus. With the help of the Disney villains, Winifred, Mary and Sarah gather together sinister shadows, nefarious nightmares and the power of their frightful friends to conjure the ultimate Hocus Pocus Party Potion and cast a spell on everyone in the Magic Kingdom Park.
In Frontierland, prospector Cactus-Flower Cate rounds up youngsters for the “Frontierland Costume Promenade,” where kids can show off their costumes. The “Frontierland Costume Promenade” takes place just prior to each run of Mickey’s “Boo-to-You” Halloween Parade.
Several attractions will be transformed just for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.
Is Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party worth the money? Depends on how much you are “into” Halloween. Some of the experiences available during the party are not offered at any other time, so it allows you to enjoy Magic Kingdom in a unique way.
Although the number of people admitted each night is limited, Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party can feel quite crowded, particularly on weekend nights and the last couple of nights it’s offered. The rides will be less busy than they would be at that time on a regular park night, but the headliners can still build up some decent wait times, and the special character meetings will often have quite long lines. Don’t necessarily expect to walk onto every ride. The party is more about the parades and Halloween “atmosphere.”
It’s fun to have dinner at one of the in-park restaurants like Jungle Skipper Canteen, Tony’s Town Square, Liberty Tree Tavern or Be Our Guest just before the party. This allows you to be in the park right when the festivities begin. The in-park restaurants book up quickly, so make reservations as early as possible (180 days in advance).
Adult ticket prices start at $90.53, tax included, when purchased in advance and $100.53, tax included, at the gate (if available). In the past, Friday nights in October and the final week leading up to Halloween have sold out in advance.
In 2019, Walt Disney World offered a Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party Pass. This pass allows you to attend Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party every event date except for Halloween night (October 31, 2019). There were a limited number of these passes available.
2020 Regular prices for all guests:
$90.53 (age 10+), $85.20 (age 3-9) for August 18, 25; September 1, 7, 13, 15, 20
$94.79 (age 10+), $89.46 (age 3-9) for August 13, 21, 28; September 4, 11, 18, 22
$101.18 (age 10+), $95.85 (age 3-9) for September 25, 27, 29
$105.44 (age 10+), $100.11 (age 3-9) for October 1
$116.09 (age 10+), $110.76 (age 3-9) for October 2, 4, 6, 8
$122.48 (age 10+), $117.15 (age 3-9) for October 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 22
$126.74 (age 10+), $121.41 (age 3-9) for October 9
$133.13 (age 10+),$127.80 (age 3-9) for October 16, 23, 25, 27, 29; November 1
$158.69 (age 10+), $153.36 (age 3-9) for October 31
*Disney Vacation Club members and Disney Annual Passholders can buy advance discounted tickets for all August, September and November dates and selected dates in October. Tickets must be purchased in advance.
2020 Discount prices for DVC members & Annual Passholders:
$85.20 (age 10+), $79.88 (age 3-9) for August 18, 25; September 1, 7, 13, 15, 20
$89.46 (age 10+), $84.14 (age 3-9) for August 13, 21, 28; September 4, 11, 18, 22
$95.85 (age 10+), $90.53 (age 3-9) for September 25, 27, 29
$100.11 (age 10+), $94.79 (age 3-9) for October 1
$110.76 (age 10+), $105. 44 (age 3-9) for October 2, 4, 6, 8
$117.15 (age 10+), $111.83 (age 3-9) for October 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 22
$121.41 (age 10+), $116.09 (age 3-9) for October 9
$127.80 (age 10+), $122.48 for October 16, 23, 25, 27; November 1
In the past, Active Duty, Retired, and Permanently Disabled US Military (with current military ID) have been able to purchase discounted tickets for themselves and up to 5 family/friends for select dates. The tickets may be purchased at any theme park ticket window or Guest Relations Office. They may also be available at Shades of Green or MWR/ITT locations, which do not charge tax. Tax is added if purchased at the theme parks.
New!For 2020, Magic Kingdom will have holiday entertainment and décor November 6 – December 30.
New!New for 2020, projection effects will transform Cinderella Castle with a variety of designs, including a whimsical Christmas sweater and a regal overlay of red, green and gold ornamentation.
New!New for 2020, seasonal characters – including gingerbread men and elves – will join Disney characters in cavalcades through the park. On Main Street, U.S.A., toy soldiers will march with the Main Street Philharmonic. Santa Claus will wave to guests as he makes pop-up appearances in the park.
Normally, Disney decorates Cinderella Castle for the holiday season with a “Dream Lights” effect that makes the Castle seem to be covered in ice. Over 200,000 lights are draped over the turrets and roofs of the Castle to create this beautiful effect. A short show called A Frozen Holiday Wish and a castle lighting ceremony (featuring Queen Elsa from Frozen) is held each evening, usually around 6:15 pm, and the lights remain on, slowly changing colors, for the rest of the evening. Please note: Due to current health and safety measures, Castle Dream Lights will not take place in 2020.
Each year during the holiday season, Jungle Cruise transforms into the Jingle Cruise. As you make your way through attraction queue, check out all the merry décor that’s been mailed to the skippers, or that they’ve created themselves. They even add a few holiday jokes to their tours to help everyone get in the spirit.
Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party is held after the regular closing of Magic Kingdom and requires separate admission. | {
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California's finances are golden again.
After multi-billion dollar shortfalls in recent years, the state's budget has finally straightened out. California expects to take in $2.4 billion more in revenue than it will spend this fiscal year, which ends June 30. After paying off a shortfall from last year and setting aside funds for upcoming obligations, it's on track to end the year with a $36 million surplus.
If the legislature approves Governor Jerry Brown's 2013-14 budget proposal, California should have enough money next year to increase funding for education and pay down debt, while setting aside $1 billion in a reserve fund.
"For the next four years, we're talking about a balanced budget. We're talking about living within our means," Brown said last month when he unveiled his budget. "This is new. This is a breakthrough."
What prompted the turnaround?
Three things: Major spending cuts over the last few years, big tax increases approved by voters in November and general improvement in the economy.
When Brown took office in 2011, the state faced a $26.6 billion budget gap. To close it, the state slashed spending for schools, the correctional system, health and human services and higher education.
California's general fund spending dropped to $93 billion this fiscal year, down from a peak of $103 billion in 2007-08. The state workforce contracted by more than 30,000 positions. Spending on schools plummeted to $47.3 billion last year, down from $56.6 billion four years earlier. The state limited the time adults could receive welfare cash assistance to as little as 24 months, down from 60 months.
The new budget for next year increases spending in certain areas, particularly education. The general fund is projected to grow by 5%, to $97.7 billion.
"It's been a long time since California has had a budget that didn't consider significant cuts in health, social services and other programs," said Jason Sisney, director of state finance for the Legislative Analyst's Office. "We have a relative degree of stability for the first time in half a decade."
Another major contributor is the state's new revenue stream.
California is on track to take in $95.4 billion this year, including nearly $6 billion from the passage of major, temporary tax increases in November. Millionaires will pay a top rate of 13.3% through 2018, while the state's sales tax rate will be a quarter point higher through 2016. Corporations will also pay higher levies.
Meanwhile, California's finances are improving as the general economy gains ground. The state has been creating jobs faster than the nation for a year -- its unemployment rate is now around 9.8%, down from 12.4% in October 2010 -- and its housing market is rebounding more swiftly, according to Gabriel Petek, analyst with Standard & Poor's. The rating agency rewarded the state by upgrading its credit rating last week. (It is now the second lowest-rated state, behind Illinois.)
Don't break out the bubbly just yet, though. California's new balancing act is as fragile as a Jenga tower.
The state is still highly dependent on income tax revenue from the wealthy, a notoriously fickle source. The tax increases prompted grumblings from wealthy residents like golf star Phil Mickelson, and spurred other states, such as Texas, to encourage businesses to move.
Related: Texas to California businesses: Move here!
"Millionaires don't make a million dollars every year," said Mike Genest, a consultant and former state finance director under Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. "The idea that we have emerged from our historic budget shortfalls in a sustainable way is very questionable."
All of the state's budget figures and forecasts for the year are still guesswork. California will have a better idea of exactly how much revenue it will collect this year -- and whether it will still have a surplus -- when it issues its revised forecast in May.
Another risk is that lawmakers will want to restore many of the services and funding that were slashed during the Great Recession and its brutal aftermath. Brown has pledged continued fiscal constraint, but that can be difficult to accomplish politically.
If legislators don't approve certain measures in Brown's budget proposal, such as the continuation of some fees and taxes, the state could dip back into the red at the end of its 2013-14 fiscal year. It would run a tiny $7 million deficit, according to projections from Brown's finance office.
And like many states, California has yet to deal with its longer-term problems. The big whammies there include unfunded liabilities associated with the teachers' retirement system and state retiree health benefits.
California officials will also have to keep a close eye on decisions emanating from Washington, D.C. Federal spending cuts could slow California's economy.
"There are still risks out there that are out of the state's control," said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the state Department of Finance.
Federal policy makers are now facing many of the same issues -- spending cuts, tax increases, safety net reforms -- that plagued California for years. Perhaps they can take a lesson about making those tough choices -- and the payoff you get when you do. | {
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General Li Zuocheng warned that China would defend its sovereignty at all costs. Photo: Handout | {
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SAN FRANCISCO — A new educational institution, the coding boot camp, is quietly emerging as the vocational school for the digital age, devoted to creating software developers.
These boot camps reflect the start-up ethic: small for-profit enterprises that are fast (classes are two to four months), nimble (revising curriculum to meet industry needs) and unconcerned with SAT scores or diplomas. Most are expensive, but some accept a share of the graduates’ first-year earnings or a finder’s fee from employers as payment.
Most important, at a time when so many young people are underemployed, most graduates, especially those from highly selective boot camps, quickly find well-paying jobs. In a recent survey of 48 boot camps, Course Report, an online boot camp directory, found that three-quarters of graduates were employed, with raises averaging 44 percent from their pre-boot camp pay and an average salary of $76,000.
Enrolling 20 to 40 students at a time, many boot camps have venture capital backing; in May, Dev Bootcamp, which started here and expanded to New York and Chicago, was bought by Kaplan, the educational services company. | {
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With a tweet, Twitter kicks off next big tech IPO
Matt Krantz and Alistair Barr | USA TODAY
Show Caption Hide Caption Twitter files for an IPO Twitter says it has filed confidential paperwork with the SEC to sell shares but details about the company's financials, including revenues, will not be made public for awhile.
Social media giant can take advantage of fourth-quarter strength for the industry
Company is valued at %249 billion to %2410 billion%2C but IPO offers unseen risks
Facebook%2C LinkedIn stock surge this year may support Twitter valuation
Twitter said Thursday that it filed for an initial public offering, setting the stage for the most high-profile technology stock market debut since Facebook's troubled share sale last year.
Twitter announced the filing on its own social media messaging service, saying: "We've confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale."
The company followed that up with a second tweet, saying "back to work" and attached a photo of employees at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco.
The tweets were swiftly re-tweeted thousands of times and set off viral chatter across Silicon Valley, where many of the venture capitalists who backed Twitter are based.
George Zachary of Charles River Ventures thanked Twitter founders Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone and CEO Dick Costolo.
"Still hold every single share from our first-round investment," Zachary tweeted.
"My over/under for Twitter at end of first day of trading: $25B," tweeted David Sacks, a former PayPal executive and founder of start-up Yammer, which Microsoft bought for $1.2 billion last year.
"This is one of those exciting moments in the Valley," said Kevin Hartz, CEO of start-up Eventbrite, who has invested in several other successful start-ups including PayPal, Pinterest and Airbnb. "It's just a financing event for Twitter, but it does demonstrate the next step in the life of what is an emerging Internet giant."
Twitter, created in 2006, has turned into a new form of communication used by presidents, corporate chieftains and smartphone-wielding kids alike. The company has only recently started to generate serious revenue by showing ads in the stream of other tweets users see. But these initiatives have gained traction: Twitter will haul in $583 million in advertising revenue for 2013 and hit $1 billion in 2014, according to eMarketer.
"It makes sense that they are doing an IPO with those numbers. It's a great time for them to raise money," says Gartner analyst Brian Blau.
The filing is also timed as the fourth quarter approaches — a traditionally strong period for social media activity and related advertising, according to Sam Schwerin of Millennium Technology Value Partners, which owns a small stake in Twitter.
Facebook's IPO last year was a flop, but its shares have rebounded in recent months as the company succeeded in selling more ads through smartphones and other mobile devices — through similar ad techniques as Twitter uses.
Facebook shares are up more than 60% so far this year and hit a record this week, while professional network LinkedIn has rallied 117%. That should support Twitter's valuation during the path to the public market, Schwerin said.
Twitter will need that kind of support. It's shares have traded in the so-called private secondary market, which lets shareholders and stock-owning employees of private start-ups sell some of their stakes to other investors.
A fund run by BlackRock put $80 million into Twitter at the start of 2013, and that deal valued the company at more than $9 billion. Some other, smaller secondary market deals have valued Twitter at well over $10 billion. That means it needs strong results and a buoyant stock market for the IPO to go smoothly.
Twitter is using a relatively new Securities and Exchange Commission rule that allows companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenue to file an IPO prospectus "confidentially" with regulators.
This registration statement is the first step in an IPO that typically takes three to six months, but can take longer. By submitting the filing, called an S-1, to the SEC in private, regulators can look it over and point out any issues before Twitter makes it available to the public, says Francis Gaskins of IPOdesktop.com. No price range for the stock has been set.
Twitter will need to make its confidential S-1 filing public about three weeks before it starts a road show, in which the company gives presentations to potential investors in the IPO. The road show is one of the final steps, typically followed by pricing of the shares and the first day of trading.
Filing S-1s in private has become pretty common since the passage of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act in April 2012, says Jay Ritter, professor of finance at the University of Florida. What's unusual, however, is that companies usually don't announce they've submitted their plans in case the deal doesn't happen, he says.
Shares of LinkedIn and Facebook rose modestly in after-hours trading, and CNBC financial news cable network reported that Goldman Sachs would be the lead underwriter on the offering.
Spokesmen at Twitter and Goldman declined to comment.
Given the status of the filing at this point, Gaskins expects the deal to hit the stock market by early December.
Twitter's IPO comes just as demand for IPOs is starting to heat up. So far this year, 131 companies have filed for IPOs, which is up 44% from the 91 that filed at this point last year, says Renaissance Capital.
Technology companies, though, have not been the biggest driver of IPOs. So far, there have been 22 tech IPOs this year, trailing the 31 in financial companies and 33 in health care. But investors are clamoring for technology. The average tech IPO has soared 23% on its first day of trading, topping the 16% and 5% first-day gains of health care and financial deals, Renaissance says. | {
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Dive! Dive! Top-Secret Subs in Northern Idaho?!
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
Associated Press Writer
``Missile submarines were by definition beyond any control from land. Their entire mission was to disappear.'' -- Tom Clancy, from his novel ``The Hunt for Red October''
BAYVIEW, Idaho (AP) — Dave Pierce likes to play with model boats.
AP/Jeff T. Green
One of 10, 1/4th scale model submarines moored at the Navy's Acoustic Research Detachment in Bayview, Idaho. The Naval Surface Warefare Center's test facility on Lake Pend Oreille in Northern Idaho, is the only of its kind in the world
Model submarines, actually — up to 88 feet long.
A guy needs a very big bathtub for models on that scale, and the Navy officer has just the place —Lake Pend Oreille, which meanders 43 miles through the timbered slopes of the Selkirk Mountains.
Pierce commands a submarine research base where, years after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy is still perfecting the hunt for Red October.
AP/Jeff T. Green
U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. David Pierce sizes up the 60-foot, 1/4th scale model submarine, "Dolly Varden" at the Navy's Acoustic Research Detachment in Bayview, Idaho. The facility, at Lake Pend Oreille, which meanders 43 miles through the timbered slopes of the Selkirk Mountains, is the only large scale model submarine acoustic testing facility in the world.
Northern Idaho may seem an unlikely place for one of the nation's most advanced submarine test sites. But the Navy came for the waters, said to be perfect for running silent and running deep.
The lake reaches depths of 1,100 feet, with a constant subsurface temperature of 39.5 degrees. Constant temperatures are important for taking consistent noise measurements, since the speed of sound is affected by temperature.
Most of the surrounding land is government-owned, so there is little development along its forested shoreline to create distracting noise.
``There is no lake like this anywhere in the world,'' said Pierce, a lieutenant commander, referring to the combined attributes that make this an ideal place to test submarine design.
AP/Jeff T. Green
Matthew Craun, research engineer from the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division, analyzes data taken from the 63-foot-long, 1/4th scale model submarine "Pike." The "Pike" is used to study structural acoustic responses of submarine stealth technologies by being moored 1,160 feet below the surface of Lake Pend Oreille in Northern Idaho.
The end of the Cold War did not end the threat from foreign subs, says Tom Warring, a spokesman for the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Carderock, Md. ``The collapse of the Soviet Union doesn't mean subs are going away,'' Warring said. ``Iranians own submarines. Indians own submarines.
``There are a lot more submarine owners than there used to be.''
The Acoustic Research Detachment has a key role in the quest for ever-quieter submarines. It's the only active-duty portion remaining of the former Farragut Naval Training Center, established during World War II to train 293,000 sailors. Most of the 4,000-acre center was shut down in 1946 and made into Farragut State Park.The remaining base covers just 22 acres along the south end of the lake, near this resort community of 300 people. The fleet of remote-controlled model submarines is housed in sheds built over the lake.
Model subs are deployed for weeks at a time, tracked by underwater microphones. But the top-secret testinghas little impact on public enjoyment of the lake.
AP/Jeff T. Green
U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. David Pierce sizes up the 60-foot, 1/4th scale model submarine, "Dolly Varden" at the Navy's Acoustic Research Detachment in Bayview, Idaho. The facility, at Lake Pend Oreille, which meanders 43 miles through the timbered slopes of the Selkirk Mountains, is the only large scale model submarine acoustic testing facility in the world.
``We test at night because there are fewer boats and the winds die down,'' said Henry Netzer, the base's senior civilian engineer.
Much of the testing is done in a 26-square-mile area in the middle of the lake, far from most people, he said.Occasionally, researchers have asked boaters to leave the area because noise from their craft was ruining the tests.
``By and large the Navy here is real cooperative,'' said Kevin Elmore, who works at a Bayview resort.
``The subs go around the lake 10 or 12 miles from here, out in the middle of no-man's land. We only see them go in and out.''
The Navy is good for business, said Ruby Tidwell, owner of the Bayview Scenic Hotel. ``Navy personnel stay here,'' she said. ``They can walk to the motel.''
But the base's mission has sparked a range of rumors and dark imaginings over the years. Some believe a secret underwater river between the lake and the Pacific Ocean allows full-sized subs to enter the lake.
Another local legend links the base and a mythical underwater beast named Pondy.
Pierce, an acoustic engineer, said he'd never heard of the base before taking command about a year ago. But others say it plays a key role in the development of future classes of submarines.
Pend Oreille has been called the Navy submarine force's ``most important body of water,'' Rear Admiral Edmund Giambastiani, director of the Navy's submarine warfare division, noted at a ceremony last year.
Work here has saved some $1 billion in development costs because it is so much cheaper to test models than full-sized subs, Giambastiani said.
Workers at the base operate a variety of unmanned models up to 88 feet long — about one-quarter the length of a full-sized sub. These days, they're testing the Navy's new nuclear attack submarine class.
How quickly and quietly do these vessels go? How deep can they dive?
That's classified, said Pierce, the sole naval officer at the base, which employs about 130 civilians.
The key to submarine survival has always been stealth, and modern subs are amazingly quiet.
When tests were under way a decade ago on the design of the Seawolf class, one of the models was painted prior to the trials, Pierce said.
When tests showed an unacceptably high noise level, researchers found the painting project was to blame.
``A bristle of the paintbrush used to paint the surface had been left on the (sub's) dome,'' he said. ``One bristle had overcome the design of the dome.'' The dome is the front of the submarine.
Work is under way on a new $8 million building that will house five submarine models including a 120-foot model of the new attack submarine — the largest submarine model in the world.
AP/Jeff T. Green
Construction on the new Model andEngineering Support Facility at the Navy's Acoustic Research Detachment on Lake Pend Oreille in Bayview, Idaho, continues to progress. The new facility will support the outfitting of up to five model submarines once complete.
The $50 million model will be called the Cutthroat, a name selected by students at nearby Athol Elementary School to honor local trout.
It is being built jointly by Newport News Shipbuilding and Electric Boat, Netzer said. But final assembly will take place in the new building, a first for the base, he said.
The base has occasionally drawn anti-nuclear protesters, though it has no nuclear facilities, Pierce said. The models are not armed and no weapons are tested at Bayview, he said.
The base has never lost a model in the lake's vast waters, Pierce said. ``That would be a bad thing,'' he said.
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This month’s game for bored players calls upon your carom skills. It’s called Reverse Pool, or if you are less politically correct, it’s also been referred to as Irish Pool or Kentucky Pool.
The rules may vary, and you are certainly welcome to add your own set of rules if you like. Here is how my friends and I play the game:
The object of the game is to be the first to make 8 balls.
To make a shot legally, you shoot the intended ball off of the cue ball and into the pocket you called. Banks, kicks, and other caroms do not matter – all that is required is that you shoot the object ball into the called pocket, and at some point during the shot, it must contact the cue ball.
To be clear, you are hitting the object ball with your cue stick, and making it carom off of the white cue ball before it goes into the pocket. Got that?
Rack up all of the balls like you’re playing 8-ball, with the balls in any order. The 8-ball does not need to be in the center. Replace one of the object balls with the cue ball (You’re going to use the replaced ball – for example, the 1-ball – to break). The cue ball can go anywhere in the rack, and you will want to place it in a spot where you can carom the break ball off it into a called pocket.
Yes, you call your shot even on the break.
I like to place the cue ball on one of the corners of the rack. With a good firm break, I can make my ball in the corner pocket off the cue ball and get a pretty good spread on the rack.
Place the 1-ball (or whatever object ball you chose) behind the head string, and break the rack open. Make sure you call your shot before breaking. If you make it, you continue shooting. If you do not, it’s your opponent’s turn.
Any other balls made on your shot count toward your score, as long as you made the ball you called. If you miss and other balls go in, bring them up and spot them.
A foul gives your opponent cue ball in hand. Fouls include:
You do not hit the cue ball and then a rail.
The object ball goes into the wrong pocket or the right pocket without hitting the cue ball.
The cue ball goes into any pocket.
This is a very fun game, and it helps you with your carom/billiard abilities. Sometimes, playing a different game like this one or Honolulu (see last month’s article) will help you to see the table in a different way, and you may see shots in your regular play that you didn’t consider before!
Here are a couple of variations:
Place the cue ball in the center of the rack for the break, and break using the 8-ball. Player gets to shoot after the break always, and any ball made on the break is spotted.
Try this game playing 8-ball. You must hit the cue ball before hitting your opponent’s ball; otherwise, it’s a foul.
For an added challenge, only balls going into the pocket cleanly off of the cue ball are counted (similar to bank pool rules).
Have you played this game, or something similar? Have a question about the rules, or any other question? Use #AskTheBilliardsProfessor on Twitter (@billiardsprof) or drop me a line at [email protected]. I can also be found hanging out with fellow billiards enthusiasts at reddit.com/r/billiards. Come on by and join the discussion! | {
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2ND UPDATE, 5:50 PM: Los Angeles County health officials shut down the Dumb Starbucks operation late Monday afternoon for “operating without a valid public health permit” following company “President” Nathan Fielder’s revealing news conference today. “Employees” on site say they have no idea when it will reopen.
PREVIOUS UPDATE, 4:15 PM: Comedy Central‘s Nathan Fielder is the mastermind behind the pop up art installation/social experiment slash TV stunt known as Dumb Starbucks. “I’m proud to announce we’ll be opening our second Starbucks in Brooklyn, New York soon… This really caught on so I’m going to ride it out,” he announced today. Fielder’s Nathan For You docu-reality series debuted last year on Comedy Central with the Canadian comedian frequently setting up similar real life hoaxes and gags in the public. In today’s media scrum he acknowledged that since Dumb Starbucks currently lacks health permits “legally speaking, we are operating as an art gallery.” One production design expert tells us the signage and materials used to create Dumb Starbucks’ elaborate environment might have cost as much as $30K. Today’s line was still out the door, and the media attention drew officers from the LA County Health Department who were seen barreling into the store shortly before the afternoon press conference. A film crew has been shooting at the location and filmed today’s press conference. Season 2 of Nathan For You was greenlit last April and airs in 2014.
A video in which Fielder argues the legality of Dumb Starbucks under existing parody law has emerged on YouTube:
PREVIOUS, 3:54 PM: The mystery of “Dumb Starbucks” that’s had L.A. in caffeinated confusion may finally be solved. The parody coffee shop which popped up over the weekend in Los Feliz has attracted a nonstop stream of curious customers lining up for free cups of “dumb” coffee since appearing with zero fanfare days ago. According to the AP, filming permit records obtained Monday show that the location is tied to Abso Lutely Productions, the comedy production company run by Tim & Eric duo Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (Tom Goes to the Mayor, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie). Abso Lutely also produces the Nathan Fielder comedy show Nathan For You, which has been speculated to be behind the stunt. The cafe, decked out in near-replica Starbucks decor, has been handing out free coffee drinks and pastries to “customers” who’ve flocked to the location in droves – despite not knowing exactly why Dumb Starbucks exists in the first place.
In three days a Twitter feed for Dumb Starbucks has amassed over 8K followers. Even Universal got in on the mania on their Dumb & Dumber To Facebook page. A presser is scheduled to be held today at 4 PM. | {
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Опасности, по‑настоящему угрожающие нашей цивилизации, едва ли носят внешний характер. Это не безумные политики, не войны и не порождаемые ими банкротства. Гораздо большую тревогу вызывают те опасности, которые угрожают ей изнутри, — угрожают не столько здоровью и имуществу, сколько самому сознанию современного человека.
На мой взгляд, из всех разнообразных ядов, которые наша цивилизация потихоньку синтезирует в своем собственном чреве, вряд ли найдется более сильнодействующий, чем странное и страшное явление, обозначаемое в обиходе термином «удовольствие» (я беру это слово в кавычки, чтобы показать, что говорю не о настоящем удовольствии, а о распространенных в нашем обществе видах организованного досуга). Подобно любому другому человеку в здравом рассудке и с нормальной психикой, я терпеть не могу работать. Но я лучше соглашусь ежедневно высиживать по восемь часов за чиновничьим столом, чем быть обреченным на жизнь, полную «удовольствия».
Было время, когда развлечения требовали от людей определенных умственных усилий. Например, в XVII веке члены королевских семей и их приближенные получали истинное наслаждение, слушая речи эрудированных проповедников (скажем, доктора Донна) и диспуты на теологические и метафизические темы. Частью развлекательной программы, предложенной пфальцграфу Фредерику по случаю его женитьбы на дочери Якова I, была научная дискуссия, уж не помню на какую философскую тему, между хранителем королевской печати лордом Уильямсом и группой кембриджских логиков. Представьте себе, что скажет нынешний властитель, если университетские ученые предложат ему развлечься подобным образом!
Лица королевской крови были не одиноки в своей любви к интеллектуальным удовольствиям. В Елизаветинскую эпоху любая леди и любой джентльмен среднего культурного уровня могли при необходимости поучаствовать в исполнении мадригала или мотета. Те, кому знакома невероятная сложность и утонченность музыки XVI века, поймут, что это значит. Даже простолюдины выбирали для себя развлечения, требующие известной сообразительности, неординарности и личной инициативы. Они слушали, к примеру, «Отелло», «Короля Лира» и «Гамлета» — очевидно, с интересом и пониманием. Они пели и играли на музыкальных инструментах. Крестьяне год за годом исполняли привычные обряды: весной и летом это были танцы, зимой — пантомимы, осенью — праздник урожая. Их удовольствия были умными и живыми, и люди сами прилагали усилия к тому, чтобы себя развлечь.
Мы все это изменили. На место старых удовольствий, требующих ума и личной инициативы, мы поставили гигантские организации, снабжающие нас готовой развлекательной продукцией — продукцией, не требующей от искателей удовольствий ни личного участия, ни сколько-нибудь заметного интеллектуального напряжения. Миллионы кинотеатров потчуют публику одной и той же пресной галиматьей. Третьеразрядные писатели и драматурги существовали всегда, однако в прошлом их произведения быстро умирали, не пересекая границ города или страны, в которых родились на свет. Сегодня произведения бездарных сценаристов распространяются из Лос-Анджелеса по всему миру. От бесчисленных зрителей не требуется никаких душевных усилий, никакого участия — они должны только сидеть и пялиться на экран.
Нужна ли жителям демократических стран музыка? В прежние времена они создавали ее сами. Теперь им достаточно просто включить граммофон. А если они захотят литературы, для этого есть Пресса. Конечно, номинально Пресса существует ради того, чтобы поставлять информацию. Но в действительности ее задача состоит в том, чтобы занимать людей, не требуя от них ни малейшего усилия и не отягчая их разум ни единой мыслью. Следует признать, что эту задачу она выполняет с исключительным успехом. Вы можете много лет подряд прочитывать по две газеты в каждый будний день и еще одну по воскресеньям, ни разу не столкнувшись с необходимостью пошевелить мозгами и вообще хоть немного сосредоточиться — достаточно просто скользить не слишком внимательным взглядом вдоль печатных столбцов.
В отдельных слоях общества все еще пользуются популярностью виды спорта, которые требуют от человека личного участия. Очень многие представители среднего и высшего класса играют в гольф и теннис, а те, кто побогаче, стреляют птиц, охотятся на лис и катаются на лыжах в Альпах. Но огромные массы населения даже спортом занимаются опосредованно, предпочитая наблюдение за футбольным матчем тяготам и опасностям самой игры. Это правда, что во всех слоях еще танцуют — но танцуют, повсеместно совершая одни и те же движения под одни и те же мелодии. Из танца сейчас тщательно вытравлены все следы как местного, так и индивидуального своеобразия.
Эти пассивные удовольствия, эти готовые развлечения, одинаковые для всех обитателей западного мира, безусловно, представляют собой грозную опасность для нашей цивилизации. В рабочие часы подавляющее большинство людей уже занято выполнением чисто механических задач, а теперь и в часы досуга мы прибегаем к развлечениям, столь же стандартизованным и требующим столь же мало ума и инициативы. Прибавьте такой досуг к такой работе и получите в сумме безупречно пустой день, дотянуть до конца которого — уже огромное облегчение.
Отравляя себя подобным образом, наша цивилизация легко может докатиться до преждевременного маразма. С душой и мозгами, атрофировавшимися из-за бездействия, не умеющее развлечь себя и настолько закормленное штампованными развлечениями, что задеть его за живое способна лишь все более явная демонстрация насилия и жестокости, демократическое общество будущего рискует заболеть смертельной хронической скукой. Вполне вероятно, что оно пойдет по пути древних римлян — римлян, которые в конце концов тоже, в точности как мы сейчас, потеряли способность себя развлекать; римлян, которые, подобно нам, тоже стали жить на готовых развлечениях, не принимая в их организации никакого участия. Невыносимая скука заставляла их требовать все больше гладиаторов, все больше слонов, умеющих ходить по канату, все больше экзотических животных, которых можно зарезать на глазах у публики. Наше общество требует неменьшего, однако, благодаря существованию немногих идеалистов, не получает всего, чего ему хочется. Самыми жестокими видами развлечений сейчас наслаждаются лишь тайно; чтобы удовлетворить свою тягу к убийствам и кровопролитию, вы должны стать членом ку-клукс-клана. Впрочем, не следует отчаиваться: скорее всего, мы еще увидим, как кровь течет по арене ипподрома. Обуздание людей, жаждущих любой ценой заглушить скуку, может оказаться непосильной задачей даже для идеалистов. | {
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It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update on the blog but we’ve been busy fixing lot of little issues here and there and preparing to wrap up this last version of The Pipe Tool before a huge overhaul.
First off if you haven’t noticed is that we hit our 1000 user mark – and we’ve surpassed it now to 1125 users! We gave away this awesome Vermont freehand to a great guy – pipingain’teasy with a little help from Dan at americanpipemakers.com.
Fixes and Features
One of the cool new features is the ability to smoke from your open cellar and choose how much you want to subtract. It’s set to 3 grams by default.
We fixed some things like the ratings part on iphone/android was not working right and it should now work correctly.
We resolved some display issues on the main screen and added some meta tags so that rich previews work on mobile devices when sending links.
Additionally we resolved some issues with exporting pipes – heck we added the ability to export your pipes to begin with. And we also added a new feature to ad notes when selling a pipe (premium only).
In case you weren’t paying attention we also added some new charts and graphs:
Some of these may not display all the right info, but we’re working on it. We’re gearing up to do a larger change to the site with a total overhaul of the structure, database, front end, etc. We’re taking all the cool features and functions and making it all work much better in a easier format. If you haven’t already take the time to help us out and offset the cost of making this tool better for you by going premium.
If you hadn’t checked out the calculator, it’s another cool feature we added – access it by going to your cellar and checking out the calculator button. It’s a bit morbid, but gives you an idea on how much you might want to buy. | {
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The tributes to Dennis Ritchie won’t match the river of praise that spilled out over the web after the death of Steve Jobs. But they should.
And then some.
"When Steve Jobs died last week, there was a huge outcry, and that was very moving and justified. But Dennis had a bigger effect, and the public doesn’t even know who he is," says Rob Pike, the programming legend and current Googler who spent 20 years working across the hall from Ritchie at the famed Bell Labs.
On Wednesday evening, with a post to Google+, Pike announced that Ritchie had died at his home in New Jersey over the weekend after a long illness, and though the response from hardcore techies was immense, the collective eulogy from the web at large doesn’t quite do justice to Ritchie’s sweeping influence on the modern world. Dennis Ritchie is the father of the C programming language, and with fellow Bell Labs researcher Ken Thompson, he used C to build UNIX, the operating system that so much of the world is built on – including the Apple empire overseen by Steve Jobs.
“Pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX,” Pike tells Wired. “The browsers are written in C. The UNIX kernel – that pretty much the entire Internet runs on – is written in C. Web servers are written in C, and if they’re not, they’re written in Java or C++, which are C derivatives, or Python or Ruby, which are implemented in C. And all of the network hardware running these programs I can almost guarantee were written in C.
“It’s really hard to overstate how much of the modern information economy is built on the work Dennis did.”
Even Windows was once written in C, he adds, and UNIX underpins both Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop operating system, and iOS, which runs the iPhone and the iPad. "Jobs was the king of the visible, and Ritchie is the king of what is largely invisible," says Martin Rinard, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
"Jobs' genius is that he builds these products that people really like to use because he has taste and can build things that people really find compelling. Ritchie built things that technologists were able to use to build core infrastructure that people don't necessarily see much anymore, but they use everyday."
From B to C
Dennis Ritchie built C because he and Ken Thompson needed a better way to build UNIX. The original UNIX kernel was written in assembly language, but they soon decided they needed a “higher level” language, something that would give them more control over all the data that spanned the OS. Around 1970, they tried building a second version with Fortran, but this didn’t quite cut it, and Ritchie proposed a new language based on a Thompson creation known as B.
Depending on which legend you believe, B was named either for Thompson’s wife Bonnie or BCPL, a language developed at Cambridge in the mid-60s. Whatever the case, B begat C.
B was an interpreted language – meaning it was executed by an intermediate piece of software running atop a CPU – but C was a compiled language. It was translated into machine code, and then directly executed on the CPU. But in those days, C was considered a high-level language. It would give Ritchie and Thompson the flexibility they needed, but at the same time, it would be fast.
That first version of the language wasn’t all that different from C as we know it today – though it was a tad simpler. It offered full data structures and "types" for defining variables, and this is what Richie and Thompson used to build their new UNIX kernel. "They built C to write a program," says Pike, who would join Bell Labs 10 years later. "And the program they wanted to write was the UNIX kernel."
Ritchie’s running joke was that C had "the power of assembly language and the convenience of ... assembly language." In other words, he acknowledged that C was a less-than-gorgeous creation that still ran very close to the hardware. Today, it’s considered a low-level language, not high. But Ritchie's joke didn’t quite do justice to the new language. In offering true data structures, it operated at a level that was just high enough.
"When you’re writing a large program – and that’s what UNIX was – you have to manage the interactions between all sorts of different components: all the users, the file system, the disks, the program execution, and in order to manage that effectively, you need to have a good representation of the information you’re working with. That’s what we call data structures," Pike says.
"To write a kernel without a data structure and have it be as consist and graceful as UNIX would have been a much, much harder challenge. They needed a way to group all that data together, and they didn’t have that with Fortran."
At the time, it was an unusual way to write an operating system, and this is what allowed Ritchie and Thompson to eventually imagine porting the OS to other platforms, which they did in the late 70s. "That opened the floodgates for UNIX running everywhere,” Pike says. “It was all made possible by C."
Apple, Microsoft, and Beyond
At the same time, C forged its own way in the world, moving from Bell Labs to the world’s universities and to Microsoft, the breakout software company of the 1980s. "The development of the C programming language was a huge step forward and was the right middle ground ... C struck exactly the right balance, to let you write at a high level and be much more productive, but when you needed to, you could control exactly what happened," says Bill Dally, chief scientist of NVIDIA and Bell Professor of Engineering at Stanford. "[It] set the tone for the way that programming was done for several decades."
As Pike points out, the data structures that Richie built into C eventually gave rise to the object-oriented paradigm used by modern languages such as C++ and Java.
The revolution began in 1973, when Ritchie published his research paper on the language, and five years later, he and colleague Brian Kernighan released the definitive C book: The C Programming Language. Kernighan had written the early tutorials for the language, and at some point, he "twisted Dennis’ arm" into writing a book with him.
Pike read the book while still an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, picking it up one afternoon while heading home for a sick day. "That reference manual is a model of clarity and readability compared to latter manuals. It is justifiably a classic," he says. "I read it while sick in bed, and it made me forget that I was sick."
Like many university students, Pike had already started using the language. It had spread across college campuses because Bell Labs started giving away the UNIX source code. Among so many other things, the operating system gave rise to the modern open source movement. Pike isn't overstating it when says the influence of Ritchie's work can't be overstated, and though Ritchie received the Turing Award in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology in 1998, he still hasn’t gotten his due.
As Kernighan and Pike describe him, Ritchie was an unusually private person. "I worked across the hall from him for more than 20 years, and yet I feel like a don’t knew him all that well," Pike says. But this doesn't quite explain his low profile. Steve Jobs was a private person, but his insistence on privacy only fueled the cult of personality that surrounded him.
Ritchie lived in a very different time and worked in a very different environment than someone like Jobs. It only makes sense that he wouldn't get his due. But those who matter understand the mark he left. "There's that line from Newton about standing on the shoulders of giants," says Kernighan. "We're all standing on Dennis' shoulders."
Additional reporting by Jon Stokes. | {
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Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema has been largely unchallenged on the airwaves in the Arizona Senate race, reaching out to independent voters while Republicans fight amongst themselves.
And in one week Republicans will have to confront a problem unique to Arizona: how to make up ground among moderate voters in a very short time.
Next week’s primary will set off a six-week sprint to reach voters before they receive their ballots in October — a key point in a state where a majority of the electorate votes by mail. Republicans raised concerns back in January that a divisive and drawn-out GOP primary could be a “disaster” for the eventual nominee because of that short timeline.
And even though GOP Rep. Martha McSally has consistently been the favorite to win the primary, the intraparty battle has raged for several months.
While Republicans have gone after each other, Sinema the likely Democratic nominee, has been reaching out to independent voters with a flurry of ads. Republicans are generally confident they can defeat Sinema, but they acknowledge it will be a tough race. | {
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Oil prices slumped on Monday, with New York crude striking five-month lows, as the dollar strengthened against the euro on mounting worries over Europe’s debt crisis, traders said.
New York’s main contract West Texas Intermediate crude for delivery in June was down $1.99 at $94.14 a barrel. Earlier Monday it hit $93.65 an ounce — the lowest point since mid-December.
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Brent North Sea crude for June was down $1.87 at $110.39 a barrel in London midday deals having reached a near four-month low of $110.04 earlier on Monday.
Oil futures retreated as the euro tumbled to its lowest point against the dollar since January, as Greek politicians failed again to form a government over the weekend, again throwing into doubt the future of the eurozone.
The European single currency dived to $1.2861, the lowest point since January 23 and compared with $1.2917 late in New York on Friday.
A stronger US currency makes dollar-denominated oil more expensive for buyers using the euro, denting demand for crude.
“Due to the lack of US economic data today, currency movements could offer some further direction to the oil market which looks fairly vulnerable at the moment,” said Sucden brokers analyst Myrto Sokou.
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Greece on Monday faced the prospect of fresh polls after political parties failed to narrow divisions over a painful EU-IMF bailout deal, with few expecting progress at talks to form a government.
Meetings hosted by President Carolos Papoulias resume at 1630 GMT as eurozone finance ministers gather in Brussels where officials insist Greece must stick to tough austerity measures in return for the debt rescue.
If Athens does not, and the debt accord lapses, it appears increasingly that eurozone leaders are prepared for Greece to leave the 17-nation bloc despite fears that that outcome could destabilise the whole euro project.
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Oil market sentiment was also weighed down by a Saudi call for crude prices to fall further.
“We need to get prices at a level around $100. Now, it is still high,” Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi was quoted as saying on Sunday by Dow Jones Newswires.
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He was referring directly to Brent crude, the most widely traded oil contract worldwide.
Speaking to reporters in Australia, al-Naimi added that global crude stocks were likely to increase ahead of an anticipated seasonal rebound in demand starting from July.
“It is very important to recognise that supply today is 1.3 million to 1.5 million barrels per day over demand, which is good. It is going into inventory and bringing inventory up — that should give comfort to consuming countries,” al-Naimi said. | {
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Welcome to EvolverTech
We offer an array of services in order to enhance the corporate image of our clients. We ensure that you get high quality work, effective communication, regular client support, 100% ethical and proven results at nominal rates.
All of our designs are original and our sites are hand coded. You don't have to know anything about web design. We will lead you through the entire process. | {
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From cppreference.com
<optional> Defined in header template < class T >
class optional ; (since C++17)
The class template std::optional manages an optional contained value, i.e. a value that may or may not be present.
A common use case for optional is the return value of a function that may fail. As opposed to other approaches, such as std::pair<T,bool>, optional handles expensive-to-construct objects well and is more readable, as the intent is expressed explicitly.
Any instance of optional<T> at any given point in time either contains a value or does not contain a value.
If an optional<T> contains a value, the value is guaranteed to be allocated as part of the optional object footprint, i.e. no dynamic memory allocation ever takes place. Thus, an optional object models an object, not a pointer, even though operator*() and operator->() are defined.
When an object of type optional<T> is contextually converted to bool, the conversion returns true if the object contains a value and false if it does not contain a value.
The optional object contains a value in the following conditions:
The object is initialized with/assigned from a value of type T or another optional that contains a value.
The object does not contain a value in the following conditions:
The object is default-initialized.
The object is initialized with/assigned from a value of type std::nullopt_t optional object that does not contain a value .
object that . The member function reset()
There are no optional references; a program is ill-formed if it instantiates an optional with a reference type. Alternatively, an optional of a std::reference_wrapper of type T may be used to hold a reference. In addition, a program is ill-formed if it instantiates an optional with the (possibly cv-qualified) tag types std::nullopt_t or std::in_place_t.
edit] Template parameters
T - the type of the value to manage initialization state for. The type must meet the requirements of Destructible (in particular, array types are not allowed).
edit] Member types
Member type Definition value_type T
edit] Member functions
(constructor) constructs the optional object
(public member function) (destructor) destroys the contained value, if there is one
(public member function) operator= assigns contents
(public member function) Observers operator-> operator* accesses the contained value
(public member function) operator bool has_value checks whether the object contains a value
(public member function) value returns the contained value
(public member function) value_or returns the contained value if available, another value otherwise
(public member function) Modifiers swap exchanges the contents
(public member function) reset destroys any contained value
(public member function) emplace constructs the contained value in-place
(public member function)
edit] Non-member functions
edit] Helper classes
std::hash <std::optional> (C++17) specializes the std::hash
(class template specialization) nullopt_t (C++17) indicator of optional type with uninitialized state
(class) bad_optional_access (C++17) exception indicating checked access to an optional that doesn't contain a value
(class)
edit] Helpers
edit] Example
edit] See also | {
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When is the Drill Held?
Missouri’s 2021 statewide tornado drill will be held on Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 10 a.m. In case of severe weather on the day of the drill, it will be moved to Thursday, March 4 at 10 a.m. This is an opportunity for Missourians to practice their sheltering plans and ensure readiness in case of a severe weather emergency while at home, work or school.
Each year, the National Weather Service chooses the date of Missouri’s statewide tornado drill. The drill is generally held during the first two weeks of March.
Why Participate?
Severe weather can strike at any time in Missouri, making it important for all of us to be prepared to find the most secure shelter available no matter where we are. The statewide tornado drill is an excellent opportunity for Missourians to practice their sheltering plans and ensure readiness in case of a severe weather emergency. The statewide drill provides schools, businesses and families with an opportunity to test their planning and readiness to be able to quickly seek appropriate shelter in case of a real severe weather emergency. By practicing and increasing readiness across the state, Missourians will feel confident and prepared in the event of actual severe weather emergencies.
How to Participate
At 10:00 a.m. on the day of the drill, NOAA Weather Radios will alert listeners that the tornado drill has begun. Outdoor warning sirens will also sound across Missouri. At this time, participants should practice taking cover in their designated shelter.
Schools, businesses and families are all encouraged to participate in the statewide tornado drill. Schools are encouraged to use the tornado drill as an educational tool for students by incorporating tornado facts and meteorological information and safety tips into their lesson plans.
Missouri’s annual Statewide Tornado Drill is part of Severe Weather Preparedness Week, which includes:
Monday – Have a Plan/Receive Weather Information Day
Tuesday – Tornado Safety Day, including a statewide tornado drill at 10:00 a.m.
Wednesday – Lightning Safety Day
Thursday – Hail/Wind Safety Day
Friday – Flood Safety Day
The National Weather Service St. Louis Forecast Office has compiled information about all these weather threats and the safety measure to take in response at its Severe Weather Preparedness Week site.
StormAware is using Facebook and Twitter to help provide severe weather facts and safety information in the days leading up to and during Severe Weather Preparedness Week. Please like the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency’s Facebook page at facebook.com/MissouriSEMA and follow on Twitter at twitter.com/MoSEMA_. | {
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And so, their next little arc begins.
Phew! The wall of sleep hit right in the middle of this one, but here it is!
Woo-hoo! Inside joke references that only probably two people will even get for the win! | {
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ANDERSONVILLE — Hamburger Mary’s, the iconic LGBTQ-friendly burger chain, has listed its Chicago location for sale.
But the owner said the restaurant, 5400 N. Clark St., isn’t going anywhere for at least a year. And if they move, they’ll open another Chicago location.
“It’s just hard to do business in Andersonville,” said Brandon Wright, co-owner of the restaurant chain.
Wright said rising costs are “outpacing the price increases” the burger chain charges.
“We can only charge so much for a hamburger,” he said. “Even a gourmet one.”
But Wright made it clear Hamburger Mary’s will be staying at its current location for the foreseeable future and that the restaurant is not closing.
“The business space is up for sale and our hope is that we are able to move somewhere with a bigger dining area and less rent,” he said.
There is still over a year left on the current lease, Wright said.
Realtor Tim Rasmussen, with SVN Restaurant Resource Group, said they are selling “the leasehold interest.” In other words, they are selling Hamburger Mary’s rights to the lease the space.
He said the listing went on the market nearly three weeks ago. So far he has fielded offers from chambers of commerce, restaurants and other commercial properties.
“It’s a great corner and it’s an architecturally significant building, so I’m assuming whoever goes in there will have the ability to operate there successfully,” he said.
When asked what other locations he was exploring, Wright said it was too soon to know where Hamburger Mary’s could move. But loyal customers shouldn’t worry about the restaurant chain leaving the city, he said.
“I can’t imagine Chicago without a Hamburger Mary’s,” he said.
Wright said his employees have been looped in every step of the way. It is important to him that they aren’t blindsided by anything, he said.
“I don’t like it when businesses close or move with no notice to their employees,” Wright said.
But just because the restaurant isn’t closing or leaving its current location anytime soon, doesn’t mean they don’t need your patronage, he said.
“If you like Hamburger Mary’s and you have enjoyed your time there, then come back because we are still there and we could use your support,” he said. “And that goes for all the small businesses in Andersonville.”
Do stories like this matter to you? Subscribe to Block Club Chicago. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods. | {
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John Kevin Hines had been pacing on the Golden Gate Bridge for 40 minutes in anguish, crying. If one person asks me what's wrong, I won't go through with this, he thought, over and over.
Eventually, a woman wearing giant sunglasses approached him. "Would you take my picture?" she asked. The 19-year-old accepted the camera from her and clicked it five times. Then he snapped.
The moment Hines released his hold on the 4-foot-high railing, he regained his grip on reality. During the 4 seconds between jump and splashdown, he could think clearly. All the problems that had made him want to die moments earlier? Those seemed less overwhelming than a 220-foot plunge into San Francisco Bay.
Oh, my God, I don't want to die, he thought. What have I done? God, please, save me.
It's a prayer seldom answered. Since the bridge opened in 1937, someone has jumped from it every 2 weeks on average. Out of roughly 2,000 attempts, only 28 "failed."
The psychologist Edwin S. Shneidman, Ph.D., a pioneer in suicide research, once said that it's a bad idea to kill yourself when you're feeling suicidal. That's no joke: You're not solving problems well. You're unable to step outside your troubled mind. And those things make you a very, very dangerous man.
Realization of the risk comes too late for many, from bottom-rung stragglers to men whose lives and achievements seem worthy of celebration, not self-termination. Their final act perplexes family and friends. It saddens them, sickens them, and even angers them.
And in the end, it worries the rest of us, too. Because any of us could be walking that bridge one day.
The numbers are so gut-churning, it's like looking over a bridge railing. Nearly 26,000 men took their own lives in 2005. That's nearly four times the number of women who did the same thing, even though three times more women than men attempt suicide. (For every completed suicide by a man or woman, 25 attempts fail.) Whereas a woman might swallow pills halfheartedly, a man is four times more likely to complete the act, mostly because men tend to use guns—and their aim is true. As grim as that sounds, it gets worse. Mark S. Kaplan, Dr.P.H., who researches suicide at Oregon's Portland State University, believes the suicide death toll may be up to 25 percent higher than officially recorded. Many single-car accidents seem mysterious. When an overdose occurs and toxicology results are ambiguous, as in the case of Heath Ledger, was it a tragic accident or an exit strategy? Some medical examiners will certify a death as suicide only if the victim leaves a note, and yet only about 20 percent of people who kill themselves do so. Sometimes insurance companies pay the survivors less or nothing at all in cases of suicide. The denial of friends and family is a factor, too: It's less painful to think a loved one didn't die by his or her own hand. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Violent Death Reporting System, which tracks the circumstances surrounding violent deaths (including suicides), might be able to sort all this out—if it were funded in more than 17 states.
There's always an internal detonator with suicide, but an external spark helps light the fuse. One factor that comes along every few generations is economic distress. During the Great Depression, when banks went bust and people's life savings vanished, suicide rates soared. Another instigator: large numbers of veterans returning from armed conflict, many of them with troubled (or injured) minds, lousy job prospects, and fractured families.
Which begins to explain why suicidologists, who study the phenomenon, are feeling a little edgy themselves these days. "For those who serve in the military, the suicide risk may be even greater considering multiple deployments, possible brain trauma from concussive blasts, and combat-related post-traumatic stress," says David A. Jobes, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the Catholic University of America. "This may be a uniquely dangerous moment for young American men and suicide, given the recent economic upheaval."
As a cause of death, suicide is different from disease; the ripples from each event extend much further than a single splash in San Francisco Bay. At the Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers, the 20th anniversary "Healing After Suicide" conference is under way. The room is dark except for candlelit tables surrounded by survivors—an umbrella term for friends and family members of the deceased. (Currently, nearly 5 million people in the United States have had a suicide in their family.) I stroll among large bulletin boards covered with photographs of faces: smiling, serious, shy, handsome, nondescript, friendly, distant. This isn't a gallery of misfits; these are the kinds of expressions that fill all of our family albums.
In a side room at the conference, I see a haunting echo of the smiling victims pinned on the bulletin boards. The last row of academic posters ends with disturbing photographs of men and women striking suicidal poses. These aren't actual suicides; the images are from the International Affective Picture Set, designed to provoke responses in psychology experiments.
The researcher, Donald H. Marks, Ph.D., M.D., is the hepatitis clinic director at Cooper Green Mercy Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. Ten of Dr. Marks's hepatitis C patients became suicidal while they were taking an interferon drug. The drug's prescribing information warns that this could happen. So when Dr. Marks performed functional MRI scans on the brains of these suicidal patients while they looked at the creepy photos, they all showed "activation" in specific brain regions that might be associated with suicidal thoughts.
Might there be a self-destruct button embedded in our CPU, one that could be identified and disarmed in at-risk individuals? Jobes, for one, thinks suicide will never be reduced to something so simple. "After all, we know the brain chemistry of depression, but most depressed people don't take their own lives," he says.
On stage in the other room, a mother is recalling one of her five children, the brightest of her brood. He could have done anything in life, she says, but in high school, with no warning, he shot himself in the head. Suicide is murder for your loved ones. Much of her adult life has been an attempt to find meaning in a devastating loss.
Thomas Joiner, Ph.D, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, is also dealing with that kind of loss. I'd studied his research and prepared my questions on my way to Tallahassee to meet with him, but it's only when we sit down across from each other, alone in a huge, impersonal conference room, that it occurs to me: I need to ask this 43-year-old father of two sons about his own father's death—by suicide.
"I'm comfortable talking about it," says Joiner, who also lost his maternal grandfather to suicide.
"It's important to discuss, as a way of learning more about an important public-health problem."
As a kid growing up in Atlanta, Joiner knew his father felt down once in a while. But he suspected nothing more. Even later on, when he studied suicide as a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, he didn't make the connection. The day his dad died, his mother called to say he'd disappeared. The police wouldn't find the body until 2 1/2 days later. The cause of death: a self-inflicted knife wound.
"My response was extreme shock," says Joiner. "Just a deep, agonizing sort of loss and sadness—what most people feel in such sudden-death scenarios." The final page of his father's life would remain blank; there was no note. Only in hindsight does Joiner suspect that his father had a variation of bipolar disorder.
The hidden nature of suicidal thoughts makes me wonder if perhaps a lot of men entertain these urges. "I take your point," says Joiner. "There is this other layer: Why did it happen? How much anguish and pain must he have been enduring? That was there for me, and it remains there for me to this day."
The vague threat, the unvoiced desire for death, is not unusual in men who will eventually kill themselves. They may make an offhand crack or casual remark. "They'll hint that something's wrong and then take it back," says suicide expert Lisa Firestone, Ph.D., the coauthor of Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice.
Even doctors don't know what to do half the time. Kaplan randomly chose primary-care doctors in Illinois from the files of the American Medical Association and sent them a survey, asking how they managed depression and suicidal tendencies in their patients. Roughly 50 percent of the doctors said they wouldn't ask those patients if they had access to a gun at home.
Mental health professionals often don't have all the training they need to help at-risk patients, either. As part of his master's degree program in psychology, Jason Spiegelman served an internship as a therapist at the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center, in California. "Learning the theory and actually practicing it are two very different things," he says.
Sitting in a Baltimore restaurant, Spiegelman describes a Monday morning that began for him like any other—until he arrived at work. As he walked in, he says, the secretary glanced up. "One of your clients committed suicide over the weekend," she said, as if announcing the arrival of a FedEx package. A feeling of nausea flooded the young therapist's body as he climbed the stairwell to his boss's office. "I'll never forget it," he says. "The fear. The self-loathing. Am I going to lose my internship? And then, a second later: How can I be thinking of myself?"
Spiegelman instantly knew who was gone. Juan (not his real name), a Latino man in his 30s, had been in therapy for years. The man's case file spilled over with notes outlining years' worth of mental doodling about suicide—what the experts call ideation.
For all of his formal education, Spiegelman hasn't taken a single class on suicide. That's the norm, not an exception. "Most clinicians learn on the fly rather than in school or professional training programs," says Jobes. "It's the most common clinical emergency, and yet clinicians are not typically well trained to deal with it."
Spiegelman had done everything he'd been trained to do with such clients, including taking a suicide assessment: He'd asked Juan a series of questions designed to gauge the immediacy of the threat. The more specific the suicidal thoughts are, the greater the chances they'll be acted upon, the theory goes.
"As often as we did the assessment, he never went beyond a vague fantasy of suicide," says Spiegelman, 35, who today works as an assistant professor of psychology at the Community College of Baltimore County, Maryland. Juan's father would later say his son's mood brightened in the days before he died. When Juan did commit suicide, he hanged himself—an approach he had never mentioned.
Spiegelman doesn't blame himself. His supervisor's review noted that he hadn't missed anything. Mostly, though, he credits Juan's father with keeping the tragic event from destroying the life of a second man. "He was as gracious as you could imagine," says Spiegelman. "He said it wasn't my fault, that his son spoke highly of me. The father took care of me, which was a nice thing, because it doesn't always go down that way."
Suicidal men tend to share certain characteristics: They feel trapped in their lives. They're commonly substance abusers. Depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are highly correlated with suicide risk. But there are still miserable men with no desire to check out early, thank you, and others who seem well adjusted but who flirt in their minds with suicide. Psychotropic drugs that dampen depression don't always douse a death wish.
"I think every man is capable of reaching a desperate place where suicide can move onto his psychological radar screen," says Jobes. "But who goes there, when, how, and why is this unique interplay of biochemistry, social forces, family modeling, and other factors. How those queue up is remarkably complex and specific to the man who's struggling at that moment."
I'd always thought of suicide as a tragedy primarily affecting two groups of men: adolescents, for whom upheavals that would seem manageable soon enough instead become matters of life and self-inflicted death; and the aged, who might feel miserably alone or who simply can't stand the thought of another day of nursing a hurt that's been aching all their lives.
There's a reason for that misperception. "Several years ago, colleagues of mine organized a National Institute of Mental Health conference on suicide and middle-aged men, and there was sort of a ho-hum reaction," says Jobes. "Like, who cares about those guys? Most suicide prevention focuses on subgroups, whereas few seem to notice the 800-pound gorilla."
"Men in the overall U.S. population just haven't been the focus of a lot of suicide-prevention efforts," adds Kerry L. Knox, Ph.D., director of the Canandaigua Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
That's mind boggling, since 70 percent of all suicides by men occur in life's prime, not its dawning or twilight. Suicide rates are comparatively low under age 16, rise gradually through age 18, and then jump through age 24; the normal four-to-one male-to-female ratio of suicide deaths rises to seven to one between the ages of 20 and 24. But rather than tumbling after age 24, the rate actually levels off at the high point.
One cause of the spike is that mental disorders often tighten their grip in a man's early 20s. "[Patients with] bipolar disorder and schizophrenia have a higher risk of suicide during the first 5 years of the disorder rather than later on, when people often have learned to accept it and deal with it," says Firestone. These individuals are usually prescribed drug regimens, which can help if they remember to swallow all of their pills. But that's a tacit admission of mental illness, one that's often resisted. In rare cases, taking mood-altering drugs can make a bad situation worse.
Even if a man reaches his 20s in good shape, psychologically speaking, suicide land mines—like the ones mentioned below—remain scattered along the journey throughout his 30s and 40s.
Relationships: Joiner estimates that "romantic disruptions" and other relationship issues trigger depressive episodes in about 75 percent of men between the ages of 20 and 40 who commit suicide. "Especially in their early 20s, guys can think, This one person was right for me, I've lost her, and it's all over," Firestone says. "They lack the perspective that they're going to have other relationships, maybe even better relationships, in the future."
Career Failure: Data going back decades shows that, like clockwork, economic downturns push more men over the brink—a fact that should concern us all now. Men draw much of their identity from their careers, and when unemployment rises, that underpinning falls away. Many men at that highly vulnerable age for suicide—the early 20s—may struggle simply to begin a fulfilling career in a sharp economic downturn.
The feeling of being a burden doesn't apply only to people failing at life. Even the most successful, driven men, the ones we perceive as being on top of their game, can buckle under a heavy load. Which might explain why Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young was reported to have mentioned suicide to a therapist earlier this season. "With so many people identifying with and riding on his success, the burden of failure can loom large," says John Draper, Ph.D., director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline program. The higher the stakes, the more there is to lose.
Shame and Humiliation: It's one thing to fall from grace; it's another to have that fall subjected to public display and ridicule. That prospect was a major contributor to "executive suicides" such as those committed by Clinton lawyer and confidant Vince Foster, and Enron vice chairman Cliff Baxter. Fame isn't a prerequisite, either; going public can mean having your own family and social circle learn embarrassing news. "There's this very male lineage of suicide being a face-saving way of resolving dire circumstances," says Jobes.
Modern Warfare: Historically, suicide rates among soldiers have dropped "in theater" during times of actual combat, but that trend has been turned on its head in Iraq and Afghanistan: The number of suicide attempts in the U.S. Army has increased sixfold since the war on terror began. Nearly 600 soldiers in that military branch alone—the size of an infantry battalion task force—have died by suicide. The Army itself estimates that up to 11,600 times during that span, an Army soldier has attempted to harm or kill himself.
That doesn't bode well for returning veterans, who are at heightened risk for suicide once they leave the structure of military life. When Mark Kaplan and colleagues used national health surveys to track 320,890 men for 12 years, they learned that the veterans in that group were no more likely than the others to die from natural causes or by accident—but twice as likely to die by their own hand. Recent reports suggest 1,000 suicide attempts per month among V.A. vets, a total that the V.A. spokesperson I interviewed wouldn't dispute.
Self-preservation is our most basic instinct, so suicidal people must be mentally ill, right? Not necessarily. Joiner believes men learn fearlessness every time they play a contact sport, fight in a bar, or experience pain or injury. This eases the brakes that stop us from doing something contrary to our nature. Sometimes, that includes killing ourselves.
To test his theory, Joiner asked student-subjects to fill out self-reporting questionnaires on how much pain they could withstand. Male subjects scored higher, and it wasn't just frat-house bravado. When participants were then asked to place their forearms in water barely above freezing or have their fingers pinched by a mechanical device, men lasted longer than women did.
At the suicide conference I attended, researchers presented the results of an experiment that tested Joiner's theory on recent veterans of the Iraq war. Never is "learned fearlessness" so prevalent as it is during the violence of combat, and the participants did report becoming more tolerant of mayhem and danger. "When I was overseas, I kind of lost connection with reality . . . and my feelings," said one subject. "If you don't have any emotions, you aren't scared or afraid, either." If Joiner is right, many of these vets will be at high risk of harming themselves, perhaps fatally, as civilians.
Learned fearlessness is particularly dangerous when it's combined with the feeling of being a burden to others. "Those pieces—isolation, fearlessness, and feeling like a burden—simultaneously lead to suicidal behavior," says Joiner. "You think, 'my death will be worth more than my life to people I love.'"
From study reviews, suicide experts find that isolation usually emerges as the biggest risk factor of all. Jobes has seen this dynamic unfold among soldiers. But when men do reach out, they can regain their footing quickly. "Once you pull them out of that internal world, they respond well to a two-heads-are-better-than-one approach to problem-solving in therapy," says Jobes. "But it's a conundrum because they're not seeking treatment."
For a man who tried to kill himself, John Kevin Hines is pretty lucky. On his descent from the Golden Gate Bridge, he threw his head back during free fall, which allowed him to hit the water in a seated position—albeit at 75 mph. He opened his eyes as he plunged 50 feet, and as it became darker, he thought, I didn't die. What am I going to do now? A man who moments ago tried to kill himself was desperately fighting for his life now. He broke through the surface just before passing out.
At the moment he jumped, a woman who had a Coast Guard friend on speed dial just happened to be driving over the bridge—which is the only reason two Coast Guard members fished Hines out of the water.
"Do you know what you just did?" one of them asked.
"Yeah, I just jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge."
"Why?"
"I don't know," said Hines. "I guess I wanted to die."
"Do you know how many people we pull out of this water who are dead already?"
Of course, the best way to prevent suicide is to keep men like Hines off those bridges in the first place. In 1996, John Draper founded a crisis hotline for the Mental Health Association of New York City. Three years after gaining national attention for its work surrounding 9/11, the organization won a grant to run the national network of suicide hotlines. Every month, the network's 133 independently operated call centers receive more than 40,000 calls. A recent study in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior found that when people call a hotline they experience a decrease in hopelessness and psychological pain (but no reduction in intent to die). The effect lasts for weeks afterward. Twelve percent of callers said the hotline kept them alive.
"Sometimes when a man's mind is locked in to suicide, there's a paradoxical openness, too," says Draper. "If you're open to killing yourself, might you be open to less absurd notions as well? They just have to stay alive long enough to find other options."
Another sobering truth is that a prior attempt makes you more likely to eventually kill yourself. But Draper turns that upside down. "Past attempts carry a lifetime risk estimated at about 7 percent," he says. "That means 93 percent of those who attempted suicide found ways to survive periods when they were convinced life wasn't worth living and to go on to live out their lives. What might they have missed otherwise?"
A Deadly Side Effect
According to prescribing info, these drugs are potentially linked with suicidal thoughts. (If you're on a drug and feeling down, consult with your doctor before discontinuing it.)
Neurontin Last July, an FDA panel announced that this and 10 other anti-epilepsy drugs double suicide risk.
Antidepressants Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft sometimes work like magic. But the FDA concluded in May 2007 that everyone ages 18 to 24 on an anti-depressant is at a small but increased risk of developing a drug-induced urge to die.
Accutane Pimples may be the least of your problems if you take this acne med: The FDA has linked it to dozens of suicides.
Interferon No wonder some patients who take this drug for hepatitis B and C or cancer want to hurt themselves. The side effects are a cocktail for suicidal behavior.
Amantadine This drug, used to treat Parkinson's syndrome and influenza infections, has a list of side effects that include depression and suicidal thinking.
Amphetamines This class of drugs includes Ritalin and Adderall, used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, but could exacerbate preexisting depression or bipolar disorder.
Reglan If heartburn weren't bad enough, this acid reflux drug has been reported to trigger a death wish in some users.
Chantix Last February, the FDA reported that this stop-smoking pill gave a small number of users "vivid, unusual, or strange dreams"—and thoughts of ending it all.
Suicide Hotlines
1-800-273-TALK (8255): The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline will connect you confidentially to a counselor at a suicide crisis center 24/7. (Veterans: Dial 1.)
211: This FCC dialing code provides links to mental health hotlines.
911: If someone is currently attempting to kill himself, call.
Web Sites
suicidology.org The American Association of Suicidology (AAS) serves as a clearinghouse for suicide info.
afsp.org The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention focuses on research and education.
glendon.org Offers a variety of suicide-prevention resources.
psychalive.org Provides self-help tools for those who may be feeling suicidal, or who know someone who's feeling that way.
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Looks like Wand hooked up Lil' Nog with his surgeon | {
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Haunt – Mind Freeze (Shadow Kingdom Records)
Rating: 9/10
The revival of traditional metal appears cyclical due to the steady presence and live interest of the veteran purveyors along with a new crop of bands that produce material worthy of praise and adulation. Place Haunt in the latter category, as mainman Trevor William Church is already on the third album in three years for Mind Freeze while filling out the lineup to a quartet from its solo band origins. Productivity would be for naught if the quality wasn’t outstanding – and fortunately for this effort, it’s quite apparent that solid / hook-oriented guitar parts, catchy choruses, and a defined keyboard presence aids the memorable output throughout these nine tracks.
Trevor’s compositions run the gamut from more melodic hard rock-oriented offerings a la early Dokken and Def Leppard for the title track and “Saviours of Man” to dandy, heads down metal affairs like “Hearts on Fire” and “Fight or Flight”, where the twin Iron Maiden/ Riot-like guitar attack and elevated energy makes headbanging a necessity. Choosing to place sparse 80’s-like keyboard motifs enhances the subsequent guitar hooks and groove-like passages during “Have No Fear” and “Light the Beacon” – possibly hinting at the influence of the Netflix hit series Stranger Things. The solos between Trevor and second guitarist John Tucker are mesmerizing – “Divide and Conquer” and “On the Stage” containing heroic moments that should get crowds clapping, chanting, and clamoring for more. Chances have been also taken in the production department – the snare possessing a snappier tone, the musical foundation a bit more well-rounded to take the material into punchier terrain. Because of Trevor’s ubiquitous creative outpouring, he understands that his followers don’t mind shorter albums due to his frequent releases, and it keeps the listener more willing to press play immediately following the concluding twin harmony activities for the closing “Voyager”.
Mind Freeze could be the record that puts Haunt into a bigger picture conversation – one where they grow from being a baby/cult act into something more palatable for the mainstream metal audience to start buzzing about. Enjoy the ride, as US traditional metal hasn’t been this hot in at least thirty years.
Mind Freeze by HAUNT
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Aerial footage shows chaos on the roads of central London on Monday morning. Millions of London Underground passengers are facing a lengthy journey to work amid a 24-hour tube strike over staffing and ticket office closures | {
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Builders in the London area are ramping up to meet demand driven by smaller households.
More apartment units and row houses were built in the London area in 2015 compared with the previous year, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said Monday.
CMHC market analyst Anthony Passarelli said the demand for new apartments is being driven by demographics.
“Empty-nest” baby boomers and young professionals are behind the growth of one- and two-person households, he said.
“New apartments are designed to suit the tastes of people aged 25 to 34 . . . or 55 years and older, as they head the majority of these smaller households.”
There were 2,105 housing starts in the London area last year, up from 1,983 in 2014.
The CMHC surveys London, St. Thomas, Strathroy and surrounding rural areas.
The 2015 total includes 595 apartment units, up from 473, and 440 row houses, compared with 372 in 2014.
The number of single-detached starts in 2015 was down slightly to 1,047 from 1,116 in the previous year.
The overall increase in housing starts is the latest positive news for the London area economy. Sales of existing homes were up almost 10 per cent in 2015. The number of people with jobs jumped by 9,300 over the past year, pushing the unemployment rate down to 6.2 per cent, below the national and provincial rates.
Peter Kokkoros, deputy chief building official for the city of London, said the number of building permits issued for single-family homes in the city was down slightly, reflecting the CMHC numbers for the wider London region.
Permits were issued for 1,290 housing units in 2015, down sharply from 2,051 in 2014, he said.
But Kokkoros said figures for 2015 are misleading because the department is processing applications for eight apartment projects with 1,344 units.
Permits for a 200-unit Tricar building at 505 Talbot St. and a 300-unit Medallion tower at King and Lyle streets will likely be issued in the next few weeks, he said.
“There’s a lot in the pot. I don’t know if they will all be built this year.”
Other residential towers in the works include:
a 17-storey, 219-unit condo tower on Richmond Street near the Western University campus
a 69-unit, six-storey mid-rise building at 356 Dundas St.
a 35-unit, six-storey building at Waterloo Street and Central Avenue
two six-storey apartment buildings and townhouses on Richmond Street North south of Hillview Boulevard
a 12-storey, 135-unit building on Pomeroy Lane near Southdale and Colonel Talbot roads
a 22-storey, 191-unit building at 96 Ridout St.
Jake Draper, president of the London Home Builders’ Association and director for contractor operations for Copps Buildall, said there seems to be confidence in the market, especially in the multi-family sector.
“We are really busy with drywall and steel which is predominantly going to highrise projects.”
Builders of single-family homes also report strong sales, indicating a good start for the this year’s construction season, he said.
There were 101 housing starts in the London area in December, up from 73 in the same month in 2014, CMHC said.
The total includes 85 single-detached starts, a big jump from 55 in December 2014, and 16 multi-family starts.
Across Canada, housing starts were down in December led by a steep plunge in the Toronto condo market,
BMO economist Robert Kavcic said the hot Toronto condo market was due for a correction.
“This is hardly bad news, and even a relief for policy makers after starts were running too hot for comfort earlier in the year.”
But overall, CMHC said the annual number of housing starts in Canada was 193,800 units, a slight increase over the last two years and in line with the long-term average.
London area housing starts
(2014 in brackets)
December starts
Single-family - 85 (55)
Semi/rowhouse - 7 (18)
Apartments - 9 (0)
Total - 101 (73)
2015
Single family - 1,047 (1,116)
Semi/rowhouse - 463 (394)
Apartment - 595 (473)
Total 2,105 (1,983)
(Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.)
London area annual housing starts
2015 - 2,015
2014 - 1,983
2013 - 2,163
2012 - 2,240
2011 - 1,748
2010 - 2,079
2009 - 2,168
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The common argument in favor of the Military Commissions Act’s restriction of habeas corpus is summed up by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist:
We don’t want (terror suspects) to have everyday rights of American civilians right here. These are war criminals.
There’s really no other argument in support of it that comes even close to sounding sane, though there are of course a plethora of rephrasings out there (such as the rhetorical “Don’t you want the government to be able to stop terrorists?”).
There are half-arguments, of course. They tend to involve phrases such as “This doesn’t apply to US citizens!” or “It’s only for enemy combatants!”
They all boil down to one simple fact: supporters are working on the assumption that, somehow, it will only apply to people who are guilty. The problem with that, of course, is that the Great Writ’s entire purpose and the whole necessity for its existence is bound up in one single, simple aim:
The Writ of Habeas Corpus exists only to ensure that we have the right guy in custody.
One must wonder why the hell the government needs to deny accused terrorists access to the courts under a Writ of Habeas Corpus if the accused are actually guilty. If they’re guilty, the court proceeding that results from the serving of such a Writ should determine that — or, more to the point, should determine whether there’s sufficient reason to even believe the accused is guilty to an extent that warrants detention and investigation.
If a Writ of Habeas Corpus leads to a decision that the accused is in fact not being held justly, the person should damned well not be held any longer! That wrongly accused person should receive an apology and a ride home. That person should never have been detained in the first place. Mistakes happen, but they are not solved by ensuring that we cannot discover whether or not a mistake has been made.
The Military Commissions Act in no way improves the ability to pursue a “war on terror” by suspending habeas corpus. All it does is sweep mistakes under the rug and ensure that those who are wronged in pursuit of the specter of security will only continue to be wronged indefinitely, and nobody can do anything about it. It seems impossible that those Senators and Representatives who voted for this, or that the President who will be signing it into law on the 17th, even for a moment considered the likelihood that they might think differently of this if they did not currently hold public office.
In short, the simple truth of the Writ of Habeas Corpus is that all it does is help sort the good guys from the bad guys, to the benefit of the good guys, and suspending it in whole or in part for those literally or effectively detained on US soil in no way benefits anyone at all except those whose errors destroy the lives of innocent bystanders and should be brought into the light of public scrutiny. | {
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To the surprise of essentially everyone, including probably their own management team, the Montreal Canadiens are still in the thick of the playoff race in the third month of the 2018-19 season. They’re hanging around in that second wild card spot while Carey Price is giving them a mediocre .900 save percentage so far, and Antti Niemi has been even worse.
The season has not been without growing pains, with the Canadiens being a fairly poor defensive team. November wasn’t as kind to them as the opening month, but hot starts from Max Domi, Jonathan Drouin, Tomas Tatar, and Jeff Petry have put them on pace to make the playoffs, against all the odds made in the off-season.
The return of Shea Weber to the lineup also helps bring more danger to the power play, creating more offence from the backend with the NHL’s most dangerous point shot, not to mention the impact he has in his own end of the ice.
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In order to keep this level of play up, though, the Canadiens are going to need some scoring from other areas when Domi, Drouin, and Tatar inevitably cool off a little bit.
Brendan Gallagher is who he has been, and I don’t expect the NHL’s leader in scoring chances at 5-on-5 to stop scoring a healthy portion of goals. His playmaking ability keeps improving, too, so his line should be strong throughout the season.
One area where the Canadiens should see a rise in production as the season goes on is off the sticks of Artturi Lehkonen and Jesperi Kotkaniemi.
When Lehkonen and Kotkaniemi are on the ice, the Canadiens control the most important factors in goal scoring at an absurd rate, creating more offence than when they’re off, and allowing very little on the defensive side.
In fact, no Canadiens forward has been on the ice for fewer passes to the slot against per 20 minutes than Kotkaniemi, partially because Claude Julien does a good job protecting his minutes, and partially because he and Lehkonen have been great defensively.
In fact, when this pair is off the ice, the Canadiens actually lose the pass-to-the-slot battle; recording just 49.7 per cent of the total passes to the slot. When the pair is on the ice, the Canadiens control about 55 per cent of the passes to the slot.
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Lehkonen has been a scoring chance machine for his entire career in both the NHL and Swedish Hockey League, but, so far in North America, his goal production hasn’t followed his chance production. It is very rare for a player with a shot as good as Lehkonen’s to produce chances for so long and never be rewarded, though.
Playing with a creative centre like Kotkaniemi allows Lehkonen to get more chances off the rush and receive more dangerous passes, which should produce benefits before long.
That ability to get scoring chances isn’t just an even strength thing for Lehkonen either; as over this season and last, Gallagher is the only Canadien who has produced more scoring chances or more high danger chances on the power play.
Another reason why I think Lehkonen, specifically, is going to have a strong remainder of the season is that he’s worked hard to diversify his game, becoming a much better and more successful playmaker.
The number of passes Lehkonen makes in the offensive zone hasn’t changed much since his rookie season, but after being a below average slot passer, this season he has focused on being a bigger contributor in setting up his teammates’ scoring chances and increased the frequency with which he attempts passes into the offensive zone.
As a result, he’s gone from one of the Canadiens’ worst 5-on-5 passers in getting the puck into the slot over the last two seasons to within the top-six players on the team this year.
Despite a focus on more difficult passes to complete, Lehkonen’s offensive zone pass completion percentage actually improved, thanks in part to a dramatically high pass success rate off the rush where he has completed 90 per cent of his pass attempts and shown chemistry, in particular, with Kotkaniemi on controlled entries.
Combined, Kotkaniemi and Lehkonen have just eight goals this season, but don’t be surprised if both of them end up with closer to 20 by the end of the season. | {
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Thirty-five years ago, a Minnesota judge sentenced Craig Dennis Bjork to three consecutive life sentences in prison for the grisly murders of two women and his two young children. But that didn’t stop Bjork from killing again.
Now the notorious mass murderer could face the death penalty.
Minnesota abolished capital punishment in 1911. But after decades of violence and escape plots from behind prison walls, the state transferred Bjork to Oregon, where he allegedly killed another prisoner. Prosecutors are seeking capital punishment, meaning Bjork, now 57, could be the first Minnesota prisoner sentenced to death in modern history, according to corrections staff and criminal justice experts.
Human rights groups say the unusual case shines a spotlight on the “randomness” of the death penalty in America, and how geography determines if a crime is punishable by execution.
“As a state that abolished the death penalty more than 100 years ago, Minnesota should consider refusing to transfer its prisoners — and the taxpayer dollars that go with them — to states where the death penalty remains on the books,” said Michele Garnett McKenzie, deputy director for nonprofit The Advocates for Human Rights. Bjork’s attorney in Oregon, Gordon Mallon, said he’s looking into whether Bjork being committed to Minnesota’s corrections system will be an issue in the case.
Oregon prison officials denied a request to interview Bjork in person. In letter correspondence, Bjork agreed to talk over the phone, saying he had “nothing to lose.” But he reneged after a Star Tribune reporter declined to pay him $100.
“Nothing is free,” wrote Bjork, saying he needed the money for postage and phone calls related to the interview, much more than the actual costs for these services.
“If not, I wish you well,” Bjork wrote. “I’m genuine.”
Murder of the century
Bjork’s story as a notorious prisoner begins in March 1982. After his girlfriend, Ramona Yurkew, had been missing for four days, Minneapolis police searched Bjork’s duplex unit near Powderhorn Park.
There, they found Yurkew’s body beneath a bed. Police also discovered the lifeless bodies of Bjork’s sons, ages 1 and 3, along with Gwendolyn Johnson, a 20-year-old woman with a history of prostitution arrests. All had been strangled. Police called it the worst mass murder in the city since the turn of the century.
After a month on the run, Bjork surrendered to police in Wichita, Kan. At the trial, a psychiatrist who’d interviewed Bjork said he had binged on amphetamine and alcohol. He’d killed Johnson after she solicited him for sex, and the next day choked his family and hid their bodies under beds.
“I choked everybody with my hands,” Bjork said, according to the psychiatrist. “It was all peaceful. There was no bizarre episode. No running through the halls or clanging. In my eyes it ain’t murder. I was just taking care of everybody. I wasn’t trying to hurt nobody.”
Kevin Burke, now a Hennepin County judge, took on Bjork’s defense pro bono. “It was a challenge,” Burke explained in a recent interview. And Burke was no stranger to ambitious cases; at the time he was also representing a cop killer.
Burke had no illusions about his client’s role in the murders, but he argued Bjork was so detached from reality he didn’t understand his actions and should be found not guilty by reason of mental illness. He cast Bjork as a deeply troubled man who binged on drugs and alcohol to manage a serious personality disorder. His client had lost the internal battle, he told the court, and simply snapped into a fugue of violence.
The judge rejected the insanity plea. He sentenced Bjork to three life terms, plus 20 more years for killing Johnson — all but guaranteeing he would die in prison.
After the sentence, Bjork was a problem prisoner, known by other inmates as “The Family Killer.” One summer day in 1996, while serving a stint in solitary confinement, Bjork wrote an internal memo to the Stillwater prison warden demanding he be moved back to Oak Park Heights prison. If he didn’t comply, Bjork threatened to kill again.
“I’m very homicidal,” he wrote, according to court records. “I’m very close to committing mass murder in Stillwater. Trust me minimum of 3 bodies, I’d go for 10 and come real close.” A prison psychologist interviewed Bjork and said he appeared capable of following through on his plan.
On Thanksgiving Day 1997, a correctional officer, John Sward, found Bjork in the Stillwater prison kitchen mopping up a dark red liquid that looked a lot like blood.
“What is going on?” he demanded, according to court documents.
“It’s these beet cans making a big mess,” Bjork replied.
It didn’t look like beet juice, the officer said.
“I gotta get out of here,” Bjork said, and he walked out of the kitchen.
Sward followed red drag marks through the kitchen to a garbage storage area. He lifted an overturned garbage cart and found Edwin Curry, another inmate who had been on kitchen duty that day. Curry had been bludgeoned with a pipe.
Correctional officers searched the prison and found Bjork in the dining hall eating a candy bar and drinking a cup of milk. “It was nothing personal,” Bjork said, “but a few minutes more and you would have had a dead guard on your hands also.”
Prison staff found a notebook in his cell with an underlined entry for that date: “Should have moved me, punks.”
The trial of his life
After Bjork killed Curry, the Minnesota Department of Corrections transferred him out of state through a program called the Interstate Corrections Compact. He ended up at Oregon State Penitentiary, a maximum-security facility in Salem.
On Aug. 13, 2013, he killed a prisoner named Joseph Akins, according to a grand jury indictment filed in December 2015.
The full details have not yet been made public, but Marion County prosecutor Matthew Kemmy confirmed his office is seeking the death penalty. In court filings, Bjork has called the killing self-defense.
In a pretrial hearing earlier this year, Bjork lashed out at one of his defense attorneys, shouting for him to “shut up” during court proceedings and then speaking over the judge’s warnings to be quiet. “This idiot isn’t going to represent me,” he said, according to court documents filed by the prosecutor, and then he muttered insults under his breath.
Bjork fired that attorney and Mallon took his case this spring. Prosecutors are asking that Bjork be restrained during the trial.
Because of Oregon’s backlog on death penalty cases, the trial won’t take place until April 2019.
Bjork will have to answer for more than just the Akins murder. Oregon law considers it aggravated murder when a person kills someone while incarcerated or intentionally kills after being convicted of murder. In addition to killing Akins, the indictment includes five more counts for the killings of his two children, Johnson, Yurkew and Curry.
But even if a jury sentences Bjork to death, he may never be executed. Oregon currently has a moratorium on executions. And even if the temporary ban is lifted, it could be decades before Bjork is actually executed if he is convicted.
“People have been sitting on death row for more than 30 years,” said Mallon, “and so there’s a question of whether he could live long enough to get executed.”
Andy Mannix • 612-673-4036 | {
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Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Drivers waiting in traffic say the protest is creating more pollution
Commuters were faced with disruption again on Tuesday as climate change protesters continued to block a key Cardiff city centre road.
Members of Extinction Rebellion have taken over Castle Street with a green boat and chained themselves together.
The group has faced calls to end the protest and one member has apologised but said the disruption was necessary.
Road closures were put in place from Boulevard De Nantes to Lower Cathedral Road in the city centre.
Bus passengers were also advised to check services before travelling.
South Wales Police said the force "completely" understood the frustration felt by the public, with Extinction Rebellion members saying they expected the protest to remain in place until Wednesday.
Cardiff is one of "five centres of disruption" planned by the group, with others due to take place in Leeds, Glasgow, London and Bristol during the "five-day national campaign" of protests.
Different coloured boats have been used in each city. In Cardiff a green boat was placed front of Cardiff Castle during the first day of protesting on Monday and a second has now been placed outside City Hall.
"Please avoid driving into the city centre if possible and consider using public transport, or walking or cycling for shorter journeys," Cardiff council said on Twitter.
What do the police say?
Ch Supt Stuart Parfitt, of South Wales Police, said: "We completely understand the frustration felt by the public who need to access the city centre and we are working closely with Cardiff council to manage and minimise the disruption, following well-practiced road closure arrangements.
"The protest - which is part of a national campaign - has remained peaceful to date, with protestors refraining from causing damage, disorder or intimidation. The group has also acted with consideration when emergency vehicles have needed to access the blocked highways.
"While there is legislation relating to obstruction of highways, this needs to be balanced with the human rights of those protesting. Everybody under the law has the right to protest peacefully and lawfully and the police must respect that right whilst also recognising the impact on the wider public.
"This is a fine balance and something which is constantly under review with the local council and other emergency services.
"Should the situation escalate, South Wales Police will respond accordingly, taking into account the rights of all those concerned.
"Our response is in line with that taken by police forces throughout the country."
Sian Stephen, from Cardiff Extinction Rebellion, said she expected the protest to remain in place until Wednesday.
"We want people to be aware that this is not our first choice. We really apologise for any inconvenience being caused," she said.
"We wouldn't be here if there was another way of getting our aims achieved, but at the same time I think people need to keep a bit of perspective.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Some of the protesters glued themselves around the boat on Monday
"Three days of disruption is nothing compared to the changes to our lives that climate change will cause."
She added: "We've had a very small number of people who have been annoyed but I would say overall, people have been really curious and have stayed."
Image caption Traffic was busier near the city centre on Tuesday morning, but was said to be moving
The protest won the support of the Bishop of Llandaff, the Right Reverend June Osborne, who said it was important "to find the political will to protect the interests of future generations".
But others, including businesses on Castle Street, said the protest would not win people's support because of the disruption caused to their lives.
Councillor Jayne Cowan said a march or a public meeting would have been more effective.
"I know the issue is so important but with this disruption they've lost a lot of support from the public," she said.
"The public are worried about being late for work, the businesses are worried about losing money.
"I don't think this has helped the cause too much because people are talking about the disruption not climate change which is what it should be."
Jeffrey Smith, from Aberbargoed, said everyone had a right to protest.
But he told Jason Mohammad on BBC Radio Wales: "These people have caused more pollution over yesterday and today. I was supposed to work in Cardiff but it was absolute gridlock. Protest off the roads." | {
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Mr. Creighton’s hypothesis, authored over many articles, argues that the Towers were destroyed “via conventional demolition, and that during the design stages of the process, the conspirators relied too heavily on the use of detonation cord in the floor systems, which led to the vaporization of most of the truss systems. This was accidentally revealed (the “iron microspheres”) when the RJ Lee Group did their Composition and Morphology study of the Ground Zero dust samples for Deutsche Bank.”
PETN/RDX is a good candidate because these are the most commonly used hi-explosives in the industry. They have a long, studied history and are generally reliable. It’s sensible to start with the most plausible hypothesis (conventional hi-explosives) first, and failing that, move onto testing more exotic hypotheses.
Primaline 85 detonator cord would be used to pulverize the concrete, and also to remove the building’s lateral support supplied by the double-bridged long trusses. RDX cutter and kicker charges would be used to cut columns down to a specific length (every three floors is a common estimate from what I’ve read), and then ‘kick’ those columns out of the way from the proceeding downward collapse. Refer to article three, “Demolition Hypothesis”, for further details on the demolition sequence.
Background Reading if interested (Chronological Order):
Main Conventional Explosives Hypothesis
Post-Collapse Logistics
BBC Piece Post Mortem: Mark Loizeaux and the Special Engineer This article offers an explanation for the publicly acknowledged presence of demolition crews at the Trade Center site.
Proposed Tests to Detect Conventional Explosives
Dust to Dust This article proposes a test for detecting the residue of post-explosion by-products in the Trade Center dust.
Proposed Testing Procedure for Hi-Explosive Residues in Ground Zero Dust This article details possible specific procedures for testing for hi-explosives in chain of custody Trade Center samples.
There’s informative discussion in the comment threads of these articles as well!
PETN detonation is still a strong candidate (better than thermite) for many of the apparent combustion byproducts that were discovered…
Key innovations of this hypothesis:
The iron microspheres are byproducts of (likely Primaline 85) detonation cord explosion. The source of these spheres are primarily the 6000 metal floor pans and 40,000 double-bridged long trusses, the majority of which apparently were not found in the rubble. This also reveals a key feature of how the Tower destruction was engineered (re removal of floor systems).
This also explains the great abundance of spheres; the floor systems were a major structural element of the Towers, so their destruction, via detonator cord, would lead to hundreds of tons of spheres.
The microscopic “red-gray chips” in the dust, which were found alongside (often attached to) these spherical particles, can be explained as the primer paint which coated the trusses. The intense heat from the detonation cord (meant to pulverize the concrete) would’ve also flash melted the trusses, and the resultant molten metal cooled off whilst suspended in space…which formed via surface tension into these particles. That’s partly RJ Lee’s account for how these spheres formed:
Various metals (most notably iron and lead) were melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles. Exposure of phases to high heat results in the formation of spherical particles due to surface tension.
Different sorts of paint ignite at different temperatures, and we know that Jones & Harrit only focused on the primer paint from the columns. Therefore, paint from the trusses as a source for these red-gray chips cannot be ruled out. Mr. Creighton’s hypothesis provides a good accounting – as with the microspheres – for their presence in the WTC dust.
as with the microspheres for their presence in the WTC dust. The pyroclastic collapse dust cloud can be explained as the molten microspheres generated from the detonator cord, travelling within the pulverized concrete cloud at rapid speed. Recall the firefighter testimony on the Tower collapses as documented (see Citation #1 in his article) by Kevin Ryan and others. The “Neither Gravity nor Thermite” article and the firefighter testimony refute the common claim that the collapse was “cold”, whereas its initiation was “hot”.
The smoke and dust clouds are linked again to the pulverized concrete floor systems. Not unique to Mr. Creighton’s hypothesis, but still accounts for it well in terms of the demolition design.
Would PETN/RDX Detonation Be “Too Loud”?
That regular cutter charges would be “too loud”, therefore we can exclude their use, is not a supported claim. This is the same argument NIST offered for not performing the explosive residue tests. We know NIST both artificially rose the minimum decibel level required for a ‘blast scenario’, and ignored reports of very high decibel levels – using unsupported and unstated assumptions – which indicate hi-explosive charges like RDX. When use of hi-explosives is suspected, we run the appropriate tests for known probable compounds. That’s the only way to exclude compounds like PETN, RDX, TNT and HMX from consideration. Then, if those results fail, we can move on testing more exotic hypotheses, like “nanothermite”.
Stated Assumptions of NIST “Plausible Blast Scenario”:
Unstated Assumptions:
No efforts at noise abatement
Complete transmission of sound to outside air
No absorption or blockage of sound along the path
Unknown if assumed use of efficient cutter charge
The goal of a controlled demolition is to use the minimum required for the design, and this involves strategic placement in particular installation vectors (floors, columns) and pre-weakening. Drilling of explosives deep within structural supports could also limit the sound level. Explosives could’ve also broken multiple important connections, rather than sever major columns outright.
Could the numerous explosions heard by several hundreds of witnesses, considering these above factors, fit the known PETN/RDX detonation sound profiles? I have sufficient confidence to (tentatively) say…yes!
Conventional Explosives Would Be Too Easy to Test For?
No major government agency has ran the standard tests for conventional hi-explosive residue on the Trade Center steel! Not NIST, FEMA, USGS, or the FBI.
Strength of Nanothermite Hypothesis
How does the latter hypothesis compare to PETN/RDX? The use of nanothermite can explain some bizarre features of post-collapse conditions (e.g. the molten Tower rubble pile).
However, criticisms and weaknesses have been pointed out:
Were Conventional Explosives Combined with Thermite?
Speaking for myself, in regards to particular evidence of the Tower’s destruction…no, I don’t think so. I accept that thermite can be combined with standard high-explosives, if one wishes to manufacture a genuine explosive variant of thermite (which is traditionally an incendiary). However, in the case of the Twin Towers, one hypothesis negates the other. The evidence doesn’t support a combination of thermite with standard explosives in any conceivable way. This is because the evidence for thermite is better explained as the byproduct of PETN/RDX usage.
Further, the conventional hypothesis explains features of the post-collapse conditions which thermite can’t, such as the missing trusses and floor pans, and ties it back to how the demolition was engineered in the design stages.
The two claimed pieces of evidence for thermite are primarily the “red-gray” chips, and the iron microspheres. The spherical particles, according to the thermite hypothesis, are the partially-reacted byproduct of the thermitic red-gray chips. No strong evidence of a thermitic reaction was shown in the 2009 Bentham paper, such as a 4kJ/g energy release or an alum-redux reaction (see “Criticisms” subsection).
With the standard hi-explosives hypothesis, thermite as a source for these two pieces of evidence is ruled out. Creighton provides a plausible explanation for the close relation between these two pieces of evidence: The “red-gray” chips are primer paint (either from the trusses or the columns), and the microspheres are the trusses which were flash melted following the detonator cord explosions. We also know that primer paint was coated on the trusses and the columns. Further, we know that different sorts of paint ignite at different temperatures, which is why Jones reported a range of ignition temperatures for his alleged thermitic chips.
If we assume the chips are evidence for thermite, you have to ask why so much was used. Why would demolition planners use so much of an exotic, untested material which apparently reacts so inefficiently that hundreds of tons of unreacted thermite are left in the dust? Does that make sense? Wouldn’t it also be prohibitively expensive, considering the experimental nature of the “explosive”? Even black operations have a budget.
The same result can be accomplished with 4 tons of detonator cord. I’ve lost track of the article which did the calculation, but the author stated to me it was less than 4 tons. I’ll retain this figure as a ballpark estimate. | {
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Dave Brockie, founder and frontman of satirical thrash band GWAR, was found dead in his Richmond, VA home yesterday, Style Weekly reports. He was 50.
Brockie's cause of death has yet to be determined. Richmond police have issued a statement:
At approximately 6:53 p.m. on Sunday, Richmond Police were called to a residence in the 4800 block of West Seminary Avenue for a report of a deceased individual. When officers arrived, they found David M. Brockie, 50, deceased inside the home. Detectives do not suspect foul play at this time and the Medical Examiner’s Office will determine cause of death.
Brockie’s stage alias was Oderus Urungus. The monster-metal outfit recently celebrated their 30th anniversary. Bassist Mike Bishop writes:
Dave was one of the funniest, smartest, most creative and energetic persons I've known. He was brash sometimes, always crass, irreverent, he was hilarious in every way. But he was also deeply intelligent and interested in life, history, politics and art. His penchant for scatological humors belied a lucid wit. He was a criminally underrated lyricist and hard rock vocalist, one of the best, ever! A great front man, a great painter, writer, he was also a hell of a bass guitarist. I loved him. He was capable of great empathy and had a real sense of justice.
GWAR formed in Richmond in 1984, and quickly gained infamy for their live performances, which combined gross-out theatrics, costumed stunts, and crass humor. The band’s self-created mythology cast its members as almighty aliens who came to Earth hellbent on destruction and mischief. Their most recent effort, Battle Maximus, came out last year.
Update 3/24 10:30 a.m. Eastern : GWAR's manager Jack Flanagan has issued a statement:
It is with a saddened heart that I confirm my dear friend Dave Brockie, artist, musician, and lead singer of GWAR passed away at approximately 6:50 PM EST Sunday March 23, 2014. His body was found Sunday by his band mate at his home in Richmond, VA. Richmond authorities have confirmed his death and next of kin has been notified. A full autopsy will be performed. He was 50 years old, born August 30, 1963. My main focus right now is to look after my band mates and his family. More information regarding his death shall be released as the details are confirmed.
Watch Brockie and his band perform "The Salaminizer" from 1990’s Scumdogs of the Universe live in 1991:
Watch GWAR wreak havoc at SXSW 2008, via Pitchfork.tv: | {
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Dustin Theoharis, who has had 12 surgeries since police shot him 16 times in 2011, is suing the Washington Department of Corrections for its involvement after agreeing to a $3 million settlement from King County in lieu of litigation. Both the King County Sheriff's Office and the Washington DOC previously ruled the shooting justified, and both officers involved appear to remain employed. Via KING5, Seattle's NBC affiliate:
Cole Harrison, who was at the house, described it this way: "They (the officers) rushed into that room like they were going to get somebody. I mean they rushed down there and then all of a sudden. Boom, boom, boom, boom." It's estimated that the two officers fired more than 20 bullets; 16 hit Theoharis, who was lying in bed. The officers said they thought Theoharis was reaching for a gun. They later told investigators they weren't sure how many bullets they fired. "I thought he was going to try to kill us, there is no greater level of threat," King County Deputy Aaron Thompson told investigators during an interview months after the shooting. Theoharis didn't have any weapons, but both the Sheriff's Office and the Department of Corrections ruled the shooting justified and in compliance with policy.
A new civilian watchdog at the Sheriff's Office, meanwhile, released its report on problems with the shooting. Its findings may be shocking but they're unfortunately not surprising: the union contract, for example, allowed a 72 hour delay of any request for a written statement. The police officers involved refused to make
statements at the scenes, while a written statement came a month later. No one from the internal affairs unit showed up at the shooting, and an investigation wasn't opened until six months later. The Sheriff's Office appeared more concerned in defending its officers than investigating the incident. The report noted that the first responding sergeant was in charge of the crime scene before becoming a supervisor, a neutral party, and finally an advocate for the officer, acting as one of his representatives in an internal affairs interview.
None of these issues are unique to King's County, but unlike your constitutional right to bear arms, national lawmakers aren't likely to be targeting police brutality as a national issue any time soon.
There's a book out about how we got here. | {
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Hillary Clinton has a lot of thoughts about Donald Trump’s presidency so far. In an appearance this weekend in Pittsburgh, the former secretary of state and presidential candidate described the current administration as pushing a system of “organized cruelty” and warned Americans of the “grim” future that lay ahead if they don’t vote Republicans out of Congress in November.
Clinton’s remarks at the annual convention of the American Federation of Teachers, a national labor union, were among her harshest words yet about the Trump administration. Clinton has given few speeches since losing the presidential election in 2016, and she didn’t hold back her views of where America is heading under Trump. She drew a picture of an America that often resembled the fictional dystopia of Gilead in A Handmaid’s Tale.
“I used to worry that they wanted to turn back the clock to the 1950s. Now I worry they want to turn it back to the 1850s,” Clinton said to thousands of teachers who attended the convention, which included appearances by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
Clinton also blasted Trump’s nomination of conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court.
“This nomination holds out the threat of devastating consequences for workers’ rights, civil rights, LGBT rights, women’s rights, including those to make our own health decisions,” Clinton said. “It is a blatant attempt by this administration to shift the balance of the Court for decades and to reverse decades of progress.”
Then she ripped into the administration’s practice of separating immigrant families at the border. “I find this beyond politics,” Clinton said. “The inhumanity of it, the disgrace, the indecency of it.”
Clinton didn’t spare any criticism for Republicans in Congress either. She denounced their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and their tax cuts for corporations and wealthy Americans. She warned the audience that “the pressure and forces against progress are stronger than ever, they control our government and they are determined to have their way.”
The people in power are trying to “rip out the heart of America,” Clinton said. “They want to turn us against each other. They want to divide and conquer ... a man-eat-man and woman-eat-woman society.”
Clinton even went as far as to compare America to 18th-century France on the verge of revolution, reading a few lines from Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.
“It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch on incredulity. It was the season of light it was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope it was the winter of despair,” Clinton said.
“Dickens may have been writing about the years leading up to the French revolution, but he might as well have been writing about this moment in America,” Clinton said. “Because fundamental rights, civic future — even facts, reason, and evidence are under assault.”
Teachers are fighting multiple political battles
Clinton’s speech at the AFT convention follows months of turmoil facing teachers across the country. Public school teachers have rallied, gone on strike, and shut down schools in half-a-dozen states since February, demanding raises and more school funding.
The teachers unions have supported these efforts, but now they are facing another crisis: The Supreme Court’s ruling in Janus v AFSCME. The ruling, handed down in June, allows government workers in every state to opt out of paying agency fees to labor unions that represent them. The change will be a financial blow to teachers unions, such as the AFT, which represent large numbers of government workers.
At the convention, Clinton urged teachers to continue their rallies to boost funding for public education and to continue running for state and federal office. “We are in the midst of a struggle for our nation’s heart and soul,” Clinton said.
The former secretary of state gave her stinging critique of the current administration without ever uttering Trump’s name, or the name of any Republican in Congress. But her message was pretty clear: vote Republicans out of office in November.
“Then we can start holding people accountable,” Clinton said. “The alternative is too grim to think about.”
Warren and Sanders — two potential 2020 presidential candidates — echoed Clinton’s remarks during their own speeches at the conference, commending teachers for reviving the US labor movement.
“Across this country, educators are rising up, speaking out, and fighting for the future of this country,” Warren said. “People are no longer silent.” | {
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LOVELAND, Colo. – Garrett Uptain is proving to be someone to keep your eye on in the RAM Mountain States Circuit.
Uptain left last year’s RAM Mountain States Circuit Finals Rodeo as the all-around champion and he also won the average in bull riding. He returned this year competing in both the saddle bronc riding and bull riding.
Although the saddle bronc riding did not go as he planned, he was still able to pocket go-round money placing second in the second round and defend his titles in the all-around and bull riding.
During the final round Oct. 26, at The Ranch, déjà vu set in as Uptain was nearing the eight-second mark aboard Burch Rodeo’s Mobster, a bull that’s bucked at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Just like a year earlier, he got bucked off right at the whistle, but he was able to register a 78-point ride.
“Mobster came around to the left really nice,” Uptain said. “I haven’t been on him, but I’ve seen him, and I asked Jesse Hill about him. He told me he takes a pretty hard corner so make sure to get around it.”
The Craig, Colo., cowboy claimed the bull riding average win after scoring 153.5 points on two head. Uptain placed second in the second round with 75.5 points and second in the third round with 78 points. He was the only bull rider to cover two out of the three bulls.
“My first bull, Fat Pat, of Rocky Mountain Rodeo was a really nice bull that came around to the left,” Uptain said. "I hadn’t ever been on him, but I had seen him a lot.
“In the second round, I just didn’t finish.”
The ag education major at Chadron (Neb.) State College will be making back-to-back appearance at the RAM National Circuit Finals Rodeo in Kissimmee, Fla., the 2020 edition will be April 2-4.
After he graduates this year, Uptain plans to become a high school ag teacher and continue to pursue his goal to qualify for the Wrangler NFR.
“I want to hit it hard and try to make the Finals,” Uptain said. “And of course, I want to come back to the Mountain States Circuit Finals.”
Uptain earned $7,081 in bull riding and $2,832 in saddle bronc riding to win the all-around title in Loveland with $8,498. Uptain also was the recipient of a prestigious award.
“The Richard Rule Cowboy Tough Award is an awesome deal,” Uptain said. “I was pretty excited to get an award that recognizes toughness and faith in Jesus.”
“As for the money, I’m going to use it to help pay for college,” Uptain said. “I’m glad my family was here to watch, and I have to give a shout-out to my travel partner, saddle bronc rider, Ian McGivney, for pulling my bull rope."
Other winners of the $169,741 rodeo were bareback rider Logan Patterson (251.5 points on three head); steer wrestler Cody Pratt (17.1 seconds on three head); team ropers Jay Tittel/Richard Durham (17.8 seconds on three head); saddle bronc rider Wyatt Hageman (227.5 points on three head); tie-down roper Darnell Johnson (29.1 seconds on three head) and barrel racer Kelly Yates (47.63 seconds on three runs). | {
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Jores Okore: Nordsjaelland defender has been linked with Fulham
The Denmark international has been linked with Manchester United and Newcastle United, and impressed for Nordsjaelland in the group stage of the Champions League this season.
Speculation has also claimed that Fulham have shown an interest and Okore's representative Nikola Juric is aware of the rumours.
"I heard that Fulham made an offer to sign Okore but his club rejected the proposal," Juric told Expressen.se.
"A lot of teams are interested in him. Half of the clubs in the Premier League are after him, so is Lyon and many others.
"He is only 20 years old and, if he signs with a club in England, he obviously won't be expecting to be playing regularly right away.
"So he knows that he has to be thorough sorting through all these offers and, for him, the most important thing is that a new club has a plan for him."
Ukrainian duo Dinamo Kiev and Shakhtar Donetsk have previously been linked with Okore, with clubs in Germany and Russia also following his progress. | {
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Sir Bradley Wiggins has yet to sign a new contract with Team Sky for 2015, and the ante was raised well in advance of the transfer period when the head directeur sportif at the Australian Orica-GreenEDGE squad suggested the team may be interested in signing the 2012 Tour de France winner. Matt White said Wiggins is “definitely a rider who would fit into this group”.
Wiggins’ management company, 19, had no comment to make. Earlier this year, however, in response to rumours that the Olympic time-trial champion had been contacted by a new team run by the Formula One driver Fernando Alonso, 19 stated that Wiggins had no plans to leave Sky, adding that he had been made an offer by Sky but would wait until later in the season to consider his options.
“Wiggo has made it public that his focus would be the Olympics in 2016 ... but we have a history, for sure. I would love to work with Wiggo,” White told the Sydney Morning Herald. The pair worked together at the Garmin-Slipstream team when the Londoner made his Tour de France breakthrough with fourth place in 2009, before leaving the US team for Sky. White added: “I haven’t spoken to him for a while … but he is definitely a rider who would fit into this group.
“We would have to know what his plans are for next the two years. Obviously, 2016 would be a write-off for the Tour, but he is a guy who could definitely fit in. His ambitions at Sky are certainly different to a year ago.”
Since his annus mirabilis of 2012 Wiggins has not shown Grand Tour winning form, although this year he has expressed his determination to support Chris Froome in his defence of his Tour title, and Wiggins looked to be in his best form since 2012 in winning the Tour of California this month.
There is, however, currently no certainty that Team Sky will allow Wiggins to ride this year’s Tour de France, given his historically poor relationship with their Tour leader, Froome. Although Wiggins has said he cannot envisage finishing his career at a team other than Sky but given the size of his current salary,, renegotiated after his Tour win, the team will face a dilemma over what terms to offer to keep him in the fold for 2015 and 2016, when he has said he will target the Rio Olympic Games. Those factors could in theory prompt him to switch teams.
Orica-GreenEDGE won two stages of the Tour de France and two in the Vuelta a España last year, as well as taking three early stages and leading the Giro d’Italia this May but the Australian team have yet to make an impact in the general classification in the Grand Tours, something they are keen to change. Their recent signings include the young Britons Simon and Adam Yates, who have performed well in their first professional season, and they were cited by White as possible Tour riders for the future.
“Our team is ready to have a Grand Tour rider next year,” said White. “We have identified people who would fit in to the culture of our team. They are people who are ready to come to the team and we are ready to support them.
“When you look at the likes of Esteban Chaves, Simon and Adam Yates, Luke Durbridge and Michael Hepburn, if we can keep that group for the next two years we will have one hell of a Tour de France team.” | {
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Entre as dificuldades das investigações do assassinato da vereadora Marielle Franco (PSOL) e do motorista Anderson Gomes, está a falta de imagens do momento do crime. Os criminosos, diz a polícia, escolheram um ponto cego no trajeto da vereadora e executaram o crime em um local em que não existiam câmeras.
Boa parte das ruas do centro do Rio de Janeiro --Marielle foi assassinada no Estácio, na região central, 4 km depois de deixar um evento na Lapa-- é coberta tanto por câmeras de segurança do município quanto por câmeras dos circuitos internos dos edifícios. O local escolhido pelos criminosos era um dos poucos pontos em que ação poderia ocorrer sem registro.
“Essas imagens seriam muito importantes. Dariam uma ideia precisa da dinâmica do crime. Você vê por aí como os assassinos são profissionais. A forma como a perseguição foi feita, a precisão nos tiros, na escolha do momento de interceptá-la e disparar”, diz um dos agentes que participam da investigação.
Veja também:
A Polícia Civil investiga se a munição usada no assassinato de Marielle e Anderson foi utilizada recentemente em outros crimes no Rio, segundo confirmou um dos agentes que participam da investigação.
As balas de calibre 9 mm encontradas ao lado dos corpos na última quarta-feira (14) são do lote UZZ-18, vendido à PF de Brasília em 2006. Caso tenham aparecido em algum outro crime no Estado, dizem os policiais, seria mais um possível caminho para encontrar os criminosos.
Imagens das câmeras de segurança próximas ao local do crime indicam que dois carros participaram da ação.
Marielle participava de um evento direcionado a jovens mulheres negras, na Lapa, na região central. A polícia acredita que os criminosos seguiram Marielle e sabiam exatamente onde atirar. Eles teriam esperado a vereadora por cerca de duas horas, do lado de fora do evento.
As investigações indicam que os dois carros seguiram a vereadora; enquanto um deles se postou na frente do automóvel em que ela estava, obrigando o motorista a diminuir a velocidade, o outro carro emparelhou e atirou contra ela.
Todos os disparos foram feitos contra a parte traseira do carro, do lado direito, onde ela estava sentada. Marielle morreu imediatamente após ser atingida por quatro tiros na cabeça. Os assassinos fugiram sem levar nada. O motorista levou três tiros. Uma assessora que também estava no carro teve ferimentos leves.
"Cria da Maré", vereadora usava mandato para denunciar violência UOL Notícias
Imagem: Reprodução
Pistas sobre o assassinato
O Disque Denúncia informa que já recebeu denúncias sobre o caso e as encaminhou para a polícia. O anonimato é garantido. Quem tiver qualquer informação a respeito da identificação e localização dos assassinos pode usar os seguintes canais para denunciar: | {
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Donald Trump is still a central focus of Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe, with The Washington Post reporting on Tuesday that Trump “remains under investigation.”
According to the Post, “Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III informed President Trump’s attorneys last month that he is continuing to investigate the president but does not consider him a criminal target at this point, according to three people familiar with the discussions.”
More from the new report:
In private negotiations in early March about a possible presidential interview, Mueller described Trump as a subject of his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Prosecutors view someone as a subject when that person has engaged in conduct that is under investigation but there is not sufficient evidence to bring charges.
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Trump and his supporters will likely point to this report as goods news, but it’s important to remember that Mueller told this to the White House as part of a negotiation to get the president to sit down for an interview.
Divulging to Trump that he is a non-criminal target could be a negotiating tactic for Mueller. After all, if Mueller told the president he was on the verge of being criminally charged, Trump would be much less likely to cooperate.
Not to mention: A sit-down interview with Trump is key to building any possible criminal case against him, particularly when it comes to obstruction of justice.
Bigger news: Mueller is preparing a report on Trump obstruction of justice
The most important part of The Washington Post story isn’t the news that Trump is not officially a criminal target of the investigation. It’s that Mueller is preparing a report about whether the president’s personal actions since taking office constitute obstruction of justice.
More from the Post report:
The special counsel also told Trump’s lawyers that he is preparing a report about the president’s actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations. Mueller reiterated the need to interview Trump — both to understand whether he had any corrupt intent to thwart the Russia investigation and to complete this portion of his probe, the people said.
Clearly, Trump is still the central figure in Mueller’s investigation. The fact that Mueller told the White House that Trump isn’t under criminal investigation is essentially meaningless. It could change at a moment’s notice as the special counsel continues to gather more evidence.
The fact that the president remains an active target suggests that Mueller is still working to compile more information. Getting the president to sit down for an interview is key to that process.
Once the president opens his mouth in a potential special counsel interview, he’ll likely give Robert Mueller all the information he needs to bury Trump, if not criminally then certainly politically. | {
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No, everthing is better now… I promise you don’t need to worry about me. I was just confused when we talked before… I guess I was just mad at him, that’s why I made up those things I told you… Of course I’m telling the truth. I love my Dad, everything is perfect now…. | {
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With the Oscars right around the corner I thought it would be fun to put together an Academy Award list. Because there are so many Oscar lists out there I wanted to do a unique list in a hopefully fun and entertaining format. This bottom to top list (10 to 1 with a bonus of 0) will have the number representing the number of achievements and lists those achievements accordingly. So I guess you could say it’s a list within a list. All accomplishments on this list are prior to the results of the 82nd Academy Awards scheduled for March 7, 2010.
10 Triple Winners
Achievement: Ten Oscar Winners that Have Appeared in 3 Oscar Winning Best Picture Films
1. Donald Crisp Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) , The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and How Green Was My Valley (1941)
2. Clark Gable, It Happened One Night (1934) , Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Gone With the Wind (1939)
3. John Gielgud Around the World in 80 Days (1956) , Chariots of Fire (1981) and Gandhi (1982)
4. Hugh Griffith, Ben-Hur (1959) , Tom Jones (1963) and Oliver! (1968)
5. Dustin Hoffman, Midnight Cowboy (1969) , Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Rain Man (1988)
6. Diane Keaton The Godfather (1972) , The Godfather Part II (1974) and Annie Hall (1977)
7. Shirley MacLaine, Around the World in 80 Days (1956) , The Apartment (1960) and Terms of Endearment (1983)
8. Meryl Streep, The Deer Hunter (1978) , Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Out of Africa (1985)
9. Morgan Freeman, Driving Miss Daisy (1989) , Unforgiven (1992) , Million Dollar Baby (2004)
10. Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) , Terms of Endearment (1983) , The Departed
Interesting Fact: In the film Million Dollar Baby Morgan Freeman was originally approached to play the lead role of Frankie Dunn. But even before Clint Eastwood took on the directing and starring role he decided to take the part of Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris.
9 Tony and Oscar
Achievement: Nine Actors to Win a Tony Award and an Oscar for the Same Role
1. José Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac (1947/1950)
2. Shirley Booth in Come Back, Little Sheba (1950/1953)
3. Yul Brynner in The King and I (1952/1956)
4. Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady (1957/1964)
5. Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker (1960/1962)
6. Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons (1962/1966)
7. Jack Albertson in The Subject Was Roses (1965/1968)
8. Joel Grey in Cabaret (1967/1973)
9. Lila Kedrova, and did it the other way around. She won an Oscar for Zorba the Greek, in 1964 and 20 years later won a Tony for the same role in Zorba in 1984.
Interesting Fact: In the film The King and I, three musical numbers were filmed and then deleted from the movie. They were: “My Lord and Master” (a ballad sung by Tuptim shortly after her arrival in the palace) – “Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?” (a soliloquy for Anna, in which she comically expresses her anger towards the King) – “I Have Dreamed” (another duet for Tuptim and Lun Tha) – It was felt that “My Lord and Master” and “I Have Dreamed” didn’t do much to advance the plot, and the number “Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?” would make Anna sound too whiny and nagging.
8 Posthumous Nomination
Achievement: Eight Times Actors Have Been Nominated Posthumously
1. Jeanne Eagels, The Letter (Nominated Best for Actress) 1928/9
2. James Dean, East of Eden (Nominated for Best Actor) 1955
3. James Dean, Giant (Nominated for Best Actor) 1956
4. Spencer Tracy, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Nominated Best Actor) 1967
5. Peter Finch, Network (Won for Best Actor) 1976
6. Ralph Richardson, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan (Nominated for Supporting Actor) 1984
7. Massimo Troisi, Il Postino (Nominated for Best Actor) 1995
8. Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (Won for Supporting Actor) 2008
Interesting Fact: In preparation for his role as The Joker, Heath Ledger hid away in a hotel room for about six weeks. Ledger delved deep into the psychology of the character. Ledger’s interpretation of The Joker’s appearance was primarily based off of the look of punk rocker Sid Vicious combined with the psychotic mannerisms of Malcolm McDowell’s character, Alex De Large, from A Clockwork Orange.
7 Non-Speaking Roles
Achievement: Seven Oscar Nominations for a Non-Speaking Role
1. Jane Wyman, Johnny Belinda (Won for Best Actress) (1948)
2. Patty Duke, The Miracle Worker (Won for Best Supporting Actress) (1962)
3. John Mills, Ryan’s Daughter (Won for Best Supporting Actor) (1970)
4. Marlee Matlin, Children of A Lesser God (Won for Best Actress) (1986)
5. Holly Hunter The Piano (Won for Best Actress) (1993)
6. Samantha Morton, Sweet and Lowdown (Nominated for Best Supporting Actress) (1999)
7. Rinko Kikuchi, Babel (Nominated for Best Supporting Actress) (2006)
Interesting Fact: In the film The Miracle Worker, for the dining room scene, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke wore padding beneath their clothes to prevent serious bruising during the intense physical skirmish. The nine-minute sequence required three cameras and took five days to film. You can watch the scene here.
6 Non-English Roles
Achievement: Six Winning Oscars for Performing in a Spoken Language Other Than English
1. Sophia Loren, Two Women (Italian) 1960
2. Robert DeNiro, The Godfather Part II (Italian) 1974
3. Roberto Benigni, Life Is Beautiful (Italian) 1997
4. Benicio del Toro, Traffic, (Spanish) 2000
5. Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose (French) 2007
6. Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Spanish) 2008
Interesting Fact: With Penelope Cruz winning an Oscar for her role as Maria Elena in the film Vicky Cristina Barcelona it continues a trend of young actresses winning Best Supporting Actress Oscars in Woody Allen films. Previous winners were Mira Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite (1995) and Dianne Wiest in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994) .
5 Back-To-Back Oscars
Achievement: Five Actors Winning Back to Back Oscars
1. Luise Rainer: Best Actress for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Best Actress for The Good Earth (1937)
2. Spencer Tracy: Best Actor for Captains Courageous (1937) and Best Actor for Boys Town (1938)
3. Katharine Hepburn: Best Actress for Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner (1967) and Best Actress for A Lion in Winter (1968)
4. Jason Robards: Best Supporting Actor for All the President’s Men (1976) and Best Supporting Actor for Julia (1977)
5. Tom Hanks: Best Actor, Philadelphia (1993) and Best Actor for Forrest Gump (1994)
Interesting Fact: Not only is Luise Rainer (Pictured above) the first woman to win two Academy Awards and the first person to win them back to back she is also the oldest living Oscar winner. Rainer was born of Jewish parents in Dusseldorf, Germany and made three German movies. Because of the rise of the Nazis in her home country, she accepted a contract from M-G-M in 1935and departed with her parents to Hollywood. She now lives in London and on January 12, 2010 she celebrated her 100th birthday. You can watch a 100 year birthday tribute here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVCWkOh_KHY
4 Female Best Director
Achievement: Four Woman Nominated for Best Director
I found this hard to believe because there have been so many talented woman directors over the years. No woman has won an Oscar for Best Director and only four have been nominated.
1. Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties (1976)
2. Jane Campion for The Piano (1993)
3. Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation (2003)
4. Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (2008)
Note: The Hurt Locker was first released theatrically in Italy in 2008. It was then released in the United States in 2009 and will be eligible for the upcoming Academy Awards. So Kathryn Bigelow could be the first woman to win an Oscar for Directing.
Interesting Fact: Lina Wertmüller’s films are highly reflective of her own political commitments, with the main characters either dedicated anarchists, communists, feminists (or all) .
3 The Big Five
Achievement: Three films winning for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Writing
In the Biz this is known as “The Big Five” or the “Oscar Grand Slam”.
1. It Happened One Night (1934) Director: Frank Capra Actor: Clark Gable Actress: Claudette Colbert Writing Adaptation: Robert Riskin
2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) Director: Miloš Forman Actor: Jack Nicholson Actress: Louise Fletcher Writing Adapted Screenplay: Laurence Hauben and Bo Goldman
3. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Director: Jonathan Demme, Actor: Anthony Hopkins Actress: Jodie Foster, Writing Adapted Screenplay: Ted Tally
Interesting Fact: Clark Gable gave his Oscar for It Happened One Night to a child who admired it, telling him it was the winning of the statue that had mattered, not owning it. The child returned the Oscar to the Gable family after Clark’s death in 1960.
2 Self-Directing
Achievement: Two Directors that Directed Themselves to an Acting Oscar
1. Laurence Olivier, Director of and Best Actor for Hamlet (1948)
2. Roberto Benigni, Director of and Best Actor for Life Is Beautiful (1998)
Neither Olivier or Benigni were awarded the Oscar for Best Director
Interesting Fact: In the film Hamlet, Olivier played the voice of Hamlet’s father’s ghost himself by recording the dialog and playing it back at a reduced speed, giving it a macabre quality. You can hear the voice at 2 minutes and 49 second into this clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu46pOY0itc
1 Four Oscars
Achievement: One Actor Winning 4 Oscars
Katharine Hepburn holds the current record for the most acting Academy Awards won by an individual. The movies are: Morning Glory (1933) Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) The Lion in Winter (1968) On Golden Pond (1981) All 4 Oscars are for best actress. You can see all four of her Oscars here.
Interesting Fact: Another one and only achievement is the only actor to win an Oscar for playing a real-life actor who has received an Oscar. Ironically it is Cate Blanchett for winning Best Supporting actress in the 2004 film The Aviator, in which she played Katharine Hepburn.
0 Science Fiction
Achievement: Zero Science Fiction Films Winning Best Picture
Sci-fi movies have never been a big favorite for the Academy. District 9 and Avatar are both up for best Picture for this year’s academy awards and a win from one of the two would mark the first best picture Oscar for a science fiction film. There have only been a few nominated science-fiction films for best picture in the past, including A Clockwork Orange (1971) , Star Wars (1977) and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) .
Interesting Fact: There are several legends attributed to the “Oscar” nickname. Betty Davis claimed to have dubbed the statue with the name because its backside reminded her of Harmon Oscar Nelson, her husband. Another story claims the Academy’s first librarian, Margaret Herrick, named the award because it reminded her of her uncle Oscar. Columnist Sidney Skolsky lays claims to making a vaudeville reference when he coined the name in the press. The Academy began officially calling the award Oscar in 1939. | {
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Braves top starter Mike Foltynewicz won’t be ready for the start of the season, general manager Alex Anthopoulos revealed Monday (Twitter link, with video, from 680 The Fan). The 27-year-old was scratched from a start nearly two weeks ago due to elbow soreness.
“Folty’s the one guy that, building him up as a starter, he’s not going to be ready,” said Anthopoulos. “Feeling great. Throwing. We were just mapping out his throwing program this morning in terms of bullpens, live BPs — all those type of things. We’re just trying to figure out what point do we get him up to five innings?”
Anthopoulos wouldn’t forecast specifically how much time Foltynewicz would need to get ready, as he’s not yet progressed to throwing off a mound. The GM speculated on anywhere from one to three would-be turns through the rotation, though the situation remains fluid. Anthopoulos did acknowledge that had Foltynewicz been healthy, he’d likely have been given the Opening Day nod for the Braves.
With Foltynewicz out for the start of the year, the Braves will open with Julio Teheran, Sean Newcomb and Kevin Gausman locked into rotation spots. As Anthopoulos noted, the significant number of off-days the Braves have early in the year will allow them to work with only a four-man rotation early on, so there may only be one other spot up for grabs. Atlanta isn’t lacking for options to take that fourth spot in the rotation to open the year; Touki Toussaint, Kyle Wright, Max Fried and Bryse Wilson have all made multiple starts already this spring — Wright will make a third today — and could all conceivably get a look in that spot. Gabe Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tweets that with Foltynewicz sidelined, Teheran or Newcomb (likely the former) will receive the actual Opening Day start. | {
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Vírus é transmitido pelo Aedes aegypt, que se desenvolve em locais propícios ao acúmulo de água (foto: Leandro Couri/EM/D.A Press)
Os Centros de Controle e Prevenção de Doenças dos Estados Unidos emitiram um alerta nesta sexta-feira recomendando que mulheres grávidas adiem viagens ao Brasil e outros 13 países da América Latina onde o Zika vírus está circulando.A agência de saúde pública dos EUA também instou mulheres em idade fértil que estão tentando engravidar a consultar um médico antes de viajar para os países latino-americanos, além de tomarem medidas de prevenção contra a picada de mosquitos durante as viagens.O zika vírus chegou à América há menos de dois anos e já atinge nove países do continente, de acordo com a Organização Mundial da Saúde (OMS). O rápido avanço está registrado no alerta mundial para as infecções divulgado na terça. Ao todo, 22 países no mundo já relataram casos desse "primo" da dengue. Segundo o relatório, até fevereiro de 2014 não havia nenhum caso confirmado de infecção pelo vírus nas Américas.O Brasil registrou as primeiras mortes por chikungunya desde que o vírus foi identificado no Brasil, em 2014. Foram três casos. Dois registrados na Bahia e um, em Sergipe. Todos os pacientes tinham idade avançada (85,83 e 75 anos) e traziam histórico de doenças crônicas.Além dos óbitos, boletim divulgado nesta sexta-feira, pelo Ministério da Saúde traz outro sinal de alerta: o número da doença praticamente duplicou em três meses e os casos já chegam ao Sudeste. Até o fim de setembro, haviam sido contabilizadas 12.691 infecções. No relatório mais recente, foram informados 20.661 casos, um aumento de 62%. | {
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Football is always more exciting after an international break – managers, players and fans are all fired up to be back with their clubs. There was very little movement in the table, but a flurry of impressive displays and highlight reel goals made this one as good a Premier League weekend as any. One thing that stood out this weekend is that English football is prevailing, and homegrown talent is getting the job done. Here are some of the weekend’s biggest matches and why they show positives signs for England.
Aston Villa 0-2 Spurs: A side funded largely by the record sale of Gareth Bale, Tottenham looked comfortable as they beat Villa two-nil away from home. Kyle Walker looked comfortable once again on the right side of defence, keeping pace easily with Agbonlahor, who is known to have strong pace and outwit defenders. Michael Dawson was as reliable as ever in shutting down Christian Benteke and Libor Kozak before him, and he will prove a worthy substitute for the England national team should Cahill or Jagielka go down. The biggest talking point of the game was the continued play of Andros Townsend. He scored the winning goal and played a full 90 minutes in this match, beating the £30 million signing Erik Lamela onto the team sheet. Townsend is far from superstardom, but if he continues to see playing time, his development could well continue in an exciting manner.
Arsenal 4-1 Norwich: Wow. Another scintillating performance from a Gunners side that is full of confidence. Santi Cazorla meshed perfectly with the squad after returning from injury. Jack Wilshere’s goal was absolute football porn, and yet another goal from Aaron Ramsey which was impressive as well. Arsenal’s academy is the pride of the Premier League, and Arsenal have been notoriously good at mixing home grown talent with signings. Arsenal’s midfield exemplifies that, with players like Wilshere and Ramsey, who admittedly was purchased and not produced, revolving around the nucleus of Mesut Özil. Kieran Gibbs and Carl Jenkinson (Jenkinson was an unused substitute in this match) also have the potential to be future England starters. There are some questions about Arsenal’s defensive and attacking depth, but if they keep their vintage Arsenal form up, breaking the eight-year trophy drought is more than plausible.
Manchester United 1-1 Southampton: What a start to the year for Southampton. After their draw at United they are sixth – four points ahead of United and only four behind leaders Arsenal. They led in possession 53% – 47% and shots on target 9-5 against the Premier League champions. Their ability to defend has been incredible, and their new signing Dejan Lovren is looking like a ten-year veteran to the league. The entire Southampton back four looked calm in front of an intimidating Man United attack, especially English talents Nathaniel Clyne and Luke Shaw. Clyne was instrumental in shutting down the ‘new star of the BPL’ Adnan Januzaj, who besides playing a nice ball through to Wayne Rooney was kept quiet. Clyne and Shaw could make cases to start for the English national team in the future, and will most definitely continue to see the top of Southampton’s team sheet. On the other side of the pitch, Wayne Rooney looked as dangerous as ever, and it was his run that led to Van Persie’s goal.
Newcastle 2-2 Liverpool: Liverpool will certainly blame themselves for not taking three points away from their match against a 10-man Newcastle. Their 3-4-1-2 formation was maybe a tad too defensive as two of the midfielders were Glen Johnson and Aly Cissokho, both of whom are natural defenders. Gerrard and Sturridge scored for their side, but there wasn’t enough attacking determination from a side that played up a man for the entire second half following the dismissal of Newcastle’s Yanga-Mbiwa. Newcastle walked away feeling as if they had won.
Goals not to miss:
Jack Wilshere: The team goal of the season thus far. A superb understanding between Wilshere and Giroud as three back-heels were played in a row, finished off one touch by Wilshere into the bottom corner. Outstanding.
Patijm Kasami: An incredible finish from Kasami which saw him take a long ball on his chest as the ball dropped over his shoulder and smash it first touch into the top left hand corner of the net in a way that brought back memories of Marco Van Basten. The Crystal Palace supporters could not believe what they saw.
Aaron Ramsey: Great footwork from Ramsey deep in the box saw him shake two defenders before slotting it in past the keeper.
Jonathan De Guzman: He only needed one step to fire a beautiful shot in from the edge of the box. An incredible strike.
Eden Hazard: You will be holding your head after this one – not because of the goal but because of the brutal missed call. As keeper David Marshall bounced the ball, Eto’o grabbed it from him, and Hazard eventually put it in. The referee should have called a foul, but claimed Marshall had dropped the ball. Terrible call right before half time to give Chelsea an equalizer.
Also, if you haven’t seen them, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Edinson Cavani scored two breathtaking goals against Bastia. Ibrahimovic somehow managed to scorpion kick the ball into the net, while Cavani completely undressed the defender and the keeper before slotting it into the open net. Should not be missed
Thanks for reading – as always feel free to leave comments below and follow the site @lastwordonsport and like our Facebook Page.
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Current situation
Case numbers
There are 4 new cases of COVID-19 today, 20 September 2020. There are now 71 active cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand. See our Current cases page.
Alert levels
All of New Zealand is at Alert Level 2. Gatherings within the Auckland region may involve a maximum of ten (10) people. There can be up to 50 people at funerals and tangihanga if the event is registered with the Ministry of Health. Find out more on the Unite Against COVID-19 website.
Public transport
At 1pm Monday 14th September, the need for physical distancing on public transport was removed. Wearing masks on domestic flights or on public transport such as trains, buses and ferries remains mandatory.
See also: Information on contact tracing and testing.
For COVID-19 health advice and information, contact the Healthline team (for free) on 0800 358 5453 or +64 9 358 5453 for international SIMS. | {
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“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” – Winston Churchill. And yes, today does, in fact, mark the end of the beginning of the Mueller Investigation… and perhaps for Donald Trump. Why? You’ll just have to listen and find out!
In this super-sized episode, we tackle:
(1) Michael Cohen’s just-announced plea to a new count of lying — this time in connection with his prior testimony before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees investigating Russian interference in the 2016 elections;
(2) A follow-up on Andrew Miller and Concord Management and Consulting, including a fascinating new blog written by Randall Eliason with Yodel Mountain implications;
(3) Paul Manafort’s apparent repudiation of his plea deal with Mueller, what that means and when we’ll know;
(4) Jerome Corsi’s public refusal to plead and cooperate with the Mueller investigation over WikiLeaks and Julian Assange; and
(5) An update in the Brain Frosh
Finally, we end with an all new Thomas Takes The Bar Exam #103 on a property owner who has the rug pulled out from under him due to a new law. If you’d like to play along with us, just retweet our episode on Twitter or share it on Facebook along with your guess and the #TTTBE hashtag. We’ll release the answer on next Tuesday’s episode along with our favorite entry!
Appearances
None! If you’d like to have either of us as a guest on your show, drop us an email at [email protected].
Show Notes & Links
Support us on Patreon at: patreon.com/law
Follow us on Twitter: @Openargs
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/openargs/
Don’t forget the OA Facebook Community!
For show-related questions, check out the Opening Arguments Wiki
And email us at [email protected]
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India and Bhutan continue to share strong economic relations and defence ties. After India agreed to finance Bhutan with 4500 INR Package, the news has emerged that India will construct a satellite tracking and data reception centre in Bhutan.
The “ground station” of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Bhutan is likely to double up as “a strategic asset” for New Delhi, given its location between India and China.
Beijing has already set up an advanced satellite tracking centre and astronomical observatory at Ngari in Tibet Autonomous Region – about 125 kilometres away from the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which serves as a de-facto border between India and China in the absence of a settled boundary.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that the construction of the ISRO’s “ground station” in Bhutan would be completed soon. “Space science is the new dimension of our cooperation (with Bhutan). I am happy that Ground Station being built by ISRO in Bhutan to reap the benefits of the South Asian Satellite is soon going to be completed,” he told media persons after a meeting with new Bhutanese Prime Minister Lotay Tshering at Hyderabad House in New Delhi.
“With the completion of this project, Bhutan will get help in tasks such as weather information, tele-medicine and disaster relief in the far-flung areas of the country,” said Modi.
The ISRO launched the South Asia Satellite on May 5, 2017. New Delhi bore the entire expenses for building and launching the satellite. Prime Minister, himself, had in 2014 mooted the idea of having a satellite for all the members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), so that India could share the benefits of its advances in space technologies with all its neighbours in South Asia. Pakistan stayed away from it although all other SAARC nations joined India in the project.
Though Modi said that the ISRO’s ground station in Bhutan was intended to help the tiny nation take advantage of the South Asia Satellite, sources told the DH that it was part of India’s countermeasures to China’s advanced satellite tracking station in Tibet.
The facility set up by the Chinese Government is so advanced that it could not only track satellites launched by India but could also “blind” them, said sources in New Delhi.
India on Friday also pledged Rs 4500 crore as its assistance to Bhutan to support the tiny neighbouring nation’s 12th five-year-plan for development. “In Bhutan’s 12th five-year-plan, India will provide assistance of Rs 4500 crore. This contribution will be according to the needs and priorities of Bhutan,” Prime Minister said. “I have assured (Bhutanese) Prime Minister that as always India will play the role of a trusted partner and friend in the development of Bhutan.”
Thimphu stood firmly with New Delhi during the 72-day-long face-off between Indian Army and Chinese People’s Liberation Army at Doklam Plateau in western Bhutan in June-August, 2017.
Tshering is on his maiden visit to India after taking over as Prime Minister of Bhutan last month. He invited Modi for an early visit to Bhutan.
New Delhi and Thimphu on Friday also reached an agreement on the tariff of the electricity India would import from the newly-constructed 720 MW Mangde-Chhu Hydroelectric Plant in Bhutan. | {
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Ronaldo to put Premier League on red alert as Madrid star plots return to England
Cristiano Ronaldo is considering a stunning return to the Premier League after growling disillusioned with life at Real Madrid.
The Portuguese winger, 27, has reportedly told friends that his ‘dream’ move to the Spanish capital has turned sour.
Relations between Ronaldo and the Bernabeu crowd have worsened with many fans questioning his attitude.
Frustrated: Cristiano Ronaldo is considering leaving Real Madrid
Real are in pole position to wrestle the La Liga title away from Barcelona but that has done little to appease Ronaldo.
The star – who joined Real from Manchester United in an £80 million world record transfer in June 2009 – has confided to family and friends that he misses Old Trafford and his former manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who he regarded as a father figure and mentor.
If Ronaldo does leave Madrid, Manchester City would be among the favourites to snap him up.
Return: Ronaldo (right) could be set to re-join former club Manchester United
United meanwhile would be unable to splash out £80m but could be prepared to shatter their record outlay, the £30m they handed to Spurs for Bulgarian striker Dimitar Berbatov.
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Halloween is a great holiday that many people including high schoolers celebrate and this year it falls on a Thursday. Unfortunately, that means that we will have school the next day, a Friday. Now this is a problem for all of us who want to celebrate this amazing holiday but also want to get a reasonable amount of sleep. Now there is only one solution for this epidemic that is school on November 1st. We need to get a lot of signatures to show our wonderful principal Mr. Vanslambrook and Dean Adams that we will literally spontaneously combust if we have to go to school. We will for the reason that if anyone would like to go trick or treating, they most likely are going to eat a great deal of candy. This candy will give them lots and lots of energy which in turn, will make them stay up later than normal which is already late. So the teenagers will be extra drowsy if they have to go to school the next day. All I am asking for is the day off after an important night, or maybe just a delayed opening. Thank You | {
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Posted August 28, 2015 at 7:26 am
It'll add bounce to your step!
...Sorry.
When I drew the previous comic, I had not intended any sort of transformation. I found I liked the idea of the my avatar's hair being perkier in the last panel, however, and that combined with the sleepy poses in the first two panels resulted in it looking like a much more thorough transformation given how my avatar previously looked.
Basically, some sort of follow up became inevitable. AND, since I like having a comic idea for Monday, I'm going to blatantly wonder what would happen if a guy drank it. | {
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I knew you were down here I could smell you
515 shares | {
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Ever since he signed on to the idea of a federal database and visual identification for Muslims in America, some of Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans have deemed him a fascist. I wrote as much two weeks ago and Slate’s Jamelle Bouie later presented an even more detailed case, but it’s another thing entirely when a fellow candidate, John Kasich, breaks out some Niemoller-esque language to condemn Trump. Others, including advisers for Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, took to Twitter to make the allegation.
Even New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, a staunch social conservative, took up the question on Thursday. Ultimately, he dismissed the charge. But whether or not Trump supports a fascist policy at this stage of the campaign may matter less than whether his audience has bought in.
A new Public Policy Polling report released this morning found that Trump has a commanding lead in New Hampshire. But perhaps more alarming is that 53 percent of all Trump supporters in the state agree with him on that Muslim database idea. Forty-nine percent want to close all mosques in the United States. (To boot, 58 percent believe his lie about “thousands of Arabs in New Jersey” celebrating the September 11 attacks.)
Douthat argued that Trump “isn’t actually building a fascist mass movement” and hasn’t won a primary yet. The latter seems more likely to happen with each passing day. Perhaps Douthat and any other doubters will wake up then. Or maybe when he wins South Carolina, too. Or maybe by the time Trump is nominated. They’ll get it eventually, right? | {
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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Rep. Tim Ryan over the weekend joined the list of Democratic presidential candidates who publicly back impeaching President Donald Trump, arguing that Trump’s behavior during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe constituted obstruction of justice.
During a nationally televised CNN Town Hall on Sunday night, Ryan asserted that Mueller would have prosecuted Trump if he wasn’t president, and the House of Representatives needs "to move forward with the impeachment process,” because it’s the House of Representatives’ job to oversee the White House.
“I have a duty and responsibility, and that duty and responsibility has led me to think we have to do this,” said Ryan, of Niles.
Ryan made similar remarks in Iowa after Mueller made public statements on Wednesday that said “after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”
“I really don’t want to impeach, but at this point, I don’t know how we don’t,” the Ohio congressman told the Des Moines Register in a Friday interview.
Mueller’s report describes repeated efforts by Trump to interfere with the investigation, including telling former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to take control of the probe, firing FBI Director James Comey and efforts to oust Mueller.
Ryan joins a horde of other Democratic presidential candidates who support impeaching Trump, including U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigeig
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has called for further investigating Trump before deciding whether to launch the impeachment process. | {
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The world of NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is unraveling fast. First, it feels justified in showing a conservative pundit brutally raped. Then, it argues the merits of euthanizing a baby. Now, it’s advocating the “convict first, ask questions later” system of trying college rape cases. Whatever path the show is going down, I don’t want to be a part of it.
The March 7 “In Loco Parentis” episode begins with a rape tribunal on a college campus. The female victim is Detective Carisi’s (Peter Scanavino) niece, Mia, and when he finds out what happened and that the alleged rapist was only given a one-year suspension by the school, he wants to open up a police investigation.
Unfortunately, ADA Peter Stone (Philip Winchester) notes that “despite Betsy DeVos,” New York universities only need a preponderance of evidence to convict a student of rape, but state criminal cases need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Already we’re off to a messy start. Our heroic detectives are despairing over the fact that the case needs actual evidence to convict eighteen-year-old student Ethan in a court of law rather than just the word of Carisi's niece. When lawyers and detectives are eager to move past the legal system and dismiss Education Secretary DeVos working to bring back due process on campuses as an obstacle, we’re in trouble.
The plot thickens when Mia admits to her uncle that she did consent to sex. He tells her she needs to make things right and apologize to Ethan. Then the episode follows up with another twist: when Mia invites Ethan to talk he rapes her - for real this time! His motivation? Her false allegations made him mad and the "PC" culture labeled him as a rapist, so he might as well rape her. He even states as much on the stand.
Stone: What were you studying in college? Ethan: I was premed. Stone: Hmm. You were going to be a doctor. Ethan: I was. A neurosurgeon. But that's gone now. Stone: You don't think you'll be acquitted? Ethan: [Scoffs] You know what? It doesn't matter. I'm already wearing the scarlet R. My friends won't talk to me. You know, since Hudson booted me, I applied to six other colleges. I got 700s on my SATs, and that wasn't good enough. Once the PC police get their fangs into you, your life in polite society is over. Stone: And that's-- that's what happened to you? Ethan: Sure is. All it takes is one girl to say you looked at her funny, and that's it. Your life's over. Stone: Yeah, but you did more than look at Mia funny, Ethan. Ethan: Why, because she said so? Look, that first time in her dorm, we were in it together. You heard what her uncle, the cop, said. I didn't rape her. Stone: You were railroaded. Ethan: That's right. Stone: And the bleeding hearts didn't want to hear the truth. Ethan: [Scoffs] They wouldn't know the truth if it hit them in the face. They sit there with their self-righteous grins, pointing their fingers at you, whether you did something wrong or not. Stone: And it pisses you off. Ethan: You're damn right, it does. Stone: And when you went to Mia's dorm room, you planned on telling her just how much it pissed you off. Lawyer: Objection. Judge: Overruled. Stone: Well? Ethan: That damn school, they wrap themselves in their political correctness and their honor code, only they don't know the first thing about honor. Stone: You were accused; therefore, you were guilty. Ethan: That's right. I was already labeled a rapist. What the hell? I might as well be a rapist. Stone: And who better to rape than Mia Marino? Ethan: That's right! The bitch ruined me, and I got to ruin her.
In the end, he is sentenced to seven years, and the Special Victims Unit gets vindicated for wanting to prosecute someone for a crime he didn’t commit since he ended up being a criminal anyway. The fact that no one sees a problem with this is almost as concerning as the case itself. Due process and the legal system could be eroded because a girl falsely claims to be raped, and now our media creates narratives that support it. Never mind the innocent students who suffer for it.
SVU can put all our complaints in the mouth of a rapist, but that doesn’t change the truth. Women are safer in college campuses than they are out of them, and many rape cases have fallen apart under scrutiny. Promoting the opposite doesn’t make these facts go away. | {
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Click to enlarge and debate the strip below the line.
Keith Hackett’s verdict
1) Time for some common sense. It’s a head injury but there’s no need to stop play: the player landed off the pitch, he’s already receiving medical attention, and, even after he rolled back on, neither he nor the physio is interfering with play. So await the outcome of the attack, and then stop the game, delaying the restart until the injury has been fully dealt with. As for the defender’s behaviour… Did he roll back on due to his delirium – or was it a deliberate attempt to disrupt the opposition attack? You have to be very certain of that before taking any action against him – but if you are sure it was a ruse, show him a yellow card for entering the field of play without permission. James Lambert wins the shirt.
2) No. Only the players who were on the field of play at the end of the game can be involved in the shootout. So, before the kicks begin, equalise the two teams in number: they’ll have 10 takers each. This is one of those situations where the club staff clearly don’t know the laws properly: if the striker had hobbled back on before the end of extra time, he could have taken part. Thanks to Ryszard Kaleta.
3) You are the decision maker – so make your decision and stick by it. You need to have the self-belief to act on what you and your colleagues saw, and nothing else. If you don’t think the keeper touched it, award a goal-kick. Thanks to Seb Collins.
Photograph: Guardian
Competition: win a T-shirt of your choice
For a chance to win a Philosophy Football T-shirt send us your questions to [email protected]. The best scenario used in each new strip wins a T-shirt; Terms apply. For more on You are the Ref’s history, click here. | {
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hssy20 Committee on Science, Space and Technology
Use restriction: No portion of any recording may be used for a political purpose; no portion of a recording may be disseminated with commercial sponsorship except as part of a bona fide news program or public affairs documentary; no portion of a recording may be used in any commercial advertisement; and any redistribution must be subject to this same notice. | {
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NoStigmas is mental health your way. Together, we are eliminating the days of silence, solitude and stigma surrounding mental illness and suicide; we are building a world where mental health is everywhere, everyday health.
We provide online and offline platforms for you to be yourself regarding mental health. No matter where you’re at in your mental health journey, there’s a spot here for you. By connecting to NoStigmas, you become educated and empowered to find support, share your voice, plan local activities and participate in global activism. We are here to cultivate the go-to, perpetually growing network of mental health communities. Together with you, we're both eliminating stigma & building a world where nobody has to face mental illness and suicide alone. | {
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By their very nature, engineers tend to be cautious in their approach. That’s because making seismic, unpredictable change simply isn’t part of an engineer’s cultural make-up when you’ve spent, for example, years refining your modelling and simulation tools.
Every engineer, however, should also recognise that no model or simulation is perfect.
So, when you encounter a situation which shows you something that your models weren’t predicting, or where your understanding wasn’t quite right, you need to venture into that space as an opportunity to exploit, rather than a mistake to be quickly addressed and removed.
And there’s a critical difference between those two scenarios.
Because we’re so desperate to find every grain of performance, there’s a prevailing mentality that says that accidents shouldn’t happen; and, when they do, we should quickly impose processes and procedures to stop them happening again.
"Every engineer should also recognise that no model or simulation is perfect."
But when they do occur – and they will, because human and procedural errors will always happen – you need to glean everything from them that you possibly can.
Back when I was a junior engineer on the McLaren Formula 1 test team, one of the mechanics mistakenly left a set-up packer in the suspension system of one of our grand prix cars. The following morning, when we began our first laps of the day, the car’s suspension was completely solid because this little packer hadn’t been removed.
It was immediately obvious to the driver, who quickly returned to the pits and said that the car felt awful in terms of bump- and ride-quality. But he also told us there were some clear positives to be gained from the experience.
At that point, it would have been easy to focus on the problem, remove the packer and simply move on. But we didn’t want to just explain it away; the race engineers wanted to understand the positives, and re-engineer the car to retain the benefits and get rid of the negatives.
Now, that’s not something we would ever have programmed into the car’s set-up or run-plan, but it certainly fast-tracked us towards trying something new, really catalysing new areas of investigation into suspension set-up and stiffness.
Nevertheless, these valuable learning experiences can be somewhat traumatic. Which leads me to my own worst moment on the race team.
Back in 2006, the regulations required teams to qualify their cars with race fuel-loads. The trade-offs were obvious – load the car up with fuel and you’d end up further down the grid, but with the benefit and flexibility of adjusting your strategy in the race. By contrast, qualify on petrol fumes and you had a good chance to be quick on Saturday, but you’d theoretically start the race with one hand tied behind your back.
The skill came in finding the perfect balance: a fuel-load that wouldn’t compromise your race pace, but which still gave you a good roll of the dice in qualifying.
At the 2006 German Grand Prix, I didn’t merely throw those dice poorly, I managed to drop both of them...
I’d been in charge of setting the fuel-load for Kimi Raikkonen’s final qualifying run. I made a mistake and didn’t put enough fuel in the car. And as Kimi happily trundled out of the garage and rolled to the end of the pit-lane to start his lap, I knew I’d made a mistake – and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
I’m sure you can imagine that horrific, curdling feeling I had in the pit of my stomach at that very moment.
"The skill came in finding the perfect balance: a fuel-load that wouldn’t compromise your race pace, but which still gave you a good roll of the dice in qualifying."
The post-session post-mortem was pretty grim, particularly in such a highly-charged environment where everything is closely scrutinised. But the engineering team got through it, and we set about planning how we were going to execute what was looking like a pretty compromised strategy in Sunday’s race.
Now, this is where it starts to get interesting: before the race weekend, all our simulations, which had been firmly plotted around a more conventional qualifying strategy, had told us we were likely to finish third.
In the race, we pitted 10 laps before all our competitors, but still ended up finishing in exactly the same position as we’d predicted: third.
What’s more, there had been a couple of major positives to the weekend: Kimi’s light fuel-load meant he’d taken pole, earning the team and its partners some well-deserved kudos, and, by dint of being at the front, we’d avoided any of the usual first-corner chaos that often happens at Hockenheim. We’d also led the first nine laps of the race before peeling into the pits for that super-early pit-stop.
At the end of the race, we started to realise that there were some peripheral positives to come out of employing that more extreme strategy. We hadn’t previously appreciated the importance of some of those more outlying variables when we’d been designing our race simulations, so that experience helped prompt a shift towards putting less fuel in the car for qualifying from that point onwards.
"Create a culture that can extract the absolute maximum from these accidents, not one that hides them away and makes sure they don’t happen again."
In both of those occasions, it was important for us to understand whether everything that had occurred because of those mistakes was negative. Good engineering prompts you to ask whether there was anything we could learn from it – you need to embrace the unexpected nature of those accidents rather than simply explain them away.
And that’s one of the key lessons I’ve learned over the years – don’t be over-protective of your own work, understand that it might not always be quite right, and that there’s always something new to learn or understand.
Create a culture that can extract the absolute maximum from these accidents, not one that hides them away and makes sure they don’t happen again.
And that’s not always easy. At McLaren, I’m still surprised by how easily we accept the positives that come from such openly accidental occurrences. And that’s led to a culture where, while people don’t deliberately make mistakes, every consequence of every unexpected event is analaysed with great clarity.
"Don’t be over-protective of your own work, understand that it might not always be quite right, and that there’s always something new to learn or understand."
In more general terms, that means understanding the root of any problem with a broad mindset. Don’t start to solve a problem by employing a current solution or way of working – try and understand what outcomes need to be achieved, then work backwards from there.
With that mindset, you’re hopefully able to present greater reasoning behind your argument, further qualify it with fact and data, and challenge your conclusions in new, fresh and interesting ways.
Make your engineering as much about the journey as the destination.
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An elderly Long Island couple who had been married for 70 years couldn’t live without each other — dying just hours apart.
Ruth and William Bauer passed away one after the other Monday at their assisted living home in Glen Cove.
“They were such companions that I don’t think either one wanted to live without the other,” their 64-year-old daughter, Marie, told The Post. “After 70 years, I don’t think they even conceived of a life without the other.”
Ruth, who was 92, died around 7 a.m., and William, who was five years her senior, passed away by the evening.
“Mom completely relied on dad. He was her eyes,” Marie said. “And she was his reason for living. He enjoyed life and other people, but she was central to life.”
Maria said her brother, Charles, was holding his father’s hand when he took his final breath.
Ruth and William met at a bank they both worked at in the Big Apple in the early 1940s. They married in 1946 shortly after he ended his Navy service during World War II.
“And then they moved out to the ‘wild’ in suburban Long Island to New Hyde Park,” Marie said.
Charles was born in 1950, followed by Marie and then a third child, Thomas.
The family of five had an “ordinary” life — William working his way up the ladder at the Newmont Mining Company, where he retired from in the 1980s after rising to the title of purchasing manager.
Shortly after their youngest son entered high school, Ruth went back to college to get both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees — something her husband strongly supported.
“They were a great team. They made all their decisions together,” Marie said.
In fact, a few years ago, it was their idea to finally move into an assisted-living center as Ruth’s macular degeneration got worse.
Both of them were in relatively good health, aside from some memory issues and deteriorating vision for Ruth, until around Christmas time this year.
“My dad wanted to mow his own lawn into his 90s,” Marie said. “But at the very end, things started rapidly escalating.”
Their love story has received lots of attention from local media, which they both would have gotten a kick out of.
“Mom and dad would fall off the sofa if they saw this,” Marie said. | {
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MUMBAI: Even as governments across the world are undecided on how to regulate crypto currencies, Pundi X, an Indonesian origin company is planning to launch a point of sale terminal network which will help people buy and sell these currencies over the counter. The company plans to launch its network in Singapore, Indonesia, Africa and Brazil followed by India later this year.Pundi X will partner with different cryptoexchanges helping people buy or sell cryptocurrencies through a globally connected point of sale network, which will create an offline sales channel for these currencies.Pundi X will kick-start the sale of its own initial coin offering (ICO) from January 21 to 31, launching its own currency called PXS. The company is likely to go live in Singapore after the ICO, said Manan Mehta, advisor to the company in India.The plan is to create a network of 100,000 devices across the world giving consumers the opportunity to buy and sell crypto currencies and use them to pay for goods and services through their network.“The network will allow the conversion of crypto currencies into fiat currency, in the short term till crypto currencies are accepted globally. Our aim is to make the payments process immutable through crypto currencies and the underlying blockchain technology,” Mehta said.Crypto currencies are a code or a virtual token that can be freely transferred from one user to another through a secured network. Such currencies are the newest alternative payment mode and have gained prominence due to the sharp rise in their value over the last few months. In India, these currencies can be bought via about 11 active trading platforms like Unocoin, Zebpay, Coinsecure, Coinmama, LocalBitcoins and Bitcoin ATMs.Pundi X wants to create a global network that allows people to buy and sell these coins. It is already in talks with partners in Africa and Brazil and has a tie-up with a leading super market store with 45,000 merchants in Indonesia.However, central bank scepticism could hit the trade of these currencies. The Indonesian central bank was the latest to warn against trading in crypto currencies. “Owning virtual currencies is very risky and inherently speculative. The digital tokens are prone to forming asset bubbles and tend to be used as method for money laundering and terrorism funding, so it has the potential to affect financial-system stability and harm the public,” the Indonesian central bank was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.The Reserve Bank of India too has warned against the use of virtual currencies while India’s finance ministry has called the spurt in their prices as “entirely a matter of mere speculation”.Mehta said Pundi X respects the government stances with regards to crypto currencies and will work in the jurisdictions of the governments that validate the use case for cryptocurrencies. The company lists Japan, Estonia, Singapore and Gibraltar as countries that are creating the necessary regulation for such currencies to function. | {
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Below is an interesting video of Michael Chorost speaking at Google June 30, 2008. Michael spends about half of the video explaining the amazing cochlear implant that has enabled himself and more than 100,000 deaf people around the world to regain their hearing. In the other half of the video Michael explores the future of man and machine, which is the focus of his upcoming book “World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humans and Machines”. A few interesting themes from the video:
1. There are only 100,000 people with cochlear implants in the world, yet there are 500,000 deaf people in the United States alone. It really is a shame that the gift of hearing is technically available yet not being given to the millions of deaf people around the world for due to cost and other reasons.
2. Michael describes the internet as a worldwide mind that we are all able to access and update. He explains how he felt disconnected from this “mind” when his blackberry was not functioning for a short period of time. This idea is one of the centerpieces of his upcoming book and is a major theme for all of us to consider as we envision the future of mankind.
3. Michael shows video clips of the incredible advances that are being made in interfacing the human brain with prosthetic limbs. Michael asks us to consider the implications and capabilities that will be unleashed for mankind as our ability to interface directly with the neurons of the brain improves in the coming years. The ability to read minds and the ability to purposely enhance the human body is considered.
Authors@Google: Michael Chorost | {
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Former Olympian Ashley Wagner says she was sexually assaulted by another figure skater in 2008 when she was 17.
The three-time national champion wrote in USA Today on Thursday that John Coughlin climbed into her bed after a party at a skating camp and began kissing and groping her. Coughlin was 22 at the time and took his life in January at 33.
Wagner says she was “absolutely paralyzed in fear.”
Wagner won an Olympic team bronze medal in 2014 and is now retired from competitive skating. She says she feared speaking out earlier because she competes in a sport where judges determine success. She told the newspaper two factors helped change her mind — the emergence of the #MeToo movement and Coughlin’s coaching suspension in January by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, an organization dedicated to protecting young athletes from abuse.
USA Today also reported that Coughlin’s former pairs partner from 2004-07, Bridget Namiotka, posted on Facebook in May that Coughlin “sexually abused” her for two years.
Wagner said soon after that night in 2008 she told two people close to her about what happened. USA Today spoke to one of those, who confirmed her account but was not identified because of the “sensitivity of the topic.” Wagner said she spoke with officials at U.S. Figure Skating in February.
In a USFS statement released to the newspaper, spokeswoman Barbara Reichert said:
”What happened to Ashley should not happen to anyone, period. Ashley is incredibly strong; not just to have the courage to come forward with her story, but to share her experience publicly to help others. Ashley recently spoke at U.S. Figure Skating athlete safety seminars and her experience and message of empowerment had a profound impact on skaters and their parents.”
The U.S. Center for SafeSport and the figure skating federation had begun investigating allegations lodged against Coughlin late last year. They found enough evidence to warrant an interim suspension barring him from attending activities sanctioned by the U.S. Olympic Committee. Coughlin had become a coach and TV commentator after retiring from skating.
Coughlin maintained his innocence throughout the investigations. He was found dead Jan. 18 at his father’s home in Kansas City, Missouri.
His father, Mike Coughlin, said by phone Thursday the allegations against his son go back many years, and he doesn’t believe any are valid. He adds his son did not coach any of those skaters and he had no leverage over them.
”John was a fellow skater with the people involved,” Mike Coughlin said. “And it is, you know, just a tragic situation.” | {
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Martin Schoeller
He is in the backseat of a dark SUV -- coffee in hand, dressed in black, hair sharply parted -- and is, for the first time in his life, reading his own Wikipedia entry.
George Timothy Clooney (born May 6, 1961) is an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter who gained fame as one of the lead doctors in the long-running television drama ER (1994-99).
He pauses. "Yes, that's true."
He attended St. Susanna school . . . There he developed an interest in theater.
"Sort of . . ."
He was an average student.
"Actually, I pulled out my report cards," says Clooney. "I was a much better student than I thought I was. I had all A's and a B. So that's not so bad."
Clooney injured himself on Syriana's set, during a torture scene, in 2004. He had some excruciating headaches and suffered short-term memory loss.
"And," he adds, looking at me, "I suffered short-term memory loss."
You may Google yourself from time to time, but George Clooney doesn't. How could he? It's different for him. It's overwhelming. Its infinite madness could disintegrate a man's personality. "George Clooney" pops up on nearly 11 million sites on the Internet. Spend a day browsing these sites and you will find unfathomable rage and baffling adoration. You will find America with all its insane colors refracted through the prism of George Clooney.
But George Clooney is also a brave man, and today he has agreed to spend a couple of hours exploring what the Internet has to say about George Clooney. A sort of This Is Your Virtual Life. Today he will see things that shock him, scare him, and make him shake with laughter. He will see things so disturbing that he will walk out of the room horrified. Also, he will see his own nipples.
But for now, a little after 9:00 a.m., as we zip down the FDR Drive to the loft where the Esquire photo crew is waiting, he's reading aloud his comparatively friendly user-generated biography:
He secretly financed and executive-produced a political thriller short film called The Endgame Study in 2006.
"Never heard of that. It was so secret, I have no idea what they're talking about."
It is rumored that Clooney was the one to have circulated the videotape of Jesus vs. Santa (the video greeting card that gave birth to South Park) around the Los Angeles area in 1995.
"There's truth to that."
Michelle Pfeiffer and Nicole Kidman each bet him $10,000 that he would be a father before he turned forty.
"When I turn forty, I'll let you know about that."
Clooney stirred up controversy for his remarks about Charlton Heston, saying Charlton Heston "announced again today that he is suffering from Alzheimer's."
"I wrote him a letter saying I usually avoid making jokes at people's expense, so I'm sending you an apology, and I got a really nice letter back from his wife."
His entry finishes with the Heston flap. "Huh. Nice way to end," says Clooney with a humpf. But overall, he has to admit, a pretty favorable assessment of his life -- if not entirely accurate. "The hardest thing is trying not to correct everything on the Internet. It'd be night and day -- wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. So you just have to say, All right, I'll take it, bring it on."
The SUV pulls up to the photo studio. Or what is supposed to be a photo studio. It's an unmarked brown door on a deserted street in Brooklyn. "Where the hell are we?" asks Clooney. "This is a hit, isn't it?"
Part I: clooney+career
There is no one inside packing heat, just a photo crew, along with coffee and cookies. Clooney and I withdraw to a bare, industrial, wireless-equipped room in the back. We sit in low-slung chairs at a long table, facing a MacBook.
I figure it's still too early to alarm Clooney with the sordid details of his bedroom habits. Stick to the career for now. I click to the Internet Movie Database and scroll to his first credit: a part in a 1978 miniseries about the history of Colorado. Andy Griffith played a professor. Clooney distinguished himself as the Village Extra.
"They don't even have my first gig," he says. He made his real debut in a horse-racing flick called And They're Off. "I didn't even want to be an actor," he says. "I was just hanging out with my cousin." The movie was shot in Clooney's home state of Kentucky and starred his cousin Miguel Ferrer. "I rented my car, a Monte Carlo, to them and got fifty bucks a day. They gave me a part as an extra. And Miguel said, Come to L.A. and be an actor. I had just spent the summer cutting tobacco, which is a miserable job. So that's what made me move to Hollywood."
This one looks interesting: a 1993 thriller called The Harvest. Clooney is listed as the "lip-syncing transvestite." Yeah, he remembers that one. Wishes he didn't. He went to visit some buddies on the set in Mexico, and the director asked him to be in the background, wearing a gold lamé dress and mouthing the words to a song. "It wasn't really supposed to be credited, and suddenly this idiot director put our names on it. It was like, Thanks, pal. It didn't matter when nobody knew who you are, but now it's come back to haunt me."
I take him to YouTube, which has dozens of copyright-infringing clips of his work. There's a brilliant ad for Italian vermouth directed by Robert Rodriguez. And there's the nonlinear love scene from Out of Sight -- Clooney in white boxers, Jennifer Lopez in the sexiest grandma underwear in history.
A YouTube commentator has written:
I precisely found it pretty awful. . . . =(
"That's funny," Clooney says. "Because that's usually thought of as a pretty great love scene. Steven Soderbergh really shot the shit out of that movie. That one holds up. I try to get a couple that hold up over the years. O Brother holds up. Three Kings [about the first Iraq war] will hold up. Three Kings actually seems like it's newsworthy."
He pauses.
"And The Peacemaker, of course. Someday, a group of people will discover that one and give me a posthumous award for that."
I tell him that, without a doubt, somewhere on the Internet, we can find a fan club for his 1997 belly flop about Russian nukes. "There's no such thing," he insists.
After a couple of minutes, I concede the point. The closest I can find are a handful of positive reviews of the Peacemaker DVD on Amazon. I also find this review, which Clooney reads aloud:
George Clooney is about as entertaining to watch as Michael Jackson being raped by the Gorton's fisherman.
"Wow, that's an angry cat right there," says Clooney.
One could argue that some would find that immensely entertaining -- but I agree that I think it is meant as an insult.
"If you want to see angry, look up Batman & Robin," Clooney says.
He's right. The most popular review on Amazon:
I finally understand this movie. It's the kind of thing that Ed Wood would have directed if someone had handed him umpty-million dollars and not applied any adult supervision.
Clooney unleashes a big laugh. "That's hilarious."
Because of his various battles with the tabloids, I'd always considered Clooney to be prickly about criticism. But I'm not sure that's accurate. In some ways, he's the most self-aware of celebrities, and he knows that getting trashed is part of the game. He saw his aunt Rosemary go from superstar to has-been to psychiatric patient to respected elder. He saw his dad's career wax and wane. He understands fame.
"You ever hear of the Hollywood Stock Exchange?" I ask. "They set up a stock exchange where people trade celebrities."
"Really? I must be waaaay down. It's been a bad year."
Clooney's definition of a bad year, apparently, includes an Oscar nomination for Michael Clayton and a $311 million gross for Ocean's Thirteen. Not to mention the upcoming release of Leatherheads, the first movie he's directed since his Oscar winner, Good Night, and Good Luck, in 2005.
Clooney's stock is trading at $46, down from a career high in 2000, the year of The Perfect Storm and O Brother, Where Art Thou?
"What's Damon at?" Clooney asks. "He should be way up. Forbes did something recently where they said he's the most bankable star."
Martin Schoeller
I type in Matt Damon. "Damon's at $83. Damon Wayans is at $1.54."
"That hurts," he says. "That's unfair to Damon Wayans."
We play a guessing game to see who's highest: Hanks clocks in at $139. Cruise is $116. Depp -- $115. Will Smith wins at $168.
"It's not necessarily just payday and numbers," he says, perhaps relieved. "Because if it was just numbers, Johnny Depp would kill everybody."
Part II: clooney+handsome
The fact that George Clooney is handsome is an a priori truth. Triangles have three sides, and Clooney is handsome. Yet the terrible thing about the Internet is that even a priori truths are called into question.
We are logged on to a Facebook group called "George Clooney is NOT the sexiest man alive."
"Ninety-four members," says Clooney as he looks at the photo of himself with a red X through it. "What the fuck?"
He reads the site's manifesto aloud:
I for one am sick and tired of George Clooney thinking hes the sexiest man alive, like jesus hes so old! It's just not right. That man is so full of himself it isn't funny. Join this group if you totally agree with me.
"Should I defend myself in this one?"
Clooney dictates and I type:
That's bullshit. He looks great for a 70-year-old.
Clooney likes to make jokes about how he's an alterkocker. It helps, of course, when the visible ravages of age are confined to a few gray hairs. It's also easier when you've had your eyes done. Or at least that's what a bunch of celebrity sites claim. Clooney reads aloud from one:
In a bold and unprecedented move for a celebrity, George Clooney openly admitted to having cosmetic surgery.
"I love this one," he says. "This was everywhere. Oprah did a show where Julia Roberts and I interviewed each other. And Julia said, 'Would you ever consider plastic surgery?' And I said, 'I got my eyes done, what do you think?' "
Clooney opens his eyes wide, like Betty Boop.
"I was in Italy when it aired, and all of a sudden it was all over the Italian papers. Once it switches languages and loses all sense of irony, and it's bouncing back and forth.... They used to say you can't make a joke in print, but you can get away with it on film. But now you can't get away with it there."
He pauses.
"I did get my balls done, though. I got them unwrinkled. It's the new thing in Hollywood -- ball ironing."
Clooney has also been accused of having hair plugs. That libel came after his role in Syriana, for which -- to appear more schlubby -- he shaved back the hair on his temples. In fact, he claims he's got the opposite problem, an advancing hairline: He's got a widow's peak that he shaves. "Right here," he says. "Feel."
I've never felt another man's widow's-peak stubble. But Clooney makes the invitation with such ease and confidence, it seems impolite to turn him down.
"Nice, isn't it?"
I decide to raise the stakes: CelebHeights.com.
It features a bizarrely impassioned debate about Clooney's height -- with participants arguing for everything from five nine to six one and analyses of his footwear and comparisons to Javier Bardem's stature.
Deadman15 writes:
The thing i did notice is he doesnt have the best posture (as stated here many times before), and he does do the head tilt thing alot.
"Yes, I slouch," Clooney says. "My mother tells me that."
So what's the truth? According to the man himself, he's five eleven and a half.
"I saw Donald Trump on Larry King, and he was saying [here Clooney goes into a Trump impression], 'Clooney is a very short guy. I mean, he's a tiny guy.... I don't want to knock the guy, but he's very small.' I met Donald Trump once, and I was sitting at a table. He came over, shook my hand, and walked away. I guess I looked about three foot five sitting at the table."
Part III: clooney+sex
Clooney's publicist is sitting on a long couch across the room. He's been tapping out text messages, trying to put out a fire. Seems an impostor has been claiming that Clooney's coming to the Ford Models party tonight. He's not. But as far as hoaxes go, this is a believable one.
I decide Clooney is ready to see a bit about his swinging single life. We start with an article in a South African newspaper titled I WAS CLOONEY'S VIRGIN LOVE. Clooney reads it out loud:
Sexy George Clooney gathered a trembling 18-year-old virgin in his arms, laid her down on his bed, and made such gently passionate, non-penetrative love to her that -- 10 years later -- she still shudders when she recalls the terrific orgasm.
Actress Claudia Wells . . . told Britain's News of the World: "I know a lot of women will think I was crazy not to have had full sex with him, but I've never regretted it. Even without full intercourse the sex was terrific.
He stops. "I know who Claudia Wells is. I can't imagine she said this."
So is he denying he gave her a shudder-inducing orgasm?
"I don't think that one is true. But it was twenty years ago, so maybe I did."
I tell Clooney that I wish I was in a position not to know whether I gave someone a terrific orgasm.
"Yeah, I know. But twenty years ago -- I'm having trouble remembering the penetrative love I had."
(For the record, Wells says, "I've been trying to get them to take that down for years," but otherwise declines to comment.)
I click onto a site that features Clooney having penetrative love, but this one is admittedly imaginary. It's a fan-fiction site -- a place for Clooney admirers to write steamy short stories. This story concerns Clooney's ER character, Doug Ross, Julianna Margulies's nurse, a hot tub, and words like gripped, caressed, and moan.
Her gentle sucking of his nipples became more frantic. . . .
Their tongues darted ferociously, as if in a contest of whose could get further inside the other's mouth.
"You know what?" says Clooney. "I think this was actually taken out of Bill O'Reilly's novel."
O'Reilly -- who has feuded with Clooney over Clooney's charitable work -- wrote a 2004 thriller called Those Who Trespass. "Do yourself a favor one time -- read his novel," says Clooney. "It's fantastic. It's like, 'He cupped her small, supple breasts.'"
(The actual O'Reilly text: "Ashley felt two large hands wrap themselves around her breasts and hot breath on the back of her neck.... Tommy O'Malley was naked and at attention.")
Back to real girlfriends. I bring up a site that has a list of Clooney's alleged exes, all with accompanying sultry photos.
You've got a lot, I tell him.
"Well, I'm old. I've been around a long time."
Clooney fact-checks the site:
Vendela -- "No."
Celine Balitran -- "Yes."
Salma Hayek -- "No."
Brooke Langton -- "Yes."
Traylor Howard -- "Yes."
Lucy Liu -- "No."
Julia Roberts -- "No."
Renee Zellweger -- "A little bit."
Jenifer Siebel -- "For a minute."
Hillary Rowland -- "Don't know who that is."
Teri Hatcher -- "No."
Ellen Barkin -- "Never, but I love her. She's a great friend."
I show him an article in a Canadian paper in which a psychic predicts 2008 is the year in which Clooney will wed. He's been dating former Fear Factor contestant Sarah Larson for five months -- enough to inspire jealous sniping on Clooney fan sites.
"I think that wedding one is a bit ahead of its time," Clooney says.
Well, last year, I say, this psychic predicted the death of Steve Irwin.
He's unimpressed. "It's really hard to predict the death of the Crocodile Hunter. 'I predict the death of the guy who stands under an elephant.'"
But is there perhaps another reason he won't commit? I show him a site called "George Clooney is GAY GAY GAY." Clooney starts to read:
George Clooney's life parallels Rock Hudson's way too much to be a coincidence. He was married once to some unknown actress --
He breaks off: "No, Talia is not unknown. She's actually very successful...."
He keeps reading:
He dates beautiful women and nothing happens and they disappear into oblivion.
"That's because I eat them."
So . . . any truth to this?
"No. I'm gay, gay. The third gay -- that was pushing it."
Martin Schoeller
Part IV: clooney+politics
We have just finished a discussion of how gay he is when someone asks Clooney where he's going after his New York stay.
"I'm actually going to Darfur."
Clooney, who cofounded the charity Not on Our Watch, has been named a messenger of peace by the UN, and he's off on a fifteen-day trip to Africa and Asia. It's his second stealth trip to Darfur but his first to Khartoum, the highly unstable capital of Sudan. Is he nervous?
"I'm nervous because [the UN] is nervous," he says. "I'm going with a woman from the UN, former U.S. Army. She's a badass. But this is one of those times where you say, I have a really nice house in Italy, do I really want to..." He trails off.
I show Clooney a site that has eight different T-shirts urging him to run for office. Clooney 2008. Obama/Clooney. Sexiest Prez Alive. There's also a Facebook group with 357 members imploring him to run for Senate in Kentucky. Could that be the next step?
He says no, which will be a relief to the folks at celebpolitics.com, a Website that keeps a watchful eye on liberal actors. I show Clooney that he has a conservative-friendly rating of -14. He's a "wacko liberal nutcase." (Though Alec Baldwin beats him with a -21 rating.)
The site highlights a 2003 quote from Clooney:
The problem is, we elected a manager and we need a leader. Let's face it: Bush is just dim.
"That was 2003?" he says now. "Gee, gosh, I was wrong about that. Bush turned out to be really great at all this."
They also rate your movies, I tell him.
"Oh, good. I can tell you which one they'll like the best: O Brother, Where Art Thou? That's my bet. Because when I'm around conservative cats, they'll go [in a southern accent], 'I do like that O Brother, Where Art Thou? movie.'"
Nope, that one's Toxic Liberal Waste. As are almost all of his other movies.
We click on whitehouse.gov. We're in luck. President Bush will be answering submitted questions later in the day.
"Here's one I've been wanting to ask the last few weeks."
I type it in for him:
Where's Dick Cheney?
"There's a couple of options," Clooney surmises. "They're keeping him out because he's the only person with a lower approval rating than Bush. Or he's out hunting lawyers."
(Bush did not answer the question, opting instead for this one from Gioia: "Who picks your attire for all the important events you attend? Love your ties." Responding, "Dear Gioia, I pick my own suits and my own ties. Thank you for the compliment about the ties, and thank you for your question.")
Part V: clooney+fights
For such an easygoing guy, Clooney always seems to be facing off with someone, at least in Crazyland. Even his friendships are seen as hot rivalries. I show him a site that says he is having something called a "bromance" with Brad Pitt:
They're both very famous and both have been voted sexiest man alive, so really they belong together.
"Well, you know, if I was a girl and he was a girl, and I was a lesbian and he was a lesbian, I'd be all over him," says Clooney.
So I show him something a little tougher. Apparently his most recent battle has been with Fabio, with whom he argued at a restaurant. Something about Fabio's fans taking photos and Clooney not wanting to be in the background of the pictures.
Fabio has just been quoted about it in GQ. Clooney reads about it with a Schwarzeneggerian accent:
He is a dog whose noise is worse than his bite.
"Did he really say that? He couldn't have said that."
He ate more than he could chew.
"It's like a Saturday Night Live sketch. Nobody says things like that."
I could have beaten the bleep out of him.
"Yeah, that's probably true. He's a big guy. I wouldn't doubt that. There is a moment when you're actually in the argument and you're thinking, If I do get beaten down by Fabio, that will be far worse than the pain. I wouldn't shake that."
That seems to remind Clooney of something else. "Someone just came after me," he says. "Some actor went off on a fucking rant on me, like a drunken rampage. I wish I could remember who, because it'd be a fun one to see."
After a few minutes, we figure out the actor in question is British actor Rupert Everett. I call up the page and we start to read:
Clooney thinks that, provided he does films which are politically committed, he's allowed to do Ocean's 11, 12, and 13. But the Ocean's movies are a cancer to world culture. They're destroying us, Everett told The Independent.
"You go, Where did that come from?" he says. "You kind of go, Dude, weren't you in Dunston Checks In?"
Part VI: monkey+butt
Clooney's been pretty comfortable with all this so far. He's not easily thrown by his own fame or by the brutal assessments of the fame obsessed. But what about the larger dangers of the Web? I realize that I've spent a couple of hours showing Clooney sites about Clooney, but I haven't asked him, Does he ever go on the Internet?
"I go on YouTube when somebody says to look something up," he answers. "There was one a few years ago that killed me. Look up 'monkey smells butt.'"
I type it in. Up pops a video of a chimp sticking his finger up his butt, smelling it, then promptly passing out.
Clooney roars with laughter. "He just smells it and goes woooah and flops off the side. That always kills me."
At this point, I make a segue that seemed relevant at the time but in retrospect was probably a very bad idea. "You know," I tell him, "I asked the guy who does the Esquire Website what I should show George Clooney, and he said, 'Show him 2 Girls 1 Cup.' "
"What's that?"
"It's the most disturbing video in the history of videos."
"Show it to me."
"Really? I don't know."
"I can take it," Clooney says. "I'm a grown-up. We're all grown-ups."
"It's scarring. It'll scar you forever."
"Is it long?" he asks.
"No," I tell him, "but it's so disturbing. I saw it once and can never get it out of my mind. I can't watch it again."
"I want to see it."
Well, he asked. After a bit of searching, I find the link. I click it.
After several seconds: "It's not so bad," he says.
Three seconds later: "Oh."
Another two seconds: "Oh, my GOD! Oh, my God!! Oh, my God!"
Clooney puts his hand over his mouth like he's going to throw up. He bolts from his chair and walks out of the room.
Clooney's longtime PR guy, Stan Rosenfield, wants to know what the fuss is about. Clooney tells him he just watched the most repulsive video he's ever seen. Rosenfield wants to see it.
"I want to go at least one second more than George."
"I've got to watch Stan watch it," Clooney says, recomposing himself. "It's like the rodeo -- see how long you can last."
Rosenfield lasts three full seconds before walking out.
Clooney, having regarded himself all morning, now just watches, doubled over with laughter.
Author's note: Please do not watch this video. I don't want any more page views on my conscience. But do feel free to watch the monkey one. That's kind of funny.
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The tepid response from some publishers marks another blow to Allen’s career and legacy. Allen is currently locked in a court battle with Amazon. The streaming giant scotched their four-movie deal, which included the now-shelved film “A Rainy Day in New York,” and in response, Allen sued the company for at least $68 million. In a court filing, Amazon cited tone-deaf remarks Allen made about the #MeToo movement, along with public statements from several actors who said they regretted working with him as evidence that it would be impossible to profit from Allen’s work.
The break with Amazon and the lack of interest in his memoir from several major publishers highlight how tenuous his once hallowed position has become. “Personally, I don’t foresee any work in his future,” said Tim Gray, senior vice president and the awards editor at Variety, the entertainment industry trade publication. “However, it’s possible that history will be kinder to Woody Allen than the current moment seems to be.” He added that “Hollywood loves comeback stories; Ingrid Bergman, Charlie Chaplin and Elizabeth Taylor were each denounced on the floor of Congress for their private lives, but were eventually welcomed with open arms by Hollywood and the public.”
Allen is known for work inflected with literary and philosophical references, and he has a long track record in publishing. He began his career as a comedy writer. As a teenager, he got a job writing jokes for an advertising agency in New York, and, in the 1960s, he began publishing satirical pieces in The New Yorker. He contributed 44 pieces to the magazine over the decades, and last wrote for them in 2013.
His first book, the humor anthology “Getting Even,” was released in 1971 by Random House, and the publisher put out several more of his books, including “Without Feathers” and “Side Effects.” Even when much of the material was recycled, his books often found an eager, if not enormous, audience. (His 2007 humor collection, “Mere Anarchy,” sold more than 40,000 copies in print, according to NPD BookScan.)
Critics were not always kind. Reviewing “Mere Anarchy,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times that “he has sustained a writing style that remains impervious to the changing world around him” and added that “the best of Allen’s old pieces outshine the new work.” A reviewer for The Guardian groused that “even in the smallest doses, these lazy riffs and lame parodies do more to annoy than entertain.”
Although several biographers have tackled Allen as a subject, he has never published a straightforward memoir. In 2003, Allen was close to a deal to sell a memoir to Penguin for about $3 million, but Allen held out for more money. “For this I want a lot of money. The ball is in your court,” Mr. Allen wrote in a letter to his agent that was sent around as a proposal. | {
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Over the last few weeks, we’ve all heard more than our fair share of horrifying news. Most of that news has featured headlines like Northern Dynasty Says It has Trump Backing For Pebble Mine, Republicans Move To Sell Off 3.3 Million Acres of National Land, and House Moves to Encourage Drilling in National Parks. Just typing those headlines made me fume.
While those news stories terrify me, the stories that scare me the most don’t contain headlines that make me want to punch public lands thieves in the face. Rather, they are editorial pieces written by leaders in our industry that I respect containing opinions I largely agree with. What disturbs me so much about these articles is that they contain a seemingly benign but deeply troubling sentiment that goes something like this:
The real tragedy is that we, as outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen, are in this spot because we have failed to adequately make a case for outdoors as a sustainable, tremendously important economic driver—at least not as well as other industries have.
No doubt the outdoor industry has failed to make a strong economic case. That’s certainly true. However, the idea that we are in this spot because we have failed to make a strong economic case is totally off base. And that perspective scares the bejesus out of me because it means that many of our industry leaders think the solution to stopping the shit storm that’s raining down on us is to make stronger, more effective economic arguments. Mark my words, if the best weapon we arm ourselves with is economics then we can kiss our public lands, clean waters, and wild fish goodbye.
There was a time in our nation’s capitol when economics ruled the day, but that time is dead and gone. In case you haven’t noticed, we now live in a world of fake news and alternative facts. Hell, politicians can’t even agree if Barack Obama or Donald Trump had more people at their inauguration. That shouldn’t be too hard to come to a consensus on. It’s certainly far more black and white (no pun intended) than the debate over whether it makes more economic sense to keep public lands in the hands of the public or to sell them off to the highest bidder.
I’m not trying to totally dismiss the economic argument. It is certainly important and a case we need to continue making to certain people at certain times. But it’s not how we got into this spot, and it’s most definitely not how we’ll get out of it.
Having worked in politics for years and gotten an up close and personal look at how the sausage is made, I can tell you that Congress runs primarily on two things: fear and obligation or as a friend of mine recently called it “spanks and thanks.” What that means is that the people with power are those who are feared and those who are needed to win elections.
This may not come as a surprise to you but in far more cases then you’d like to believe, our elected officials are more concerned about their next election than they are about economics. That’s especially true in the House of Representatives (the horrifying spawning grounds of these evil, anti-conservation ideas) because with an election every two years, those folks are constantly running for office. As a result, their north star is public opinion and political support, both in votes and campaign dollars. Put differently, fear and obligation are far more powerful forces than economics.
Nobody plays this game of fear and obligation better than the NRA, one of the most powerful political forces in Washington. When was the last time you heard the NRA make an economic argument? Probably never because they know its effectiveness pales in comparison to the power of their spanks and thanks operation, which strikes fear into the heart of any politician that dares cross them and handsomely rewards those who stand with them.
Vote against the NRA and they will make sure you have an angry mob of gun-toting constituents at your next political event. If you’re politically vulnerable and you cross them, you can bet they are going to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into your opponent’s campaign coffers next election. But if you play by their rules and do what they want, they will make sure those gun-toting constituents are supporting you and will reward you with mountains of campaign cash.
We are a long way away from having the organization and resources needed to purchase widespread obligation, but we have everything we need to strike fear into the hearts of those who cross us. We utilized that weapon last week and witnessed its power when Congressman Jason Chaffetz killed his bill to sell 3.3 million acres of public land.
When sportsmen and conservationists across the west let Jason Chaffetz feel their wrath by unleashing holy hell on him via calls, letters, and social media, he immediately pulled a complete 180. These folks weren’t quoting economic studies about the value of these lands. They were instilling fear. And it only took a few days of that to convince Chaffetz to kill his bill and to issue this statement via Instagram:
I’m a proud gun owner, hunter and love our public lands. The bill would have disposed of small parcels of lands Pres. Clinton identified as serving no public purpose but groups I support and care about fear it sends the wrong message. The bill was originally introduced several years ago. I look forward to working with you. I hear you and HR 621 dies tomorrow.
Once you get past all of the spin and political BS in that statement, you can see that Chaffetz inadvertently showed us his vulnerability, confirmed our power, and laid out our blueprint for success all in one Instagram post. If Jason Chaffetz truly supported and cared about our causes, he would have never introduced this legislation in the first place. Nor would he have launched and supported hundreds of other attacks on our public lands and waters.
The truth is he didn’t care about our causes and groups before. But he cares about them now, at least for this bill, because we made him care. He retreated with his tail between his legs not because of economics and certainly not because of his ethics. He killed this bill because he feared the repercussions of crossing us. He experienced our wrath and realized our power, and it scared the shit out of him.
I never thought I would say this, but thank you Congressman Chaffetz. Thank you for doing the right thing and killing your bill. Thank you for exposing your vulnerability and for demonstrating our power. And thank you for showing us the best way to defeat your posse of public lands thieves and anti-conservation goons.
If we’ve learned anything from Congressman Chaffetz, it’s that it’s time we put the economic reports down, pick up a pitchfork, and light a torch. It’s time to form an angry mob and become a political force to be reckoned with. And it’s time to beat on the gates of Washington and deliver this message loud and clear – DON’T FUCK WITH US! | {
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Screenings to carry on into August
The Prince Charles cinema in London's Leicester Square is continuing its Ghibli anime screenings, which will carry into into August. All the screenings are subtitled. (As well as the Ghibli screenings, there will also be a showing of Katushiro Otomo's Akira on Thursday June 18 at 8.45 p.m.)
- The cinema will screen My Neighbors the Yamadas on Sunday June 7 at 3.15 p.m.
- It will screen Tales from Earthsea on Sunday June 14 at 3.15 p.m.
- It will screen Ponyo on Sunday June 21 at 3.15 p.m.
- It will screen My Neighbor Totoro on Sunday June 28 at 3.15 p.m.
- It will screen Arrietty on Sunday July 5 at 3.15 p.m.
- It will screen Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind on Sunday July 12 at 3.15 p.m.
- It will screen From Up on Poppy Hill on Sunday July 19 at 3.15 p.m.
- It will screen Howl's Moving Castle on Sunday July 26 at 3.15 p.m.
- It will screen The Wind Rises on Sunday August 2 at 3.15 p.m.
- It will screen Only Yesterday on Sunday August 9 at 3.15 p.m. | {
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} |
By populating your current namespace run is much like the import command. However, unlike when you use import if modifications are made to the code that you brought in using run you do not have to use a different command (like reload) to update your namespace, you just need to execute run again and you are current.
These three commands make developing code libraries in IPython relatively easy. You can now write and test code in your notebook, save it to disk and use it in other notebooks. This is particularly useful when the point of the notebook is not to share code but rather the results. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
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