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The documentary Blackfish, which details the history of marine mammal abuse and the downplaying of trainer deaths and injuries at the park, has, as one would expect, been a public relations nightmare for SeaWorld.
Now, the theme park is allegedly manipulating public perception of the documentary and its enterprise.
Most recently, a post on Forbes.com by contributor James McWilliams ("SeaWorld's Popularity Tanks As Blackfish Documentary Makes A Splash") was removed from the site approximately a day after publication (Google has cached the original post here).
On January 2, McWilliams put up a post on his personal site admitting that he had been pressured to change the article, then quit after refusing to do so. "Management demanded changes that I could not, in good conscience, make," he writes, adding that his article "rattled some corporate cages."
A source that requested anonymity told Outside that after the article was published editors at Forbes asked McWilliams to draw on empirical evidence to downplay any suggestion of a causal connection between Blackfish's popularity and criticism surrounding SeaWorld—an impossible mandate, according to this source.
Mia Carbonell, a spokesperson for Forbes Media, said that Blackstone is not a principle investor in Forbes Media, adding:
"In his post, Mr. McWilliams didn't seek comment from SeaWorld, he misinterpreted the company's financial position and he leaned heavily on the work of a controversial author, a decision that made Forbes editors uncomfortable. When Forbes asked Mr. McWilliams to rework the post, he declined to do so and resigned. Forbes has not been contacted by SeaWorld or Blackstone."
A few days earlier, on December 31, the Orlando Business Journal held an online poll asking viewers whether Blackfish had changed their opinion of SeaWorld. A suspiciously large percentage, 99 percent in fact, said that it had not. Given the documentary's profile, writers at the Journal found the numbers to be a little bit suspicious and decided to investigate.
The Journal's staff discovered that 54 percent of the votes had come from one IP address. The owner of that address turned out to be SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment.
In July, SeaWorld attempted to counter the film's assertions with a press release filled with bogus scientific assertions that were quickly debunked by both the makers of Blackfish and independent sources.
More Stories About the Orca Controversy | {
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Національне антикорупційне бюро хоче перевірити законність придбання заступником голови фракції "Опозиційний блок" Сергієм Льовочкіним 11 га землі під Києвом та будинку у Франції.
Про це повідомляє "Слово і діло".
За інформацією видання, детектив НАБУ подав клопотання до суду с проханням надати доступ до низки договорів про купівлю землі Льовочкіним в Обухові та Обухівському районі Київської області загальною площею понад 11 га, оскільки вважає, що її придбання не відповідає доходам депутата.
Як зазначається, в цьому клопотанні є також інформація про те, що нардеп вказав у своїй декларації придбання будинку площею 1 056 кв. м у Франції, в муніципалітеті Сен-Жан-Кап-Ферра за більш ніж 40 мільйонів євро. В законності його придбання НАБУ теж сумнівається.
Зокрема, за інформацією "Слова і діла", детектив попросив надати доступ до договорів про купівлю землі з метою підтвердження або спростування можливих фактів незаконного збагачення внаслідок придбання у власність вищевказаної нерухомості.
Як з'ясувала "Українська правда" в декларації Льовочкіна за 2016 рік дійсно вказаний будинок на 1056 квадратів і земельна ділянка площею 9 387 кв. м, розташовані у Франції. Обидва об'єкти придбані 16 липня 2012 року. Ціна і точне місце розташування не вказуються.
Крім того, у документі записані 3 земельні ділянки на 2700, 862 і 700 кв. м, а також будинок на 862 квадрати в Козині Обухівського району. Вартість цієї нерухомості теж не вказана.
В Антикорупційному бюро пообіцяли УП прокоментувати ситуацію найближчим часом.
Як відомо, Міністерство внутрішніх справ активно розслідує кримінальне провадження щодо Сергія Льовочкіна. Згідно заяви МВС, під час розслідування встановлено, що Льовочкін та Дмитро Фірташ, яким підконтрольне GDF MEDIA LIMITED, у 2015 році здійснили перерахування 100 мільйонів доларів на користь ВАТ "Перший канал" (Російська Федерація) в якості оплати за удаваний правочин з придбання 29 відсотків акцій ПрАТ "Телеканал Інтер".
За даними МВС, під час розслідування також отримана інформація про те, що Льовочкін через підконтрольні йому офшорні компанії легалізував частину здобутих злочинним способом коштів шляхом придбання численних об’єктів нерухомості у різних країнах світу. | {
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VMware has addressed a denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-6957, in its Workstation 12.x and 14.x and Fusion 10.1.1. and 10.x on OS X products.
The affected VMware solutions can be attacked by opening a large number of VNC sessions. The DoS vulnerability was discovered by Lilith Wyatt of Cisco Talos, the flaw could be exploited on Workstation and Fusion only if the VNC has been manually enabled.
VNC implementation in VMware solutions is used for remote management purposes.
“VMware Workstation and Fusion contain a denial-of-service vulnerability which can be triggered by opening a large number of VNC sessions.” reads the security advisory published by VMware.
The company issued the security patches in Workstation 14.1.1 and Fusion 10.1.1., VMware also shared details about a workaround for Workstation 12.x and Fusion 8.x releases that involves setting a password for the VNC connection.
While VMware has classified the vulnerability as “important,” Cisco Talos has ranked it as a “high severity” flaw and assigned it a CVSS score of 7.5.
Experts at Cisco Talos confirmed that an attacker can trigger the flaw on a targeted server and cause the virtual machine to shut down by opening a large number of VNC sessions.
“Since the VMware VNC server is naturally multi-threaded, there are locks and semaphores and mutexes to deal with shared variables.” reads the advisory published by Talos.
“The VNC server also maintains a global variable that indicates the amount of locks that are currently used, that is incremented by certain events.”
Talos published the Proof-of-Concept exploit code:
# There are obviously better ways to do this for x in `seq 0 $(( 0xffffff/2 ))`; do echo “doop” | ncat <targetIP> <VNCPort>; done
“Regardless, the important thing to note here is that the incrementing instruction (lock xadd cs:MxLockCounter, eax😉 is the only cross-reference to the MxLockCounter global variable, meaning it never gets decremented.” continues Talos.
“Thus, as long as and attacker can initiate a bunch of TCP connection to the VNC server (each successful connection increments it twice), without even sending any other datagrams, an attacker can eventually shutdown the connected virtual machine.”
Below the timeline for the flaw:
2017-07-13 – Vendor Disclosure
2018-03-15 – Public Release
Pierluigi Paganini
(Security Affairs – CVE-2018-6957, DoS vulnerability)
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Dear Naomi Wolf,
That's why we are so fortunate to have women like you, Ms. Wolf, who 'get it'. It's so important that we maintain our culture of victim blaming here in the U.S. When women dress suggestively, drink alcohol, or show up at a party or bar, they are asking for it. We know that.
And I'm sure the men of University of Texas particularly appreciate your help. Especially after that recent, gratuitous study by the U.S. Department of Justice citing 1 in 4 college women will be the victim of sexual assault before they graduate. That's why it was so awesome that your piece made fun of Julian Assange's victims. What better way to discourage young women from reporting attempted or successful rapes?
We are also grateful that you singled out that pesky little state of Rhode Island. Rapists hate Rhode Island, the first state to implement mandatory dating violence training for young adults.Yeah, RI Attorney General Patrick Lynch is a real buzz kill. He's even one of the 75 participants (along with The New Agenda Foundation) tomorrow in all day radio show It's Time to Talk Day designed to encourage greater public dialogue about domestic violence. Don't those national organizations know that awareness will hurt rapists and abusers?
They just don't get us like you do Ms. Wolf. We're so glad to have a feminist on our side, phew -- we thought they hated us. For now, let's just keep this our secret.
Hugs,
The Rapists | {
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British Airways and Lufthansa said Saturday that they were temporarily suspending flights to the Egyptian capital of Cairo over unspecified safety and security concerns.
The British carrier said it was canceling flights to the Egyptian capital for a week. The German airline said normal operations would resume Sunday.
“We constantly review our security arrangements at all our airports around the world, and have suspended flights to Cairo for seven days as a precaution to allow for further assessment,” BA said in a statement to Fox News.
The airline did not elaborate on the reason for the abrupt suspension but added that it would never operate an aircraft unless it was safe to do so. A spokeswoman for the airline said "we never discuss matters of security" when asked what prompted the move.
Lufthansa said it was suspending its flights as a precaution, mentioning "safety" but not "security" as its concern. Company spokespeople would not elaborate on what motivated the suspensions. Lufthansa spokesman Tal Muscal said the company has two flights a day to Cairo, one each from Frankfurt and Munich.
The British Foreign Office updated its travel advisory with a warning of the airline's decision. The agency said an estimated 415,000 British nationals visited Egypt in 2018 and that most visits were "trouble free."
It advises against travel to the country's South Sinai region, the Sharm el Sheikh area, where a bomb brought down a Russian airplane in 2015, and areas west of the Nile Valley and Nile Delta regions.
The agency also warned travelers that terrorists are very likely to carry out attacks in Egypt, with most occurring in North Sinai.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"Terrorists have attacked tourists in Egypt in the past," the travel advisory said."There is a heightened threat of terrorist attacks targeting Coptic Christians from extremists linked to Daesh-Sinai in Egypt."
Messages left for Egypt's civil aviation ministry were not immediately returned Saturday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. | {
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Last updated on .From the section Football
John Barnes believes Brendan Rodgers will need time and support if he becomes the new Liverpool manager.
The Liverpool legend has no doubt about Rodgers' ability, but has warned the Anfield faithful they will need to show some patience.
"As far as I am concerned Brendan Rodgers is an outstanding young manager," said Barnes.
Swansea City and Liverpool are in discussions about a compensation package for Rodgers.
The 39-year-old will sign a three-year contract at Anfield and his appointment is likely to be officially confirmed within 24 hours.
Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins confirmed his club and Liverpool are negotiating a compensation package - expected to amount to between £4m and £5m - with Swansea to secure Rodgers' services.
Barnes admitted Rodgers may not have the experience or be the "big-name" appointment that Liverpool supporters were hoping for.
quote I hope the Liverpool fans get behind him and back him because I think he is a very good manager John Barnes
"I think he plays in a very modern and comprehensive way and you can see what he has done at Swansea," said Barnes.
"Of course, [Roberto] Martinez may have started that and he was spoken about and would have been an excellent choice also.
"I think Brendan will do well if people support him. All he needs is to be given time and support.
"The problem that he will have is his inexperience and [that he] is not a big name and hasn't been around for a period of time [so] fans can say he doesn't have the experience.
"For me, it is not important at all. What is important is the quality that he actually has.
"I hope the Liverpool fans get behind him and back him because I think he is a very good manager."
Liverpool sacked manager Kenny Dalglish on 16 May after finishing eighth in the Premier League.
The Reds were 17 points away from a Champions League qualification spot, but won the League Cup and reached the FA Cup final.
Northern Irishman Rodgers guided his Swansea side to an impressive first season in the top flight, including a 1-0 win over Liverpool on the final day of the season.
After parting ways with Dalglish, Liverpool embarked on an extensive search for a new manager.
The Reds were linked not only with Rodgers and Wigan manager Roberto Martinez, but also former Chelsea boss Andre Villas-Boas, ex-England coach Fabio Capello, and Ajax manager Frank de Boer.
Rodgers initially declined the opportunity to speak to Liverpool about the vacancy and instead the club's hierarchy sought a meeting with Wigan's Martinez.
Rodgers's managerial career began at Watford in 2008 after coaching spells at Reading and Chelsea.
His return to Reading was an unhappy one but, after his appointment as Swansea boss in July 2010, Rodgers guided his Welsh side to promotion to the top flight in May 2011, making Swansea the first Welsh team to reach the Premier League. | {
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The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked unexpected and revealing patterns among cryptocurrency traders, according to new research.
In their paper entitled “How Crisis affects Crypto: Coronavirus as a Test Case,” posted to the Oxford University Faculty of Law blog on April 17, Hadar Y. Jabotinsky And Roee Sarel observed that the crypto markets took a pronounced U-turn midway through the crisis.
Analyzing the period of Jan. 1–March 11, the researchers found that initially, both spot market prices and overall trading volume increased as the number of identified COVID-19 cases rose. This positive correlation then reversed and investors began pulling their cash out of crypto and the markets began to decline.
What accounts for this u-turn and what, if anything, can regulators learn from it?
Empirical insights and some possible explanations
The researchers argue that the initially positive correlation between the spreading virus and a rise in market cap and volume in crypto implies that, at first, traders viewed crypto as a reliable source of liquidity and an effective safe-haven asset.
Yet after the number of global cases hit 50,000, around Feb. 28, this trend began to reverse, with investors appearing to respond even more strongly to the number of deaths than to new infections.
Around the time that total cases hit 50,000, they note, the number of newly-identified infections began to slow down. This potentially indicates that traders interpreted an apparent lull in the spread of the disease as a positive sign for the financial markets, prompting them to move back toward traditional assets.
This negative momentum in the crypto sector notably did not then reverse back, even as the number of new cases began again to increase exponentially in early March.
Conclusions for regulators
The paper draws several key conclusions from these findings, noting that the cryptocurrency markets could, in one view, be understood as a source of systemic risk for the traditional financial system during times of crisis — particularly given that the new sector has become increasingly interconnected with legacy financial institutions.
While a mass exit from the traditional markets into crypto can aggravate the system’s instability, the researchers note the lessons to be learned are that regulation needs to be targeted, and crucially, time-sensitive. An intervention that comes too early or too late will be counterproductive, as crypto markets do not appear to respond to the crisis in a linear way:
“Insofar that the initial uptake in cryptomarket occurs due to pure externalities – so that market players do not internalize the risk – regulation would be welcome. On the flipside, any regulation must be careful not to undermine the benefits which make the cryptomarket potentially more reliable at a time of crisis.”
During times of macroeconomic stress, crypto can potentially offer investors a viable lifeline at key junctures — one that should not be stifled by ill-judged intrusion:
“In particular, if traditional markets crash, firms can raise funds by issuing security tokens – which would ease liquidity constraints and reduce the risk of a bank run.”
As reported earlier this week, a crypto-based app that helps users to create a micro-economy in times of emergency has reported a huge surge in monthly downloads during the pandemic. | {
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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has urged the Government to stay out of any military action as the situation in North Korea deteriorates.
Writing exclusively in today’s Sunday Mirror, Mr Corbyn calls for Prime Minister Theresa May to rule out committing any of the British Armed Forces – including for joint exercises in the region.
And he called on Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un to “wind down the war of rhetoric”.
Mr Corbyn said: “In the interests of sanity and safety for the whole world, global pressure for dialogue and diplomacy must be overwhelming.”
(Image: Getty)
His plea came after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Kim Jong-un’s regime was responsible for the crisis over its nuclear programme and must now “fix it”.
In a series of postings on his Twitter feed, Mr Johnson said Britain was working with the United States and allies in the region to find a diplomatic solution to the stand-off between Pyongyang and Washington.
“The North Korean regime is the cause of this problem and they must fix it,” he said.
By Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party
The threat of catastrophic nuclear conflict is once again a real possibility.
As Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un trade threats and tensions escalate, the danger is growing.
We have just marked the anniversary of the last time a nuclear bomb was used in conflict, by the US on Nagasaki in Japan 72 years ago.
Well over a hundred thousand people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from what were small atomic bombs.
Any nuclear conflict over North Korea today would kill millions of innocent people in the Korean peninsula and beyond, with devastating fallout in China, Japan and elsewhere.
(Image: Reuters)
Trump and Kim must immediately wind down the war of rhetoric, as the German chancellor Angela Merkel has demanded. The risks of an unintended escalation into full-blown conflict are too great for the whole world.
North Korea’s latest missile test has been rightly condemned internationally. But the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang risks derailing efforts to move towards essential de-escalation and demilitarisation.
We cannot play fast and loose with nuclear weapons and nuclear threats. Our government must press for measured responses to bring the temperature down.
Sanctions, which the UN security council stepped up on North Korea last week, will not alone resolve the tensions. Diplomacy, security guarantees, and international law are the only realistic route out of the crisis.
(Image: Reuters)
Britain can help pull this back from the brink by pushing hard for the resumption of the stalled six-party talks.
That must involve both South Korea and Japan to be effective and have the clear objective of a denuclearised Korean Peninsula.
At the six-party talks in 2007, North Korea signed an agreement to disable its nuclear weapons facilities. Ten years on, what incentive does Pyongyang have to come back to the negotiating table?
The scaling back of US and South Korean military exercises in exchange for North Korea agreeing to freeze its nuclear programme can be the basis of an offer to reopen talks, with the support of China and Russia.
North Korea cannot sustain current levels of military spending and meet its people’s basic needs.
So the chance of more open trade and agreements are another lever for de-escalation and a negotiated settlement.
(Image: Getty)
Our government must not drag our country into any military action over the Korea crisis, including joint exercises.
There can be no question of blind loyalty to the erratic and belligerent Trump administration.
US-led regime-change wars and the threat of more to come have made this crisis more dangerous and difficult to resolve.
A Labour government would be committed to achieving a nuclear-free world, as are all signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
We can only head off the spread of nuclear weapons if existing nuclear states make meaningful moves towards disarmament.
Labour’s shadow peace and disarmament minister Fabian Hamilton would be dedicated to this task.
In the interests of sanity and safety for the whole world, global pressure for dialogue and diplomacy must be overwhelming. | {
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In the Era of Trump’s America, I must admit that I hardly recognize the very people who raised me. I was brought up by the Religious Right, and went on to become a faithful foot soldier for the cause of conservative Christianity and right-wing politics until my mid 30’s. However, long gone is their commitment to the values they tried to instill in me, and so much else that once consistently encompassed their collective identity.
Sadly, my old tribe seems to collectively struggle to realize they’ve done exactly what they spent the entire Left Behind series warning me not to do: they have fallen in line behind a worldly leader who arose to power during a time of “wars and rumors of wars,” who did so by falsely pretending to be a Christian, but who would ultimately lead them to follow an entirely new religion.
To help my former right-wing family out, here’s the top 10 signs you’re now following TRUMPianity instead of CHRISTianity:
10. You spent 8 years criticizing every move of Obama, but the minute Trump was sworn in you started telling everyone that “Christians should respect the president” and that being “divisive” is a sin.
Remember the you of two years ago? That’s okay, because I do– and you certainly didn’t seem to believe that Christians should “respect the president” or that being politically divisive was any sort of sin.
Here I am recalling you taught me that, “sin is always sin” and doesn’t change just because culture changes. Huh!
9. You think, “but we’re a nation of laws” somehow trumps biblical teachings on how immigrants are to be treated.
You didn’t expect me to forget all of those years where you taught me that the Bible is the “final authority for all matters of living,” did you?
Good, because I didn’t– but it certainly sounds like you did. I’m reminded every time you dismiss what the Bible teaches about the treatment of immigrants with, “But, but… we’re a nation of laws!”
I thought you’d said, “We have a responsibility to follow God’s law, not man’s law!” just a few weeks ago. Silly me!
8. Your church is planning a “patriotic worship service” for the 4th of July.
Let me simplify this for you: there’s no such thing as “patriotic worship” unless you’re willing to simply admit you’re worshipping your own country.
You were the ones who taught me that if God isn’t the focal point of our worship, that it’s sinful idolatry. Surely you remember Jesus saying, “It is written: worship the Lord your God and serve him only”?
Apparently there’s now room for two. Strange!
7. You instinctively applaud when Trump threatens to “bomb the shit” out of people, but quickly push back if someone quotes what Jesus taught about violence and enemy love.
Jesus commanded we love our enemies, and that we never repay evil with evil but instead repay evil with good. I mean, it’s right there in the red words. I still have it underlined from 1984.
But now when I quote that in response to your thinking that it’s all cute when Trump wants to “knock the crap” out of a protestor or nuke a country, you tell me that I’m twisting scripture.
Sorry, but I think siding with Trump over Jesus is… as Trump would say: Sad!
6. You think that having a filthy mouth and boasting about sexual immorality is a sign of being unsaved, but when it comes to Trump you all of a sudden have a “Who am I to judge?” attitude.
I mean, c’mon. I grew up under your guidance and I think we both know that neither one of us ever thought we’d see the day when you became an advocate of not judging. You told me that if I had sex before marriage or used the F-word that it would be evidence I was never saved to begin with.
Doesn’t it seem odd to you that it was Trump, and not Jesus who got you to (selectively) soften up on the whole judging others thing? Interesting!
5. You think it’s God-honoring to refuse to bow to a national statue, but that you should be fired from your job, kicked out of the country, or even charged with treason for refusing to stand for the flag.
Let me get this straight: When everyone obeyed the king and bowed down to the national statue and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused– under the pain of death– to pledge their allegiance to anyone except God, they were the good guys of the story…
But fast forward to present day America, and the good guys are actually the ones who want to force everyone to pay respect to the national symbol? Plot twist!
4. You want the nation to return to “biblical values”… except for all those socialist sounding biblical things like caring for the poor, welcoming the stranger, giving food to the hungry, etc.
So you really want the nation to return to “biblical values”? You do realize that when Israel lived under God’s law (which you love to quote when talking of same sex marriage) also included laws that mandated the rich be taxed, even down to the food they had, and that the wealth was to be redistributed to the poor and immigrants, yes?
Or is this the one situation where you’d rather not remember that you keep saying, “But God’s law never changes”? Confused!
3. Your church spends one month a year celebrating the story of refugee family who fled their violent homeland and secretly crossed the border to safety, only to return home years later where their son became another unarmed person of color killed by the state’s violent security forces because they “felt threatened”…
Yet you spend 11 months of the year missing the obvious. Ironic!
2. You claimed Barack Obama’s election was the result of evil forces, but the minute Trump was sworn into office you started quoting verses about how “God picks a nation’s kings and queens.”
For real, how does this work? Did God only get involved and start deciding elections with the past election cycle, or did you just start quoting this verse after the black guy left?
There’s a lot in this world I don’t know, but I do happen to know the answer to *that* one. Easy!
1. You spent the 90’s saying “character counts” but now say, “We don’t vote for a national pastor.”
Ahh, my absolute favorite sign you’re following Trumpianity instead of Christianity.
Version of you from today, I’d like you to meet the version of you from the Clinton administration. You were supposedly so morally outraged that you coined the term, “Character Counts” to explain why you felt Clinton was unfit for office.
The version of you from today? My, my… as I listen to you explain that “We don’t vote for a national pastor…” I am keenly aware of how having the political power changes things. Totally!
…
So you’re a loyal Trump supporter and a loyal Christian?
I’m not so sure.
You might want to take a more self-critical look and make sure you’re following Christianity, and not Trumpianity. Really!
Dr. Benjamin L. Corey is a public theologian and cultural anthropologist who is a two-time graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary with graduate degrees in the fields of Theology and International Culture, and holds a doctorate in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. He is also the author of the new book, Unafraid: Moving Beyond Fear-Based Faith, which is available wherever good books are sold. www.Unafraid-book.com.
Be sure to check out his new blog, right here, and follow on Facebook: | {
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Congress once again needs to correct a problem it created in the first place. But its recent attempt at a fix of the patent system is not only inadequate, but irrelevant.
Patents have long been granted to inventors by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office if their product or process is judged to be useful, novel and nonobvious. In 2011, Congress passed the America Invents Act, or AIA, which was meant to improve patent protections, but several of its provisions belie that intent. The worst of them made possible the pursuit of challenges to the validity of a patent not only in the federal courts, as was previously the case, but also via a new procedure — “ inter partes” review, or IPR, by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, or PTAB, which resides within the patent office. That new venue, combined with the lowered burden of proof, has made a circus — with lawyers as the ringmasters — of the protection of intellectual property.
Unlike in the federal courts, in IPRs there is no presumption of validity of the patent, and the bar is different in another important way: In federal courts, a patent challenger must prove the invalidity of patent claims by “clear and convincing” evidence, the highest burden of proof in civil cases; in IPR proceedings, however, a challenger needs to show only a “preponderance” of the evidence, a lower standard equivalent to “more likely than not.”
The AIA legislation was intended to offer a more streamlined alternative to the challenge of patents in the federal courts and to stymie patent trolls, who bought up patents they never intended to use. Hedge funds, individuals, and companies sometimes purchase patents not with the intent to protect their manufacture of innovative products, but to sue innovators who had their own, similar patents. Stopping this practice was a laudable goal that made sense for technologies like software code and cell phone hardware, but it was never intended to be applied to pharmaceutical innovation, where the so-called Hatch-Waxman law, which had already effectively balanced the interests of brand-name and generic drug manufacturers by creating a pathway for generic drugs. Especially with regard to pharmaceuticals, the 2011 AIA was a solution in search of a problem.
The IPR alternative to the courts has been widely condemned by patent-holders in a number of industries, chiefly the innovative pharmaceutical industry, which considers it to be unfair, unnecessary, and anti-innovation. Other nonstakeholder observers agree, including a federal court decision that called the panels’ actions “ arbitrary and capricious .” (The Supreme Court will take that case up this year.)
Here’s where it gets weird. A company called Allergan last September transferred its patents for Restasis, a popular medicine to treat dry eyes, to New York’s Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, in an effort to use the tribe’s sovereign immunity as a shield against patent litigation, including IPR. The tribe was compensated upfront and with the prospect of future royalties, and promptly leased the patents back to Allergan. This subterfuge was disallowed by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in February.
Nevertheless, the controversy called attention to the more fundamental problems caused by the creation of IPRs, which instead of addressing the problem of “patent trolls” had created a new set of patent trolls. Thus, at least with regard to drug patents, the PTAB/IPR approach is undermining one of the goals of the law that created it.
Unfortunately, rather than fix the underlying problems with IPRs, grandstanding senators have responded to this case by introducing a bill to prevent tactics like the one used by Allergan, the Preserving Access to Cost Effective Drugs (PACED) Act. But the bill’s author, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and his cosponsors are treating the symptom without fixing the condition that causes it — namely, the IPR system.
The name of the legislation exposes its central fault: a naïve preference for “cost-effective” drugs at the expense of innovation. Returning to the Hatch-Waxman balance is crucially important, because the currently skewed system under IPR puts a thumb on the scale in favor of dubious patent challenges.
Remember, to bring a new drug to market costs more than $2.5 billion . And with patent protection under assault, investors are less inclined to take the risks inherent in funding the development of new drugs. Patients, the ultimate beneficiaries of pharmaceutical innovations, are the real losers.
For three decades, the federal court mechanism instituted by the Hatch-Waxman legislation has done a credible job of advancing pharmaceutical innovation by protecting patent rights while also fostering the introduction of generics. Those courts are still available to anyone with a legitimate case to challenge a patent. In fact, earlier this year, a federal district court invalidated a number of Restasis patents, finding that the ideas they were based on were obvious, in light of earlier Allergan patents.
Nobody should be fooled by the PACED Act. Preserving access to cost-effective drugs requires true regulatory reform of the Food and Drug Administration. And preserving innovation requires an end to the IPR assault on pharmaceutical patents.
Jeff Stier is a senior fellow at the Consumer Choice Center. Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. | {
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Newcastle Jets is pleased to announce that the Club has signed influential English midfielder Wayne Brown to a fresh contract through to the completion of the Hyundai A-League 2018/19 Season.
28-year-old Brown inked an initial two-season contract with the Jets in May 2016, however is now set to stay with the Club for a further season on top of his original deal in the Hunter.
In his brief time with the Club thus far Brown has demonstrated, and been praised for, his quality and contribution to the Jets.
The crafty midfielder scored spectacular goals from outside the box in both his Hyundai A-League and Westfield FFA Cup bows, and thanks to his versatility and vigour has not missed a minute of any Newcastle Jets match throughout the current A-League campaign.
The Club’s number 10 said life at the Jets and in Newcastle sits well with himself and the young Brown family.
“I am delighted to have committed to the Club,” Brown said. “I have settled in really well here, I am happy on the pitch and most importantly the family is happy off the pitch as well.”
“The Club and fans have taken me in like one of their own, so I am delighted that it can continue for even longer.”
“We have got a great bunch of lads and I think that is key for us. We have got experience, we have got homegrown players and young talent that is eager to learn,” he said.
Newcastle Jets Head Coach Mark Jones described Brown as a “very capable player” and one who can help set the standard within his squad.
“He (Brown) has very good attacking instincts, is very tidy technically on the ball, but is also an aggressive defender who wins the ball and presses well,” Jones explained.
“He is a winner and the sort of character that we want in our football team. Wayne inspires others through his hard work, discipline and attitude."
Brown is set to travel south to Victoria with the Club’s Hyundai A-League squad for Thursday night’s round six clash against Melbourne City later today.
The former Fulham FC first teamer said the Jets’ focus is to return to the level of performance that they displayed in the opening three rounds of the campaign.
“I think you have seen from all the results that it is going to be a really tight league because anyone is capable of beating anyone on their day,” Brown said.
“We need to get back to the performances that we had at the start of the season and get the results that we did.”
“We are working hard on the training field day in day out, and hopefully we can start putting some points on the board,” he concluded. | {
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Using happiness scales to inform policy: Strong words of caution
Timothy Bond, Kevin Lang
Self-reported measures of happiness are growing in popularity as alternatives to GDP. This column presents a novel statistical critique of the validity of comparing such measures across groups. Since monotonic transformations of individuals’ happiness levels can reverse average happiness rankings between countries, no meaningful comparison can be made without assumptions on the distribution of happiness.
Economists have long known that GDP is an imperfect measure of well-being. In addition to missing nonmarket transactions, it ignores environmental degradation, the quality of social interactions, and many other outcomes of economic interest. But at least since Easterlin (1974) some economists have gone further, and challenged the view that per capita GDP and well-being are positively related. This has fostered calls to replace or downplay GDP as a measure of national success,1 while augmenting or replacing it with measures of subjective well-being, a position supported in some governmental circles. Others have argued for the purposeful contraction of economies (e.g. Victor 2010, Kallis et al. 2012). Subjective well-being measures have also been used to challenge ‘common knowledge’ on topics ranging from whether being wheelchair-bound reduces happiness to whether students should prefer ‘Podunk U’ or Harvard.
We view many of these conclusions as premature. They have been reached without an adequate recognition of the limits of happiness scales. Our goal is not to provide a litany of concerns – which can be done for most social scientific metrics – but rather to establish that standard happiness measures cannot rank the average happiness of two groups without strong additional assumptions about the underlying distribution of happiness. We expect that even if we achieve consensus on these assumptions, many comparisons will remain unranked.
Any ranking can be reversed
One common measure of happiness asks respondents to evaluate their happiness on a three point scale (e.g. General Social Survey). “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days – would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” Researchers typically call “very happy” 2, “pretty happy” 1, and “not too happy” 0.
But surely not everyone who reports being very happy is equally happy. Even if everyone interprets the question identically, some very happy people will be “extremely happy” while others will be only a little happier than “pretty happy.” These responses represent individuals placing their happiness (a continuous variable) into discrete categories. For example, an individual may decide she is “pretty happy” if her happiness is 60-80, and “very happy” if it is above 80. Oswald (2008) refers to this as the “reporting function.” With three intervals, if all individuals use the same reporting function we can, without loss of generality, define the bottom interval as happiness below zero and the top interval as happiness above 1.
Consider now the example in Table 1 which shows happiness reports from two fictitious groups. Group A’s happiness appears to stochastically dominate Group B’s. Any values we assign that maintains the ranking of the categories shows that Group A is happier on average. But what happens when we treat the responses as representing intervals?
Table 1. An example
The natural solution is to use ordered logit or probit, but it is important to normalise correctly. Any comparison of two groups’ happiness levels must assume their reporting functions are the same. If one group answers “very happy” only when “extraordinarily happy” and the other answers “very happy” when “quite happy,” it is impossible to use these responses to compare the two groups’ average levels of underlying happiness. Thus we need to normalise the two cutoffs and not the mean and variance, as is common.
Using these normalisations and ordered probit, we find that Group B is, in fact, happier on average (-.14 v. -.18). The intuition is as follows. The two groups have the same number of respondents who are “Not too happy” but Group A has more “very happy” respondents. If happiness in each group is normally distributed, Group A’s distribution must have a higher variance. Since Group A’s variance is larger, its least happy members are less happy than those in Group B. When we estimate the mean, this ends up swamping the fact that its most happy members are happier. Stochastic dominance in the categorical responses is not sufficient to rank average happiness.
Moreover, we can easily reverse our conclusion about whether Group A or B is happier on average. Just as any monotonic transformation of a valid utility function represents the same preference ordering, any monotonic transformation of the happiness distribution is consistent with the same distribution of reported happiness. If we transform the happiness function so that h’ = exp(h), we obtain a log-normal (right-skewed) distribution of happiness. A right-skewed distribution increases dispersion among the happiest and decreases it among the least happy. Since Group A has more individuals in the happiest category, this transformation increases Group A’s happiness more and proves sufficient to reverse the ordering.
This is not the result of a carefully crafted example. Starting from the results of two ordered probit estimates, there is always an exponential transformation that reverses which of the groups has higher mean happiness. If Group A has higher mean and lower variance under the normal, there is always some c such that the transformation h' = ech makes Group B happier on average. If Group A has a higher mean and higher variance under the normal, there is always some c such that the transformation h' = e(ch) makes Group B happier on average.
Reassessing the link between GDP and happiness
Are GDP and happiness really unrelated? In Bond and Lang (2014), we used ordered probit to estimate mean happiness in the US in each year of the General Social Survey from 1972 to 2006. Figure 1 plots the relation between average happiness and real per capita GDP and confirms the ‘Easterlin Paradox’: the relation is negative, although not statistically significant. However, as shown in Figure 2, the variance of happiness also declines with per capita GDP. Thus, if happiness is sufficiently left-skewed, the Easterlin Paradox is resolved. If h' = –e(-2.6h), the relation between per capita GDP and happiness is not only positive but statistically significant as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 1. Mean happiness and GDP per capita
Figure 2. Standard deviation of happiness and GDP per capita
Figure 3. Left-skewed happiness with no Easterlin Paradox
What about cross-country comparisons? Using a four-point scale, the World Values Survey assessed happiness in 57 countries. Since few respondents report being in the lowest category, we combined the bottom two categories, which maintains comparability with our results from the GSS. As shown in Table 2 – if happiness is normally distributed – Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Great Britain, Ghana, and Colombia are the happiest countries, suggesting the relation between development and happiness is weak or negative. A right-skewed log-normal transformation (h' = e2h) strengthens this result, replacing Britain and Columbia with Guatemala and South Africa. However, if happiness is left-skewed (h' = –e(-2h)), the happiest five countries become New Zealand, Sweden, Canada, Norway, and Great Britain, all members of the OECD. Note that some rankings are unaffected by the skewness of the happiness distribution within this range: it is very difficult to make Iraq look like a happy place. However, there is great variation among others. Ghana goes from the happiest to the third least happy depending on which of the two transformations we choose.
Table 2. Ranking of countries by mean happiness
Source: 2005 Wold Values Survey.
Happiness research going forward
How can researchers draw appropriate conclusions from happiness data given the problems we have raised?
We could assume we know the policy-relevant distribution of happiness. However, this takes definitive stands on key issues in the field. For example, since wealth and income are highly right-skewed, assuming happiness is normally distributed almost necessarily requires that the marginal effect of income/wealth on happiness is strongly decreasing.
Alternatively, we could assume that only the categories themselves are policy relevant. We could then use stochastic dominance to rank groups based on their categorical responses. While this approach has intuitive appeal, it is easy to construct examples where it leads to the wrong conclusion if the known underlying data are placed in discrete categories. For example, actors have high mean wages but most have low incomes.
Of course, as the number of points on the scale becomes large, they can be treated as points rather than intervals, but the assumption of a common reporting function becomes problematic. Using the conventional Cantril (1965) scale with eleven intervals raises significant technical problems since we have only two free normalisations but cannot identify any moments beyond the first two.
We hold out hope that researchers can reach agreement on what constitute reasonable distributions of happiness. For example, we propose the ‘Tolstoy Assumption’: that happiness is left-skewed (“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”). If a researcher reaches a conclusion requiring happiness to be right-skewed, she must also conclude that per capita income and happiness do not rise together. Regardless, happiness researchers must be explicit about their underlying distributional assumptions when drawing conclusions from subjective well-being data.
If we accept the Tolstoy Assumption, some results (e.g. the positive effect of Moving-to-Opportunity on happiness) are reinforced while, as we have shown, others are reversed. Until we recognise and address the unique problems associated with the categorical data used to estimate happiness, it is premature to apply them to draw strong conclusions that inform policy.
References
Bond, T N and K Lang (2014), “The Sad Truth About Happiness Scales”, NBER Working Paper No. 19950.
Cantril, H (1965), The Pattern of Human Concerns, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Costanza, R, I Kubiszewski, E Giovannini, H Lovins, J McGlade, K E Pickett, K V Ragnarsdottir, D Roberts, R De Vogli, and R Wilkinson (2014), “Development: Time to Leave GDP Behind”, Nature, 505: 283-285.
Easterlin, R A (1974), “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence”, in P A David and M W Reder (eds) Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramowitz, New York: Academic Press: 89-125.
Kallis, G, C Kerschner, and J Martinez-Alier (2012), “The Economics of Degrowth”, Ecological Economics, 18 (6): 172-180.
Oswald, A J (2008), “On the Curvature of the Reporting Function from Objective Reality to Subjective Feelings”, Economics Letters, 100 (3): 369-372.
Victor, P (2010), “Questioning Economic Growth,” Nature, 468: 370-371.
Footnote
See, for example, Costanza et. al (2014). | {
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Fans are working on a mod for the Resident Evil 2 remake that restores the original game’s fixed camera angles. YouTube channel Tinkerer Enveloping Sounds has released a couple of videos that show the progress they’ve made on this ambitious project.
The first video shows Leon navigating through the gas station at the beginning of the game while the second (slight spoilers ahead) features Claire making her way through the orphanage. Both areas feature custom fixed camera angles that change when the player triggers some invisible borders. In other words, it’s exactly like the classic Resident Evil camera system you remember from the original titles in the series.
It’s worth noting that the choice of scenes illustrates the difficulty (and potential) of this mod. The sequence featuring Leon and the gas station sees Leon navigate the area with the help of a flashlight. The modders reveal that because the flashlight is really the only reliable source of lighting in the area, they had to design the camera angles so that they work around that crucial light source. In other words, most of the angles still utilize the over-the-shoulder perspective.
However, the second sequence (which benefits from a variety of light sources) allowed the modders to get much more creative with their cinematography. Indeed, it’s this sequence that really showcases how impressive this concept is. The team really has managed to turn the over-the-shoulder Resident Evil 2 remake into a game that captures the presentation style and spirit of the classic Resident Evil titles. It also proves that there is merit to the fixed camera perspective that goes far beyond the old technological hurdles that often dictated the use of that presentation style. | {
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What is DHL Express?
The DHL Express is one of the premier shipping services DHL shipping carrier. It allows you to send your parcels all around the world. It helps in domestic as well as international shipping.
The ELEX WooCommerce DHL Shipping Plugin with Print Label is a WordPress/WooCommerce extension that helps you display DHL shipping rates on the cart and checkout pages, print labels from within WooCommerce, pack items automatically into boxes, and track DHL shipment.
This plugin is Verified by DHL International (UK) Ltd. This plugin will work in all countries where DHL Express service is available.
What is DHL Paket?
DHL Paket is a special service from DHL that allows you to send small and large parcels fast and securely within Germany. It is a fast delivery service that takes approximately 1-2 business days, provides insurance coverage up to 500 euros, provides DHL shipment tracking online, and includes climate-friendly shipping.
The ELEX WooCommerce DHL Paket Shipping (Versand) Plugin allows you to pay postage and print label using DHL Paket, from an order view page in the WordPress Admin. If you also need the shipping rates to be shown on the checkout page, you may need to set the weight and zone-based rates manually. For this, you can make use of DHL Express or any other weight-based shipping solution.
This plugin has been Approved by DHL Paket Quality Control and allocated an official App Id for integration. The DHL business customer shipping API permits the management of shipments and the online purchase of postage and is typically aimed at senders with a volume of more than 200 shipments per year. For DHL business customers who do not have a DHL business customer account (EXP), and who have a shipment volume less than 200 shipments per year, shipping documents are created via the private customer shipping API.
The business customer shipping API takes care of:
The preparation of shipping documents for national and international shipping.
Creation of export documents.
Booking or cancellation of a pick-up request for a shipment from any point of origin and delivery to any destination location.
Retrieval of labels.
All operations apart from those required for booking and canceling pick-ups are available for the following shipping types: Day Definite (DD) and Time Definite (TD).
What is DHL eCommerce?
Looking for standard domestic and international parcel pick-up, delivery and return solutions for business customers as well as e-commerce logistics and facilitation services? Here is the solution! DHL eCommerce offers all this and more! | {
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Pop singer and icon Katy Perry apologized during an interview with Black Lives Matter activist Deray McKesson for her "several mistakes" in "cultural appropriation." She made the acknowledgements as part of a YouTube series of conversations and performances.
"I've made several mistakes," she told McKesson, "even in like the 'This Is How We Do' video, about how I wore my hair. And having a hard conversation with one of my empowered angels, Cleo, about what does it mean? Why can't I wear my hair that way? Or what is the history behind wearing the hair that way?"
Pop singer Katy Perry apologized for appropriating black culture in the video for her song, "This is how we do." (Image Source: YouTube screenshot)
"And she told me about the power in black women's hair," Perry continued, "and how beautiful it is, and the struggle, and I listened, and I heard and I didn't know, and I won't ever understand some of those things because of who I am. I will never understand but I can educate myself and that's what I'm trying to do along the way."
"And even in, you know, my intention to appreciate Japanese culture, I did it wrong, with a performance," she explained. "And I didn't know that I did it wrong until I heard people saying I did it wrong."
Perry was referring to her 2013 performance at the American Music Awards show that was called "racist" by some because of the Japanese elements she used, including dressing up as a Geisha.
"And sometimes that's what it takes, it takes someone to say, out of compassion," she continued, "out of love, 'Hey do you— This is where the origin is, and do you understand?' And not just like a clap back, you know."
Katy Perry's performance inspired by Japanese culture in 2013 was called racist by some. (Image Source: YouTube screenshot)
"Because it's hard to hear those clap backs," she said. "Your ego just wants to turn from them. And I've been so grateful to have great teachers and great friends who will really hold me accountable. Even when I said that I wasn't feminist because I didn't know what that word meant."
"You know someone pulled me aside," she continued, "in a quiet space, and didn't shame, didn't judge me. My friend Shanon, she just said, 'Sweetheart, I love you, and I just want to show you what the Webster's definition in the dictionary says about what it is to be a feminist. And it's just equality.'"
"And so are you feminist?" McKesson asked.
"Yes, sir, I am! I am!" she answered emphatically. "I am a feminist, and I think it's a beautiful thing to want equality for all females for all women."
I think it's amazing that Katy Perry can admit when she's wrong and that she's tried educating herself on issues! #KPWWW pic.twitter.com/CaYUrOqElU — Sarah ツ (@lil_skyscraper_) June 11, 2017
Perry has been maligned by both right and left for her clumsy forays into politics, including a recent misventure where she appeared to mock liberals pining for former President Barack Obama's tenure in the Oval Office. Perry then angered conservatives when she included "open borders" to her solution to terrorism after the Manchester, England, attack.
Not everyone was happy with her admissions, however. Some on social media criticized her saying, "Black people been speaking out against cultural appropriation for years and now Katy wants to be babied because she chose to ignore that," and, "Katy Perry wants to be 'woke' all of a sudden because her career is falling down the drain." | {
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Pizza Hut did not waste any time becoming the official pizza of the NFL. Less than a day after the league ended its sponsorship deal with Papa John's, Pizza Hut signed its own agreement with the NFL
Less than a day after the NFL ended its sponsorship agreement with Papa John's, rival Pizza Hut swooped in and signed its own deal with the league on Wednesday.
Financial terms of the deal were not revealed, but ESPN is reporting that the contract runs past the original Papa John's deal, which was set to expire after the 2020 season.
On Tuesday, Papa John's ended its recently stormy NFL sponsorship after a season in which founder John Schnatter criticized the league's response to players' peaceful protests during the national anthem.
Officials at the pizza chain said Tuesday that the two sides agreed to end the relationship, which became strained after Schnatter's criticism. The company later apologized for the remarks and Schnatter stepped down as CEO at the end of last year.
But the company based in Louisville, Kentucky, is not divorcing itself from the league altogether. It says instead it will focus its football marketing efforts on 22 of the league's 32 teams and its star players.
John H. Schnatter, Founder, Chairman & CEO of Papa John's International, Inc. rings the NASDAQ Opening Bell at NASDAQ MarketSite on January 31, 2014. He stepped down as CEO in December after criticizing the NFL's response to player protests during the national anthem
'The NFL and Papa John's have made a mutual decision to shift from their official league sponsorship to a focus on partnerships with 22 local NFL teams, presence in broadcast and digital media, and key personalities in the sport,' the league and company said in a joint statement.
Schnatter blamed slowing sales growth at Papa John's on the outcry surrounding football players kneeling in protest over inequality and police brutality against minorities. 'We are disappointed the NFL and its leadership did not resolve this,' Schnatter said during the season.
Papa John's stock dropped 12 percent after Schnatter spoke out against the league, according to ESPN.
In total, Papa John's sales were down 3.9 percent between October and December compared with the same time period in 2016. The company pointed to failed promotions and a negative consumer perception.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, left, Papa John's founder John Schnatter, center, and Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder pose for a portrait during a break in filming a Papa John's commercial at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Tx. on September 1, 2010
Papa John's ads frequently featured current and former NFL players, such as quarterbacks Peyton Manning (right) and Joe Montana (left), as well as founder John Schnatter (center)
Still, the company was profitable in 2017, growing by 0.1 percent.
On Tuesday, shares of Papa John's were down 7 percent.
The protests began with now-former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in the 2016 NFL preseason.
President Donald Trump has continued to point to the protests as an explanation for the league's diminished ratings.
Trump also criticized NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who stated that its the league's position that 'everyone' should stand for the anthem, but did not implemented any new rule requiring players to do so.
In November it was reported that the NFL would consider leaving players in the locker room until after the anthem, which was the league's routine prior to 2009.
Trump did not like the idea.
'The NFL is now thinking about a new idea - keeping teams in the Locker Room during the National Anthem next season,' he tweeted on November 22. 'That's almost as bad as kneeling! When will the highly paid Commissioner finally get tough and smart? This issue is killing your league!.....'
Prior to that in October, Vice President and former Indiana Governor Mike Pence left a Colts game after several members of the visiting 49ers took a knee and locked arms during the anthem.
Trump later claimed that Pence's exit, which cost Indianapolis Police $14,000, had been 'long planned.' | {
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said Tuesday that it is investigating reports that a supervisor used government time to recruit workers for private sex swinger parties at his home.
An internal misconduct investigation is looking into the claims centered on workers in San Diego, ICE spokeswoman Lauren Mack told NBC News in a statement.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICEgov/Twitter
It follows a report by the San Diego Union Tribune that an accusation of gross sexual misconduct was made in a complaint submitted to the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year.
The newspaper said employees at the ICE Enforcement Removal Operations office in the city complained that they had been approached during work hours to participate in the parties held at the home of a supervisor in the office along with his wife, who is also an agent.
“The agency takes all allegations of misconduct seriously,” Mack said in the statement. “The matter you reference has been referred to ICE Homeland Security Investigations Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) for further investigation. That inquiry is ongoing and, as such, we are unable to offer further comment at this time.”
The complaint, which has been seen by the newspaper, says the recruitment has been going on for more than a year, and alleges the practice is coercive of subordinate employees and an abuse of authority.
It said workers were approached about the parties by the supervisor, whose wife is also an employee. None of the reporting could be immediately verified by NBC News. | {
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Web typography has evolved in recent years. These days we can see great, readable typography and a number of excellent website designs based on typography. However, despite all the excitement we should not forget about the fundamental principles of good typographic design and apply them in our projects correctly.
Here you will find 50 awesome typography posters handpicked all over the web in order to make your day and free your imagination.
Sometimes you feel just out of ideas. The perfect combination of colors, fonts, indentations and photography makes these typography prints really incredible. So, I hope these posters will free your imagination.
Enjoy! | {
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Livraison en magasin Livraison estimée sous 3-4 jours ouvrés
Votre commande est livrée dans le magasin Auchan de votre choix. Vous êtes prévenu par e-mail et/ou par SMS dès la réception de votre commande par le magasin.
Vous retirez votre commande en moins de 5 minutes en toute autonomie, quand vous le souhaitez selon les horaires d’ouverture de votre magasin et vous en profitez pour faire vos courses. Votre colis reste disponible en magasin pendant 14 jours dès réception.
Livraison en Drive Livraison estimée sous 3-4 jours ouvrés
Votre commande chargée dans votre coffre en moins de 5 minutes !
Votre commande est livrée dans le Auchan Drive de votre choix.
Vous êtes prévenu par email ou SMS dès la réception de votre commande dans votre Drive.
Vous vous présentez aux heures d'ouverture de votre Drive, à la borne de votre choix, votre commande sera chargée dans votre coffre en moins de 5 minutes.
Livraison standard en point relais Livraison estimée sous 3-4 jours ouvrés
Votre commande est livrée dans le Point Relais de votre choix. Vous êtes prévenu par e-mail et/ou par SMS dès la réception de votre commande par le Point Relais.
Souvent ouverts jusqu'à 19h30 et parfois le week-end, les 4 500 Points Relais disponibles en France offrent l'avantage d'être proches de votre domicile ou de votre lieu de travail.
En cas d'absence, ils conservent votre achat pendant 14 jours avant de nous le retourner.
Livraison standard à domicile Livraison estimée sous 3-4 jours ouvrés
Pour les produits vendus par Auchan, votre commande est livrée à domicile par La Poste.
Absent le jour de la livraison ? Vous recevez un email et/ou un SMS le jour de l'expédition vous permettant de confirmer la livraison le lendemain, ou de choisir une mise à disposition en bureau de poste ou Point Relais.
Livraison Express en point relais Livraison estimée sous 2-3 jours ouvrés
Votre commande est livrée dans le Point Relais Express de votre choix. Vous êtes prévenu par e-mail et/ou par SMS dès la réception de votre commande par le Point Relais.
Les 10 000 Points Relais Express disponibles en France offrent l'avantage d'être proches de votre domicile ou de votre lieu de travail. En cas d'absence, ils conservent votre achat pendant 14 jours avant de nous le retourner. Votre commande est livrée dans le Point Relais de votre choix. Vous êtes prévenu par e-mail et/ou par SMS dès la réception de votre commande par le Point Relais.
Souvent ouverts jusqu'à 19h30 et parfois le week-end, les 4 500 Points Relais disponibles en France offrent l'avantage d'être proches de votre domicile ou de votre lieu de travail.
En cas d'absence, ils conservent votre achat pendant 14 jours avant de nous le retourner.
Livraison Express à domicile Livraison estimée sous 2-3 jours ouvrés
Votre commande est livrée sous 2-3 jours ouvrés, suivant l'expédition de votre commande, le délai de livraison total est indiqué dans le panier. En effet le délai de préparation varie selon les entrepôts.
Vous pensez être absent le jour de la livraison ? Vous recevez un e-mail et/ou un SMS le jour de l'expédition vous permettant de choisir une autre date. | {
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Jeremy Olson knows the power good teachers can have on students.
“My junior year in high school – I had these great experiences, great teachers – and I started thinking, ‘These people are really impactful. This is kind of a profession that seems to do a lot of good in people’s lives,’” Olson says. “I was fortunate enough to go to a high school that had a program that we could kind of do a teacher assistant type program, and started in that and I was hooked.
That inspiration turned into action - and now Olson is the Superintendent for Crookston Public Schools. But it hasn't always been easy – particularly, this year.
“We just went through about $400,000 of reductions,” says Olson. “We did end up having to do about 3 reductions as a district.”
“Sometimes you have to have some short term sacrifice to have some long term thriving for the district,” he adds.
Olson says the district lost three teaching positions when it had to pull $1,000,000 from its general education fund to pay for its special education program. And with special education costs rising, state legislators are working to close the gap before more sacrifices have to be made.
"That affects the whole education budget. It means that in some cases, you're going to be seeing teacher lay-offs, you're going to see program cuts, you'll see class sizes growing," says State Sen. Kent Eken (DFL – MN). “It’s not sustainable. And it’s reaching that breaking point, that crisis point.”
“The state is covering about 63% but that amount also has been continuing to decline,” Eken continues. "We, at the state level, need to ante up and take responsibility and be a true partner with our school districts.”
“An investment in our students is an investment in the future of Minnesota. It’s critical that we invest in our schools so Minnesotans are no longer forced to either cover the state’s education funding gap or face bigger class sizes, teacher layoffs, and less opportunity,” says Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan (DFL – MN).
Governor Walz's new budget aims to invest $91,000,000 in special education alone, but some legislators are arguing for even stronger actions and more long-term solutions.
Initially, congress agreed to fund 40% of special education costs, but the current reality is that the federal government pays less than half of that - about 8% in Minnesota.
"It's time to go after the federal government. We have to start a lawsuit. It's hurting our state. It's so frustrating – i can't believe we're waiting this long. This is multiple administrations, Mr. Chair. It's time. Minnesota has to lead. We have to do something," says State Rep. John Huot (DFL – MN).
“Minnesota led the way in ensuring that every child in this state would have the opportunity to develop to their fullest potential. And I think that we need to lead the way once again to pressuring the federal government to live up to its obligations,” Eken says. "There's actually two members of congress from Minnesota – Pete Stauber and Angie Craig, one's a democrat, one's a republican – and they are both working together to try to address this problem at the federal level."
Stauber and Craig's plan would raise the federal government's funding to that 40% threshold over a ten year period - so more teachers can stay in their classrooms and inspire and challenge future generations.
"If we snapped our fingers and had the 40% back, we'd probably look at having many of those dollars move in to our 'gifted and talented' funding," Olson says.
In defense of its special education funding levels, a U.S. Department of Education spokesperson says:
"Since its inception in 1975, the IDEA has recognized the critical importance of a robust financial commitment on the part of the federal government, states, and local education agencies in ensuring that all children with disabilities have access to a free appropriate public education. At the time the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the predecessor to the IDEA, was under discussion, Congress debated the appropriate level of federal funding for special education and related services. Ultimately, they agreed that 40 percent of the average per pupil expenditure would be the maximum level of federal funding that states would receive. While section 611(a)(2) of the IDEA provides the maximum amount any state may receive, it does not require Congress to appropriate this amount. Congress retains the authority to determine the level of funding under IDEA each year.
The Department is committed to improving outcomes for children with disabilities, and if Congress sees fit to increase IDEA funding, we stand ready to support states in this critical work." | {
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Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo is putting up one of the most prolific passing seasons in 49ers history, despite the team relying heavily on a running game while playing in the lead for much of their 11-2 start.
Only the Baltimore Ravens have attempted more running plays than the 49ers this season, which has cut into the number of passing attempts for Garoppolo. But he also has benefited from the balance of the team’s offense, which has kept opposing defenses honest.
At 249.6 yards passing per game, Garoppolo is on pace to throw for 3,993 yards this season. The 49ers have produced only three 4,000-yard passing seasons in franchise history. Steve Young did it twice, and Jeff Garcia threw for a team-record 4,278 in 2000.
“The more Jimmy gets to play, the more experiences he has, I think the more wisdom he has out there and the more consistently he plays,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said on The 49ers Insider Podcast.
Among 49ers quarterbacks who have thrown for 3,500 or more yards in a season, there only have been five passer ratings of better than 100. Steve Young did it three times, while Joe Montana did it twice.
Garoppolo’s passer rating is 103.9. Six of his past seven games have featured ratings of 110 or better. During that seven-game stretch, Garoppolo completed 70.4 percent of his passes for 1,931 yards with 18 touchdowns and five interceptions.
Garoppolo ranks 12th in the NFL with 3,245 yards passing. Of quarterbacks who have attempted 300 or more passes this season, Garoppolo ranks tied for second, along with Dak Prescott and Patrick Mahomes, at 8.3 yards per attempt. Kirk Cousins leads the league at 8.4 yards per attempt.
He leads the league with 40.5 percent of his pass attempts being completed for first downs. Garoppolo has led fourth quarter comebacks and game-winning drives this season against Pittsburgh, Arizona and New Orleans.
Garoppolo engineered three go-ahead drives on Sunday in the 49ers’ 48-46 victory over the Saints. He enabled the 49ers to kick a field goal in the fourth quarter, giving the 49ers a 45-40 lead, when he scrambled for 2 yards on a third-and-2 play to the San Francisco 35-yard line.
[RELATED: What 49ers QB Jimmy Garoppolo did to impress Kyle Shanahan]
“That was huge,” Shanahan said. “Jimmy made a lot of plays in that game that there were some looks that you expect him to be automatic on and throw good balls, and he did.
“He didn’t miss any of the open ones, but there was a number of plays where he didn’t have a good play and he’d keep it alive and made some plays out there that weren’t necessarily there in rhythm.” | {
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This weekend marks the fifth iteration of Smash Summit, Super Smash Bros. Melee's most prestigious invitational tournament.
The event's unique invitation system allows fans to vote in six players of their choice to fill out a bracket containing eight pre-invited competitors: the highest-ranked players at the time of the event and two auto-qualifiers. With the game's top-level metagame more unstable than it's been in years, Smash Summit 5 promises to bring an exciting end to Melee's 2017 season.
No. 1 spot in flux
Many would consider Adam "Armada" Lindgren the favorite to win this Smash Summit. After all, the Swede's dominance at past Summits has been so complete that the event's official trailer centers on the other elite players' struggle to defeat him.
However, recent events have challenged this preconception. For the first time, Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma is entering the Summit house as presumptive first seed, fresh off of four consecutive major wins at Shine, Game Tyrant Expo, The Big House 7 and DreamHack Denver. Furthermore, Armada is coming off a relatively low third-place finish at last weekend's Canada Cup, where he dropped sets to William "Leffen" Hjelte and Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman.
If Hungrybox outplaces or defeats Armada at this weekend's event, he will enter the year-end SSBMRank voting period with a very strong case for the top position. Hungrybox himself is confident about his shot at the number one ranking as well.
"If I win Summit 5," he said, "I'll have a basically indisputable argument."
Another threat to Armada is the new "god" who has risen to challenge him: Justin "Plup" McGrath, whose victory over Armada at The Big House 7 was, if not dominant, far from a fluke.
With Hungrybox, Plup, Leffen, Mew2King and Armada's longtime rival Joseph "Mang0" Marquez lurking in the bracket, a fifth visit to the Summit house is starting to look very dangerous for Alliance's champion.
Hungrybox put it simply: "There's a big six again."
Falcon's chance for glory
This season, Beyond the Summit diverged from its usual selection process, pre-inviting only eight players rather than the usual top-10. Instead, two spots were awarded to the non-invited players who placed highest at Game Tyrant Expo and The Big House 7.
Dajuan "Shroomed" McDaniel's fifth place at the former allowed him to ride into the Summit uncontested, but the process wasn't as simple at The Big House. There, Justin "Wizzrobe" Hallett and Johnny "S2J" Kim tied at seventh and were forced to play a qualifying match.
After a five-game thriller, Wizzrobe emerged victorious, giving the Floridian Falcon main a chance to compete at his first-ever Smash Summit. The substantial voting power of S2J's loyal fanbase helped him qualify during the voting period. Both of these players represent the pinnacle of Captain Falcon play; Wizzrobe's resume is unquestionably the strongest of any Captain Falcon, with wins over Hungrybox and Mew2King, while S2J is playing the best Melee of his career, having bagged a Mew2King win of his own while on his way to four consecutive top-eight finishes at majors.
With two godslaying Falcons in the bracket, Smash Summit 5 has the potential to be the character's best tournament ever.
Fresh faces
This Summit had the most intense voting period yet. Fans poured in donations to help get their favorite players in, contributing to the tournament's $76,567 prize pool, the largest in Smash history. But the six competitors who survived the process represent perhaps the most diverse group of invited players yet, both in personality and style.
Other than S2J, whose five consecutive qualifications have made him a Summit regular, each of these players will be entering Smash Summit for his first time.
The first to qualify was New England's reluctant champion, Jack "Crush" Hoyt. Before the last two Smash Summits, New England's deep pockets and impressive organization allowed the region to vote in its favorites, much to the chagrin of the broader Melee community. Though his fellow New Englanders were skilled players in their own right, Crush is on a different level, having climbed his way up to 23rd on this summer's edition of SSBMRank.
Crush boasts wins over a multitude of top players, including Daniel "ChuDat" Rodriguez, Sami "Druggedfox" Muhanna, Masaya "aMSa" Chikamoto, and, only a few days ago at Too Hot To Handle, Plup. Beyond his notable wins, Crush's popular Twitter presence has ensured that he has fans across the country, making him easily the most popular player from his region to ever attend Smash Summit. But regardless of his popularity, the self-proclaimed "ledge regrab abolitionist" has made it clear that he's going to Smash Summit 5 strictly for business.
"It all comes down to capitalism and wealth inequality," the Boston resident said regarding his discomfort with the event's format. "The one percent of Summit voters are the ones who are funding the whole tournament, basically."
However, Crush's qualms with the Summit spectacle extend beyond his passion for the common man; he believes that top players are forced to debase themselves for the purpose of generating votes.
"People eating onions and drawing on their faces ... that's not what we want Melee to be about," he said.
Despite these reservations, EndGame TV's premier player knows the Smash Summit is an amazing opportunity for him to up his game even more.
"Right now, I'm at that point where I have a need for the highest echelon of play, he said. "This is pretty much the perfect time for me to be going to Summit and playing these people."
When asked about his thoughts on the Summit voting process, Michael "MikeHaze" Pulido offered a more pragmatic take than Crush.
"Overall, that's not the player's fault. That's something that Summit might want to look into in the future," MikeHaze said. "I don't think they'll change that at all."
Though some members of the Smash community were vocal about their disappointment over his qualification, the SoCal-based streamer doesn't take it personally. Instead of getting distracted by critics, MikeHaze intends to take advantage of the unique opportunity afforded to him by the event, which he sees as a chance to raise his level of play and improve both his technique and his mindset.
"Going to Summit's been a dream of mine ever since they announced the first one," MikeHaze said. "It was always my goal to go there as a competitor and as a player."
After a career marked by injuries, multiple retirements and controversial but career-saving technology, Aziz "Hax" Al-Yami is Melee's prodigal son, and this Summit is his chance to return to the big stage.
The NYC legend was ranked No. 8 on 2014's global rankings, and his star was poised to rise even higher when hand injuries forced him to retire in 2015. In early 2017, Hax returned to the game using a box-style controller that allowed him to play Melee without causing further damage to his arthritis-ridden appendages.
Though the use of these controllers at major events has been a source of spirited debate, Hax has made an impressive return, scoring victories over top-100 players such as Roustane "Kage" Benzeguir and Alex "Captain Smuckers" Cottrell and climbing back to a top-four ranking within his region. And no ruleset will be holding Hax back this weekend: With Beyond the Summit's blessing, the fan favorite and former Falcon main will be wielding his "B0XX" at Smash Summit 5.
Due to his inability to travel often, Michelangelo "Blea Gelo" Greco may be the invitational's least prominent participant. Despite his obscurity, those who have been following Melee for a while know that South Florida's best player is no slouch. He's notched career wins over titans such as Wizzrobe, Druggedfox and Mustafa "Ice" Akcakaya.
Voted in on a wave of support from Luigi mains, Florida's Melee scene and fans from his homeland, Blea is confident in his skills.
"I don't look for the comments on Reddit," the Venezuela native said. "I know how much I've played this game and what I'm capable of, and I know that I have not traveled as much as other players, but I don't care. I'm just going to go do some Melee and change their mind."
Blea's boisterous personality is reflected by his character of choice: Luigi. As the first Luigi player to ever qualify for Smash Summit, he made it clear that he is competing not only for himself but to elevate his character's metagame and aid his Luigi brethren. After all, Blea said, "there's no competition to be the best Luigi right now. ... We are not competing to be the best Luigi, we're competing to be the best in the world."
While it's unusual for a Luigi to be in the Smash Summit 5 bracket, aMSa's Yoshi is an even more uncommon sight.
The Japanese player's popularity was made evident during the voting process: After he failed to qualify during the first two rounds of voting, a massive groundswell of support helped aMSa amass 120,595 votes, thousands more than his closest competition. While aMSa's is highest-ranked player of his nation and character, his recent results have been stellar by any metric. At Game Tyrant Expo, aMSa defeated Plup 2-0 on his way to a ninth-place finish, and at The Big House 7, he achieved a respectable 13th-place finish with victories over Colin "Colbol" Green and Ryan Ford. There's no doubt that the Red Yoshi has everything it takes to make a run at this weekend's event.
Although most players who are voted into Smash Summit have failed to make deep bracket runs, every competitor who will cross the Summit house's threshold this weekend has the skills necessary to pull upsets and make a splash. In 2017, Melee fans have already seen the impossible become possible: Plup has vanquished Armada, S2J has defeated Mew2King and Hungrybox, not Mango or Armada, sits atop the metagame.
And while Armada will do everything he can to continue his dominant streak at this event, the outcome of Smash Summit 5 is very much up in the air. There's only way to know what's going to happen this weekend: sit down, tune in, and see for yourself. | {
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Lots of parallels between History’s new 1950s-set UFO drama series Project Blue Book and today. Both then, and now, there is a high level of mistrust in the government and in science, cast and creators agreed Thursday at TCA.
Presumably that’s some comfort to people living in Donald Trump’s America, who might otherwise think we are living in the worst of times, a TV critic suggested.
Created and written by David O’Leary, Project Blue Book chronicles the top-secret true U.S. Air Force-sponsored investigations into UFO-related phenomena, known as Project Blue Book. Aidan Gillen stars as Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a college professor recruited to spearhead a clandestine operation researching thousands of cases, many of which never were solved. Each episode draws from the actual files, blending UFO theories with authentic historical events from one of the most mysterious eras in U.S. history.
“Blue Book was one of the original Fake News,” agreed EP/writer Sean Jablonski. People today like to think of the ’50s as “the good old days,” but the era brought us McCarthyism and a cold war with Russia.
One of the most dramatic lines from the trailer is one in which a general shouts, “The Russian have nothing to do with this!” actor Neal McDonough, who plays Gen. James Harding, pointed out. Which also struck TV critics the week after the disastrous Helsinki summit between President Trump and Vladimir Putin.
The government back then was working hard to make sure people did not find out about the investigation, lest it cause “massive problems in America and other countries,” added McDonough.
One prevailing theory at that time was that aliens were coming to visit our nuclear test sites because they were worried what we were up to, cast member Michael Malarkey said. Nuclear test sites are a hot button issue today too.
McDonough praised the show as one of few on the small screen that familiies can sit around and watch and then discuss.
“I have been in plenty of shows my kids aren’t going to be able to watch,” he said joking about “that great family show Justified?!”
Describing himself as a “devout Christian,” McDonough said the show “made me really think what if there was another plan.
“I look at the sky now and think differently after doing a show like this.”
One TV critic wondered how much of the series is based on the file and to what degree “you X-File-d it.”
Jablonski split the baby, saying so much of the real reports were “fascinating already,” but they also wanted to “make sure it’s wonderful drama.”
Creator David O’Leary suggested the universe is likely “teaming with life.”
Project Blue Book hails from A+E Studios and Compari Entertainment, a division of Robert Zemeckis’ ImageMovers. | {
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Update (21 March 2019): my book Mastering Distributed Tracing is out!
In Go 1.7 we have a new package net/http/httptrace that provides a convenient mechanism for observing what happens during an HTTP request. In this article I will show how it can be used in the context of distributed tracing, by using OpenTracing API to instrument a client and a server and visualize the results in Zipkin UI.
First, a bit of an introduction.
What is Distributed Tracing and OpenTracing?
Distributed tracing is a technique for monitoring and profiling systems built on microservices architecture, popularized by such systems as X-Trace, Google’s Dapper and Twitter’s Zipkin. At its foundation is the idea of distributed context propagation, which involves associating certain metadata with every request as it enters the system, and propagating that metadata across thread and process boundaries as the request execution fans out to other microservices. If we assign a unique ID to each inbound request and carry it as part of the distributed context, we can then stitch together various profiling data from multiple threads and multiple processes into a single “trace” that represents the execution of the request by our system.
Distributed tracing requires instrumentation of the application code (or the frameworks it uses) with profiling hooks and a context propagation mechanism. When we, at Uber, started building our distributed tracing system, we soon realized that there was no good API we could offer to developers that was internally consistent across programming languages, and was not strongly tied to a particular tracing system. It turned out we were not alone in that thinking, and in October 2015 a new community was formed that gave birth to the OpenTracing API, an open, vendor-neutral, language-agnostic standard for distributed tracing. You can read more about it in Ben Sigelman’s article about the motivations and design principles behind OpenTracing.
Show me the code already!
Alright then. Sheeesh…
import (
"net/http"
"net/http/httptrace"
"github.com/opentracing/opentracing-go"
"github.com/opentracing/opentracing-go/log"
"golang.org/x/net/context"
)
// We will talk about this later
var tracer opentracing.Tracer
func AskGoogle(ctx context.Context) error {
// retrieve current Span from Context
var parentCtx opentracing.SpanContext
parentSpan := opentracing.SpanFromContext(ctx);
if parentSpan != nil {
parentCtx = parentSpan.Context()
}
// start a new Span to wrap HTTP request
span := tracer.StartSpan(
"ask google",
opentracing.ChildOf(parentCtx),
)
// make sure the Span is finished once we're done
defer span.Finish()
// make the Span current in the context
ctx = opentracing.ContextWithSpan(ctx, span)
// now prepare the request
req, err := http.NewRequest("GET", "http://google.com", nil)
if err != nil {
return err
}
// attach ClientTrace to the Context, and Context to request
trace := NewClientTrace(span)
ctx = httptrace.WithClientTrace(ctx, trace)
req = req.WithContext(ctx)
// execute the request
res, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
if err != nil {
return err
}
// Google home page is not too exciting, so ignore the result
res.Body.Close()
return nil
}
There are a few things to note here:
For now I side-stepped the question of the tracer variable initialization. I will come back to it later.
variable initialization. I will come back to it later. The AskGoogle function accepts context.Context object. This is the recommended way in Go for developing distributed applications, as the Context object is what allows distributed context propagation.
object. This is the recommended way in Go for developing distributed applications, as the Context object is what allows distributed context propagation. We assume that the context already contains a parent tracing Span. A Span in the OpenTracing API is used to represent a unit of work performed by a microservice. An HTTP call is a good example of an operation that can be wrapped in a tracing Span. When we run a service that handles inbound requests, the service normally would create a tracing span for each request and store it in the Context, so that it is available when we make a downstream call to another service (in our example to google.com).
We start a new child Span to wrap the outbound HTTP call. It is ok if the parent span is missing, by the way.
Finally, before making the HTTP request we instantiate a ClientTrace and attach it to the request.
ClientTrace struct is the basic building block of httptrace. It allows us to register callbacks that will be executed by the HTTP client during the lifecycle of an HTTP request. For example, ClientTrace struct has methods like these:
type ClientTrace struct {
...
// DNSStart is called when a DNS lookup begins.
DNSStart func(DNSStartInfo) // DNSDone is called when a DNS lookup ends.
DNSDone func(DNSDoneInfo)
...
}
We create an instance of this struct in the NewClientTrace method:
func NewClientTrace(span opentracing.Span) *httptrace.ClientTrace {
trace := &clientTrace{span: span}
return &httptrace.ClientTrace {
DNSStart: trace.dnsStart,
DNSDone: trace.dnsDone,
}
}
// clientTrace holds a reference to the Span and
// provides methods used as ClientTrace callbacks
type clientTrace struct {
span opentracing.Span
}
func (h *clientTrace) dnsStart(info httptrace.DNSStartInfo) {
h.span.LogKV(
log.String("event", "DNS start"),
log.Object("host", info.Host),
)
}
func (h *clientTrace) dnsDone(httptrace.DNSDoneInfo) {
h.span.LogKV(log.String("event", "DNS done"))
}
We register two callbacks for DNSStart and DNSDone events implemented by a private struct clientTrace that holds a reference to the tracing Span. In the callback methods we use the Span’s key-value logging API to record information about the events, along with the timestamp that is captured implicitly by the Span itself.
Didn’t you say something about the UI?
Just in time. The way OpenTracing API works is once the Finish() method on the tracing Span is called, the data captured by the span is sent to the tracing system backend, usually asynchronously in the background. Then we can use the tracing system UI to find the trace and visualize it on the timeline. However, the example above was only meant to illustrate the principle of using OpenTracing with httptrace. For the real working example we will use an existing library https://github.com/opentracing-contrib/go-stdlib, from Dominik Honnef, that does most of the instrumentation for us. Using this library our client code does not need to worry about tracing the actual HTTP call. However, we still want to create a top-level tracing Span to represent the overall execution of the client application and record any errors to it.
package main
import (
"fmt"
"io/ioutil"
"log"
"net/http"
"github.com/opentracing-contrib/go-stdlib/nethttp"
"github.com/opentracing/opentracing-go"
"github.com/opentracing/opentracing-go/ext"
otlog "github.com/opentracing/opentracing-go/log"
"golang.org/x/net/context"
)
func runClient(tracer opentracing.Tracer) {
// nethttp.Transport from go-stdlib will do the tracing
c := &http.Client{Transport: &nethttp.Transport{}}
// create a top-level span to represent full work of the client
span := tracer.StartSpan(client)
span.SetTag(string(ext.Component), client)
defer span.Finish()
ctx := opentracing.ContextWithSpan(context.Background(), span)
req, err := http.NewRequest(
"GET",
fmt.Sprintf("http://localhost:%s/", *serverPort),
nil,
)
if err != nil {
onError(span, err)
return
}
req = req.WithContext(ctx)
// wrap the request in nethttp.TraceRequest
req, ht := nethttp.TraceRequest(tracer, req)
defer ht.Finish()
res, err := c.Do(req)
if err != nil {
onError(span, err)
return
}
defer res.Body.Close()
body, err := ioutil.ReadAll(res.Body)
if err != nil {
onError(span, err)
return
}
fmt.Printf("Received result: %s
", string(body))
}
func onError(span opentracing.Span, err error) {
// handle errors by recording them in the span
span.SetTag(string(ext.Error), true)
span.LogKV(otlog.Error(err))
log.Print(err)
}
The client code above calls a local server. Let’s implement it, too.
package main
import (
"fmt"
"io"
"log"
"net/http"
"time"
"github.com/opentracing-contrib/go-stdlib/nethttp"
"github.com/opentracing/opentracing-go"
)
func getTime(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
log.Print("Received getTime request")
t := time.Now()
ts := t.Format("Mon Jan _2 15:04:05 2006")
io.WriteString(w, fmt.Sprintf("The time is %s", ts))
}
func redirect(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
http.Redirect(w, r,
fmt.Sprintf("http://localhost:%s/gettime", *serverPort), 301)
}
func runServer(tracer opentracing.Tracer) {
http.HandleFunc("/gettime", getTime)
http.HandleFunc("/", redirect)
log.Printf("Starting server on port %s", *serverPort)
http.ListenAndServe(
fmt.Sprintf(":%s", *serverPort),
// use nethttp.Middleware to enable OpenTracing for server
nethttp.Middleware(tracer, http.DefaultServeMux))
}
Note that the client makes a request to the root endpoint “/”, but the server redirects it to the “/gettime” endpoint. Doing so allows us to better illustrate how the trace will be captured in the tracing system.
Let’s run the example
All source code used in this article is available on Github. I assume you have a local installation of Go 1.7, as well as a running Docker that we will use to run the Zipkin server.
The demo project uses glide for dependency management, please install it first. On Mac OS, for example, you can do:
$ brew install glide
Then get the demo code, build and run it:
$ go get github.com/yurishkuro/opentracing-go-nethttp-demo
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/yurishkuro/opentracing-go-nethttp-demo
$ glide install
# ... lots of output ... $ go build .
$ ./opentracing-go-nethttp-demo
2016/10/06 00:10:54 Starting server on port 8000
Now in another terminal, let’s start the Zipkin server
$ docker run -d -p 9410-9411:9410-9411 openzipkin/zipkin:1.12.0
Unable to find image 'openzipkin/zipkin:1.12.0' locally
1.12.0: Pulling from openzipkin/zipkin
4d06f2521e4f: Already exists
93bf0c6c4f8d: Already exists
a3ed95caeb02: Pull complete
3db054dce565: Pull complete
9cc214bea7a6: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:bf60e4b0ba064b3fe08951d5476bf08f38553322d6f640d657b1f798b6b87c40
Status: Downloaded newer image for openzipkin/zipkin:1.12.0
da9353ac890e0c0b492ff4f52ff13a0dd12826a0b861a67cb044f5764195e005
If you do not have Docker, another way to run Zipkin server is directly from the jar:
$ wget -O zipkin.jar 'https://search.maven.org/remote_content?g=io.zipkin.java&a=zipkin-server&v=LATEST&c=exec'
$ java -jar zipkin.jar
Open the UI:
You should see something like the screenshot below. Note that the Service Name dropdown is empty since we did not generate any traces yet.
UI home pag
Now open another terminal and run:
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/yurishkuro/opentracing-go-nethttp-demo
$ ./opentracing-go-nethttp-demo -actor client
Received result: The time is Thu Oct 6 00:23:22 2016
If you reload the UI page, you should see “client” appear in the first dropdown.
UI home page after a trace was generated.
Click the Find Traces button, and you should see a single trace.
Search results showing one trace.
Click on the trace.
Trace timeline view.
Here we see the following spans:
The top-level (root) span called “client” generated by the service also called “client”, which spans the whole timeline for 3.957ms. The next-level (child) span called “http client”, also generated by the service “client”. This span was automatically created by the go-stdlib library and spans the overall HTTP session. The two spans called “http get” generated by the service called “server”. This is a bit misleading as each of those spans actually internally consists of two parts, the data submitted by the client, and the data submitted by the server. Zipkin UI always picks the name of the receiving service to display on the left side. These two spans represent the first request to “/” endpoint, and after receiving the redirect response the second request to “/gettime” endpoint.
Notice also that the last two spans display white dots on the timeline. If we mouse-over one of those dots we will see that they are actually the events captured by the ClientTrace, such as DNSStart:
Mouse-over on the white dots displays events reported by httptrace
You can also click on each span to find more details, including the timestamped logs and key-value tags. For example, clicking on the first “http get” span shows the following popup:
3rd span details, part 1
Here we see two types of events. The overall start/end events from the point of view of client and server: Client Send (request), Server Receive (request), Server Send (response), Client Receive (response). And between them we see other events logged to the span by the go-stdlib instrumentation as they were reported by httptrace, such as the DNS lookup that started at 0.16ms and finished at 2.222ms, establishing the connection, and sending/receiving the request/response data.
3rd span details, part 2
This is the continuation of the same popup showing the span’s key/value tags. The tags are not associated with any timestamp and simply provide metadata about the span. Here we can see at which URL the request was made, the 301 response code (redirect) that was received, the hostname where the client was run (masked), and some information about the tracer implementation, like the client library version “Go-1.6”.
The details of the 4th span are similar. A couple of things to note is that the 4th span was much shorter because there was no DNS lookup delay, and it was against the /gettime endpoint with status code 200
4th span details
Did you forget about the tracer variable?
I almost did. The tracer is the actual implementation of the OpenTracing API. In my example I used https://github.com/uber/jaeger-client-go, which is an OpenTracing-compatible client library from Jaeger, Uber’s distributed tracing system. Jaeger’s client libraries are open sourced, and we plan to open source the backend and the UI by the end of 2016. The main program in this example looks like this:
package main
import (
"flag"
"log"
"github.com/uber/jaeger-client-go"
"github.com/uber/jaeger-client-go/transport/zipkin"
)
var (
zipkinURL = flag.String("url",
"http://localhost:9411/api/v1/spans", "Zipkin server URL")
serverPort = flag.String("port", "8000", "server port")
actorKind = flag.String("actor", "server", "server or client")
)
const (
server = "server"
client = "client"
)
func main() {
flag.Parse()
if *actorKind != server && *actorKind != client {
log.Fatal("Please specify '-actor server' or '-actor client'")
}
// Jaeger tracer can be initialized with a transport that will
// report tracing Spans to a Zipkin backend
transport, err := zipkin.NewHTTPTransport(
*zipkinURL,
zipkin.HTTPBatchSize(1),
zipkin.HTTPLogger(jaeger.StdLogger),
)
if err != nil {
log.Fatalf("Cannot initialize HTTP transport: %v", err)
}
// create Jaeger tracer
tracer, closer := jaeger.NewTracer(
*actorKind,
jaeger.NewConstSampler(true), // sample all traces
jaeger.NewRemoteReporter(transport, nil),
)
// Close the tracer to guarantee that all spans that could
// be still buffered in memory are sent to the tracing backend
defer closer.Close() if *actorKind == server {
runServer(tracer)
return
} runClient(tracer)
}
The Jaeger tracing system itself is different from Zipkin, but we are currently using a Zipkin-compatible Thrift data model, which allows me to use the Zipkin server to show the trace.
Conclusion
We used a combination of several components to illustrate a simple tracing of an HTTP request, both across the process boundaries and with a deep dive into the actual HTTP request execution:
Standard net/http/httptrace package, https://github.com/opentracing-contrib/go-stdlib instrumentation library, Jaeger Go client https://github.com/uber/jaeger-client-go that implements OpenTracing API, and Zipkin server and UI from https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin.
The source code of the demo is available here: https://github.com/yurishkuro/opentracing-go-nethttp-demo.
More About Jaeger and Distributed Tracing at Uber
Update 2017–04–14
Today we announced the open source release of Jaeger. The example in this article can be updated to work with Jaeger backend and UI. First, start the all-in-one Jaeger backend Docker image:
docker run -d -p5775:5775/udp -p16686:16686 jaegertracing/all-in-one:latest
Now, modify the main() function to use default initialization of Jaeger tracer, instead of giving it a Zipkin transport (only showing relevant changes):
import (
jaegerClientConfig "github.com/uber/jaeger-client-go/config"
) func main() {
// ...
// initialize tracer using Configuration struct
cfg := jaegerClientConfig.Configuration{
Sampler: &jaegerClientConfig.SamplerConfig{
Type: "const",
Param: 1.0, // sample all traces
},
}
tracer, closer, _ := cfg.New(*actorKind)
defer closer.Close()
// ...
}
Run the client and server as before to generate traces, which will now be sent to Jaeger backend, and use Jaeger UI at http://localhost:16686.
We also have a more complex demo application HotROD (rides on demand) on GitHub. See Getting Started with Jaeger. | {
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The WiTrack system provides significantly increased accuracy in tracking a person’s movement, and can even detect motion through walls and obstructions. Credit: JASON DORFMAN, CSAIL
Imagine playing a video game like Call of Duty or Battlefield and having the ability to lead your virtual army unit while moving freely throughout your house.
Gaming could become this realistic, thanks to new technology developed by Dina Katabi's research group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) that allows for highly accurate, 3-D motion tracking. The new system, dubbed "WiTrack", uses radio signals to track a person through walls and obstructions, pinpointing her 3-D location to within 10 to 20 centimeters—about the width of an adult hand.
The researchers will present their findings during the Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation in April 2014.
"Today, if you are playing a game with the Xbox Kinect or Nintendo Wii, you have to stand right in front of your gaming console, which limits the types of games you can play," says Katabi, a professor of computer science and engineering and co-director of the MIT Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing. "Imagine playing an interactive video game that transforms your entire home into a virtual world. The game console tracks you as you run down real hallways away from video game enemies, or as you hide from other players behind couches and walls. This is what WiTrack can bring to video gaming."
Earlier this year, Katabi and her graduate student Fadel Adib unveiled WiVi, a system that detects humans through walls and can track the direction of their movement using WiFi signals. Based on this earlier work, Katabi and Adib developed WiTrack in collaboration with Rob Miller, a professor of computer science and engineering, and graduate student Zach Kabelac. In comparison to WiVi, WiTrack has significantly higher accuracy and can track both two-dimensional and three-dimensional movement using specialized radio waves, as opposed to WiFi signals.
WiTrack operates by tracking specialized radio signals reflected off a person's body to pinpoint location and movement. The system uses multiple antennas: one for transmitting signals and three for receiving. The system then builds a geometric model of the user's location by transmitting signals between the antennas and using the reflections off a person's body to estimate the distance between the antennas and the user. WiTrack is able to locate motion with significantly increased accuracy, as opposed to tracking devices that rely on wireless signals, according to Adib.
"Because of the limited bandwidth, you cannot get very high location accuracy using WiFi signals," Adib says. "WiTrack transmits a very low-power radio signal, 100 times smaller than WiFi and 1,000 times smaller than what your cell phone can transmit. But the signal is structured in a particular way to measure the time from when the signal was transmitted until the reflections come back. WiTrack has a geometric model that maps reflection delays to the exact location of the person. The model can also eliminate reflections off walls and furniture to allow us to focus on tracking human motion."
In other motion-tracking systems, users must carry a wireless device or stand directly in front of the sensing device in order for the device to pick up movement. By using specialized radio signals, WiTrack frees users from wireless devices and allows them to roam spaces freely while still providing high-accuracy localization.
The system's ability to track motion through obstructions could make it particularly useful not only in gaming, but also in tracking elderly patients at high risk of falling. Current approaches to fall detection require individuals to continuously wear sensors or install cameras in the person's home. While WiTrack does not require individuals to wear sensors or install cameras, it can still detect falls with very high accuracy.
The ability of the WiTrack system to perform high-accuracy localization without expending enormous amounts of computational power is a promising new development in motion-tracking technology, according to Victor Bahl, a principal researcher and director of mobility and networking research at Microsoft Research.
"Motion tracking has generally been accomplished by analyzing images captured from strategically placed cameras inside the room. A limitation of such systems is that they only work when the moving object is directly in the camera's line of sight," Bahl says. "Another problem is [that] image analysis is a computationally heavyweight operation."
"The technology Professor Katabi and her students have developed does not have these limitations," he adds. "Their system detects movement without requiring a huge amount of computational power, and without having to be placed inside the room. The surprising thing is that it is very accurate. There is still more research to be done, but the approach is promising."
The team is currently working on advancing the WiTrack system so that it can track more than one person in motion at a time. The researchers believe the system should be easily adaptable to commercial settings. "The system is not expensive or time-consuming to produce and it could be miniaturized for easier production and use," Kabelac says.
Explore further MIT team shows system that tracks people through walls
This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching. | {
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Alone Together in Journey
Journey is a hard game to talk about without sinking into hyperbole. This isn’t necessarily because it is a great game (though it is), but more because it is a game that takes aim squarely at our emotions. It’s not trying to make us understand something so much as make us feel something. As such, Journey is a game best not explained at all; instead, it is a game best described. So please allow me to tell you about those I met on my two journeys.
———
JOURNEY ONE
One: I met One in the rubble of the open area beneath the cascading sand and the crumbled bridge. I had been lost in this kind of pit for some time and was delighted to encounter someone else. They seemed equally happy to see me. I could tell One had never met a fellow pilgrim either, that we were each other’s first. We spent many minutes just dancing on the sand and shouting at each other, testing our voices before we even began to look for a way over the cliff ahead of us.
Together we found the path and continued on our way. We climbed hills and slid down dunes. We traveled slowly, wistfully, more concerned about being together and the sights around us we were both seeing for the first time than the mountain on the horizon.
When One sat down in the shade of a giant pillar and crumbled into dust, I didn’t know what to do. No goodbye. Just oblivion. I looked at the spot where they had been for some time, dumbstruck and sorrow-stricken, waiting for them to come back. They didn’t.
Two: I met Two sliding down the dunes at great speed, silhouetted against the sun. I called out to them; they answered distractedly but didn’t slow down. I raced to catch up, almost embarrassed by my own desperation to be close to them.
We went underground together. Well, I say ‘together’ but Two rarely paid much attention to me. If they got ahead, I would have to rush to catch up. If I got ahead and paused to wait for them, Two would just rush past without so much as a yelp. We were alone together, really, each on our own journeys that happened to overlap for a time.
We came back above ground on the foothills of the snow-covered mountain. As the breeze knocked us around, I finally began to sense some comradeship, but maybe it was just the illusion of shared hardship. Still, we rubbed against each other for warmth, and that was enough.
Halfway up the mountain is a giant lamp in a small room. Lighting it fills the room with a warm, homely orange glow. Two seemed convinced there was more to this room than the lamp and the image on the wall and jumped around it in their frantic-distracted way, shouting at stones and shadows. They were like a moth against a light bulb.
I wanted to move on. We were so close. I stepped outside and called back, but Two either ignored me or couldn’t hear me over their own shouting. I took a few more steps. A few more. I stood on the far side of a narrow bridge, near a structure of some kind. One more step and the lamp room would be out of sight. I couldn’t hear Two over the wind anymore, but I could still see the blue domes of their voice resonating through the walls. I called out one last time, the blizzard sapping my strength. Then I turned around, abandoned Two, and continued alone.
There was no Three. I climbed the peak alone. Cold. Frozen. Abandoned and an abandoner. The peak was right there, but as I took those final, frail, toothpick-leg steps up the mountain, I did not look ahead to my goal but had the camera squarely focused on the path behind me. Maybe Two would appear from behind one of the many lonely graves. Maybe they were cold and needed my help. Maybe they finally followed me.
They hadn’t. I died alone. I transcended alone.
———
JOURNEY TWO
One: I did not meet One for some time. I walked and I glided and then I had no power so I walked. I found orbs that I had missed last time. My ribbon grew and grew. But I was alone.
I finally met One flying across the dunes, riding the small sand creatures. I joined them and together we flew and danced and sang. One’s ribbon was short. They’d jump once and be muted, coming back to me sheepishly for more energy. One seemed almost confused by my long ribbon, and I almost felt awkward about it, like I had just realized I was showing off.
Eventually I realized that this was One’s first journey. That they didn’t really know what they were doing (as if any of us do). I felt paternal. I tried to show them how to jump, how to collect the orbs. I would stand next to the more hidden ones and shout and shout. Sometimes One would actually come and investigate.
I lost One briefly during the great slide, but they caught up to me before the end and we went underground together. I sat patiently on the perches while One tried to climb the jellyfish-like ribbons, while they ignorantly and naively walked right up to the serpents as though there is nothing cruel in the world. My ribbon was twice long as I was tall; One’s barely touched their shoulders, even after all the orbs I revealed to them.
How do you teach when you aren’t even really there? One was on their own dumb, blind, stumbling journey and I was on my own. We were together, in a sense, but we were so far apart. There was little I could do but tolerate their failings again and again. Still, I was glad to have a companion, and I think One was, too.
We climbed the giant pillar, half-flying, half-swimming in the dust motes. I did all the work, raising the dust higher and higher so we could ascend while One floundered beneath the surface, seemingly unable to figure out which buttons would make them go up. I didn’t want to ruin their first journey by doing all the work, but I wanted to move on.
Then, at the top of the pillar, I unthinkingly stood in the light while One was still far below. I meditated. The white being spoke to me, and I woke up alone. I walked out onto the snowy foothills. One would have to find their own path.
Two: I walked up most of the mountain alone. Avoiding serpents, freezing, stumbling in the wind. Occasionally, the bottom of my screen would light up and I would turn quickly, thinking someone was shouting to me, but no one was there. Maybe I was seeing things in the blizzard. Maybe I was hearing things in the wind. I proceeded slowly, constantly looking over my shoulder and stopping just in case I wasn’t crazy and someone was trying to reach me.
I made it all the way to the lamp alone. I stayed there for a while, just waiting. Then I saw the shouts as Two came running up the mountain. I shouted back, but they didn’t so much as flinch. They just kept on running, right past the lamp room. Running and shouting. Not at me, mind. Just… shouting. I followed them, responding to the shouts I knew were not aimed at me. I don’t know what we were saying. We just ran and shouted into the cold.
I thought perhaps Two didn’t care for me at all. But when a serpent attacked on the higher slopes, ripping my ribbon to shreds, Two waited for me beneath some rubble, rather than carrying on while the beast was distracted. Two didn’t shout randomly anymore. They whispered, whispered at me. I responded, then we went on in silence.
We stumbled up the peak together, cuddling and refusing to separate even as the winds picked up and tumbled us across the graves. I didn’t look back this time. I looked forward, nudging the analog stick to walk me more into my companion’s body than towards the summit. We climbed together. We died together. We transcended together.
It would be easy to lose someone as you dash and fly jubilantly and impatiently towards the final peak above the clouds after your resurrection, but Two and I were restrained. We waited for each other. I think neither of us wanted to end this alone.
Two reached the final perch first and was standing there waiting for me when I arrived. We walked into the light together. We did this side-by-side, Two and I. We did it silently. No one shouted anymore. No one whispered. We just walked.
I couldn’t help but think of the person behind the pilgrim, the person under the hood, the person looking in on this world through the lens of his or her own television screen somewhere in the world. I couldn’t help but wonder who he or she was. Where he or she was. Maybe singular-they was an actual-they, a couple cuddling on the couch, sharing the controller. Or a parent talking her child through the game; or a child talking his parent through.
As the light enveloped us, I realized that, really, we had never been together at all. None of us had. We were all alone on our own journeys, occasionally alone together. Alone like lovers on Skype, separated by an ocean. Alone like passengers sitting beside each other on a bus. Alone like customers in a queue at the checkouts. Both there, both together in some spatial and temporal way, but both ultimately on our own, separate journeys.
As a single, lonesome star ascended from the mountaintop (mine, not ours), I realized that this is what Journey is all about. At least, what it is all about for me. Not companionship, not friendship, but the loneliness that is other people. Maybe that sounds depressing, but I don’t think it necessarily is. We have countless stories about how people love each other and how they hate each other. Now, in Journey, we have one about how strangers just kind of exist on their own trajectories, and those existences can sometimes get tangled up for a time. I think that is kind of beautiful.
———
Journey, from thatgamecompany, is available now for the PS3. | {
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Quando quem está iniciando descobre algumas vantagens do Linux, entre elas a diversidade, onde vários ambientes desktops estão disponíveis, por exemplo; ele tende a experimentá-los para, depois, escolher a que apresenta maior benefício – na maioria das vez a “leveza”.
Pelo bem ou pelo mal, descobre que a “preferida” nem sempre vem com o recurso “matador” que viu na outra. Muitas vezes, um mero detalhe, como a falta de ícones no desktop, desmotiva o interesse em continuar a usar. Quando isso ocorre, costumo dizer que não existe almoço grátis!
Escolhas
Você “nunca” terá o melhor dos dois mundos: a completude das interfaces robustas com a leveza das simples. E antes que a decepção tome conta de seus sonhos, saiba que a vida é feita de escolhas. E você terá de optar pelo meio termo que atenda as suas necessidades, se houver.
Quer um browser leve? Escolha um de 1 MB, que não permitirá acessar sua conta bancária ou assistir Streaming. Ou instale algo mais robusto que consumirá uma parcela considerável de sua memória RAM.
Quer um bom editor de imagem? Idem! Quer um excelente editor de texto? Ibidem! Dificilmente haverá uma opção intermediária, que calce suas mãos como uma luva.
E como descobrir aquela distro com “um quê” especial, aquela sacada que ninguém teve antes? Experimentando! Muna-se de paciência, tempo e vontade de descobrir. Pode ser até uma frankenstein, que mistura alho com bugalho e o resultado seja interessante.
Experimente
Não se iluda, que a busca não é fácil. Dá um trabalhão danado, mas vale a pena. E certamente “sua adoração” durará o espaço de alguns dias, quiçá semanas, até que “a mosquinha” da curiosidade o pique novamente e surja a hora do instala, desinstala, instala, desinstala, instala…
RECOMENDO QUE LEIA
5 Erros que todo usuário Linux cometeu ao começar aprender Linux
Esqueça o comando “free”, que lhe mostra a quantidade de memória usada e disponível. Poupe os fóruns com suas angústias, não se torture. Aceite que a RAM é para ser devorada sem dó nem piedade. E junto com a swap, o demônio torturador dos agonizantes de plantão, a suprema glória.
E o espaço em disco? O número de partições? O sistema de arquivos? O tempo de boot? Tudo besteira, tudo secundário. Instale, use, aprenda, envolva-se. Deixe o teclado fluir, aprenda sobre seu funcionamento, saboreie a novidade. Isso é o que importa.
Avante
O tempo em que o esfeniscídeo era para nerds e gênios escovadores de bits já passou, e não deixa nenhuma saudade. Precisamos de pessoas normais que não saibam recompilar o kernel, compilar um executável com, o famigerado, tar.gz, converter um rpm em deb com o alien.
E deixe o preconceito de lado. Se um aplicativo é bom, mesmo proprietário, use e pague por ele, nem que seja um valor simbólico, como faz no android. Ajudará os desenvolvedores viverem de seu trabalho – meta onde falhamos miseravelmente até os dias de hoje.
E nunca se esqueça de contribuir, com seu conhecimento, aqueles que sabem menos que você. Passe a frente o que recebeu de boa vontade, mesmo sabendo que não está no mais perfeito dos mundos.
RECOMENDO QUE LEIA
6 maneiras para você ajudar a comunidade Linux crescer cada vez mais | {
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Advertising Read more
Istanbul (AFP)
A charity has successfully transferred 13 animals to a new home in Jordan via Turkey from a neglected Syrian zoo, including a lioness who gave birth to a healthy cub just hours after arriving, it said Monday.
The Four Paws group last month moved the animals from the "Magic World" zoo and amusement park in Syria's war-torn Aleppo province to an animal protection centre in northern Turkey.
The 13 creatures -- five lions, two tigers, two Asian black bears, two hyenas and two dogs -- were then safely transported by air to an animal sanctuary outside the Jordanian capital Amman, it said in a statement.
Shortly after arriving on Saturday, the pregnant lioness, named Dana, went into labour and gave birth to a healthy cub that was called Hajar.
"The condition of the lioness and her cub is good considering the circumstances," said the charity's veterinarian Amir Khalil.
An ultrasound carried out in Turkey shows the lioness was pregnant with two cubs, raising the prospect of a second birth.
"Chances are little that the second cub will be born alive," said Khalil. "It is important that Dana gets the medical attention and rest that she needs."
After arriving, all thirteen animals were released from their transport cages for the first time since their rescue almost three weeks ago.
Most of the animals will now stay at the Jordanian animal sanctuary but both tigers will be taken to a specialised rescue centre in the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, the group is looking for a suitable home for the two dogs, who are husky-mix.
"Nothing stands between the animals from Syria and a better future," said Heli Dungler, the founder and president of the Austria-based Four Paws.
© 2017 AFP | {
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According to the FBI Department of Internal Affairs, United States Republican John Doolittle was raided in Northern Virginia by US federal agents due to his alleged ties and involvement with former convicted gambling lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Law enforcement sources in the FBI reported that the raid occurred on Tuesday at Doolittle's home, a place where he and his wife ran a Republican fundraising committee.
According to facts released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Doolittle was associated with an investigation into the Abramoff gambling scandals.
Julie Doolittle, his wife, owned a Conservative fundraising firm, Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions. The firm had been tied to Abramoff's law firm, Greenberg Traurig.
This week, Kevin Ring, a gambling lobbyist also associated with Abramoff and who previously worked as an aide to Doolittle, quit his job with the law firm where he worked.
The infamous Jack Abramoff is currently serving a 5.5 year term for his involvement in the Florida-based SunCruz Casinos gambling fraud debacle. A federal judge has granted him a hearing to determine a reduction in his sentence as a reward for his continued cooperation in the Department of Justice probe.
Since his conviction, Jack Abramoff has worked closely with Federal Investigators in an attempt at a reduced sentence.
April 19, 2007
Posted By Terry Goodwin
Staff Editor, CasinoGamblingWeb.com
Source: www.casinogamblingweb.com | {
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Norway appointed on Wednesday a skeptic on wind power and climate change as its new oil minister who will oversee oil and gas drilling and wind turbine installations on and offshore Western Europe’s largest oil producer.
Sylvi Listhaug of the right-wing Progress Party was appointed Minister of Petroleum and Energy on Wednesday, replacing Kjell-Børge Freiberg who was “honourably discharged from his office,” the Norwegian government said.
Listhaug is taking over one of the most important ministries which oversees one of Norway’s top exports—oil and gas—as well as the government’s majority stake in energy giant Equinor. The new appointment comes as political parties in Norway debate about how far into the Arctic they should allow oil and gas drilling.
While Norway’s oil policies are not expected to dramatically change under the new minister who is of the same party as the previous head of the petroleum ministry, Listhaug comes into office with a baggage of some controversial statements in the past regarding wind turbines and climate change.
In an interview with Norway’s VG outlet back in 2011, Listhaug said that “it has not been proven that human CO2 emissions cause climate change. It is mostly an excuse for imposing more taxes.”
Then in August this year, the new oil minister told Norwegian broadcaster TV2 that Norway does not need wind power, and referred to wind turbines as “white monsters.”
In Norway, hydropower accounts for 95 percent of electricity production, while thermal power production and wind power represent 2.4 percent and 2.6 percent of electricity production, respectively, according to Statistics Norway.
Earlier this year, public opposition forced the Norwegian government to scrap plans for large-scale onshore wind power development.
The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate was quoted as saying that the plan received 5,000 responses from the public and most of these “were critical from private individuals who do not want wind power in their municipality.”
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: | {
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COLOGNE, Germany – Senior navy leaders from Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Netherlands signed a pact on Thursday placing a renewed focus on the English Channel as a key strategic region for NATO.
The agreement effectively re-awakens the dormant “Channel Committee” of the Cold War, which formed the alliance's braintrust for defending the sea lane connecting the North Sea to the Atlantic. The move follows a pattern of recent naval strategizing by European nations to fortify their territorial waters against a hypothetical incursion by Russia.
Channel Committee member nations pledge to “harmonize” their naval acquisition plans, possibly to the point of common procurement, the declaration text reads. Countries also want to ramp up the level of their personnel exchanges and joint training, and move toward honoring service members' professional qualifications across the group.
“The Channel area is the front door to Central Europe and an important gate to the Baltic Sea,” the text states. “It is the critical choke point for the maritime traffic between the United Kingdom and continental Europe.”
The German navy has previously set its sights on the Baltic Sea as a potential theater of operations that warrants greater emphasis. Membership in the Channel Committee essentially ensures that both bodies of water that touch Germany, east and west of Denmark, come with some type of naval advocacy.
“For Germany, it's important to not just be associated with the Baltic Sea,” said Sebastian Bruns, who heads the Center for Maritime Strategy and Security at the University of Kiel in northern Germany.
What is yet to come, he said, is formulating naval aspirations that go beyond the country’s immediate neighborhood, namely the Indo-Pacific.
But first, officials here should work to explain their CHANCOM vision and fill out the largely symbolic declaration with a more concrete work program, Bruns said. That goes especially for NATO, where leaders may need help understanding the utility of the patchwork approach to naval theaters.
× Fear of missing out? Sign up for the Early Bird Brief, the defense industry's most comprehensive news and information, straight to your inbox. Thanks for signing up. By giving us your email, you are opting in to the Early Bird Brief. | {
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Korra loved the cold isolation of the south pole. The chills and shivers down her spine, the vast whiteness of snow for miles and miles around, the howling wind that echoed across the plains.
For years, she'd called these frozen wastes her home, along with her trusty dog Naga. She'd left her home in the water tribe to seek out a life on her own and so far, it had been fruitful.
She'd developed quite a reputation as a hunter, catching some of the most sought after beasts of the wilds and making quite a bit of money for herself.
It was a good life, but Korra couldn't help but feel that sometimes something was missing. She had a job, a loving wonderful pet, a home where she could sleep in warmth and comfort every night... But there was something more she wanted, something she could just feel would make it all complete.
Something she couldn't quite put her finger on.
It was on one particularly chilly day that Korra set out on another one of her hunts with Naga. With her skill with her spear and hunting knife, she'd downed a mighty bear with ease.
After skinning the beast and piling its remains into a large sack she carried on her shoulder, she made her way home.
She'd set up her home in a small igloo near a tall mountain. It wasn't much, but Korra just preferred to have the essentials. A bed to sleep, a bath to bathe, a table to take meals from and a loyal dog for company. What more did anyone else need in such a home?
Successful in her hunt, Korra headed towards her home. The sun was setting on the horizon, making the snow almost appear gold in the fading light. Naga kept following Korra, her large paws leaving tracks in the snow.
It had been a long day for them both, but Korra knew that she and Naga had now earned a long rest, not to mention a good meal.
As she approached her home, she stroked Naga lovingly. Naga was living proof that Polar bear dogs really were man's best friend. She had won many a hunt with the help of Naga's nose.
"We did good today, girl," she told her, ruffling her dog's white fur.
As Korra entered her home, she noticed something was off. That morning, Korra hadn't exactly left her home in the best of states, so to see it now, all clean and tidy was quite a surprise.
And on the table was a freshly prepared meal for her. Laid out for her on one of Korra's own plates, no less.
Korra smelled the meal, it was still warm. Whoever and whenever they'd cooked it, it had been very recently. Korra didn't know what to make of it all.
"Oookay, this isn't spooky at all," She remarked.
Naga looked around, confused. She was just as bewildered as her owner was.
Korra sighed. "Well, can't let good food go to waste, right girl?"
The big white dog yelped in agreement as Korra sat down, eating the mysterious meal happily. The food tasted delicious. Fresh seaweed noodles and bream, Korra's favourite. But who had made it for her and why?
When all was done and Korra had bathed and tucked herself into bed, she couldn't sleep. The whole experience was... unnerving to her. It rattled in the back of her head, keeping Korra awake for hours.
Eventually, Korra was able to sleep, but the experience for her wasn't over by a long shot.
For the next three days, Korra returned from her hunting to find the same occurrences. Her home neat and tidy and a new fresh meal prepared for her. The mysterious visitor even baked her freshly baked Kale cookies in her mother's recipe!
Her mystery guest was also leaving fresh treats for Naga as well, something that did greatly please Korra's friend.
But while Korra was slowly feeling grateful for it all, she still had to wonder.
Why was all this happening?
Eventually, on the fourth day, Korra was returning home from her hunting with Naga.
Today's hunt hadn't gone well for Korra. She'd been too distracted by the recent occurrences in her home. She wondered if there would ever be a resolution to this mystery.
As she was nearing her home, she noticed Naga barking loudly. She was growling as well and leaning down towards her paws. Korra knew that was a sign something was wrong.
"What is it, girl?" Korra wondered, before she then looked forward.
Running towards her home... Was a fox. It was red, unlike the foxes Korra had usually seen in the frozen wastes which were white. What was a fox like that doing here?... And more importantly, why was it going into her home?
Cautiously, Korra took out her hunting knife and made her way to the hut. Whatever was going on, if whoever was in there was trying to lure her into a trap, she was ready for it.
Inside, Korra saw a sight that took her breath away.
Inside her home... Was a woman, with beautiful skin. Her hair was raven black and flowed like water and there was a delightful smile on her face. She was completely in the nude as well.
Korra nearly dropped the dagger. Just what was this divine creature? She then noticed something that caught her eye.
Hung on one of Korra's walls... Was the skin of a fox. Did that belong to the strange being? Was she some sort of shapechanger, able to shift between woman and beast? Korra had only heard stories about such creatures, none of them good.
Korra being distracted by the fox gave the woman the chance to turn around and see her. She beamed at her, grinning. Her eyes glistened and sparkled, an almost hypnotic gaze. It left Korra unable to move.
"Oh you're home!" She cheered gleefully, in a voice that was like a melody to Korra's ears.
"Who... what are you?" Korra asked.
"My name is Asami," The woman introduced herself.
"Are... are you the one who's been making meals for me the last few days?" The hunter inquired.
The woman nodded. "Yes. I came to be your wife."
"My... my wife?" Korra wondered. She had to admit, she had thought about possibly finding a spouse for herself, but now one had just dropped into her lap. Was she... Was she what Korra had been missing in her life?
Then Korra looked at the fox skin. "But... you're a shapechanger aren't you?"
"Yes, but I am a spirit and a kind one, I assure you" Asami explained. "The fox is merely a form I take. But... does this form look pleasing to you? Am I... beautiful enough for you?
Korra took a moment to admire Asami's form. She was indeed beautiful, she wasn't going to lie. And... she was being sweet to her. She obviously had no ulterior motive in doing this. Plus, there was a soft sensation in her heart that made Korra want to hold the woman close and never let her go.
"Yes it pleases me greatly," Korra replied, going over to her and taking the spirit's hand. "But if you are to be my wife... can you at least tell me when you are going to cook me my favourite meals?"
Asami grinned. "Of course. I will keep no secrets from you."
Looking at the woman again, Korra blushed at her honesty. It was in this moment... that Korra felt she was the luckiest woman in the whole world. No creature had ever walked this earth that was as beautiful as Asami was to her.
She then did something she'd been wanting to do with a woman in so many years. She brought her close... and kissed her. And Asami kissed her back, holding Korra close, giving her just as much love as she'd put into the meals she'd made for her.
As she pulled away, Korra smiled. "Asami... will you be a good wife to me?"
"Of course, my noble hunter," Asami vowed.
And so, a few days later, Korra took Asami to the temple in the nearby settlement, where they were officially wed. Every night, Asami would prepare Korra's favourite dish, keeping her promise and being the best wife Korra could have ever hoped for.
Not long after Asami gave birth to their first child, Korra soon realised that this is what she'd been missing from her home. She had a family and that family was now the most important thing in the world to her.
xXx
Author's Note: This last one didn't almost get done, but as I write this, late at night, know that I preserved to get the last of these weekly Korrasami things done. I got the idea for this from one of my new favourite YouTube channels (Overly Sarcastic Productions if you're interested) and one of their videos talking about this Inuit myth. Who better to adapt a story like that for than Korra and Asami!
Anyways, I hope you've enjoyed this week of ficcing and the extra stories I've sprinkled here and there.
See you soon! | {
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I have been playing with both Ocaml and Haskell* lately. In Ocaml, I have been rewriting a lot of simple Python scripts I use at work to see how they compare. They tend to be faster and more trustworthy. Ocaml, though, has pretty bad concurrency support. They have some thread library that wraps the OS threads, no real good message passing interface. Even the guys at Jane St have listed that as a complaint**.So I decided to check out Haskell again. With Haskell I have always thought it was a great language, but could never grok it. That sounds a little weird, but reading Haskell code is simply great. When you figure out what it does, it tends to be very expressive and flexible. After looking at what Haskell offers for concurrency, I think that in theory it could give Erlang a serious run for its money. Here's why:- Haskell, in general and in my opinion, is a safer language to write code in than Erlang. One can do a lot of work with Dialyzer to verify their code, but they are still somewhat limited. Haskells type system is very expressive and powerful. Haskell also has ADT's, which as far as I know Erlang still does not. For an idea of why ADT's are so powerful when it comes to writing safe code, see the Caml Trading video. And in this case, by 'safe' I mean writing correct code.- Haskell produces generally fast code. GHC does some impressive optimizations, and supercompilation*** is most likely getting going to be part of GHC in the near future. It should noted that while Haskell can produce fast results, its lazyness can also be unpredictable in the optimizations (both speed and memory) that it performs. This is believed, by many, to be a big drawback to Haskell. I haven't done enough work in Haskell to really say how bad this is but Real World Haskell does give a complete chapter to diagnosing performance problems and optimizing them.- Haskell's threading implementation uses green threads with a many-to-one mapping to OS threads. This means you can take advantage of multiple cores without modifying your Haskell code. The Erlang VM does this too, with SMP support. The greenthread implementation also appears to be blazing fast. Haskell is number one in the threadring solution on the language shootout. Erlang is about 4x slower. Take from that what you will.- You can implement Erlang-like best-case programming in Haskell, from what I can tell. Haskell supports Exceptions, and you can throw exceptions to other threads using asynchronous exceptions. This gives you a way to 'link' threads like you can link Erlang processes. It is still programmer driven, so you can make a mistake, point for Erlang.- STM, while I haven't read up on this, it seems like a pretty great way to handle synchronization between threads.- Monads. When reading up on concurrency in Haskell, monads seemed to often come up as valuable in ensuring correctness. For example, in an STM transaction, one wants to restrict the transaction from doing things that cannot be rolled back, such as IO. This is done by the 'atomically' function taking an STM monad as input and wrapping the output in an IO monad. What this all means is one can't do IO in the atomically block unless it's unsafe. The ability to restrict what the user can do, when one wants to, with the type system is quite powerful.That being said, Haskell does have some clear losses next to Erlang. The biggest drawback is the lack of a distributed model. There is distributed Haskell, I have not researched it much but I'm under the impression it is not 'there' yet. Erlang is easy to learn, very easy. Haskell is not. I have found that, in order to write really good Haskell code, one has to keep a lot of stuff in their head at once. Perhaps this is just because I am new but I have found Haskell better to read than to write. Erlang is not like this, while the syntax has some peculiarities to it, it is not hard to pick up and start writing good Erlang. I think Ocaml shares more in common to Erlang in this regard. The hump one needs to get over in order to write solid Haskell code is a real and legitimate reason to not choose Haskell.All that being said, I admittedly am fairly new to Haskell so these opinions will change over time, I'm planning on putting more effort into writing real projects in Haskell to see how it goes. Needless to say, I am impressed by what Haskell has to offer for concurrency. If I'm factually wrong on anything here, please correct me, this is all based on some reading research I've been doing on Haskell, not my actual experiences.* When I say Haskell, I really mean GHC here** Yaron Minsky's Caml Trading lecture, very good! Makes a great, practical argument, for Ocaml - http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/61*** Supercompilation http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/downloads/slides-supercompilation_for_haskell-03_mar_2009.pdf
Labels: concurrency, haskell, ocaml | {
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/9/2013 (2544 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Pic-a-Pop is about to rise for the second time from the soda pop graveyard.
The popular discount brand from the 1970s and '80s resurfaced after a decade-long absence in 2005 but it disappeared again after its bottler, Angostura Canada, shut down its Winnipeg plant four years ago.
PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ARCHIVES An old friend is returning home. Bart Hruda is bringing back Pic-a-Pop.
Now the retro pop's owner has signed a deal with Canadian Gold Beverages Inc. in Marchand, Man., and at least some of its rainbow of colours and flavours could be back on store shelves as early as mid-November.
"The deal and the handshake are done," said Peter De Jong, owner of Canadian Gold. "We're just waiting for the labels."
"We definitely want to restart the Pic-a-Pop line. We are finalizing the dots (on the agreement). It should be in stores six to eight weeks from now."
Pic-a-Pop's first comeback was in 2005 when Bart Hruda was running a pair of Sugar Mountain candy stores, which specialized in retro treats. He received so many requests for Blue Razzberry, Black Cherry, Grape and other Pic-a-Pop flavours he tracked down its last owner in Texas and offered to carry the line if he would relaunch it. The man was retired and wasn't interested in re-entering the beverage game, so he offered to sell the brand to Hruda, who quickly agreed.
Hruda said he had as much produced as possible before Angostura shut its doors and stored it in a warehouse but once it was gone, it was gone.
He would like to do some small production runs to assess the consumer demand and then ramp it up from there if it starts to fly off the shelves.
One element from the past that won't be revived is Pic-a-Pop status as a discount brand.
"We're going to maintain it as a premium beverage," Hruda said. There are two Sugar Mountain locations in Winnipeg, at Polo Park and St. Vital malls. There is also a seasonal location inside a rail car at The Forks. The original Corydon Avenue location is under renovation and is scheduled to reopen in 2014.
Now living in Ottawa, Hruda was in Marchand a couple of weeks ago going over the ingredients and selecting which of the nearly 40 recipes he'd like produced.
Producing soda in glass bottles in another province or state wouldn't be profitable because of shipping costs in a razor-thin margin game, he said.
"It makes sense if you're going to consume it in Manitoba, you should produce it in Manitoba," he said.
Hruda knows the Canadian Gold plant well, as it produced Pic-a-Pop when it first returned to the market. But as the batches required grew, he moved production to Angostura.
But now with a change of ownership at Canadian Gold, which installed a second production line that handles glass, the two companies are poised to do business once again.
De Jong bought the plant last fall after it had been closed for about a year. Canadian Gold makes its own branded sparkling, still and lemon water and it also does a brisk private-label business. It ships across Canada, the U.S. and to China, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.
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The condition of wounded GOP Rep. Steve Scalise improved to fair from serious, according to a Wednesday statement from MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
Listed in critical condition shortly after the attack a week ago in Alexandria, Virginia, Scalise underwent several surgeries over four days. He was shot when gunman James Hodgkinson, 66, fired on a Republican baseball practice session. Scalise suffered a single rifle shot to his left hip.
MedStar Tweet.
The hospital has been providing regular updates on Scalise's condition, detailing the repair needed for the bullet's path across his pelvis — which fractured bones, injured organs and caused severe internal bleeding.
The 51-year-old House majority whip was among five people wounded after the gunman opened fire at a congressional baseball practice. The gunman was shot by police and later died. | {
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Poll: Voters prefer hemorrhoids over Congress
Catalina Camia | USA TODAY
It's no surprise these days that Congress isn't very popular, but a new poll says voters have a higher opinion of witches, hemorrhoids and jury duty than their lawmakers in Washington.
Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm based in North Carolina, asked a series of questions trying to gauge support for Congress compared with government-run institutions such as the Internal Revenue Service, health problems such as toenail fungus, cockroaches and dog poop.
The findings may surprise some lawmakers in Washington, who are deadlocked over how to reopen the federal government after eight days of shutdown.
Voters say they have a higher opinion of hemorrhoids than Congress, by 53% to 31%. More than seven in 10 voters say they view jury duty more favorably than Congress, which musters only 18% support in that comparison. Even toenail fungus rates 3 percentage points higher Congress.
Overall, voters in PPP's telephone poll gave Congress an 8% approval rating. Nearly nine in 10 voters, or 86%, say they disapprove of Congress — which is in line with a recent CNN survey.
"Congress having an 8% approval rating tells us one thing about how unhappy voters are," said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling. "But it's even more telling that voters have a lower opinion of it than annoyances like the DMV and jury duty, health issues like hemorrhoids, and even witches."
Some bold-faced names making headlines should take note, however. The poll says voters prefer Congress over Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, Vladimir Putin and Anthony Weiner.
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Worlds Of Wonder: On this special day, we check out local comic creator Tan Eng Huat, as well as a couple of made-in-Malaysia graphic novels.
The next time you are in a comic store, or are browsing comic book titles on your mobile device, look up Marvel’s Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu, and check out the name of the book’s penciller.
Yes, the artist in charge of drawing the new adventures of Shang Chi, Marvel’s master of kung fu, is a Malaysian – Tan Eng Huat, to be exact.
Fans (and regular readers of this column) may recognise his name – after all, he was one of the first local comic artists to make it to the big leagues of mainstream Western comics in 2001 with DC’s Doom Patrol.
Shang-Chi in particular sees Tan treading somewhat familiar property, since he grew up reading manga and Hong Kong wuxia comics like Tin Ha and Long Fu Mun, and also worked for five years as an assistant to acclaimed Hong Kong artist Chow Seng on Water Margin, based on the literary work of the same name.
“I grew up reading a lot of Hong Kong comics, and it was interesting to see how I could translate that kind of knowledge into this book,” he said.
According to Tan Eng Huat, Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu is the hardest book he has ever worked on.
Tan tried to put in a few of the things he learnt from his time with Hong Kong wuxia comics, such as speed lines, which he learnt when working for Chow Seng.
Speaking during an interview at the launch of regional comic anthology Liquid City Volume Three in Kinokuniya, Suria KLCC recently, he mused that before he got assigned to Deadly Hands, he was pretty much oblivious to the fact that Marvel actually had a character like Shang-Chi.
“That was the first time I realised that Marvel Universe had an Asian character who did kung fu!” he said with a laugh, noting that although the character is Asian, his foundation is still very much American. “They try to put a lot of Asian elements like Chinatown, dragons etc, and other stuff that is related to Asian culture, but it’s still very American.”
Born in 1974 in Teluk Intan, Tan is relatively well known in the local comic scene, having been a regular with Gempak magazine since 1993, publishing books such as Genocide and Red Hunter under the pen name Kutu.
Tan earned his first big break in 2001 when he met then DC group editor Andy Helfer at the World Manga Summit in Hong Kong. In an editorial at the end of Doom Patrol #1 (Tan’s first issue), Helfer recalled how he made friends with a “really nice guy from Malaysia named Tan” and hung out with him during the summit without ever knowing he could draw. When he eventually saw Tan’s artwork, Helfer was blown away. “This guy was good ... with great waiting in the wings,” Helfer wrote, calling Tan “the most original voice (artist) to be heard (seen) in American comics” at the time.
One of Tan’s most recent comics was the criminally underrated X-Men: Legacy, which focused on former super-villain Legion.
So it was that Tan signed an exclusive contract with DC Comics to pencil the John Arcudi-scripted Doom Patrol, which eventually earned him the Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award at the 2002 Eisners (or Eisner Comic Industry Awards). After 22 issues of Doom Patrol, he went on to work on other DC books such as The Authority and Justice League Of America (for which he gained another Eisner nomination, for Best Penciller and Inker, in 2004).
After working exclusively for DC Comics for a few years, Tan started to draw for Marvel as well, starting with 2006’s Ghost Rider, followed by Silver Surfer: In Thy Name, and Punisher in 2009, among others. His most recent Marvel contributions were the criminally underrated X-Men: Legacy (which starred Legion, the son of Professor X), and the current ongoing Deadly Hands.
According to him, Deadly Hands is one of the hardest books he has ever worked on. “There is a lot of background, a lot of characters and a lot of fighting. The hardest part of doing a comic is the continuity, and ... I also have to keep the focus on the dialogue, who talks first.”
Tan is not the only Malaysian comic artist working for high-profile Western companies, of course. Among others, Billy Tan has been a staple in Marvel and DC in recent years, Sheldon Goh currently draws for Zenescope Entertainment, and Malaysian-born, Singapore-based graphic novelist Sonny Liew is well known for his quirky graphic novels and also for founding the Liquid City anthology.
Tan is also part of Gilamon, a platform for creator-owned projects that includes fellow Malaysian comic creators Lefty, Michael Chuah and Chin Sau Lim. | {
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Prenez note que cet article publié en 2016 pourrait contenir des informations qui ne sont plus à jour.
Un entrepreneur albertain veut bâtir un centre de villégiature proposant le tout premier spa au pays qui utilise du bitume pour ses soins. Cette matière possède des vertus pour la santé, selon l'instigateur du projet, qui souhaite s'installer au nord de la province.
« Je pense que nous devons aller au-delà de la pensée que c'est trop exotique, de ce qu'on connaît », dit Buff Parry, dirigeant de l'entreprise The Salai Project inc., derrière le projet.
L'entrepreneur est convaincu que l'idée de créer un spa de bitume a le potentiel de générer beaucoup d'argent dans le secteur touristique en Alberta.
Agrandir l’image (Nouvelle fenêtre) L'entrepreneur Buff Parry veut créer le premier spa de bitume en Alberta
Selon Buff Parry, les Autochtones connaissent depuis de nombreuses années les bienfaits médicinaux du bitume. « Il possède un effet thérapeutique pour les blessures en surface, ou encore pour soigner le psoriasis, l'acné et d'autres problèmes de peau », affirme-t-il.
Il a appris l'existence des spas de bitume à l'international lorsqu'il faisait une étude sur le bitume à l'Institut autochtone médiatique (Indigenous Media Institute).
Une pratique en vigueur au Moyen-Orient et en Asie
Des bains de bitume sont, selon l'entrepreneur, déjà offerts dans un spa similaire en Azerbaïdjan, dont il espère obtenir du financement, voire un partenariat. En Israël et en Jordanie, à proximité de la mer Morte, d'autres installations de boue de bitume, moins luxueuses, existent aussi pour les touristes.
« Certaines personnes utilisent le bitume juste pour le plaisir, non pour les effets thérapeutiques, car cela détend et aide à la relaxation des muscles, [pour soulager] les crampes entre autres », dit-il.
Agrandir l’image (Nouvelle fenêtre) Des boues de bitumes près de la Mer morte sont utilisées. Photo : YouTube
Il considère Fort McMurray comme l'endroit idéal pour implanter son centre de villégiature et a déjà commencé à approcher des Premières Nations locales. Il espère que les experts autochtones en médecine joueront un rôle primordial dans son projet.
Les prix des traitements ne seront pas pour toutes les bourses. Ils varieront entre l'utilisation non raffinée du bitume, qui sera la moins coûteuse, et un bain complet dans l'huile de bitume pouvant coûter jusqu'à 250 $. « Si cela fonctionne en Jordanie, en Israël, en Azerbaïdjan, pourquoi pas ici? » dit l'entrepreneur.
Outre le spa, il aimerait aussi construire un centre d'arts et il a aussi l'idée d'un centre de recherche pour étudier les liens entre le bitume et la santé.
D'après un reportage de Gareth Hamsphire | {
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New Delhi: Public sector banks (PSBs) have reported 16% rise in number of wilful defaulters at 8,167 who collectively owe them Rs76,685 crore at the end of March 2016.
As against the previous year, there is 16% rise in wilful defaulters owing over Rs25 lakh each to 8,167 from 7,031 at the end of March 2015. However, dues to the bank have increased to 28.5% to Rs76,685 crore in 2015-16 from the earlier Rs59,656 crore.
To recover loans from such defaulters, banks have filed 1,724 FIRs with a total outstanding of Rs21,509 crore in 2015-16. The conviction rate in all these cases was only 1.14%.
Last fiscal, banks recovery efforts in such cases yielded Rs3,498 crore. There were 129 wilful defaulters who borrowed loans in excess of Rs100 crore amounting to Rs28,525 crore from PSBs as on 30 June 2016, minister of state for finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.
To bring down NPAs, he said, RBI has formulated guidelines for early recognition of financial distress for recovery from borrowers. “Before a loan account turns NPA, banks are required to identify stress in the account under three sub-categories of Special Mention Account (SMA)," he said.
Banks are required to report credit information on borrowers having aggregate exposure of more than Rs5 crore to Central Repository of Information of Large Credits (CRILC), he said.
“As soon as an account is reported by any of the lenders to CRILC as SMA-2, Joint Lenders’ Forum (JLF) is to be mandatorily formed if the aggregate exposure of lenders is more than 100 crore," he said.
In a separate reply, Gangwar said banks have seized property worth Rs64,519 crore during 2015-16 as against Rs54,060 crore in the previous fiscal. These properties were seized by invoking the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act.
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How to Win Friends and Influence People Summary provides a free book summary, key takeaways, review, best quotes and author biography of Dale Carnegie’s famous self-help book.
Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People gave birth to the genre of self-help. In this book, he lays out an effective plan. It’s about how to get what you need from people. The key, as he says, is to change your behavior. He expands on the basics of dealing with people and becoming a leader. To develop these principles, Carnegie drew from great leaders from history. Abraham Lincoln was one such leader. As he wrote this book How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1935, some of the examples may look outdated. But, his core precepts are ageless. It’s possible to use them even today and is put forth easily. We recommend everyone to read this classic. No one has explained it better than Carnegie till date.
“Criticisms are like homing pigeons. They always return home.”
This Summary Will Help You Learn
Why you should listen to what others have to say;
How you can motivate others with positive reinforcement;
Which 12 strategies you may use to make others trust what you’re telling them.
Take-Aways
Show genuine interest in people.
Don’t complain or criticize others.
Motivate people to speak about themselves.
If you err, accept it quickly.
Talk about your mistakes first before criticizing others.
Appreciate every effort, no matter how small.
First, change yourself, then change others.
Everyone wants to feel important. Hence, make others feel valued. Don’t ever undermine anybody’s sense of value.
Address people by their names. It’s the most important and sweetest sound in every language.
Dramatically share your views. You may use illustrations or performance to put across your ideas.
Suggested Reading: The Wealth of Nations Summary: Adam Smith
Suggested Reading: How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job Summary: Dale Carnegie
How to Win Friends and Influence People Summary
“Fundamental Techniques in Handling People”
Mastering the art of influencing others and winning friends isn’t easy. But, it’s not all that tough also. You first need to learn and practice three core principles to deal with people. Keep reminding yourself of how important these principles are. Analyze them. And, think of ways to apply them in your life. Try using them whenever possible. Also, you may ask a friend or partner to remind you when you break any principle. Don’t forget to review your progress as you practice. Make notes which show when and how you used them.
Principle 1: Be Nice
The most important precept of dealing with people is kind to them. Hence, you must not condemn or criticize others. Instead, try understanding them and their actions. This way you can show your support, sympathy and be kind. Everyone like people who treat them with kindness. They positively respond to this approach.
You may have to practice self-control to resist showing your negative feelings. If you wish to change others, first focus on yourself.
Principle 2: Find Out What They Want
The next core strategy is to recognize what others want. And then give it to them. People want many things. Some of the most common aspirations are health, food, money, safety, a feeling of importance, etc.
Most of these desires may get fulfilled. But, the feeling of importance is usually not met. It’s a very strong desire. When people crave this they seek success, try wearing fashionable clothes and what not — all, in the pursuit of feeling important to others.
Want to know someone’s basic character? Try knowing what triggers their feeling of importance. Once you know this, you may make them feel valued. Also, refrain from doing or saying things which undermine their sense of importance.
For example, when giving employee feedback, use incentives instead of criticism. Always remember, criticism from a senior kills a person’s goals like no other. Hence, praise whenever you can. Try not to pick on small things. But, at the same time, don’t give insincere flattery. Because this sure doesn’t work well. People will mostly see it to be selfish and shallow. Instead, give sincere and honest appreciation.
Principle 3: Help Them Get What They Want
The 3rd principle is to encourage a want in others. This is a helpful precept as everyone’s interested in getting their desires. Hence, if you wish to have more influence over others, know what they want. And, then help them attain it. For this, first, understand their viewpoint. They see the situation from their perspective and your own.
“Six Ways to Make People Like You”
Want people to like you? Then, focus on them. Also, show you care for their well-being. Follow the below six rules:
The First Rule
Develop a real interest in people. Through this, you’ll get their attention and cooperation time and again. If you show a genuine interest in others, as a manager, you may deepen their loyalty.
The Second Rule
Smiling makes for a great first impression. This’s crucial because actions are louder than words. Plus, a smile shows others that you like them. It shows that you’re pleased to see them.
Most importantly, it shows that you want to be friendly. A smile must not be an ingenuine grin. People hate such fake expressions. Instead, a genuine smile draws people to you.
The Third Rule
Remember people’s names. You may use an easy technique to master this. When meeting a person for the first time, ask some basic things. First, is the name. And secondly, something about their education, family or business. Create an image of this information in your mind. Then, when you meet that person again, you’ll remember everything. Such power to recognize is significant. It’s because for people their names are substantial.
The Fourth Rule
Become a good listener. Convince others to talk to you about themselves. Rather than looking here and there, pay complete attention to people talking to you. It’s very flattering. People in customer service can mainly benefit from this skill. For example, suppose a client has some complaint. Just listen to him/her attentively. This may help calm their anger. This may also make their problem disappear.
The Fifth Rule
Speak in a manner that interests people. Discuss their passions and hobbies. Theodore Roosevelt was a master in this area. He knew a broad range of subjects. Whenever he had to meet an extraordinary person, he’d study his interests. This habit allowed him to woo people.
The Sixth Rule
Find a suitable method to makes people feel valued. For example, ask yourself what traits in others you admire. William James, a psychologist, says, “the deepest desire of human beings is to get appreciation.”
By praising others, you help add to their sense of importance. But, you must be genuine in your gratitude. Compliments must not appear to be fake flattery.
“How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking”
Adopt 12 strategies to convince people to trust what you’re telling them. Try to use every technique in your conversations consciously:
The only way to win an argument is to avoid it – Disagreements tend to make people defensive. Besides, someone who thinks he/she has lost an argument loses face. Once you become part of a debate, you can never win. It’s because if you lose, then you lose. And, even if you win, you lose. Hence, avoid arguments. Show respect for other people’s opinions – Don’t make people feel you disagree by using careless words or looks. When you challenge their views, you compel them to attack. This doesn’t change their mind at all. Admit when you are wrong – If you err, quickly accept it. Such admission is useful when you know others think you’re wrong. It’s better to hear self-criticism. Besides, when you accept a mistake, others are likely to be more forgiving. But, if you don’t accept, they’ll be more critical. Even if you are angry, begin in a friendly way – It’s impossible to win someone over who has negative feelings for you. But, by calming such emotions, you can make them understand your perspective. Get the other person to say “yes” in the beginning – Start by discussing things on which both parties agree. Because, once you get a “no,” you’ll have a hurdle in front of you. Hence, start with questions which will elicit a “yes.” Once the person starts saying yes, you can present the tougher questions. When dealing with complaints, let your clients do the talking – Let them speak all that they want to. As you listen, you’ll know more about their issues. Hence, you’ll be better placed to help. So, listen with an open mind. Be sincere and motivate your clients to share their concerns fully. Seek cooperation – Put the onus of producing an idea to the other party. People trust those suggestions more which they propose themselves. See things from the other person’s point of view – Put yourself in the shoes of the other person. This way, you’ll better know their needs and wants. This is especially useful if you’re going to sell something. It’ll help you understand what inspires the other person. Sympathize with what the other person thinks or wants – Through this, even if you don’t agree, you display that you understand. Say things like: “I don’t blame you for your feelings. If I were in your position, I’d feel the same.” Appeal to people’s higher aspirations and nobler motives – Normally, people have two reasons to do anything — the actual reason. And, a good reason. Most humans are idealists at the core. Hence, they like to believe their actions are with good intentions. So, you can change people by appealing to those good intentions. Dramatically express your ideas – By presenting your plans dramatically, you can make them look stronger and convincing. Use showmanship and illustrations to put across your ideas. This is a useful approach. Because the truth needs to be vivid. Merely speaking facts is not enough. Use a challenge to motivate others – This strategy is beneficial. Why do you ask? Because successful people like to prove their value. For example, Charles Schwab once drew “6” on a mill’s floor. He did this to note how many products the day-shift workers made. The following day, when the night-shift workers came, they drew a 7. This was to show that they did even better. It motivated the day-shift employees to work even harder and draw a 10. By showing what he expected, Schwab motivated his workers to work harder. If he had just asked his staff for better work, the results would be different.
“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
“Be a Leader”
If you hold the position of a leader, use these nine principles. These will help you encourage others to change without arousing hatred:
If you need to discuss someone’s fault, start with genuine praise. Don’t condemn someone in front of others. If someone has erred, indirectly raise awareness of his mistakes. Before criticizing someone, first, reveal your mistakes. Don’t give people a direct order. Instead, ask questions. For example, “how do you think we should do this?” This allows workers to provide their ideas. Never let anyone lose their face. Praise employees who’re improving even if the progress is little. Give your employees a good reputation to live up to. Encourage them. Let their weaknesses appear simple to correct. Make others feel happy about using your ideas.
Suggested Reading: Thinking, Fast and Slow Summary: Daniel Kahneman
Suggested Reading: The Millionaire Fastlane Summary: MJ DeMarco
How to Win Friends and Influence People Review
Every book can be unique on its own, but this one by Dale Carnegie is one of the most influential ones in terms of the concept of self-help. The book was written in 1935, but when you read it even today, there are various concepts, which can be related to today’s modern life as well. There are various lessons in this book, which can be applied in today’s life, which itself is a great achievement of the book. The book is filled with so much useful information regarding self-help that how people can help themselves to grow in their lives by winning more friends and influencing other people. The author has talked about 12 critical strategies, which people can adopt into their lifestyle. These principles and strategies have been developed by the author after reviewing the life patterns of great leaders like Abraham Lincoln.
There are two or three strategies explained in the book that I would like to discuss in this review. The one principle told by Dale Carnegie is that “don’t complain” as well as criticize others. It is a fact that when people are criticized, they don’t like it at all, so one cannot develop good relations with others by criticizing them. The other strategy explained in the book is about accepting your own mistakes and errors. Moreover, it is crucial to show respect for other people. One has to respect the opinion of others so that any disagreement can be avoided. If you want to win the hearts of people and want to convince them of your interest, then it is vital to avoid any bad arguments. These rules described in the book can be useful for every other person, who wants to influence others and want to make more friends in his/her life. The people who are bad at dealing with people can take a lot out of this book to improve their people dealing abilities.
How to Win Friends and Influence People Quotes
“Criticisms are like homing pigeons. They always return home.”
“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”
“The expression one wears on one’s face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one’s back.”
“The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want.”
“Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance, and kindness.”
“One can win the attention and time and cooperation of even the most sought-after people by becoming genuinely interested in them.”
“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
“Make the other person feel important, and do it sincerely.”
“The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.”
About the Author
Dale Carnegie was a favorite motivational teacher. He was also an author and wrote many famous self-help classics. His books sold millions of copies during the 1930-40s. These classics became the grounds for many training programs and seminars. The main topics these books addressed included self-improvement, interpersonal skills, salesmanship, and public speaking. How to Make Friends and Influence People was published in 1936. This book How to Win Friends and Influence People became a bestseller in no time and is still very popular. His other classics include The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking, How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, and, How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job. Carnegie passed away on November 1, 1955.
Feedback
Having read this How to Win Friends and Influence People Summary, what is your thought on it? Do you have any comment to share with us?
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Suggested Reading: The Snowball Summary: Alice Schroeder
Suggested Reading: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Summary: Stephen R. Covey | {
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European coaching giant David Blatt is on the brink of making his long-awaited leap to the NBA with either Golden State or Cleveland, according to sources close to the process.
Sources told ESPN.com on Friday that Blatt, an American-Israeli who rose to prominence coaching abroad after playing at Pete Carril's Princeton, is poised to land either with the Warriors as an assistant or with the Cavaliers as head coach after barging his way into Cleveland's search in recent days.
"It will be Golden State or Cleveland," one source said.
Coach David Blatt announced Thursday that he is leaving European team Maccabi Tel Aviv to make the jump to the NBA. Jac Guez/AFP/Getty Images
On Thursday in Israel, his adopted country after the Boston native played professionally there and became a citizen, Blatt announced he was leaving newly crowned Euroleague champions Maccabi Tel Aviv to pursue his first job in the NBA at 55.
Blatt's destination won't be known until next week at the earliest, sources said, after a face-to-face interview with the Cavs. He already has interviewed with Cleveland general manager David Griffin over the phone and joins Los Angeles Clippers assistant coaches Alvin Gentry and Tyronn Lue in the late stages of a search that initially focused on college titans such as John Calipari, Billy Donovan and the fast-rising Kevin Ollie of freshly minted NCAA champion UConn.
The Cavs had second interviews with Gentry and Lue on Friday, meetings that were expected to include team owner Dan Gilbert.
ESPN The Magazine's Chris Broussard reported Thursday that the Cavaliers also have reached out to ESPN's Mark Jackson, who returned to the network after his May ouster by Golden State.
New Warriors coach Steve Kerr, meanwhile, continues to press hard to add Blatt to serve, in essence, as his offensive coordinator. Sources say Kerr also continues to pursue Gentry -- who currently serves as the Clippers' top aide to Doc Rivers -- as well as noted San Antonio Spurs shot doctor Chip Engelland for his staff. Engelland is likewise coveted by new Utah Jazz coach Quin Snyder, sources say.
The Warriors had been increasingly confident of winning the race for Blatt's services, but Cleveland's unexpected pursuit of the Maccabi coach has thrown that into some doubt.
After leading Russia to the bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics -- its first Olympic basketball medal since the collapse of the Soviet Union -- Blatt guided a Maccabi team bereft of big-name stars on a Cinderella run to the Euroleague title last month, highlighted by victories over CSKA Moscow and Real Madrid in the semifinals and finals.
"Maccabi was outgunned at every position except coach," said one admiring Western Conference general manager who attended the Euroleague Final Four. "David took down two Goliaths in a weekend. He belongs in the NBA."
Until now, Blatt has resisted multiple opportunities to move back home because he was reluctant to leave behind his status as one of Europe's two most respected coaches -- along with Italian legend Ettore Messina -- to work in the NBA as an assistant. But he has since been convinced that the fastest path to realizing his dream of becoming a head coach in the NBA could require a stint first as an assistant, since Blatt's profile in his native country remains relatively small compared to his standing overseas.
The Minnesota Timberwolves are also among the teams that have expressed strong interest in Blatt, but sources say that the lifelong Boston Celtics fan has decided to focus on the Warriors' assistant job if he can't get Cleveland's head-coaching job.
Blatt said at his Thursday night news conference in Tel Aviv that it was time to leave the European game behind "to meet other professional challenges that I have in my life."
"It's been a dream of mine for almost forever to go and join a team in the NBA in some capacity," Blatt said. "I wish I could have done it as a player. I wasn't good enough. But now perhaps I'll have that opportunity as a coach."
The Cavaliers and the Los Angeles Lakers are the only two NBA teams left with a head-coaching vacancy.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. | {
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A common thing I read on ukulele social media is how beginners seem to hate friction tuning pegs on ukes. I decided to look into them a little more closely. Guess what... you get what you pay for.
Personally, on smaller traditional looking instruments, particularly sopranos, I don't think you can beat the look of friction pegs. Geared tuners on small instruments can make the neck top heavy and just, kind of, stick out! But it is a worry that friction tuning pegs have gained a reputation to being difficult to use, sticky or just plain useless. This is not true across the board.Sadly, like many things with the uke today, cheap parts flood the market and it is therefore no wonder that pegs form part of that. The friction pegs on the recent uke that I took to pieces , are some of the worst I have seen and are a nightmare to use for a beginner (I just about got them working). The vast majority of other cheaper ukes that use friction pegs (including some higher cost ones) will use pretty basic friction tuners too. I am used to them, and I can tune with them, but have been working with them for years. A beginner though will find they stick, shoot to over tuning and that they are generally hard to be precise with. A shame, but very common.However, if you spend only a little extra money, you can find some really nice pegs with a number of parts that honestly will change your perception of friction pegs. The pegs on my Koaloha Soprano are sublime. They look pretty much the same as other friction pegs, but only when using them will you see what I mean. They hold, but turn as smooth as geared pegs, without slipping. Not all friction pegs are alike!So whilst it may not be cost effective to add £25's worth of better pegs to a £20 ukulele, if you are playing a £100 uke and dissatisfied with the friction pegs, or fancy removing geared tuners to move to a more traditional look, retro fitting them is easy and you can get good quality.Anyway, I put together this video to show you how they compare, and what goes in to making a higher end peg.Enjoy! | {
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Hello Halloween fans! If you're anything like me, when the month of October rolls around, things take a sudden change for the EVIL. In what other month can you waltz around your neighborhood or turn the TV on and, more than likely, see some allusions to the spooky and nightmarish? And so, while every month is a great month for a horror fan, October always holds a special place in our hearts. To commemorate this great time of year, then, I've compiled a list of 80s horror movies either focusing on or taking place around Halloween. Enjoy!
*Note: Movies denoting a * are what I consider to be PURE Halloween movies. The others, though containing varying aspects of the Halloween spirit or taking place around that time, don't embody sufficient seasonal elements to constitute a pure Halloween movie. | {
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Google Assistant on Pixel 4 may handle calls while you're on hold
You won't have to pay attention until a human answers.
Google Assistant's ability to handle phone calls may extend beyond booking appointments. A 9to5Google source claims Assistant on the upcoming Pixel 4 will have the option of taking over when you're on hold, bringing you back when another human answers. You'd only have to tap a button to ignore the hold music and get things done. It's not clear if this will also skip the canned "your call is very important to us" messages, but that's certainly the dream -- you wouldn't be jolted back into the call until an actual service rep was there to help.
This might not be available the moment the Pixel 4 is ready, however. The on-hold feature is relatively young, according to the source, and might only appear at an announcement as a teaser of what's in the pipeline. There's also no mention of whether or not the feature would extend to other Android phones, although Duplex reservations eventually made their way to non-Pixel devices. The Pixel 4 limitation may just be a matter of giving fans early access to a feature before it's ready for broader availability.
If this is authentic, it offers a peek into Google's phone strategy this year: it's backing its usual emphasis on AI wizardry with uncommon hardware features like hands-off gestures and ultra-responsive screens. You might come for the hardware, but stay knowing that you'll have time-saving Assistant features before anyone else.
Video
Presenter: Terrence O'Brien
Script: Terrence O'Brien
Script Editor: Chris Velazco
Producer/Camera: Michael Morris | {
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The independent agency's draft 30-year infrastructure strategy, to be released on Tuesday, makes 134 recommendations, worth around $100 billion. North East Link named as Melbourne's most urgent road building project Credit:Paul Rovere It includes a plan for a new outer metropolitan ring road, which the agency's report said would offer "sweeping benefits" around Melbourne's north and west. It said the North East Link, which road lobby groups have pushed for years, would generate returns of between $1.40 and $2.10 for every $1 invested. "North East Link provides the greatest benefit for the cost," Mr Masson said.
But the report found the East West Link toll road, famously dumped by the Andrews government at a cost of more than $1 billion, does not stack up in the short and medium term. However it said planning for the road should start soon, because it could be needed over the longer term. "We are absolutely not ruling it out," Mr Masson said, "but this is not the priority – North East Link is." Build airport rail – but not yet Credit:Jesse Marlow The report also recommends deferring construction of an airport rail line from central Melbourne, saying it will only be needed once the city's SkyBus to Tullamarine is full in 15 to 30 years. And it finds new rail lines to Monash University and Rowville, and to Doncaster, cannot be justified.
The Andrews government dumped former premier Denis Napthine's promise to build an airport rail line by 2026. The Age asked Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan whether she now supported building an airport rail link. Ms Allan did not answer, instead listing other projects the government was progressing, including level crossing removals and the Metro Rail tunnel. Introduce peak-hour road tolls Rosanna Road, Heidelberg. But as a top priority, the report said Melbourne needed a major new transport pricing regime that hit motorists with variable tolls depending on the time of day and road congestion.
Traffic modelling work undertaken by Infrastructure Victoria found 20 per cent of trips during the morning peak were not for work or study. A variable tolling regime, potentially using GPS technology to track motorists, would cut peak traffic by about 5 per cent, which would produce an effect similar to school holiday periods. "Well designed road pricing would blow away any reduction of congestion you could get from adding other roads to the network," Mr Masson said. Make housing affordable Credit:Angela Wylie The report also identified affordable housing as one of Melbourne's gravest issues – with up to 100,000 low-income Victorians already living under "extreme financial stress".
"The consequences this has got on productivity," Mr Masson said, "are very profound." There is a need for 30,000 new affordable dwellings to be provided within the next 10 years, the report finds. New tram and train lines, and longer trains The report recommended building a new tram line to the urban development area in South Melbourne and Port Melbourne known as Fishermans Bend. And it said Melbourne's rail line should be extended to the south-east growth area of Clyde, while railway services to Melton and Wallan should be electrified.
And the government should roll out 10-carriage trains. Melbourne's existing rail car sets are six carriages. Intensify around rail and tram lines And far more apartments should be built around train stations and tram lines, the report found, particularly in Melbourne's inner and middle eastern and southern suburbs. The report compared building a house in an outer suburban area to an established area, and found building new infrastructure would cost "between two to four times more than infill" housing. The draft strategy has also made recommendations to 'unlock' brownfield sites close to established areas – such as Fisherman's Bend.
Opposition attacks government over East West Link An artist's impression of the East West Link flyover to Tullamarine Freeway (North Bound). Image supplied In April this year, Treasurer Tim Pallas said the North East Link "innately" made sense. Labor strategists view the proposal, which would cost up to $10 billion, as an antidote to claims that motorists have been let down by the cancellation of the East West Link. Loading Opposition Leader Matthew Guy attacked Premier Daniel Andrews, saying the cost of cancelling the road - now acknowledged by all sides of politics to be $1.2 billion - meant Victorians should be furious.
"Daniel Andrews said the East West Link was a dud idea," Mr Guy said. "It is the most expensive lie in Victoria's history." | {
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The look I was going for, was another take on the 'hooded rogue' fantasy trope - I wanted a set that was elegant and individual in design, but still practical. I wanted a slightly foreign look - I went with the medium armour which most resembled a tabard to signify this.
You may notice that there are colour differences on the arms, blue and ivory - I'm still unsure which colour to choose. Also, I'm not entirely sure about the shoulder pads.
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Despite a steady increase in domestic violence reports, abused men insist that figures do not reflect reality, as victims are ashamed to speak up, have no one to turn to, and are scared they will lose custody of children. For some, this nightmare turns into reality once they separate from their wife. Sarah Carabott reports.
‘I am mourning my child because of injustices in the justice system’
“What I am about to tell you is just the tip of the iceberg,” is the very first thing Peter* says.
The man, who separated from his wife recently, lives in constant fear that he will lose total access to his 10-year-old son.
“My heart bleeds as I feel that my child is slipping through my fingers. In a sense, I am preparing for the worst – I am already mourning him.”
Peter feels that he has tried all he can to save his relationship with his son, but he has failed because the justice system is against him.
The man suffered psychological and emotional abuse at the hands of his wife for years, but he did not want to leave the relationship for fear of losing his son.
The abuse – including paying ‘rent’ to remain in the matrimonial home – increased until he could not take it anymore and he was eventually advised by his own therapist to leave the house and file for separation.
Overnight, he ended up homeless and without access to his child.
Peter told The Sunday Times of Malta that in the past, several women did not work, so those who went through separation often ended up destitute. While he agreed with changes in the law that ensured women were not left in the lurch, as a separated father he feels that women nowadays have the upper hand, no matter the family’s history.
Through it all, children are suffering in silence, but they will carry the emotional scars forever.
“I’m seeing my son drown but I’m wearing a straitjacket and I cannot throw him a lifesaver,” he says.
“At one point he was in need of counselling about the reality of separation, and I suggested that he speaks to his school counsellor. He was quite willing to start the sessions, but changed his mind overnight after speaking to his mother.”
When separation proceedings kick in, women are backed by a society that seems resolute to isolate fathers from their children. Separated fathers are feeling helpless, and nowadays I can fully understand why men give up, he adds.
Peter has only been allowed 24 hours access to his son, and had to “trade additional maintenance money for more time”.
And despite a clear schedule stipulated by the separation contract, which limits extracurricular activities, the mother signed up the son for other activities that coincided with the time allocated to his father.
This added salt to Peter’s wound, who was the main caregiver for his son before separation.
He notes that in some cases, mothers are disinterested in their children until separation looms on the horizon and they suddenly start seeing the child as a pawn to use against the father, because it seems that men are always to blame for separation in the eyes of the justice system.
I’m seeing my son drown but I’m wearing a straitjacket and I cannot throw him a lifesaver
This tussle could guilt-trip the children into believing that they are the cause of tension between their parents, whom they love unconditionally, Peter said.
He questioned whether protection for men and children was thrown out of the window when laws were changed to protect women.
“Is this equality? Is it fair on the children that their time with their father is limited? Is this truly for the well-being of the child?”
Peter called on “those who have the supremacy to change things within the family court to do so now”. The key in all of this was equally shared custody.
All the abuse, plus issues of maintenance and access would no longer be relevant as duties and finances would be genuinely shared in equal measures.
But most importantly, children would be psychologically better off, he said, insisting that the idea of 50:50 custody was not naïve.
“We need to ensure real equality. We owe it to our children. Children are being brought up in frightful environments and are coaxed into opting to stay with the mother if the courts grant them a choice.
“We have heard of stories of children walking out of court after such judgments have been delivered, tearfully apologising to the father. Who is really protecting these children?”
‘My son was used as ammunition against me’
A man who lost touch with all four of his children compared the “hole” in his heart to “an empty grave”.
John* explained that whenever he missed his late father, he headed to the cemetery and cried over his grave. Burying him had brought some closure.
“On the other hand, I can only weep on the inside over my children.”
The man said that his former partners have managed to psychologically alienate him from his children by obstructing the bond that could have been created between them.
This happened to mothers as well as fathers, however, speaking about parental alienation from the latter was still taboo.
John told The Sunday Times of Malta that he got the wrong end of the stick from the very beginning, as the justice system leaned more towards mothers when it decided on who should be granted care and custody.
John first became a father 20 years ago, and the “false allegations” started when his son was a few months old.
When his son turned one, the couple started separation proceedings and John was granted shared parental duties that translated into 40 hours with his child.
Despite going their own way, the abuse on John continued through his son and it grew to a point where his estranged wife accused him of sexual abuse. He was never convicted of the abuse, but he could not take it anymore and distanced himself from his own son.
“Let me put it to you this way. I was with my back to the wall,” he says, his arms outstretched.
“My former wife is standing right in front of me with a gun pointed at me, and the bullet is my son. What would I do? I dodged the bullet. That is parental alienation.
“Nowadays I know I did the wrong thing… I have since tried to get in touch with him several times, to no avail.”
John fathered children from two other women before seeking professional help.
How does a man fall victim to abusive women three times in a row?
“Would you ask me the same question if I was a woman? Haven’t we heard of women who mother children from different men?
“My mother was quite abusive towards me. I believe that just as women who are brought up in an abusive family, could end up victims of domestic violence, men too can end up victims,” he said, pausing as he got visibly emotional.
John has not been in a relationship for at least five years, and looking back, he can trace narcissistic and manipulative traits in his former partners that he had also observed in his mother.
The man, who spent most of his life abroad, married his second wife following the annulment of his first marriage. Although the first few years were quite rosy, his second partner was psychologically and physically abusive.
When he reported her to the police, he was warned not to lift a hand against her. John was taken aback – he had sought the authorities’ protection, but in the officer’s eyes, he was the perpetrator because of his gender.
John’s comments mirror concern voiced by other men who have spoken to this newspaper over the years.
In one particular case, a man recounted how a police sergeant had asked him whether he was actually the aggressor, because since domestic violence victims were usually women the officer thought his wife had reacted to his abuse.
*Names have been changed | {
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A powerful U.S. Senate committee on Monday invited seven pharmaceutical companies to testify at a hearing later this month examining rising prescription drug prices.
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, ranking member of the committee, invited executives from AbbVie Inc, AstraZeneca PLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co Inc, Pfizer Inc and Sanofi SA.
The U.S. Congress has been intensifying scrutiny of the pharmaceutical industry as rising prescription drug prices consistently poll as a top voter concern. It is also a priority for the administration of President Donald Trump, who made it a central issue of the 2016 presidential campaign.
The Senate Finance Committee held its first hearing on drug prices in January, when Grassley and Wyden noted that several drug companies declined an invitation to testify. Some of the companies were re-invited on Monday, though the senators did not specify which ones.
The Senate is controlled by Republicans and the House of Representatives is controlled by Democrats.
The invitation follows a slew of actions by lawmakers to heighten scrutiny of the pharmaceutical industry. The House Oversight Committee also held a drug pricing hearing in January, and a handful of House Democrats have sent letters to drug companies asking for information on their pricing practices. | {
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I have to agree that many people do not realize what a Pagani Zonda is let alone the new Pagani Zonda R even when it comes to some car enthusiasts. One day I will be able to pull up to a crowd of people in a new Pagani Zonda R and they are all going to look at me with this confused facial expression that basically says “what in the world is that.” I will then find myself trying to explain that my Pagani Zonda R has an improved variation of the 7.3 liter AMG V12 that other Zondas have while my R version should beat the recorded Nurburgring lap time of 7:27.82 that the Zonda F accomplished some time ago. After that I will have to repeat myself about 10 more times and then tell them this is an all new model that has a longer wheelbase than the Zonda F and has been redesigned from the ground up only carrying over about 10% of the components from the Zonda F. Then they will ask me what the hell is a Zonda F and I will have to slap a few people and then… I will wake up from my dream and tend to the serious bump on my head from hitting it on something.
In your dreams right? Well, maybe not if you have over a million dollars to buy one of these bad boys. Better put your name on the list now before they are all gone because this one is going to be FAST!
A few Pagani Zonda R stats to daydream about:
0-62mph: 3.0 seconds
Top Speed: 233mph
Horsepower: 739bhp
Engine: Mercedes Benz AMG 6.0 liter V12
Transmission: Paddle-shift (sequential) gearbox with 20 millisecond shift time
Vehicle Weight: 1070kg
Price: $1.8 million (USD) est.
Codename: C9
Origin: Italy
Official Pagani Zonda R Images | {
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Populous is one of our favorites and the next 2 weeks promise big news from the team. The original roadmap promised a working Alpha for testing the invoice financing platform by end of summer and they delivered ahead of schedule. The first billion Euro partnership was announced with luxury goods behemoth Luxure Global Citizen who deals in brands like Cartier and Rolls Royce. They even displayed a real invoice for a $300k Lamborghini as part of the deal.
The alpha launch and was tested with feedback from real users. This feedback was taken by the team and built into the Beta platform. November saw a promise to release the Beta in Q4 2017 which ends in just over 2 weeks. Rumors seem to indicate the Beta is working on limited release and already working with real invoices for purchase. Rather than simulated products for buyers and sellers to test, the Beta seems to be a functioning product with real transactions for coin holders to actually invest in.
Populous (PPT) is looking to join the higher ranks of the new generation of blockchain companies and part of the crypto economy. They have not invested a new blockchain or encryption but instead are launching with Ethereum’s blockchain and based the PPT tokens in the ERC20 platform. This allows the team to focus on the product rather than the programming of a new coin gold rush. This is good news for both Ethereum (ETH) and Populous as it could prove the Ethereum network can produce winners based on the smart contract technology it promised. While Ripple (XRP), Stellar (XLM) and Cardano (ADA) each have different blockchains and coins, Populous is moving forward focusing on the product.
Stellar Lumens news coming soon?
The Invoice Financing Market
Populous is working to revolutionize the multi-billion dollar invoice financing market which currently has no central market. Those looking to sell accounts receivable are faced with large interest loans from private lenders or working through bank financing which can be difficult at best. Populous hopes by allowing millions of businesses and individuals access to a free market it can create a more liquid and efficient marketplace for both buyers and sellers.
Invoice sellers get the advantage of selling to the masses which allows for competition in hopes to drive prices up and collect a larger percentage of the invoice value. At the same time purchasers hope to have access to more investment markets than offered with traditional financial institutions. This should allow for larger risk but also larger returns than offered on traditional markets.
PPT tokens
Populous has been moving higher in the last week with the broader crypto market. While not well known by many new investors, it has a close following among early adopters. This creates opportunity with the coming Beta launch. It is very possible the Beta launch is not priced in at today’s $40 PPT price. The Beta launch announcement is coming before the end of the year with a scheduled update for just before Christmas. The recent movement up has been in line with the rest of the crypto coins while Populous has maintained the position in the teens on Coinmarketcap.com.
Populous Will Move on News
Nothing proves the value of recent news like yesterdays move in Ripple (XRP). The announced partnership with banks in Japan and Korea caused a near 100% gain in the price of Ripple in less than a day. Litecoin also saw a huge move this week on the back of struggling Ethereum and Bitcoin networks under the strain of millions of transactions. News carries volume and volume carries price in this market. This works in opposite also. Any announced delay could knock Populous down a few notches.
Ripple and Monero May be headed to Coinbase
We’re going after everyone. No one is safe. We are Populous.https://t.co/QnltjcLNR2 — Populous Platform (@BitPopulous) November 9, 2017
A 100% Ripple (XRP) type move in Populous would propel it to the top of the news wire for crypto coins. Interestingly, as big a move as that is, it would not carry it to the top 10 by market cap. If there is a Beta launch and a partnership the move could be off the charts. Populous does have a problem with liquidity. The largest market is Binance with nearly $3 million daily volume. It also does not trade on any Korean exchanges which limits upside as Korea is the largest crypto market in the world. Any mention in the update of adding a Korean exchange like Coinone, Bithumb or Upbit would be huge news for Populous. We will update with any announcement here at cryptogazette.com.
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John Hammond was kid from New York with a dad in the music industry, so it's no surprise he became a recording artist. But it was a bit unexpected that he became obsessed with the Blues at an early age. As one of the premiere Blues artists of the past six decades, John tells Marc about the connections he's made along the way, from Howlin' Wolf to Bob Dylan to The Band to Cheech and Chong. Plus, the always excitable Michael Rapaport returns to the garage to talk about his new book, This Book Has Balls. This episode is sponsored by the Movie Crush podcast and Squarespace. | {
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There are different types of coffee blogs dominating the country where viewers can access the content and make the best-informed decision about the coffee. Some blogs have been ranked as the best with great traffic and, therefore, are more reliable. There are millions of people who love coffee and coffee blogs are out there to ensure there is a spark of more interest, and there is an increase in the demand for the beverage in the country. In this article, we shall discuss the very best coffee blogs and coffee … Read more | {
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where it started at
The Timeless Honesty of Wild Style, the First Hip-Hop Movie Charlie Ahearn and Fab 5 Freddy’s documentary-like film became an international cult favorite in the early 1980s. It’s just as fresh today. | {
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Lenovo K5 Note
Released 2016, January
165g, 8.5mm thickness
Android 5.1
32GB storage, microSDXC
0.3% 13,892,705 hits
246 Become a fan
5.5" 1080x1920 pixels
13 MP 1080p
3/4 GB RAM Helio P10
3500 mAh Li-Po
Disclaimer. We can not guarantee that the information on this page is 100% correct. Read more | {
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The Reserve Bank of India is denying any knowledge of a proposed ban on cryptocurrencies — despite reports that a number of governmental agencies have backed the draft legislation — according to a Right to Information request filed on June 4.
Varun Sethi, a lawyer specializing in blockchain, filed the inquiry into the RBI’s involvement with “Banning of Cryptocurrencies and Regulation of Official Digital Currencies Bill 2019″ draft, following a report from the Economic Times. The legislation would ban the sale, purchase, and issuance of all types of cryptocurrencies.
Bank officials said that the RBI was not in communication with governmental agencies during the legislative process and had not received a copy of the bill. The bank forwarded several of Sethi’s questions to the Department for Economic Affairs as well as the Ministry of Finance — including, “What are ‘official digital currencies’ as per the RBI?”
The bank has been involved in cryptocurrency legislation as recently as April when the organization unveiled a regulatory sandbox that would allow blockchain products — excluding digital currencies — to be tested on a sample of consumers. It has not endorsed a full ban on cryptocurrencies in the past.
Several governmental initiatives within the world’s second-most populous nation have been undertaken to regulate blockchain, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi first established a panel to study how to regulate the crypto sector in November 2017.
The Economic Times reported that a committee in support of a total ban, including representatives of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), among others was “of the view that already there is a lot of delay in taking action against cryptocurrency.”
If passed, those who “mine, generate, hold, sell, transfer, dispose, issue or deal in cryptocurrencies directly or indirectly” could be jailed for up to 10 years.
The draft also advocates introduction of an official digital currency for India, the ‘Digital Rupee,’ that would presumably not land users in jail.
Image via Shutterstock. | {
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The Ewa expansion project will feature 650,000 square feet of new retail, including a 167,000-square-foot Bloomingdale's department store, large format retailers, dining, entertainment and 200,000 square feet of inline retailers. Nordstrom is also relocating to its new 185,000-square-foot space come March. | {
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I Norge dömdes en man till fängelse för att ha spottat mot poliser och hotat med coronaviruset. Liknande incidenter har även inträffat i Sverige.
– Det finns flera exempel på det. Man utger sig för att vara smittad och springer mot polisen och hostar eller spottar, säger Patrik Danielsson som är Polisförbundets nationella huvudskyddsombud.
Enligt honom är det en taktik som används av vissa som inte vill ha med polisen att göra och som vill försöka undkomma ett gripande. Taktiken har förekommit även tidigare men har fått ett uppsving i takt med coronavirusets spridning.
– Vi måste alltid utgå från att personerna är smittade, det måste alla poliser ha med sig ute i vardagen. Men vi kan inte sluta göra vårt jobb utan får hantera läget utifrån det.
Drygt 130 coronatillbud
Fram till i måndags hade drygt 130 tillbud med koppling till coronaviruset rapporterats in av polisanställda. Det handlar oftast om poliser som kommit i kontakt med misstänkt coronasmittade i samband med gripanden, när de hjälper sjukvården, vid passhandläggning eller liknande.
– Det finns en allmän oro inom hela polismyndigheten. Vi påverkas av det som händer runt omkring oss, men inte till den grad att det hindrar oss från att göra vårt arbete, säger Patrik Danielsson.
Han menar att det ställer högre krav på de enskilda poliserna att använda den skyddsutrustning som finns tillgänglig, att hålla avstånd, sköta handhygien och så vidare.
– Vi har en verksamhet som kräver att vi är igång hela tiden, säger Patrik Danielsson.
Allvarliga händelser rapporteras vidare
De tillbud som anses allvarliga rapporteras vidare till Arbetsmiljöverket. Hittills har Arbetsmiljöverket fått in drygt 60 tillbuds- och olycksanmälningar kopplade till coronaviruset.
Majoriteten av anmälningarna gäller vård och omsorg och handlar om anställda som har kommit i kontakt med smittade personer. Men det finns också exempel på incidenter inom polisen, på Systembolaget och inom postverksamheten. | {
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Officers face away from the World Changers Church during the funeral for Miosotis Familia.
Bill de Blasio and Chirlane McCray arrive at the funeral service for Miosotis Familia.
Hundreds of NYPD officers on Tuesday turned their backs on Mayor de Blasio — again — at the funeral of a cop.
The disgusted Finest were assembled outside the World Changers Church in The Bronx on Tuesday as part of the overflow crowd of mourners for assassinated Officer Miosotis Familia.
They showed the building their backs as speakers broadcast de Blasio’s eulogy for Familia from inside.
The protest came after de Blasio skipped town to participate in protests at the G-20 summit in Germany last week — the day after Familia was killed by cop-hating gunman Alexander Bonds.
And as he prepared for the trip, the mayor missed a swearing-in ceremony for new police recruits, an event that was especially poignant in light of Familia’s murder.
Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins said de Blasio deserved the snub.
“Mr. Mayor, you didn’t have to travel to Germany for a protest — all you had to do is speak in front of the men and women of the NYPD,’’ Mullins said.
Protesting officers chatted with one another and swiped through their phones while their backs were turned.
Many turned back around when Police Commissioner James O’Neill stepped up to speak — but not everyone paid respectful attention even then.
Some officers griped that they feel even the commissioner has not had their backs since the case of NYPD Sgt. Hugh Barry, who fatally shot a scissors-wielding Bronx woman in October.
Right after the shooting, O’Neill said police “failed,’’ and Barry has been charged with murder in the woman’s death.
“They preached support for us, but these have become hollow words only used in an election year,” a cop said, referring to de Blasio and O’Neill.
“How can you respect these people when they speak from both sides of their mouths?”
The cops’ snub of de Blasio marked the third time in his tenure that has happened.
They showed him their backs during the funerals of slain Detectives Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, who were executed by a cop-hating man in 2014.
Officers gave de Blasio the brush-off at Ramos’ funeral in Queens and then gave him another view of their backs days later at Liu’s Brooklyn funeral — even though then-Police Commissioner Bill Bratton called the display “very inappropriate” and urged cops not to make a repeat performance.
At Familia’s funeral, de Blasio called the fallen Finest “a hero.”
“Officer Miosotis Familia lived life the right way,” he said.
A de Blasio spokesman downplayed his boss’ shunning by police at the service.
“A couple dozen people showed up to partake in a bogus controversy ginned up by the media and those looking to politicize Detective Familia’s death,” rep Austin Finan wrote in an e-mail to The Post.
“That’s unfortunate,’ he wrote.’ | {
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The director-general of the World Health Organization reacted to President Donald Trump's recent criticism of the agency by warning international leaders Wednesday that politicizing the coronavirus pandemic would lead to "many more body bags."
What are the details?
Fox News reported that WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was asked during a news conference about President Trump's condemnation of the organization from the day before, when the U.S. president referred to the WHO as "China-centric" and threatened to freeze its funding.
"If you don't want many more body bags you refrain from politicizing it — please quarantine politicizing COVID," Tedros said, before reiterating, "My short message is please quarantine politicizing COVID — the unity of your country will be very important to defeat this dangerous virus."
Tedros continued, "The United States and China should come together and fight this dangerous enemy, they should come together to fight it and the rest of the G-20 should come together to fight it, and the rest of the world should come together and fight it.
"We will have many body bags in front of us if we don't behave," the director-general added. "When there are cracks at [the] national level and global level, that is when the virus succeeds."
On Tuesday morning, President Trump hit out at the WHO on Twitter, saying the agency "really blew it" in its response to the coronavirus pandemic, and questioned why the organization advised the administration against banning travel from China months ago.
During a briefing from the White House later that day, President Trump told reporters that the WHO has "been wrong about a lot of things," and criticized the agency for appearing "to be very China-centric."
"So we will be looking into that very carefully, and we're gonna put a hold on money spent to the WHO," President Trump said. "We're gonna put a very powerful hold on it, and we're going to see. It is a great thing if it works, but when they call every shot wrong, that is no good." | {
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haha XD Grunkle Stan: "Aaaarrrhggghhhh!!!!!!!" XDi never knew you could ride hallucinationsjust imagine them, sitting around on the ground with dull eyes and saliva dripping out of their mouths... while they still have this adventure to remember from that dayI *heart* GF! | {
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Cool, so everything's sorted right? Brexit is getting done, everything's going back to normal and I never have to talk about trade again.
Oh yeah, no sorry. That's all a lie. We are about to enter the most perilous system-level recalibration of an advanced economy in trading history.
What.
Yeah, all that nightmare of the last four years was the easy part. Now we have to figure out our future trading relationship with the EU.
I saw Boris Johnson on the telly the other day.
Really? That never happens anymore.
No, it was crazy. He just popped up. It was like a Big Foot sighting. Anyway, he seemed to suggest it was all really easy. We'd get it done in a year and then be free to do whatever we want.
Yeah, that's the official narrative. But the reality is very different.
Are you suggesting that the government is making a sustained attempt to deceive the public in order to hide the fact that they have an impossible set of negotiating goals and no competence to deliver them?
Yes, I know. It's hard to believe.
I know what happens now. You start talking about fisheries and regulatory alignment and customs procedures and then I gradually lose the will to live and have to order extremely expensive whisky.
That's right, that's how this works. So here's the thing. The government wants to get the Brexit deal negotiated, ratified and implemented in eleven months, before December 31st. They were entitled to an extension but have decided not to take it. That means the deal is going to have to be proper bare-bones - a completely stripped-down set of negotiating goals.
Like what?
Tariffs, basically. Nothing else. Just eliminate the tariffs.
What are tariffs again?
They're taxes on goods crossing borders. The thing is, most tariffs are already very low. Decades of worldwide tariff-reduction rounds have hammered them down in pretty much every area but agriculture. So it's a very modest bar to set. It also means that services - which are kind of key to our economy - are completely forgotten about. And it does nothing about the real problem areas of trade - alignment, customs checks and rules of origin.
Yeah, that's it. That's where I switch off. I swear these words are like hypnotic suggestions to close down brain function.
Bear with me, they're all pretty simple when you break them down. And the implications of them can smash local economies, which then has a massive political impact. Will people blame Brexit? The government? Or the EU? Remainers? Immigrants? The knock-on effect of these decisions will define our politics for years to come. Which is troubling, because it's not clear the government has any idea what it's doing.
How so?
Take the distinction between goods and services. Sounds simple right? Goods are things and services are, well, services - legal, financial, hairdressing, whatever. But actually that's a crude distinction that doesn't reflect the reality of how businesses work. Car companies, for instance, sell cars. But many of them also often offer the financing for the car, which allows the person buying it to pay in monthly installments. So in that capacity they're actually functioning as a mini-bank. And banking is…
A service.
Exactly. The same is true for loads of companies, like IBM. They sell things. But they also sell services. So even at this very basic level, going for a goods-only deal already has a massive knock-on effect on businesses. If they want to keep on selling the services in Europe, they have to internally restructure to get into the right regulatory regime. Sometimes that'll be big news - they'll close an office or factory. Sometimes it'll be a case of moving staff around or bulking up whatever office they have on the continent to get recognition there, and it'll slip under the radar. But the long-term danger is that all the high-knowledge, proper value-added activity goes to Europe.
Grim.
Yep. And things get uglier when you look at regulations.
Yeah I heard about this. What are they exactly?
Regulations are one of the key aspects of international trade. Countries have different regulatory regimes. So when they trade, people have to show that they are satisfying the requirements of the country the good ends up in. That entails a lot of time and paperwork. Until now, Britain has been part of Europe's regulations regime. Now it wants to completely detach itself. But we're so deeply ingrained in continental trading networks that we can't afford either time or paperwork.
How come?
Basically because of our reliance on a manufacturing system called Just-In-Time. Manufacturing depends on this to keep costs down. It means that you avoid holding a lot of stock. Instead, you get the parts you need, literally, just in time. And we are absolutely locked into this. So for instance BMW makes the engines for its Mini model at Hams Hall just outside Birmingham. But the engine blocks come from France to the UK, where they're drilled and processed, then go to Cologne in Germany for more engineering, then back to the UK for final assembly. GKN in Birmingham also makes the drive line for many cars - this is what transmits power from the engine to the wheels. But it uses components from Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the UK. Millions of components come across the Channel every day to arrive just as they're needed.
Is this primarily a car thing?
No, it goes across the board, in Britain's most successful manufacturing sectors. Take aviation. Nearly 80% of aerospace components manufactured in the UK are exported. And the important part there is in the word 'components'. That's what we do. We don't make the whole plane. As a country, we specialise in wings, landing gear, engines and avionic systems - the electrical equipment in the cockpit. All of that is regulated by the European Aviation Safety Authority (Easa). Everything you see on a plane in Europe, numbering over 5,000 different parts, has been vouched for by them, down to the little trolley serving you drinks when you ask for your fourth rum and Coke and the air steward starts to look at you suspiciously. Oh, and his training is overseen by them too, as is the pilot's, and that of the engineers.
It's the godfather of aviation regulation.
That's right. The industry is clear: it needs to hold Easa tight. And not just Easa. It also wants a close relationship with Reach - Europe's chemical safety regulation system - because they use those chemicals in the manufacturing process. There is zero reason to deviate from this regulatory framework. There are literally no upsides. The UK is not going to start setting international standards for aviation on its own. The trend in the global industry is towards alignment, because everyone wants the same things - a safe product, with fuel efficiency, which is clean and quiet and cheap to run, and which can be traded in a complex supply chain with a minimum of friction.
Can you stay in Easa from outside the EU though?
Sure. It's an EU body, but it has various agreements with non-EU countries. Or you can just align and basically mimic whatever it does. And why not? The industry will make products to those specifications anyway, simply to trade them easily.
So surely that's what we'd do. It sounds insane to do anything else.
Yes it would be insane, wouldn't it? But apparently that's what's going to happen.
You're not serious.
Who knows. Theresa May's administration had pretty much decided to stay in the system. The political declaration for the future relationship she signed with the EU said the UK would "explore the possibility of cooperation" with Easa and then added: "In this context, the United Kingdom will consider aligning with Union rules in relevant areas." But then things got a bit weird. Johnson updated the political declaration when he got his deal and he made some small but quite striking changes.
Like?
Well the line on 'exploring possibilities' stayed, but the following sentence, on alignment, was deleted. That raised a lot of alarm. And then the chancellor, Sajid Javid, told the Financial Times this weekend that "there will not be alignment, we will not be a ruletaker". So right now, if we're to take the government's word for it, no - we're going to pull away, for no reason at all, and at enormous cost. Or they could be lying to sound tough and Brexity. Or they could think it's a negotiating gambit with the EU. Who knows?
OK. So you've now been talking about regulations for what feels like several days. Is that it?
No I'm afraid not. The government also wants out of the customs union. That means it's also a customs problem. Manufacturers will have to fill out two sets of forms - one for regulations, one for customs. In the case of agriculture, they'll also have to satisfy health checks - these are called sanitary and phytosanitary measures. And that takes place on or near the border.
Please tell me this section is over. Hell, please tell me it's all over and the final days are upon us. Anything to escape this relentless carnival of doom.
The worst bit is yet to come, I'm afraid. It's called rules of origin and it is horrible. It's a kind of bureaucracy that kicks in when you have a trade agreement.
How does that make sense? Surely trade agreements are supposed to reduce bureaucracy.
Yep, but they need an insurance policy. So imagine the UK and EU do a trade agreement eliminating tariffs. And then the UK does a separate agreement with the US eliminating tariffs.
Sounds ideal.
Quite. But the EU and US don't have a trade deal eliminating tariffs. So now there is an incentive for the US to ship goods to the UK for entry into the EU as a way of sidestepping the taxes on their exports to Europe, but without having to make any of the concessions a trade deal would involve. Rules of origin checks are how you get around that problem.
How do they work?
The purpose of the rules is to find out where something was made. But the way of doing that changes depending on what kind of good it is. There's different rules in different sectors. Sometimes they measure a country's economic contribution to the product, such as its capital or the labour or intellectual input. There's also different grades of change in the product. You often have to show that the product has transformed from one customs category to another in a substantial way.
Did something terrible happen to you when you were a child?
Hey I didn't make the rules. But they do make sense. And this, arguably more than regulations or customs, is going to be one of the defining issues impacting on Britain in the years to come. Actually, it's already happening.
How so?
The EU and South Africa, for instance, have a deal on rules of origin allowing components from the other side to count towards the 'local content' tally. But when the UK leaves, its components will automatically be excluded from the total. So last July BMW redirected engine production from the UK to Germany for South African production. That could be the start of a trend.
How big a problem is this?
Very big. British car production leans heavily on parts and processes in the EU and Turkey. If those are excluded from the calculations, they wouldn't satisfy the rules of origin requirements. And even working it out is a nightmare - a horrible tangled web of multiple supply chains, with their own separate supply chains for component parts, and then multiple layers of subcontractors and goods going back and forth. And it's not just goods like cars and planes either. The same goes for food. Chickens reared in the UK often go off to the Netherlands for slaughter then come back and are turned into ready meals. So how much work went into the chicken to make it British? And what happens when it's put on a frozen supermarket pizza?
Civilised people don't put chicken on pizza.
That's where you're wrong. Chicken is a perfectly respectable pizza topping. But even if the chicken is British, what about the dough, the tomato sauce and all the other stuff? It's a nightmare. Just working this stuff out will put a massive new burden on British producers, who never had to do any of it before. And that assumes they can even pass the test and get the product to a level where it has enough domestic components to satisfy the rules.
Is there any way out of this?
In terms of the faff of it, no. But there is a way to make the test easier to pass. We need the rules of origin to have something called a cumulation provision.That means some inputs from outside the UK count towards domestic content. There are two main ways to do that: bilateral or diagonal. Bilateral would mean stuff done in the EU and UK would count. Diagonal includes the UK and EU and extends it to other countries who have trade deals with both of us. That would fix the South Africa problem BMW had. But even there they have different levels. We would want something called 'full cumulation', meaning that no matter how small the work done in different countries, it counts.
So it's a no-brainer, right? You go for full cumulation diagonal rules of origin. Oh and look at that. You have made the most unspeakable words come out of my mouth.
Yep, you totally would. But that's in the EU's gift. It gives them significant leverage over us. And honestly, listening to the weirdly bullying rhetoric coming from the UK government, it's not clear Downing Street realises that.
Election went to their head.
There's a lot that's gone to their head.
OK so I think I get this. It's ultimately pretty simple right? The Brits want the Brexit talks done in one year so they've reduced their negotiating goal to tariff elimination and that is going to hurt us.
Not all of us equally. Small firms will be hit harder than large firms and poorer areas will be hit harder than richer areas.
But of course, because the reality of the world is inversely proportional to any sense of moral justice.
Pretty much. Small firms selling less than £250,000 of merchandise to the EU, of which there are tens of thousands, will be forced into filling out all sorts of forms they've never had any contact with before. That'll be a much bigger burden on them than it will the big firms selling over that amount, or who already trade with the rest of the world. And the cost of adopting the new system might outweigh the benefit of exporting the goods in the first place.
Why does this mostly affect poorer areas?
Well there's a cruel irony to the effects of a hard Brexit: It won't really hurt Remain-voting areas but it's likely to seriously damage Brexit-supporting areas.
This is insane.
Yes, it is. The kinds of industries which could get really pummelled - automobile, aerospace and that - are mainly based in the Midlands and the North. Remain-voting London, on the other hand, is less exposed to European markets. It's economy is already hyper-globalised, arguably more so than any other city in the world. Decision-makers in the capital are often on the phone to Namibia, Honduras or Belize. But the decision-makers in Hull are more likely to be on the phone to Denmark and Germany.
Gotcha.
There's another problem too.
Oh cool, another one, yeah why not.
Tariffs aren't the only ask. Britain has also got a negotiating goal on fishing.
Fishing? Really? Surely that's a tiny dot in the economy. And given that they've given up services you wouldn't expect them to get too het up about it.
True. But it matters to the communities who do it and it has a political importance that far exceeds its economic impact. Britain also has a watertight legal case for its demand. Basically, sovereign coastal states have a 200 mile limit out to sea in which they can fish, under the UN Law of the Sea Convention.
Cool name for an international convention.
Isn't it. The whole thing is very Aquaman.
I always preferred Namor.
Everyone sensible does. He has those little wings on his ankles which let him fly. That is so preposterous and wonderful at the same time. Imagine what it looks like to see him fly with the little wing thingies on his ankles.
You were talking about fisheries policy.
Ah yes. So the British position is simple. We are now going to be a sovereign coastal state. We want our 200 mile limit. We'll decide what goes on there. The EU position is very different. It wants everything to stay the same as it is right now.
And what is the status quo for fishing exactly?
Basically anything outside of 12 miles from a member state is a common area. The stocks of individual fish species are then divided up between countries in set quotas to prevent overfishing. So Britain might have a 15% share of a particular stock, for instance. Those quotas are set. They do not change. But each year scientists provide advice on the total allowable catch. If it was 100,000 tonnes, Britain would get 15,000 tonnes that year. And that's how they divide up the stock.
So they want that to stick.
Yeah. But Britain, on the other hand, will probably want something like what Norway has. Each year, in the autumn, Norway gets together with the Europeans and sorts out some annual fish arrangements. It's fraught and tense, but it has a lot of power in the talks. They haggle over how much of a quota it gets on certain stocks. And unlike in the EU, that quota can change. Sometimes, if no agreement can be reached, Norway just says you can't fish in their waters at all. Britain would love to operate just like that.
Why can't it? You said the law is on the UK side.
It is, but the leverage isn't.
Recurring theme.
Quite. We can take control of our waters and block anyone fishing within 200 miles of them if we want, but there's a problem: we don't eat our own fish. Eighty per cent of what we catch goes to the EU. The fish we actually eat - good old British fish and chips - mostly comes from Norway and Iceland.
OK, but so what?
So the European threat is simple. If we don't do what they want they'll put tariffs on fish. That would absolutely hammer our fishing industry. The tariffs are high in this area and it would apply on almost everything it sells.
OK so what about some sort of compromise? Maybe the UK could stay in the EU system but they agree to rejig the quotas a bit to placate us.
Tempting, but the trouble is that would involve opening up the whole quota debate across the EU again. It would be like opening Pandora's Fish Box. They won't do that.
So we're faced with two sides with really quite distant goals in a highly emotional area of trade.
Yep. Which is why it's instructive to look at how they plan to talk about this. Britain wants to talk about fish separately to everything else. But the Europeans aren't having any of that. They want to bring the issue into the general trade discussion. And that'll be the attitude throughout - the British trying to silo off individual topics so they can't be used as leverage against each other and the Europeans making it more comprehensive.
What is it the Europeans actually want?
I thought you'd never ask. It's quite simple. They don't want Britain to undercut them. And that's not just about price - it's about regulations, subsidies and taxes.
What do you mean?
Well take Ireland. It basically functions as a kind of tax haven. This distorts the market and leads a bunch of major international companies to set up base there, where they pay hardly any tax. Countries like France hate that. Now, they might not be able to fully control tax policy, but they will want to make damn sure the same thing doesn't happen with Britain.
This is the Singapore of Europe thing, right?
Right. Britain will be experiencing two things simultaneously after the end of the transition period. First, a degree of damage to its trading status, the exact extent of which depends on how the trade talks go. And second, some freedom it did not have before. So where does that lead you? Well you're still a big country which can encourage companies to set up with you because of your infrastructure, language, culture and all that. So why not slash corporate taxes to the bone, lower regulations and subsidise business? Make yourself as low standard and attractive as possible. The Europeans want firm commitments to stop this happening.
How do you know?
When the new European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen came to London recently her priorities were clear: "Zero tariffs, zero quotas, zero dumping." That's an interesting set of priorities. Used in this context, 'zero dumping' sounds like code for UK firms undercutting European ones.
Like how?
Well environmental regulations for one. The EU is about to bring in a massive new green initiative, including carbon tax and carbon VAT tax. It doesn't want that undermined by Britain basically exporting lots of dirty carbon to the EU. Same with what's called 'social dumping' - unfair labour practices like easy firing laws. And the same with subsidies - throwing cash at an industry so it can outperform its competitors overseas. This is disciplined at the WTO, but China does very well operating in the grey area of the rules. Britain could try and do the same.
This is really their main priority?
Pretty much. Britain isn't their biggest concern globally - the US and China are - but it is a big meaty economy, which can heavily undercut them, right on their doorstep. Lowering environmental or labour or subsidy standards would allow this, and might tempt firms over from the rest of the world to invest in the UK rather than the EU - or, hell, even get firms in the EU to move. Taken together, this is called the 'level playing field' debate. And it is central to the European negotiating aim.
So this is where one of the main battles will be?
Yep. And it has a knock-on effect on the timetable. Johnson is desperate to get this all done in eleven months. But the level playing field issue has a procedural impact which could make that impossible.
How so?
It's because of how the EU works. It's split up into different competencies. Some things member states have pretty much to themselves, like criminal justice. Some things are mixed competencies, like the environment. And some things are exclusive competencies of the EU, like trade. If the talks with the UK were completely focused on trade, the European Commission could insist that it has exclusive competence. That would be great news for the UK. It would mean that only the Council, where national leaders meet, and the parliament, where MEPs vote, needed to sign off on the deal. But if the deal expands to include things like the environment - and the level playing field issue does exactly that - then it becomes a mixed agreement. And that means you need each and every member state to ratify it according to their domestic political arrangements.
Christ alive. So every national parliament would need to OK it?
Yeah and not just them. In some cases, their constitutional arrangements mean even regional parliaments, like the one in Wallonia in Belgium, would also need to ratify. When Canada did a trade deal with the EU, Wallonia actually refused and for a brief moment it looked like the whole thing would fall down.
Damn.
And actually it goes further than that. A non-mixed agreement would be decided by a qualified vote in the Council. That's important, because it means you don't have to keep them all on board - just most of them. But if it has to be decided by every individual state, you need something for everyone in there, and nothing too terrible for anyone either. The whole thing becomes a lot more complicated and harder to negotiate.
Can the UK prevent this?
It's unlikely. Nearly everyone believes this is a mixed agreement. Member states want to maintain EU unity, but they all have different interests with the UK. They'll want to be able to have an impact on negotiations.
So that it then? There's no way Johnson can get his deal ratified in time?
Yes and no. There is still a get-out clause. The UK and EU can take the trade aspects and provisionally apply them in areas where the EU has exclusive competence. Then the deal goes out for ratification to national parliaments, for however long that takes. And then when they've agreed, it's all put back together and gets properly ratified. There's a bit of wriggle room, basically.
OK.
The trouble is what happens if a member state says no. That happens. The Netherlands rejected the EU's association agreement with Ukraine after a referendum. Greece decided it wanted protection for Ouzo in the South African talks. And if that happens, you have to reopen the agreement and work it all through again to try and find a compromise. Basically, you are sucked into the domestic and regional politics of 27 other member states. And there's no predicting which way that will go.
God.
Yeah. And then there's the thing we haven't mentioned, which is an absolute monster of administrative confusion and grim political consequences.
I can't believe this isn't over yet and you are still talking. Have I died and gone to the Bad Place?
We're all in the Bad Place. You must surely know that now.
Yeah, good point. OK, hit me.
Northern Ireland.
Christ, I'd forgotten about that.
So has the British government. This week, the Stormont Assembly voted unanimously - all parties and not a single vote against - to withhold consent from Johnson's Brexit deal. But even without their consent, it is going to be imposed on them. And it is an absolute godawful mess.
Why?
The deal Johnson did with the EU on Northern Ireland says that it stays in the UK customs territory but follows EU customs rules. It's not clear that he understood the implications of this. It means that a British trader selling into Northern Ireland would need to prove the goods are going to stay there, or pay the EU tariff.
Doesn't sound so bad.
But think about how weird it is. All around the world, goods arriving at a customs border are asked questions about the past - what is it, where was it made, how was it made? But now they are going to be asked questions about their future - where will it end up? And that is fundamentally unknowable. How do you prove it stayed in Northern Ireland? Let's say it's by a receipt on sale. How do you prove that the person you sold it to isn't then selling it into the EU? And this isn't just for final goods. It's also for goods for processing. So you need to know about the supply chain of the people you sell to as well.
I see the problem.
We don't even really have much data to prepare us for this because we don't track British trade to Northern Ireland, for the simple reason that it was always treated as domestic. The kind of information you'd usually have to prepare for a free trade agreement simply doesn't exist.
This is horrible.
It gets much worse. How is Northern Ireland supposed to prepare for this? If the British government succeeds in securing zero tariffs across the board, then life gets marginally easier, although you'd still need to deal with regulatory checks. But if it doesn't, we won't know what the outstanding tariffs will be until close to the deadline. And the Northern Irish system needs to be up and running at the end of transition on December 31st, with all the infrastructure and monitoring that entails. Put simply: It can't be done.
What's Johnson's plan?
He doesn't have one, or at least he hasn't revealed it. Probably the former. He still insist trade will be frictionless, even though this simply cannot be true by virtue of the deal he himself signed. The government also insists that "largely electronic" processes - the high-tech-solutions band back together again for a reunion tour - will solve everything. And then, even if everything works out in the best possible way and all the highest aspirations of the high-tech solutions come to pass, there is still a ghastly problem we have to face.
Alright, I'm strapped in. What is it?
Rules of origin.
No, come on. Not again man. Don't do this to me. We've done that.
Yeah, but it applies here too. The Northern Ireland arrangement is permanent. It stays in place even if the UK and EU have a trade agreement. And that means it has to function as if it's in the EU customs union. And that means…
Rules of origin between Britain and Northern Ireland.
Exactly. Those laborious, nightmarish requirements, carved right into UK territory.
Do they have to do these checks at the border?
No. You can do it away from the border. But the impact on businesses will be huge. Exporters from Britain, who are used to sending things to Northern Ireland as if it were the same country, will suddenly face the full bureaucratic horror show of rules of origin. They will need to decide if they want to go to all the work of figuring out where all their inputs come from, and where their suppliers source their inputs, and where their supplier's suppliers source their inputs. Or whether it is cheaper to simply stop exporting to Northern Ireland. Which many of them are very likely to do.
What's the political consequence of this?
It shows that Johnson's promise of frictionless trade between Britain and Northern Ireland is an outright lie. In fact, his deal creates a permanent border within the UK. It will never go away. It is set in stone. And the worst part, the really immoral part, is that this is happening without the consent of the people it is being imposed on. How that plays out, against the background of Irish politics and the prospect of sudden infrastructure and monitoring arrangements, and impossible timetables, is anyone's guess. But one thing is clear: No responsible person would have done this.
OK. Please tell me this is over now.
Yes. But also, it's only just beginning.
Just on the off chance that I fell asleep through any of that, can you give me a quick executive summary.
Sure. Johnson has set himself an arbitrary one-year deadline for a trade talk with the EU. The consequence of this is that the deal is bare bones, excluding services or - probably, if they're not lying - alignment on goods. Unless he changes course, this will be highly damaging to UK industry, especially those parts based in the Midlands and the North. He also wants control of fisheries. The EU want fisheries to stay as they were and a set of level playing field provisions to stop the UK undercutting them in future. They will try to secure these outcomes by keeping all the issues in play at the same time, so they can leverage them against each other. Whatever happens, the UK must deal with rules of origin requirements, which are extremely painful and will have potentially ruinous results between Britain and Northern Ireland.
Can you make it shorter than that?
The government either does not know what it is doing or is not prepared to reveal what it is doing. We are heading towards a truly disastrous set of outcomes unless that changes.
Thank you. And also please never talk to me again.
This article is based on conversations with...
David Bailey, professor of Business Economics at the Birmingham Business School
Meredith Crowley, international trade economist at the University of Cambridge
Piet Eeckhout, EU law professor and dean at the UCL Faculty of Laws
Andrew Kuyk, policy lead at the UK Seafood Industry Alliance
Philip McCann, professor of Urban and Regional Economics at Sheffield University Management School
Thomas Sampson, assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the LSE
Uta Staiger, executive director of the UCL European Institute
...and others in London and Brussels who chose not to be named.
Ian Dunt is editor of Politics.co.uk. His new book, How To Be A Liberal, is out in spring 2020.
The opinions in Politics.co.uk's Comment and Analysis section are those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the website or its owners. | {
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There have been attempts by many, after the suicide of Hyderabad University scholar Rohith Vemula, to separate his death from the context surrounding it. This is not a Dalit issue, said Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani. It's a matter of depression, wrote Manu Joseph in the Hindustan Times. 'He's not even Dalit,' insisted many of the Bharatiya Janata Party's supporters, who were happy to blame it all on a Congress-liberal conspiracy.
Senior journalist P Sainath, who has spent decades covering rural India, took the mic at a protest against the administration of the Hyderabad University and delivered a speech that attempts to put Vemula's death in context. Although he starts off with ad-hominem attacks against Irani, Sainath goes on to explain how people have attempted to explain away Vemula's death.
"They say Rohith's suicide is a depression suicide, it has nothing to do with discrimination and all the things you are talking about," Sainath says. "One question is, why are some classes and castes in society more depressed than everyone else? But, there is a more cruel and venomous insinuation in this: This is not emotional depression, they are treating it as a mental health issue... this is inborn."
Sainath attempts to explain to the audience the exact nature of inequality in this country. He points out how a minuscule portion of the country's rural population have actually had access to higher education, and furthermore, how the national average for Dalits is lower than even that number.
"We're talking about a discrimination that is structural, social, economic and now being legalised," Sainath said, referring to the new restrictions on those who can contest in local elections, which disproportionately affects Dalits.
"Students of University of Hyderabad, you have taken this battle to the next level. You are in the process highlighting much larger issues, which is what I think I read from the tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula. A long time ago, French writer Victor Hugo wrote that there is nothing on earth that can stand in the way of an idea whose time has come. In India in 2016, I think that time has come. And the idea, is justice: social, economic, cultural, gender and for Rohith and a billion other Rohiths," Sainath said. | {
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Google Inc. is close to launching a cloud-storage service that would rival one of Silicon Valley's hottest start-ups, cloud-storage provider Dropbox Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
Like Dropbox, Google's storage service, called Drive, is a response to the growth of Internet-connected mobile devices like smartphones and tablets and the rise of "cloud computing," or storing files online so that they can be retrieved from multiple devices, these people said.
Drive... | {
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The evening started off simply enough, with you having nothing better to do but join the rest of the cast-offs of society in the Sleeping Lion. Being a mercenary can sometimes be exciting, but mostly it is just boring. That’s what strong drink is for. The basic truth is that there is nothing else to do with your life. You’re powerful. You can handle yourself in a fight, you know that much. And so you came to Gloomhaven, looking for sporadic work guarding trade caravans and loading cargo ships. So far, however, the most action you’ve seen has been in this run-down tavern. Pretty much every night some disagreement between patrons turns bloody, and suddenly you’re not bored anymore. Turns out tonight is no different. Some Inox bumps into a man’s drink, and it turns out the man isn’t too friendly toward Inox. Then, wouldn’t you know, the Inox isn’t too friendly toward humans who aren’t too friendly toward Inox. Things naturally devolve from there. The next thing you know, chairs are flying across the room and no one even remembers how the fight began. It’s every mercenary for themselves, and that boredom isn’t going to allieviate itself. Scenario 1: Just Another Night You’ve beaten so many people senseless in the brawl that you start to get a little light-headed, much like a night with too many drinks. As the carnage wanes in the background, you lean against a table, overcome with an emotion. Dissatisfaction. Normally these fights are the only thing that dispels it, but tonight, not even the thrill of a good brawl can fill the void inside of you. Your life should mean more than this. You are wasting away in this den of wrath and debauchery. Given enough time, no doubt you will fade away into the background too, indiscernable from the rest of these drunks. But it’s not too late. You can still take your fate into your own hands and find true adventure. You just need to make the decision to change, so you decide to climb aboard a ship headed out into the eastern sea.
Everything in your rational mind is telling you to avoid this ship — the overwhelming stench of caustic smoke, the loud banging as the rickety engines rattle around, and the vague mumblings of the captain about what lies in the ship’s hold — all of it is telling you to walk away, but somehow your sense of adventure gets the better of you. Despite her aloof demeanor, you catch a faint hint that Dreyl, the Quatryl Captain, actually does seem pleased to have you aboard. As the ship weighs anchor and sputters out of harbor, the grimace on her face could almost be construed as a smile. “I may actually have hit a small bit of luck havin’ you lot aboard,” Drey says. “A contingency plan in case this thing goes sideways.” You try to press her on what exactly she means by “thing,” but instead, Dreyl goes into a long, meandering story about how she used to be a smuggler. She and her best friend Luce worked for a man named Barty Half-Ear, building and repairing engines for his ship so that he could evade capture and have the upper-hand in a battle. Dreyl and Luce lived well enough until one of the engines blew out during a bloody combat, leaving the ship vulnearable to be boarded. Barty lost many of his men in the ensuing carnage. As punishment for the failure, Barty killed Luce in front of the crew and threw her overboard. You can see Dreyl shake with rage as she describes the events. “Just slit poor Luce’s throat and made me watch as she bled out on the deck. I screamed and screamed, but couldn’t do nothin’ else.” She then describes how she escaped Barty’s ship and has been planning her revenge ever since. It is at this point that a knot starts to form in the pit of your stomach. You begin to notice that the ship has not been following a straight course, but, rather, has been zig-zagging through the water since you left Merchant’s Bay, almost as if you are hunting something. “There the bastard is,” Dreyl suddenly spits. “Stupid sod hasn’t even changed his patrol pattern in all these years.” You see a small white sail out on the horizon. As Dreyl lays down on the throttle, the sail grows quickly and steadily larger. You stare in wide-eyed horror as your ship continues to speed closer until you can see the shapes of men scrambling around on the deck. They look horrified, too. An explosion rips through the air from cannon fire, but Dreyl expertly manuevers the ship in evasion. Your ship is much smaller and has no apparent weapons, but that doesn’t seem to faze Dreyl at all. You desperately ask what she is planning, but she just stares ahead in grim determination and mutters, “We’re gonna sink the bastard, even if it kills us all.” Before you can object to her line of reasoning, you are thrown to the ground as Dreyl flips a switch and the death trap lurches forward at an alarming speed. Dreyl has maneuvered around to the stern of the larger ship and you now race straight ahead on a clear ramming course. All you can do is brace yourself before the two ships collide and everything goes white. When your vision returns, what lies before your eyes is a scene of chaos. The demolished bow of Dreyl’s ship has punched a hole straight into the back hull of the larger vessel and water is pouring in at an alarming rate. Twisted metal and splintered wood litter the scene where the two ships have merged, and a foul, acrid gas rises up out of the ruined engines, permeating the area. “The bombs,” Dreyl coughs, lying wounded on the floor. “They didn’t go off… use them… to kill Barty…” There are indeed a number of small explosives that appear to have fallen out of a central casing due to the crash and now litter the floor. You’re not especially inclined to follow the instructions of this suicidal Quatryl, but the crew on board the larger ship seems to be recovering from the collision, as well, and they don’t seem to happy about what happened. Perhaps the bombs could come in handy. Scenario 2: A Quatryl Scorned With one last blow, Barty groans and keels over. He is still alive, begging you to spare his life. Before you can act, however, a massive explosion from below rocks the ship, and the entire structure begins to lurch and split apart. It seems like Dreyl finally managed to get her explosives to work. You need get off this ship before the situation gets any worse. Looking out of Barty’s shattered cabin window, you see the outline of a small island on the horizon. With any luck, you’ll be able to find a dinghy on this doomed vessel and make your way back to dry land. You may even have time to take something — or someone — with you.
Your lust for adventure apparently has its limits. Faced with the choice between reckless excitement and securing the safety of the mad Quatryl who tried to kill you, well, it’s an easy choice. Looking down at the shivering, battered figure of Dreyl lying in the center of the boat, you can’t help but feel sympathy for her. Her madness was driven by an understandable anger and need for revenge. Plus, she may be the only one who can help you get back to civilization. Halfway around the north side of the island, the cliff walls thankfully recede and give way to a sandy shore. You beach the boat and carry Dreyl to dry land. Your healing skills are able to stabilize her and bring her back to consciousness, but her burns are alarmingly severe. She can do little but moan in agony. “Bloodroot…” she gurgles. Yes. Your remember that a salve of bloodroot can allieviate burns, and it is very possible that the root could be found on this island. Dreyl seems to think so, at least. You stare off into the trees beyond the beach, thinking things through. You face a couple of problems. One is that there are very strange noises coming from the inner island — a low, eerie sound with a regular rhythm, accompanied by random, high-pitched screeching. It is off-putting to say the least. Your other problem is that bloodroot is nearly indistinguishable from daggeroot, a highly toxic plant that causes debilitating poison with any amount of contact. Dreyl moans again, and your resolve solidifies. You will brave the strange forest to help her recover. It doesn’t take long to find those problems, though. Scenario 3: Unreliable Medicine You race back to the shore, laden down with enough bloodroot to cover the small Quatryl’s body in a soothing salve. It takes an hour to make the paste and apply it, but when it is finally done, Dreyl’s moaning subsides. In another hour, she finally begins to speak again, though it is interupted by soft sobs. “I’m sorry…” she whispers. “I was just so… Luce… why did you save me?” Dreyl begins to cry uncontrollably and it takes some time to calm her down once again, all the while, the strange low chanting continues from the forest. The Quatryl says she can help you get off this island and back out onto sea in an adequate ship if you can bring her enough building materials. “It’s really up to you lot,” she says quietly. “I have no reason for livin’ anymore, other that to make up for my selfishness.”
Not wanting to be ambushed later by a pack of vengeful Vermlings, you pursue the fleeing figure back into the forest. Catching it or getting a clear shot proves more difficult than anticipated, however. The Vermling continues to gain ground until you are barrelling through the trees with only vague idea of the direction you should be headed. Suddenly, you burst out into a clearing full of the small creatures, all of them dressed in the same colorful attire of plants and feathers. At your arrival, the Vermlings hiss menacingly, but they do not appear to be armed. You are about to brandish your own weapons when one of them yells above the crowd. “Wait!” It says. “These are ones I saw! These are ones who kill Blackbiters! They are not enemy!” You haven’t quite arrived at that conclusion yourself yet, but you stay your hand as the Vermling walks closer to you. “You kill many Blackbiter and their demons, yes?” He asks. Not sure what to do, you nod. “Good! You help kill more of them, yes?” You nod again and the crowd of Vermlings visibly relaxes. You talk more with the one who recognized you, named Antgut, and you learn that this Vermling tribe, the Hollowbones, has been warring with the Blackbiters for many years. Only recently, though, did the Blackbiters begin employing the aid of demons. Antgut is afraid the demons will turn the war in the Blackbiters favor, and the Hollowbones were preparing to attack their enemy’s temple when you appeared. “Before we fight,” Antgut explains, “We need power of ancestors. We make ritual feast, and would be honor if you join us.” Antgut explains that the most important task in the feast is the cooking of the meat. Drake carcasses, recently harvested from a nearby cave, must be butchered, brought to the cooking cave, and then returned to the banquet table, all the while a totem of the enemy tribe is danced around and attacked. “It is very important meat cooked well and totem destroyed,” Antgut says. “Sacred task, but I see you kill Blackbiter already. Ancestors choose you for task.” Scenario 4: Unlikely Allies With the meat delivered, the dancing and singing of the Hollowbone tribe ends abruptly and dramatically. As you clear out the rest of the vipers, you notice that the meat emits a faint golden glow. Disconcerted, you see the tribe crowd around the table and begin to feast. Antgut approaches you. “We thank you greatly,” he says with a smile. “Without you, ritual surely fail.” You begin to hear an odd cacophony of noises around the table as Antgut continues. “I lie, though,” he admits. “Ancestors give us power, but not power to fight. Power to flee.” At this, you recognize the sounds around the table as those of birds cawing. Before your eyes, a number of Vermlings begin to change shape. They writhe on the ground in pain, flapping their arms wildly. Slowly, their limbs become wings, their mouths become beaks, and their feet become talons. “You can eat meat, too,” Antgut says noncommittally. “I not know if it work on non-Vermlings, but it all I can offer for help.” He turns and begins to walk toward the table.
Seeing movement in the tower up above has cemented your decision, and you begin to race up the stone steps. As you ascend, the pyramid eventually tapers into a giant spire shooting up into the sky. You grab the hand holds carved into the vertical face of the stone structure and begin to climb. Halfway up the tower, carried upon the ever-increasing winds, you begin to hear the sounds of commotion below you. A multitude of Vermlings are pouring out of the base of the pyramid and moving up the stone steps after you. Completely unable to fend them off while clinging for your life, you have no choice but to continue climbing upward toward the zenith. Farther still up your ascent, with the swarm below hot on your heels, you begin to hear troubling sounds from above as well — the sound of a woman yelling. You recognize the voice as Dreyl’s. You climb as fast as you can, finally reaching a large, open, circular platform to stand on. Above you, you can see two more smaller platforms, and it seems like Dreyl’s voice is coming from the very top. Getting there will not be easy, however. Demons and more of the wretched Blackbiters block your path. “When we sacrifice the small one,” one of them taunts. “The demons will make this island ours!” Scenario 5: The Sun Spire You arrive at the top of the spire to see two Vermlings huddled around an altar. Dreyl is tied up on top of it, throwing a non-stop stream of profanities at them. It looks like she has been cut in numerous places, and a troubling amount of her blood has been collected in a bowl at the altar’s center. It glows with a dark energy. “You are too late!” One of the shamans cackles. “We have called down the aid from the stars! Soon all our enemies — including you — will be burned in never-ending sky fire! We will show you death!” It is time to free Dreyl and show them how gravity works. – With the platforms secured from both above and below, you finally have time to take stock of the situation, free Dreyl from her bonds, and heal her wounds. Completely cut off from the ground by a pack of gibbering Vermlings, you discuss your options and mention the strange meat you were given by the Hollowbones. “Are you mad?” Dreyl says. “Did the Vermlings bite you one too many times and give you the red fever? Eat that horrid, diseased meat on the off-chance it turns you into birds? That’s ridiculous! Surely there must be another way.” As Dreyl continues to scold you, a blinding ray of light shoots down from the sky onto the altar. The central column of the tower begins to glow red-hot, all the way down to its base at the pyramid. Before you know it, the entire structure is shaking wildly and fissures begin to form in the ground far below. “I guess we’re out of options!” Dreyl yells. “Hand over that meat before we all fall to our deaths!” Without thinking, you begin to ingest the foul-tasting flesh as quickly as possible. Midway down the spire, the stone cracks, and the platforms you are standing on careen toward the earth, flinging you out into the open air. You are preparing for the end when your arms suddenly sprout feathers. You begin to flap them wildly as other odd changes to your body occur. It is incredibly painful and disorienting, but you soon find yourself soaring through the air as a bird, along with Dreyl and the rest of your party. You have significant misgivings about how long this transformation will last, but the island below continues to crack and split, leaving less and less habitable earth on which to land.
“Well, ain’t that a sight for the ages,” Barty says as he stands over you. “Some mad sellswords crash into my ship, leave me for dead, force me to piece together a new boat from the wreckage, and then suddenly they appear in the stark middle of the sea looking for rescue. “Not only that, but you still have this traitorous Quatryl with you!” He jabs at Dreyl with an oar. “What kind of world is this, where the likes of her can yet be breathin’?” “You murderous bastard!” Dreyl spits out as she coughs up sea water. “Only after I see you dead will I allow myself to die.” “Murderous!” Barty feints indignation. “Why, correct me if I’m wrong, lass, but did I not just save your skin? Would you like me to throw you back into the sea?” Dreyl yells in anger, and you step in to stop the altercation from turning bloody. You point to the horizon, reminding everyone that a storm is approaching. You’ll be able to sort out your differences when and if you get through that alive. “Aye,” Barty says while Dreyl sulks in silence. “Thanks to you, this ship is a broken fraction of what she once was, and I have no crew. I can steer us through, but I’ll need your help. I sense the work of the angry sprits of the sea.” “This isn’t over, Half-Ear!” Dreyl shouts over the growing sounds of the storm. “Just stay away from me until we’re through!” Scenario 6: A Ship in a Storm Before the storm even clears and the rest of the angry creatures and pushed back into the sea, Dreyl and Barty are back at each other’s throats, with Dreyl brandishing a mean-looking electric baton in Barty’s direction. “It’s time for you to pay for Luce’s murder, Half-Ear,” Dreyl says. “Oh, please,” Barty scoffs. “Your friend had been stealing from me for a long time, and everyone knew. Had to make an example. It’s as simple as that.” “So you kill her in cold blood?” Dreyl says. “If you had no mercy then, why should I show you any now?” Dreyl swings the baton at Barty, and he dodges out of the way. “Put that toy down ‘fore you hurt yourself, girl,” Barty chides. “Do you think those mercenaries you tricked will side with you on this one? You poor saps need me to navigate to dry land.” “I don’t care, you human piece of garbage!” Dreyl yells. “As long as I can see you take your last breath, nothing else that happens afterwards will matter!” “Come now, friends” Barty addresses you, dodging another swing from Dreyl. “We clearly have a problem here. This crazed Quatryl and I ain’t gonna last on the same ship together. Her stupidity overwhelms me. It’s time to choose.” Instead of choosing, however, you continue to try to live with both of them.
You move toward Barty with grim determination, but your vision begins to blur, and your knees buckle as the whole cabin spins around you. “A pity,” Barty sighs. “I had truly hoped we’d be able to get along — I have your antidote right here after all — but that damned Quatryl is still clouding your judgement, and it looks like I just can’t take the risk.” Your vision goes white around the edges, and your consciousness fades in and out as Barty speaks. “Don’t worry. The poison won’t kill you. Why break something you can still profit from?” The next thing you know, you find yourself face-down in a bed of hay, your head pounding fiercely. You try to move, but make little progress due to fatigue and the iron chain around your ankle. You are in a prison of some sort, surrounded by metal bars and a hard stone floor. As you groan and shift up into a sitting position, a figure approaches your cage. “Well, I’ll be,” an obese Orchid says, peering through the bars. “That lying sack of refuse actually told the truth. Me, I thought you’d never wake up, but the Prophet had faith in the smuggler’s antidote.” The Orchid laughs with joy, his purple, scaled skin straining to hold in his excessive fat. “Barty told us you were quite powerful, but equally stupid, so I hope you provide the Prophet with some worthwhile entertainment. “Rest up. Your first fight will be arranged for tomorrow.” The Orchid walks off and you spend the rest of the day huddled in your dimly lit cage, trying in vain to determine how much time has passed and where exactly you ended up. After an interminable amount of time, the fat orchid returns dragging behind him many great lengths of chain. “All right, it is time for your fight,” he says. “We’ve put together something really special for you, so try not to die too quickly.” He pauses for effect. “One way to die quickly is to attack me or attempt any sort of escape. It will not end well for you. I’m going to go into your cages one by one and attach your leg irons to one of these chains. Just follow the chain out that back door into the antechamber of the fighting pit. You’ll find your equipment there, and when you are ready, we’ll begin the show.” Not knowing what else to do, you comply with the Orchid’s commands and equip your gear in the antechamber as massive waves of cheers and yells from outside rattle the doors to the fighting pit. One voice rises above the din, but as you strain to hear it, the doors to the pit suddenly burst open. You see a circular stadium before you with a central area full of blood, bones, and dismembered corpses. Hundreds of shouting Orchids sit in the concentric rings of seats looking over the pit. You have little time to take better stock of the situation, though, as there is a gargantuan bear in the pit with you. Its truly massive shape is covered in scars and fresh wounds. It looks incredibly angry. Scenario 7: Arrival in Chains The crowd gasps as the bear falls to the ground dead, overcome by its wounds. You breathe a sigh of relief, looking over the impressed crowd. You see a small female Orchid in white robes emerge from under an awning and stare down at you. You feel her gaze penetrate your soul. “They can take more,” she says simply and then returns to her seat. The crowd gasps again as cages around the perimeter of the pit are opened, releasing a number of deadly drakes. – This time the crowd cheers as you finish the last of your foes, and, once again, the robed Orchid emerges and stares down at you. “They can take more,” she says. “Show me the Doctor’s latest creation.” The crowd immediately becomes silent and you can hear some commotion from behind the robed Orchid. Suddenly, the ground beneath you begins to shake, and an explosion from the center of the arena knocks you back. As the smoke clears, you see a giant shape rising slowly from a hole in the floor of the pit. A golem made of metal and stone towers over you. – The heat from the Golem finally subsides, and you look up once again to the robed Orchid, dreading what she will say next. As she emerges from the awning, the cheering crowd once again falls silent. “True specimens of combat,” she announces. “We have been entertained. Return them to their cages to await our future desires for diversion.” The chains around your ankles grow taut, drawing you back into the antechamber doors. You have no desire to perform in this prison until you are killed. You may be weak, but now could be your best chance for escape.
You follow the Orchid into the darkness as he weaves a path through twisting and forking passages. Multiple times on the path, after you have passed through some corridor, he moves a false wall into place behind you to stop anyone from following. On the one hand, you feel safe, but on the other, you are totally lost and vulnerable. Eventually the passageway opens up into a large stone room and you see three more Orchids sitting around a wooden table, discussing a number of blueprints scattered across its surface. They look up at you as you enter. “So you were correct, Ashtooth” one of the sitting Orchids says to the one you followed. “This is good. Using them is the most ideal plan.” You start to object, but Ashtooth raises a hand to silence you. “There is no need to speak. We will explain everything you need to know, and then you will execute the plan. It is the only way for you to escape this island.” The Orchids sit you down at the table and begin to speak. Their manner is much different than the manner of those you encountered outside. They are far more calm and deliberate. The Orchids explain that this island is not far off from the mainland where they are from, and its residents have become increasingly problematic over the last few years. Apparently a charismatic Orchid emerged from the mainland society and began teaching that the true path was not one of knowledge and meditation. The true path was to follow her and embrace hedonistic pleasures, trusting that this prophet would take care of their needs. “Our lifestyle is not easy,” Ashtooth says. “But it is necessary. And anyone who can call our people away from their task has nothing but evil in their hearts. The Prophet must be destroyed. When you do that, her followers will disperse, and you will be free to leave the island without interference. If you do not destroy her, there is no way to avoid the ones currently looking for you.” Ashtooth explains the plan, showing maps of the old tunnels of a ruined Quatryl fortress that lead into the keep where the Prophet resides. You study the blueprints until you are sure you can find your way into her inner sanctum. The Orchids assure you that the tunnels will be clear, but when you near the main keep, you run right into a group of patrolling undead and a passageway clearly trapped against intruders. Scenario 8: The Doctor’s Lab You open the door to find an old Quatryl with his back to you, hunched over a giant creature of metal and stone in the middle of a laboratory. It is similar to the golem you encountered in the fighting pit, however, this one is hollow. “My mistress said you would be coming,” he coughs. “All those traps… I thought I’d have more time.” The Quatryl climbs up onto the golem and inserts himself into the central metal chamber. The golem begins to move like a marionette, mimicking the movements of Quatryl inside. “Oh well,” he says. “I haven’t quite figured out proper waste containment, but it will have to do for now.” – You beat down the Doctor’s “waste” product until it stops moving and then move over to the ruined golem where the Doctor is still coughing inside. “I’m not sure what I expected,” the Doctor laughs quietly. “You did destroy my rocket golem after all. “Still, I find myself confused as to how you found this place. Are you working for my mistress’s enemies? And if so, why? I’d be happy to arrange an audience with her for you. Surely you could arrive at a beneficial arrangement with her.” You are not interested in negotiation.
You draw your weapons as the Prophet rises to her feet and dusts off her robe. “Again you surprise me,” she says. “I will give a warning: I know your capabilities. I know you are about to die. You should flee.” The Prophet moves faster than you expect and exits the room through a door in back, leaving you with her many guards. Scenario 9: Skewed Perspective You open the back door and see the Prophet at the end of a long hallway. “I can see the many futures you hold,” she calls out to you. “The many paths you could have taken. But you have made the wrong choices. The path you are on leads to your death. I will show you.” The Prophet raises her hand, and your vision goes blurry. The hallway before you feels off-kilter, and your head spins. You lose your balance and fall to your knees, watching in horror as the scene in front of you vibrates and splits apart. The hallway slowly becomes two hallways heading off in different directions. The Prophet stands simultaneously at the ends of both. “Turn back or die,” she says and then disappears behind the doors at the ends of the halls. – You see the Prophet standing at the back of a small room at the end of the hall. No doubt she also stands at the back of the other room at the end of the other hall. You finally have her cornered, but she doesn’t look concerned. “You do not understand the infinite strands of time spreading out in all directions,” she states. “You cannot hope to defeat me.” – The Prophet grunts as you strike her one last time. A look of confusion crosses her face. “A mistake…” she whispers. “I thought I understood. Your path… it opens up before you. But this path… for me… is closed.” She falls over, and, as she lands, the two hallways and two rooms snap back into focus and instantly merge together, forming but a single hall, a single room, and a single corpse of a white-robed Orchid on the ground. With the Prophet dead, you return to Ashtooth in the ruined tunnels as planned. The Orchids display little emotion as you relate what took place in the keep. They simply nod their heads and offer a reserved thanks. “This is good,” Ashtooth says. “We had doubts the plan would succeed, but now the Prophet’s followers will disperse and return home. And you — you will once again have your freedom.” Ashtooth leads you through another set of winding, forking paths until you arrive at an archway leading into the open air. Ahead you see a number of small ships moored to a pier. “We must stay behind to see the rest of our plan through,” Ashtooth says. “But you should go. Take a ship and be free.” As you go to leave, Ashtooth holds out a talisman to you. “Take this,” he says. “With it, you will always be welcome among my people. They are but a short journey from where we are. The Quatryls are farther south along the coast. And the one who sold you — I suspect he is headed back toward the western continent.” | {
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An increasingly dark or twisted sense of humour could be an early warning sign of impending dementia, according to experts.
The results have appeared in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, which was carried out by University College London.
Dr Camilla Clark recruited 48 patients with frontotemporal dementia from their dementia clinic at University College London. The patient's friends and family were asked to rate their friend or relative's enjoyment of different kinds of comedy.
These included slapstick comedy such as Mr Bean, satirical comedy such as Yes, Minister or absurdist comedy such as Monty Python and examples of inappropriate humour. Dr Clark found that the dementia patients preferred slapstick humour to satirical, when compared to 21 healthy people of a similar age.
Nearly all of those asked, said that they had noticed a change in the patient's humour within the previous nine years before being diagnosed with dementia. The changes included a darker sense of humour and laughing at tragic events in the news or their personal lives.
Dr Clark said: “These were marked changes – completely inappropriate humour well beyond the realms of even distasteful humour. For example, one man laughed when his wife badly scalded herself”.
Dr Simon Ridley, of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said anyone concerned about changes in their behaviour should speak to their GP.
“While memory loss is often the first thing that springs to mind when we hear the word dementia, this study highlights the importance of looking at the myriad different symptoms that impact on daily life and relationships", he said.
“A deeper understanding of the full range of dementia symptoms will increase our ability to make a timely and accurate diagnosis”.
Frontotemporal dementia is only one type of dementia, and is one of the rarer types. | {
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So you need equipment financing, but don’t know where to start? With Trust Capital, applying for a business loan is quick and easy!
Every loan at Trust Capital begins with our easy one page online application. The majority of our transactions are application only and require no additional documentation, but be assured that if we do request additional information, we are working hard to get you the lowest possible payment. | {
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One U.S. gallon of automotive diesel fuel at 76 degrees Fahrenheit and standard atmospheric pressure weighs 6.91 pounds . That’s equal to 110.54 ounces or 3.13 kilograms. The density of a substance can change due to heat and pressure, so this number may change slightly in different environments. Colder temperatures and higher pressures increase the weight of a gallon. However, it doesn’t change too much under normal conditions, so many truck drivers estimate the weight of fuel at 7 pounds per gallon.
Physical Properties
Petroleum diesel, also known as petrodiesel, is the most common type of diesel. This fuel is made by distilling crude oil at high temperatures. It looks clear or brown in liquid form. It’s sometimes mixed with bio-fuels. Diesel has a high energy content, meaning it provides a lot of power when used. While diesel can be stored for long periods of time, it does
degrade over time.
Like gasoline, diesel has an octane number that refers to its energy value. It comes in different grades: number one, which is premium, and number two, which is regular. Off-road diesel is made only for construction vehicles, agricultural equipment, and other machines that will not be used on paved roads. It’s usually dyed red. Use of off-road diesel on regular roads can lead to fines.
Differences Between Gasoline and Diesel
The reason why diesel is often used in large vehicles is that it carries more energy than gasoline. Diesel molecules are large yet compact well against each other, packing more energy into every gallon. Compared to diesel’s roughly 7 pounds per gallon, the same amount of gasoline weighs only about 6.2 pounds. While
diesel releases more harmful substances into the air when burned, it’s more fuel efficient. Diesel vehicles also require special engines that don’t need spark plugs to ignite the fuel.
Diesel in Cold Weather
Because diesel is denser than gasoline,
it’s more prone to freezing. Cold temperatures cause thin, waxy sheets of semi-solid diesel to form. This can clog an engine’s fuel filter. Water content in the fuel, which is especially common in biodiesel, make it even easier for the diesel to freeze. If diesel looks cloudy or hazy, it may be freezing.
Treating Frozen Diesel
Chemicals can be added to diesel to keep it from congealing. If the diesel has already begun to turn waxy, adding number one diesel or kerosene to the engine can dissolve the wax. However, doing so is costly and lowers the efficiency of the fuel.
Heat can also turn the wax back into a liquid. Many diesel vehicles come with a means of heating the fuel tank for this purpose, but if the temperature gets too cold, it may not be enough.
The History of Diesel
The diesel engine was invented by Rudolph Diesel in the 1890s in an attempt to create more efficient vehicles. Rather than focusing only on petroleum, Diesel tried using everything from coal dust to vegetable oils as fuel. He was really invested in the latter and predicted that
plant oils would someday be as important as petroleum.
While Diesel’s engines faced problems with reliability in his day, they were still more efficient than his competitors’. They were also strong enough to be used by the French navy in 1904. While the diesel engine would go on to further successes, Diesel did not live to see this happen. He vanished off a ship headed to England in 1913. Some believe that he committed suicide. Others suggest that he may have been murdered by oil magnates who were threatened by his push to use biofuels. | {
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Leinster rugby has never been stronger, with the province currently possessing squad depth the envy of clubs teams around the world.
Leo Cullen can almost call on two full teams of international players, with the Leinster coaching staff rotating their team to perfection last term en route to a PRO 14/Champions Cup double. One knock-on effect of Leinster's strength in depth has been that a lot of homegrown talent has been forced to move away in order to get proper game time.
With the IRFU enforcing an unofficial policy of only selecting players based in Ireland, Munster, Connacht and Ulster have all been beneficiaries of Leinster's talent overspill.
Last weekend, as Leinster hosted Ulster and Munster visited Connacht to round off the festive inter-provincials ties, 27 of the 60 starters were from Leinster.
Cullen's side fielded 13, Connacht had six while Ulster and Munster had four each. While players such as Tadhg Beirne, John Cooney and Tom Farrell have all made their breakthroughs away from their home team, the question has been asked as to whether the influx of Leinster players into the other provinces dilutes the local identity of the teams and if eventually fans will become unhappy if the majority of their side if made up of ex-Leinster players.
Speaking on The Left Wing, Independent.ie's rugby podcast, Luke Fitzgerald thinks that Irish rugby is benefiting from the increase in player momevement, and doesn't think the amount of Leinster players plying their trade elsewhere is an issue.
"It is a pretty small talent pool and the population is very skewed," Fitzgerald said.
"That's where the most people are playing. The focus in other provinces is very much on developing their own talent but the schools system might be more developed in Leinster. I don't see a problem with it. As long as it is Irish talent then you can see us progressing here. As long as they are Irish, because it is all the same system to me."
Fitzgerald added that as long as the nucleus of the provinces remain local, teams are right to continue to strengthen their squads with Irish talent - no matter what province they come from.
"I still think you need to have the local guys around - and they do," Fitzgerald said.
"There is a mix. You need a few of the local heroes like Peter O'Mahony and Conor Murray. They are always going to have a big local presence and they are their best players. You just need to supplement that. I think the nucleus of the team should be local but you can't stop the furtherment of the team by not supplementing where you have to so that the team can perform. Otherwise people like Jacob Stockdale could be standing out there with no opportunity to score tries. Ulster needed Marty Moore in the scrum. They needed Jordi Murphy because Marcell Coetzee was injured all the time. You need these guys so the local guys can go out and perform. They key is getting the balance right and you do need a balance."
Subscribe to The Left Wing, Independent.ie's Rugby podcast, with Luke Fitzgerald and Will Slattery for the best discussion and analysis each week. From in depth interviews with some of Irish rugby's biggest stars to unmatched insights into the provinces and the national team, The Left Wing has all your rugby needs covered.
Listen and subscribe to The Left Wing on iTunes and Soundcloud
Online Editors | {
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This device will alert the drivers of any physical obstruction on railway tracks ahead and thus avert accidents.
If Hindu mythology is to be believed, when Lord Shiva opened his third eye, it would lead to destruction. But, the third eye or ‘Tri-Netra’ that the Indian Railways is getting, will help in averting train collisions, derailment and accidents on unmanned railway crossings.
India will be the first country to use Terrain Imaging for Diesel Drivers- Infrared Enhanced Optical and Radar Assisted or ‘Tri-Netra’ in railways for monitoring obstructions on tracks to prevent mishaps, claims Indian Railways.
“This device will alert the drivers of any physical obstruction on railway tracks ahead and thus avert accidents. This will prove to be more useful during nights and in foggy conditions when drivers have to constantly look outside the locomotive to assess the condition,” Ved Prakash, Director Information & Publicity, Ministry of Railways told FE Online.
How will Tri-Netra device work?
According to railway officials, the tri-netra device will use infra-red to tab signals up to a distance of 2-3 km and display the information on a screen fitted inside the locomotive. The display will not distract the driver with flashes or alarms during normal conditions, but warn them about danger in red colour and will give the driver ample time to stop the train. The equipment will have cameras, antennas, sensors for visualising the track ahead, which will be mounted on either ends of the locomotive.
Also read: Talgo train achieves target speed of 180 kmph on Indian tracks
“These devices can easily sense the presence of any uprooted tree or a boulder lying on the railway tracks. If a vehicle has broken down on the rail tracks, the device can notice them well in advance,” Prakash told FE Online.
The Ministry of Railways has invited global tenders from companies to design, develop and implement Tri-Netra for locomotives. In the pilot project, these devices will be installed in 100 locomotives and gradually more devices could be procured depending on success of the system.
Specifications and design of critical components shall also be approved by the Research Designs & Standards Organisation, the railways research arm.
RDSO PRO VK Varma confirmed the same. | {
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2018年9月28日（金）～30日（日）、東京ビッグサイトで開催される「第58回全日本模型ホビーショー」（一般公開日は9月29日～30日）。ここではセメダインから出展されるアイテムを紹介します！
関連記事：第58回全日本模型ホビーショーが9月29日から開催！動作拡大型スーツ「スケルトニクス」搭乗体験や、国産プラモデル誕生60周年記念展示に注目
「クリアパーツがくもらない」「貼ってはがせる」接着剤に注目！
セメダインブースでは、クリアパーツをくもらせずにくキレイに接着できる「ハイグレード模型用」や、ラジコンやドローンに用いられるCFRPや真ちゅう・チタンなどを強固に接着できる「メタルロック」、フィギュアやパーツの仮固定に便利な弾性粘着剤「BBX」が展示されます。
また、ロングセラーで親しまれている「プラモデル用」「ABS用」、ポリエチレン・ポリプロピレン・フッ素樹脂を強力に瞬間接着できる難接着素材専用接着剤「PPX」など、さまざまな使用シーンに最適な接着剤も展示。そのほか、3Dプリンターの造形で用いられるABSやPLAなどの各素材に適した接着剤についても紹介される予定です!!
おもな展示品を動画とあわせてチェック！
●水性ウレタン系接着剤「ハイグレード模型用」
接着部分が目立たない透明タイプ。パーツにダメージを与えない無溶剤・水性タイプ。硬化前なら水でふき取ることが可能です。
●【クリアパーツが曇らない】 ハイグレード模型用【セメダイン】（CEMEDINEch）
●アクリル樹脂系接着剤「メタルロック」
金属、CFRP同士を強力に接着。エポキシ系に比べて、はく離強度や耐衝撃性に優れる速硬化タイプ。
●【2液混合型アクリル系】金属・炭素繊維の接着に【メタルロック】（CEMEDINEch）
●弾性粘着剤「BBX」
貼ってはがせる強力粘着剤。フィギュアの固定や、パーツの仮固定に最適です。柔らかいゴム状弾性体となり、振動にも強い。
●【仮組み】貼ってはがせる粘着剤【BBX】（CEMEDINEch）
●セメダインについて
1923年の創業以来、日本初の合成接着剤メーカーとして「つける技術」をモノづくりのソリューションとして提供。その技術は、輸送機製造や交通システム、産業機器製造、電機製品・電子部品製造に広く採用されているほか、ビルや住宅、各種インフラやテーマパークなど多くの建築現場を支えています。
DATA
第58回全日本模型ホビーショー
会期：2018年9月28日（金）～30日（日）
業者招待日：2018年9月28日（金）9:00～17:00
一般公開日：2018年9月29日（土）9:30～18:00／9月30日（日）9:30～16:30
会場：東京ビッグサイト東7・8ホール
主催：日本プラモデル工業協同組合
このほかにも、電撃ホビーウェブでは「第58回全日本模型ホビーショー」の関連情報を随時紹介していきますので、引き続きお見逃しなく!!
関連情報
関連記事 | {
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Sometimes you just need a little bit extra light on your keyboard while you type in dark areas. When you don't have keys that are illuminated, that extra light would make all the difference. This little astronaut light attaches to any open USB port on your computer or laptop, and acts as a flashlight/lamp while you work.
The astronaut USB light has a strong flexible cord that lets you position the spaceman and the light into pretty much any position you like. This way you can have the light shining on your keyboard, at you, or to the side if you're working next to your computer.
To use the astronaut flashlight just plug him into any USB port on your computer or laptop, position him however you like, and flip his visor guard to the back of his head. When his visor guard is open, the light will be on, and when the visor guard is closed, the light will be off. There's a small button the back of the astronaut's neck that gets turned on and off when the visor gets pulled all of the way back.
The astronaut computer light is powered via USB, is white in color, includes 1 astronaut light, is made from ABS plastic, and the astronaut by himself measures 2.75 inches tall x 1.37 inches wide x 2.36 inches thick.
A floating astronaut USB lamp
Connects to any open USB port
Connects to either laptop or USB wall charger adapter
White in color
Turn on and off by adjusting visor
Flexible cord lets you adjust into any position
Measures 2.75 inches tall
Check out the USB astronaut light in action via the video below. | {
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By LYNN BERRY, Associated Press
FRYAZINO, Russia (AP) — The elderly former Soviet military officer who answers the door is known in the West as "The man who saved the world."
A movie with that title, which hits theaters in the United States on Friday, tells the harrowing story of Sept. 26, 1983, when Stanislav Petrov made a decision credited by many with averting a nuclear war.
An alarm had gone off that night, signaling the launch of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles, and it was up to the 44-year-old lieutenant colonel to determine, and quickly, whether the attack on the Soviet Union was real.
"I realized that I had to make some kind of decision, and I was only 50/50," Petrov told The Associated Press.
Despite the data coming in from the Soviet Union's early-warning satellites over the United States, Petrov decided to consider it a false alarm. Had he done otherwise, the Soviet leadership could have responded by ordering a retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States.
What made this even more dangerous was that the Soviet Union appears genuinely to have feared a surprise U.S. nuclear attack during what was an exceptionally tense period of the Cold War. That month, the Soviets had shot down a passenger plane flying to South Korea from the U.S., suspecting it of spying. The United States, after a series of provocative military maneuvers, was preparing for a major NATO exercise, called Able Archer, which simulated preparations for a nuclear attack.
In the movie, "The Man Who Saved the World," by Danish director Peter Anthony, actors portray the events of that night in 1983. The dramatic scenes are interwoven with footage of the real Petrov as an older man at his home in Russia, and on a 2006 trip to the United States, where he receives an award at the United Nations and meets with movie stars, including Kevin Costner, Matt Damon and Robert De Niro.
In his homeland, Petrov's role in history has won him little fame. He still lives in Fryazino, a town on the outskirts of Moscow, in a simple, unkempt apartment that looks much as it does in the movie, down to the long strip of yellow fly paper hanging from the ceiling. Unlike in the movie, where Petrov is shown angrily chasing out foreign journalists who have come to hear his story, he proves a gracious host, welcoming guests into his kitchen.
When Petrov, now 76, looks back on that night at the secret Serpukhov-15 control center, he remembers the sound of the alarm that shattered the silence shortly past midnight.
"It was this quiet situation and suddenly the roar of the siren breaks in and the command post lights up with the word 'LAUNCH,'" he said. "This hit the nerves. I was really taken aback. Holy cow!"
He stood up and saw that the others were all looking at him in confusion. "My team was close to panic and it hit me that if panic sets in then it's all over." He needed to make a decision.
In the movie, Petrov speaks of not wanting to be responsible for setting off a nuclear war. But in the AP interview he suggests this was more of the filmmakers' poetic license.
"Sorry, I didn't have time to think about whether I would be the one who started World War III," he said. "I had to decide how reliable the information sent by the computer was."
Within minutes of the first alarm, the siren sounded again, warning of a second U.S. missile launch. Soon, the system was reporting that five missiles had been launched.
Petrov reported to his commander that the system was giving false information. He was not at all certain, but his decision was informed by the fact that Soviet ground radar could not confirm a launch. The radar system picked up incoming missiles only well after any launch, but he knew it to be more reliable than the satellites.
The false alarm was later found to have been caused by a malfunction of the satellite, which mistook the reflection of the sun off high clouds for a missile launch.
Petrov was not rewarded for his actions, most likely because doing so would have brought to light the failure of the Soviet's early-warning satellites. Although his commanding officer did not support Petrov at the time, he was the one who revealed the incident after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. If Col. Gen. Yury Votintsev had not spoken out, Petrov said he himself "would have forgotten about it like a bad dream."
Ret. Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, an expert on Russia's strategic nuclear forces, played down the importance of the decision forced on Petrov, saying the Soviet leadership in any case would have waited for confirmation from the radars before launching a retaliatory attack.
What's more, Dvorkin said, Russia no longer even has full satellite coverage of the United States, and relies fully on its radar network to monitor U.S. nuclear forces.
"The situation in Russia today is such that the satellite system doesn't work at all, and this doesn't frighten anyone too much," he said. "As you can see, everyone is living peacefully, without panic." | {
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Express Sport has taken a look at the Premier League attendance records for the 2015/16 season so far, and can reveal which club has the most dedicated fan base (based on statistics acquired by MyVoucherCodes.co.uk)
With the help of MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, we have analysed the average attendances in the top flight of English football and discovered some surprising results.
Which club do you think fills their ground most often, and which side is languishing at the bottom as their fans stay at home? | {
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Supporters of Vladimir Putin are holding an all-night party in Moscow to celebrate the inauguration of Donald Trump.
One of the organisers, Konstantin Rykov, who has served as a Russian MP affiliated to Putin’s United Russia Party and has also been described as a “Kremlin web propagandist”, invited his facebook followers to the event with the comment: “See you in the evening. Washington will be ours.”
Russian nationalists attending the party will also be treated to a “presentation of the political concept of Triptych” by an art group which has created flattering portraits of Putin, Trump and Marine Le Pen, the hard-right French Front National leader.
Vladimir Putin says Donald Trump didn't use prostitutes because he's met so many beautiful women
Rykov wrote on his facebook page: “I beg you all to try to get to [the venue] no later than 19:30 [Moscow time]. Otherwise, you'll miss the most important point "presidential oath", as well as sparklers, party poppers and champagne.”
The party, to be held in what was once Moscow’s main Soviet-era post office, is due to be televised on Tsargrad TV, a pro-Putin Russian Orthodox TV channel.
It appears to feed in to what has been called Russian “Trumpomania” since the US election result, which in Russia was greeted by the issue of commemorative coins and matryoshka dolls.
Trump takes oath to become 45th President
It also comes amid reports that the US intelligence agencies are investigating links between Russian officials and associates of Trump.
The man about to become the 45th President of the US has already angrily dismissed as “fake news” a leaked dossier in which an ex-MI6 officer made unverified claims that the Russians had been cultivating Trump for years and had compromising information on his activities with prostitutes.
The Kremlin has also denied the claims in the dossier and said it did not seek to influence the outcome of the US election.
Rykov, however, reportedly made little secret of his support for Trump during the US presidential election.
In March Reuters reported that he told his social media followers: “Trump is the first member of the American elite in 20 years who compliments Russia. Trump will smash America as we know it, we've got nothing to lose.
"Do we want the grandmother Hillary? No. Maybe it's time to help the old brigand."
Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural Show all 14 1 /14 Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural A lesbian couple kisses in front of mural depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, on the walls of a barbecue bar 'Keule Ruke' on May 19, 2016 in Vilnius, Lithuania. Barcroft Media/Getty Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural A lesbian couple kisses in front of mural depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, on the walls of a barbecue bar 'Keule Ruke' on May 19, 2016 in Vilnius, Lithuania. Barcroft Media/Getty Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural VILNIUS, LITHUANIA - NOVEMBER 23: A woman walks past a mural showing U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (R) blowing marijuana smoke into the mouth of Russian President Vladimir Putin on the wall of a bar-b-que restaurant on November 23, 2016 in Vilnius, Lithuania. Many people in the three Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are concerned that Russia, because Trump has expressed both admiration for Putin and doubt over defending NATO member states, will be emboldened to intervene militarily in the Baltics. Sean Gallup/Getty Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural A woman walks past a mural on a restaurant wall depicting US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin greeting each other with a kiss in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on May 13, 2016. Kestutis Girnius, associate professor of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science in Vilnius university, told AFP -This graffiti expresses the fear of some Lithuanians that Donald Trump is likely to kowtow to Vladimir Putin and be indifferent to Lithuanias security concerns. Trump has notoriously stated that Putin is a strong leader, and that NATO is obsolete and expensive. Petras Malukas/AFP/Getty Images Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural AP Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural A child walks past a graffiti depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, on the walls of a bar in the old town in Vilnius, Lithuania, Saturday, May 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis) AP Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural People walk past a mural on a restaurant wall depicting US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin greeting each other with a kiss in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on May 13, 2016. Kestutis Girnius, associate professor of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science in Vilnius university, told AFP -This graffiti expresses the fear of some Lithuanians that Donald Trump is likely to kowtow to Vladimir Putin and be indifferent to Lithuanias security concerns. Trump has notoriously stated that Putin is a strong leader, and that NATO is obsolete and expensive. Petras Malukas/AFP/Getty Images Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural A man photographs a mural on a restaurant wall depicting US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin greeting each other with a kiss in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on May 13, 2016. Kestutis Girnius, associate professor of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science in Vilnius university, told AFP -This graffiti expresses the fear of some Lithuanians that Donald Trump is likely to kowtow to Vladimir Putin and be indifferent to Lithuanias security concerns. Trump has notoriously stated that Putin is a strong leader, and that NATO is obsolete and expensive. Petras Malukas/AFP/Getty Images Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural AP Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural A young woman walks past a mural showing U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (R) blowing marijuana smoke into the mouth of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the slogan "make everything great again," in reference to Trump's campaign slogan of "Make America Great Again," on the wall of a bar-b-que restaurant on November 23, 2016 in Vilnius, Lithuania. Many people in the three Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are concerned that Russia, because Trump has expressed both admiration for Putin and doubt over defending NATO member states, will be emboldened to intervene militarily in the Baltics. Sean Gallup/Getty Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural A morning commuter stops to look at a mural on a restaurant wall depicting US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin greeting each other with a kiss in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on May 13, 2016. Kestutis Girnius, associate professor of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science in Vilnius university, told AFP -This graffiti expresses the fear of some Lithuanians that Donald Trump is likely to kowtow to Vladimir Putin and be indifferent to Lithuanias security concerns. Trump has notoriously stated that Putin is a strong leader, and that NATO is obsolete and expensive. Petras Malukas/AFP/Getty Images Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural Restaurant owner Dominykas Ceckauskas pose next to a mural on the wall of his establishment depicting US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin greeting each other with a kiss in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on May 13, 2016. Kestutis Girnius, associate professor of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science in Vilnius university, told AFP -This graffiti expresses the fear of some Lithuanians that Donald Trump is likely to kowtow to Vladimir Putin and be indifferent to Lithuanias security concerns. Trump has notoriously stated that Putin is a strong leader, and that NATO is obsolete and expensive. / AFP / Petras Malukas (Photo credit should read PETRAS MALUKAS/AFP/Getty Images) Petras Malukas/AFP/Getty Images Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural A passerby photographs a mural showing U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (R) blowing marijuana smoke into the mouth of Russian President Vladimir Putin on the wall of a bar-b-que restaurant on November 23, 2016 in Vilnius, Lithuania. Many people in the three Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are concerned that Russia, because Trump has expressed both admiration for Putin and doubt over defending NATO member states, will be emboldened to intervene militarily in the Baltics. Sean Gallup/Getty Trump and Putin passionately kiss in street mural Getty
At least some of the popular enthusiasm for Trump in Russia appears to stem from a hope that his presidency will ease tensions between the two countries and lead to a lifting of sanctions imposed over the annexation of Crimea.
In the immediate aftermath of the US election result, Putin critic and former Russian parliamentarian Gennady Gudkov said: “Trumpomania has taken hold of the country: the media, politicians and political analysts, astrologists, and housewives, none of them can calm down and mind their business.
“In Russian news the main actor is His Majesty Trump.”
Gudkov claimed state media was giving Trump blanket air time at the expense of more mundane and sometimes depressing domestic news stories.
Sellers of traditional matryoshka nesting dolls have added Trump dolls to their popular line-up of items carved in the likeness of President Vladimir Putin, Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, ex-President Mikhail Gorbachev and Josef Stalin.
Trump's message to Putin
Craftsmen in the city of Zlatoust, east of Moscow, have released a limited series of silver and gold commemorative coins, engraved with "In Trump We Trust" - an allusion to the phrase on US banknotes "In God We Trust".
And in what may be a play on the suspected sympathies of US diplomats – some of them Barack Obama appointees reportedly told to vacate their posts by Trump – a Russian Army store opposite the US embassy in Moscow is offering 10 per cent discounts for embassy staff and US citizens. | {
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Nose to the grindstone. We’re making great progress! We are very grateful for our outstanding Dev team that continues to make large strides week after week.
If you haven’t yet, be sure to join our Reddit community and come discuss this week’s update.
Clove Development Updates
Began work on Ravencoin atomic swaps
Continued working on calculating fee per transaction for networks that are not supported by BlockCypher
Began planning out Clove API
Cilantro Development Updates
Develop delegate state machine to enable fluid Markov Chain transitions during consensus
Experiment with consensus model and map various concurrency techniques to our network architecture to see what works best
Research different leading consensus algorithms
Establish and test new data models and serialization formats to enable super-fast network speeds
Refactor and further abstract node APIs
Continue experimenting and integrating new ideas in our test environment
Seneca Development Updates
Built a MyRocks database Docker container
Researched Python ORM libs
Worked more on storage API spec
What’s Next?
Next week we plan to begin implementing MyRocks-driven smart contract storage for Seneca. For Cilantro we hope to have our beta consensus process with tests and state machine functionality in place, and start working on non-standard transactions in addition to Seneca integration.
Don’t forget to register for our 5 ETH giveaway!
In celebration of the launch of our Testnet, we’re running a giveaway for our Twitter and Telegram subscribers; but you are not eligible unless you register. Please remember to register for your chance to win. Read the full details here.
IMPORTANT: The Lamden team will never ask you for your private keys, and we will not ask you to send us ETH or TAU.
Learn More about Lamden | {
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Syndrome - When Everyone's Super, No One Is
when every storm is a record breaker
none of them are | {
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...
Super hot model fucks old man with big dick Super hot model fucks old man with big dick | {
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FILE – Workers tend to a well head during a 2013 hydraulic fracturing operation outside Rifle, in western Colorado. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)
DENVER (CN) – Twenty-eight days after it was introduced, Colorado’s biggest reform on big oil and gas in decades passed in the state House Friday morning by a 36 to 28 vote, potentially changing the entire scope and mission of the state’s oil and gas commission.
Although criticized by many industry stakeholders and Republican lawmakers for rushing through the capital without considering the voice of the industry, supporters of the Protect Public Welfare Oil and Gas Operations say the bill’s content should come as no surprise.
“So much of this legislation has been introduced year after year after year and oil and gas never had to take it seriously. They never had to sit down and negotiate with us,” said Speaker of the House KC Becker, D-Boulder, who sponsored the bill. “There’s a lesson here. If you’re going to ignore people for a long time, and suddenly they have a voice, maybe you should have been paying attention the whole time.”
The most fundamental change proposed by the bill is in the very mission of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission which would shift from fostering the development of natural resources to regulating them “in a manner consistent that protects public health, safety, and welfare.”
Kelly Sloan, a fellow at the Centennial Institute and industry lobbyist points out that the need to “foster” development and “avoid waste” came from early drilling technology.
“In the early days of the oil industry, we realized we can drill holes in the ground and this wonderful black stuff came up that we could burn, but they didn’t really understand the petrophysics behind it and what they saw was people would drill haphazardly and depressurize fields early,” Sloan said to Courthouse News. “You’d end up leaving 80 to 90 percent of the oil in a particular basin or particular field or particular play unrecoverable.”
Critics most worry the bill will create a backdoor moratorium, as new permits can be paused while new rules are put in place, severely altering the $31 billion industry that the Colorado Petroleum Council says supports more than 232,000 jobs.
“We are deeply concerned about the potential negative impacts of Senate Bill 181, many of which were not considered because the bill’s authors chose to reject what had previously been a customary stakeholder process during the drafting stages,” explained a spokesperson for the council in an email. “Perhaps most troublesome in the bill’s language is it’s opening the doors for indefinite moratoria to be imposed by nearly every level of government, down to the municipal level.”
The bill also gives local governments the ability to self-regulate local drilling operations in addition to increasing the number of mineral owners who need to consent in order for forced pooling to occur.
“This is a transformational step forward for a common sense, balanced approach to fracking in Colorado,” said Jim Alexee, Director, Colorado Sierra Club, in a statement. “We applaud leaders in the state, and local officials across Colorado, for their bravery in the face of corporate special interests.”
The bill’s next stop is Gov. Jared Polis’ desk. Polis campaigned on a promise to convert the state’s power supply to carbon-free renewable energy by 2040 and spoke in support of the legislation shortly before it was introduced.
In the weeks leading up to this vote, more than 31,000 Colorado residents joined a Facebook group calling to “Recall Colorado Governor Jared Polis,” citing the “fast track, backdoor legislation for SB 181 advancing.” | {
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Took me a few seconds to realize what was wrong...Those legs! There's no way the feet can be on the same position if one leg is completely stretched while the other one is angled!Her upper body is pretty cute though | {
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Jonathan Frakes, best known for his role as Will Riker on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” is embarking on a new mission.
The actor and director said that he is putting his gated Los Angeles estate on the market for $12.495 million. The three-story redbrick home, located on Hazen Drive in the Beverly Hills Post Office area, has seven bedrooms and 10 bathrooms and measures about 10,000 square feet, according to listing agent Judy Feder of Hilton & Hyland.
... | {
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Chomsky is asked whether New Atheists like Sam Harris are correct that religious fundamentalism is the actual primary motive for Middle Eastern fundamentalist violence. The argument he winds up making is that, contra-Harris, the issue is that the US and Israel have made concerted efforts to destroy all secular nationalist endeavors by promoting religious fundamentalists at their expense and therefore have left religious fundamentalism as the only vehicle for people to express political dissatisfaction with Western policies.
I never feel knowledgeable enough about the Middle East to pronounce precisely on these issues. So, as much as ever, I need Your Thoughts.
Your Thoughts? | {
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If you've been feeling nostalgic for the days when airlines served A full meal in economy, Delta has good news for you.
The legacy carrier announced Thursday it will start offering complimentary meals in the main cabin on several long haul flights as part of a multi-million dollar effort to improve customer experience across the board.
The airline was among the first to axe free meals back in 2001, with many domestic airlines following suit over the next decade.
Starting March 1, Delta will offer complimentary meals in the main cabin on flights between New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport and Los Angeles/San Francisco.
The following month, the airline will expand the complimentary meal service to 10 other domestic flights from Seattle, N.Y., Boston and Washington, D.C. Other enhancements include upgraded main cabin snacks, enhanced blankets and free in-flight entertainment. Passengers on long-haul, international flights will also receive complimentary beer, wine, spirits and sleep kits.
Delta began offering complimentary meals late last year as part of the limited service test to improve customer satisfaction. Some fliers were pretty surprised by the re-introduction of inflight meals.
"Blow me down and call me Nancy, there was a free meal on my @Delta domestic flight. What is this 1997? :)," said one Twitter user last year.
Blow me down and call me Nancy, there was a free meal on my @Delta domestic flight. What is this 1997? :) pic.twitter.com/Khqlk3C0Gh — Derek Fung (@bubandbob) November 4, 2016
FOR THE LATEST TRAVEL FEATURES FOLLOW FOX LIFESTYLE ON FACEBOOK
The meals offered on 12 routes will vary depending on flight time. In the morning, customers can choose between a honey maple breakfast sandwich, Luvo breakfast medley or a fruit and cheese plate. In the afternoon, there's a mesquite-smoked turkey combo, Luvo Mediterranean whole grain veggie wrap, or a fruit and cheese plate. Customers flying overnight will have a selection of a various entrees and be offered a breakfast bar before arrival.
Delta says it will regularly rotate its menus with a focus on seasonal and locally-sourced food and beverages. | {
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COATZACOALCOS, VERACRUZ.- El gobernador de Veracruz, Javier Duarte, informa a través de su cuenta en Twitter de una fuerte explosión en las instalaciones de Pemex en Coatzacoalcos en la planta de Clorados 3 en el complejo Pajaritos.
Se activaron todos los protocolos de protección civil, principalmente, en las congregaciones de Villa Allende, Mundo Nuevo y los ejidos de Coatzacoalcos.
En este momento, la Secretaría de Protección Civil se encuentra trabajando en coordinación con las autoridades de Pemex. | {
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Much has been written about the 1111 Lincoln Road project in Miami Beach, Florida, since its completion in 2010. Essentially a parking garage, it has been featured in the majority of high-profile architecture publications and hailed as a bold and intellectually stimulating piece of modern architectural design. The New York Times covered a wedding held in the seventh-floor event space. It also has been the backdrop for big-budget advertising campaigns promoting luxury products. However, not much has been written about the development process and the visionary developer behind the project, Robert Wennett.
Better described now as a mixed-use building than a garage, 1111 Lincoln Road provides a gateway to the Lincoln Road pedestrian mall conceived by Morris Lapidus, the influential 1950s Miami Beach architect. The structure sits next to a late-1960s brutalist-style office building, formerly known as the SunTrust Building.
In contrast to the heavy-looking mass of the office building, 1111 Lincoln Road is an elegant and breezy collection of stark concrete ramps, slabs, and columns. The varying floor heights provide a variety of spatial experiences throughout the building; it houses about 300 parking spaces, and 40,000 square feet (3,700 sq m) of retail and restaurant space is located on the ground floor, fifth floor, and roof. On the top floor, a 5,000-square-foot (465 sq m) residence with 17,000 square feet (1,580 sq m) of gardens overlooks the ocean, city, and Biscayne Bay. The development included the relocation of the bank tenant into a new purpose-built retail bank branch on an adjacent site and subsequent renovation of the existing office building. The new structure ties into the existing office building at several upper levels and extends the street-level pedestrian-mall retail frontage.
Wennett conceived 1111 Lincoln Road as less of a building or a development and more as a philosophy or a mind-set. In a 2013 interview, he described it as a “design-driven, experience-based venue.” The building was intended to serve as an extension of the public mall rather than a purely utilitarian parking structure, and today one sees joggers scaling its stairs and ramps, yoga practitioners taking in the expansive view from the seventh floor, and party-goers attending events. All this activity occurs alongside a consistently full parking garage and fully leased retail space with handpicked luxury tenants such as Taschen books, Osklen clothing, Nespresso coffee, and Mac cosmetics.
The Vision
Before focusing his attention on Florida, Wennett founded and ran Starwood Urban, a $500 million real estate private equity fund focused on urban redevelopment projects around the United States and sponsored by Starwood Capital.
When the fund liquidated its portfolio in 2004, Wennett became interested in the opportunity he saw in Miami Beach and, more specifically, at Lincoln Road Mall. The pedestrian mall had seen significant growth in the late 1990s, and many national chain retailers had moved in such as Starbucks, American Apparel, and Guess. During the early 2000s, however, the demographics of the area were changing and consumers were becoming more sophisticated. Wennett believed that Lincoln Road could support a change in the tenant mix to more high-end retail. The office building, with its adjacent surface parking lot, appeared to offer an entry into the market.
In 2004, the building owners accepted Wennett’s offer of $23.5 million—$200 per square foot ($2,150 per sq m) for the eight-story office space and $400 per square foot ($4,300 per sq m) for the land, including some surrounding surface parking lots covering a total of about one acre (0.4 ha). At the time, Lincoln Road retail space unencumbered by office space above was selling for $700 per square foot ($7,500 per sq m). Wennett’s purchase of the office building and surrounding land included about 50,000 square feet (4,700 sq m) of developable surface parking lots, much of which faced Lincoln Road. It was the largest undeveloped tract on Lincoln Road Mall.
Once the site was purchased, Wennett began to hunt for an architect that could handle the unique challenge he envisioned. After narrowing the field to eight or nine renowned architecture firms and visiting examples of their work around the world, Wennett chose the Pritzker Prize–winning Swiss firm Herzog and de Meuron. The firm, which is in a position to be picky about clients, was enticed by the site and by Wennett’s vision and personality. Herzog and de Meuron “believed the people of Miami would embrace an idea of openness and a place to show off and look good,” and “loved the idea of making parking beautiful as well as functional,” says Christine Binswanger, the firm’s senior partner.
The architects’ initial sketches reflected the essence of the final form. Miami Beach planning regulations, which exclude parking area in the floor/area ratio (FAR) calculation, allowed for about 300 parking spaces, or seven floors’ worth, and 45,000 square feet (4,200 sq m) of other uses. The concept presented by the architects provided one level of ground-floor retail space, but instead of stacking the parking above it at the typical floor-to-floor height of about nine feet (2.7 m), the architects varied the heights, ranging from ten to 30 feet (3 to 9 m).
The result was a variable single-, double-, and triple-height skeleton that had a dramatic street presence and allowed a variety of other functions within the building. The increased overall height also balanced the brutalist scale of the adjacent office building. However, the proposed plan exceeded the city’s 75-foot (23 m) height limit for the site by 50 feet (15.2 m).
Knowing that this would be a sticking point with the city, the team approached the planning department very early in the process, explaining why the height variance was important to the building and the streetscape, and to the overall vision for the public realm. The team also made it clear to planners that only a height variance was being sought and not an increase in FAR. Binswanger said the planners initially were “shocked by the extra height, but they immediately understood the potential.” The planning department quickly became a proponent of the additional height and provided support for obtaining a zoning variance.
Project Financing
While the design and permitting process continued into 2007, the financial climate deteriorated rapidly as Miami led the nation’s housing market collapse with a glut of troubled condominiums. When capital markets descended into chaos in 2008, Wennett decided the only chance he had to secure financing was to syndicate the loan himself. Fortunately for him, neighboring SunTrust was still motivated to relocate to its new retail bank branch, so it agreed to participate in part of the syndication. Cash flow from the existing office building also ensured that carrying costs would not factor into a protracted capital-raising period. To secure the remaining capital, Wennett drew on his network of contacts in the banking community and was able to convince them of the project’s potential. He previously had decided not to bring in an equity partner in order to maintain design control and ownership.
A critical component of the pro forma was the retail space. According to Wennett, the Miami Beach market net rent for office space at that time was about $15 per square foot ($161 per sq m), whereas Lincoln Road Mall retail space was renting for $80 to $90 per square foot ($860 to $970 per sq m). He used $110 per square foot ($1,200 per sq m) for retail space in the pro forma in the belief that the new building would provide higher-quality space and attract high-end retailers.
Parking rates were projected according to future demand because there was already an undersupply of parking in the area and the project would serve as a destination, increasing demand. Office rents in the existing building were set at market rate of around $15 net per square foot ($161 per sq m). Initially, a revenue stream from events held at the building was included, but lenders wanted it excluded from the underwriting.
The pro forma estimated construction costs at about $40 million, twice the cost of a traditional parking garage because of the unconventional nature of the building. The projected returns were still attractive to Wennett and his financiers, even with event revenue excluded.
Herzog and de Meuron, working with Wennett to refine the retail layouts to better suit prospective tenants, included retail space on the fifth floor to draw people up from the street. The ground floor of the existing office building was converted from a two-story bank branch into double-height retail space in order to maximize the land value and provide a continuous strip of retail businesses along Lincoln Road Mall.
The team considered extension of the pedestrian public space to be integral to the project’s prospects for success. The developer’s proposal included closing one block of Lincoln Road Mall to traffic and extending the pedestrian promenade in front of the stores to Alton Road. Working on that extension with Miami-based landscape architect Raymond Jungles and the city, the team created a design featuring multicolored paving, outdoor seating, and greenery. The city approved the design and agreed to fully finance the $6 million upgrade to the public realm.
With Art in Public Places (AIPP), a citizens’ trust that oversees public art in Miami, Wennett recommended commissioning multimedia conceptual artist Dan Graham to create artwork for the mall extension. Upon his selection by the city, Graham created an elegant, interactive, curved glass sculpture to serve as a focal point for Lincoln Road Mall and attract visitors. The cost of the sculpture, $150,000, was financed by both the city and Wennett through the AIPP program.
Construction Bids
The project faced a crisis when contractors’ bids for the work came in about 50 percent higher than the original estimates. Though the building appeared to be a simple concrete structure, it included a range of details that gave it a refined quality, including a dramatic central staircase. The building also was to have expensive elements, such as indirect lighting and profiled slab edges to add to its impact. The cost of some nonstandard items was particularly difficult to estimate: fire sprinklers and pipe work, for example, were designed to be cast into the slab. In addition, the New York–based structural engineer had relied on the extensive use of steel—a material less commonly used in Miami than elsewhere.
Once the reasons for the cost discrepancies were identified, the design team worked closely with the general contractor in an intensive value engineering exercise. As well as reducing the amount of steel used in the project, the team was able to reduce costs through additional rationalization of the architects’ original construction details to better complement local building practices. In the end, the team was able to bring the building in on the original budget without compromising the design intent.
When the building opened, with the retail spaces fully leased, it drew the interest of Miami residents—and the broader architectural community. Wennett was surprised not at the level of interest, but by the variety of ways people interact with the building. The interest has also translated into financial success, with retail rents reaching as high as $300 per square foot ($3,200 per sq m).
Wennett occupies the 5,000-square-foot (465 sq m) residence on the top floor of the building. Hung from the top slab of the structure, the residence is surprisingly hidden. It has a courtyard serving as a front yard, with lush plantings that hang over the slab edge into the garage below. The house also commands spectacular views of the city and bay.
Unorthodox Mix
The 1111 Lincoln road project represents less an example of a new building typology than a visionary approach to urban redevelopment. In combining such an unorthodox mix of program and uses, Wennett and Herzog and de Meuron have transformed the character of Lincoln Road Mall to appeal to a new demographic. Though it is unlikely that this particular combination of uses will suit many other locations, the innovative approach to reimaging the urban context, and the people who use it, could be replicated elsewhere. The success of Wennett’s unique approach hinged on his responsiveness to the eagerness of new-market millennials to embrace avant-garde architecture, as well as a willingness to take a chance on an untried product.
The development strategy rejects the cookie-cutter approach to urban redevelopment in favor of a more nuanced response to market and urban opportunities that exist in the complex environments of cities. With his previous experience in urban infill projects and his understanding of the local market, Wennett was able to conceptualize, with the help of his architects, a product that appealed to the targeted demographic in an unconventional way. Equally important, he was able to manage the construction cost and value-creation process throughout the design and construction phases. The combination of these two factors produced an outstanding project return that more than compensated for the risk of the untried product and seemingly ambitious underwriting.
Wennett and the team demonstrated that by combining careful consideration of the urban context and its inhabitants with outstanding design and the passion to make it happen, the conventional notion of highest and best use can be raised even higher and better than first expected.
Dan Malone is an architect, real estate professional, and 2014 graduate of the master in design studies program in real estate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Richard Peiser is the Michael D. Spear Professor of Real Estate Development at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
eleven eleven | Elizabeth Priore from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo. | {
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Anti-Trumpers still keep throwing conservatives under the bus to maintain the status quo, just as they’ve often done (remember the Tea Party).
We hoped they would go away after the election. We hoped they would stop their whining and grandstanding once Donald Trump took office. We hoped they would accept defeat and embrace our Republican president, that they would hold him accountable regarding policy and support any effort to right the ship that has been lurching toward the brink for decades.
But they didn’t go away. Their whining has grown shrill. Their opposition, not only to Trump, but to anyone who breathes a word in his favor, has swelled like a blistering boil. Our hopes were in vain, and now we’re reaching a breaking point.
I’m not talking about the liberal “resistance.” They’ll never go away. The Left never stops. I’m talking about NeverTrumpers—or Anti-Trumpers, as many prefer to be called now. Their relentless attacks on Trump echo the Left. They whine about his tweets, “faux masculinity,” vulgarity, personnel changes, unproven “collusion” with the Russians. They call him a racist, white nationalist, dictator, traitor, and a lunatic.
These paragons of virtue are also attacking fellow conservatives who call out the hypocrisy of the media, focus on the good Trump is doing while calling him to account for the bad, and refuse to jump on the bandwagon of conspiracy theories or get upset over every annoying tweet. For this, they’re called sell-outs, racists, failed conservatives, Trump whores, Putin lovers, media organizations that have lost all credibility.
Whose Side Are You On?
Worse, Anti-Trumpers are colluding with Democrats to oppose the president and attacking fellow Republicans in Congress for trying to get conservative policies passed. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has teamed up with Democrat Sen. Cory Booker to write bipartisan legislation that stops Trump from firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol roundly criticized conservatives and the president during the Obamacare repeal process and is now engaged in talks to create a “Committee Not to Renominate the President.”
Ruling-class Republicans pulled out the knives on Sen. Mike Lee and his efforts at a full Obamacare repeal. His Senate colleague and fellow Republican Orrin Hatch, who blocked Lee’s moves toward actual repeal, accused him of being “against everything.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page piled on, labeling him an “Obamacare Republican.”
Anti-Trumpers are willing to throw conservatives under the bus to maintain the status quo, just as they’ve often done (remember the Tea Party). So much for principles. Never mind that conservatives fight for life, civil liberties, religious freedom, free speech, morality within the civil society, limited government, and strong national security—all of which are essential to conservatism.
Somehow this common ground they have with Anti-Trumpers goes out the window because they’re not firing up the stake and branding Trump evil incarnate. Instead, Anti-Trumpers side with those who oversee cultural decline, think girls can become boys, hate life, love centralized power and control, reject localism for globalism, play footsie with terrorists, and seek to silence free speech in every area of American society.
The GOP Enabled Big Government Long Before Trump
The problem with the Anti-Trumpers, however, is much larger—a point that’s captured by Sen. Jeff Flake’s transparent display of self-aggrandizement in publishing “Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle.” This pathetic work of hypocrisy is a shining example of everything that’s wrong with Anti-Trumpers.
“Never has a party so quickly or easily abandoned its core principles as my party did in the course of the 2016 campaign,” Flake writes. “And when you suddenly decide that you don’t believe what had recently been your most deeply held beliefs, then you open yourself to believing anything — or maybe nothing at all.”
What a joke. The GOP didn’t abandon its most deeply held beliefs in 2016. That’s been going on for decades. Where was Flake’s scorching pen during the reign of Barack Obama? Did any Republican senator or congressman write a manifesto about how Obama is ruining the country? No, of course not. Far be it from them to offend a Democrat. Instead, they—like Flake himself—propped up Obama’s leftist agenda by voting for policies and personnel that defy our deeply held beliefs.
Flake refused to join conservatives in their fight to defund Obamacare. He signed on to the Gang of Eight amnesty debacle. He confirmed one of the most dangerous attorney generals we’ve ever had—Loretta Lynch, justifying it in the name of “giving the president what he wants.” He has expanded centralized power by failing to cut spending while raising the debt ceiling. And he’s no friend to the Constitution with his support of gun control legislation.
Anti-Trumpers Accept the Left’s Premises
Hypocrisy, however, isn’t the real problem—and danger—of Anti-Trumpers. It’s their unwitting support of a leftist juggernaut that is bulldozing its way across our nation. Their unnecessary and childish attacks on conservatives who chose to vote for a Republican president rather than let a progressive criminal in the White House feeds the leftist beast. They’re writing themselves into a narrative that seeks to delegitimize conservatives, undermine their values of liberty, and eradicate their deeply held beliefs from a culture roiling in materialism, relativism, and subjectivism.
Is Trump the savior? No. Is Trump a conservative? No. But he’s not the threat these dictators of conscience think he is. Their histrionic reaction to his “populism” is rooted in prejudice, not insight. They resent that they’ve lost power, influence, and their own deluded sense of legitimacy. They don’t want to be associated with someone the Left labels a racist, and they want to run to the high ground instead of realizing that the fight is already underway—on the low road where leftists dwell.
It’s a fight that began years ago, but Republicans have been too ignorant and weak to truly engage. They haven’t even realized how the Left has been manipulating them, using them, and labeling them into irrelevancy—something I explained during the election, here and here.
This is the point Anti-Trumpers need to wrap their heads around. If they don’t, they’re going to end up giving the Left a hand in pushing us all over the cliff. Loudmouths like Flake and his conga line of preening purists need to wake up and see who the real enemy is.
Stabbing Your Own In the Back Is Imprudent
Anti-Trumpers are like the Night’s Watch who betrayed Jon Snow in “Game of Thrones.” They didn’t like how Snow joined forces with the wildlings beyond the wall (an enemy to the Night’s Watch and the people of Westeros) in order to defeat a greater enemy that threatened them all. Snow understood who the real enemy was—the cold totalitarians who make mindless drones of all they conquer. He was willing to work with people outside his own camp to defeat the greater threat. His brethren killed him for it.
The real enemy is the progressive Left and its cultural Marxism.
Those who repeatedly stabbed Snow under the sign of traitor thought they were noble, the only ones standing on principle, the righteous ones who wouldn’t betray their deeply held beliefs by aligning with an opposition group to defeat a greater threat. They considered it too risky, and they were so angered by Snow’s “betrayal” that they were willing to kill their own commander instead of taking the low road to defeat a common enemy. You see the irony. By attacking their own, they took the lowest road possible.
The Anti-Trumpers are no different. The real enemy is the progressive Left and its cultural Marxism. This is the enemy in our media, education system, scientific community, pop culture, entertainment, and politics. Its ideology is entrenched in our psychology. Trump’s “nationalism and populism” don’t hold a candle to this threat. Leftists are the White Walkers of the North with an ideology that doesn’t simply disagree with our deeply held beliefs on various points but wants to completely destroy them!
When Anti-Trumpers pile on about irrelevant issues (and there are many when it comes to criticisms of Trump), they are giving the Left legitimacy and delegitimizing those who are working to fight it.
When you say conservatives are discredited for writing pieces in support of Trump or critical of Anti-Trumpers or liberals, you’re strengthening the labeling that can lead to delegitimization. You’re joining the “in-group” of radical leftists and making a scapegoat of newly defined out-groups. You’re devaluing other conservatives and populists, who have legitimate gripes and agree with conservatives on many points. These people aren’t delegitimizing themselves by supporting Trump. Anti-Trumpers are doing it. They’re the ones guilty of promoting negative stereotypes and negative images that will weaken the very people fighting for this nation’s soul.
The Stakes Are Too High for Petty Infighting
Those who embrace a leftist ideology have been struggling and scheming for decades to transform our nation into their own vision of utopia. They’ve resorted to violence and destruction to achieve their twisted goals. They’re driven by a “better-world” ideal, enslaved to their own self-made worldly authorities who determine what is right, what is wrong, what words are acceptable, and what speech is allowed.
They see themselves as victims who have suffered in the past under the oppression of the brutal white male. They don’t seek healing; they seek retribution and dominance over people they perceive as dangerous because they’re looking at them through the lenses of the past. They no longer see fellow Americans as valued human beings—they see them as threats to their better-world dreams and to the unabated release of their self-destructive delusions on society.
This is the state of mind that plagues nearly half of our country, and Anti-Trumpers are feeding it by essentially agreeing that these liberal-defined out-groups (conservatives who support Trump, populists, anyone with a patriotic spirit or holders of traditional values) are a threat to a better-world ideology. Along with the Left, they’re creating the impression that we are a danger—a threat not only to America, but to the entire world. Yet they’re blind to the truth and fail to see the real danger to our nation.
Let’s Get Clear about the Real Enemy Here
Is it contradictory for me to assert the evils of labeling people while I’m doing the same? No, because there is right and wrong, evil and good, in this world. Some things are a true danger and should be called at for what they are—and defeated, not tolerated. Certainly, there are many shades of gray in the space between evil and good, but when it comes to totalitarian ideologies, we’re not dealing with shades of gray. We’re dealing with blackness.
What happens when a powerful in-group that holds to these evil beliefs becomes convinced that out-groups are a danger to their distorted ideology? What happens when you stop seeing people as fully integrated individuals and see them only as racists or lunatics or any other label that transforms a person from a human being into a monster? I’m not talking about general labels of distinctions about beliefs (liberals, conservatives, leftists, progressives, etc.). I’m talking about labels that carry stigma, that delegitimize and dehumanize.
The real danger is the ideology of leftism that is seeking to deconstruct our nation and destroy all who threaten its utopian ideals.
What happens is natural and logical—you want to destroy the danger, and that’s what Anti-Trumpers need to stop and consider. Really let that sink in. Trump supporters can be threatening and obnoxious, no doubt. There are many reasons for this, most of which are reactionary.
But they’re not the real threat. They’re not the ones physically attacking people in the streets. They’re not the ones who embody the elements of a genocidal mentality. They’re not the ones who embrace a philosophy that is, in essence, evil. The real danger is the ideology of leftism that is seeking to deconstruct our nation and destroy all who threaten its utopian ideals.
If Anti-Trumpers really care about our nation and not just the future of the party or their own political careers, then they will stop labeling fellow Republicans, stop demeaning them, stop attacking every little thing Trump does, and focus on what’s really important. They’ll oppose Trump when his policies don’t move our nation in the right direction, and they will wholeheartedly embrace him when they do. They’ll exercise some self-control and major on the majors instead of the minors.
They’ll stand up to Democrats before attacking fellow Republicans, and they’ll hold the media to account for spreading lies that support leftist ideology. They need to dig deep for the courage to risk their own reputations in the eyes of a culture that is blinded by leftist labels and fight the fight wherever it is—on the high road or the low. | {
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Derby grandfather grows giant cucumber Published duration 2 August 2018
image caption The beast grown by Raghbir Singh Sanghera could be an Armenian cucumber, one expert suggested
A grandfather in Derby says praying to his cucumber has helped it grow to a potential world-record size.
Raghbir Singh Sanghera, who worked as a farmer in India before coming to the UK in 1991, grew the 51in (129.54cm) ribbed vegetable in his greenhouse.
Mr Sanghera said the cucumber - whose species has not yet been determined - continues to grow in girth and length.
The current Guinness World Record for the longest cucumber , which was grown in Wales in 2011, is 107cm (42.13in).
Peter Glazebrook, an expert in growing giant vegetables, says it appears to be an Armenian cucumber (Cucumis meloflexuosus), making it a muskmelon as opposed to a standard cucumber (Cucumis sativus), which is part of the gourd family.
"We have seen these presented before at giant veg shows only to be rejected," Mr Glazebrook said.
"However, it is a fine specimen of its type, and he has done well."
Only members of the Cucumis sativus species can qualify for the Guinness World Record of longest cucumber.
A spokesman for Guinness World Records said they have no current record for the longest Armenian cucumber, "but anyone can apply to create a new title via our website".
image caption The colossal cucumber - which may in fact be a variety of muskmelon - has now reached more than 51in (129.54cm)
Mr Sanghera said he will take the vegetable to the Singh Sabha Gurdwara in Nottingham, where he volunteers, for everyone to share once it is ready to eat.
"It's still growing and will get thicker, then when it's ready we'll keep some seeds for next year," the 75-year-old said.
"You have to look after it like a child."
image caption Mr Sanghera has a seat in his greenhouse where he prays
Mr Sanghera said the unusually long vegetable was one of four he planted four months ago, but while the other three were eaten, one was left alone to grow.
"I have made a seat to sit next to it and where I can see it and watch it," he said.
"I pray that it grows, that it keeps us all healthy and that everybody stays well and happy - it makes me happy seeing it."
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Related Topics Derby | {
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Fans of scripted comedy would be quick to point to cringe as The Office’s (UK) greatest legacy. Movies like Superbad, Bridesmaids, and last year’s Trainwreck certainly have taken up this mantle and brought what could be called “squirmcore” to the mass market. Keener surveyors of comedy will be quick to point out that another, and perhaps even squirmcorier, series predates The Office (UK) by a year. Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm so successfully broke from the multicam format for HBO in 2000 and quickly cemented itself as utterly obsessed with those moments of cringe that surrounded the series’ protagonist, a fictionalised Larry David. However, I would argue that cringe was only a secondary product of The Office (UK). Gervais’ and Merchant’s true innovation, and what made The Office (UK) the most influential sitcom of this millennium so far, is that it is a UK series built unlike any UK series. The series’ long-reaching success comes from two guys from the UK trying to make a U.S. series.
There are two words that crystalise the comedic divide between the UK and U.S. that is wider than the Atlantic: respectively, Cruelty and Heart. Fawlty Towers still stands as the most instructive example of this in UK televisual history. Cruelty spouts forth from the mouths and open hands of the characters. The protagonist Basil is subjected to as much cruelty as he is able to dish out, usually with Manuel as his catharsis’ target. The end of each episode might as well conclude with a mass shooting and suicide given the fever pitch to which Basil is worked up. The closest thing to a happy ending in the 12-episode series, Basil finding some money at the end of Communication Problems, is quickly shattered along with the vase Basil drops from his hand. By comparison, the conventional U.S. sitcom (literally you can take any, except for Seinfeld), is structured to preserve the happy ending. And not just one in which characters are victorious. The U.S. sitcom, from Fresh Prince of Bel Air, to Friends, to Taxi, concludes with a healthy dose of Heart™. Through the comedy of the rest of the episode, the characters learn some lesson about the integrity of the familial unit, the importance of friendship, the embrace of otherness, or really any weighty ideal the creators want. To reiterate succinctly: the UK sitcom baptises by fire, the U.S. baptises by love. | {
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Wien. Auf den ersten Blick sehen einander die beiden Gemeinden Semriach und Litschau nicht gerade unähnlich. Möglich, dass die Semriacher und Litschauer diesem Befund heftig widersprechen werden, gemeint ist aber: Es sind beides ländliche Gemeinden vergleichbarer Größe, im Dorfzentrum steht eine aus dem Mittelalter stammende Kirche, von ihr gehen sternförmig ein paar mit Häuserzeilen versehene Straßen weg. Und rundherum: Felder und Waldstreifen. So sieht in Österreich der ländliche Raum aus.
Doch es gibt einen ganz wesentlichen Unterschied zwischen diesen beiden Gemeinden, der für ihre Entwicklung eine bedeutende Rolle spielt. Setzt man sich in Semriach ins Auto und fährt eine halbe Stunde Richtung Süden, befindet man sich mitten in der Grazer Altstadt. Fährt man hingegen eine halbe Stunde von Litschau mit dem Auto, gelangt man nicht viel weiter als bis Groß-Siegharts.
Die Folge dieser geografischen Ungleichheit lässt sich an der Bevölkerungsentwicklung ablesen. Bei der Volkszählung 1991 hatte Litschau mit 2923 Einwohnern noch leicht die Nase vorn. In Semriach waren damals 2876 Personen hauptgemeldet. Das hat sich seither ziemlich dramatisch verändert. Litschau ist auf 2254 Einwohner geschrumpft, Semriach auf 3305 Einwohner gewachsen.
Die Statistik Austria hat in ihrer vorletzten Publikation im Februar eine neue Typisierung vorgenommen, um den bisher sehr weit gefassten Begriff des "ländlichen Raums" differenzierter betrachten zu können. Normal werden für derartige Statistiken administrative Einheiten betrachtet, also beispielsweise Bezirke oder Gemeinden. Womit es dann aber keinen Unterschied zwischen Litschau und Semriach gibt, die ja - zumindest bis vor nicht allzu langer Zeit noch - ähnlich groß waren.
Fünf funktionale Kategorien
Vor einigen Jahren fügte die Statistik Austria ein funktionales Merkmal hinzu: die Stadtregion. In diese fällt als Umlandgemeinde von Graz auch Semriach. Sie war somit nicht mehr klassischer ländlicher Raum. Wirklich zufriedenstellend war diese Typisierung aber nicht, weshalb nun eine weitere Differenzierung vorgenommen wurde. Elf Ausprägungen wurden beschrieben, diese dann zwecks besserer Übersicht in fünf Kategorien zusammengefasst. Wobei nicht nur die Entfernung zur nächsten Großstadt eine Rolle spielt, sondern auch die Bevölkerungsdichte.
Urbane Großzentren: Das sind die Kernzonen der größten Stadtregionen, also alle Landeshauptstädte und die unmittelbare Umgebung mit Ausnahme von Eisenstadt und St. Pölten.
Urbane Mittel-/Kleinzentren: Dieser Kategorie entsprechen 115 Gemeinden, darunter viele Bezirkshauptstädte wie Amstetten, Lienz, Villach oder Braunau.
Regionale Zentren: Elf Prozent aller Kommunen fallen in diese Kategorie, es sind kleinere Städte, die doch näher dem ländlichen Raum als der Großstadt sind, etwa Oberwart, Bad Ischl, Landeck, Kitzbühel oder Hollabrunn.
Außenzonen von Zentren: Hierunter fallen Umlandgemeinden, sowohl von großen wie auch von kleinen Städten. Semriach fällt in diese Kategorie, ebenso Pressbaum oder Fischamend. Je größer das jeweilige Zentrum, desto weiter gefasst ist die Außenzone rundherum.
Ländlicher Raum abseits von Zentren: Die meisten Gemeinden fallen in diese Kategorie, insgesamt 1233. Die Bandbreite ist groß. Litschau in der Grenzregion zu Tschechien findet sich hier ebenso wie die wachsende Stadt Mattighofen, die das florierende Unternehmen KTM beherbergt.
Interessant ist, wie sich demografische Daten nun mit dieser neuen, differenzierten Typologie darstellen. Einerseits verdeutlichen sie Entwicklungen, die - auch in der "Wiener Zeitung" - hinlänglich beschrieben wurden. Aber es gibt doch auch einige Überraschungen.
Zunächst sticht einmal die Bevölkerungsveränderung zwischen 2001 und 2017 hervor, sie betrifft die erste wie die letzte Kategorie, also die Großstadt wie den ländlichen Raum abseits von Zentren. In Österreich leben 41,1 Prozent der Menschen in urbanen Großzentren, vor 16 Jahren waren es noch 38,2 Prozent.
Umgekehrt ist die Entwicklung im ländlichen Raum fernab von einem urbanen Zentrum. Der Anteil ging von 29,4 auf 26,9 zurück, in den drei übrigen Kategorien gab es nur marginale Veränderungen seit 2001. So weit, so erwartbar. Landflucht eben. Doch Österreichs Bevölkerung ist in diesem Zeitraum insgesamt stark gewachsen, der Rückgang in absoluten Zahlen im ländlichen Raum ist aber nur marginal. Heute leben in diesen 1233 Gemeinden lediglich um 936 Personen weniger als noch 2001.
Gibt es gar keine Landflucht?
Gibt es am Ende kaum Landflucht? Sondern ist es nur ein städtischer Zuwachs, der die prozentuelle Verteilung verändert? Rein den Zahlen nach müsste man diesen Schluss ziehen, aber so einfach ist es nicht. Die Statistik Austria hat sich auch die Binnenwanderung sowie die internationale Zuwanderung angesehen, beides ist im ländlichen Raum verhältnismäßig stark ausgeprägt. In keiner anderen Kategorie wird ein negativer Saldo bei der Binnenwanderung ausgewiesen. Das heißt, in allen anderen Gemeindetypen ziehen mehr Menschen aus anderen österreichischen Regionen hin als weg. Nur im ländlichen Raum abseits der Zentren gibt es ein Minus von 136.558 Personen. Dem steht aber eben ein Plus von 142.847 bei internationalen Wanderungen entgegen.
Ein sehr wesentlicher Faktor betrifft hier die Fluchtmigration in den Jahren 2014 bis 2016. Die vielen Flüchtlinge, die in diesen Jahren kamen, wurden auch in kleine, oftmals ländliche Gemeinden verteilt. Viele zogen dann freilich weiter, wenn sie einen positiven Asylbescheid erhielten, meist nach Wien oder in andere urbane Zentren.
Dennoch blieben auch einige in den ruralen Kommunen, dazu kommt eine Zuwanderung aus dem EU-Ausland, wobei hier sicher auch der Tourismus eine treibende Kraft darstellt. Und der ist nicht überall gleich ausgeprägt. Migranten aus anderen EU-Ländern machen etwa die Hälfte der knapp 143.000 Zuzüge aus. Ein Ungleichgewicht ist freilich auch hier offenkundig. Mattighofen etwa wächst, wie auch andere ländliche Gemeinden im Westen. Liegen Orte aber an der Peripherie, geht die Tendenz meist nach unten.
Bemerkenswert ist auch der Altersdurchschnitt. Vor 16 Jahren war die Bevölkerung in dieser Kategorie mit 39 Jahren noch relativ jung, mittlerweile sind die (groß)städtischen Einwohner die jüngsten und die ländlichen mit durchschnittlich 43,6 Jahren gleich um fast vier Jahre älter geworden. Es ist also doch das alte Lied: Die Abwanderung aus dem ländlichen Raum ist Realität. | {
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I'll have you know that my power went out last night And I only tried to turn on the lights 17 times
138 shares | {
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Chinese historian Ho Koon-wan explains the inscription dating back to the Song Dynasty. The declared monument in Sai Kung is the oldest dated inscription known in Hong Kong. Photo: Nora Tam | {
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MOSCOW, June 27. /TASS/. Russia’s spacecraft manufacturer Energia fears that successes of US companies and China’s progress in upgrading its Shenzhou vehicles may reduce the demand for Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.
"Systematic perfection of China’s manned spacecraft Shenzhou and creation of a national orbital station Tiangong are fraught with the risk demand for Russia’s manned spacecraft on the world market may ease unless their technical parameters and costs are improved," Energia said in the annual report.
Energia believes that its main competitors are US cargo spacecraft Cygnus from Orbital Sciences (performed its first commercial flight at the beginning of 2014) and Dragon, from SpaceX, which has been used to deliver cargoes to the International Space Station since October 2012.
It is expected that Dragon will make its first manned flight in 2017. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner will be put in orbit in 2018. | {
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New rules to limit air pollutants such as nitrogen oxide and mercury could save more than 20,000 lives a year, say NGOs
This article is more than 3 years old
This article is more than 3 years old
Power plants in the EU will have to cut the amount of toxic pollutants such as nitrogen oxides they emit under new rules approved by member states and widely applauded by environmental groups.
Friday’s decision imposes stricter limits on emissions of pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, mercury and particulate matter from large combustion plants in Europe.
“Air pollution is the prime environmental cause of premature death in the European Union,” said Enrico Brivio, a spokesman for the European commission.
Large combustion plants account for a big share of air pollutant emissions across the EU: 46% of sulphur dioxide, 18% of nitrogen oxide, 39% of mercury and 4% of dust, he added.
NGOs say the new rules could save more than 20,000 lives every year by reducing pollution from coal-fired power plants alone.
The EU’s industrial emissions directive, its main instrument regulating pollutant emissions from industrial plants, entered into force in 2011. It sets EU-wide emission limits on large combustion plants for certain pollutants which can cause respiratory diseases.
However, the directive has been criticized for exemptions which have allowed more than half of Europe’s coal plants to exceed limits for harmful pollutants, according to a report by environmental groups last year.
Several countries which are heavily reliant on coal, such as Poland, Bulgaria, Germany and the Czech Republic, were opposed to the changes.
“EU coal power plants will now either have to reduce their pollution or close down,” said Darek Urbaniak, senior energy policy officer at WWF. “It is about time Europe quits its dirty coal addiction for good and invests in energy efficiency and renewables instead.”
There had been concerns in some countries, such as Bulgaria, that power plants would be forced to close down or that electricity prices would go up, but Brivio said “the European law does not require the closure of Bulgarian plants and will not increase the price of electricity.”
National authorities will be able to use a derogation, or form of exemption, when costs would be disproportionate compared with the environmental benefits, Brivio said, while respecting environmental safeguards.
The stricter limits will apply to all 2,900 large combustion plants in the EU – including coal-fired power stations and peat, oil and gas power plants – and will have to be met by 2021. | {
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Kevin Duggan
[email protected]
We were all conditioned during the election season to not pick up the phone and answer calls from unfamiliar sources.
But on Monday, if you receive an unexpected call around 7 p.m., you might want to pick up. It could be Mayor Wade Troxell calling.
He’ll want to talk with you about high-speed internet. More specifically, he’ll want to speak with you and potentially thousands of others about what, if any, role the city should play in the future delivery of broadband services.
The city is planning a telephone “town hall” meeting on broadband services. Calls are expected to be placed to about 15,000 phones.
The meeting is scheduled from 7 to 8 p.m. Those who don’t receive a call but want to participate may call 877-229-8493 and enter PIN 110303 to join in. It’s a toll-free call.
Troxell will be joined by City Manager Darin Atteberry and Mike Beckstead, the city’s chief financial officer, according to a press release.
As you may know, the city is looking at ways to bring internet service capable of handling 1 gigabit of information per second to the community. The idea is to have a fiber-optic network that would reach to all homes and businesses.
Officials don’t want to rely on commercial internet service providers such as Comcast and CenturyLink to come through with that level of service any time soon.
Business models city officials are considering and discussing with residents and businesses are:
Do nothing: The city would take no action and let the market do its thing.
Franchise: City would not build or operate the system, but would craft an agreement with an operator similar to its cable television franchise with Comcast that would include performance standards.
Wholesale: The city would build and own a network and lease it to a provider.
Retail: The city would build and operate a network as if it were a municipal utility.
The models carry cost estimates ranging from nothing to $135 million. In addition to cost, control over service levels is an issue to consider.
Another issue to consider is that given the pace at which technology changes, should the city sink a lot of money into a system that could soon be outdated?
The interest in and indeed need for fast internet is clear statewide. Larimer County just got the go-ahead from voters to look into its options for providing or partnering with others to provide services.
Outreach efforts on the topic in Fort Collins have revealed some interesting trends. In face-to-face surveys with residents, 75 percent of participants were somewhat or very supportive of the municipal retail model, according to a memo to City Council.
INTERNET: Comcast call center will open in early 2017
Online surveys came in with slightly higher support for the retail model.
However, when the Local Legislative Affairs Committee of the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce was surveyed, 95 percent of participants said they were not supportive of the retail model.
About 55 percent did not support the wholesale model: Most supported doing nothing to various degrees.
The City Council is expected to receive a recommendation on what, if anything, to do about broadband services in December.
For more information about the city’s broadband project, visit fcgov.com/broadband.
Kevin Duggan is a senior reporter. Follow him at Coloradoan Kevin Duggan on Facebook or @coloradoan_dugg on Twitter.
Broadband could be $125M effort for Fort Collins | {
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Some of Australia's best Indigenous artists have donated $100,000 of their own money to ensure their remote art centre can exist for future generations.
Key points: Iwantja Arts is in the APY Lands and the $100k will be used to maintain the centre
Iwantja Arts is in the APY Lands and the $100k will be used to maintain the centre Fundraiser will ensure Indulkana children have opportunities to paint, artists say
Fundraiser will ensure Indulkana children have opportunities to paint, artists say South Australian Government agrees to fund the rest of the upgrades
Iwantja Arts, based in the tiny town of Indulkuna in the APY Lands in South Australia's far north, have fostered award-winning artists for decades.
But the building in the tiny community, almost 400 kilometres south of Alice Springs, has become run down.
Although the not-for-profit arts centre takes a cut of all sales to keep itself running, it is old and past its time, with maintenance hard to maintain in such a remote location.
"We need to fix the roof of the old building because when it's raining there's water coming out everywhere," said Alec Baker, one of the men who secured the first funding for Iwantja Arts.
Artist Alec Baker helped secure the first funding for Iwantja Arts ( Supplied: Iwantja Arts )
The building is also too cold in winter and does not have enough space to keep people separated when required for cultural reasons, accoridng to Iwantja Arts chairperson Vicki Cullinan.
"We also need a new kitchen to make a proper kitchen for us and make more rooms for ladies and men's side for paintings," she said.
Now a number of artists have put on a sell-out show in Sydney's trendy suburb of Darlinghurst and donated the money that would have gone into their own pockets to fix the art centre.
Art show fundraiser 'for the young one to learn how to paint'
Kaylene Whiskey won the 2018 Sulman Prize, which is run alongside the Archibald Prize, and donated work for the exhibition.
She said she wanted to ensure that children in Indulkana and the APY Lands could have opportunities to create art.
"Kids learn to paint and when they grow up they want to be really good at painting," she said.
Artist Kaylene Whiskey wants to ensure children in Indulkana have opportunities to create art ( Facebook: Iwantja Art )
Ms Cullinan agreed that ensuring the cultural practices surrounding Indigenous art continued and was a strong incentive for artists to donate their own money sold from work.
"We really need the art centre fixed, not for us, but for the future as well," she said.
"For the young ones to come and learn about art how to paint, to learn about Tjukurpa [the creation period], to pass it onto our children when they're growing up."
Iwanjta Arts coordinators estimated it would cost about $500,000 to upgrade the art centre.
After the exhibition, the South Australian Government agreed to fund the rest of the upgrades.
The exhibition in Darlinghurst was possible after 10 art centres in the APY Lands banded together to open their own gallery in Sydney, in an effort to circumvent dodgy art dealers who rip off artists. | {
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Sometimes it’s hard to get through your twenties when you know there’s at least another 30 years of mediocrity ahead of you. You want to stay positive and motivated, and you want to keep telling yourself that someday you’ll be great, but you know it’s not true, and it’s hard to put on a happy face and continue to play grown up while you balance your comforting delusions with the stark disappointment of reality. You wake up and go to work, feeling less and less like a child, while you do your best to ignore your inevitably anticlimactic and inconsequential death. You’re experiencing your twenties, and that’s special.
But you’re garbage. You’re not particularly talented and everyone you know has lied to you about your worth. So how do you keep being a care-free piece of shit millennial without killing yourself? Well, just take a look at these inspiring quotes from old people who are just as disposable as you:
Chuck Hansen, 55, Collects Disability:
“I spent my twenties trying to work my way up to a management position at the local movie theater, but then I got a hernia reloading the syrup bags on the soda machine and they never promoted me because I filed a worker’s compensation claim. I stayed at the movie theater for another 15 years anyways until I was edged out by a 17-year-old assistant manager that wanted to hire his friends. I’m in my late fifties now and I build model airplanes and I have skin cancer. Cubs are looking good this year though.”
Rebecca Smith, 47, Paralegal:
“The other day, during conversation, I found myself jealous of a woman who had been divorced three times. I have never been divorced. I have never been married. I tell myself it’s because I’ve dedicated myself to my career, but I just answer phones at a firm that practices family law. Every day I watch women with failed marriages in their darkest moments and I even then I know that they’re happier than me. I answer the phones the same way so often that when my father called me at home to tell me my mother had died I picked up and instinctually said, “Thank you for calling Epstein & Marigold, please hold.” I didn’t take time off work to go visit her in the hospital. The last time I saw her she told me my sister was her favorite. But there’s some good stuff on Netflix these days. ”
Jimmy Cosgrove, 38, Stay At Home Son:
“I spent seven years in community college. I would work a bit here and there but I never really saved any money beyond what I needed to attend a couple of annual music festivals. I did too much acid at a concert once and freaked out. I took off all my clothes and a group of guys beat me up and pissed in my mouth. I tried to play it off like it was a funny drug story but I still think about it every night before I go to bed. I think that’s the reason I didn’t finish community college and it’s definitely why I developed agoraphobia and never left my mom’s place. It was hard at first but now that I’m in my late 30s it feels like I’m mom’s caretaker and it’s kind of like having a job. Super stoked about the JJ Abram’s “Star Wars”. Really hope he doesn’t fuck it up.”
Frank Wilson, 42, Dishwasher:
“Growing up I wanted to be a professional wrestler. I didn’t find out wrestling was fake until I was 27 years old, and at that point it was already too late to lose my virginity. Emotionally speaking, I had invested everything in wrestling, and financially speaking, you could say the same. Finding out wrestling was fake was like finding out Santa wasn’t real, which I had also just discovered a year prior. That was also the year that I found out my dad wasn’t really an astronaut that had died in space, and I also learned that the gifted and talented school I had attended as a kid was actually an alternative program for children with emotional disabilities. Things turned around though. I wash dishes at Chili’s now and I hide my phone in the women’s bathroom. It’s like dating but I don’t have to confront my social anxiety.”
Jenny Firch, 41, Girlfriend:
“I always thought I’d be a writer. No, I knew I’d be a writer. I could feel it. I’d read every book I could get my hands on, and I was always making sure that everyone saw how much of a little reader I was. At family events, everyone would take notice. ‘Look at little Jenny! That girl’s going to be smart as a whip, reading all those books,’ they’d say, and I’d smile and think about how great I was as I scanned the pages without really comprehending anything. It was only years later that I realized not only was I not any kind of writer, I wasn’t even a reader. I had been illiterate the entire time. I was so busy thinking about how great I looked reading those books that I never bothered learning the English language. But you know what they say; fake it until you make it! I never became a writer, and I never learned how to read, but I did learn how to use my illiteracy to curry favor with co-dependent men who support me financially and emotionally as I navigate the wonders of my undiagnosed bipolarity.” | {
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O ren Koules has a new show in the works titled The Tortured and, no, it is not another name for the Tampa Bay Lightning, as fitting as it may be.
Koules, a former Major Junior A and minor pro player who grew up in the Chicago area, made his considerable fortune as a Hollywood producer, then used a chunk of it to buy into part ownership of the Lightning.
He has co-produced the string of Saw horror movies, now numbering five, about serial killings. Murderous might also describe his proprietorship so far with the Lightning (along with, among others, ex-NHL player Len Barrie, a Canadian who made it big in B.C. real estate development).
Barry Melrose is said to have been Koules' personal choice as head coach but he is also assumed to have signed off on Melrose's firing Friday after only 16 regular-season games on the job.
Koules was also behind the movie Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd. Which, irresistibly, might describe how all involved are looking – the Lightning has fired two head coaches, Melrose and John Tortorella, since June and has now elevated a man, Rich Tocchet, into the position who is still on probation for his involvement in a sports betting scam. Melrose is owed $2.25 million (U.S.) over three years; Tortorella is still collecting the $1.3 mil' he's owed.
Koules' TV credits include the hit series Two And A Half Men. That's what the Lightning's five skaters have looked like on most shifts in most games this season. Melrose berated them for lack of effort, they responded by giving him more (or less) of the same.
That's two NHL coaches fired already this season, Denis Savard having lasted only four games with the Chicago Blackhawks. (The other day, Savard accepted a position with the team as an "ambassador.") The serial killings continue.
Columnist Joe Henderson of the Tampa Tribune: "It's possible for a franchise to look more foolish than the Lightning do right now, but then again maybe not. They should abandon the Forum for a circus tent. In the league of serious people, these are the guys with big red noses that honk and squirt water." ... Gary Shelton, writing in the St. Petersburg Times: You work 16 games, and what do you get? Evidently, a fresh pink slip and a severance check."
AND FURTHERMORE: Seeing as he is likely to get a contract worth more than $137 million (U.S.), what does the CC in CC Sabathia stand for anyway? Cold Cash? In fact, it's Carsten Charles. ... Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James both admit to having some Barry Manilow tunes on their iPods. Do you? ... The Montreal Canadiens may be owned by an American, but the Toronto Maple Leafs will soon be run by a pair of them, Brian Burke and Ron Wilson. What would Conn Smythe have thought of that? Harold Ballard? ... Sage Rosenfels, good with math, knows he was a long shot to be named the Houston Texans' starting quarterback: "I have been a backup for eight years. So, if there's 32 teams in the league times eight years, that's 256 times that teams have said, 'This guy is not our starter.' So, yeah, I think there are some (detractors) out there." ... Topps, the sports trading cards company, is putting out a line of Barack Obama cards, 90 in all. Will there be more to mark his rookie year as President? ... The Vicktory Dogs Wine Collection, with some profits tabbed for charity, features portraits of 22 dogs confiscated from Michael Vick's Bad Newz Kennels. The dogs are now living at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah.
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Butternuts Beer and Ale's Pork Slap pale ale is a favorite of hipsters throughout the Northeast. Flickr/Garden State Hiker The recent explosion of American microbreweries has shifted the beer industry's attention to quality, not quantity. And now — with Oktoberfest underway — is the perfect time to discover a new artisanal brew.
We found the 24 coolest microbrewers making waves in the American craft beer industry, from a Latin American-style cervecería in Chicago to a sustainable brewery in Maui that uses local Hawaiian ingredients to make its brews.
A brewery is considered a microbrewery if it produces less than 15,000 barrels per year, with 75% or more of its beer sold off-site, according to the Brewers Association. | {
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Zobacz wideo
Prof. Ryszard Legutko, europoseł Prawa i Sprawiedliwości, a także kandydat tej partii w wyborach do Parlamentu Europejskiego w tym roku, zabrał głos ws. filmu braci Sekielskich "Tylko nie mów nikomu" i pedofilii w Kościele.
REKLAMA
Polityk zaczął od wyjaśnienia na antenie PolskiegoRadia24, że tak naprawdę, w większości tych przypadków nie mamy do czynienia z pedofilią.
Sprawy nadużyć seksualnych, nazwijmy to elegancko, wśród członków Kościoła, czy wśród duchownych, to tak naprawdę przypadki pedofilii są niezwykle rzadkie, to, z czym mamy do czynienia, to mamy do czynienia z homoseksualizmem
- przekonywał prof. Legutko.
Prof. Legutko o pedofilii i pederastii. "Nadużycia dotyczą chłopców w wieku od 12 do 17 lat"
Podkreślał przy tym, że są "badania" na ten temat. Nie podał dokładnych danych, wspomniał natomiast, że takie badania miał przeprowadzać kilkakrotnie episkopat w USA, a także "chyba niemiecki".
Ponad 80 procent przypadków owych nadużyć dotyczy chłopców w wieku od 12 do 17 lat, no to przepraszam bardzo, co to jest za pedofilia? To nie jest żadna pedofilia, to jest pederastia po prostu
- powiedział prof. Legutko.
Pedofilia w Kościele. Prof. Legutko o "mafii lawendowej"
Polityk Prawa i Sprawiedliwości nie poprzestał na tym, ponieważ ocenił, że film Sekielskich w rzeczywistości służy tylko do uderzenia w Kościół.
W żargonie nazywa się to mafią lawendową. Jeśli gdzieś jest problem w Kościele, to właśnie tutaj. Film Sekielskiego został wykorzystany w zamiarze uderzenia w prawą stronę, w Kościół. Wpisuje się to w pedofilską, antykościelną retorykę
- mówił Ryszard Legutko. Tutaj warto nadmienić, że "lawendowa mafia", o której wspomina polityk, ma być siatką księży homoseksualistów, mącących wewnątrz Kościoła.
Pedofilia w Kościele. Belka o Legutce: Gość miał jaja, żeby powiedzieć, co myślicie naprawdę
Ryszard Legutko nie jest pierwszym politykiem obozu władzy, który nieprzychylnie patrzy na próby nagłośnienia problemu pedofilii w Kościele. Radny sejmiku małopolskiego i ojciec prezydenta Andrzeja Dudy, Jan Duda, mówił, że dyskusja na ten temat jest "sztucznie wywoływana".
Jest to problem wydumany. Specjalnie wymyślony, żeby jątrzyć zwłaszcza w tym temacie
- mówił z kolei Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, kandydat PiS do PE z okręgu warszawskiego.
Słowa Ryszarda Legutki skomentował m.in. Marek Belka, były premier, który napisał na Twitterze:
'Wybitny intelektualista', jak nazywa go pan Kaczyński, niejaki Legutko, stwierdził, że molestowanie 12-latka przez księdza to nie pedofilia. I wy w PiS macie czelność mówić, że walczycie z tą zarazą? Gość miał jaja, żeby powiedzieć, co myślicie naprawdę. | {
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Cranberries are delicious – their tart, sometimes bitter flavor can enhance most any meal, and they blend so well with both cinnamon and something sweet. I have a tradition of making a cranberry cordial every year, but this autumn I decided to try something a little different. Following my current trend of fermenting anything that isn’t glued down in the kitchen, you can guess what I did next.
As usual, my recipes tend to be made on the fly and they are based on whatever happens to be in my fridge or pantry at the moment. Alongside the cranberries, I had most of a butternut squash and some nice firm Pink Lady apples from Mother Earth Produce. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out, but I’m sure you could easily substitute ingredients without any problems as long as the salinity is correct.
Lacto-Fermented Cranberry Apple Butternut Relish
2 cups cranberries (1 bag)
2-inch thumb of ginger, peeled and minced
1 firm apple, diced
1 cup of peeled butternut squash, diced (reserve one good long slice of peel)
1 cinnamon stick
2 star anise pods
Wide mouth quart jar
My recipe was fermented in a wide mouth quart jar using the salt brine method of lacto-fermentation. I use Himalayan Sea Salt and the lids and supplies offered by Fermentools, although any fermentation method that you prefer should work.
Pulse the cranberries and ginger together in a food processor or blender to bust up the cranberries a bit but don’t puree it – leave some texture.
Add the cranberries and ginger to the quart jar. I layered mine with the butternut squash and apples so that it would look fancy, but that is totally not required.
Push in the cinnamon stick and star anise pods.
Slide the long strip of butternut squash peel into the jar. The skin has beneficial buggies to help start the fermentation.
Prepare a 2% salt brine, pour into the jar to cover the fruit.
Add the weight to push everything under the brine. (the most important thing!)
Add the Fermentools seal, lid, band, and airlock.
Label the jar, sit back, and let it work its magic.
After one day, the brine should be pinkish from the cranberries. It will continue to darken as the process goes on.
It will take a few days for the bubbles to start in this jar, but once it starts going, beware! I had to change the airlock three times during the fermentation process due to the bubbles forcing the pink brine up into the airlock.
A day or two after bubbles have started to appear, open the lid and taste a piece of fruit to see how you like it – from here on, it is up to you! Taste every few days until you like the texture and flavor of your ferment.
Once you are satisfied, swap out your fermenting lid for a regular storage lid and stick it in the fridge.
To serve, strain the salty, tangy scarlet colored brine from the relish and put it aside to make an awesome cocktail or use it in shrubs, smoothies, or salad dressing. From there, the strained relish is delicious as it is! It fits in really well on a cheese board alongside bleu cheese or a sharp crumbly aged cheddar.
You can also blend the relish with some brown sugar to make a more traditionally sweet cranberry sauce. Even the picky eaters admitted that they liked it!
My next step is one of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions…the day-after leftover sandwich made with turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, mayonnaise, and a bit of salt.
Here are a few other fermented cranberry recipes from other bloggers:
Cultured Cranberry & Pomegranate Sauce from Musings of a Modern Hippie (fermented using kombucha)
Cultured Cranberry Sauce from Little Owl Crunchy Mama (lacto-fermentation)
Lacto-fermented Cranberry Apple Relish from Learning and Yearning (lacto-fermentation)
Lacto-fermented Cranberry Sauce from Gnowfglins (fermented with whey)
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This blog details the account of the Business Fish and his many adventures in the world of Minecraft. | {
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