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There should not be any laws against Nature. We the American People now know that Cannabis Sativa, aka Hemp, is the most sustainable plant on this Earth. Not only do want a sustainable society, we NEED a sustainable society and we know that bringing hemp back will not only help us heal our planet, our society, and our people but will also allow us to rebuild an economy that we can believe in.
We ask for all laws against Hemp be repealed, and all patents, specifically US Patent 6630507 - "Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants" be relinquished.
Thank YOU. | {
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Imagine watching the Empire State Building suddenly transform into giant spurting penis to ejaculate a figure dressed in a major King Kong look across a stage. Now, imagine this mysterious figure shedding the ape costume and emerging as the most fabulous Marlene Dietrich you’ve ever seen.
No, this isn’t the fever dream of a Hell’s Kitchen gay after watching Kong: Skull Island. This flamboyant and provocative series of events almost happened. The performance, set to take place at the Paris Opera House in 1973, would’ve introduced the world to glam rock’s first openly gay rock star. Through a sea of glitter, the crowd was to feel a potent mix of astonishment and arousal before whispering his name: Jobriath.
That you’re almost certainly wondering who the hell Jobriath is should betray the fact that his grand entrance never happened, but to dismiss Jobriath as yet another failed rock star would do a disservice to his legacy. The truth is, for all his failures, Jobriath paved a path for queer musicians. Without rock’s self-proclaimed “true fairy,” artists like ILoveMakonnen, Frank Ocean, PWR BTTM, Mykki Blanco and everyone in between might not be around to queer up the music industry.
Decades ago, in an era punctuated by the queerbaiting antics of Lou Reed and David Bowie, Jobriath’s star power proved to shine too bright, too fast---he was the Icarus of glam rock with a gloomy ending to match. Spanning multiple identities, enough tragedy to fill a Lifetime Original Movie, and a wealth of ideas that would never come to pass, this is the story of America’s first gay rock star.
The Adolescence and Abandonment of Bruce Wayne Campbell
You’d be forgiven if you thought the story of Jobriath’s adolescence was written by an overeager fiction writer. After all, his name shares similarities with both Batman and the star of Evil Dead and hails from a town that sounds like a history book. Yet, Bruce Wayne Campbell of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania really did exist. And he was even something of a child prodigy on the piano.
The Film Collaborative
Born the son of an Army man in the dirt track town, Campbell spent his youth moving from army base to army base with his family. It was a childhood light on friends and heavy on a blooming sexual identity that infuriated his family. It was an existence that wasn’t meant to last and, after a brief stint in the Army that ended with him going AWOL, he ran away to start a new life as Jobriath Salisbury in the sun-soaked streets of Los Angeles.
Detours and the Discovery of Jobriath Salisbury
Like any great glam rock origin story, Jobriath’s rise began with a little bark and a lot of hair follicles. A short time after arriving in LA, he accompanied his friend to the audition for the notoriously outlandish musical Hair. Despite only going to help the friend with lines, he was cast into the role of Woof and was soon performing to sold out crowds every night. Under the bright lights, he got a taste of stardom that changed his life.
Though as talented as he may have been in his role, he wasn’t immune to the vices of the 1960s. A cocktail of drugs strong enough to tranquilize a herd of buffalo mixed with his overinflated ego and he eventually left Hair in a blaze of glory---taking two of his costars with him to start a band called Pidgeon. You know, because it was 1969 and naming your band after sky rats was glam. The trio recorded a strange, baroque folk album that sounded like a chipper nightmare before the band promptly fell apart.
It was from this point that Jobriath’s AWOL status caught up to him and he was detained by military police. He was thrown into a military psychiatric hospital, suffered his first big breakdown, and then broke away from the padded walls to take on California one last time. It didn’t take long for him to pick up his old habits As he recalled years later, “I was floating down in the gutter. I didn't eat. I just drank beer all the time. With no money, I hustled for booze and drugs."
While he hustled, a new chapter in Jobriath’s story was being written thousands of miles away in New York. It was there that Jerry Brandt, legendary manager of Carly Simon, sat in the offices of Columbia Records’ Clive Davis listening to Jobriath’s demo tape. To his ears, he’d found the star he was waiting for.
The Film Collaborative
Jobriath Boone and Jerry Brandt’s Big, Gay American Disaster
The year was 1972 and Jobriath had just shed his steak-themed last name and emerged as Jobriath Boone—--just in time for Brandt to change his life forever. After search through LA to find him, Brandt quickly whisked the burgeoning star back to New York, got him a record contract with Elektra Records rumored to be worth $500,000, and began one of the most ambitious advertising campaigns of the decade.
“Jobriath is going to be the biggest artist in the world. He is a singer, dancer, woman, man. He has the glamour of Garbo. He is beautiful,” Brandt explained to Melody Maker before telling Music Week: “It’s Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles, and now Jobriath.” To Brandt, Jobriath was glam rock’s gay, glittered Jesus Christ and he wanted the world to know his name.
Jobriath’s face was plastered across full page ads in Vogue, Penthouse, and Rolling Stone and put on posters on hundreds New York City buses. For Brandt’s pièce de résistance, a 41’ by 43’ billboard high atop Times Square was erected featuring Jobriath naked and posed as a Roman statue broken at the base and crawling across the floor.
The AV Club
When it came time to record the album, Brandt convinced Elektra Records to book them at Olympic Studios, the famed recording studio favored by bands like The Rolling Stones. It was within these soundproofed walled that a 55-piece orchestra accompanied Jobriath on a glam rock journey through the eleven tracks that made up his self-titled debut album. Despite the aggressively sexual S&M ballad “Take Me I’m Yours” and the swaggering bravado of “I’m a Man,” reviews were warm and encouraging.
The problem was that outside of the industry, Jobriath’s flagrant sexuality produced a product the public just wasn’t ready for. By the time the giant wave of marketing finally crashed down, Jobriath’s overhyped debut had become a disastrous joke. A debut concert at the Paris Opera House with a $200,000 price tag and the Empire State building ejaculating the star was quickly scrapped.
He made his television debut in an unforgettable yet restrained performance on a prominent nightly show called The Midnight Special. It was notable for his outlandish costume that could best be described as 'spaceman by way of hamster tunnel tubing' and was restrained because, after being barred from performing his S&M jam “Take Me I’m Yours” by producers, he instead performed “Rock of Ages” and his single “I’m a Man.” Late night just couldn't handle a glitter-dipped gay rocker singing, “Any day you could buy me or tie me up.”
Alongside his TV debut, he headlined two sold out shows at The Bottom Line in all his unsheathed, gay glory to modest, 400-person crowds. The positive response brought some hope to Jobriath and Brandt but that momentum crashed down at a follow-up concert at Nassau Coliseum. There, the crowds immediately bombarded him with shouts of “faggot” as trash was thrown until he fled the stage. Elektra Records quickly pushed out the second and final album, Creatures of the Street, shortly after that disastrous show with leftover material from the Jobriath recording sessions and dropped him from their label.
With no future at Elektra, Jobriath embarked on one final tour and severed his partnership with Brandt. Like any good rock star though, Jobriath went out with a bang. His final show at the University of Alabama led to five encores that ended when the excited crowd pulled the fire alarm and sent the fire department rushing in. It was glorious moment that showcased the star Jobriath could’ve become had the country been ready to embrace that courageous homosexuality of rock’s first true fairy but ultimately signaled the end to his life as Jobriath.
The Downfall and Death of Cole Berlin
In 1975, high above the iconic Chelsea Hotel in a pyramid-topped apartment, Jobriath Boone was laid to rest alongside his brief career. From his ashes, the character of Cole Berlin emerged. When he wasn’t hustling or auditioning for the role of Al Pacino’s lover in Dog Day Afternoon, Cole spent his nights performing 1930s cabaret songs at The Covenant Gardens restaurant. His existence, perhaps for the first and only time, appeared restrained and mundane for a few years. It wasn’t until 1979 that the façade of normality was ripped away in an interview with Omega One magazine.
“Jobriath committed suicide in a drug, alcohol and publicity overdose. That whole hype just drove him crazy,” Cole said of his former identity. It was the statement of a broken man and, as the interview continued, he didn’t hesitate to talk about his personas as if they were a polyamorous family he’d moved in with. “Schizophrenia is my lifestyle. I think everybody is schizophrenic but they’ll all fighting it,” he explained. “I, or should I say we, are not fighting it. Come over. I’ll ask some of us to come out and play.”
Years after the interview, his lifestyle on the streets caught up with him and he soon contracted AIDs. On the Chelsea Hotel’s 100th anniversary in November 1982, he played his last public performance and, on the morning of August 4, 1983, police broke up the front door of his rooftop apartment and found his dead body. A decade after towering over Times Square, he died alone and abandoned—--his body decaying for four days before anyone found him.
The Great, Rock Resurgence of Jobriath
As tragic as his career and life were, time has ultimately been kinder to Jobriath. In the years following his death, the glamorous singer has become ingrained in the rock and roll folklore thanks to one of rock’s most iconic queer artists. In one of the strangest twists in Jobriath’s story, rock legend Morrissey of The Smiths has become integral in establishing the singer’s legacy.
In 1992, Morrissey expressed interest in having him as the opening act for his "Your Arsenal" tour--—unaware that the singer had died nearly ten years ago. It was a tragic request but, ultimately, served as a catalyst for Jobriath’s revitalization. In the two and a half decades since Morrissey first took an interest in rock’s first true fairy, a wealth of information and music has unearthed his story. Previously unreleased music filled Lonely Planet Boy in 2004 and As the River Flows in 2014; his first two albums saw a rerelease in 2008; and, finally, a documentary by Kieran Turner called Jobriath A.D. came out in 2012.
Four decades after crooning for audiences to let him be who he was on the track “I’m a Man,” the repercussions of Jobriath’s fearless embrace of his sexuality, Empire State Building ejaculation and all, are finally being celebrated.
For more of our investigative pieces, take a look at the Kendrick Lamar / Lady Gaga collaboration that could have been right here. | {
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It sounds like a scene out of Oliver Twist — except it's happening in Pennsylvania, in 2016.
Earlier this month, Canon-McMillan school district cafeteria worker Stacy Koltiska was ordered to take away a hot lunch she served to a hungry Grade One student because he couldn't pay for it.
So she quit on the spot.
He just looked like a deer in headlights, like 'What is happening here?' And then his little eyes just welled up with tears. - Stacy Koltiska
It was a part of a new policy by the school to refuse meals to kids as young as six-years-old, if their parents had left an outstanding balance on their accounts.
In this case, the parents of the kids had an overdrawn account of more than $25.
She says the meals were taken away — and then thrown out. In their place, the kids were given two slices of bread with a single slice of cheese.
Here is part of Stacy Koltiska's interview with As It Happens host Carol Off.
Carol Off: Just take us back to this lunch time when this young boy came to get his meal. What happened?
Stacy Koltiska: [We were told] to serve the child the hot lunch and then, when we find out they don't have money, we take it from them and give them the cheese sandwich and then throw [the hot lunch] away.
CO: So this boy had his lunch and then what happened?
SK: First, he just looked like a deer in headlights, like 'What is happening here?' And then his little eyes just welled up with tears. You could tell he was holding back tears. It is sinful and shameful. It is unimaginable, quite honestly, that this is happening. It was the most heart-wrenching thing. I looked to my boss. I said 'I can't do this. I won't do this.' I said, 'No, I'm quitting.'
CO: Tell me about this cheese sandwich?
SK: It's just two pieces of bread with one piece of cold cheese. It's not even toasted. It just humiliates the child because then all the other kids can see that he has this cheese sandwich and they don't.
CO: It's going to be clear that he doesn't have the money to pay for his lunch?
Children are God's greatest gifts and, if we can't protect them and stand up for them, who else is going to? - Stacy Koltiska
SK: Exactly. How do we expect our children to go to school for eight hours, focus, concentrate, do well in school, while they're hungry? I mean, it just makes less than zero sense to me. You're punishing a child for the responsibility of the parent. This is a little six, seven-year-old boy. Are you kidding me?
CO: What did it bring back for you when you saw what happened?
SK: I grew up poor. I was on food stamps as a child. Even if I weren't poor, just as a human being, to do that to a child. Children are God's greatest gifts and, if we can't protect them and stand up for them, who else is going to? To put people over profit and greed. We just live in a greedy world.
The school district superintendent has defended the policy to local media, saying that it has cut down on the number of parents that don't keep money on their kids' account cards and it does not target families that qualify for financial assistance.
Listen to Stacy Koltiska's full interview, in which she talks about how she feels about leaving her job and discusses whether she would return if the policy is overturned. | {
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XXXtentacion‘s ex-girlfriend has received thousands of dollars for her medical bills following the rapper’s death.
Geneva Ayala accused XXtentacion – real name Jahseh Dwayne Onfroy – of abuse. The South Florida artist was arrested in 2016, facing charges of aggravated battery on a pregnant victim, domestic battery by strangulation, false imprisonment, and witness tampering on Ayala.
Ayala created a Go Fund Me page in October 2016 to help pay for her surgery following the alleged battery. She detailed two fractures in her left eye socket as well as nose and jaw fractures, “due to an aggressive hit”.
“since these bones are fractured they’re piercing into the back of my eyeball causing damage to an optical nerve and my eye itself,” she added, writing that without surgery her “eyeball will die” and the nerve connecting her lip/cheek and teeth “will eventually die as well.”
“i’d appreciate anything, this is a very strenuous obstacle that has been put into my hands. also could use money towards my living situation and food. thank you,” she concluded.
XXXTentacion was shot by two men in a dark coloured SUV as he left a motorcycle shop in Fort Lauderdale on Monday (June 18). He later died in hospital.
Since his death, Ayala has received more than $6,000 in donations – bringing total donations to $34,249 at the time of writing. The total surpasses her goal of $25,000.
Ayala spoke out about the rapper’s death, sharing an illustration of the pair and writing, “i want to scream at the top of my lungs until i can’t then keep screaming. i don’t want to believe this. no one knows. the shit. i feel. for you.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkL1FvuFckO/
She then shared a quick video clip that shows what seems to be XXXTentacion’s head, writing “it isn’t real. come back.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkNVnB5FwoQ/
Ayala later alleged that she was kicked out of the vigil for the rapper, writing, “they kicked me out of the vigil. so damn disrespectful. i can’t believe people are that selfish. i wasn’t even there 25 minutes and i literally got pulled away from the memorial. i just wanted to stay. i wasn’t bothering anyone. this is unfair. i’m absolutely devastated. THEY BURNED THE SHIT I LEFT THEY BURNED WHAT I BROUGHT FOR HIM IM SO MAD LIKE IM SCREAMING.”
She followed up that post with a picture of the alleged burned items, with the caption: “i left those those things for him. i didn’t bother anyone. i said nothing to no one. i can’t believe they’d do that. how did they let that happen. why would anyone let that happen, where is the respect? the globe, board, flowers and candles i brought for him were placed BEHIND THE CAUTION TAPE, AND THEY LET THEM GET THE SHIT AND SET IT ALL ON FIRE. he would’ve wanted me there. i have no fucking words.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkOrVohFWi9/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkOsnUYF4pz/
Meanwhile, XXXTentacion’s manager Soloman Sobande released a statement following the rapper’s death and called for his family’s privacy. | {
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Welcome to the Vibe To This To get started, Check out the Latest blog posts above. If you are looking for a specific style or playlist see below. To keep infromed about the new MUSIC that we think is vibin, click subscribe. | {
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AP
Greg Bedard of the Boston Globe reports that the Patriots have reached a two-year agreement with former Broncos fullback Spencer Larsen.
It’s a very Patriots-ish move. Larsen can play fullback, special teams, and linebacker, and that kind of versatility saves roster spots. Larsen has 25 special teams tackles over the past four seasons.
Larsen is 28 years old. He was on Denver’s roster when new Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels was the Broncos’ head coach in 2009 and 2010. | {
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You guys know I've been evangelizing 5G and 10Gbit/s Ethernet to be embedded into motherboards for a while now. Well, Aquantia is pleased to offer a special holiday promotional pricing for our 5G and 10G AQtion NIC products. At $59.00 and $69.00 respectively.
San Jose, Calif. – Nov. 21, 2017 – Aquantia Corp., (NYSE: AQ), a leader in high-speed, Multi-Gigabit Ethernet connectivity solutions, today announced its plan to help PC gamers and hardware enthusiasts squeeze new levels of performance out of their systems. Today, Aquantia announced a special holiday promotion with international distribution partners Arrow, WPGA and WPI, to deliver the industry’s fastest Ethernet adaptors – Aquantia AQtion Network Interface Cards (NICs) – to gamers and performance PC users at a giftworthy pricepoint for a limited time. On Black Friday, November 24th, the Aquantia AQtion AQN-108 5G NIC will be available for $59.00 and the Aquantia AQtion AQN-107 10G NIC will be available for an unprecedented $69.00.
The super-low latency and in-game advantage that AQtion Multi-Gigabit NICs deliver make them the perfect holiday surprise for any hardware enthusiast. The performance PC user – whether a gamer, video editing enthusiast, designer, engineer or just a tried and true geek – wants the ability to move huge volumes of digital life data seamlessly and quickly. In a home or office, that seamless capability requires a 5G or even a 10G NIC card.
Kamal Dalmia, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales, said: “Typically, gamers and performance PC enthusiasts are on the leading edge of technology trends. Given the substantial uptick in interest we have seen for Multi-Gig PC Access solutions in the past year we thought it would be great to kick off the holiday season with a special promotion for those users. Not only do they get outstanding Multi-Gig Ethernet performance, but they get bragging rights over their pals who are still using outdated, 17-year-old single gigabit technology.”
The AQtion AQN-108 NIC supports 5G and 2.5G Ethernet speeds over standard Cat 5e and Cat 6 copper cables. Compliant to IEEE 802.3bz standard, these adapters are also backward-compatible with legacy 1000BASE-T Ethernet. The AQtion AQN-107 NIC has the added benefit of supporting 10GBASE-T Ethernet in compliance with the IEEE 802.3an standard. By supporting PCI Express x4 and x1 versions with a single RJ45 port, these new Aquantia NICs can be used to easily upgrade existing PCs and new models to fully utilize the bandwidth capabilities of modern CPUs and GPUs.
| {
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The 2020 NFL Draft is a short three days a way, and rumors are flying around as expected. Last week, the Atlanta Falcons were reportedly "strangely interested" in quarterbacks. While that report was referring to (roughly) the 10-20 range on the board, Peter King of NBC offered a more sensible take in his Football Morning in America piece this morning.
King cited the Falcons (along with the Baltimore Ravens) as a potential second-round destination for former Alabama and Oklahoma quarterback Jalen Hurts. Most found the previous report about the Falcons being interested in a QB in the first round ridiculous, given Matt Ryan's $62 million cap hit in the event of a trade, as well as the fact that there's little evidence to suggest a rapid decline in his production.
Still, Ryan will be 35 years old whenever the 2020 season kicks off, and one could understand why the Falcons may want to add a young talent to the QB room. The efficacy of the Ravens run first offense with Lamar Jackson under the helm the past two seasons has seemingly drawn teams to Hurts more than most expected. ESPN's Mel Kiper projected him to be selected No. 49 by the Pittsburgh Steelers in his latest mock, and noted he'll be surprised if Hurts slips out of the second round.
Grabbing a talent like Hurts in the second round is inherently more defensible than the Falcons dedicating first-round draft capital to a quarterback in their current landscape, but it's still a decision that will be met with skepticism from fans who believe all of the club's eggs should be in the basket of winning a championship in 2020.
In the event Hurts is in fact drafted to Atlanta, he would probably slot in third behind Matt Schaub on the depth chart, and be at the helm of some sort of rushing package as a change-up/short yardage option for the Falcons' standard offense under Dirk Koetter and Ryan. If Hurts gets scooped up before the No. 47 pick, look for the Falcons to further address the defense or potentially pick up an interior offensive lineman.
With the Falcons first-round selection likely dedicated towards the defense (whether it be a cornerback, pass rusher, or otherwise), the second round now represents a territory of mystery for Falcons fans. Thomas Dimitroff is seemingly leaving no stone unturned as he makes an effort to get Atlanta back on the right track after missing the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.
At Falcon Report, we want to provide you with the best Atlanta Falcons experience. Please take this short survey of five questions to let us know how we're doing. Take the Survey | {
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On Monday, Texas Senator Ted Cruz's supporters attempted a coup, and on Tuesday they complained that the Republican National Committee's rules forbid them from doing so successfully, so it stands to reason that on Wednesday the man they supported stepped onto the stage in Cleveland and pointedly refused to endorse his once-bitter rival, Donald Trump.
Cruz's supporters are still not very pleased with the outcome of the primary, as evidenced by what happened when Trump's plane landed near a rally at which the Texas senator was addressing them:
Advertisement:
Earlier in the primary season, Cruz -- or "Lyin' Ted," as Trump eventually came to refer to him -- referred to Trump as a "narcissist," a "pathological liar," a "sniveling coward," and a "philanderer," but on Wednesday evening he insisted that he came to praise the GOP's candidate, not bury or challenge him to another cage match. Trump, Cruz began by saying that he and his wife were "so happy to join you in Cleveland, where LeBron James just led his team to a great come-back victory."
Only then did he congratulate Trump on winning the nomination Tuesday, but instead of saying that he hoped Trump would win in November, he merely said that he hoped "conservative principles would prevail." Cruz asked the audience to indulge him momentarily, and allow him to speak about some of the victims of the recent shootings in Dallas, saying that they died protecting the very people who were protesting them.
After drawing an elaborate comparison between himself and one of the officers slain in Dallas, Cruz claimed that "America is a simple idea -- 'freedom matters.' For much of human history, government has decreed and the people obey," whereas in America, "we the people constrain government." He further argued that "partisan rancor" has reached a fever pitch, and "we have to do better."
Advertisement:
Cruz ran through the litany of conservative complaints about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- Benghazi, ISIS, Iran -- before claiming that the president is "a man who does everything backwards: he wants to close Guantanamo Bay and open the borders; export jobs and import terrorists; but enough is enough, and I am here to tell you there is a better vision of our future."
That vision is not Trump's, however, but "a return to freedom." He claimed that this is a "fight for freedom," and encouraged everyone in attendance to "vote their consecience" -- not for the GOP candidate, even though the audience shouted "Endorse Trump!" and "We want Trump!" repeatedly.
He issued no such endorsement, merely imploring conservatives "not to stay home in November." | {
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We lead. With your help, we'll continue to.
Greetings from Maine! As has been requested of everyone, I’ve decided to step up and do my part to get Democrats elected in Maine. Here is some of the necessary information you’ll need to run for office — particularly our State Legislature — in 2016.
I won’t get into the Congress, as our class isn’t up for election this year in the Senate, and in the House, we have a strong Democrat in Chellie Pingree in ME-01. We also have a solid Democratic candidate in ME-02, Emily Cain, to take on incumbent Bruce Poliquin, who rode the coattails of a bear-baiting referendum to get elected as Governor Paul LePage was re-elected in 2014. Emily is joined in the primary by Joe Baldacci. Joe is the brother of the last Democratic governor, John, and has promoted strengthening the minimum wage in Bangor while on the City Council.
2016 is an extremely important year, as holding the line in the Legislature means that the governor will not be able to enact his strong anti-welfare agenda, or push his income tax cuts through without a citizen’s initiative. I can’t stress enough how important it is to draft progressive, hard-working candidates for every seat, and to help them get elected. That means you, fair Democrat. I know that, because you read that paragraph, that you are filled with a deep desire to run for office, and you’re looking to me seeking answers.
So you want to run for the State Legislature...
(Rule #1 : The second you have this idea, and know you’re going to do it, design a palm card and have it ready. Immediately. We’ll get there later.)
In truth, we do very well in drafting at least a candidate on paper to run in just about every seat in the state. But the fact we just have paper candidates isn’t a good thing. So take a look at our districts, and ask yourself if you know someone living in that Republican district who wants to try to take a seat. A great time to run is when someone is running for their fourth term, so when they term out you’re the heir apparent. You can find out who represents you here.
I would also stress the importance of running in primaries against Democrats who you disagree with. You can research people’s votes on this website. I recommend the Advanced Bill Search, it’s very robust, or at least it was before this latest update — I don’t know what they may have broken since. Hate how they stand on your issues? Primary them!
Why am I so cavalier about this? Because you have two things going for you that make life easy: ease of ballot access, and the Maine Clean Election Act.
Ballot Access
The guide where I’m pulling this information from is here. There aren’t major changes in the 2016 guide, but they will have one coming out, so I encourage you to review it. There are no changes in the signature requirements.
The filing deadline for candidates is March 15th every year, aside from holidays and weekends and blah blah. None of that matters this year, so petitions for ballot access are due at the Secretary of State’s office, on the 4th floor of the Burton Cross Building, at 111 Sewall Street by 4 PM. But you aren’t going to be worried about that, because yours will be in early, right? By like, February 1st. And you will take a selfie at the window and post it all over social media like every other candidate ever.
Other stuff you need to know:
You have to be enrolled in the Democratic Party prior to January 1, 2016, to run as a Dem.
You have to be 21, a one year Maine resident, and live in the district three months prior to the election for the House. You need to be 25 to run for the Senate. Note that this means you can take out petitions for a seat, even if you live elsewhere, provided you land in your new district before March. Not that I can think of a reason to do that, but meh.
You can’t start circulating petitions until January 1st, but you can pick them up early.
You need a minimum of 25 signatures to run for House, and a maximum of 40. For Senate, it’s a minimum of 100 and a maximum of 150. These people must be registered as Democrats. Feel free to ask for some voter registration cards at the Secretary of State — one block will do — and keep some on you for these occasions. Just make sure you submit the voter registration cards WITH the petitions for verification and make it clear they signed the card before the petition.
Make sure your town/city clerk fills out the Certification of Candidate Enrollment for you, on any one of your petitions.
Your signatures all need to be witnessed by a circulator, who does not need to be you, nor do they need to be a resident of Maine. That circulator then needs to sign the oath on the petition in the presence of a Notary Public. This seems like it’s hard, but you can’t swing a dead cat in Maine without hitting a Notary Public. Go check out the list, I bet you know someone who is one. When you do that, fill out the Candidate’s Consent form, too.
Also, please don’t have someone else collecting signatures for you, even though you can. If you can’t get your signatures, don’t run. It’s super easy to get your signatures, and you’ll be doing the harder work of qualifying for Clean Elections.
Only one town per petition. It isn’t a legal requirement, but imagine having to take the same petition to 12 towns when you’re running for Senate. Sound awful? It is. Happened to me once on a citizen’s initiative campaign. Never happened again, I’ll tell ya what.
You’ll turn your petitions into the town(s), they’ll verify your signatures. Have what you need? Great! If not? Sad trombone, back out you go. Don’t submit more than the maximum.
There are different instructions for running as an independent, but you, fearless Democrat, aren’t doing that! Right?
...right?
Okay, so you’ve got your petitions, you know what to do with them, it isn’t even January 1st yet, and you’re raring to go. Yay! You are a good candidate, and we love you. There is something else that I personally hope you do, although it is not required by any means — and that is run as a Clean Elections candidate. You can still run traditional and collect contributions that way, but if you do, you, my friend, are on your own!
“But I think big money in politics sucks! Ed, isn’t there a better way?”
Of course there is, dear reader. I’m glad you asked. In 1996, Maine established a comprehensive campaign finance system called the Maine Clean Election Act, otherwise known as the Ordinary People Can Run For Office Act. (It isn’t really otherwise known as that.) We had a Supreme Court decision that basically crippled the system for a few years, but this past November we passed a citizen’s initiative that bolstered the system’s strength and made it viable again. Therefore, you should use it.
For starters, here is the guide I’ll be pulling information out of for you. Forms in general are on this page. Now, here are the things you need to know. You’ll want to read the guide yourself for some of these items, which are more specific than the ballot access end.
So let’s get the initial forms out of the way...
You can register with the Ethics Commission now. Complete your Candidate Registration and your Declaration of Intent and submit them, and you’re allowed to raise money.
You’ll also want to set up a campaign bank account and submit the Vendor Form and Direct Deposit form ASAP (they take a month to process it). Have a treasurer who knows what they’re doing, and can track basic financial expenses.
Either set up an Employer Identification Number with the IRS and use that on the Vendor Form, or use the candidate’s SSN. The IRS thing takes like five minutes and removes liability from the candidate, so I suggest doing it.
Seed Money Contributions
You are allowed to raise some seed money for your campaign in a more traditional sense. You can raise up to $100 per person, from anyone in the country qualified to donate to campaigns. This includes yourself. You can’t give your campaign more than $100 . Seed money contributions are limited to $1,000 for House candidates and $3,000 for Senate candidates. Here are some pointers:
Ask all your close friends and family for donations. Shamelessly. If you don’t feel comfortable doing so, put down the lance, and do not tilt at this windmill. You can’t win an election if you don’t feel comfortable asking people you know for help. “All I want for Christmas is a better government. Don’t give me fruitcake, send me $20 for my campaign.” You know, shameless.
Extend out to your networks after that. Kossacks you’re close to, Facebook friends, you know the people I mean. The people who donate to all the campaigns they like. Guess what? They like you more. Ask for $100.
Do not use ActBlue. I don’t dislike ActBlue, but clean candidates shouldn’t use it. One, it’s a PAC. It skirts the finance rules. Two, they take 3% of your money in fees, and you have to file that as an expenditure, and you can’t raise more money to cover the loss. Three, it’s harder to sort out contributions if you go over your limit.
Because you raised all your contributions in cash or check, you now find yourself easily able to refund donations over your limit so you raise exactly what you’re allowed to, and then stop asking.
Take this pile of money, and order your palm cards, a handful of $5 money orders, and plan a simple, personalized piece that is very cheap. After that, totally up to you. Leave some left over for incidentals, more money orders, etc. You can find ways to spend it if you need to.
Spend all of it before you turn in your MCEA Request for Certification and your Seed Money Report. If you don’t, you lose it, as your MCEA contribution is reduced by whatever you have left. If you think you’re ordering light on the palm cards, boost your numbers. Whatever. Just don’t have any left. I think I brought the seed money down to like 7 cents. Couldn’t find a damn way to use it. Sigh.
Qualifying Contributions
What makes the MCEA function is the Qualifying Contribution. You travel around your district asking people to contribute $5 to the Maine Clean Election Fund. When you’ve collected enough contributions, you get certified as a Clean Election candidate, and they send you a direct deposit of:
$500 for an uncontested House primary
$2,500 for a contested House primary
$2,000 for an uncontested Senate primary
$10,000 for a contested Senate primary
The House uncontested budget sucks. Be mindful of your budgeting. June is a long way away. Burn your Seed Money on all the stuff you need, and then you can use the $500 for whatever else comes up. You could consider lawn signs now. Some small vendors will do a deal where they give you half your signs now and half later. But be careful, you can go broke fast. Anyway, this is kind of off topic, but also where it makes sense to discuss it in the timeline.
So, here is how the Qualifying Contribution system works. First, you need 60 of these for a House race, and 175 for a Senate race. It can be a long, tedious process, but it’s worth it. For this part, unlike petitions, I would encourage you to have friends help you raise money.
You knock on the door of a Democrat in your district. Extra points if you use the database to initially target people who gave QCs in the past to others. (Talk to the party and get access, play around with it. It’s free.) Have a great chat, and of course they love you, because you’re awesome.
Ask them for a $5 check, payable to the Maine Clean Election Fund. Be prepared to explain how Clean Elections works. People still have no idea, sometimes.
But they don’t have a check. All they have is cash. Well, it so happens you’re carrying $5 bills to make change, and those money orders I told you to get. They hand you $5, you hand them a money order. They fill it out the same way, but make sure they put their name on it legibly. ( Important: Re-deposit that $5 into the campaign bank account.)
Have them fill out the Qualifying Contribution form. Keep your checks matched up with your form, don’t get them all mixed up, that gets messy. Only one town per form.
Ask your friends in the district to donate online. On or around January 1, a big “Contribute” button will pop up on the Ethics Commission website. If they donate online, everything is done for you — you just need to print the forms when you’re ready to submit.
When you’re ready to submit, make a spreadsheet of all your $5 donors and their towns of residence and submit it with your Request for Certification. Review the campaign guide before submitting! This part can be complicated.
And congratulations. You’re financed. You get the cash mentioned above, and assuming you survive your primary, you will have an additional $5,000 for House or $20,000 for Senate deposited shortly after the results of the primary election are certified.
But wait. There’s more.
The revamp of the MCEA offers the opportunity for additional funding; in fact, you can get up to three times as much as your initial general election disbursement in total. All you need to do is go out and collect more checks. Anytime before October 18, 2016, candidates can submit more checks for more funding. House candidates must submit 15 at a time, Senate submits 45. Each side may do that up to eight times a piece.
If they do so, House candidates get $1,250 per 15 checks, up to a total of $10,000 for 120. Senate candidates get $5,000 per 45 checks, up to a total of $40,000 for 360.
So this is how one navigates getting on the ballot and such for the state legislature. This is not all inclusive; that’s why there are guides. Please peruse them, and feel free to ask questions. I know the answers to most of the stuff in the guides, having run four campaigns for legislative races in Maine. But I won’t be your treasurer. Don’t even try.
Good luck! | {
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Jeg er ateist. Jeg blev godt nok konfirmeret, men har for nylig meldt mig ud af folkekirken. Jeg kunne ikke drømme om at røre religion med en ildtang. Og så mener jeg i øvrigt, at vi som samfund er elendige til at tage hensyn til religioner.
Men jeg kan se, at jeg i hvert fald blandt politikere står relativt alene med det synspunkt: Jeg medvirkede for nylig i en paneldebat arrangeret af Folkekirken om, hvor meget religion kommer til at fylde i fremtiden. Panelet bestod af politikere, debattører og fagfolk som deltagere, og blandt hovedparten var der bred enighed om, at vi kommer til at se mere til religion i det offentlige rum i fremtiden, men at det ikke var noget, vi ’kunne gøre noget ved’.
Undskyld mig, men hvornår i alverden er det i sig selv blevet et problem, at vi er mere religiøse? Og så tilmed et politisk problem?
Det er naturligvis elefanten i religionsdebatten, islam, som er drivkraften bag bekymringen, men det er en faldende tolerance over for religion i det offentlige rum, der bliver resultatet.
Redneck-agtig intolerance
Da Jyllands-Posten i efteråret 2015 kørte en artikelserie baseret på diverse spørgsmål til landets muslimer, blev danskerne konfronteret med, hvad der tyder på at være en stigende religiøsitet blandt landets muslimer. Blandt andet viste undersøgelsen, at op mod halvdelen af landets muslimer bad fem gange om dagen, hvilket fik den konservative Rasmus Jarlov til at udbasunere, at integrationen var slået fejl, og at alle disse muslimer var fanatiske.
Et andet spørgsmål afslørede, at fire ud af 10 muslimer satte koranen over grundloven, hvilket også vakte stor vrede og var som benzin på bålet blandt de mange danskere, der frygter en ’islamificering’ af Danmark. Men helt ærligt: Stillede man mig et lignende spørgsmål, ville jeg også svare, at mine egne moralsæt vægter højere for mig end den gældende lovgivning.
I USA er dette i øvrigt helt normalt. Her svarer stort set samme andel af alle (!) amerikanere, at de sætter biblen over den amerikanske lovgivning.
Som liberal bliver jeg nødt til at sige fra over for den politiske kamp mod bestemte religioner. Ikke fordi jeg som sådan bekymrer mig om religioners overlevelse, men fordi én krænkelse af grundlæggende rettigheder let kan retfærdiggøre en anden. Og jeg vil hade at se århundreders kamp for rettigheder blive undergravet af en redneck-agtig intolerance over for religion.
Det kan godt være, at man som liberal må stå alene i denne kamp: Mange konservative er næsten per definition pro-kristendom, og en stor del af venstrefløjen er antireligion, men det er altså en fast forankret del af liberal tankegang (og afledt deraf, det danske demokrati) at beskytte religiøses rettigheder.
Som John Locke, en af liberalismens helt store figurer, skrev i 1689 om retten til at være hedensk: »Magistratens (statens red.) rolle er alene at sikre, at statsforbundet ikke lider skader, og at der ingen skade sker mod nogen mand, hverken i liv eller ejendom.«
Retten til at prædike, tro og udleve sin religion er altså ukrænkelig, medmindre andre mennesker lider direkte skade som konsekvens.
Tre slags hensyn
Ét problem er det rent juridiske. Vi er i øjeblikket i gang med at undergrave borgernes religiøse rettigheder. Noget andet er det mere medmenneskelige aspekt: Vi gør utroligt lidt for at give plads til religion – særligt fremmede religioner.
Mens det mange steder i udlandet, eksempelvis USA, ses som helt almindelig pli at give plads og vise hensyn til religioner, så stemples man som politisk korrekt (uha!) og apologet (endnu værre!), hvis man går langt i forsøget på at tilfredsstille religiøse minoriteter – eller bare forsøger at gøre muslimer glade.
Problemet i den debat er, at der er forskellige typer af hensyn – og noget er rigtigt nok problematisk – men som udgangspunkt må et moderne samfund dyrke pluralismen og gøre, hvad det kan, for at alle kan føle sig hjemme.
Hensynene kan opdeles i tre kategorier: Det misforståede, det unødvendige og det helt igennem ufarlige.
Med misforstået mener jeg her, at man forsøger at tage hensyn på bekostning af de i Vesten bredt anerkendte universelle værdier: Individets frie valg, ligestilling på tværs af køn, race og seksualitet, og generel respekt for andres autonomi.
Sagen om kønsopdelt svømmeundervisning er for mig et eksempel på dette. For at give plads til, at muslimske forældre er trygge ved at sende deres piger til svømmeundervisning i skolen, har man kønsopdelt undervisningen på en skole i Nordvest.
Mens det kan hjælpe med integrationen af praktiske årsager, så er det et brud med en grundlæggende vestlig – og feministisk – idé om, at vi ikke skal skelne mellem køn. I handlingen med at kønsopdele er der en accept af, at der er så fundamental forskel på drenge og piger, at de skal opsplittes. Spørg dig selv dette: Havde vi accepteret en opdeling af race eller seksualitet? Nej, selvfølgelig ikke. Så hvorfor yde et særligt hensyn, der blåstempler et tilbageskridt for det moderne kønssyn?
De unødvendige hensyn er lidt mere aparte. De fleste husker måske sagen om mavedansen i Lalandia. Hvis ikke, så lad mig genopfriske: Til et juleaftensarrangement med Dansk Folkehjælp i 2011 besluttede man i løbet af aftenen at varme op til julefesten med mavedans og arabisk musik.
Det mødte naturligvis stor modstand fra Dansk Folkeparti, der kaldte det en regulær svinestreg og mente, at det var helt utilstedeligt med den slags udansk opførsel i den højhellige juletid. Hensyn som disse er naturligvis fuldstændigt uskadelige, men det var jo næppe en religiøs forudsætning for de muslimske deltagere, at de kunne danse mavedans mellem Søren Banjomus og risengrøden. Vidste de på forhånd, at det måske ville støde nogle af de andre deltagere, havde de med garanti også takket nej til det festlige indslag.
Og så er der det, vi burde give meget mere plads til: Den helt igennem ufarlige hensyntagen. For der er i det hele taget masser af hensyn, vi kan tage til andre menneskers religiøsitet, uden at det krænker os selv eller virker ligegyldigt for modtageren.
Ønsket om halalslagtet (eller for nogen: kosher) kød er eksempelvis ikke noget, der skader nogen som helst. Når mange producenter lader en imam bede et par gange ved produktionsbåndet på slagterierne, skader det jo absolut ingen – og hvis der nu endelig er nok mennesker, der ikke bryder sig om at fordøje kød med andre religioners velsignelse, skal der nok være slagterier, der tilbyder ateistiske kyllinger.
Det er et non-issue. Det samme gælder for institutionerne: Er der et flertal i en børnehave eller alderdomshjem, der udtrykker ønske om et Allah-blåstemplet spisekort, så sker der jo absolut ingen skade ved det. Hvis Birgitte på 90 eller Oliver på fire så insisterer på at få frikadeller en gang om måneden, kan det nok lykkes for de fleste at finde løsninger, hvor alle er glade.
En fælles sag
Det fremstår i høj grad, som om mange danskere end ikke orker den mindste ulejlighed, der kan gøre en masse mennesker glade, i et eller andet antireligiøst korstog mod at gøre yderligere plads til andre.
For hvordan kan man det ene tidspunkt kalde religiøse mennesker fanatikere og problematisere religion i det offentlige rum og så helhjertet forsvare, at folkeskolen underviser i kristendom og ikke religion? Hvordan kan man rase mod religiøse trossamfunds særrettigheder og samtidig helt ublu støtte en ekstrem favorisering af kristendommen manifesteret i folkekirken? Hvordan kan man rase over muslimer, der går ned i tid i ramadanen, men insistere på at holde fri i kristne højtider?
Det burde være en fælles sag for alle trosretninger, men også for alle mennesker med en urokkelig tro på de individuelle menneskerettigheder at sikre den religiøse tolerance. Og her har vi danskere endnu meget at lære. | {
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LAHORE: Pakistan will deploy troops and bullet-proof buses for Sunday’s (today) Pakistan Super League final, its biggest cricket match in years, after a wave of militant attacks prompted a host of foreign stars to pull out.
“Unprecedented” security involving thousands of troops and police will guard the sold-out game in Lahore — scene of a deadly 2009 assault on Sri Lanka’s team which halted international cricket tours in the country.
Fears of a fresh incident threaten to overshadow Sunday’s final between Quetta Gladiators and Peshawar Zalmi, the culmination of a Twenty20 tournament which has otherwise been played in the United Arab Emirates.
Holding the final in Pakistan has drawn criticism from some quarters, after a series of militant attacks in February left 130 people dead, including a Lahore suicide blast that killed 14.
“God forbid if any mishap happens we can say goodbye to int (international) cricket in Pak for the next decade,” tweeted Pakistan great Imran Khan.
England’s Kevin Pietersen, Luke Wright and Tymal Mills have all withdrawn, along with their Quetta team-mates Rilee Rossouw of South Africa and New Zealand’s Nathan McCullum.
Peshawar’s owners meanwhile have claimed all five of their foreign stars — Darren Sammy and Marlon Samnuels from the West Indies, and England’s Chris Jordan, Samit Patel and Dawid Malan are ready to go to Lahore, though the players themselves have not confirmed this.
Both teams will be able to pick from a specially created pool of 12 foreign players willing to participate, Cricinfo reported on Friday.
The Super League is Pakistan’s answer to the glitzy Indian Premier League and provides much-needed income for Pakistani cricket after international teams stopped visiting.
Sunday’s game stands as a test as to whether Pakistan can again successfully host top-level cricket, and has also been held up as a symbol of defiance in the face of Islamist violence.
It will be the highest-level game in Pakistan since the 2009 assault, in which gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan team bus outside Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium, killing six people and wounding several players.
A marked improvement in security since 2014, coupled with the success of the inaugural Super League, convinced the Pakistan Cricket Board to risk a final in Lahore — before last month’s attacks set nerves on edge once more.
“The success of the PSL will open the gates for teams to start coming into Pakistan,” insisted cricket chief Shaharyar Khan, as the three-and-a-half-week tournament began last month.
The army, paramilitary Rangers and Punjab police will secure the area and players will travel in bullet-proof buses, in what officials say are unheard-of levels of security. The 27,000-capacity Gaddafi Stadium was already under guard on Friday.
Khalid Mehmood, a former PCB chairman, said the match is the first step in the long process of rehabilitating Pakistan as a venue for international cricket.
But after this month’s attacks, the final has also become a focal point in Pakistan’s struggle against extremism, he told AFP.
“Either we should have cancelled the match, shut down the schools and everything and been scared of terrorists, or we should stand against this terrorism,” he said.
Fans queuing for tickets in Lahore Friday agreed, with several telling AFP they have security concerns but are “not nervous”.
“It’s a sign of international cricket’s revival in our country. It also indicates that the Pakistani people hate terrorism and want peace,” said fan Uzair Ahmad. | {
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Dear Democratic Colleague,
This morning, we won a major victory in the D.C. Circuit in the Mazars case. The Court rejected the Administration’s defiance of Congress’s oversight authority, writing in the majority opinion that “Contrary to the President’s arguments, the Committee possesses authority under both the House Rules and the Constitution to issue the subpoena, and Mazars must comply.” As you know, this case is a product of the excellent work of Chairman Elijah Cummings and the Committee on Oversight and Reform.
As we proceed down the path of following the facts for the American people, I wanted to call to your attention the statement issued yesterday from 17 former Watergate special prosecutors, which takes us to a higher level of patriotism and a deeper level of concern for the Constitution. As they write, “The Constitution establishes impeachment as the proper mechanism for addressing these abuses; therefore, the House should proceed with the impeachment process, fairly, openly and promptly. The president’s refusal to cooperate in confirming (or disputing) the facts already on the public record should not delay or frustrate the House’s performance of its constitutional duty.”
This week, we have seen increased outside validation of our efforts to hold the President accountable and these statements speak to the heart of the Constitutional challenge that we face. Also yesterday, conservative lawyers from past Republican Administrations issued a statement in support of an “expeditious” impeachment inquiry into the President’s abuse of the office of the presidency for personal political objectives, and his violation of the oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”
I look forward to hearing from you on our Democratic Caucus conference call today at 4:15 p.m. E.T. I thank all our Members for their patriotism and seriousness of purpose in honoring our oath of office. The President’s actions threaten our national security, violate our Constitution and undermine the integrity of our elections.
No one is above the law. The President will be held accountable.
Thank for your leadership. | {
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As fewer World War II veterans are left to share their stories, this year's 75th anniversary D-Day commemoration is focusing on keeping memories alive.
A group of French students recently joined 15 veterans from the United States who returned to Omaha Beach for an emotional ceremony at the American Cemetery.
"There are so many who have died for us, to rescue us," said 10-year-old Martin Deshayes, who marveled at the tales of the arrival of thousands of troops on the shore. "If they hadn't landed at that time, maybe we would be Germans now or we wouldn't exist."
A teacher from the nearby town of Tour-en-Bessin, Claire Muller, recalled hearing war stories from her grandparents, whose house was bombed during the Battle of Normandy.
"But still they were so grateful and they helped the injured," she said.
In the city of Caen that was destroyed by bombing after the D-Day landings, the Memorial Museum was full of children as the anniversary approached. Some 110,000 students visit each year.
While the museum once organized meetings with veterans and other survivors, it also anticipated the need for sharing memories in more permanent ways such as videos.
"Still, witnesses are irreplaceable," said Isabelle Bournier, the cultural and pedagogical director. She described the fascination of a group of children who recently happened to see a veteran at the museum.
To help children better understand the war, the museum immerses them in recreated scenes and allows them to touch objects from daily life. The aim is to evoke historic context without showing them horrifying images.
Marie Poinson visited with her two teenage sons. She said she had worried they would find the museum depressing. Instead, they were impressed by the images of ruins and people fleeing, which reminded them of current conflicts around the world.
"They now have a deeper understanding of what the words 'never again' mean," she said.
___
Follow all the AP's coverage of D-Day at https://apnews.com/WorldWarII | {
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En el caso de los centros estatales, la CNDH observó que en 95 de los 130 carecen de personal de custodia suficiente y hay sobrepoblación en 71 de ellos, el mismo número en el que se detectan unas condiciones de autogobierno de los presos. Además, detectó que en 73 de las prisiones la existencia de privilegios como el que un interno disfrute de dos celdas para él en el mismo penal donde 30 personas se hacinan en una celda habilitada para albergar a cuatro.
Ciudad de México, 13 de abril (SinEmbargo).- La Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH) presentó hoy el Diagnóstico Nacional de Supervisión
Penitenciaria (DNSP) 2015 sobre las cárceles del país que en su mayoría presentan deficiencias graves que van desde sobrepoblación, el hacinamiento, la existencia de privilegios, así como malas condiciones de salud e higiene.
El organismo revisó 130 prisiones estatales, 21 centros federales de máxima seguridad y tres prisiones militares, donde detectó un sin número de deficiencias que “violentan” los derechos humanos de los presos mexicanos.
En el caso de los centros estatales, la CNDH observó que en 95 de los 130 carecen de personal de custodia suficiente; en 71 cárceles del país existe hacinamiento, en 73 hay áreas de privilegios, así como presencia de objetos, sustancias prohibidas; así mismo en 73 penales se advirtieron autogobiernos, pues se detectó que internos ejercen control mediante la violencia sobre el resto de la población.
Mientras que en 86 se detectó falta de prevención y atención de incidentes violentos, como riñas, lesiones, fugas, homicidios y motines.
Del total de los centros penitenciarios revisados, el organismo advirtió que en 104 hay deficiencias en la clasificación entre procesados y sentenciados; en 92 se identificó la falta de actividades laborales y de capacitación para el trabajo.
Además, el organismo detectó en 73 de las prisiones la existencia de privilegios como el que un interno disfrute de dos celdas para él en el mismo penal donde 30 personas se hacinan en una celda habilitada para albergar a cuatro, o que algunos internos disfruten de celulares, televisiones o armas pese a ser objetos prohibidos, detalla el DNSP.
Por otra parte, los Estados que obtuvieron las mejores calificaciones en el DNSP 2015 son: Guanajuato, con 8.02; Aguascalientes, 7.75; Baja California, 7.42; Chihuahua, 7.38 y Tlaxcala, 7.34, y los que tuvieron los menores promedios son: Nayarit, 4.11; Quintana Roo, 4.43; Guerrero, 4.99; Hidalgo, 5.01, y Tabasco, 5.06. Dijo que a los centros federales les correspondió un promedio global de 7.36 y a las prisiones militares de 7.93.
No es la primera vez que la misma CNDH encuentra autogobierno, hacinamiento, maltrato y violaciones distintas a los derechos humanos en las prisiones mexicanas. De alguna manera, fue como como hallar hilo negro.
Para el titular de la Comisión, Luis Raúl González Pérez, el diagnóstico penitenciario correspondiente a 2015 presenta una mejora “marginal” con respecto al de años previos. Detalló que en una escala de 1 a 10, el promedio nacional de calificación de los centros penitenciarios estatales fue de 6.21 para el año pasado, que si bien representa un crecimiento de dos décimas respecto de las calificaciones de 2014, “no implica un avance sustantivo o cambio radical en el panorama nacional en la materia”.
El Ombudsman nacional sostuvo que “día con día se violentan los derechos fundamentales de un gran número de mexicanas y mexicanos privados de su libertad”.
Y consideró que se debe “eliminar la falsa percepción que existe en algunas personas, en el sentido de que el respeto y vigencia de los derechos humanos es antagónico a la ejecución y cumplimiento de una pena privativa de libertad. Las y los internos están privados de su libertad, pero no de su dignidad como personas”.
González Pérez señaló que lo ocurrido en el penal de Topo Chico, donde en febrero del año pasado 49 reos perdieron la vida durante un intento de motín, evidenció las vulnerabilidades y fallas del sistema penitenciario.
“No debe esperarse a que haya hechos graves en un centro penitenciario para voltear a ver los problemas existentes e implementar acciones de carácter paliativo, ni tener actitud reactiva para atender un problema solo cuando tiene repercusión social”, dijo. | {
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So you probably just finished setting up your first ever web server that will host your tasks app, a nextcloud instance, and maybe some budget app that you want to use to track your spendings. Now you’re tooting the horns and having a big party.
After downloading and installing your new task app you run into an error.
Permission errors are so annoying! ;)
You see a permission error. Hastily scanning the interwebs you come across many threads that state “chmod 777 will help”. And indeed, some folks state that this got everything up and running. So you clearly have to adjust the permissions to get everything to work, right?
I mean, if you were owning a house and one of your tenants had a problem with entering their appartment, you would just remove all the doors for them, right? Right?!
Well, that’s what a chmod 777 somedirectory/ does.
It opens up the the directory and all of its files to every user on the server.
Photo by Alex Holyoake on Unsplash
777 means every user has the rights to not only access this folder, but also read, write and execute it’s files. Welcome chaos.
If you were the tenant of the aforementioned appartment, you might at first think “well, that worked like a treat, I am back in and I can finally take a shower!”
Security issues in two acts
Enters your neighbour.
“Hey Tom! Nice that you have all your doors removed. Just don’t mind me while I go through your account statements and also put my old shoes in your drawer. Ooooh, nice boxer you have there. I’ll just borrow the red and the grey one! And oh, you should be doing something about your colesterol, just as your doctor writes!”
Enters your janitor.
“I know we had an appointment for next week, but there’s no door, so I figured I could just.. oh, what a nice bedroom of yours. Is that mahogany on the headboard? I so love wood!”
You still in the shower? You shouldn’t. You should be scared as fog and screaming all over the place.
Now you might say “wait a moment, that does not apply to me, since I am the only user on my server, ha!”
While this may prove to be true, let me change the situation slightly to be right after all.
Every server on the internet is vulnerable
Your are not safe
Your server is not just a machine that you use at home. It’s a VPS with a hosting provider, or a virtual machine that you enabled portforwarding to from your home router. Now we’re talking internet!
Every server on the internet is vulnerable. Even more so, if you don’t take good care of permissions and updating your software frequently.
Let’s take a closer look.
You have your budget app, your task app, and your nextcloud instance running on the same server. Unforatunately your task app has a bug that allows the bad guys to upload files by calling a php file of it directly.
Although things like these should not happen, they do.
They happen every day. Multiple times. Per Minute. So it most certainly will for one app or another on your server. (We are all just humans after all.)
But not only is there a file uploaded to your server that does not belong there, it is also a php file, which can now be executed. This is because there are no well metered directives in your apache or nginx config. This is quite as common.
Yeah, I know. A problem never comes without company.
But back to the topic.
Calling the php file the attacker can now spawn a new connection to a random IP, trying to ssh into noumerus machines using random user names and passwords. Or the file is triggered and downloads go binaries and executes them to mine bitcoin on your CPU. Just to name two things of many that I saw on servers out in the wild.
If that’s not reason enough, we still have my example at hand. Just like your neighbour and the janitor, the attacker can now navigate through your file system. And since you chmod()ed your budget app’s diretory to 777 to “repair” the permission issues you had, the attacker can now change files of your budget app.
Maybe they just change it to display “p0wned!” on every page that you access.
Or think about someone putting in the work to read your database information, connecting to it and slowly getting all the information available from it.
Where your money comes from, where it goes, account information, transfer details. Everything.
(The money you lost by changing write permissions!) Photo by Mathieu Turle on Unsplash
With write permission you grantet to everyone they could even alter your most favourite feature of the app, which is automatically paying bills via your bank’s API. Only now the attacker will put another account number into every single payment that you send, redirecting the money to himself.
Your money never reaches the payee and you receive the dunning letters.
Nice work. The attacker pats himself on the back. You just paid for his Grapple Hackbook “Thin air” without noticing. Damn, I wish I had a Hackbook…
This example might seem a little exaggerated, but I guarantee that it might just as well have happened multiple times today.
What can you do?
Fix the permissions. Honestly. chmod is the tool at hand. Well metered, you can make sure everything is correct.
As a little guidance, try these steps:
Check user and group permissions.
On most systems, www-data is the correct user and/or group to run your webapp with Check for file permissions.
A pretty decent standard permission set is 755 for directories and 644 for files. This should take a fair bit of the way. Check whether or not php has the right user/group settings.
On Apache servers this usually is www-data but on nginx servers this might very well just be another user, depending on your setup.
Wrap up
The internet is a cruel place and by now you should understand, why it’s a bad idea to change permissions to 777 for production software, at least on servers that are accessible from everywhere in the world.
Using find you can quickly find all files and all directories and set them up as described with just 2 commands
user@box:/var/www/mytaskapp/# find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
This will find all files in the current directory and its subdirectories and apply permissions 664 to them.
user@box:/var/www/mytaskapp/# find . -type d-exec chmod 755 {} \;
This will find all directories within the current directory and apply permissions 755 to them.
One last thing to say:
There are certainly cases, where a careful change of permissions can help debugging an issue. I will go deeper into debugging these errors in a later post since today I merely scratched the surface.
While I am doing that, please don’t be the one letting Tom take your favourite pair of boxers.
Cheers! ;) | {
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Andy Rawll of MetalTalk conducted an interview with legendary Swedish guitarist Yngwie J. Malmsteen about his forthcoming blues album, "Blue Lightning". You can watch the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).
On the inspiration behind "Blue Lightning":
Yngwie: "It's a funny thing. I've been told by people since as long as I can remember, 'You're just noodling around onstage.' They would go, 'You should do a blues album.' I always said, 'Nah. I don't think so.' But, about a year ago, Mascot came to me and said, 'Hey, blues album.' I said 'Maybe bluesy.' That's what we did. We picked some classic songs and we originally said we're going to pick them together, but I picked them, and they liked it. That's how we did it. I was basically touring the 'World On Fire' album, then going into the studio for a bit, then going out on tour, so it wasn't one shot in the studio. I quite enjoyed it, actually. I had a lot of fun doing this."
On his vocal performance on "Blue Lightning":
Yngwie: "I'm quite pleased with it, yeah. It was a funny thing: My studio, like I told you, I have this new [equipment] brought in, every time we started doing new stuff in the studio, it's like an inspiration to go in and do something. I had this brand-new vocal microphone they gave me from a company called Neve. It's a really amazing vocal mic. So, a lot of times it was inspiring to hear all the sounds coming out of the microphones. It was a lot of fun. That's what it was, yeah."
On what other guitar players have inspired him:
Yngwie: "Very early on in my life and career, my musical life, so to speak, I actually leaned away from the guitar players and was very much into classical violin. That's in 99.9999 percent of my influences, especially [Niccolò] Paganini, but I hear guitar players, I've heard guitar players since then, of course, that I admired greatly, like Alan Holdsworth — many other things. I like guitar players you probably wouldn't think, like Angus Young and Brian May. They're all great. I think there's a lot of great guitar players out there. As far as influence? No."
On playing with DEEP PURPLE vocalist Ian Gillan's solo band in 1990:
Yngwie: "It was a lot of fun. We actually played 'Speed King'. We played 'Demon's Eye', I think. We played 'Black Night', 'Lucille' and one more, but I actually had an even more interesting — I did a tour with DEEP PURPLE in 2009. It was with Don Airey and Steve Morse and the last show was in Tokyo. They said, 'Hey, come up and play with us.' That particular night, Jon Lord happened to be in town. Jon Lord came up and I came up and we did 'Smoke On The Water'. It was crazy. That was really good. That was a lot of fun."
On the 1978 "Powerhouse" demo that helped launch his career:
Yngwie: "To be honest with you, I didn't know what to expect about anything. That was a few years before I moved out, so I did everything I could in Sweden. It wasn't going very well. [Laughs] I made a lot of tapes and I would send them out all the time. I sent them to Guitar Player magazine and they said, 'You got to come to the States.' That was in '82."
Malmsteen will release "Blue Lightning" globally on March 29 via Mascot Records/Mascot Label Group. | {
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Joe Biden Joe BidenPelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Hillicon Valley: Subpoenas for Facebook, Google and Twitter on the cards | Wray rebuffs mail-in voting conspiracies | Reps. raise mass surveillance concerns Fox News poll: Biden ahead of Trump in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Ohio MORE’s presidential campaign expanded his critiques against “Medicare for All” and pressed its opponents to fight to protect and expand the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which the former vice president played a crucial role in ushering through Congress.
Deputy Campaign Manager and Communications Director Kate Bedingfield detailed Republican efforts to overhaul the Obama administration’s signature legislation.
Bedingfield said Democrats should work to protect the law instead of enacting a plan the campaign says would effectively kill it.
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“With all of these renewed threats, as Democrats we should be presenting a united front to protect the law we rallied together to pass,” Bedingfield wrote in a Medium post. “Defending Obamacare is how Democrats took back the House. And it’ll be one way we take back the Presidency from Trump.”
“Joe Biden has been very clear: he will not support any policy that means getting rid of Obamacare. He will oppose Republican efforts; he will oppose Democratic efforts,” she continued.
The health care debate has taken center stage in the Democratic presidential primary, with Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernie SandersThe Hill's Campaign Report: Trump faces backlash after not committing to peaceful transition of power Bernie Sanders: 'This is an election between Donald Trump and democracy' The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump stokes fears over November election outcome MORE (I-Vt.), a favorite of the party’s progressive flank, trading barbs about their respective plans.
The former vice president has proposed expanding the ACA while offering a government-run “public option” and allowing people to keep their private insurance if they so choose, while Sanders, who has emerged as one of the staunchest proponents of a Medicare for All platform, said his plan would eliminate private insurance.
“At the end of the day, you’ve either got to be on the side of the people or the side of the health insurance companies. I know which side I’m on,” Sanders tweeted this week, directly referencing Biden in an attached video.
At the end of the day, you’ve either got to be on the side of the people or the side of the health insurance companies. I know which side I’m on. pic.twitter.com/P2ZVzSSXM2 — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) July 16, 2019
Biden has expressed concerns with Sanders’s plan, saying this week it could lead to a lapse in coverage for millions and that “starting over makes no sense to me at all.”
“I am disappointed, I have to say, in Joe, who is a friend of mine, really distorting what Medicare for All is about,” Sanders shot back in an interview with The New York Times. “And unfortunately, he is sounding like Donald Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE. He is sounding like the health care industry in that regard.”
Bedingfield, noting that “a few of the Democratic candidates for president are suggesting a complete overhaul of our health care system,” went through a list of what the campaign claims would be the downsides of a Medicare for All plan, including a price tag of $30 trillion to $40 trillion and disruptions to existing Medicare coverage.
She wrote that all Democratic presidential contenders want to eventually achieve universal health care coverage but expressed confidence that put up against more progressive plans, voters would see the virtues of Biden’s platform.
“So let’s have the debate: build upon what’s been working in Obamacare? Or scrap it altogether and start from scratch? Joe Biden looks forward to continuing that conversation on the trail, and we’re confident that once voters look beyond Twitter and catch-phrases, they’ll see which plan will better put us on a path to the goal we’re all striving towards,” she wrote. | {
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I don't always clean the house But when I do,I think it will help me get laid
973 shares | {
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Arpád Soltész ako novinár, glosátor a komentátor tne do živého už dve desaťročia. Ako zrelý štyridsiatnik má za sebou bohatú a zároveň celkom tŕnistú novinársku kariéru, pod čo sa podpísal najmä fakt, že jej prvá polovica sa odohrávala v divokých rokoch mečiarizmu.
Toto nemá byť Soltészov oslavný medailónik, no uvedenie niektorých súvislostí nebude na škodu v ďalších častiach textu, ktorý bude pojednávať o jeho románovej prvotine. Žurnalista Soltész patril od začiatku do loveckej svorky novinárov, ktorí boli ochotní viesť súboje s establišmentom a organizovaným zločinom, pričom v 90. rokoch 20. storočia sa dalo len s veľkou námahou vnímať tieto dve mocenské štruktúry oddelene.
Tí novinári, ktorí na to upozorňovali, dostávali kopance z každej strany, mnohí aj doslovne. Patril medzi nich aj Arpád Soltész, ktorý bol fyzicky napadnutý aj za investigatívnu žurnalistiku na regionálnej úrovni, keďže ako Košičan sa dlhodobo a systematicky venoval chúlostivým témam týkajúcich sa VSŽ (Východoslovenské železiarne dnes U. S. Steel Košice).
Ak ste už zabudli, alebo si z objektívnych príčin nepamätáte, vygooglite si. Kľúčové slová sú: VSŽ, Rezeš, HZDS, privatizácia.
Zároveň sa v tom čase ako jeden z mnohých, a zároveň ako jeden z mála nedokázal zmieriť s faktom, že v jeho domovskom regionálnom denníku novinári pod tlakom vtedajších železiarskych kruhov strácali autorskú slobodu prejavu.
Po desaťročiach neslobody bol tento postoj úplne prirodzený a legitímny, no napriek tomu sa v novinárskych kruhoch našlo veľa servilných žurnalistov, ktorí sa vyhrievali v područí novovznikajúceho režimu.
Arpád Soltész k nim nepatril, pričom toto opäť neuvádzam ako ďalší stavebný kameň jeho imaginárneho pomníka, pretože som presvedčený, že obhajoba pravdy a slobody slova má byť náplňou práce každého novinára, tak ako je povinnosťou lekára poskytnúť pacientovi akútnu zdravotnícku pomoc bez rozdielu na to, či pri sebe má alebo nemá kartičku poistenca.
Takže aj Soltész si v podstate iba poctivo robil svoju robotu, a to až tak, že sa jeho iná kauza dostala pred sudcov Európskeho súdu pre ľudské práva v Štrasburgu. Na úplnom začiatku tejto kauzy bola žaloba dotknutej osoby za reportáž o jednej z najzávažnejších a najšpinavších káuz obdobia mečiarizmu, v ktorej vtedajší redaktor denníka Národná obroda Arpád Soltész opisuje záhadné okolnosti zmiznutia popradského podnikateľa a prednostu okresného úradu Vladimíra Bachledu z roku 1997.
Vygúglite si. Kľúčové slová sú: Bachleda, Tatravagónka, Soltész, ESĽP.
V hre bolo opäť často pošliapavané právo na slobodu slova, ktoré sa vtedajšie chápadla politickej mafie snažili roztrhať na márne kúsky, a to aj napriek tomu, že mečiarizmus ako taký bol už vlastne na ústupe. A presne do tohto obdobia je usadený aj Soltészov románový debut s názvom Mäso – Vtedy na východe.
Píše sa koniec „zlatých“ deväťdesiatych rokov. Dej sa odohráva na divokom východ Slovenska. Je po voľbách, Mečiar skončil, Lexa je na úteku. Nastalo veľké upratovanie a siskári horúčkovito skartujú spisy aj svedkov.
V okamihu, keď jednotlivé bandy stratili podporu štátu, zúžil sa priestor, prichádzali o kšefty a zrazu nebolo dosť peňazí pre nikoho, nieto ešte pre všetkých.
Napätie v podsvetí rástlo. Každú chvíľu niekoho zastrelili, politici šaleli. Robo Holub bol dávno po smrti, Miki Černák sedel v base, Žaluďa práve zastrelili. Prosto ideálne kulisy na temný román v štýle noir.
Presne toto mi pri čítaní napadlo ako prvé. Temná kriminálka v štýle tzv. hardboiled school, teda s postavami pre ktoré je charakteristická cynickosť a bezcitnosť, a to aj na strane dobra. V Soltészovom románe túto funkciu plnia dvaja policajti a jeden novinár.
Ich protivníkmi sú najväčšie zločinecké skupiny svojej, teda aj našej doby: polícia, justícia a tajná služba. Občas aj mafia, ale tá podľa rozprávača aspoň hrala podľa pravidiel. Záujmov sa nechcú vzdať ani bývalí agenti KGB, ktorí sa stále nedokážu zmieriť s koncom studenej vojny a rozpadom komunistického impéria.
Tajnú službu v tomto príbehu volajú „Cestovka“. Tento názov jej prischol po únose prezidentovho syna (mali by ste vedieť, ale pre istotu si vygooglite kľúčové slová sú: SIS, Kováč ml., únos), no ešte väčšie opodstatnenie nadobudol v súvislosti so zastrešovaním ilegálnej migrácie cez východnú slovensko-ukrajinskú hranicu, a tiež s participáciou na tzv. etnoturistike.
Vygooglite si. Kľúčové slová sú: Rómovia, Belgicko, azyl, Luník IX.
Okrem toho tu ešte stále v plnom prúde fičia obchody s drogami, nelegálnym alkoholom, cigaretami a bielym mäsom, a hoci zo západu na východ Slovenska stále nevedie diaľnica, ukrajinská hranica a tzv. balkánska cesta majú dlhodobo atribúty rýchlostnej cesty.
V takomto zdeformovanom prostredí sú aj mnohé menšie trestné činy vlastne poctivou robotou. Civilné obyvateľstvo podieľajúce sa na takomto biznise si totižto neuvedomuje trestnoprávnu zodpovednosť. Pašovanie a krádeže berie ako kompenzáciu za neriešenie nezamestnanosti v regiónoch.
Aby to však nebolo také jednoduché, ešte aj stranu svetla reprezentujú osoby, ktorým prúdi v krvi temnota. Policajti Miki Miko a Šalený Valent vedia, že sú vo vojne, ktorá sa nedá vyhrať, dá sa iba bojovať. Povahou sú to banditi, ale s veľmi silným zmyslom pre spravodlivosť.
Autor im dal podobu živáňov v uniforme, z ktorých každý má iný motív boja. Šalený Valent si na mafiánoch hojí komplexy a odpykáva si hriechy z minulosti. Miki Miko je zasa Apač na bojovom chodníku. Vedie s mafiou vojnu z veľmi osobných dôvodov.
„Dobrú“ trojku dopĺňa novinár Pali Schlesinger. Trpí učebnicovým spasiteľským komplexom, vrhá sa do nebezpečných káuz a udržiava kontakty s mnohým stranami zákopovej vojny. Od začiatku je evidentné, že autor do jeho postavy vpísal autobiografické črty, čo by mal vlastne naznačovať aj úvod tohto textu.
Autor vytvoril napínavý príbeh o slovenskom podsvetí a trestných činoch organizovaných štátnymi inštitúciami. Kto si predmetné obdobie pamätá, toho ovládne bolestivá reminiscencia, tí ostatní sa zhnusia tiež. Prispieva k tomu aj Soltészov štýl, ktorý je úderný, cynický a často nekorektný, tak ako sú aj jeho súčasné glosy a komentáre.
Nevyhýba sa ani naturálnym scénam, pričom najstiesnenejšie som sa cítil v pasážach s jednou z hlavných postáv. Je ňou Nika, sedemnásťročná stopárka, ktorú uniesli, znásilnili a plánovali predať do Kosova. Jej únosom sa však paradoxne spúšťa celý kolotoč ďalšieho násilia a spravodajských hier, ktorými sa zúčastnené strany snažia zakryť svoje hnusné kšefty.
Soltészov popis tohto stavu je na jednej strane brilantne prozaický, miestami komicko-bizarný, no na druhej strane z neho vanie skutočná temnota a depresia. Je až neuveriteľné do akej miery skutočné historické reálie splývajú s autorovými fabuláciami, pričom aj to, čo vyznieva ako evidentná konšpirácia, v skutočnosti až veľmi precízne zapadá do kontextu doby.
Arpád Soltész: Mäso – Vtedy na východe, Vydavateľstvo: Ikar, 2017 | {
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It’s been a while since we visited Trattoria al Forno for dinner.
It hasn’t been a while since we visited for breakfast. That review from August is available here: https://www.easywdw.com/easy/blog/trattoria-al-forno-breakfast-review-at-disneys-boardwalk/. Since that post discusses the logistics of visiting the BoardWalk area and offers a tour of the restaurant, I won’t waste your time by reiterating all of that here. My original dinner review is available here.
So if you missed breakfast or would like a lengthier refresher on the atmosphere, check out that post. And if you don’t want to read anymore and find yourself wondering if you should do breakfast or dinner, my suggestion would be breakfast. I don’t think Trattoria does enough to differentiate itself from the multitude of other Italian options in the area. Via Napoli serves the best pizza on property and is a great value if you can get three or four people to share a large pizza. Tutto Italia offers a more authentic menu in a more sublime setting. Il Mulino is your “Not Disney” choice over at the Swan/Dolphin in case The Mouse is becoming a bit grating towards the end of the trip. I’ll have a Todd English’s bluezoo review one of these days. Somebody remind me. But breakfast is inexpensive and would be done here as good or better than most other options.
On the plus side, Trattoria does offer over 100 Italian wines available by the bottle and more than 30 available by the glass.
As somebody that’s decidedly in the “tastes like wine” category, I’m a little more interested in the cocktails:
There’s some value in the Amarcord beer choices – each of those bottles would run you $10 at the store, so the markup is only about 70%. Birra Moretti is closer to $1.50 per bottle, so the markup is 400%. Since 750ml is about 25.4 ounces, you’d come away with more beer in one of the larger bottles than two of the Morettis and only pay $2 more. It’s a no-brainer.
Many of these liqueurs and apertifs are mostly unique to Trattoria though you might run into the occasional Fernet-Branca elsewhere. Perhaps at Tony’s Town Square next week.
I always wish they would title the last page, “So you brought your own, I see.”
Each person is delivered their own freshly baked ciabatta loaf served inside this precious wrapper. Oil is presented tableside and your server should ask you if you want salt and pepper added. Your answer to this question should be “yes” as it’s virtually flavorless without it. Just changing the brand that they use would go a long way to improving the quality of the meal right off the bat. The bread is good but that oil is tragic. They also have butter, which you might consider requesting if your server doesn’t ask (ours did).
I got boxed out of the $10.75 Italian Manhattan – Jim Beam Black Extra Aged Bourbon, Amaro Nonino Liqueur, and Angostura Bitters garnished with a Luxardo Gourmet Maraschino Cherry on my last visit because they were out of the liqueur. This time I successfully ordered one and it was well put together – the Amaro Nonino replaces the usual vermouth and has a more earthy flavor that offers a little extra spice. And at 35% ABV, it doesn’t do a whole lot to cut the strength of the drink. Recommended.
On strength, the $10.75 Negroni – Beefeater Gin, Campari, and Carpano Antica Sweet Vermouth also comes recommended.
For sweet, I’d actually consider the $11.75 Molto Bello – A Margarita with an Italian twist, made with Patrón Silver Tequila, Caravello Limoncello, fresh Lime Juice and Agave Nectar. The limoncello and agave nectar do a nice job of covering up the taste of what now might be middle shelf tequila.
As far as changes since the opening of the restaurant in December 2014, the Mixed Greens Salad replaces a Romaine Salad; the Hand-rolled Gnocchi replace the Grilled Treviso (Italian Red Lettuce), and the Antipasto di Stagione (Seasonal Antipasto) is new.
On the Pizza front, the restaurant opened with six options and is down to four. The Roasted Wild Mushroom is at least a new description, though it sounds like it’s an amalgamation of the previous Roasted Portobello Mushroom and Truffle Cream options. The Pizza di Verdure is new and sounds a little out there, while the Smoked Prosciutto returns.
The pizza with Fennel Sausage, Salame Piccante, and House-pickled Peppers is no longer available. The Broccoli Rabe with Fennel Sausage is also gone.
Interestingly, almost every single item is the same price as when the restaurant debuted, except for the soup that is up 51 cents.
The Second Course header sees a few changes to various entrees with some items being substituted in for others, but nothing looks to be too egregious.
The Lamb Shank, which I tried on my previous visit and deemed to be “a good value” is no longer offered, of course.
The Campanelle with Green Beans, Roasted Potatoes, and Genovese Pesto is also now a Seasonal Ravioli.
This time around, we started with the $12 Venetian Mussels with Tomato-Curry Broth and Grilled Bread. It’s hard to tell because I am bad at this, but this is a serious pile – 30 maybe? And the sauce was surprisingly rich with just a touch of spice that was eased by the tomatoes. Any excess was easily mopped up with the bread, which was a substantial improvement from what they serve everyone by default. One wonders why restaurants don’t try a little harder with their bread service.
Things started getting salty with the $10 Caprese Salad with House-made Mozzarella. For the money, it was a nice large portion with two hulking balls of cheese surrounded by fresh tomato slices and a few dabs of balsamic here and there. But for some reason, there was a lot of coarse salt on top and while it did help bring out some of the subtler flavors of the cheese, it was a bit overwhelming. The vinegar may have been the smarter way to go there. Still, you can’t really fault the quality or the portion size and this was another good value.
Ordinarily I order something a little more interesting, but I wanted to compare Trattoria’s version of the $22 Chicken Breast alla Parmigiana
with fresh Pasta to the entrees of the same name served at Mama Melrose and Tony’s Town Square. I thought Trattoria’s was the best of the bunch (which may not be saying much) with a substantial chicken breast that was perhaps a bit over-breaded and over-cooked, but it did hold up nicely to the sauce and what ended up being a generous amount of parmesan cheese. I felt like they had the right idea but the execution was just a little bit off.
The dish was originally served with thicker tagliatelle noodles that were under-sauced (if that’s a thing?), at least for the typical American that is going to empty a jar of Ragu over their box of pasta at home. After cooking it first I would hope. The spaghetti that’s currently served underneath the chicken works better and the homemade sauce offers a pretty robust flavor, though in my old age I would like something a little chunkier. When I was a boy, even the hint of an onion was enough to try to flip the table.
Overall, it was a satisfying dish – plenty to eat and not unreasonably priced compared to other options in the area. Hopefully they’ll bake your chicken a minute or two less.
The $19 Roasted Wild Mushroom Pizza – with Porcini Cream Sauce, Greens, and Quattro Formaggio. Again, they have the right idea with this – the cheese coverage is solid; the cream sauce has a really rich flavor; and there’s a ton of fresh mushrooms of all sorts of shapes and sizes. But it was so salty – like if someone had turned the salt shaker over on top of it, the top fell off, and all the salt cascaded down onto the pizza. And because this had happened to this particular cast member a number of times, he was one pizza fail away from having to see about a job at Luigi’s Pizza over at Universal. Like I felt my fingers covered with salt after picking up the first slice. Other than that it was good though.
The pizzas here are otherwise sizable – plenty for two or three people to share as an appetizer or it will fill most up as an entree.
And finally, a lousy picture of the $18 Eggplant Rollatini with Pesto Ricotta filling and Marinara Sauce.
While it certainly looks the part, we found the pasta to be particularly bland and again, the main ingredient seemed to be salt with just some of the sourness from the ricotta showing through. Not “terrible” for 18 bucks, but not something you probably want to seek out.
Of course, you may be served something entirely different.
Overall, with so many other options at the various resorts and inside Epcot, I’m not sure Trattoria al Forno does anything distinctly well enough that it necessitates a visit. On the other hand, if you don’t want to venture into Epcot because it’s a Saturday during Food/Wine or don’t want to spring for park hopper tickets and you accidentally visited Hollywood Studios first, or you’re on the Disney Dining Plan and don’t want to visit the Swan/Dolphin, then Trattoria may make a lot of sense. It certainly doesn’t break the bank compared to Flying Fish and would likely be less expensive than Captain’s Grille, Cape May Cafe, or something like that. And it’s a pretty low key overall experience. I think you typically read about more service issues at Trattoria than a lot of other restaurants, but you just never know. They did have a rocky opening.
I wouldn’t stick my nose up at returning and would be interested to see if the execution of a lot of the dishes has improved, but it wouldn’t be on my short list of restaurants during my first couple of Disney World vacations. | {
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Kid needs permission slip to read ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ his dad’s response is brilliant
The temperature at which permission slips receive sick burns.
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s cautionary tale about book censorship, was written as a response to the paranoid political climate of the McCarthy era, but its message apparently still hasn’t sunk in. It’s 2016, and some kids still aren’t allowed to read the book without a permission slip from their parents. Daily Show head writer Daniel Radosh just had to sign a note so his son could read it for a school book club. As Radosh’s son Milo explained in the note, Fahrenheit 451 has been challenged over the years by parents who object to the book’s mild swears (“hell” and “damn”) and its depiction of Bible-burning. tfw your kid’s school makes you sign a permission slip so he can read Fahrenheit 451 📚 🔥 pic.twitter.com/t9lmD8vKTu — Daniel Radosh (@danielradosh) October 24, 2016
But those objections miss the point of the novel—they could only be more ironic if parents were calling for copies of Bradbury’s book to be destroyed. And Radosh is practically an irony-spotter by profession, so this wasn’t lost on him. He signed the slip and attached his own note, praising Milo’s teacher for immersing the kids so thoroughly in the world of Fahrenheit 451.
Here’s what he wrote:
I love this letter! What a wonderful way to introduce students to the theme of Fahrenheit 451 that books are so dangerous that the institutions of society — schools and parents — might be willing to team up against children to prevent them from reading one. It’s easy enough to read the book and say, ‘This is crazy. It could never really happen,’ but pretending to present students at the start with what seems like a totally reasonable ‘first step’ is a really immersive way to teach them how insidious censorship can be I’m sure that when the book club is over and the students realize the true intent of this letter they’ll be shocked at how many of them accepted it as an actual permission slip. In addition, Milo’s concern that allowing me to add this note will make him stand out as a troublemaker really brings home why most of the characters find it easier to accept the world they live in rather than challenge it. I assured him that his teacher would have his back.
Looks like this assignment’s going to be a learning experience for everyone involved. | {
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For the past six years, Rian Cope and Dylan Brayshaw have been cycling the world in the pursuit of waves documenting it as they go. In 2009, they cycled across the Indonesian archipelago over three and half months in what they now regard as their coming of age adventure.
"It came around as a result of some serious wanderlust and a small budget," explains Rian. "Motorcycles wouldn’t cut it, but bicycles were possible." Earlier this year, and with a TV series in the pipeline, they were back in the saddle. After deciding on Taiwan, they lined up a trip to sync with swell season, and arrived just in time for a category 5 typhoon. We caught up with the lads to find out how it went.
So why Taiwan?
D: We chose Taiwan because we didn’t know a lot about it. I had seen some great photos from the island on the internet and in some magazines. The more I researched it the more I wanted to go. The size of the island was good for us too, about 1200km north to south. We had one month so the distance would be perfect and there seemed to be lots of interesting things to see and do when the waves are small.
R: It was all Dylan’s idea! I had no idea there was potential for surf in Taiwan. We knew we wanted to hit the road again with a long term series in the making. We decided on Taiwan as a destination not too remote or isolated to kick things off.
What is it about travelling with bikes that you love so much?
D: A few things, one is the exercise and the feeling you get when you ride a bicycle, it's just simple fun. You're also open to new experiences that you wouldn’t get on a surf tour, like locals buying you lunch or inviting you to stay the night. You're in control of your travel experience, you don't have to wait for a bus or work on anyone else's schedule, you're free to go wherever you want to go. Another thing that’s great is the freedom you get. I remember saying to myself after many days on the road, I got myself here, to this very wave, by myself. You're in control of your travel experience, you don't have to wait for a bus or work on anyone else's schedule, you're free to go wherever you want to go.
R: I love the simplicity. A mode of transport that costs nothing to run. It burns fat, not money. You can maintain it with simple mechanics and a few small tools. And you’re exposed to the elements – wind, rain, sun, smoke, smog, dogs, buses, smells, grease, sand, snow. You're totally emerged in your environment, and you come home better for it.
Travelling in such close proximity with someone, testing your bodies and emotions along the way, does it test your friendship?
D: Yes definitely, this trip tested both. We’re both used to each other, but when the waves are small I can get a bit frustrated and that tests the friendship for sure. The physical test came when we climbed Wuling Pass up to 3275m elevation, it took us three days of climbing but totally worth the five hour downhill to the beach.
R: Hell yeah. We've had a few arguments over the years. About how far we should ride tomorrow, or how long we should stay at this surf break before we need to move on so we don’t miss that ferry. Our Indonesian adventure really pushed me, and forced me to think about someone else apart from myself. I had a whole other person to consider when making decisions. I like to think that it's made me a better more patient and understanding person not just with our friendship, but in life.
How do you go about refining your luggage enough so that it fits on your bikes?
D: It's taken a bit of experience to refine our kit but the trick is to just take what you need. Unfortunately we need to film everything so we carried a lot of camera gear and a laptop to backup footage. Everything has its place in the bags and on the bike. I like to think that it's made me a better more patient and understanding person not just with our friendship, but in life.
R: That's taken years of experience. Outside of eat.sleep.surf, I've continued on several more adventure rides and I've really managed to narrow down my packing. Heavy items should be placed at the bottom of your pannier bags to help with balance, everyday items need to be within easy reach, and camera equipment needs to be waterproof. You work out your priorities with what you need for luggage, and pack accordingly. Ultra-light weight is the new way forward with manufacturers creating internal frame bags. It’s mad how little people are starting to travel with.
Any major mechanical issues with the bikes?
D: On this trip nothing, not even a flat tyre the entire trip, I was amazed.
R: I've had broken spokes and burst dozens of tires over the years, but Taiwan was a mechanical free trip. So long as you keep the air in your tires up, the chain greased, and ride the bike within its limits, any bicycle will get you across a country.
How do you manage physical exhaustion between surfing and cycling?
D: Simple, if you're tired you rest if not you cycle or surf.
R: I like to try and do some training at home before we depart. My job allows me to be on the bike fairly regularly which is handy. Eat lots, drink lots and naps in the middle of the day are awesome when travelling – just find a shady tree.
What’s the surf community like over there from what you can tell?
D: We bumped into a few local surfers over there, Taiwan seemed to have the beginnings of a strong surf community. I've had broken spokes and burst dozens of tires over the years, but Taiwan was a mechanical free trip. We saw the Taiwan Open of surfing and also met up with a surf tour operator who showed us the more popular waves.
R: Small but growing. There is a small community of expats from around the world who surf and the local Taiwanese are also involved in a smaller capacity. You need to be able to get around the island within a few hours to pick the right break depending on conditions, so we found we had most spots to ourselves. Very friendly people, like ridiculously friendly. No localism there.
What other trips have you done with the bikes?
D: Indonesia is what started it all, since then we did New Zealand together for two weeks and then I did a solo trip back to Indonesia and travelled east of Bali to Scar Reef on Sumbawa.
R: Indonesia was our first and most exciting adventure, as we had never done anything like it – 3500kms across Sumatra, Nias, Mentawais, Java and Bali. I got hooked however and have done a few each year now, including riding 1600km unsupported across the Gibson and Great Sandy Desert on a Fat Bike, and I rode from Paris to Marrakech over the Atlas mountains into the Sahara Desert. Both epic trips which I enjoyed pushing myself to my limits.
Highlights of the trip?
D: The Toroko Gorge was amazing to cycle through and the rivermouth wave that we camped at for a few nights was a highlight.
R: The rivermouth we found and had to ourselves for most of the time. Just camping on the small hill overlooking the break with a great restaurant down the road. It was the perfect situation. And riding up Wuling Pass which is East Asia’s highest road at 3275m above sea level – it was an incredible accomplishment.
Would you go back?
D: Yes definitely, now that I know where the waves are.
R: In a heartbeat.
Where’s next?
D: I’m thinking about Peru but who knows, there's a lot more to discover on a bike.
R: I'm looking at riding up to Cape York, Australia’s most northern point. But I'd love to get over to South America – Peru and Chile for some cold water surfing and epic mountain climbs on the bike. Think Machu Picchu, the Andes and the Amazon. | {
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The Birchbark Discovery Centre, billed as a new format of school for the Northwest Territories, will open its doors in Yellowknife this fall.
A joint venture between the YK1 school board and NWT Montessori, the school – dubbed a “community-based alternative education program” – expects to take up to 15 students as it begins a three-year pilot.
Registration has opened for students heading into Grades 1 to 4.
Birchbark differs from other schools, say its founders, because it hands some control over learning to children – using a format already tested in some southern provinces.
Teachers, renamed “learning advisors,” take subjects children are interested in and structure large periods of uninterrupted time around those subjects, with a significant amount of time spent either outdoors or exploring the community.
According to a brochure for Birchbark, this format will encourage students “to be creative, innovative and take risks.”
Courteney Lizotte, YK1’s supervisor of instruction, told Cabin Radio: “On the average school day, the learning advisor will be given a large chunk of time in order for students to work on a project in a self-directed way.
“That could be to explore, research, create, develop, or find information, or for the student to be taken out into the community, visiting different areas in Yellowknife and different organizations, learning through volunteers and different community people.
“That will be uninterrupted so they can focus on that self-directed piece.”
More: YK1’s information page for Birchbark
Lizotte says Birchbark will be “family-oriented,” with an expectation that parents are involved “as much as possible” in their child’s learning.
While the initial intake will involve up to 15 students, the program will grow over time if the pilot is successful.
YK1 and NWT Montessori are currently working on ways to measure that success.
“We will follow the NWT curriculum so there will still be a standard the learning advisor will have to follow,” said Lizotte.
“Reporting to parents will still happen; academic achievement will still be measured in terms of them following and learning the curriculum.”
Registration is open until August 15. Parents will be told if there is a place for their child by August 17.
Brendan Callas, who was born and raised in Yellowknife and has taught at Range Lake North School for the past five years, will be the pilot program’s initial learning advisor.
Mildred Hall School, which Callas attended as a child, will provide Birchbark with classroom space.
“They will still be a part of the community of Mildred Hall,” said Lizotte. “It’s just the shape of their day and their focus will be a little bit broader, in terms of having more freedom to develop that curiosity and be in an outdoor classroom.” | {
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THE GEORGIA REVIEW Summer 1984 Existentialism Here and Now By Alfie Kohn TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago, existentialism was a hot piece of intellectual property. A wide reading public was buying up such new books as William Barrett’s Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy and Viktor Frankl’s From Death Camp to Existentialism (later republished under the title Man’s Search for Meaning). American psychologists were being introduced to the movement by a brilliant anthology entitled Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology, edited by Rollo May and others. The 1958 International Congress of Psychotherapy chose existential psychology as its theme. And the twentieth-century existentialists themselves were all still alive: Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus, Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel and Paul Tillich. Today all six men are dead and, from first appearances, so is the movement for which they are known. One recent essay in a religious journal referred to existentialism in the past tense, and virtually nothing has been published on the subject in any popular magazine[1] during the whole of the last decade. W.W. Norton reissued some of May’s introductory essays from Existence last fall, and a Boston Globe review of the collection began: “Remember existentialism?” Is such a book, in fact, no more than an exercise in nostalgia? Should existentialism be dispatched to a museum along with bobby sox and the U-2 affair? This view is inaccurate, I would contend: Existentialist thought has not so much blown away as decomposed in order to fertilize various fields of thought. To argue for this proposition and, more generally, to examine what has become of existentialism in the 1980s, I think it useful to begin with a conceptual résumé of the philosophy. After distilling its themes and identifying several widespread misunderstandings about existentialism, we can proceed to survey the intellectual landscape to determine the movement’s current status. What Existentialism Is and Is Not Camus spoke of a dialectical tension between, on the one hand, human beings, desperate for a sense of coherence to their lives, who cry out to the heavens for answers, and, on the other hand, the stubborn silence that greets such pleas. This may serve as a somewhat strained metaphor for the quest to understand existentialism itself. A taste for neatly packaged definitions. . . and the maddening ambiguity of the subject in question: here, too, are ingredients for the absurd — or at least for a generous measure of misunderstanding. To start with the former, Maurice Friedman began his introduction to The Worlds of Existentialism by sounding a note of annoyance: “Give me a one-sentence definition of existentialism.” This statement is often more a ritual defense against the insecurity aroused by not being au courant than a genuine desire for knowledge. . . . The very notion that existentialism is something that can be defined in a catch phrase, or that one can merely know about it without understanding it from within, has made it, for some people, into an intellectual fad and robbed it of its proper seriousness.[2] In its own fulsome way, Time magazine may have been on to something in 1958: “There is no sign that [existential psychology] will become a frothy success like Freudian analysis or hula hoops…[because] any understanding of it requires the most rigorous intellectual exercise.”[3] A book on the subject likely to sell today would have to be entitled The One-Minute Existentialist. Indeed, I was reminded of Rabbi Hillel, asked for the meaning of life while standing on one foot, when a middle-aged student of mine conceded recently that she wanted to learn about philosophy so long as she did not have to read too much. The other half of the equation is existentialism’s peculiar resistance to being defined. This is not merely a function of its complexity or even of the diversity of ideas offered under its umbrella, though the latter is noteworthy: A Danish theologian, struggling against Hegel and against the dilution of his Christian faith, is tossed under the same rubric with a twentieth-century atheist who edited newspapers, directed plays, and criticized this very theologian. Existentialism is difficult to define primarily because its essence, so to speak, is to oppose the kind of analytic reduction that definition entails. It is not a system of philosophy to be learned or subscribed to (I am always at a loss to answer the question “Are you an existentialist?”); it is not properly an “ism” at all, at least in the sense that Catholicism or Communism is. Perhaps the best one can do is define the term ostensively: “Read Sartre and Kierkegaard and you’ll understand.” (This is admittedly unsatisfying, though, since we need a set of criteria to justify putting Sartre and Kierkegaard on the list and keeping others off.) What analytic philosophers call ostensive definition, a method, here becomes a clue to content; it recalls the watchword of phenomenology: “Zu den Sachen selbst!” — “To the things themselves!” To argue that existentialism’s death has been greatly exaggerated is to suggest that its presence is still discernible. But how are we to recognize this presence? Only the vaguest sketch of the movement can be offered here. For the existentialist, the fact of existing becomes not simply declarative but exclamatory (“Imagine! I am!”) and then interrogatory (“…and what am I to make of that?”) “Man becomes a question to himself,”[4] and the question begets more questions, all of which concern the issues inherent to being human. The issues of interest do not concern my being a male or an Ohioan, a laborer or a Protestant or a neurotic; the focus instead is on those problems common to every human being by virtue of that status: What does it mean to choose? What shall serve as meaning for me? What am I to make of my fellows? And, in Ionesco’s haunting words, “Why was I born if it wasn’t forever?” The existentialists may offer different answers, but they have the questions in common — as well as the passion with which they ask them. The existential style, moreover, is to address such questions to the whole person rather than to our rational faculties alone. In fact, an opposition to what is seen as a disproportionate emphasis on reason is one of the defining characteristics of existentialism — not merely because rationalism, like one of the blind men, feels a tail and calls out that he now knows what an elephant is, but because reason ultimately sees the individual as an exemplar of something larger and prior. To the existentialist, the living subject comes first — a position that engenders opposition to Platonic essentialism, Cartesian dualism, Hegelian idealism, modern scientism, and a great deal more. To complete this painfully abbreviated overview, it may be helpful to say something about what existentialism is not. This endeavor is particularly appropriate given that much of the American response to the movement — both its initial infatuation and subsequent loss of interest — has been based on a distorted view. Even in its halcyon days, or especially in its halcyon days, the word “existentialism” was misused even by those who were counted as supremely literate and enviably well-informed. The dimensions of this misunderstanding help to account for the equanimity with which supportive scholars observe the apparent passing of existentialism from popular discourse. And like the difficulty of arriving at a definition, the responsibility for widespread misconceptions, if it makes sense to assign responsibility, must be shared by those interested only in convenient labels and by the impenetrability (or richness, depending on one’s inclination) of existentialism itself. I was introduced to the topic by an English teacher in high school and then a political theorist in college, both of whom treated existentialism as synonymous with the thought of Camus. I currently own two dictionaries, one of which defines the term as “a body of ethical thought…” and the other of which calls it “a literary-philosophic cult of nihilism and pessimism.” These grotesquely mistaken characterizations suggest the range of error one finds, but I should like to focus here on six specific misconceptions: existentialism as, respectively, atheistic, pessimistic, abstract, here-and-now oriented, irrational, and individualistic. The first two adjectives are regularly and vigorously attached to existentialism. Each, by telling only part of the story, is egregiously misleading. Both are quite clearly the result of associating the entire movement with Sartre, a confusion he encouraged by essentially appropriating the term. (It is this appropriation that led Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, and Camus to back off from the appellation “existentialist”; they actually were only distancing themselves from Sartre’s thought.) With respect to the question of God, of the ten philosophers most frequently discussed in the context of existentialism, only three (Sartre, Camus, and Nietzsche) were unquestionably atheists. Five (Kierkegaard, Marcel, Berdyaev, Tillich, and Buber) were passionately religious, and the remaining two (Heidegger and Jaspers) prove rather difficult to classify. At least as significant for anyone seeking to understand the movement is the fact that the overwhelming majority of (sympathetic) secondary sources on existentialism have been written by theologians — or, at the very least, theists. Most of the philosophical articles about existentialism still appear in religious journals like Encounter, Thought, and Cross Currents. Christians, and particularly Catholics, have resonated to the existential canon far more than atheists. It should be noted, though, that the problematics of human existence cannot be neatly resolved for a theistic existentialist; this is what distinguishes him from many other theists. For Kierkegaard or Marcel or Buber (to choose one representative from each of the major Western faiths), there is no untroubled salvation for the faithful. Truly, even a life with God — or searching for God — is a life struggling to conquer absurdity. The “pessimist” epithet is even less appropriate. Those who use it usually have Sartre in mind, so its validity is at best very limited. But even Sartre pronounced his philosophy optimistic on balance, although the claim is surely debatable. He, along with Nietzsche and Camus, explicitly repudiated nihilism and sought to construct alternatives to it. Even if Rollo May is right that “the terms ‘optimism’ and ‘pessimism’ refer to the state of one’s digestion, and have nothing whatever to do with truth,”[5] it is instructive to realize why existentialism is perceived as pessimistic by so many Americans. Even to talk about subjects like death — never mind what one has to say — is viewed in this country as morbid and unseemly. Existentialism is a philosophy of balance: To exist is literally marvelous and not to be taken for granted, but that existence is shot through with finitude; our freedom to define ourselves is exhilarating but also a terrible burden; that God is dead — an historical statement, not a theological one – allows us to “belong to a higher history than any history hitherto,”[6] but suggests utter abandonment, a loneliness of dreadful proportions. On the other hand, when Sartre writes that “life begins on the far side of despair,” he is not only pointing to the self-deception involved in denying the dark underside of existence but also emphasizing that life can begin. Such balance does not play well to the “Have-a-nice-day” audience on this side of the Atlantic. In my experience, adolescents as well as adults are puzzled by the suggestion that awareness or authenticity or any other ideal may be intrinsically valuable rather than dependent for its worth on the extent to which it enhances our happiness. For them, for many of us, the only sensible justification for a value is its potential to pleasure us. If a fuller, more truthful appreciation of absurdity isn’t any fun, why bother with it? (Psychotherapy, similarly, having lost all connection to Freud’s ideal of self-knowledge, is now seen as nothing other than a means to feeling better.) Existentialism is perceived as pessimistic, then, not because of the context in which it raises the issues of mortality and meaninglessness, but for having the bad taste to raise them at all. As Barrett correctly notes, existentialism did not create the wrenching problems it addresses, “but simply sought to give them philosophic expression, rather than evading them by pretending they were not there.”[7] The assumption that existentialism is a philosophy of abstraction could not be further from the truth. Abstraction is precisely what this movement finds intolerable. From Kierkegaard’s furious and lifelong assault on Hegel’s sub specie aeterni view of human history to Sartre’s famous declaration that existence precedes essence, existentialism has argued for the primacy of the real, experiencing human. That “existential” is loosely used to mean “abstract” can only suggest a failure to distinguish between intangibility (a characteristic of any idea) and abstraction. The description of existentialism as concerned exclusively with “here-and-now” reality offers a truncated and thus misinformed perception of the movement. The human as he or she experiences the world is central, but this is not at all an experience locked in the present moment. Kierkegaard brilliantly described such temporal isolation in his discussion of the “aesthetic mode,” but he did not mean to endorse this any more than Camus’s stranger reflected the latter’s idea of authenticity.[8] Human life is a tension between history and possibility, which is to say, between past and future. Thus, the present can be understood as the intersection of previous choices (now congealed into a self) and the process of projecting ourselves forward at each moment — anticipating, dreading, planning. Existentialists, like Eliot, understand that “If all time is eternally present/All time is unredeemable.” Existentially oriented psychologists have even used the idea of temporal imbalance as a conceptual tool for understanding personality disturbance.[9] Misunderstanding of existentialism’s view of the present probably issues from the dramatic depictions in its literature of being caught in the present and also from the disproportionate emphasis on here-and-now experience in some quarters of humanistic psychology. Its rebellion against reason’s proud reign since the Enlightenment has led some to see existentialism as championing the irrational. (William Barrett’s superb introduction to the movement carries the unfortunate title Irrational Man, which undoubtedly has multiplied the confusion.) Luther branded reason “a whore,” infinitely inferior to faith; the Romantics (and the neo-Romanticism of the American human potential movement) dismissed matters of the mind as sterile and unrewarding in contradistinction to those of the heart. But existentialism has challenged the insufficiency of reason and the hubris of positivism and scientism in their refusal to grant the legitimacy of other domains of the human. It is the exclusive emphasis on rationality, the imperial arrogance of its partisans, to which the existentialists have objected. The critique rests on three foundations: the value of wholeness (and the need to affirm the whole person rather than just a disembodied mind), the urgency of action (as opposed to mere reflection), and the personal relationship to what is known (which Kierkegaard called “subjective knowledge” and counterposed to the rationalist ideal of disinterested objectivity). Once again, the point is balance rather than a swing to irrationality — or, more precisely, an attempt to illuminate the existing human who embodies both reason and unreason. Finally there is the matter of individualism. This view of existentialism is at once the most common and the most plausible. Kierkegaard’s denigration of “the crowd,” Nietzsche’s of “the herd,” and Heidegger’s of “das Man” (the “they”) surely are suggestive, and John Macquarrie must be taken seriously when he writes that “all the leading existentialists. . . are [primarily] concerned with the individual whose quest for authentic selfhood focuses on the meaning of personal being” despite paying “lip-service to the truth that man exists as a person only in a community of persons.”[10] Still, the truth proves much less susceptible to the easy label of individualism. Buber, Marcel, and the mature Camus were centrally concerned with the interhuman, tireless in their criticism of rampant individualism. Buber in particular noted that the individual/collective dichotomy was a false one: “The wholeness of man. . . [involves] the sphere of ‘between’. . . . This is where the genuine third alternative must begin.”[11] To this extent, to stress the limits of das Man is not necessarily to fall into uncritical worship of the individual. (High school English teachers are apt to link existentialism with the American transcendentalist theme of self-reliance, an equation that is myopic and difficult to defend.) The assumption that Sartre is purely individualistic is similarly hasty. Two hundred and fifty pages on “Being-with-Others” in Being and Nothingness should convince us that he is not unaware of the issue,[12] while his caution against viewing No Exit as a statement of his view of human relationship needs to be considered, as well. Add to this the grounding of his ethics — “When we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men”[13] — and the moral impulse underlying his later Marxism. Generalizations about existentialism’s individualistic coloration are, in short, only partly justified, and the focus on “the individual self” may be read as emphasizing the “self” more than the “individual.” The Current Status of Existentialism For someone with an active interest in existentialist issues, the silence in contemporary discourse can be deafening. Existentialism, as noted above, is widely perceived as passé, and this is not only true in popular culture: The Journal of Existentialism(formerly the Journal of Existential Psychology) ceased publication in 1967 and the International Forum for Existential Psychiatry) folded three years later. Only the Review of Existential Psychiatry and Psychology limps along, publishing irregularly, its parent association gone. This and other evidence notwithstanding, though, existentialism has not gone the way of the phlogiston theory. It continues to offer a minority report in philosophy proper, to color the Zeitgeist more generally, and to contribute most impressively to psychology and psychotherapy. This assessment was confirmed by a series of recent conversations I had with philosophers, including William Barrett (retired from New York University), Hazel Barnes (Univ. of Colorado), and Maurice Friedman (San Diego State Univ.); such psychologists as Rollo May (now in private practice), Suzanne Kobasa (City Univ. of New York), and Steen Halling (Seattle Univ.); and literary critics like William Spanos (State Univ. of New York), Frederick Karl (New York Univ.), and Leo Hamalian (City Univ. of New York). Existentialism may be viewed as analogous to psychoanalysis – its heyday past, its number of rising practitioners falling, its representation in psychology departments approaching zero, and even its critics failing to become exercised anymore. Yet the impact of psychoanalysis both in and out of the academy is beyond dispute; its concepts and dialect are so much a part of us that even recognizing the extent of its contribution proves difficult. Something similar, though clearly on a smaller scale, has happened with existentialism. Neither movement is au courant in the 1980s, but that signals a diminution of its faddishness rather than of its significance. No one sympathetic to existentialist ideas is dismayed at their having passed from the realm of hem lengths and Top 40 music. To note that popularization involves dilution and misrepresentation is not to consign the movement to the ivory tower in a fit of elitism. It is merely to insist that just because other topics have replaced it in cocktail party conversation (a predictable occurrence given our appetite for novelty; as Sartre put it, we require the smell of fresh paint) we need not begin the last rites for existentialism. A thorough survey of existentialism’s influence across the disciplines would require an intimate familiarity with the currents of each discipline that I do not pretend to have. I know, for example, that existentialism — and, more saliently, phenomenology — has shaped a recognizable school in sociology and political science,[14] but I don’t know much more than this. I am also aware that existentialist thought has been brought to bear on a surprisingly wide variety of other topics and fields,[15] but my understanding of each is limited. The following discussion, then, will necessarily be of limited scope, confined to literature, philosophy, and, in somewhat greater depth, psychology. In literature, one would be hard put to argue that existential themes have receded over the last quarter century. However, more than in any other arena, determining which writers merit the “existentialist” label in the first place is virtually impossible. There are some on whom most critics will agree: Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Rilke, and the drama of Brecht, Pirandello, and the Theatre of the Absurd. After that, anything is fair game — to the point that the tag is almost meaningless.[16] Given the unmistakable presence of existentialist themes in Aeschylus and the Book of Job, one can scarcely suggest we are addressing a phenomenon exclusively of the modern age. On the other hand, with the likes of Walker Percy and Joan Didion still publishing, it would be difficult to argue that literature has left such themes behind. Literary criticism is quite another matter. Frederick Karl and Leo Hamalian edited an anthology entitled The Existential Imagination 20 years ago, and another, The Existential Mind, ten years ago.[17] Today, Hamalian pronounces existentialism “dated,” noting that he hasn’t seen the word used in a long time in connection with criticism. Similarly, Karl comments: “As an active movement or something that would influence present-day literary criticism, it’s almost died out.” Criticism has turned toward deconstruction and other styles emphasizing a reading of the text such that it appears to exist in a vacuum — or so it seems to the existentialist. “There is no ‘real life’ anymore,” according to Karl. “What remains is the internal dynamics of the text itself.” Yet paradoxically, according to William Spanos, himself the editor of an existentialism anthology, deconstructionism presupposes existentialist thought in a way that partisans of the former are loath to acknowledge. Calling himself both a deconstructionist and a Heideggerian, Spanos sees no discontinuity between post-structuralist criticism and Sartrean and Heideggerian philosophy. If the problems of “lived life” contrast with the isolated text in criticism, they contrast even more sharply with the philosophy of language. Breathtakingly trivial issues form the mainstay of analytic philosophy, whose practitioners justify this orientation by citing the rigor made possible thanks to a microscopic dissection of formal propositions. Shaped by the positivism of the Vienna Circle, this approach to philosophy is perhaps best captured in J. L. Austin’s dictum that truth is important, but importance is not. Yet this school, from all accounts, does not hold the discipline in thrall today the way it did not so long ago. Whether this shift is due more to the inherent limitations of the approach or to the insistent criticism from Continental philosophy (notably existentialism and phenomenology) is difficult to ascertain. In any case, two of this country’s most respected students of existentialism argue that they are by no means alone. “The contributions existentialism has made have become, in certain respects, part of modern philosophy,” contends William Barrett. “They’ve infiltrated gradually, and analytic philosophers have become more aware of these problems.” He points especially to the range of topics being tackled by ethical theorists and to the acceptance of Heidegger by philosophers of religion. Hazel Barnes, Sartre’s major English translator, notes that a paper on existentialism is almost always given at any philosophy conference now, while courses on the subject are still being taught all over the country. “In other words, it’s become part of the basic philosophical framework. It would be inconceivable for someone who spoke even three minutes on philosophy today not to include [existentialism and phenomenology] as a very profound part of it.” Barnes finds that students’ interest is undiminished, as well: “It used to be that people regarded Sartre, Camus, and so forth as the latest thing; obviously they don’t now. But you know the old Quaker expression ‘it speaks to my condition’? Well, the students still feel that, and I find that both when I speak around the country and in my own classroom.” It is in psychology, however, where existentialism’s contribution is still most pronounced. The departments at certain universities — notably Duquesne, Seattle, and the University of Dallas — are dominated by the existential and phenomenological perspective, offering such courses as “Phenomenology of the Face” and “Seminar on Desperate Styles.” (Interestingly, all three of these schools are Catholic.) The real power of existentialism, however, owes not to the minority that conspicuously identifies itself with it, but to the extent to which its themes have been assimilated into other schools. During a lengthy and wide-ranging conversation last summer, Rollo May stressed this point: The impact [of existentialism] is not that there are therapists who call themselves existential therapists, because existentialism is not a technique over against other techniques. It is not a system that you go to school to learn. It’s rather a concern with the basic presuppositions of what it means to be a human being. You can be a good Freudian or a good Jungian and still existential — and if you are good, you will be existential. Even some behavior therapists are very good existentialists. . . . Existentialism means keeping in mind the person who has the instincts or drives or behavior. Irvin Yalom, whose publication of Existential Psychotherapy gave a boost to the movement several years ago, similarly emphasized that “the experienced clinician [of any school] often operates implicitly within an existential framework.”[18] Historically, the influence of existentialism on psychology comes from two sources: Sartre and his “existential psychoanalysis” (as set out in Being and Nothingness) from which R.D. Laing took his cue, and the Swiss psychoanalysts Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss who attempted a synthesis of Freud and Heidegger. The latter version washed up on American shores with May’s Existence anthology. Its primary feature is a repudiation of the so-called “subject/object” dualism, which Binswanger once called “the cancer of all psychology,” in favor of the notion of “being-in-the-world.” This rather clumsy locution refers to the fact that we constitute what is outside us and are constituted by it, and that this reality is prior to the existence of the individual. It is inaccurate, in other words, to speak of an “I” over here and an “environment” over there and then say they interact. There is a sense in which the whole that includes them is more real than either by itself. Other features of an existential approach to psychology include: a rejection of the dehumanizing elements of the natural science model, and particularly its emphasis on causality, reductionist explanatory theories, and quantification; an affirmation of the individual as changing through his or her choices, and the need to authentically take responsibility for those choices; a focus on the real encounter between two human beings that describes psychotherapy; and a rejection of theoretical approaches, including Freud’s, that portray the human as a collection of components. On traditional disputes in psychology regarding the significance of behavior versus motivation, or the priority of thought versus feeling, the existentialist response — precisely as it is to such philosophical disputes as the mind/body problem — is to suggest the whole debate is misconceived. What matters is the self’s experience; anything else is a distraction at best and a violence against the human at worst. I am not an object for others to cathect, a collection of neurotransmitters and chromosomes, a repertoire of behaviors, or an information processing unit; I am an experiencer, an actor, a chooser — a whole and unique person in the world. This approach hardly qualifies as the prevailing direction of American psychology or psychiatry, but its impact is felt. There are presentations at the national conventions, articles in mainstream journals (like the American Journal of Psychiatry), and textbooks that reflect an existential perspective. “Fifteen years ago,” says Seattle University’s Steen Halling, “if you looked at a traditional psychology journal and someone said that people responded to events as they perceive them and not events as they really are, that would have been a radical thing to say. It isn’t anymore.” Suzanne Kobasa has been conducting a longitudinal evaluation of the relationship between perceived stress and disease. An increasingly popular subject for research, Kobasa sees it as “taking some existential concepts that were vague and trying to turn them into empirical constructs. Behind the questions of stress resistance, I see a basic existential conception of life — such issues as the inevitability of change and struggle [and the idea] that what one is is what one makes.” The entire field of psychosomatic medicine, in fact, follows existentialism in rejecting the mind/body split that has plagued Western thought since Descartes. The so-called neo-Freudians have introduced a variety of existentialist concerns into their studies of character. In place of Freud’s creaky mechanistic model, firmly based in the natural sciences and decidedly individualistic, the revisionists have emphasized our capacity to grow and choose and make meaning, as well as our relations with others. It is relevant to ask not only how one approaches psychology, but just what one is studying. Whereas Freud investigated such reifications as the “id” and the “ego,” the neo-Freudians were more concerned with the whole existing person. But even many of those psychoanalysts who recoil from taking such liberties with the master have begun to embrace a new movement that quietly introduces existentialist themes. The late Heinz Kohut developed a “self psychology” during the 1970s that is particularly concerned with narcissistic disorders. While this is not the place for a summary of Kohut’s thought — or an explication of narcissism — several features of this theory warrant brief attention. To begin with, the very way Kohut and others describe narcissism recapitulates such existentialist issues as alienation and emptiness. Moreover, Kohut created this self psychology as a direct result of the inadequacy of traditional psychoanalytic treatment; it was a change grounded in his concrete experience, not in a desire for a more elegant theoretical construct. When he talks about “data,” his conception diverges from that of the natural sciences. In the words of one Kohutian, “By taking an empathic, introspective stand one may sample the full range of experience from within the self of the patient as well as one’s own array of inner responses.”[19] One addresses the total subjective experience of the self, that is, and sees this as more fundamental than biologically based drives; the person replaces Freud’s “mental apparatus.” Too, this person is principally understood as a meaning-maker: “Through self psychology. . . we have learned to approach relations not merely as what goes on between people, but in terms of the significance and meanings that become attached to the ‘goings on.’”[20] The self is even described in holistic terms, as “a psychological whole that is superordinated to the psychological parts.”[21] In short, while Kohut comes no closer to identifying himself with the existentialist movement than an occasional quotation from Kafka, his work, extraordinarily influential today in psychoanalytic circles, bears its footprints. Humanistic or “Third Force” psychology is so widely believed to embody an existentialist perspective that most textbooks simply refer to “humanistic-existential approaches.” Indeed, Charlotte Buhler argued that “Existential considerations form the underlying philosophical basis of humanistic psychology,”[22] and Carl Rogers and Fritz Perls regard themselves as existentialists. It is probably accurate to say that the themes of existentialism are not absent in American psychology so long as the humanistic alternative endures. Yet there are substantial differences between the movement originating in Germany and France and the one that developed in California. The three most substantial distinctions are these: (1) Existentialism, particularly but not exclusively in its atheistic variety, focuses on the human as a creator; he or she invents values, purposes, and, ultimately, a self. Humanistic psychology places its emphasis on discovery. The self is there already, waiting to be actualized; “all you’ve got to do is sit and be nice,” as May characterizes the position. Values present no real dilemma: “The best way for a person to discover what he ought to do is to find out who and what he is. . . . Many problems simply disappear; many others are easily solved by knowing what is in conformity with one’s nature…”[23] Somehow it is not surprising that the Journal of Humanistic Psychologyis increasingly filled with words like “spiritual,” “meditation,” and “transpersonal,” or that the photograph on its cover does not feature a person but an ethereal blue sky. (2) Implicit in the sufficiency of discovery is humanistic psychology’s profound optimism. Unlike the balance offered by existentialism, Maslow, Rogers, et al., prefer to leave questions of death and despair to the Europeans, serving up instead a sanitized vision of the human condition. Maslow has no time for what he flippantly refers to as “high I.Q. whimpering on a cosmic scale.”[24] (3) Existentialism is rooted in both affirmation and rebellion, and Camus brilliantly described how the two interpenetrate. But humanistic psychology virtually excludes revolt. In a very fine essay, Richard E. Johnson has argued that existential choice must exist “in defiance of every obstacle — not, as the new humanism preaches, ‘in harmony, in alignment with everything else’. . . . There is no way to reconcile this strain and tension of the individual self and the creative will . . . with a calm surrender to passive faith in the wisdom of the organism and the probity of the situation.”[25] Humanistic psychology, in sum, was largely shaped by an existentialist sensibility, but it would be erroneous to see the two schools as coextensive. In developmental psychology, finally, we have evidence of some incorporation of the spirit of existentialism. An exciting book by Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development[26] offers a new theory to account for how we look at the world differently as we grow. For Freud, one’s adult life is a recapitulation of early experiences, and affect (feeling) is far more significant than thought. For the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, by contrast, it is cognitive ability that matters. Kegan not only synthesizes these two perspectives — he transcends them. He proposes to explore the underlying issue that defines human life: the project of making meaning or making sense of ourselves and the world around us. From the epistemological concern with how we come to know (Piaget’s interest), he moves to the ontological issue of what and who we are. Our growth, he suggests, can be understood as a process of reconstruing our relationship to the world, specifically by distinguishing ourselves from what is outside us. This, in turn, permits us to interact with the world more fully. As Buber put it, “One cannot stand in relation to something that is not perceived as contrasted and existing for itself.”[27] There is little explicit reference to existentialist ideas or thinkers, but Kegan’s theory is an extraordinary realization of existentialism. His model unself-consciously touches on the dreadful exhilaration of change and choice (“Every transition involves to some extent the killing off of the old self”), the idea of projecting ourselves into the future, and the repudiation of the subject/object dichotomy. Most important, Kegan offers an account of growth from the inside, a phenomenological portrait of change that goes far beyond Piaget’s “objective” description of which mental operations can be performed at which age. Unlike most developmental or personality theorists, Kegan’s subject is really the (human) subject. In a sense, the tacit use of existentialist themes by people like Kegan and Kohut is more significant than the self-styled existential psychology to be found elsewhere. Such thinkers — and, doubtless, others as well — continue to find these ideas seminal and useful, yet feel no need to call attention to their roots. This suggests that existentialism is present here and now in a form both more profound and more enduring than the days when Life ran a 19-page photo essay on what was effectively billed as a new philosophical craze. Existentialism today has a quiet relevance to the issues of everyday life as well as a special immediacy in times of crisis. “Wherever there’s any ground for urgency in modern life, you have the existential issues,” Barrett says, and, indeed, my students read Sartre juxtaposed with Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth. Beyond psychology, our consciousness has been subtly changed by the presence of existentialism; this is clear whenever we speak of “absurdity” and mean more than simple silliness, whenever we talk of “a leap of faith” or “bad faith,” whenever we refer to making someone into an object or having a “dialogue.” As Maurice Friedman observes, “It’s not always being named existentialism, but the thing that represents that spirit is very palpably there. It’s had a very permanent impact that’s growing, and people are growing through it.” NOTES 1. For example: Harper’s, the Atlantic Monthly, Saturday Review, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the New Republic, Esquire, Commentary, or Psychology Today. 2. Maurice Friedman, The Worlds of Existentialism (New York: Random House, 1964), p. 3. 3. Time, December 29, 1958, p. 26. 4. H.J. Blackham, Reality, Man and Existence (New York: Bantam, 1965), p. 3. 5. Rollo May, “The Problem of Evil: An Open Letter to Carl Rogers,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Summer 1982, p. 20. 6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, trans. Thomas Common, (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1960), p. 168. 7. William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (New York: Anchor, 1962), p. 26. 8. Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Vol. 1, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1959), esp. “The Rotation Method” and “Diary of the Seducer.” The latter is paralleled by Camus’s discussion of Don Juanism in The Myth of Sisyphus (New York: Vintage, 1955), pp. 51-57. 9. See, e.g., Eugene Minkowski, “Findings in a Case of Schizophrenic Depression” (pp. 127-138), and Rollo May, “Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy (pp. 65-71), in Existence, ed. Rollo May et al., (New York: Basic, 1958). 10. John Macquarrie, Existentialism (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1973), p. 17. 11. Martin Buber, “What Is Man?” in Between Man and Man (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 199-205. 12. To the extent that his treatment of the problem in this book was not exactly Buberian, his later reflections describe a significant change: “In Being and Nothingness, my theory of others left the individual too independent,” he later told an interviewer (“The Last Words of Jean-Paul Sartre,” Dissent, Fall 1980, p. 405). This entire interview is filled with reflections on fraternity, obligation, and collaborative activity. 13. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism” in Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), p. 16. 14. Robert Bogart offers a good bibliography of existential sociology in his critique of same, published in Social Research, 44, Autumn 1977, esp. pp. 502, 504. 15. Cf. Donald F. Krill, Existential Social Work (New York: Free Press, 1978); John Calhoun Merrill, Existential Journalism (New York: Hastings House, 1977); Van Cleve Morris, Existentialism in Education (New York: Harper and Row, 1966); Celia Medina, “Chicanos, Existentialism, and the Human Condition,” Chicano Perspectives (Marfel Series in Human Behavior and the Environment, 1974). 16. Existentialism anthologies have included excerpts from Shakespeare, Proust, Dickens, Crane, and Hemingway. In his Existentialism and Modern Literature (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 1962), Davis Dunbar McElroy singles out Ibsen, Miller, and Faulkner. John Macquarrie nominates Joyce; Rollo May would include O’Neill and Fitzgerald. Surely Melville and Woolf cannot be excluded. All of which suggests the possibility of a short literature course on non-existential writers. 17. Frederick Karl and Leo Hamalian, The Existential Imagination (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Premier, 1963) and The Existential Mind, (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Premier, 1974.) 18. Irvin Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy (New York: Basic, 1980), p. 12. 19. Meyer Gunther, “Aggression, Self Psychology, and the Concept of Health,” in Advances in Self Psychology, ed. Arnold Goldberg, (New York: International Universities Press, 1980), p. 177. 20. Arnold Goldberg, Introduction, in ibid., p. 9. Kohut summarizes his “new viewpoint” as one that “allowed me to perceive meanings, or the significance of meanings, I had formerly not consciously perceived” (“The Two Analyses of Mr Z,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 60, 1979, p. 3). 21. Heinz Kohut, “Remarks About the Formation of the Self,” in The Search for the Self, Vol. 2, ed. Paul H. Ornstein, (New York: International Universities Press, 1978), p. 753. 22. Charlotte Buhler, “Basic Theoretical Concepts of Humanistic Psychology,” American Psychologist, 26, 1971, p. 380. 23. Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1976), pp. 106-7. 24. Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, 2nd ed., (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1968), p. 16. 25. Richard E. Johnson, “The Future of Humanistic Psychology,” The Humanist, March/April 1975, p. 6. Emphasis in original. 26. Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). 27. Martin Buber, The Knowledge of Man (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966), p. 62. | {
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TransLink’s new B-Line rapid bus service along Fraser Highway between downtown Surrey and downtown Langley is intended to be a precursor to rail rapid transit.
Running a distance of about 13 km from SkyTrain’s Surrey Central Station to Langley Centre, it will have an end-to-end travel time of 40 minutes, which is about 10 minutes or 20% faster than existing services.
It will run every eight minutes during peak hours, every 10 minutes during mid-day, evening, and weekend schedules, and every 15 minutes late at night. This line will operate daily between 5 am and 12 am.
The Fraser Highway B-Line will be one of four new B-Line routes that will be launched by the end of 2019 as part of the Phase One transit expansion plan.
Just like the other new B-Line services, the route will use three-door articulated buses and have a unique look that immediately identifies the B-Line as a superior service. All-door boarding is planned.
New special bus shelters will have real-time information screens displaying the arrival times of the next buses and there will be route information inside each vehicle.
These are the proposed 14 stops for the route:
Surrey Central Station (Expo Line and 96 B-Line connections)
King George Station (Expo Line and 96 B-Line connection)
140th Street
148th Street
152nd Street
156th Street
160th Street
164th Street
168th Street
188th Street
64th Avenue
Willowbrook Drive
201a Avenue
Langley Centre
The average space between stops is about one kilometre, although there is a long 3-km-long section without a stop between 168th Street and 188th Street because the area is predominantly farmland.
A stop could be added at 184th Street in the future when population and employment density warrants it, and when funding is available.
Some changes to existing local routes
Two existing bus lines that run on the exact same route will see modifications to allow for the optimal use and reallocation of resources to support the new higher-speed, more frequent B-Line. None of these routes will be axed as they are still needed to maintain local service for shorter trips.
The No. 503 will serve all local stops along Fraser Highway between Surrey Central to Aldergrove, and within Surrey, passengers will only be able to board travelling eastbound and disembark travelling westbound. This new stopping pattern will allow the route to support the No. 502 bus.
As for the changes to the No. 502, TransLink will reduce its frequency, and the resulting new combined wait-time between the No. 502 and No. 503 will be every 15 minutes during peak and mid-day and every 30 minutes during late-night. To compare, the existing combined frequencies for these routes are every six to 12 minutes during peak, every 12 minutes during mid-day, and every 30 minutes during late-night.
It is anticipated that many existing passengers that use the No. 502 and No. 503 will switch to the new B-Line on the corridor.
If all goes according to plan with the Mayors’ Council’s transit expansion agenda, this B-Line service could be replaced with the new rail rapid transit service along the same corridor by the late-2020s.
It has not been determined whether the Fraser Highway rail rapid transit line will be a seamless extension of SkyTrain from King George Station or an expansion of the new ground-level light rail transit system following the 2024 completion of the Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT.
Speeding up the B-Line through street design changes
TransLink is engaging three municipalities on possible street design changes that could increase the speed and reliability of the new Fraser Highway B-Line service beyond simply a limited stop bus service.
The public transit authority says the widespread implementation of traffic signal priority for the B-Line buses could be highly beneficial for the new service.
Queue jumpers at congested intersections to bypass traffic could offer a medium benefit, as about 10% of the time on a bus is spent waiting behind traffic at red lights.
A similar medium benefit level would also be offered by new turn restrictions at key intersections – to reduce the delays caused by turning cars – and the extension of bus stop waiting areas into the street so that buses do not have to re-enter traffic.
The street design change with the most significant benefit would be new bus-only lanes, even if it is only effective during peak hours.
See also | {
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In February, I received an e-mail from a reader using a Columbia University address — Torah Bontrager — that ended curiously:
“…and if you ever want to hear how I escaped the Amish, let me know.”
Those peace-loving bearded folks from Witness? I called Torah, and after just a few minutes, I knew this post had to be written.
For those of you who feel trapped because of a job or self-imposed obligations as an entrepreneur, this will put things in perspective.
How do you escape your environment if you’re unable to control it? If almost no one on the outside realizes what’s happening?
I’ll let Torah tell us in her own words…
Torah Bontrager after escaping the Amish at age 15.
To start, tell us a little about your background.
I’m twenty-seven and graduated from Columbia University in 2007. I was born in Iowa. We moved to Wisconsin when I was three and to Michigan when I was ten, and I lived with my family in traditional Amish communities this whole time. I escaped from my family and the Amish when I was fifteen. I’m the oldest of eleven children. Four of my siblings were born after I escaped.
What are the most common misconceptions or myths about the Amish?
Here are some of the most common false beliefs about the Amish:
-The Amish speak English (Fact: They speak Amish, which some people claim is its own language, while others say it is a dialect of German. Most people don’t know that Amish was only a spoken language until the Bible got translated and printed into the vernacular about 12 years ago.)
-Amish teens have a choice whether they want to remain practicing the religion. (False)
-Amish is only a religion (Fact: It’s a religion, culture, and language, etc.)
-Amish kids go to public school, or are taught similar courses (e.g., science) as public school kids
-The Amish are Mormons (False)
-The Amish have arranged marriages (False)
-Amish men have more than one wife (False)
-The Amish put all their income in the same pot, like a communist or socialist banking system (False)
-Cameras and music/musical instruments are allowed (False)
-The Amish are “peaceful gentle folk” (False)
What were the positives of growing up Amish?
-Growing up bilingual (Though I didn’t become fluent in English until after I escaped and I was always very self-conscious about my command of the English language)
-The emphasis on the solidarity of the extended family unit
-The emphasis on being hospitable to strangers, helping those in need, whether Amish or “English” (anyone who’s not Amish is “English,” no matter what language or culture he/she represents)
-Building your own houses, growing your own food, sewing your own clothes
These experiences taught me self-reliance, self-preservation, and gave me the ability to relate to non-American familial cultures much better than I might otherwise.
The biggest negatives?
-The rape, incest and other sexual abuse that run rampant in the community
-Rudimentary education
-Physical and verbal abuse in the name of discipline
-Women (and children) have no rights
-Religion–and all its associated fear and brainwashing–as a means of control (and an extremely effective means at that)
-Animal abuse
I consider these negatives as personal positives in a somewhat perverted or distorted way. Without having experienced what I did, I wouldn’t be the person I am today, shaped by the experiences I’ve had since. I always tell people that I’m thankful for having grown up Amish but that I’d never wish it upon anyone else.
What had you want to escape?
For as long as I can remember, I had always envisioned a life such that wouldn’t be compatible with the Amish religion and lifestyle.
I loved learning, and cried when I couldn’t go back to school the fall after graduating from Amish 8th grade. The Amish do not send their children to formal schooling past 8th grade. A Supreme Court case prevented forcing Amish children into high school on grounds of religious freedom. I knew that, by US law, I wasn’t considered an adult until eighteen. I didn’t want to wait until then to go to high school.
For four years, I tried to come up with a way that I could leave before turning eighteen without my parents being able to take me back, so I could go to school.
People generally have a peaceful image of the Amish. Can you explain the physical abuse?
The Amish take the Bible verse “spare the rod and spoil the child” in a literal sense. Parents routinely beat their children with anything from fly swatters, to leather straps (the most typical weapon), to whips (those are the most excruciating of), to pieces of wood.
When I was a little girl, my mom used to make me run down to the cellar to retrieve a piece of wood to get beaten with. I’d choose the thinner ones because I thought they’d hurt less.
One day I couldn’t find a thin piece and I had to get a thicker one. Luckily, I discovered that the thick ones hurt less. So every time after that, I’d get a thick one. It made her feel like she was hurting me more, and I’d scream harder just to make sure she didn’t catch on that it actually hurt less.
One of my acquaintances stuttered when he was little and his dad would make him put his toe under the rocking chair, and then his dad would sit in the chair and rock over the toe and tell him that’s what he gets for stuttering.
Even little babies get abused for crying too much during church or otherwise “misbehaving.” I’ve heard women beat their babies — under a year old — so much that I cringed in pain.
How did this all culminate for you prior to the escape?
My dad was a hunter and taught me to shoot. One evening after eighth grade, when I was fourteen, I came back from target practice in our field. The sun was just setting and I paused for a moment on a little knoll just below the house to enjoy the view. I had just gotten done with a good practice shooting, and I remember that the thought suddenly struck me: today would be a good day to die.
I hadn’t gotten beaten by my mom that day, and we hadn’t had any significant arguments over anything. I thought that if I died, I wanted to die without being mad at my mom. So I thought, I might as well take the opportunity to do so before I got back to the house—at which point who knows whether there would be another fight or a beating.
I put a bullet in the chamber and raised the rifle up. The closer it got to my head, the faster my heart beat. I was taught that whoever committed suicide would go to hell. But I was so miserable in the Amish culture that I believed God would understand that my motives were good.
In the end, I didn’t have the guts to point the barrel straight at my head. Okay, I thought, I’ll just put the gun next to my cheek to see what it feels like.
The instant I felt that cold hard steel, I suddenly realized that I wanted to live.
I had never had that thought before in my life. I had always thought I wanted to die. I don’t know where the idea came from that I wanted to live, but it completely changed my outlook on life.
Just remembering the feel of that cold steel still makes me shudder.
It was an instant flash of revelation—one that appeared and disappeared just as quickly. But in that moment, I realized that I truly wanted to be alive, that someday I’d be happy, and that I must be destined for something better in life—or surely I wouldn’t have gotten a crazy thought like wanting to live.
I branded that thought and feeling into my head. I told myself never to forget it, that no matter how depressed or how much I might want to kill myself in the future, even if I don’t have that same feeling again about wanting to live, I still shouldn’t kill myself because there was a better life in store for me.
At that point, I knew I had to escape.
[Continued in Part 2]
Postscript: This post is not intended to generalize all Amish. Rather, it is one person’s experience with the common constraints of the Old Order Amish. Please see Torah’s further explanations in the comments below.
Related and Recommended
The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than 500 million downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page. | {
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Gemeenten maken zich zorgen over de veiligheid op festivals, nu door extreme weersomstandigheden steeds vaker gevaarlijke situaties ontstaan. Zes gemeenten hebben daarom het initiatief genomen om, naar Brits voorbeeld, een blauwdruk te maken met algemene veiligheidsregels waaraan de festivals zich moeten houden.
Er komen in Nederland steeds meer festivals bij en al die evenementen trekken ook steeds meer publiek. De combinatie met steeds heviger hoosbuien en plotselinge rukwinden baart de gemeenten zorgen. Zij geven immers de vergunningen uit voor de festivals.
Noodweer
Extreem weer leidde de afgelopen tijd verschillende keren tot problemen bij grote publieksevenementen. Zo moesten Bevrijdingsfestivals delen van hun programma schrappen doordat er stevige onweersbuien over het land trokken. Vorig jaar haalden Pinkpopbezoekers opgelucht adem nadat ze, gehurkt op het festivalterrein, noodweer met zeer veel bliksemontladingen hadden getrotseerd. | {
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I recently vectorized some mushrooms from my old illustration 'Living Mushrooms' for a big compilation illustration, but I couldn't resist doing something fun with those weird mushrooms as well, with this as the result. | {
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After two years without true PVP, Niantic has finally confirmed that trainer V trainer battles are coming to Pokémon GO. While the developer still hasn’t announced an exact date for the much anticipated new feature – stating only that it will arrive “soon”– we were lucky enough to test out these new real-time Pokémon GO battles. Unsurprisingly, what we played felt slick and suitably fast-paced, but with the game no longer the inescapable phenomenon it once was, is this too little too late for most players?
Even if it is, it’s hard to deny its appeal. Functioning much like the existing gym battles, PVP in Pokémon GO will see players picking teams of three and sending them into battle. Interestingly though, Niantic has opted to add in some new mechanics that keep PVP battles feeling a bit more nuanced and competitive than what’s come before.
As we sent a team of pre-selected ‘mon to duke it out against another (now rival) journalist, we found that Pokémon GO’s take on trainer battles felt surprisingly speedy. As that nostalgia-soaked Pokemon battle music began to play, it was only a matter of seconds before we were charging into the fray. Armed with an extra charge attack and a ‘protect shield’, the crux of the battle saw us frantically tapping the attack button in order to build up deadly charge attacks and unleash them on our target before they could use theirs.
As always in the world of Pokémon, getting the right type match-ups are key to victory, but thanks to the addition of the new protect shields, players get the occasional opportunity to save their ‘mon from otherwise devastating attacks. While we had a few connection issues with this very early build, otherwise, what we saw of PVP offered simplistic but satisfying fun. In other words, so far, player PVP functions exactly how you’d expect it to.
So, how do you battle other trainers?
At the moment, battles are only 1 V 1 — and you’ll be able to initiate a battle with local players by scanning their QR codes, or by challenging friends anywhere, as long as they’re on your friend list.
“The two matchmaking methods we’re supporting right now are the QR code and the friend battle methods, but we are looking into supporting more methods in the future,” explains Pokémon GO product manager Matt Slemon. “The important part for us is that we always retain the feel that this is Pokémon GO, so that [battles aren’t] a sit down and play feature. In the future, we can look at ways of drawing inspiration from classic Pokemon mechanics like double battles, triple battles etc.”
With Pokémon GO‘s servers taking a hammering with every new feature, Niantic is, unsurprisingly, choosing to load out the feature strategically. “It’ll be level gated piece by piece as we make sure that both the servers can handle both the number of trainers that are playing and the frequency that those players are playing.”
Leagues and rewards
As well as being able to battle other trainers, new players will be able to better their team leader. Battling a team leader will offer up one reward a day, with trainer battles offering up three. In the battles we played, players were rewarded with the much sought after Sinnoh stone, but obviously these tantalising rewards will vary.
“The primary reward for doing battles is stardust, stardust was always intended to be a mechanic that allows you to power up Pokémon and to make it feel like your Pokémon were growing, so it seemed like the perfect fit for a Pokémon battle system.”
When it comes to leagues, there are three main leagues available: Great League, Ultra League and Master League. The leagues will be restricted to 1,500 CP, 2,500 CP and no CP restriction respectively.
Interestingly though, Niantic doesn’t see these as a straight ‘easy’ ‘medium’ and ‘hard’ progression. When it comes to trainer V trainer battles, a basic tournament infrastructure will allow players to test different teams of ‘mon in each league, with each league having its own veteran badges as unlockable rewards.
“As far as different difficulty levels, yes higher tiers of difficulty will have better rewards for the AI battles but as far as trainer battles are concerned, we sort of want trainers to be thinking of these three leagues as equals. Similarly to many other Pokémon games each battle format sort of has its strategies to master and its own teams to build. So the types of teams you’ll be looking at building to be good in Great league are going to be very different teams to the ones that you might want to curate for Ultra league or Master League.”
“Players shouldn’t go in thinking that you know Great League is the baby steps, Ultra league is like where you kind of understanding what you’re doing and Master League is where the real action is. By no means are we balancing like that as the case. We are trying to ensure that all three of these leagues are fully tenable. We think the real fun in Pokémon always comes down to what teams can I build? And by introducing a league system like this, we think it really highlights the strengths of people who want to get good at building different types of teams. We know that having no restrictions at all means the sandbox very quickly curates down to a very small few set of Pokémon. So this gives players an opportunity both to use their biggest hard hitters in Master League while having to think really tactically about tight matchups in Great League.”
Why has PVP taken so long, and what’s next?
With PVP Pokémon GO battles seeming pretty basic so far, what took Niantic so long to implement the feature? “We wanted the gameplay to feel like it really fit the world of Pokémon GO,” explains Slemon. “Many of us on the team are huge main series Pokémon fans and some of us are even competitive main series battlers, but through iteration, we found the most success and the most fun, focusing on mechanics that fit well with the on-the-move philosophy of Pokémon GO.”
With the mainline game’s parties of six leading to constant Pokémon swapping and dragging the battles out, Niantic found that the old format simply didn’t suit the fast-paced, on-the-move nature of Pokémon GO. “Trainers shouldn’t need to block out 15 to 20 minutes to sit down and make enough time to finish a battle.”
Interestingly though, Slemon confirms that while 1 V 1 battles are the focus for now, with group battles and more complex elements from the mainline game making their way into the game in the future. “More complex mechanics will arrive in trainer battles over time, many inspired by the original Pokémon games. I think the important part is the framework, so to speak, of what Pokémon GO battles are which is alternating between fast and charge attacks. And if you take that as a foundational piece of the game design, there’s all kinds of things we can do with that. But in the future you can expect to see additional mechanics, most likely derived from a beloved version in the main series, whether its statuses, buffs, debuffs etc.”
With the classic Pokémon games and anime series pitting trainer against trainer from day one, Pokémon GO fans have been desperate to test their squad against their rivals in real time. And thanks to the tease of group battles and more complex battle mechanics, PVP battling could finally turn Pokémon GO into the AR MMO many have always wanted it to be. | {
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Catalan crisis: Carles Puigdemont 'welcome' to run in poll Published duration 29 October 2017 Related Topics Catalonia independence protests
media caption Sarah Rainsford met protesters in Madrid who are calling for a united Spain
The Spanish government has said it would welcome the participation of sacked Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont in new elections.
The central government in Madrid has ordered that fresh elections for the regional parliament of Catalonia should take place in December.
It stripped Catalonia of its autonomy after the Catalan parliament voted to declare independence.
Mr Puigdemont is urging "democratic opposition" to direct rule from Madrid.
He condemned the suspension of Catalonia's autonomy and promised to continue to "work to build a free country".
Spain has been gripped by a constitutional crisis since an independence referendum, organised by Mr Puigdemont's separatist government, was held earlier this month in defiance of a ruling by the Constitutional Court which had declared it illegal.
The Catalan government said that of the 43% of potential voters who took part, 90% were in favour of independence.
Friday saw the regional parliament declare independence, with Madrid responding by declaring the move illegal.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy then announced the dissolution of the regional parliament and the removal of Mr Puigdemont as Catalan leader, and ordered that fresh regional elections should be held.
A large anti-independence demonstration is expected to take place later on Sunday in Barcelona, Catalonia's regional capital.
The political crisis will also be played out on the football pitch in the afternoon when Real Madrid, the defending Spanish champions, travel to Catalonia to play Girona, the team supported by Mr Puigdemont.
What are the latest developments?
Saturday saw the government in Madrid remove Catalonia's autonomy and take over government functions in the region.
And Spain's interior ministry took charge of Catalonia's police after firing senior Catalan police officials.
media caption Flags in Catalonia and what they mean
A central government spokesman in Madrid, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, said Mr Puigdemont had the right to continue in politics, despite his removal from office.
"I'm quite sure that if Puigdemont takes part in these elections, he can exercise this democratic opposition," he said, quoted by Reuters.
"The Catalans will be able to say what they feel about what they've been seeing in this last year, with all sorts of failing the law, abusing the law and putting themselves outside the law," he added.
image copyright Reuters image caption Puigdemont said Madrid's actions were "premeditated aggression"
He spoke after Mr Puigdemont, in a pre-recorded address to Catalans on Saturday afternoon, said the central government's actions were "premeditated aggression" that ran "contrary to the expressed will of the citizens of our country, who know perfectly well that in a democracy it is parliaments that choose, or remove, presidents".
He added: "We continue persevering in the only attitude that can make us winners. Without violence, without insults, in an inclusive way, respecting people and symbols, opinions, and also respecting the protests of the Catalans who do not agree with what the parliamentary majority has decided."
A poll published by Spanish national newspaper El Pais on Saturday suggests more Catalans (52% to 43%) are in favour of the dissolution of the regional parliament and the holding of elections.
Fifty-five per cent of Catalan respondents opposed the declaration of independence, with 41% in favour.
What powers did Catalonia have?
Before Madrid took over the Catalan government, the region had one of the greatest levels of self-government in Spain.
It has its own parliament, police force and public broadcaster, as well as a government and president, though those have now been dismissed.
Foreign affairs, the armed forces and fiscal policy were always the sole responsibility of the Spanish government.
media caption The moment Catalan parliament declared independence
There have been pro-unity demonstrations, with protesters in Barcelona waving Spanish flags and denouncing Catalan independence.
Saturday saw several thousand people attend a rally in Madrid, waving Spanish flags and calling for national unity. Some accused Catalonia's leaders of treason.
How did we get here?
After the 1 October referendum, Mr Puigdemont signed a declaration of independence but delayed implementation to allow talks with the Spanish government.
He ignored warnings by the Madrid government to cancel the move, prompting Mr Rajoy to threaten to remove Catalan leaders and impose direct rule.
Catalonia is one of Spain's richest, most distinctive regions, with a high degree of autonomy.
Many Catalans feel they pay more to Madrid than they get back, and there are historical grievances, too, in particular Catalonia's treatment under the dictatorship of General Franco. But Catalans have been divided on the question of independence.
Are you in Catalonia? What is your reaction to the latest developments? You can share your views and experience by emailing [email protected].
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways: | {
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So imagine the thoughts that were running through Durant’s head last Tuesday night, as he waited for the results of a CT scan on his left leg to come back that would either deem his season — and hopes of lifting the Larry O’Brien Trophy for the first time — over, or give him renewed hope of returning at some point.
“It was a crucial, probably 30 minutes, where I thought that I’d have to go through this long rehab to get back onto the court,” Durant said Wednesday night before Golden State took on the Boston Celtics here at Oracle Arena.
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“And then I got a call that said it wasn’t as bad.”
That call did not end Durant’s season, but informed the superstar forward that he had been diagnosed with a Grade 2 medial collateral ligament sprain to go along with a tibial bone bruise, and that he would be reevaluated in four weeks.
In an instant, Durant’s attitude changed from despair to determination to get back onto the court as soon as possible.
“Either way, I knew it’s something I had to conquer,” Durant said. “I knew it’s something I had to work extremely hard to get back. I still do no matter what and I’ve been through it before.
“[The] reason that I’m here now is that I work extremely hard, and it’s nothing different. It’s just trying to get my knee right and get my body right, and hopefully I’ll be back to play soon.”
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Durant spoke for about 10 minutes Wednesday night — his first public comments since limping off the court inside Verizon Center while holding his left knee after Zaza Pachulia fell into his leg in the opening moments of an eventual loss in Washington.
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He came into the news conference wearing a large brace on his left leg that extended well above and below the injured knee, and he opted for a high chair at the front of the room instead of his usual chair atop the podium.
Despite the injury, Durant was in good spirits, even making a few jokes throughout his interview and downplaying the severity of the situation.
“It could be a lot worse,” he said. A lot of things could’ve happened.
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“I hurt my knee … a lot of guys go through this, go through a lot of injuries. It’s nothing nobody should be concerned about. I got a boo-boo playing basketball. It is what it is.
“I’m okay. My spirits are good. My family is good. I’m doing what I love to do every single day. So it’s all right.”
One thing Durant wouldn’t do, even as he was asked multiple times, was put a timeline on his return. The Warriors said he would be reevaluated in four weeks — meaning three weeks from Wednesday night — leaving open the possibility of him coming back at some point before the end of the regular season.
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The Warriors have privately made it clear they’re going to be extremely cautious with Durant, and with good reason, as they shouldn’t truly need him until the start of the second round of the Western Conference playoffs. The team’s coach, Steve Kerr, may have let slip a more definitive timeline during his own pregame news conference when he said he’d told Durant at some point since he suffered the injury, “six weeks go by pretty quick.”
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But whether Durant returns in four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks or more, he wouldn’t bite on any questions about when, exactly, he’ll be back on the court.
“I’m not going to think about that right now,” he said. “I know everybody wants to know and is wondering, but whenever my body tells me I’m ready to play, that’s when I’ll be ready to play.
“I’m not really thinking too far ahead. I had a great day today, and I’m looking forward to having a good one tomorrow.”
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In the meantime, Durant said he’s going to be watching games from his couch — along with TV shows, movies and playing video games — in addition to his rehabilitation program. But after missing most of the 2014-15 season with the Thunder because of three surgeries to his foot, missing a few weeks now, with the ability to return for at least the majority of the playoffs a strong possibility, has him in a far different place than in those 30 minutes he spent waiting to see if his season had come to a shocking and sudden end in his hometown.
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“I had three foot surgeries, and that was tough to go through because it was my first one being out, going under and getting surgery,” Durant said. “That was different. | {
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It has come to my attention that there are still conservatives out there who do not believe President-Elect Trump is a conventional conservative or even a conservative of any stripe whatsoever. Of course, I suspected him of being pretty much a conservative in 2013 when he spoke at our Robert L. Bartley Dinner and I have been assiduously spreading the word ever since.
Click Image to Enlarge The American Spectator
Now, unlike Ronald Reagan, he never read National Review, or the America Spectator for that matter. Nor did he vote for Barry Goldwater, our first bona fide conservative presidential candidate. These are derelictions to which he pleads guilty, but back then he was not a politician or even particularly politically aware. He was a builder and real estate guy, making billions of dollars and establishing a family, in fact, three families. That can keep a man busy.
Still, I think one would be in error to say Donald Trump was not somewhat conservative in his early years of adult life. He was for free markets, a sound dollar, and all those elements that go into patriotism. By the time he had made it through the same decades as the rest of us boomers and arrived at 2013, take my word for it he had pretty much come our way.
He was for free enterprise, a strong defense, most of our values, and his love for America made him what we would call typically American. He really had come to love America. On that he was emphatic. I cannot imagine his ever being as Laodicean as our laidback 44th president.
Moreover, in looking over his picks for cabinet I cannot believe that there are many conservatives out there who have any doubts about Donald Trumps conservatism. Not since the Reagan Administration has a president chosen such an array of right-of-center appointments to head his departments and his White House staff. Generals Flynn, Kelly, and Mattis come from the London Center, a rock solid conservative think tank.
To the Department of Education he is sending Betsy DeVos of the vaunted DeVos family, an advocate of vouchers, charter schools, and school choice. His selections for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Interior Department are solid conservatives, and then there is Senator Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department who has versed himself in the conservative classics since his college days.
I count six other professed conservatives in the cabinet ending with the estimable Ben Carson. Then there is Mr. Trumps White House team led by Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and Reince Priebus, all members of the vast right-wing conspiracy. As Machiavelli said, if you want to gain an appreciation for the Prince ponder his lieutenants.
So where does Donald Trumps conservatism come from? Now you are going to think I am pulling your leg but I am doing nothing of the sort. I am not about to joke about the origins of his conservatism. His conservatism comes from the same source as Abraham Lincolns conservatism. That would be the Whig Party of the 1830s to the mid-1850s.
I am not saying that Donald between establishing casinos and golf clubs was devoting his leisure hours to reading political tracts from the 1840s. Yet he was living the life of a Whig in the 1840s, as were other Twentieth Century business people.
The Whig Party has been ignored by modern-day progressives and left-of-center historians who are uncomfortable with the Whigs essential conservatism and the questions that the party posed: namely Jeffersonian elitism, Democratic racism, and opposition to change. These historians promote Honest Abe as a frontier romantic and ignore the Whigs who basically dissolved into the new Republican Party by the mid-1850s.
Yet there they are, and their beliefs predate Donald Trump. They favored internal improvements. What Donald now calls infrastructure. They favored economic growth, especially on the frontier. And they favored high tariffs. Donald says he favors free trade but he will use the threat of high tariffs to sustain free trade. The historian Allen C. Guelzo elaborates on all this in his admirably comprehensive Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, though he leaves Donald Trump out of it.
Mr. Guelzo identifies the Whigs (and Lincoln) as essentially a reaction to Jeffersonian idealism, which is another reason the Whigs get the cold shoulder from modern historians. The Whigs opposed Jeffersons class system with its alliance of the marginal farmer with the aristocracy. The Whigs were working class and middle class as opposed to creatures of inheritance.
They were optimistic and socially mobile as opposed to Jeffersonian Democrats idolatry of stasis and the soil. They opposed slavery, and we all know what the Democrats favored and still do in its welfare-state form. The Democrats were and today are for the status quo, and conservatives along with Donald Trump favor growth and dynamism.
I could expand upon Donald Trumps Whiggery (and ours), but you have to go to lunch. I suggest you get Mr. Guelzos book and consider the origins of Donald Trump. We are all Whigs now. | {
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RIO DE JANEIRO – Russia has been ordered to return their gold medals from the 2008 Beijing Olympics 4x100m women’s relay, after Yulia Chermoshanskaya tested positive for a banned substance in a reanalysis of her sample.
The International Olympic Committee disqualified her for testing positive for steroid use.
“The Russian Federation team is disqualified from the women’s 4x100m relay. The corresponding medals and diplomas are withdrawn and shall be returned,” it said.
READ MORE: 11 positives from London 2012 doping retests, including 4 Russians
Her relay teammates in that competition were Aleksandra Fedoriva, Yulia Gushchina and Yevgeniya Polyakova.
Belgium were second in that race and Nigeria won bronze.
The IOC stores samples for a decade to test with newer methods or for new substances and conducted targeted retests ahead of the Rio Olympics.
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A total of 98 samples were positive in reanalysis of samples from both the Beijing Games and the 2012 London Olympics. | {
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Word Reference Light is an unofficial app to use the WordReference.com online dictionary. It offers a very lightweight alternative to the website and offers a very slick and modern UI. You can easily translate words, get sample sentences and hear their pronunciations. Word Reference Light is also compatible with Cortana! Just ask for instance : "Word Reference translate water to Spanish" to get the instant translation of any word in the blink of an eye. All the following languages are supported: - English - Spanish - French - Italian - Catalan - German - Dutch - Swedish - Russian - Portuguese - Polish - Romanian - Czech - Greek - Turkish - Chinese - Japanese - Korean - Arabic | {
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What is JUST as exciting as going on that incredible vacation you've had planned for so long? The days leading up to it! Download our free Vacation Countdown App now!
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I’m a skeptic. Not the kind that believes the 9/11 attacks were the product of a grand Jewish conspiracy—we hate those guys. “Stop stealing the word ‘skeptic,’ ” we tell them, but they don’t listen to us because they assume we’re just part of the grand Jewish conspiracy too.
No, I’m the kind of skeptic who enjoys exposés of psychics and homeopaths and other charlatans who fool the public either through self-delusion or for fun and profit. It’s not just me—I’m part of a growing community (some would even call it a movement) consisting of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who value science and critical thinking. We’re represented by organizations such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which was established in 1976 and has included fellows like Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and Bill Nye.
I learned about the skeptics back in college, when I worked in a magic store and performed gigs on the side. I was a huge fan of James “The Amazing” Randi, a magician who offers a million dollars to anyone who can prove they have paranormal abilities. (There’s a huge overlap between magicians and skeptics, both of whom are interested in the ways we fool ourselves.)
When I first started finding a large audience on my skepticism website, on my podcast, and on YouTube, I wasn’t terribly bothered by the occasional rape threat, sexist slur, or insult about my looks. There was something downright amusing about a creationist calling me a cunt while praying that I’d find the love of Jesus. The threats were coming from outside of my community. Outside of my safe space.
It wasn’t until I started talking about feminism to skeptics that I realized I didn’t have a safe space.
When I first got involved with the skeptics, I thought I had found my people—a community that enjoyed educating the public about science and critical thinking. The sense of belonging I felt was akin, I imagine, to what other people feel at church. (I wouldn’t exactly know—like most skeptics, I’m an atheist.) I felt we were doing important work: making a better, more rational world and protecting people from being taken advantage of. At conventions, skeptic speakers and the audience were mostly male, but I figured that was something we could balance out with a bit of hard work and good PR.
Then women started telling me stories about sexism at skeptic events, experiences that made them uncomfortable enough to never return. At first, I wasn’t able to fully understand their feelings as I had never had a problem existing in male-dominated spaces. But after a few years of blogging, podcasting, and speaking at skeptics’ conferences, I began to get emails from strangers who detailed their sexual fantasies about me. I was occasionally grabbed and groped without consent at events. And then I made the grave mistake of responding to a fellow skeptic’s YouTube video in which he stated that male circumcision was just as harmful as female genital mutilation (FGM). I replied to say that while I personally am opposed to any non-medical genital mutilation, FGM is often much, much more damaging than male circumcision.
The response from male atheists was overwhelming. This is one example:
“honestly, and i mean HONESTLY.. you deserve to be raped and tortured and killed. swear id laugh if i could”
I started checking out the social media profiles of the people sending me these messages, and learned that they were often adults who were active in the skeptic and atheist communities. They were reading the same blogs as I was and attending the same events. These were “my people,” and they were the worst.
Thinking the solution was to educate the community, I started giving talks about the areas where feminism and skepticism overlap. I encouraged audiences to get involved with issues like ending FGM, fighting the anti-woman pseudoscience of the religious right, and aiding those branded as “witches” in rural African villages.
In June of 2011, I was on a panel at an atheist conference in Dublin. The topic was “Communicating Atheism,” and I was excited to join Richard Dawkins, one of the most famous atheists in the world, with several documentaries and bestselling books to his name. Dawkins used his time to criticize Phil Plait, an astronomer who the year prior had given a talk in which he argued for skeptics to be kinder. I used my time to talk about what it’s like for me to communicate atheism online, and how being a woman might affect the response I receive, as in rape threats and other sexual comments.
The audience was receptive, and afterward I spent many hours in the hotel bar discussing issues of gender, objectification, and misogyny with other thoughtful atheists. At around 4 a.m., I excused myself, announcing that I was exhausted and heading to bed in preparation for another day of talks.
As I got to the elevator, a man who I had not yet spoken with directly broke away from the group and joined me. As the doors closed, he said to me, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting. Would you like to come back to my hotel room for coffee?” I politely declined and got off the elevator when it hit my floor.
A few days later, I was making a video about the trip and I decided to use that as an example of how not to behave at conferences if you want to make women feel safe and comfortable. After all, it seemed rather obvious to me that if your goal is to get sex or even just companionship, the very worst way to go about attaining that goal is to attend a conference, listen to a woman speak for 12 hours about how uncomfortable she is being sexualized at conferences, wait for her to express a desire to go to sleep, follow her into an isolated space, and then suggest she go back to your hotel room for “coffee,” which, by the way, is available at the hotel bar you just left.
What I said in my video, exactly, was, “Guys, don’t do that,” with a bit of a laugh and a shrug. What legions of angry atheists apparently heard was, “Guys, I won’t stop hating men until I get 2 million YouTube comments calling me a ‘cunt.’ ” The skeptics boldly rose to the imagined challenge.
Even Dawkins weighed in. He hadn’t said anything while sitting next to me in Dublin as I described the treatment I got, but a month later he left this sarcastic comment on a friend’s blog:
Dear Muslima
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and … yawn … don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.
Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep”chick”, and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so …
And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.
Richard
Dawkins’ seal of approval only encouraged the haters. My YouTube page and many of my videos were flooded with rape “jokes,” threats, objectifying insults, and slurs. A few individuals sent me hundreds of messages, promising to never leave me alone. My Wikipedia page was vandalized. Graphic photos of dead bodies were posted to my Facebook page.
Twitter accounts were made in my name and used to tweet horrible things to celebrities and my friends. (The worst accounts were deleted by Twitter, but some, such as this one, are allowed to remain so long as they remove my name.) Entire blogs were created about me, obsessively cataloging everything I’ve ever said and (quite pathetically) attempting to dig up dirt in my past. The best they seemed to come up with was that I obtained a bachelor of science in communication from Boston University. The horror! I actually made a joke about this in one of the first talks I ever gave, many years ago: “Don’t take my word for it—I’m not a scientist. I have a BS in communication. I literally majored in talking bullshit.”
Nevertheless, my shameful past as a college graduate was “exposed” and passed around on social media and forums and blogs, as triumphant skeptics demanded I stop writing and speaking about science since I lacked the proper credentials. (Interestingly, no one has ever petitioned for my three non-scientist podcast cohosts to be removed from the show. Probably just a coincidence.)
Just a week after Dawkins’ “Dear Muslima” comment, I was scheduled to speak at The Amazing Meeting (TAM), a skeptics’ conference in Las Vegas that in years past I had fundraised thousands of dollars to send dozens of women to. In the weeks leading up to TAM, a man tweeted that he was attending and that if he ran into me in an elevator, he’d assault me.
The organizers of the conference, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF)—the organization started by the person who first introduced me to skepticism—allowed the man to attend the conference and did nothing to reassure me. I attended anyway and never went anywhere alone. This past year I finally stopped attending TAM when the organizers blamed me and other harassed women in our community for driving women away by talking about our harassment.
Other skeptical organizations have been more compassionate. Center for Inquiry (the umbrella organization for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), American Atheists, and several humanist organizations have enacted anti-harassment policies for their conferences. But still, there are leaders in the skepticism community who refuse to accept that there is a problem, and those who play the “both sides are wrong” game, insinuating that “misogynist” is just as bad an insult as “cunt.”
Meanwhile, other skeptical women are being bullied out of the spotlight and even out of their homes. My fellow writer on Skepchick, Amy Davis Roth, moved after her home address was posted on a forum dedicated to hating feminist skeptics. In September, blogger Greta Christina wrote that “when I open my mouth to talk about anything more controversial than Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster recipes or Six More Atheists Who Are Totally Awesome, I can expect a barrage of hatred, abuse, humiliation, death threats, rape threats, and more.” And Jen McCreight stopped blogging and accepting speaking engagements altogether. “I wake up every morning to abusive comments, tweets, and emails about how I’m a slut, prude, ugly, fat, feminazi, retard, bitch, and cunt (just to name a few),” she wrote. “I just can’t take it anymore.”
I know that this article will only rile up the sexist skeptics. I’ll hear about how I’m a slut who deserves whatever I get, about how I’m a liar who made everything up, about how I’ve overreacted, and about how I should just ignore the trolls and they’ll go away. I’ve written this article anyway, because I strongly believe that the goals of skeptics are good ones, like strengthening science education, protecting consumers, and deepening our knowledge of human psychology. Those goals will never be met if we continue to fester as a middling subculture that not only ignores social issues but is actively antagonistic toward progressive thought.
I also believe that old line about sunlight being the best disinfectant. Ignoring bullies does not make them go away. For the most part, the people harassing us aren’t just fishing for a reaction—they want our silence. They’re angry that feminist thought has a platform in “their community.” What they don’t get is that it’s also my community. | {
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From The Advertiser
Tim Dornin, Australian Associated Press
August 7, 2019 2:27am
The Australian Energy Regular will take four South Australian wind farm operators to court accusing them of failing to perform properly during SA’s statewide blackout in 2016.
The action in the Federal Court will allege AGL Energy Ltd, Neoen SA, Pacific Hydro Ltd and Tilt Renewables all breached the National Electricity Rules.
“The AER has brought these proceedings to send a strong signal to all energy businesses about the importance of compliance with performance standards to promote system security and reliability” chair Paula Conboy said.
“These alleged failures contributed to the black system event, and meant that Australian Energy Market Operator was not fully informed when responding to system-wide failure.”
The allegations relate to the performance of wind farms during the severe weather event that swept across SA in September 2016 and which ultimately triggered the statewide power outage.
The storms damaged more than 20 towers in the state’s mid-north, bringing down major transmission lines and causing a knock-on effect across the state’s energy grid.
About 850,000 customers lost power, with some in the state’s north and on the Eyre Peninsula left without electricity for several days.
A report from AEMO released about a month later found nine of 13 wind farms online at the time of the blackout switched off when the transmission lines came down.
It found the inability of the wind farms to ride through those disturbances was the result of safety settings that forced them to disconnect or reduce output.
The blackout also sparked a war of words between supporters of renewable power and those who blamed SA’s high reliance on wind and solar generation as a contributing factor.
That included an infamous confrontation between former Premier Jay Weatherill and then Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg at a media conference in Adelaide, with Mr Weatherill lashing the coalition’s “anti-South Australian stance” as a disgrace.
Current Energy Minister Angus Taylor said it was important for the regulator to enforce market rules.
“We need to have reliable power in this country … and that means all generators need to perform,” he said.
In its action, the AER alleges each of the wind farm operators failed to ensure that their plant and associated facilities complied with their generator performance standard requirement to ride-through certain disturbances.
It also alleges that the wind farm operators failed to provide automatic protection systems to enable them to ride-through voltage disturbances to ensure continuity of supply, in contravention of the National Electricity Rules.
The AER is seeking declarations, penalties, compliance program orders and costs.
The blackout also sparked a war of words between supporters of renewable power and those who blamed SA’s high reliance on wind and solar generation as a contributing factor.
That included an infamous confrontation between former Premier Jay Weatherill and then Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg at a media conference in Adelaide, with Mr Weatherill lashing the coalition’s “anti-South Australian stance” as a disgrace.
Current Energy Minister Angus Taylor said it was important for the regulator to enforce market rules.
“We need to have reliable power in this country … and that means all generators need to perform,” he said.
In its action, the AER alleges each of the wind farm operators failed to ensure that their plant and associated facilities complied with their generator performance standard requirement to ride-through certain disturbances.
It also alleges that the wind farm operators failed to provide automatic protection systems to enable them to ride-through voltage disturbances to ensure continuity of supply, in contravention of the National Electricity Rules.
The AER is seeking declarations, penalties, compliance program orders and costs.
Full story here.
HT/ozspeaksup
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Acesse os bastidores da política de graça com Crusoé e O Antagonista+ (7 dias)
A boca de urna do Ibope em Minas Gerais mostra outra surpresa: Romeu Zema, do Partido Novo, muito além do que mostraram as últimas pesquisas. E Fernando Pimentel fora.
O instituto mostra Zema, que anunciou apoio a Jair Bolsonaro, com 41%, disputando o segundo turno com Antonio Anastasia (29%).
O petista Pimentel –atual governador mineiro– tem 22%. | {
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Trece años después del hundimiento del Prestige en las costas gallegas, el Ministerio de Fomento sigue sin saber cómo actuar en una crisis con un barco que pueda poner en riesgo medioambiental las aguas del país. Evidentemente las 77.000 toneladas de crudo que tenía el buque que ocasionó la mayor marea negra en España no son comparables con las cerca de 1.410 toneladas de fueloil del tipo IFO 380 que tiene en su interior el pesquero ruso Oleg Naydenov, pero sí que existen similitudes en la gestión de los dos casos.
La Guardia Civil encuentra una tortuga contaminada
Saber más
Todo comenzó el sábado al mediodía cuando se declaró un incendio en la sala de máquinas del buque, que estaba atracado en el Puerto de La Luz y Las Palmas de la capital grancanaria. En un primer momento se realizaron labores de extinción de este incendio hasta las 03.00 horas de la madrugada, cuando se decidió remolcar el barco, seriamente dañado, fuera de la dársena portuaria porque la flotabilidad del mismo estaba en riesgo y porque ponía en peligro a la población y al resto de barcos atracados.
A partir de aquí, al igual que con el petrolero, se improvisó porque, según señala Jesús Cisneros, profesor de Contaminación Marina de la Facultad de Ciencias del Mar de la Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, el Oleg Naydenov se remolcó hasta aguas de Fuerteventura sin tener en cuenta la opinión de técnicos. El profesor destaca que no existen planes de contingencia y por tanto, no se sabe quién toma las decisiones.
"Antes del plan de contigencia es necesario realizar una evaluación de los medios ya que no tenemos personal especializado en Costas", subraya y añade que Canarias debería contar con profesionales preparados que organicen los apoyos y coordinen a las diferentes administraciones, aparte de denunciar que en el Archipiélago no existen fórmulas suficientes para atajar un posible vertido, ya que no se saben de los recursos con los que se cuentan, lo cual quedó evidenciado en el vertido de petróleo que llegó a la Playa de El Cabrón el pasado verano.
El barco, como denuncian varios grupos ecologistas, fue "paseado" hasta aguas del sur de Fuerteventura y de aquí, una vez que el fuego fue sofocado, se remolcó al sur de Gran Canaria, donde se iba a estudiar su estado para repararlo o no en el Puerto de La Luz. Fue en este camino de regreso a Gran Canaria cuando la embarcación se hundió, antes de ser evaluada por Salvamento Marítimo para saber el verdadero estado del mismo. Fuentes consultadas por este medio aseguran que las labores de extinción no fueron las adecuadas, ya que sólo se utilizó agua, lo que provocó que el barco se escorara y, finalmente, no aguantara el peso y se fuera a pique al sur de Maspalomas, uno de los polos turísticos más importantes del país.
Así, lo ideal habría sido intentar sofocar el fuego con espuma, lo que habría evitado que el buque se ladeara, apuntan las mismas fuentes. También explican que, al llevar el barco a alta mar, lo que se ha hecho es "multiplicar el problema" porque "le quitas el 50% de apoyo para actuar en él". Esta fuente portuaria cree que el Oleg debió haber sido trasladado hasta un lugar confinado, como un puerto refugio, en el que poder actuar, una opinión que también comparte Cisneros, quien indica que "podría ser" el Puerto de Arinaga, situado a unos 40 kilómetros al sur de la capital y que también pertenece a la Autoridad Portuaria de Las Palmas.
Mientras, fuentes oficiales de Puertos han protestado por el "cero informativo" con el que ha actuado Capitanía Marítima una vez se decidió sacar el barco de dique Reina Sofía, una decisión que también ven como errónea porque, aunque consideran acertado el haberlo remolcado para evitar un percance, se debió haber llevado hasta una distancia prudente. Desde el Puerto explican que los remolcadores que actuaron en un principio en el Oleg Naydenov fueron alquilados a la compañía Boluda y que van a intentar cobrarle al armador del barco ruso los costes ocasionados.
Por otro lado, aclaran que el pesquero estaba atracado tras haber sido reparado en los astilleros de Astican y que por tanto estaba en buen estado, con las inspecciones recién pasadas y pertrechado con cartones y el combustible necesario para faenar durante varios meses en alta mar. De esta manera, desmienten posibles insinuaciones de que haya estado en Gran Canaria descargando pesca capturada de manera ilegal en caladeros africanos.
Área de gran riqueza ecológica
Tanto Greenpeace como Ecologistas en Acción han alertado del altísimo nivel ecológico de la zona en la que ha estado el buque durante las tareas de remolque, primero al sur de Jandía, un área que en el mes de marzo fue declarado Lugar de Interés Comunitario (LIC) por sus valores ambientales, y luego la zona de hundimiento, que está a 15 millas de Maspalomas, zona turística declarada Reserva Natural Especial por sus valiosas dunas.
En las aguas donde ha zozobrado el barco, un espacio marino perteneciente a la Red Natura 2000, la plataforma submarina alcanza su máxima extensión, siendo una de las áreas más productivas en términos de ecología y pesca de Canarias, con hábitats de interés como los sebadales o poblaciones de cetáceos y tortugas marinas, entre otras. De hecho el sur de Gran Canaria es una zona en la que se realizan avistamientos de estos animales, aparte de área de pesca deportiva.
Jesús Cisneros sostiene que a la profundidad a la que se ha hundido el Oleg Naydenov, a unos 2.400 metros, y teniendo en cuenta la distancia con la costa, un vertido "no sería un desastre", aunque algunos rastros de fuel bastante degradado podrían llegar a la isla. Además, debido a la gran profundidad a la que se encuentra el buque y a las corrientes submarinas, el posible vertido podría aflorar a una posición completamente distinta al lugar donde está hundido el pesquero.
Si los tanques en los que está el combustible reventaran debido a la presión de la profundidad y este aflorara a la superficie, el fuel quedaría a merced de los vientos, los cuales en este momento son de componente norte, por lo que se desplazaría hacia el sur con una corriente débil, pero si hay un cambio y empieza a soplar de componente sur, llegará a la isla.
En este sentido, el patrón mayor de la Cofradía de Pescadores de Arguineguín, Ricardo Ortega, espera que en caso de que se produzca un vertido, sea lo antes posible, ya que en esta época las corrientes del mar se dirigen hacia el sur y es a partir de este mes cuando normalmente comienzan a cambiar su dirección hacia la costa. Aparte, aclara que el fuel afectaría sobre todo a peces que habitan entre la superficie y profundidades medias, como los longorones y las sardinas. Ortega añade que el problema cuando el fuel llega a la arena es que este es complicado de limpiar porque impregna la misma y además, apenas se ve.
Según informa Salvamento Marítimo el hundimiento del barco ha dejado una sucesión de manchas de combustible que se extiende por una franja de seis kilómetros de longitud y dos de anchura las cuales, según el capitán marítimo Pedro Mederos, son las que suelen quedar cuando un buque naufraga. | {
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Mozambique’s first Islamist attacks shock the region
2017-10-27
Just when the ancient Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo)-Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) quarrel was showing some signs of being resolved, a new armed group has popped up from nowhere this month to launch several armed and deadly attacks in the north. These are believed to be the first Islamist attacks in Mozambique and have caused shock and bewilderment in the country and the region.
According to the Shabelle Media Network in Mogadishu, a group of about 30 men attacked three police stations in the small town of Mocímboa da Praia in the northern-most province of Cabo Delgado, about 30 km from the Tanzania border, early on 5 October.
‘There was a prompt response from the police; two AK-47 rifles were seized,’ said Inacio Dina, spokesperson of the General Command of the Mozambican police at a press conference in Maputo. He said two police officers were shot dead, and two gang members were captured. According to other reports, 16 people died, including a community leader.
The same group, it seems, struck early on 21 October, clashing with government forces in the fishing village of Maluku, some 30 km from Mocímboa da Praia. ‘These attacks prompted the villagers to flee and the village is currently deserted,’ a security industry source said.
Further clashes were reported by independent sources during the night of 22 October at a village called Columbe, about 16 km south of an installation of Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum Corporation which is exploring for oil and natural gas there. The company is evacuating its personnel, the sources say.
What motivated the local al-Shabaab to suddenly launch these attacks, is hazy
Locals called these raiders ‘al-Shabaab’. Whether they call themselves this too, or whether it’s because of their headgear and what they reportedly told locals after occupying Mocímboa da Praia – that they rejected state health and education and refused to pay taxes – is not yet clear.
There was understandably speculation at first that they were linked to the Somali jihadist group of the same name. But Dina cast doubt on this interpretation from the start, as he said they spoke in local languages including Swahili and Portuguese. There now seems to be consensus that they are local Muslims. Eric Morier-Genoud, the Mozambican-born political scientist from Queens University, Belfast, wrote in The Conversation that this was a group of local Muslims formed in 2014 and calling itself al-Shabaab.
Mozambique has a significant Muslim population ranging in size from somewhere between an official 17.8% of the total population to, unofficially, 30%, according to some Muslim community members themselves. It’s mostly concentrated along the northern coast.
What motivated the local al-Shabaab to suddenly launch these concerted attacks at this time is hazy. The Muslim faith was originally discouraged by the ruling Frelimo party in its Marxism-Leninist phase. But after it shifted to multiparty democracy in the early 1990s, this policy changed and all faiths were tolerated – if only to avoid alienating potential voters.
Nonetheless, there are differences over questions of education and perhaps other issues, the same sort of issues as with similar fundamentalist groups elsewhere. The local al-Shabaab – like Boko Haram in northern Nigeria – evidently objects to Western-style education, and particularly to boys and girls being taught in the same classroom, some observers say. For Frelimo, on the other hand, boys and girls should be taught together. Anything less would be tantamount to discrimination.
The local al-Shabaab – like Boko Haram – evidently objects to Western-style education
Professor André Thomashausen, former head of international law at Unisa, and a long-time observer of Mozambique, believes it is ‘Frelimo’s obsession with interfering with the Muslim faith in Mozambique that has caused sects and divisions to appear.’
He believes ‘this “next Renamo” will feed on deep divisions in the Mozambique Islamic community, fuelled by Saudi-Wahhabi zealots who have ingratiated themselves with Frelimo.’ Most Mozambican Muslims follow the mystic Sufi school rather than the harder-line Wahhabi sect. The Wahhabis have nonetheless gained greater political and economic influence.
This inter-sectoral rivalry, however, doesn’t seem to explain the al-Shabaab phenomenon since the local al-Shabaab is apparently also Wahhabi.
Dr Liazzat Bonate, a historian at the University of the West Indies in Saint Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, suggests the problem may be more about class, race and exclusion. She says there are ‘official Wahhabi groups, such as those affiliated to the Islamic Council which is officially recognised and collaborates closely with the government and international NGOs and even donor states’.
‘There are also non-official Wahhabis, such as Ahl al-Sunna, which are not recognised officially and represent opposition to the Islamic Council and everyone else. They are coming from the anti-racist stance, as they accuse the Islamic Council of being Indian-dominated, and also, they tend to have often anti-establishment positions, though sometimes they are close to the official opposition such as Renamo, or do not recognise anyone.’
She says the anti-establishment Wahhabis tend to represent lower classes and poor rural blacks, who complain about injustice, racism and oppression.
Whether this explains al-Shabaab is too soon to say. But she points out that the socio-economic ground is fertile for it to gain support among the northern Muslim youth who are being cut out of the incipient prosperity produced by the finds of oil, gas and other natural resources in Cabo Delgado.
The attacks happened in Cabo Delgado where locals’ livelihoods are threatened by business conglomerates
She believes it is significant that the attacks happened in Cabo Delgado where ‘the lands and the seashore where people traditionally fish are being occupied by business conglomerates.’
Bonate says many abuses are happening around extraction of natural resources in the province. She cites a report from France 24 in July this year that showed images of Mozambican police allegedly ‘abusing, humiliating and torturing’ artisanal miners. They had been arrested for mining without permits near the Montepuez ruby mine. Though the report said the British company Gemfields was the majority stakeholder in the mine, Bonate believes the local ownership is aligned with Frelimo.
‘Local people feel little positive impact on their lives,’ Bonate says. She warns that the ‘al-Shabaab’ eruption ‘is not to be taken lightly; it needs focused and serious research.’
If the underlying grievances are neglected, militant Islamists will gain support. ‘If the trust is breached, the consequences will be like in other places where Muslims feel left out and cheated, and their fate seems to fit well into the grand Muslim victimhood narrative … which is instrumentalised so skilfully by the Islamist political groups.’
Morier-Genoud agrees: ‘The government must devise a careful and well-thought response to this new Islamist threat. Downplaying the affair as “banditry” and dealing only with the sect when it’s clear that there are broader religious and social dynamics at play risks seeing the problem re-emerge elsewhere. In turn, going for an all-out repression to eradicate the “Islamist threat” could radicalise other Muslims and root the problem deeper and more widely.’
Cheryl Frank, head of the Transnational Threats and International Crime programme at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, says that internationally, Southern Africa is widely seen as immune to terrorism, though regional governments are very worried.
‘We currently have a window of opportunity for prevention and early intervention that is unusual and shouldn’t be ignored,’ she says.
Peter Fabricius, ISS Consultant
In South Africa, Daily Maverick has exclusive rights to re-publish ISS Today articles. For media based outside South Africa and queries about our re-publishing policy, email us. | {
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When the Haitian slaves fought for independence from the French, they sang the Marseillaise as the French shot them. Liberty isn’t for everyone, history hasn’t ended, and our approaches to the European-invented “rights of men” are little different two centuries later.
If you want to know what it takes to become a fully accepted and integrated European citizen, a trip to Malta may be worth your while. The indebted Maltese government is now “selling citizenship()”:http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25959458 for €1.15 million. Greece, Cyprus, Macedonia and Spain already offer “fast-track resident permits()”:http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/shortcuts/2013/dec/10/want-to-buy-citizenship-super-rich-malta-passports for foreign investors who invest a minimum of €250,000 in their country. Following the same logic, Cyprus’ President Anastasiades offered to “mitigate to some extent the damage” suffered by Russian investors when his country crashed by giving Cypriot citizenship to those who lost at least “3 million euros.()”:http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22147643
Wealth and privilege is our culture
The late Chicago School economist “Gary Becker suggested()”:http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323375204578271531542362850 that such market-based immigration systems “attract skilled, productive, entrepreneurial, and disproportionately young people, who are more likely to be positive contributors to the economy.” Becker saw their willingness to pay or borrow a large sum of money to obtain a passport as an indication that such persons have the fiber to be good citizens. But this seemingly logical link between economic sacrifice and good citizenship could not apply to the thousands of people sitting on “Lampedusa()”:http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21603013-why-so-many-africans-still-risk-their-lives-reach-europe-no-wonder-they-still who have spent their entire economic existence on a boat trip to the Promised Land.
When it comes to determining who possesses the moral fiber to be a European citizen, the ultimate measure is not race, religion or culture, but wealth. Wealth and privilege is our culture. It’s easy to miss this amidst the chatter of Alternative für Deutschland, the UK Independence Party and the like, each tormented by their respective hordes of Poles stealing their jobs, Romanians stealing their women, and so on. But one must understand this chatter for what it is: anti-Rest of the World conservatism more than anti-Rest of Europe. Even before our dream of a united Europe is back on track, its laws and institutions will see to it that the xenophobia inside its borders is tempered and right-wing sentiments can be used solely to determine how we deal with their favorite menace: “the Algerians()”:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-charles-g-cogan/france-the-makeover-of-th_b_5393098.html, “the Moroccans()”:http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/daan-welling–2/8473-geert-wilders-and-dutch-racism – the Africans in general.
Our legal systems have a long and proud tradition of treating criminals as outsiders and outsiders as criminals. When it comes to immigrants, not much has changed. Stuck as we are in the present, we tend to see ourselves as outside of history. All of this is more obvious from the point of view of those who spent their last few centuries having their countries invaded and occupied, and who now have to struggle ever more to join the world’s largest job market.
A threat to “our” citizens
In the 13 years that the Ivorian worker Didier Pierre Paulet – who recently brought “a case against the United Kingdom()”:http://www.humanrightseurope.org/2014/05/court-uk-seizure-of-workers-wages-breached-human-rights-law before the European Court of Human Rights – lived in the UK, he did nothing a noble citizen wouldn’t do; he worked and minded his own business. Unfortunately, he did all of this with a false French passport. In addition to a prison sentence and a recommendation for deportation, the prosecution sought to confiscate his earnings, as though they were the proceeds of drug dealing or money laundering. Paulet’s holding a job hadn’t harmed any UK or European citizen. His presence alone was a threat. A threat to the uncrowdedness of our streets and the comparatively high standards of living, a threat to the job markets reserved for “our” citizens.
Talking to the Medici, Machiavelli framed the choice as being whether to remain prince and to do whatever is necessary to that end, or to cease to be a prince. As our Union grows larger, stronger and more diverse, so the walls around it will grow to enormous heights until the “climate genocide()”:http://www.salon.com/2013/09/05/naomi_klein_big_green_groups_are_crippling_the_environmental_movement_partner/ and capital excesses of inequality lie out of sight and out of mind. It is in the trenches around Europe and the continents that lie south of it that we will defend our culture, our wealth and our standard of living. | {
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If I must choose one thing about me that stuns the world, it's definitely my tits. I've got a pair of the most incredible tits that are just begging to be squeezed. My name is KittyQ; I'm a tall girl from Italy that loves to make the world go crazy for her with her incredible body. I was born in 1993 and became a KittyQ at StasyQ model the second I turned 19. That became my biggest preoccupation that I put all my efforts into bringing my body to sheer perfection. I have an orgasmic round butt with sexy long legs that get attention everywhere I go, and you can see that on my free KittyQ pics. My tight ass and sexy pussy could have a Twitter account and still have millions of followers. In the free time, I love making plans for the future, checking erotic nudes, going to gala events, drinking expensive drinks and trying many new things. I'm crazy about fashion and always dress by the latest standards. | {
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I generally refuse to be drawn into the Yellen-Summers horse race because (a) everything that can be said, has been said, (b) I have no original information or insight, and (c) it’s all speculation anyway. But I’m going to comment on one parenthesis in Felix Salmon’s good summary post, since it has broader application:
Summers is, to put it mildly, not good at charming those he considers to be his inferiors, but he’s surprisingly excellent at cultivating people with real power.
In my personal experience, especially in the business world, this is absolutely the worst personality trait you can find in anyone you are thinking of hiring. You see it a lot, especially in senior executives. Unfortunately, at the time of hiring, you only see the ability to manage up—not the inability to treat subordinates decently. By the time you figure it out, you’ve already suffered serious organizational damage. (Thanks to my friend Marcus Ryu for identifying this problem so clearly.)
Powerful, self-confident people—like Barack Obama—are especially vulnerable, because they tend to make decisions based on intuitive judgments, and they form those judgments based on personal impressions—exactly the thing that two-faced psychopaths are good at making. (I’m not saying that Larry Summers is necessarily a psychopath, mind you—but apparently a lot of corporate CEOs are.)
This is just another reason that it makes sense to hire people based on their objective records, not the warm fuzzy feeling you get from the job interview. Thankfully, Summers has a record to go on. Hopefully Obama will keep it in mind. | {
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I’m tracking Climate Zombies: every Republican candidate for House, Senate, and governor who claims that global warming is a hoax, doubts the science of climate change, and wants a new Dark Ages for America.
First, a brief note on why. During the Bush years, most Republican politicians ducked questions on climate change, professed a desire to do something vague and unspecified about energy independence, and derided cap-and-trade. Only a few, led by James Inhofe (R-River in Egypt), openly mocked science. The emergence of the Tea Party has changed that. The respected science journal Nature, in a piece entitled Science Scorned:
Denialism over global warming has become a scientific cause célèbre within the movement. Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”, has called climate-change science “the biggest scam in the history of the world”. The Tea Party’s leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research — which Beck has equated with eugenics. The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government. Under the administration of George W. Bush, science in policy had already taken knocks from both neglect and ideology. Yet President Barack Obama’s promise to “restore science to its rightful place” seems to have linked science to liberal politics, making it even more of a target of the right. US citizens face economic problems that are all too real, and the country’s future crucially depends on education, science and technology as it faces increasing competition from China and other emerging science powers. Last month’s recall of hundreds of millions of US eggs because of the risk of salmonella poisoning, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, are timely reminders of why the US government needs to serve the people better by developing and enforcing improved science-based regulations. Yet the public often buys into anti-science, anti-regulation agendas that are orchestrated by business interests and their sponsored think tanks and front groups.
So how infected with stupid is the GOP? Last installment looked at AK, AZ, NM, NH, OK, and WI. This time, five smaller states throughout the country.
Iowa: Climate Zombies in the heartland
Sen. Chuck Grassley has waffled, but sounds infected:
But the scientific aspect that I still reserving judgment on is the extent to which it’s manmade or natural. And it’s reasonable, considering that there’s at least a natural factor in it, because historically, and you can go to the core drillings in the glaciers to get proof of this, that we’ve had decades and decades, and maybe even centuries of periods of time when there’s been a tremendous rise in temperature, and then a tremendous fall in temperature. And all you’ve got to do is look at the little ice age of the mid-last millennia as an example. And so we’ve got to single out what’s natural and what’s manmade before you can make policy.
Or, in English: Huh?
Rep. Steve King (Iowa-05) considers global warming a “fraud” and a “modern rain dance.” Rep. Candidate Brad Zaun (Iowa-03), a Gingrich protege, was caught on video questioning global warming.
So far, candidate Ben Lange (Iowa-01) and incumbent Tom Latham (Iowa-04) have simply complained about the cost of “cap and tax.” I haven’t found them questioning the science. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa-02) seems to be quiet on the subject. Yesterday she told the Des Moines Register editorial board that “the ability of biofuels to compete in the future depends on what happens with the price of oil,” which tells me that she has no sense of the massive subsidies already extended to the fossil fuel industry. And I don’t have information on candidate for governor Terry Branstad; governors seem to speak less than Congressional candidates on this subject.
Semi-final score: three Climate Zombies, four unknowns.
Missouri: Show me Climate Zombies
Incumbent Todd Akin (Mo.-02) thinks “climate change” is what happens from winter to spring. Candidate Ed Martin (Mo.-03) devotes part of his website to bashing “global warming hucksters.” Candidate Vicky Hartzler (Mo.-04) tweets about the “hoax” of a “beautiful global warming day.” Candidate Jacob Turk (Mo.-05) trashes “global warming extremists” and “false science” on his website. Incumbent Jo Ann Emerson (Mo.-08) has been complaining about “junk science” since 2000. And Blaine Luetkemeyer (Mo.-09) has drafted, in his own words, a bill that “would prohibit U.S. contributions to the IPCC, which is nothing more than a group of U.N. bureaucrats that supports man-made claims on global warming that many scientists disagree with.”
I haven’t found any specific statement by Robyn Hamlin, candidate in Mo.-01, but she’s a Campaign for Liberty organizer. Billy Long of Mo.-07 likewise has the potential to be a fount of stupid. And Rep. Sam Graves (Mo.-06) hasn’t specifically come out against science, but he lets Peabody Coal write his talking points and claims that the Gulf disaster could have been avoided if we’d only drilled in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Thus, I’m considering them as infected.
Senate candidate Roy Blunt believes that “There isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth.” More information can be found at Big Oil Blunt.
Semi-final score: a perfect ten out of ten.
Vermont and Washington: Climate Zombies in the ever-green mountains
To keep things fair, I looked at two states with strong blue/green reputations.
In Vermont, Paul Beaudry (Vt.-AL) considers global warming “nothing but a lie.” I don’t have any information on the approach to climate science of Senatorial candidate Len Britton. Gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie states:
I believe that scientific data clearly show that climate change is real, and as a result of human behavior, the world is getting warmer. Carbon emissions are playing a large role in the warming of our planet.
Vermont has one Climate Zombie, one clearly uninfected ca
ndidate, and one unknown.
Washington state looks relatively good. Candidate James Watkins (Wash.-01) scores points for believing that global warming is real. Jaime Herrera (Wash.-03) is considered an establishment Republican who won a primary against a global warming denier, and I don’t have any information on her views on science. Likewise, I don’t have any information on Doug Cloud (Wash.-06). Dave Reichert questioned the cause of global warming, notably during campaign season 2006, but voted for ACES in 2009, so it’s unclear whether he’s infected or not.
On the other hand, incumbent Doc Hastings (Wash.-04) complained about last year’s Copenhagen climate conference: “Instead of allowing all scientific opinions to be heard, this conference was devoid of an honest, comprehensive debate.” Incumbent Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.-05) thinks that Al Gore deserves an A in creative writing and an F in science. The Facebook page of candidate Dick Muri (Wash.-09) has a long, rambling statement about “congressional investigation into global warming scientists suppressing data and dissenting opinions,” the “emerging ice age” of the 1970s, and the like. Candidate John Koster hasn’t said anything that I can find, but he’s been endorsed by Sarah Palin.
While Dino Rossi (Wash.-Sen) was supposed to be more moderate than his Tea Party rival, he “believes Earth is warming but isn’t sure how much humans are to blame.” Consider this a low-level Climate Zombie infection.
Semi-final score: one wholly uninfected Republican and two potentially reasonable GOPers, one confused soul (Reichert), one potentially infected, and four Climate Zombies. The Republicans aren’t running a candidate in Wash.-07.
Utah: Zombies in Zion
Utah is one of my favorite states for scenery; its politicians, not so much. The only surprise here is why I can’t find any denier statements by candidates Morgan Philpott (Utah-02) and Mike Lee (Utah). Philpott is a protege of Rob Bishop (Utah-01), whose website mentions that “scientific data underlying the studies of global warming appear to have been manipulated to produce an intended outcome.” Jason Chaffetz (Utah-03) considers global warming a “farce.”
Gov. Gary Herbert, up for reelection in 2010, thinks that the science is not conclusive.
Mike Lee ousted, for not being conservative enough, the man who claimed that “greenhouse gas emissions have absolutely nothing whatever to do with clean air. CO2 does not add to pollutants or cause asthma or any of the other things you think of with dirty air.” Anyone want to take bets on Lee’s thoughts on science?
Final score: five out of five Climate Zombies, with extra bonus points to the state legislature for its joint resolution asking the EPA “to cease its carbon dioxide reduction policies, programs, and regulations until climate data and global warming science are substantiated.”
The rise of the extreme right wing means that science, common sense, and logic are falling by the wayside like extras in a George A. Romero movie. | {
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Is Late Stage Dream a reference to late stage capitalism?
On Late Stage Dreams there is a song with German lyrics that sonically comes out of left field. Would you mind talking a bit about the song? I also understand that Ines worked on the animation for the lyric video
Does the band have any recurring themes in the song writing?
Is there a favourite Julia Robert song and what have you all been listening to recently while the world is turning upside down?
How are you all currently holding up under the COVID-19 pandemic and how has it affected you individually and as a band?
From your perspective, how are things looking for the Cape Town music scene post COVID-19?
What does punk rock mean to you?
We interviewed Julia Robert about ‘ Late Stage Dream ’, their latest EP, released 10 July, during COVID-19 lockdown.Yes, but also a reference to all late stages. I like to think of it referring to the late-stage dream of us being in a band while maintaining jobs and normal lives and hanging out with other musicians who are all much younger. And yeah, kinda reminding people that late stage is ok, and that you can do unconventional things at all points in your life.Yeah! It’s like still playing cops and robbers when you’re in your mid-30s.So, I often feel like I look at my life in stages and constantly feel like I am in a late stage/end of an era. This makes me reflect on my own life and compare it to others. This makes me depressed and anxious because I am not where I am told to be (in my life). This way of thinking is stupid. For me, late stage dream is a reminder that it's all in your head, in your subconscious, nothing makes sense, therefore you are allowed to do and feel what you want whenever you want! I think the songs on the EP reflect this way of thinking.I see it as less about capitalism and more about the overall feeling that there is always An Ending. You know? Like for the last two decades we keep being told we're at the end of an era. End of the 90's, the 2000's, end of an era, rock is dead, third wave feminism is over, the fourth industrial revolution is no longer upon us- it is here now, and it's almost over... Every time we get told shit like this it becomes more absurd, and now in the current media-dense environment where ideologies and personal conflicts are rammed down our throats every day, every hour, the whole point of existence seems totally random and uncontrollable. Even though time and eras are becoming less and less relevant we still try think of things in a straight line, that things have a beginning, an early stage, a middle, a late stage and an end; when really everything is more of a cloudy doughnut of confusion.... All our ideologies, beliefs and systems are just dreams concocted in the minds of evil and good people that swirl around us. So calling something late stage is absurd, and that’s ok, so long as you embrace it.The song was written by us as a band in hopes of tapping into some sort of 80s music, since we are quite a 90’s driven band, going into a different sonic era is always fun. So that was the basis of the song. The structure was already there when I added lyrics, which were initially in English but eventually felt better suited to the music, in German. I wrote a lot of the lyrics in Austria, which, now that I think about it, almost definitely influenced the language choice.The lyrics were written while there were GBV protests and Women's marches all around South Africa in August/September 2019. I felt helpless in Europe because I wasn’t there to be part of something I felt strongly about, so the lyrics were how I tried to connect to that moment.The rotoscoped videos was an idea the band had. We wanted to create a translated lyric video for our audiences that didn’t speak German. So we got in touch with a bunch of our bestest womxn friends and fam and got them to submit footage of them doing anything they wanted to do. Myself and the super amazing Caitlin Barraclough animated these 1 - 5 second clips of just over 40 womxn for the video It appears we do. Often the concepts and themes of being a normal human put into everyday situations with a twist come to the surface, like being a shopkeeper, wanting to have sex with your best friend, going to an awkward dinner party, believing in aliens, not having anxiety while everyone around you does etc.We do often touch on themes of anxiousness and nervousness, but it's not often framed in a completely negative way. There's furtive energy running through much of our music and the way we write is a bit frenzied so that's probably got a lot to do with it. We do, as much as possible, try to offer people hope and encouragement, but it's usually coming from a place of "well things are pretty messed up, and so are you, but that's ok because we're all just lil spots on a lil speck of matter floating through a vast empty space”.I kinda tend to just be really smitten with whatever is our most recent effort. So, as lame as it might sound, the latest EP. It's like new children!Outside of our own music I’ve been listening to a lot of Synthwave . Went through a Joni Mitchell bit. Lots of our fellow musicians' new work like: The loose ends Fay Lamour , and Ruff Majik I also tend to like our latest stuff most!During lockdown I’ve found myself finding a lot of comfort in some pretty deep songwriters stuff like Father John Misty Kurt Vile and Nick Cave - there’s a lot ofplaying in our house.Otherwise I find myself listening to alot of 80's new wave playlists as well.For me it’s Fuzzy Feelings . I can’t explain why. Don’t tell the other songs!I've been listening to a LOT of cheesey ambient housey loungey type stuff recently. I made a playlist of it, I’m sure your readers will love it. So my lockdown soundtrack has been that, or Sun Kil Moon's Tiny Cities , which is a bunch of Modest Mouse covers by a grumpy folk crooner. It's a mixed bag.Yes, Sugar Sick Day and Starkes Mädchen … That’s a lot more than one!Recently I’ve been listening to: Agar Agar Smashing Pumpkins and Billie Holiday The band has largely been on hold. We were lucky that we had an EP to release during this time. But mostly we're in a state of hibernation. We are going to be playing some shows at the end of August. One show is an international punk festival called Bandemic run by these crazy Aussie chaps. The other is a StoorSession which will be us looking just about as fancy as we’ve ever looked.But I think mostly over the last 100-odd days everyone is just taking some time to reflect on their own missions and struggles. People, at the start of lockdown, kept on going on about how lockdown was the perfect time to spend time on all your creative projects, but that's stupid. Lockdown is time you need to spend staying sane, not putting pressure on yourself to be more productive and creative than ever. Plus, if everyone writes a whole bunch of music in lockdown we're going to have 6,000 songs about lockdown in three months time, and who the fuck wants to listen to that shit? I heard a song the other day praising lockdown as a beautiful time in which everyone can reconnect with their spirituality. That was pretty wildly insensitive when peeps are struggling to eat and family members are dying. I digress. In summary: We’re taking it squeezy and looking after ourselves.Yeah we are super fortunate to be working from home and have all kept our jobs. “The band” was totally more affected by this than us personally, as we had a rather busy April and May planned. We had to cancel loads of shows and a trip to Joburg. We also had to cancel a potential tour to Europe planned for September / October.I think bands are going to be forced to reflect on themselves, the quality of their music and who their audience is in this new more digital situation we’re all in. Bands will have to work harder on their digital presence and release tactics. If they don’t they’re gonna be in a kak situation where 10 people are listening to their live streams that get put out for free.Perhaps a re-look at the scene was necessary in the first place? It's hard to say. It doesn’t look like live shows will happen this year, but the online live show presence and people's ability to continue recording and releasing music might keep the scene thriving, regardless of live sweaty shows.I am way less optimistic than that. Venues will be shut down, artists will be broke. It's going to be a hard thing to get back on its feet. It may come round again, but it ain't gonna be pretty in the meantime. And maybe Ines is right on there, perhaps the scene in this country needs a total reimagining. Clinging to live shows as the be-all and end-all of a scene may actually be holding us back in this country more than it’s pulling us forward.It's ok to be ungly and angry, even if you don't know why.Yeah! It’s like doing, saying and standing up for what you believe in.Julia Robert are:- bass- vox, keys, guitar- guitar- drumsJulia Robert - You Talk With Control live at EVOL | {
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Summary: Researchers re-purposed CRISPR gene editing technology to study genes targeted by particular antibiotics. The study sheds light on how pharmacologists can improve existing antibiotics and develop new ones.
Source: University of Wisconsin Madison.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher and his collaborators at the University of California, San Francisco have repurposed the gene-editing tool CRISPR to study which genes are targeted by particular antibiotics, providing clues on how to improve existing antibiotics or develop new ones.
Resistance to current antibiotics by disease-causing pathogens is a growing problem, one estimated to endanger millions of lives and cost over $2 billion each year in the U.S.
“What we need to do is to figure out new weaknesses in these bacteria,” says Jason Peters, a UW-Madison professor of pharmaceutical sciences, who developed the new system.
The technique, known as Mobile-CRISPRi, allows scientists to screen for antibiotic function in a wide range of pathogenic bacteria.
Using a form of bacterial sex, the researchers transferred Mobile-CRISPRi from common laboratory strains into diverse bacteria, even including a little-studied microbe making its home on cheese rinds. This ease of transfer makes the technique a boon for scientists studying any number of bacteria that cause disease or promote health.
Peters worked with Carol Gross, Oren Rosenberg and other colleagues at UCSF and other institutions to design and test Mobile-CRISPRi. The system reduces the production of protein from targeted genes, allowing researchers to identify how antibiotics inhibit the growth of pathogens. That knowledge can help direct research to overcome resistance to existing drugs.
The researchers published their findings Jan. 7 in the journal Nature Microbiology. They took advantage of the increasingly popular molecular tool CRISPR, but in a unique way.
“Most people, when they think about CRISPR, think about gene editing,” says Peters, who earned his doctorate at UW-Madison and recently joined the School of Pharmacy as an assistant professor. “But that’s not what I do.”
Normally, the CRISPR system gets targeted to a gene where it cuts the DNA in two. The gene can be edited while the cell repairs the damage.
But Peters and his collaborators worked with a defanged form of CRISPR known as CRISPRi. CRISPRi has been engineered to be unable to cut DNA. Instead, it just sits on the DNA, blocking other proteins from gaining access to and turning on a particular gene. The result is lower expression of the gene and a reduced amount of the protein it codes for.
The researchers showed that if they decreased the amount of protein targeted by an antibiotic, bacteria became much more sensitive to lower levels of the drug — evidence of an association between gene and drug. Thousands of genes at a time can be screened as potential antibiotic targets this way, helping scientists learn how antibiotics work and how to improve them.
To make CRISPRi mobile, the researchers developed methods to transfer the system from common lab models like E. coli to disease-causing species, which are often harder to study. Peters’ team turned to one of the natural ways bacteria link up and exchange DNA, a kind of bacterial sex called conjugation. Former UW-Madison Professor of Genetics Joshua Lederberg discovered conjugation, which earned him a Nobel Prize in 1958.
“You basically mix the bacteria together and it happens,” Peters says of conjugation. “It doesn’t get much easier than that.”
Using conjugation, Peters’ team transferred Mobile-CRISPRi to the pathogens Pseudomonas, Salmonella, Staphylococcus and Listeria, among others.
“What that means is that you can now do studies on how antibiotics work directly in these pathogens,” says Peters. “That could give us a better clue about how these drugs work in the different organisms and potentially what we can do to make them better.”
The real test of Mobile-CRISPRi’s mobility came from cheese.
As cheese ages, it curates its own landscape of microbes. Scientists are just starting to investigate the immense diversity of bacteria and fungi on cheeses, which contribute to their complex flavors. One of those bacteria, Vibrio casei, was found on the rind of a French cheese in 2010 by Peters’ collaborator Rachel Dutton of the University of California, San Diego.
Manipulating genes is simple in established laboratory bacteria such as E. coli, but there is often no way to study genes in bacteria recently isolated from the environment, such as V. casei. But Mobile-CRISPRi was easily transferred into the strain, opening up new avenues for understanding how the bacteria colonizes and helps age cheese. As a proof-of-concept, V. casei suggests that Mobile-CRISPRi should be useful for any number of previously understudied bacteria, both those that harm us and those we rely on.
Now Peters is offering up Mobile-CRISPRi to other researchers to study their germs of choice.
“So now it’s going to be completely available to the community,” says Peters. “Now this gives people a path forward.”
About this neuroscience research article
Funding: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants F32 GM108222 and R01 GM102790) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch Project NYC-189438.
Source: Jason Peters – University of Wisconsin Madison
Publisher: Organized by NeuroscienceNews.com.
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Original Research: Abstract for “Enabling genetic analysis of diverse bacteria with Mobile-CRISPRi” by Jason M. Peters, Byoung-Mo Koo, Ramiro Patino, Gary E. Heussler, Cameron C. Hearne, Jiuxin Qu, Yuki F. Inclan, John S. Hawkins, Candy H. S. Lu, Melanie R. Silvis, M. Michael Harden, Hendrik Osadnik, Joseph E. Peters, Joanne N. Engel, Rachel J. Dutton, Alan D. Grossman, Carol A. Gross & Oren S. Rosenberg in Nature Microbiology. Published January 7 2019.
doi:10.1038/s41564-018-0327-z
Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article
[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]University of Wisconsin Madison “CRISPR Repurposed to Develop Better Antibiotics.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 13 January 2019.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/crispr-antibiotics-10524/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]University of Wisconsin Madison(2019, January 13). CRISPR Repurposed to Develop Better Antibiotics. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved January 13, 2019 from https://neurosciencenews.com/crispr-antibiotics-10524/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]University of Wisconsin Madison “CRISPR Repurposed to Develop Better Antibiotics.” https://neurosciencenews.com/crispr-antibiotics-10524/ (accessed January 13, 2019).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]
Abstract
Enabling genetic analysis of diverse bacteria with Mobile-CRISPRi
The vast majority of bacteria, including human pathogens and microbiome species, lack genetic tools needed to systematically associate genes with phenotypes. This is the major impediment to understanding the fundamental contributions of genes and gene networks to bacterial physiology and human health. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats interference (CRISPRi), a versatile method of blocking gene expression using a catalytically inactive Cas9 protein (dCas9) and programmable single guide RNAs, has emerged as a powerful genetic tool to dissect the functions of essential and non-essential genes in species ranging from bacteria to humans. However, the difficulty of establishing effective CRISPRi systems across bacteria is a major barrier to its widespread use to dissect bacterial gene function. Here, we establish ‘Mobile-CRISPRi’, a suite of CRISPRi systems that combines modularity, stable genomic integration and ease of transfer to diverse bacteria by conjugation. Focusing predominantly on human pathogens associated with antibiotic resistance, we demonstrate the efficacy of Mobile-CRISPRi in gammaproteobacteria and Bacillales Firmicutes at the individual gene scale, by examining drug–gene synergies, and at the library scale, by systematically phenotyping conditionally essential genes involved in amino acid biosynthesis. Mobile-CRISPRi enables genetic dissection of non-model bacteria, facilitating analyses of microbiome function, antibiotic resistances and sensitivities, and comprehensive screens for host–microorganism interactions.
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Some 400 staff were on board when one of the vessel's sections caught ablaze.
Fire erupted in No.1 Power Compartment of Soviet-Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov in Murmansk at 10:15 Moscow time Dec 12.
"Air carrier is undergoing repairs in a dry dock in Murmansk. Fire is thought to be caused by welding works. Three workers are missing, fire spread from initial 20 square meters to some 120 square meters of Energy Block and probably, neighboring compartments. Diesel fuel is burning, not clear if it's a spill or fuel is stored in tanks," Maritime Bulletin said on December 12.
Read alsoFloating dock sinks after accident with Russia's only aircraft carrier, casualties reported
Some 400 workers were on the aircraft carrier when the fire erupted. They were evacuated, while six people sustained injuries, one of them is in serious condition. One person is missing, according to Russian news agency TASS.
Most of the victims were poisoned by combustion products, while and one person suffered a head injury. | {
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I'm glad that you agree with meNice to see other bronies who like the show for its real valuesI agree with what you're saying about Rarity. I don't like her "sweet talking" either... It is manipulative, and on top of that, it's as if Rarity is using her appeal to gain things for herself, which is the opposite of generosity. Her element is supposed to be about giving, not about manipulating others so she can get something for herself. I understand in some ways why the creators do that, though; it's similar to Rainbow's situation... Waaaaaay at the beginning, when we first met Rainbow Dash, she was a royal bitch. Let's be honest. She was REALLY mean. She didn't seem like the kind of friend you could trust or rely on, like the embodiment of loyalty. But then she learned and grew through the seasons, in every episode, with the help of her friends. She's still Rainbow Dash, but she is also much nicer and more willing to listen rather than thinking about herself. I think it's a great improvement. Maybe that's what they're trying to do with Rarity; right now, she still acts manipulative sometimes, but maybe in the future they will have an episode that addresses that. It would be a great episode | {
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We talk to the developers of Jam City Rollergirls, releasing today on WiiWare.
Today is release day for Jam City Rollergirls, a new action-sports title from developer Frozen Codebase. The game spent more than a year in development, and with the title finally releasing, we talked to president Ben Geisler and Producer Reverend Norb about their experiences and decisions making a game based on such an unusual sport. Although the developer has worked with Konami to deliver a previous WiiWare title, Sandy Beach, this is the first title on the console that they are releasing under their own name.
Nintendo World Report (NWR): What led you to pick Roller Derby as the sport you wanted to make into a game?
Reverend Norb, Frozen Codebase Producer (RN): Well, we had this great idea for a full retail football game, involving all the names and likenesses of the NFL, but, when we did some research, we found to our great shock that EA had already beaten us to it! Can you imagine?! Uh, okay, seriously, I can assure you that the concept of making a sport-based videogame was pretty much the furthest thing from our mind. I watch a fair amount of sports, but I really don’t enjoy nor play sports games, except to see how the developers handled all the uniforms and players and venues and stuff. I think this goes to underscore roller derby’s uniqueness – it’s a sport, sure, but it’s all these other things, too. After attending our first bout in August 2006, we were just like OMFG, WE HAVE TO MAKE THIS AS A GAME. We were totally frantically doing research, trying to see if someone beat us to it or not. No one did! We couldn’t believe it. Roller derby has everything we wanted for a game: It was fast, it was fun, it was edgy, it was weird, it was sexy, it was outsidery, it was goofy, it was violent - it was a slam dunk. Wait, that’s a different sport. Well, whatever.
NWR: Do you think the game could be appealing to people who aren't familiar with the sport?
Ben Geisler, Frozen Codebase President (BG): Absolutely. Believe it or not, we do have some people in the office that didn't get caught up in the whole roller derby trend. It was a constant thought in our minds to make sure that gamers could play the game without knowing the intricacies of derby rules. Also we turned this game into more of an arcade sports game with more fantasy elements. But, at the same time, stats gamers will like the ability to balance their character’s speed, agility, and fan love through upgradeable items as the single player mode progresses.
NWR: Are there any other lesser-known sports you'd like to bring to gaming?
RN: Well, like I said, we’re not truly a sports game type crew up here. We found out with Jam City Rollergirls that lesser-known sports can be a pretty tough sell; publishers already have all the sports games they need in their quarterly portfolios, and nobody is going to put less copies of Madden or NBA 2K11 or Tiger Woods Golf on the shelves to make way for State Championship Lacrosse or something. But, I mean, you never know – if other sports are like roller derby, they have a modest but fanatical fan base and are hungry for media exposure of any kind, which is not a bad place to start. I think we’re going to Minneapolis next week for a roller derby/lacrosse double header; maybe we’ll have to cop a squint at the slam-bang lacrosse action as well as the derby.
NWR: How close does your game come to resembling the rules of Roller Derby?
BG:In some aspects it comes pretty close; in others it's light-years away. Any sport has core mechanics, central tenants that should not be changed. The core components we identified were: passing other skaters for points, establishing "lead jammer", working with your team on strategy and timed "jams". The sport is similar to a race but becomes a whole lot more when the athletes are asked to play offense and defense at the same time. Comparisons to Road Rash are aplenty since, for example, you can knock out opposing skaters as you round the corner.
Once we setup the core rules, we added to the top, to make it fun and arcade like. In real life there are penalties. But games aren't meant to be real life, games are art. It's no fun to sit in a penalty box, so we removed that aspect. It's also incredibly fun to occasionally feel so powerful that you can blow through the entire pack, so we added powerups to enable this.
NWR: Are any of the players in the game directly based on real life rollergirls?
RN: Yeah, thirty of ‘em! We have five real-life teams: the Rat City Rollergirls, the Texecutioners, Gotham Girls Roller Derby, the Mad Rollin’ Dolls, and the Brewcity Bruisers, and six real-life skaters from each team. So, if you’ve ever been mad at Bonnie Thunders or Suzy Hotrod because Gotham beat your team, you can play as them and skate them into a wall or something.
NWR: Are any of the rollergirls in the game customizable, in terms of outfit or appearance? What about a character creator?
BG: Yup! In Season Mode you groom a skater from the ground up. Your first equipment choices are pretty basic, but as you beat bigger and better foes, you get "sponsorship cash" which can be spent on helmets, skates, fishnets, we even have some easter egg purchasable items in the game. Many of these purchasable items will also upgrade – or at least alter – your stats. Also you can change your character’s looks - body type, hairdo, etc...
NWR: Is there an option to play banked (sloped) track or is the game solely based on flat track Roller Derby?
RN: There is no banked track action in the game per se – but there are bigger, more fanciful tracks that are not entirely flat. When we struck the deal with the Women’s Flat Track Derby Assocation, we agreed, for obvious reasons, that there would be no banked tracks in the game. We have some bigger tracks, like the Dairyland dairy barn track, with side walls that you can skate up, or sloped walls rising up out of the curves, or other skateable areas that aren’t flat. Basically, there are no banked tracks in the game, but not all of the tracks are completely flat, if that makes any sense.
NWR: Is there any sort of campaign mode, or is the game focused on the exhibition-style gameplay?
BG: There is a Season Mode where you play teams similar to a real life derby schedule - these opponents become more and more difficult as the season goes on. It leads up to a championship and if you win you get a trophy and get to watch the girls hold a "dance off." There is also a Quickplay mode which can be used for both single player and multiplayer.
NWR: What modes are you putting into the game for multiplayer?
BG: Multiplayer doesn't have a Season Mode, it only has Quickplay. This is primarily due to space limitations with the WiiWare 40mb rule. But that said, Quickplay turns out to be a lot of fun. You can pick a team to play in your home town, and have your friend pick a team to play in his/hers. Then for bragging rights, if you win, you should go onto www.jamcityrollergirls.com and report your scores!
NWR: Does the crowd interact with the players at all during gameplay? How have you managed to work the excitement of the crowd into the game?
RN: Actual crowd members were one of the casualties of WiiWare’s 40mb file size limit – we just couldn’t fit five teams and thirty licensed skater likenesses in the game and still have room for random bystanders. We have the venues set up to imply the presence of crowds – crowd noise ebbs and flows as you navigate certain portions of the track. We also have Dumptruck, derbynewsnetwork.com’s 2010 Announcer of the Year, doing the P.A. announcements and working that imaginary crowd into a lather! We have one track that is based on the Seattle Underground, so it’s kind of this rainy underground catacombs – we decided that, if anyone was really skating there, there wouldn’t be any crowd watching, so we removed the crowd noises and replaced it with the sound of the rain, which is way more atmospherically appropriate. In an earlier incarnation of this game, we had crowd members sitting around the track, and you could skate into the crowd and beat up the fans. It was fun for a few minutes, but it was really off-target as far as gameplay goes – people would go skating into the crowd and bodies would be flying and ragdolling everywhere, meanwhile their opponent was scoring points and they weren’t, and when they tired of messing with the crowd they were way behind, got bored with the game, and quit playing, so I’m kind of on the fence about crowd interactions anyway, even if we had the bandwidth for them.
NWR: Why did you decide on WiiWare as the platform for this project?
BG: We went through a bunch of iterations on this game, tried a bunch of things. The XBLA version ended up being much more simulation based, since we didn't have space concerns. But we like arcade sports games as much or more than we like simulation games, we're huge fans of NBA Jams and Road Rash, for example. So the move to WiiWare was more about going towards an arcade representation of the game. That said, we do plan to take this game onto other systems.
NWR: How much assistance have you had from Nintendo while working on the game?
BG: Nintendo has been great! We've been working with them pretty closely, we've been in Seattle a couple times and they always give us a warm welcome. I am really impressed by their staffs knowledge and expertise.
NWR: Why did you decide to make the game more into an arcade sports title instead of a straight-up sim?
RN: The right tool for the right job! As we said about a dozen times already, WiiWare games are restricted to a 40mb file size limit. That ain’t much. Providing a life-like, realistic roller derby experience in a WiiWare title is, well, I don’t want to say it would be IMPOSSIBLE to do it, but it would be pretty damn CLOSE to impossible to do. You have to know your audience, and whom you’re trying to get to give your game a try. People that want realistic sports simulations aren’t going to go browsing the ten dollar WiiWare games to find them. They’re just not. Further, people that want realistic sports simulations have certain expectations that, to be frank, can’t be met with a smaller title like Jam City Rollergirls. If somebody is looking for the next Madden or NBA 2K11, they’re not going to find it on WiiWare. You’re simply not going to get that type of product to fit in 40mb with a ten-dollar price tag. WiiWare games need to be pick-up-and-play, they need to be fun, they need to be able to be enjoyed by players from all walks of life, whatever that means. They can’t involve complex rules systems or require a long learning period. If you go looking for a game on WiiWare, you want something fast, fun, and immediately enjoyable – and that’s what we think we’ve delivered with Jam City Rollergirls.
NWR: What were the biggest challenges in making Roller Derby into a video game?
RN: A lot of it was figuring out what to keep and what to take out. At first, we thought we would just basically take the rules of roller derby and transpose them more or less one-to-one into the game, but we quickly found that there are a TON of things in real-life roller derby that are harder than hell to pull off in a videogame – critical things like being able to turn your head and see who’s coming up behind you, or avoiding skating into another player’s back for a penalty. If you are playing roller derby in real life, you’ve got bodies all around you, you’ve got a pretty good sense of your position relative to everybody else and your relative momentum, hell, you can probably feel the body heat of the people near you. You can probably SMELL them! In a video game, you’re looking from behind at a massless avatar, trying to gauge position and momentum and distance from a relatively small set of contextual data. It was tough to transfer every nuance of the sport from real-life to the game, simply because the experience of playing real roller derby requires the engagement of your senses in a way a video game can’t replicate.
Another big point that is specific to roller derby is that, in just about every other sport, there is a ball. If you’re making those sports into a videogame, you’re probably focusing on controlling (or stopping) whatever character has the ball. Well, there ain’t no balls in women’s flat track roller derby, that’s a fact! We don’t have that nice logical be-all-and-end-all of a ball to determine where the focus of the action should be, we have skaters all over the track and nary a ball to be found! Eventually, we decided that we would maintain focus by always having the player playing as their team’s jammer, the only point-scoring skater, with the ability to choose general defensive strategies each time they approached the pack. I think to really and truly replicate the strategy of roller derby, you’d have to have a top down game, and be able to toggle control to any player on your team at any time, which would be a MASSIVELY complex game to play – our approach was more at keeping the core concepts of derby, then applying proven gameplay concepts from other successful games to those concepts.
NWR: How many people were involved in the making of the game?
BG: We had a core team of 5-6 people making this game, which is fairly small. But most of them were veterans from larger studios (e.g. Naughty Dog, Raven) and long time inmates of Frozen Codebase. | {
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Kaiserreich Europe Map (Sequel to the 2nd ACW Map) By FilipTheCzechGopnik Watch
75 Favourites 3 Comments 3K Views
After days of working on this, I've finally done it... This is the sequel to my greatest masterpiece (Kaiserreich Second American Civil War Map). Now, I've really rusted up, it's been a long time since I've done a map like this so don't be surprised if it looks worse than the prequel. I know that I haven't given icons to all of the countries, but at this point... I don't care. I've finished what I set out to do. On the final note, I would to thank all of my supporters and followers who have been around for a while now, without you I would be weak and ignored.
Special thanks to: SiskelEbert82596, SocialismOrBarbarism, ComradeMaxwell, ColumbianSFR, Polandstronk, Offredo95, Mk11gz, Resistance Pencil, and my very first watcher... EricVonSchweetz. If any of you have anything to say, go ahead and do so in the comment section.
IMAGE DETAILS Image size 1900x1309px 2.61 MB Show More
Published : Jan 22, 2019 | {
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LUCKNOW: A 20-year-old girl, a polytechnic student, went missing on Thursday and was found murdered in Madiaon on Friday morning. The girl, identified as Sanskriti Rai of Ballia district was daughter of an advocate and was living in Indiranagar while pursuing her second year from the polytechnic in Ghazipur police station area.Ranjeet Singh, a resident of Madiaon, went to fields on Friday morning and saw a woman lying in a pool of blood. He informed police. A police team took her to KGMU Trauma Centre where she was declared brought dead. Police sent the body for autopsy and registered a case of murder .Aliganj CO Deepak Kumar Singh said, "During probe, we found that Sanskriti had planned to go to Ballia on Thursday with her roommate and had asked her to meet her at the railway station. She left her house around 8am but did not reach the railway station."Sanskriti's roommate called their common friend who informed the family about her going missing. He parents got terrified and reached Lucknow. After failing to find her they lodged a case of missing. It further surfaced that the mobile phone of the victim was switched off at around 8am on Thursday.CO Deepak Kumar Singh further said, "The examination of the spot suggests that assailants brought the girl in a four-wheeler, dragged her for over 25 metres and left her lying injured. The girl had grievous injury on forehead, apparently caused by a blunt and heavy object. Besides, multiple injuries and bruises were found on her hands and face." He said a police team has been sent to search the room where she lived in order to find some clues about the assailants. He said the victim's call records and other details are being scanned. | {
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Dapps Inc integrates Oasis Labs technology to Bring Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning Applications and Smart Contract Management to the Salesforce Platform Dominic Steil Follow Jun 7, 2019 · 4 min read
Dappsuite, the ubiquitous middleware connector that enables CRM users with the innovations of Ethereum, now enables a privacy-preserving environment. Dappsuite has empowered CRM businesses with low-code smart contract management for industries including Oil & Gas, loyalty rewards management for the Gaming and Hospitality industries, tokenization technology for KYC and AML financial institutions, and improved incentivization for client facing organizations.
Next-Gen B2B Contracts. End-to-End Confidential Smart Contract Management. With Oasis technology integrated into Dappsuite, CRM customers can safely and securely create, deploy and manage all their confidential smart contracts, invoices and agreements right from the Salesforce platform.
Next-Gen AI. Privacy Preserving Einstein AI. Businesses can gain insights from Einstein AI while maintaining privacy-preserving settings for their valuable customer data. Leveraging trusted executable environments and other secure computing techniques through Oasis protocol, Dappsuite users can perform advanced analytics on customer data while obfuscating it from machine learning models.
“Customer data is sacrosanct. Buying, selling and analyzing customer data obtained from third-parties without the person’s knowledge or approval is not aligned to our vision.” says Vikal Kapoor, Co-Founder & CEO of Dapps Inc. “Leading organizations have been asking us to align their data protection priorities with privacy policy efforts. Millions of customers are demanding data privacy and protections to be baked-into all B2C tech, followed by B2B2C. Our CRM apps will continue to drive sales, service, marketing and contracting features and functionality for our customer’s programs. Enabling Salesforce users with Oasis Labs and Dapps Inc. technologies exemplifies why businesses trust our apps to power their AI and CRM.”
Dom Steil, Co-Founder & CTO of Dapps Inc, says, “Privacy-preserving applications that create trust are a key part of the shift towards blockchain network utilization. Customers are increasingly demanding verification of the processes that use their data, while preserving their privacy. We are excited to bridge the trust gap with Oasis Labs for global CRM users.”
“This is a great example of the progress we’re seeing developers make on our platform,” says Raymond Cheng, Co-Founder & CTO of Oasis Labs. “We’re excited to see what Dapps Inc is doing to bring privacy-preserving technologies like Oasis to more users with this Salesforce integration.”
Privacy for data deployed onto public or private blockchain networks is a key for enterprises to adopt this technology. Some of the core tenets of using public blockchain networks is the decentralized verification of information, global transactional settlement and incentivized state systems. However, with that comes the challenge of preserving the privacy of the transactional data in a smart contracts or other financial elements transactions executed in a verifiable and secure enclave for computation. Dapps Inc. believes this is a key gap in the market that will need to be filled in order to accelerate the adoption of enterprise grade smart contracts. That is why we are excited to announce our partnership with Oasis Labs, the leading privacy-focused blockchain platform.
Dappsuite is the first low-code blockchain premier Ethereum BPaaS built for the global CRM market. By integrating Oasis technologies, Dappsuite users will be able to deploy confidential smart contracts, increasing the security, performance and competitiveness of their enterprise smart contracts and privacy preserving applications.
About Dapps Inc.
Dapps Inc. is a San Mateo based software company that has led the enterprise blockchain computing (EBC) category with customer relationship management (CRM) applications since its founding in 2017. The company’s decentralized applications (dApps) run on proprietary EBC technology for organizations to execute, manage and analyze global CRM stakeholders. Dapps product suite is fully integrated into the Salesforce platform to accelerate sales, service, marketing and contract life cycles. The company’s products are available via Google Cloud (NASDAQ: GOOG), Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) and R3 (NY, NY) marketplaces, via strategic partners like TechMahindra. Dapps products include enterprise-grade middleware connectors Dappsuite, Dappscape and Dappsync to extend the Salesforce platform with ethereum, hyperledger and corda global blockchain networks, respectively. Camila enables CRM customers to operate on a system of agreement for contract, agreement, and invoice management. Baton, enables CRM users to communicate with the global CRM community. Industry specific dApps for retail, supply chain, transport, logistics, hospitality, oil & gas and company’s products are available directly and via system integration partners. The company’s DappServices division partners with digital transformation teams at global organizations and consulting firms to define intelligent technology strategies utilizing enterprise blockchain computing. It is headquartered in San Mateo, California. https://dapps.network
Kim Clooney
Investor Relations
[email protected]
About Oasis Labs
Backed by top investors including a16z Crypto, Accel and many others, Oasis Labs is building a privacy-first cloud computing platform on blockchain. It aims to help users regain control of their data and enable privacy-preserving collaborative machine learning to foster company innovation. Oasis Labs is recently recognized as one of the 10 startups to watch in Silicon Valley.
Anne Fauvre
Marketing and Communications
[email protected]
www.oasislabs.com | {
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This is a grown-up-sized bean bag chair (about 3½' in diameter), sewn from about four yards of cloth each for the liner and cover.
I also made a variation out of scrap denim and corduroy. I scaled the pattern down to two-thirds size (about 2' diameter).
Pattern
I modeled the pattern after an existing bean bag chair we had. It goes together like a baseball or tennis ball; the paper pattern is one eighth of the full bag.
Lining Construction
I used a cheap linen for the liner.
The liner fabric was 46", but the pattern was 48" wide, so I cut the main pieces a little short and sewed scrap cloth to the ends to get the full length. For each of the liner and the cover I followed this order:
Attach every mirror-image pair at the pair's short edge. (This is the two large panels, the two small panels with the zipper flap, and the two small panels without the zipper flatp.) Sew the zipper to the side without the flap. (A zipper foot would have made this much easier, but I didn't know they existed.) Fold over and pin the flap, and sew the zipper to the side with the flap. Having two large double-lobed pieces, pin the four inflection points together (first picture below). Finish pinning the single continous remaining seam (second picture below). For the most part the two edges worked out to be the same length, but I did work out from the four pinned points towards each segment's center to reduce accumulated error. Sew the long seam!
Stuffing
I stuffed the chair with 20lbs Jaxx medium-grade shredded memory foam, which ships compressed. (I ended up adding a little more foam later; with only the initial 20lbs, the filling wasn't always enough to keep from sinking down almost to the floor, although it puffed up most of the chair's volume.)
I test-stuffed the liner using all of the couch pillows.
The filling shipped in a zipped compression pouch which in turn had a sealed plastic lining.
The shredded foam has extreme static cling, but by cutting open the plastic bag inside the liner and squeezing the filling out sort of like toothpaste I managed to avoid getting almost any foam outside the liner.
The foam expanded considerably over the first night.
Cover Layout
The material for the cover was 58" wide. I planned the layout by tracing scale templates onto graph paper, to get the pattern facing the way I wanted and to maximize contiguous scrap area.
4 yards x 58" took up most of the living room to lay out and cut.
Zipper
I used Sullivan's 3-yard make-a-zipper kit, since my local fabric store didn't have sufficiently long zippers.
The all-the-way-around zip was very convenient for fitting the cover around the stuffed liner.
Inspiration
The patterns I could find were all for kid-sized chairs, so I ended up modeling my pattern after the one adult-sized bean bags I had physically available.
I got the fabric at Gather Here, who also helped estimating how much fabric would be required and which materials were appropriate.
Improvements
The liner probably didn't need a full-length zipper or a flap over the zipper, though extra cost/work for those was minimal (and made good practice for the cover).
The zipper is tighter than the rest of the cloth, leading to a little bit of a belted look. Better handling when sewing, a shorter zip, or less stretch in the cover material, might reduce that.
I typically want a back to the chair, so a pattern with some unevennes might work better overall. | {
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Lightning Network, analysts have noted, is a conceptually beautiful thing that would let bitcoin users make lightning fast (no pun intended) payment to different merchants with low fees. On paper, in theory, it sounds pretty sweet, but the reality is a tough nut to crack and rears its ugly face every now and then. It has become the laugh of many cryptocurrency enthusiasts who always refer to this solution as being in the works for 18 months more, a favorite line of text in memes. But when a legend like Gavin Andresen mentions the issue on social networks, he means business.
More Spice: Bitmain Still Under Attack: Media FUD Machine Working Overtime
Gavin Andresen, Da’ Man
There is not much more to write about the legend Gavin Andresen represents for the cryptocurrency world. Being one of the few mortals who pioneered the cryptocurrency movement back when Satoshi Nakamoto was still inside the development of Bitcoin.
Being a supporter of big blocks in what was once known as the blocksize dilemma, whose outcome resulted in the creation of Bitcoin Cash, he has a special interest in the problem of scaling and the effect that it has on the overall adoption of cryptocurrencies.
While not an active contributor today to the Bitcoin Core repositories, his opinions are representative of what early developers think and feel about the direction of the remains of Bitcoin’s roadmap. And by the way, they are not pretty at all.
Lightning (Does Not) Strike
Lightning Network has been famous for basically three things: The awfully difficult procedure needed to even transact on the platform, the fact that it has been in a pre-alpha for a long time due to the horrible complexity it carries within, and the fact that has been marketed as being “18 months away” since its conception.
Luckily, these three elements are present in the meat of this story. Gavin was answering to a tweet from Bitcoin.com that showed the difficult time (hell) that a user passed to get a lightning node working to pay, and the thing failed miserably.
It’s the kind of occurrence that usually ends up triggering the “18 months away” meme. This time around, it also came with another revelation: Lightning will not be ready anytime soon, and development difficulty remain levels away from normal Bitcoin code.
Andresen probably takes no joy in what now seems like an overly optimistic assessment: Lightning Network will be ready for prime adoption by the year 2020, an outcome that looks most bleak for Bitcoin adoption as a payment system.
That is why the group of “small blockers” in Bitcoin have been supporting the use of credit cards as a payment method instead of advocating for pure adoption. Jimmy Song, known cowboy and Bitcoin enthusiast, even made a video in his channel where he explained why it is a bad choice as a payment method.
KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
But maybe the biggest demise of Bitcoin was in trying to approach the problem with an erroneous focus. If you have a termite problem in your home, you do not blow away the house. Bitcoin Core seems to be doing just that, shooting itself in the foot.
Gavin Andresen stressed it out, stating that complexity is no good for software projects, because complexity makes everything, well, more complex.
Security is also a concern with the complex approach, and when it comes to money apps it is worse.
He also throws the gauntlet down to Lightning developers. blasting them away by saying that they should not be hired. The point of all this is? is giving away merchant adoption just for the sake of chasing down a pipe dream called Lightning Network; a thing that they could repent in the near future. | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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Realizes Internet stardom, does ama Deleted by mod | {
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This is the shocking moment a road-rage brawl erupts between a cyclist and an HGV driver on a quiet residential street.
Dashcam footage taken from Phil Foster’s wagon shows scuffles breaking out between him and an unidentified biker who appears to have tried to overtake his vehicle.
The video captures Phil wrestling with the cyclist after they pull up a red light just after 9am in the morning in Stockport, Greater Manchester.
The bike-owner is seen throwing a number of punches at Phil who then drags him down to the ground, reports Manchester Evening News.
A stunned motorist then stops on the road to try and break up the fight, before another cyclist and pedestrian also wade in to act as peacemakers.
But despite the best efforts of the shocked onlookers, Phil and the cyclist - who is still carrying his bag and wearing his helmet - clash again before he attempts to ride away from the furore.
But as the argument comes to an end and Phil starts to drive away, amazingly two men who stopped to help are seen trying to prevent the cyclist from fleeing, and at one stage one of them is seen to pull his bike to the ground.
Read more:
The incredible scenes have now been watched thousands of times after being shared by Phil on YouTube.
Alongside the video Phil, from Reddish, writes: “I was sat at the lights, a van was in the right hand lane with his left indicator on to come into my lane.
"As the lights changed to green, the car pulled off and the van eased in my lane. No problems or issues.
“As I checked my mirrors, I saw a cyclist in my right hand mirror and presumed he would be turning right as he was in the right hand lane.
"As I passed the turning he was still overtake the line of cars and was at the rear of my trailer and obviously going straight on.
“I held my hand up in a shrug and then he shook his head.
“You can hear the rest on the video.”
Read more:
And after the footage was shared online hundreds of people have commented to air their views on the incident, which happened last month.
After some posted messages of support for the cyclist in the furore, Phil posted: “It is his responsibility to understand the road ahead, not for me to allow him passage.
"All road users have the same responsibility and if this was the other way round (and often is by many motorists) then I would have been fed to the devil.
"I could quote many items from the HC that he failed to adhere to but as you are a professional driver then you will know them all.
"He risked his own life by his own actions, I saved his life by being aware of him before it was too late.
"No need to thank me.“ | {
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CNN's Gary Tuchman goes to a shooting range to take an up-close look at an AR-15-style rifle with retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. | {
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BOSTON -- David Price has never won a postseason start. That will be the main Game 2 storyline just as it has been the main David Price storyline during the lefty's entire Red Sox career.
He knows it.
The Red Sox and Yankees open their best-of-five ALDS on Friday at Fenway Park. Chris Sale will start Game 1. Price will start Game 2 on Saturday. The Yankees have yet to announce their starting pitchers.
Price is looking forward to Saturday.
"The atmosphere in Fenway for 81 games, a lot of people would probably say that's a playoff atmosphere," Price told MassLive.com this week. "So I expect our atmosphere to be very good for our playoff games. But I feel like the atmosphere is always good. I don't think it's going to change a whole lot. I'm sure people are going to be pumped up for sure."
Price answered questions about his postseason failures during October 2015 when he pitched for the Blue Jays. He answered questions about it during his introductory press conference at Fenway Park two months later.
"I think I was just saving all my postseason wins for the Red Sox," Price said in December 2015.
The $217 million pitcher is 0-8 with a 5.74 ERA (37 earned runs, 58 innings) in nine postseason starts. He also has pitched dreadfully against the Yankees since arriving in Boston. He has gone 2-7 with a 7.71 ERA (50 earned runs, 58.1 innings) in eight starts vs. the Yankees as a member of the Red Sox. He has allowed 82 hits, including 16 homers.
Saturday doesn't seem like the ideal day he'll finally get the monkey off his back, right?
But certain statistics indicate he finally will overcome his postseason woes and break through with a win -- or at least put the Red Sox in a position to win. Pitchers obviously don't have total control of victories. Mets' Jacob deGrom, the 2018 NL Cy Young favorite, went 10-9 this season.
He might continue his winless trend. But there's no reason to believe he can't break through with his first dominant postseason.
The Five Relevant Stats:
1). 2.98 ERA
Price is 9-2 with a 2.98 ERA at Fenway Park this season compared to 7-5 with a 4.31 ERA in 14 starts on the road.
The lefty always has pitched well at Fenway Park except for his first season in Boston (2016). He went 6-1 with a 1.95 ERA and 0.95 WHIP in 11 career starts (74 innings) at Fenway as a visiting pitcher.
Why is he so comfortable here?
"The backdrop," Price said. "Just the perception when you're standing on the mound. It doesn't feel like 60-feet, 6-inches. I feel like it feels a little closer. And that's probably with the nearness of the backdrop, just that visual perception that it gives you when you're standing on the mound, I guess."
Price has a 4.95 ERA (20 innings, 11 earned runs) at Fenway vs. the Yankees the past three years. Not ideal, but he allowed two runs in 6-plus innings against New York at Fenway on Aug. 5. Both runs came in the seventh. He also tossed 8 scoreless innings against New York here July 16, 2017.
2). Three of the 16 homers have come at Fenway
Of the 16 homers Price has allowed to the Yankees, only three have come at Fenway. The other 13 were hit at Yankee Stadium.
Price gave up three homers at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 19. All three were the definitions of Yankee Stadium home runs.
Miguel Andujar hit a 340-foot homer with a 13 percent hit probability.
Luke Voit hit a 343-foot homer with an 18 percent hit probability. Voit hit another blast 341 feet with a 24 percent hit probability.
Fenway Park has a deep right field of 380 feet.
Price has allowed a surprising number of home runs during the postseason. He has given up 11 in his nine starts. Sixteen of the 38 earned runs (42 percent) he has allowed have scored on home runs.
The most important thing for all Red Sox pitchers during this ALDS is limiting home runs. Price has a better chance of doing it with the large right field at Fenway.
3). 18 straight outs
Price hasn't pitched as poorly in the playoffs as his stats show. He has hurled 6.2 or more innings in seven of his nine postseason starts.
"I haven't thrown the ball as bad as it looks and as bad as it gets talked about," Price told MassLive.com in September. "I'm very aware of that. But I haven't won. So maybe this year I'll go out, go five and give up five runs and leave with the lead and win."
He retired 18 straight batters Oct. 17, 2015, in Game 2 of the ALCS at Kansas City.
The lefty, then a member of the Blue Jays, gave up a leadoff single to Alcides Escobar in the bottom of the first inning before retiring the next 18 straight.
He should have won his first playoff start -- then a strange seventh inning happened.
The Royals scored five runs on four singles and one double in seventh. Three of the hits were softly struck. Ben Zobrist's 86.2 mph pop-up dropped into right field. Second baseman Ryan Goins called for it, but it landed between him and Jose Bautista.
Check out the link below. Price has pitched well enough to earn three wins. He also earned a victory in an elimination Game 163 in Texas in 2013.
There's absolutely no reason to believe he can't win a postseason start even against the Yankees.
4). 86
Per Tom Verducci of SI.com, "Eighty-six pitchers have started at least nine postseason games. Only one of them never has won a game: Price."
At this point, the numbers are heavily in his favor. Price is way too talented of a pitcher not to finally break through with a win, right?
5). 10 runs in the seventh
The seventh inning is the frame Price has allowed the most runs (10) during the playoffs.
Red Sox manager Alex Cora should be the right man to manage Price in the postseason. Cora has a pulse on every relevant advanced statistic. He has showed it all season. He should know the right time to pull Price.
The issue with Price is he usually does have one inning during a postseason start where he gives up a crooked number. It's not always late.
But Cora should know when to pull him if it is getting late and that big inning hasn't happened yet.
Cora served as Houston bench coach during the Astros' World Series run last year. The postseason nowadays is about pulling starters earlier rather than later and he saw it first-hand.
But Cora indicated earlier this season maybe some pitchers were pulled too early at times.
It's a balance between pulling them too early and keeping them in too long.
"There's a lot of information about that and where the stuff goes down," Cora said. "People get caught up on facing the lineup the third time around. I do believe it's more about the individual and the stuff.
"The last few days I've been reading a lot about our team. I knew them two weeks. But I know more about them, especially the pitching staff. So that information is going to help us out. Not to script it. It's not this guy, 50 pitches, he's coming out. It's not a script. But you're more familiar with their bodies, with their velocities, with everything that goes on on a nightly basis on the mound. And we can make decisions based on that." | {
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Officials on the scene say the homeowner and a parent of a child got into an argument after the homeowner was accused of pushing the child. Officials say the parent pulled a gun and the homeowner then pulled out his gun. | {
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It never brings me joy to break these stories to the health community. From the very first (Jeff Bradstreet, MD) to the countless others since June, my heart goes out to the families. I’ve even had the honor of meeting some of them in the last few months.
I am not counting Dr. El Sanadi, who was found dead yesterday here on the east coast of Florida, as “doctor #14” in my unintended series, as not enough is known at this time.
Nabil El Sanadi MD, formerly of the Cleveland Clinic, president and CEO of Broward Health (who had recently been under federal investigation) allegedly shot and killed himself Saturday at his Lauderdale-by-the-Sea residence.
UPDATE 1: We thought the suicide seemed a bit suspicious before, but when we add this recent story to the mix, it seems even MORE suspicious:
Update 2: It was ruled a suicide, but there are a few odd circumstances to his death.
Here is one thing that strikes us as strange:
“When El Sanadi was found in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor, he had already tucked his gun, a white metal Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, into the front right pocket of his sweatpants.
“The brain has 10-15 seconds of oxygen after the heart stops working,” Broward’s Chief Medical Examiner Craig Mallak said. That would have given El Sanadi enough time to put the gun in his pocket before he collapsed, he said.” (Editor’s note: seriously?!)
That just leaves us scratching our head, as we’ve never heard of someone killing themselves and then putting their gun away AFTER the fact…
End of update.
Back to original article:
From the Sun Sentinel:
Dr. El Sanadi was appointed to Broward Health’s leadership position in December 2014. He often spoke out about social issues in the county, including the recent scourge of the synthetic drug flakka.
We are told the doctor was brought in to help Broward Health after they’d been under investigation by the feds (which would have allegedly started before he came on the job).
From the piece:
El Sanadi, 60, had undergone a heart bypass surgery about 10 days ago, DiPietro confirmed. “He sounded great, for a guy who just had his chest surgically opened,” Di Pietro said. “We talked about what we wanted for Broward Health.” With an annual budget of $1.2 billion, Broward Health is one of the country’s 10 largest public health systems, providing hospital and health care services for the northern two-thirds of Broward County.
Broward Sheriff’s Office personnel were called to Dr. Nabil El Sanadi’s address, 5100 N. Ocean Blvd., just before 4 p.m. on Jan. 23, 2016 about a person who had reportedly fallen in a restroom in the condominium’s lobby, said Broward Sheriff’s spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright. She confirmed there had been a self-inflicted shooting at the address and that an adult male had been declared dead at the scene. She later identified him as El Sanadi. El Sanadi was the president and CEO of Broward Health. The system operates four hospitals, with a total of 1,529 beds, with more than 8,000 employees and some 1,800 doctors.
It is unclear at this point if the prominent MD is the same person who fell in the lobby restroom at his residence or if that is a coincidence. We will update you as more details emerge.
More from the piece:
In September, Broward Health, known legally as the North Broward Health District, reached a $69 million settlement with the federal government after it accused the district of maintaining a secret compensation system that rewarded physicians for steering referral work to the district’s laboratories, imaging departments and other services and penalized them for taking on charity cases. Born in Cairo, El Sanadi came to the U.S. with his family in the 1960s. “My family decided to emigrate because the United States is the land of the free and the brave and there was a lot of discrimination against Christians in Egypt at that point in time,” he told the Miami Herald in an interview in April 2015. El Sanadi graduated with honors with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and went on to graduate from medical school at Ohio State University. He also earned an MBA at Case. He completed his medical residency and a one-year research fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Cleveland.
We might note here that the Cleveland Clinic is one of the most progressive and holistic minded hospitals in the United States, and recently kicked McDonalds out of the food court, which I covered earlier this year on Health Nut News.
While chief of emergency medicine at University Hospitals of Cleveland, El Sanadi directed a teaching and research-focused emergency department. He held faculty appointments at Florida International University, Nova Southeastern University and the University of Miami. When appointed in December 2014 to succeed Broward Health president and CEO Frank Nask, El Sanadi said he planned to continue working one of two emergency room shifts a month so that he could maintain his skills and understand the impact of his boardroom decisions.
We have heard locals here in our Florida health community speaking highly of this prominent MD and his many accomplishments.
Please subscribe to the newsletter for updates on this story (as it’s tough to keep up with the hundreds of emails a day asking for updates). We’ll have more interviews with family members of the mostly holistic doctors who have died this past year. While most are holistic, we have chosen to include doctors like El Sanadi, who obviously was prominently known here in Florida, and his alleged suicide is raising many eyebrows here in our community.
Source: SunSentinel
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T
Three-Generations Rule
Listen, out in the belt, we do things differently. Not just from the Inner Worlds, but from each other. No two habitats are the same. We're all little islands of culture and history, separated by hundreds of thousands of kilometers of empty space. But the one thing that runs through all of us is the importance of maintenance. It has to. Where it didn't, habitats failed. Societies collapsed. People died. But it wasn't always like that. Enough failures ensured that trait was selected for. Earthers don't get it. They have open sky. Free air. Stable ecology. Sure, they had to learn the hard way the importance of managing all of that on a planet | {
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Тяжёлые времена переживают сейчас чиновники Минздрава. Явно не клеятся их дела. Всё больше проблем в российском здравоохранении, всё тяжелее они решаются, всё больше недовольных граждан. И постоянно чиновникам приходится выслушивать многочисленные «наездов»: то счётная палата расскажет о несоответствии цифр, то общественная палата покритикует, то ОНФ выступит с критикой, то Кудрин со своим комитетом… Даже сам президент страны недавно пристально обратил внимание на рост смертности (и брови его нахмурились).
Ну нет житья-покоя бедным чиновникам. И стали они отбиваться. И стали махать опровержениями направо-налево. И так рьяно это стали делать, что просто диву можно даваться. Вот на заглавной странице сайта Минздрава (www.rosminzdrav.ru) висят, например, такие новости: «Комментарий Минздрава о сообщении Комитета гражданских инициатив» (http://www.rosminzdrav.ru/news/2015/07/04/2428-kommentariy-minzdrava-rossii-o-soobschenii-komiteta-grazhdanskih-initsiativ). Читаем: «утверждение о замещении бесплатных услуг платными не соответствует действительности: по данным Росстата, в прошедшем году темп роста сектора платных медицинских услуг в 2014 году по сравнению с 2013 годом замедлился». Здорово! Да? Только я не понял, «не соответствует действительности» или «темп роста замедлился»? То есть рост платных медуслуг есть, но он стал меньше. Или его нет?
И вот ещё: «то касается сокращения медицинских кадров и их предполагаемого дефицита, то… о настоящем дефиците медицинских специалистов можно говорить только тогда, когда нужных специалистов нет на рынке труда». Замечательно! То есть, если дефицит кадров ощущают пациенты, а не рынок, то этот дефицит ненастоящий? А пока пациенты, особенно в регионах, ощущают, Минздрав говорит, что всё хорошо, но вот только не хватает патанатомов, врачей-лаборатнов, рентгенологов и фтизиатров.
Читаем дальше. «Что касается роста смертности от инфекций, включая пневмонию, необходимо отметить, что Минздрав уделяет большое внимание профилактике этих заболеваний. Например, показатель смертности от туберкулеза за период январь-апрель 2015 года по сравнению с аналогичным периодом 2014 года снизился на 5,5%». Ну это уж совсем издевательство. А Минздрав не хочет ничего конкретного рассказать, что за меры по «профилактики пневмонии» он предпринимал? И причём здесь туберкулёз, ибо он составляет лишь малую долю от всех пневмоний, смертность от которых выросла, несмотря на меры по манипулированию цифрами на местах.
Вот ещё пример, когда чиновники перепутали все даты и потеряли связь с реальностью. Помните, за 1й квартал 2015 года смертность в России выросла. Эта новость появилась 8 мая.
Теперь Росстат сообщил, что в мае смертность уменьшилась. Уменьшилась — хорошо! Но вот зачем Минздрав у себя на сайте пишет, что «такая положительная динамика связана, прежде всего, с оперативно принятыми Минздравом мерами по осуществлению мониторинга основных причин смертности населения в регионах»? (http://www.rosminzdrav.ru/news/2015/07/01/2423-v-mae-smertnost-naseleniya-v-rossii-snizilas-na-5-9) получается, что 11 мая чиновники вышли на работу после праздников, учли все недостатки, приняли меры, и за оставшиеся 20 дней сократили смертность. Ай да молодцы!!! Ну вот только зачем они строят из себя гаррипоттеров? Люди же не идиоты и понимают, что всё это жонглирование цифрами.
И даже последняя инициатива Минздрава в этом свете выглядит идея Минздрава создать внутри себя новый Департамент общественного здоровья (http://vademec.ru/news/detail64864.html). Если хотя бы примерно представляете, чем занимается (или должен заниматься) Минздрав, то забота об «общественном здоровье» — это одна из его основных задач. И министр, и её заместители публично много усилий прикладывают к делу общественного здоровья. И вот теперь новый департамент. Зачем? Чтобы уделять ещё больше сил? А почему мы не знали, что раньше этих сил не хватает (ну тойсть, мы-то знали, но чиновники об этом молчали)? Или, допустим, из-за того, что в современном мире появились новые вызовы, угрожающие общественному здоровью. Но что это за новые вызовы? Или вызовы старые, а справиться с ними нет возможностей. Но тогда почему вдруг у нового департамента получится? Аааа!! Я знаю!! Потому что на это будут выделены средства. И вот это основная причина открытия нового департамента, ибо чиновничество существует для того, чтобы насасываться бюджетными средствами. И вот Минздрав на пике неудач решает привлечь ещё денег.
Ну что ж, дело понятное. Но вот только в совокупности выходит картина невесёлая: неуклюжие попытки отбить критику, путанные объяснения, а теперь ещё попытка привлечь бюджетные деньги… Всё это, как мне кажется признаки скорого конца нынешнего Минздрава. Жаль только, что новый Минздрав и новый министр мало что смогут изменить… | {
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The Tennessee Titans are moving on to their third starting quarterback of 2014.
Head coach Ken Whisenhunt confirmed the decision Thursday, via the Titans:
Whisenhunt also spoke about the process that led to the decision and Mettenberger's future on the depth chart, via Jim Wyatt of The Tennessean, Terry McCormick of TitanInsider.com and John Glennon of The Tennessean:
Offensive coordinator Jason Michael weighed in on the change under center, speaking about Mettenberger and his move into the starting role via Paul Kuharsky of ESPN and Wyatt:
Wyatt originally reported that the team would hand rookie Zach Mettenberger the first start of his NFL career against the Houston Texans on Sunday:
On Monday, coach Ken Whisenhunt said the plan was for [Jake] Locker to regain his place in the starting lineup when healthy. But with the Titans having lost five of their last six games and facing steep odds to make the playoffs, the coach apparently had a change of heart. ... ... Indications are Mettenberger was informed of the decision Tuesday night. He was not in the locker room after practice Wednesday, when Locker was off-limits to the media. Charlie Whitehurst, who has three starts this season, said he was not allowed to talk to reporters.
According to ESPN.com's Adam Caplan, the Titans had been preparing to elevate Mettenberger for some time:
NFL.com's Ian Rapoport reported that the rookie signal-caller practiced with the first team Wednesday:
"Anybody worth their salt wants to play, so that is what I am doing, I am pushing the two guys ahead of me and trying to get better," Mettenberger recently said, per Wyatt. "It's about taking advantage of the opportunity I am given. That is what I am waiting on, an opportunity I guess. Eventually, whenever that is, you have to make the most of it."
USA TODAY Sports
The Titans selected Mettenberger in the sixth round of the 2014 draft with the 178th overall pick. In three years playing with the LSU Tigers, he had 5,783 yards, 35 touchdowns and 15 interceptions.
As NFL Network's Andrew Siciliano pointed out, this has been a big year for rookie QBs:
Bleacher Report's Cian Fahey isn't optimistic about Mettenberger's chances, however, considering how well Houston's J.J. Watt is playing at the moment:
This move obviously calls into question the future of Jake Locker. The eighth overall draft pick in 2011 is set to become a free agent following the season after the Titans declined to pick up his option. Injuries have derailed Locker's career in part, but he's never displayed the kind of confidence teams want to see from their No. 1 quarterback.
USA TODAY Sports
ESPN's Bomani Jones felt everybody should've seen Locker's struggles coming:
For the Titans, starting Mettenberger is a low-risk, high-reward proposal. Things can't get much worse from here, with the Titans sitting at 2-5, and maybe Mettenberger can be the future under center.
The timing is also perfect with Tennessee's bye week coming up in Week 9, as the team can give him more time to acclimate to his new role. | {
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Competitive Beta -- The Plan and FAQ
The Plan
Have either purchased a copy of Team Fortress 2 prior to June 23, 2011, or have made a purchase from the Mann Co. Store. (AKA premium accounts)
Have Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator enabled. ( https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8625-WRAH-9030 )
Have a phone number associated with your Steam account ( https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8625-WRAH-9030#addphone )
FAQ
How do I play in the beta?
A stress test is active, why can't I see the button?
You must be a member of this group to opt-in to stress tests.
Your TF2 account must be premium ( See: http://www.teamfortress.com/freetoplay/faq.php )
You must have a phone number associated with your Steam account. See here for more information: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8625-WRAH-9030#addphone
Custom HUD modifications may make it impossible to see the Play Competitive button on the main menu. Please ensure you have disabled them.
If you have recently activated the Mobile Authenticator or recently joined this group, you may need to restart Team Fortress 2 to see the Play Competitive button.
Why am I crashing?
P-Rec is known to crash when used during competitive. Ensure you have disabled it.
is known to crash when used during competitive. Ensure you have disabled it. Custom HUD modifications are known to cause crashes or invisible or missing UI when used with competitive. Check your HUD for updates or disable it entirely.
Why does it say I am in the lower priority queue?
Hello from the TF2 team, and thanks for joining the TF2 competitive beta group! We hope you're all ready to start killing each other for points as we get this mode up on its feet.We know you'd all like to start testing now, and eventually we hope all of you WILL get a chance to play and share your thoughts. But remember that all testing happens in stages, and right now we're at stage one.Our plan is to start small and increase participation as we go. For this initial phase of testing - which will begin in the next week or so - we'll be gradually granting random members from this group an in-game item called a Competitive Matchmaking Beta Pass. Once you've been granted a pass you will have ongoing access to the beta.In addition, we will begin holding both announced and unannounced stress-test events, inviting many group members to participate for the duration of the event to test our systems. Group members selected for stress-tests won't require a pass to play for the duration of the event.Whether we randomly select you for stress testing or grant you a pass, we will prioritize group members that meet the following requirements:Thanks again for your interest and support!Right now, the beta is only available if a stress test event is active. Check the pinned group posts for more information on if and when a stress test is active.When a Stress Test is active, abutton will appear on the main menu, with a bright "Stress Test" badge upon it.Please check the following:If you abandon a competitive match, there is a short period during which you will have lower priority in the match making system. This is to prevent those who abandon matches from interrupting too many games.If your game crashes, you have a few minutes to restart your game and rejoin the match without penalty. You will be prompted to rejoin the match in progress if you restart your game within the allowed window. | {
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Near Baghouz (Syria) (AFP) - Guns, laptops, gold coins and baby formula: when Syrian fighters search women emerging from the ruins of the jihadist "caliphate", what they find is not the contents of your average handbag.
Women arrive in droves at a screening point controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the Islamic State group's last redoubt in the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border.
Veiled from head to toe, they conceal weapons under their clothes or in their bags, tucked between their children's scant belongings, says Nawal Kobani, an 18-year-old SDF fighter.
"The men don't carry anything, these things we only find with the women," the blonde, green-eyed fighter tells AFP at the SDF outpost.
On Monday, the SDF evacuated over 46 truckloads of people from the last scrap of the jihadist proto-state, adding to the 5,000 men, women and children evacuated last week.
The SDF say they are seeking to clear civilians from the IS pocket before a final push to crush jihadists now trapped in less than half a square kilometre in Baghouz.
- 'No pictures or memories'-
The latest batch of evacuees arrive at the SDF screening point at sunset on Monday, dust covering their clothes from the rough journey out of Baghouz.
Clad in black in the fading light, a group of women huddle in a circle on the rocky, arid ground, waiting to receive food handouts from the SDF.
Carrying a bag in his hand, a young child trudges through the crowded screening point, searching for his mother, Wardah.
Behind him, one woman tends to her child, another takes out a bottle of milk for her newborn, and a third sits still in silence, as though in shock.
Abeer Mohammad, a 35-year-old Syrian evacuee originally from the northern province of Aleppo, opens her tiny bag and pulls out a dirty plastic box containing pinches of powdered milk.
"I didn't bring anything with me except some clothes and some milk for the young one," she says, her three children sitting beside her.
Story continues
"We didn't have anything left anyway," she says, her eyes covered by a full face veil.
The women's black veils make it hard to differentiate between them.
Another Syrian woman from Aleppo, who asked not to be named, said: "No pictures or memories or anything. We didn't bring anything but clothes".
- 'They have surrendered'-
Around 50,000 people -- mostly women and children -- have streamed out of the Baghouz pocket since early December, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The early groups carried large suitcases and blankets with them as they left the IS redoubt. Some women stacked gold bracelets on their arms.
But the latest arrivals came out carrying nothing more than small backpacks.
Umm Mohammad, a 45 year-old Syrian from Aleppo, sits beside a pair of crutches.
She was wounded six months ago when a shell crashed into her home in Al-Shaafa, one of the last jihadist bastions taken by the SDF.
"Today, we carried the clothes that we could gather and we brought them with us here," she said.
The men nearby don't speak.
Unlike the women, who launch a barrage of questions as soon as they get a hold of an SDF fighter, or yell out for food and water, the men stand silently in queues, or sit quietly on the ground.
They don't chat among themselves or ask questions.
"It is impossible for the men to ask for anything," says Mazloum, a 29 year-old SDF fighter.
"They have already surrendered."
Khawlah Hama, a 53 year-old Iraqi woman, walks past a group of women sitting on the ground.
She twists left and right, looking for her 14 year-old son, hoping to find him among a group of men.
"He gets very scared, he is only 14," she says.
When asked what she left behind in Baghouz, she says: "Many are still inside".
"There are many fighters, and everyone is ready to leave." | {
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Following Bush’s reelection in 2004, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a 2006 article in Rolling Stone claiming that Bush’s campaign had stolen the election. The culprit for many Democrats was electronic voting machines that could be hacked to flip Democratic votes to the Republican column.
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Trailing in the polls to Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, John McCain warned in a debate that the advocacy organization ACORN was engaging in voter registration fraud and was “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” When Obama defeated McCain and Mitt Romney in 2012, Republicans became more likely to express doubts about the legitimacy of those elections.
To some extent, these patterns are predictable. People whose preferred candidate loses are less likely to believe an election was fair than those who supported the winner, something we call “loser’s regret” or a “hurrah effect.” In an article published by two of us (Stewart and Sances), we showed how important the “hurrah effect” really is.
The figure below shows the trend in voter confidence from the end of 2000 to the end of 2012, using every public opinion poll we could find. The top line in each chart shows how confident respondents said they were in their own vote. The lower line shows how confident people were in the national vote. We present the results for all voters, as well as for Republicans and Democrats separately.
First the good news: Despite a small dip in confidence in 2006, the percentage of respondents expressing confidence that their own vote (the solid circles) was counted as cast hovered consistently around 75 percent for over a decade.
The bad news, however, is that the percentage of respondents who were very confident that the national vote (the hollow circles) was counted as cast dropped by 30 percentage points, from around 50 percent in 2000 to around 20 percent in 2012.
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Partisan divisions grew during the decade, as they have in so many other areas of American political life.
Between 2000 and 2006, during the Bush presidency, Republicans were very confident in the nationwide vote count. After the 2008 election, GOP confidence declined steadily. Democrats, meanwhile, moved in the opposite direction: lower confidence (compared to Republicans) from 2000 to 2006, then an increase during the Obama years.
This seesaw pattern isn’t necessarily concerning, as long as partisans give at least grudging support to the proposition that the outcome was fairly decided.
But in research we conducted in 2012, we discovered that a substantial number of Republicans were reluctant to even acknowledge that Obama had won the election legitimately.
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As part of the postelection wave of the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, two of us (Gronke and Stewart) asked respondents: “Taking everything into account concerning the 2012 presidential election, indicate which statement most closely describes how you believe the outcome was decided?” They were asked to choose among the following:
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Votes were counted accurately nationwide. The man who actually received the most votes was elected president in a fair election.
There was a lot of fraud in counting the votes after the election. Nonetheless, the man who actually received the most votes nationwide was elected president.
There was a lot of fraud in counting the votes after the election. Because of that, the man who actually received the most votes nationwide was denied the presidency.
Among those expressing an opinion, 31 percent of Romney voters chose the last response, endorsing the idea that Obama was not the legitimate winner. Among those with “very positive” views of the tea party, 51 percent held that perspective. But 22 percent of Romney voters with a less positive view of the tea party also questioned the legitimacy of the election, suggesting that this belief was not restricted to a fringe of the party.
Dark views about the fairness of the electoral process have persisted. In May, the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that only 36 percent of respondents said that they had a great deal of confidence that their vote would be counted accurately. While we don’t know the partisan breakdown, past patterns suggest that confidence among Republicans is lower, which would be less than we have seen in more than a decade’s worth of survey data.
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These data raise the concern that Trump’s supporters may be especially receptive to allegations of fraud. Republican voters, especially those most inclined to be anti-establishment, may be primed to believe that the American political and economic system is rigged against them.
And Trump’s rhetoric has also been unusually stark, comparing U.S. elections to those in Russia and Zimbabwe. Candidates and parties in the past decade have been content to warn their supporters to be vigilant against possible shady practices, but in a system that is otherwise fair. The GOP nominee’s allegations have been described as “unprecedented.”
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Can such unfounded charges be effectively challenged? One might hope that critical scrutiny by the media of Trump’s claims will tamp down anxiety among the public. But voter fraud appears to be clickbait for the media, and in any case academic research suggests that efforts to debunk rumors can sometimes worsen their effects.
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The best hope is for a combination of voices, both partisan and nonpartisan, to remind Americans of the mechanisms in place to ensure that votes are counted fairly. This, along with redoubled efforts by state and local election officials to make the coming election as transparent as possible, is probably the best means to contain the damage that has been done.
Paul Gronke is professor political science at Reed College and director of the Early Voting Information Center.
Michael W. Sances is assistant professor of political science at the University of Memphis. | {
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An hour and 20 minutes waiting for KFC delivery And it's 10 minutes away from my house by car
186 shares | {
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The British Supreme Court has decided partially in favour of news-clipping service Meltwater in its long-running dispute with UK newspaper publishers, who accused Meltwater of distributing excerpts of stories online without paying any licensing fees.
The country's highest court ruled Wednesday that Meltwater's customers and anyone else in the UK cannot be prosecuted for viewing news stories online. But the court confirmed that Meltwater and its customers must obtain licenses from the newspaper publishers.
The ruling stems from a dispute between Meltwater and the UK's Newspaper Licensing Agency, which represents newspaper publishers. Meltwater provides its customers - mostly public relations firms wanting to track news about their clients - reports that contain hyperlinks, the opening paragraphs of articles and other excerpts via email or its website.
The dispute centred on whether Meltwater's customers were guilty of copyright infringement when they viewed articles online without the explicit consent of the newspapers that provided the original content.
The UK's High Court and Court of Appeals had previously ruled in favour of the Newspaper Licensing Agency. But the Supreme Court overturned those rulings.
"It has never been an infringement of EU or English law to view or read an infringing article in physical form," the court said in its official summary. "Making mere viewing, rather than downloading or printing, the material an infringement could make infringers of millions of ordinary internet users across the EU."
Because copyright issues concerning Web browsing are so important and have international implications, the Supreme Court referred its judgment to the European Union's Court of Justice, which has the authority to uphold the UK decision across all 27 countries in the EU.
"We are very pleased that the Supreme Court overruled the previous rulings of the Court of Appeals and the High Court that the simple act of browsing the Internet could be copyright infringement," Jorn Lyssegen, chief executive of Meltwater, said in a statement.
"This ruling is an important step in modernizing the interpretation of UK copyright law and protects UK Internet users from overreaching copyright collectors," he said.
Andrew Hughes, the Newspaper Licensing Agency's commercial director, said the group was disappointed with the decision, which Hughes said might nudge newspapers to put more material behind paywalls.
"We think news is valuable," he said. "We think people who commercially exploit news should pay."
In the United States, a federal judge recently concluded that Meltwater US Holdings and its Meltwater News Service essentially resold excerpts of stories from The Associated Press. US District Judge Denise Cote in New York ruled against Meltwater's claims that its use of Web stories drawn from a scan of 162,000 news websites from more than 190 countries was a fair use of copyright-protected material.
Meltwater was founded in 2001 in Oslo, Norway. According to the company's website, it has more than 800 employees working in 55 offices around the world. | {
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As it did in original World of Warcraft, the Zul’Gurub 20-person raid will have a 3-day reset timer. The ZG reset will be different in each region, and the first reset will occur less than one day after the raid opens at 11:59 p.m. CEST on 15 April.
In this region, the first reset for ZG will be at 9:00 a.m. CEST on Thursday, 16 April. This will be 9 hours after launch.
Thereafter, the raid will reset every 72 hours as expected. | {
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The Biblical Library elegantly designed & crafted for enjoyable reading, separated into volumes, and free of all numbers, notes, &c. | {
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On his radio program today, far-right wing activist Jesse Lee Peterson praised President Trump’s address to Congress last night, once again claiming that God is using Trump as a “savior” who will save black people from themselves.
Peterson argued that for decades, black public officials haven’t made any efforts to help black communities in America, so now “along comes President Trump and that’s on his list, to clean up the black community so that they too can live.”
“Jesus is not like coming down here and doing it himself,” Peterson asserted. “He’s working through President Trump to get it done and I think that it’s interesting in over the last 60 years, there has not been one black man that He’s worked through to get it done.”
Peterson said that Trump is black America’s “savior” because “he is saving the blacks from themselves by going in there and cleaning up crime, drugs and so that the decent blacks who are living in those areas can finally breathe and start living without fear of being shot down, robbed, killed, they can finally work. And he’s taking the illegal aliens out of those communities, the gangs that come from across the border, supported by drug cartels; so he is the savior in that manner, the physical savior for the black people.” | {
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The Federal Government has received credible information that Australia's most infamous terrorist, Khaled Sharrouf, has been killed in an air strike in the Middle East along with two of his young sons, 7.30 has learned.
Sharrouf and his sons, Abdullah, 12 and Zarqawi, 11, are believed to have been killed by a coalition air strike while driving near Islamic State's de facto Syrian capital Raqqa on Friday, August 11, according to government officials speaking on condition of anonymity.
7.30 is also aware one of Sharrouf's brothers has confirmed the death to a small group of Australian extremists via a message which said his brother and nephews were killed by the US-led coalition.
Photos of Sharrouf's corpse and the corpses of his sons have been seen by members of Australia's extremist community, a law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity told 7.30.
Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton told a press conference on Wednesday afternoon he could not confirm the deaths.
"It's always very difficult to confirm these reports, given that we're dealing with war zones in Syria and Iraq," he said.
"The point to make is that no Australian would mourn the loss of Khaled Sharrouf. He's a terrorist, he sought to harm Australians and, if he returned to our country, he would be a significant threat to the Australian public.
"Nobody would want to see Australian children die. Nobody would want to see any children die. But the fact is that Sharrouf and his wife took their children into a war zone. If they have been killed, what other outcome would they expect?"
Do you know more about this story? Email [email protected]
First time Australian children believed to have been killed
Khaled Sharrouf went to Syria in 2013. ( ABC News )
Sharrouf has long been the poster boy for the small cohort of Australians who travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with Islamic State, and his death will be welcome news to the Australian Government.
However, the killing of Abdullah and Zarqawi — both are Australian citizens — will leave the Government open to difficult questions about how Australian children were caught up in the strike on Sharrouf.
This is the first-known time that Australian children are believed to have been killed by a Western air strike in the Syrian conflict, and serious questions will be asked about what role Australia played in the operation that led to their deaths.
Sharrouf, 36, from Sydney, fled Australia for Syria on the passport of one of his brothers in 2013.
His wife Tara followed him soon after, taking their five children with her.
Tara died of health complications in 2015, but the pair's children remained in Syria with their father.
Those children are: Zaynab, 15, Hoda, 14, Abdullah; Zarqawi, and Hamzah, six.
Since being in Syria, Zaynab has given birth to a child by Sharrouf's best friend Mohammad Elomar, who was killed in a 2015 air strike.
Sharrouf's three remaining children are now stuck in Raqqa, where local civilians live an increasingly dangerous existence, trapped between a US-backed offensive and the Islamic State, who are preventing anyone from leaving the besieged city.
Sharrouf was the first Australian to have his citizenship stripped earlier this year under new counter-terrorism legislation. He remained a citizen of Lebanon.
'Australian law get stuffed'
Khaled Sharrouf in an undated photograph. ( ABC News )
Sharrouf first came to public attention in 2005, when he was charged over the Operation Pendennis terrorist conspiracy.
Pendennis involved groups of men in Sydney and Melbourne gathering guns, ammunition and bomb-making equipment to use in terrorist attacks in both cities.
During his trial it was stated that Sharrouf had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.
The court also heard of remarks he made about Australia, that were secretly recorded by police.
"Forget Australian law … Australian law get stuffed, finished … give us all back our passports and we leave," he said.
"I swear to God I'll be the first to get out of this stuffed-up country. Sons of dogs.
"I swear I'd rather be locked up and tortured and everything in a Muslim country rather than be locked up one day in this country."
He was a peripheral player and only served five years in jail.
In the years after his release it became clear he had not abandoned his commitment to militant Islam, and in 2012 was a participant in the Hyde Park riot that began as a protest against a YouTube video denigrating Islam's prophet, Mohammed.
Sharrouf moved to Syria the next year to join the war being waged by Islamic State against dictator Bashar al-Assaad.
In 2014, Sharrouf attained global notoriety when he published social media photographs of Abdullah, then aged nine, holding the severed head of a Syrian government soldier in Raqqa.
Even US secretary of state at the time, John Kerry, reacted to the photo.
"This image is really one of the most disturbing, stomach-turning, grotesque photographs ever displayed," he said.
Sharrouf returned to the public consciousness in May this year when a video emerged of his youngest son Humzah being coaxed by his off-screen father to simulate the killing of non-Muslims and Australians.
A week later police raided the home of one of Sharrouf's relatives following concerns the pair may have spoken about committing a terrorist act on Anzac Day. | {
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GRAND BASSAM, Ivory Coast (Reuters) - Gunmen from al Qaeda’s North African branch drank beer at a beachside bar before launching a shooting rampage at an Ivory Coast resort town that left at least 18 people dead, the group’s third major attack in West Africa in four months.
Sunday’s raid, details of which are beginning to emerge in witness and official accounts, was the furthest yet from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s (AQIM) traditional desert base, a worrying indication of the militants’ growing reach.
The attack raised questions about Ivory Coast’s preparedness for such an attack, with some asking why such a sensitive target was left so vulnerable.
Fifteen civilians and three members of the special forces were killed and 33 people were wounded in the attack in Grand Bassam, a weekend retreat popular with Ivorians and westerners about 40 km (25 miles) east of the commercial capital Abidjan.
Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko said another 26 wounded were still receiving medical attention on Monday, as President Alassane Ouattara declared three days of mourning for the country, which has never before been hit by al Qaeda.
Three militants also died in the attack on the resort town, a UNESCO heritage site of crumbling colonial-era buildings.
Witness Christian Eddy said four men arrived in a Ford saloon car at the beachside bar where he works around noon on Sunday. While two remained outside, the two others entered and drank beers for around a half hour.
They then launched the attack.
“They didn’t speak French. They spoke Arabic. We communicated with them in English .... The guys who were still outside started shooting and the two seated at the table yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ and flipped over the table,” he told Reuters.
He said the first victim was a boy who was made to kneel before he was shot. Bar staff tried to warn a deaf boy who was playing nearby.
“People were yelling ‘Come over here!’ But he didn’t know what was happening and just went down to the water. They shot him in the water,” Eddy said.
Slideshow ( 19 images )
The gunmen then moved up the beach, continuing their killing spree and entering several seaside hotels.
Surveillance footage from Hotel Etoile du Sud - one of the attackers’ first targets where two people including a German woman and a Lebanese man were gunned down - showed the initial panic in the hotel bar as the first shots rang out.
Staff crouched and then fled along with customers, among them parents carrying babies or leading young children by the hand.
A man, apparently disguised as a waiter in a red waistcoat over a white dress shirt, entered with a rifle, fired at the empty bar and disappeared behind it, where the Lebanese man had been hiding. More gunshots were then heard.
The first police officers arrived on the scene around 15 minutes after the shooting began, witnesses said. It would be another half hour before special units from the security forces arrived from Abidjan.
The victims included foreign citizens from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, France, Germany and Mali.
Among the dead was Henrike Grohs, 51, head of the Abidjan branch of Germany’s Goethe Institut cultural body.
France’s President Francois Hollande said four French nationals were killed in the attack. The French government had earlier said just one of its citizens had died.
EASY TARGET
The attack is a heavy blow for Ivory Coast, which has recovered from more than a decade of political turmoil and a 2011 civil war to become one of the world’s fastest growing economies.
Slideshow ( 19 images )
President Ouattara won a landslide election victory in October, promising to attract foreign investment to the largest economy in French-speaking West Africa which is also the world’s top cocoa producer.
“Ivory Coast will not let itself be intimidated by terrorists,” Ouattara said in a televised address late on Monday. “Yes, Ivory Coast is on its feet. Yes, on its feet to combat the cowards and protect its people.”
AQIM has spread across the Sahara from Algeria and now operates in much of western and northern Africa.
In January, gunmen killed dozens of people in a cafe frequented by foreigners in neighboring Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, and also attacked a hotel. Militants attacked another hotel in the Malian capital Bamako late last year, killing 20.
Since those attacks, Ivorian authorities have increased security around hotels and shopping malls in Abidjan, a city of around five million inhabitants. But there were few signs that was the case in Grand Bassam ahead of Sunday’s attack.
“Attacking Bassam was the easiest thing for them to do. Bassam is where all the expatriates and middle class from Abidjan gather on the weekends,” said one longtime resident, who said he had seen no sign of recent security improvements.
“We don’t understand why this wasn’t considered a priority for protection. It would be easy,” he said, asking not to be named.
The recent attacks in the region are generally viewed as targeting France and its allies after Paris intervened militarily in Mali in 2013 to drive out al Qaeda-linked militants who had seized the desert north a year earlier.
The attack in Grand Bassam, thousands of kilometers from al Qaeda’s traditional operational zones, raises fears over where they might strike next. It poses serious security questions for former regional colonial power France, which has thousands of citizens and troops in the region.
While some 18,000 French citizens live in Ivory Coast, over 20,000 reside in Senegal.
France has 3,500 troops in the region, from Senegal in the far west to Chad. A French military base in Abidjan, manned by around 800 soldiers, serves as a logistical hub for regional operations against Islamist militancy in the Sahel.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve will travel to Ivory Coast on Tuesday to offer logistical support and intelligence, French diplomatic sources said. Counter-terrorism officials have also been sent to help the investigation. | {
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My name is Michael, and I am an Assaphobe.
It should be said that “Parcopresis” is the actual term for “a fear of public pooping,” the affliction with which I so greatly suffer. However, I have been referring to my syndrome as “assaphobia” for so long, we are going to stick with the term – after all, it is so important for people like me to be comfortable.
Just to be clear, this is an ass issue. I am not threatened by clean public restrooms (meaning they’ve never been used). Rather, I am terrified by the excrement of others – moreover, the revolting disgust associated therewith. In short, and with very few exceptions (Jessica Alba, 2003) – I hate your assholes and what they do. In fact, I hate mine as well.
Certainly, I am not alone. The thought of squatting in a public facility must be paralyzing to more than just me (by God, there’s a whole phobia named after it) – even if we must suffer in relative ambiguity. You see, there’s only one thing an assaphobe detests more than pooping publicly, and that is discussing their poop habits with others (and yes, others’ poop habits with them). I mean fuck off, please, seriously. (I am typing with a blanket pulled over my head to make me feel secure and it’s barely helping.)
Sure, public restroom pooping is something we all must face at some point — even assaphobes. You see, no matter how repulsive we find the thought of a bowel movement in a high-traffic public restroom is, so it goes with pants shitting, “wet gas,” and the like. There is some truth to the adage “nature calls.”
As an adult, I have shit my pants just once … it happened in my late 20s. It was June. I was in my car waiting in the left turn lane at a traffic light – the mere distance of one unraveled TP roll away from my own, pristine apartment toilet. I let out what I thought to be a “scout” fart, and well, you can guess the rest.
How do I explain the poor timing?
It was simply a dastardly result of my own unwillingness to pull over at myriad possible dumping sites along the way home.
Lesson learned. There had to be another way.
My solution (to be fully detailed later) first began to take shape when I worked in the resort industry. Yes, the right slider card (coupled with server access to the housekeeping log), meant carte blanche to christening some of the world’s cleanest toilets – think “Presidential Suite Throne” just minutes after white-glove-assisted disinfecting. Shitters paradise, I kid you not. But, you weren’t always in the right department for that kind of access. And most of us, outside the hallowed walls known only to resort universal-key card bearers, will likely never know such Assvana.
So then what?
As they say, desperation is the mother of invention. I already knew I didn’t want to crap in the employee locker room. Fuck that. That is fucking disgusting. Locker room shitting is deplorable. This required some serious contemplation.
At night, the ballroom bathrooms are wrecked, or at least they could be if there’s a function. The same can be said for restaurants and other high traffic area on-property facilities. But, what about at 8 a.m…Hmmmm?
Sure, there might be one or two fellow Assaphobes who already know the trick, but it is possible to find one of these places gleaming and nearly sterile at this hour, with a triangular fold in the TP still in place – the blessed sacrament of the wee hours housekeeping scour.
We shall revisit in a moment …
Office bathrooms the worst
Unlike universities or other public places, office bathrooms present a whole new realm of “I’d rather die” scenarios. Not only are they vile, they are occupied with people you know, people you work closely with. You may even know who is doing the damage by their shoes. Or worse, they’ll just saunter in, acknowledge you and begin the “grunt and fart” routine like they’re home in their empty house. They go at it like that is acceptable social behavior in the confines of a public restroom.
It’s not. And fuck them for thinking that it is.
Wait, I have to say this, “If you take a shit in your office restroom (languidly with grunts and sighs) while others are in there, I fucking hate you, you disgusting fuck of a fuck.”
Within the last year, I made an industry change. Yes, I am still a marketer, but I moved over to the technology industry. I know, smart. That being said, I left the proverbial “seat of thought up” when it came to considering the secondary and tertiary affects that such a decision would have on my daily comings and, well, “goings.” Yep, there was one item I failed to consider, particularly for a defcon5 assaphobe such as myself.
Working in technology is the closest thing in the human world to working in a zoo. Tech nerds come in all shapes and sizes and are known for diets that are downright scary – and that’s just on the way in. Within a twenty foot radius of my desk, sits a grizzly bear, a Jurassic-sized hippopotamus, a manatee, African elephant, an angry rhinoceros, a gorilla, a wild boar, and an entire community of sloths (save a few lizards, deer, birds, lemurs, and myrrh cats, etc.
About a month after my hire date, I went into the office bathroom to take a whizz (I don’t like public urinals either, but I can do that.) Low and behold, I had barely broken the threshold of the door, and there it was. I froze. Before me was the megalithic hippo, neck rolls and all, hastily tearing at his trousers’ fastener. This was to end badly. No way did I wish to be an olfactory (much less aural) witness to an event with such potential for epic atrocity. I whirled a quick 180 degrees to retreat.
Shit!
Another victim, unbeknownst, was right upon my heels. But, was he like me? Or was he a member of the wretched subspecies who is content to have a urinal chat while just feet away, a sub humanoid was delivering fecal Hiroshima just beyond a flismy stall door?
I did what I had to do.
I feigned retarded, acting as though I always do a pirouette upon entering a restroom. I mean, this was the house of tech nerd, how could he ever know that I don’t suffer from Asperger’s? I mean, roughly 30 percent of the office does. How else would all that programming get done?
Alas, like a bad dream whence your voice and limbs are summoned by forces of the beyond, fate lured me to the urinal like a small craft caught in a Klingon ship’s tractor beam. A barrage of explosions reminiscent of Desert Storm’s Shock and Awe rocked the damned porcelain pot behind us. The hippo was wailing. Fumes of Agent Orange Chicken angrily licked the pale green tile walls of Satan’s shit cove. My piss, and likely that of my counterpart’s, could not be forced out fast enough.
“Fuck this shit,” I said (I think, aloud.) I called back my own stream with a strong clench and bolted, not even a touch of the soap dispenser. I couldn’t take another millisecond. Disgusting fuck. I wished only that the hippo heard. He should know how disgusting and reprehensible he is – that shitpig of a man.
Aside from the Googles and Apples of the world (and I am not-so-sure about them either), technology-based business bathrooms have been removed from my list, hereunto forward – no longer acceptable EVEN FOR EMERGENCIES.
“So then what?” you ask. Where the hell am I (or anyone in my unenviable position) going to go, when home just isn’t an option?
Well, let’s think about what we’ve learned. Remember, the condition of certain resort bathrooms? Sure, not all are ideal, but even the worst ones are light years ahead of the office pot. Lightfuckingyears.
Down to the nitty gritty
Here’s what you’ve got to do. Open up Google and type in “hotels near me.” It’s going to give you a list. Rule of thumb: The nicer the hotel, the better the bathroom(s). Now, keep in mind, big resorts are going to be better than little business hotels because there are going to be more options – clean options. Generally speaking, the restrooms near big ballrooms in resorts go untouched and are virtually private by day.
Keep in mind; most hotel bathrooms are going to be an improvement, merely because you do not know the people shuffling in and out. Moreover, their main concern for repeat business is aesthetics. Clean bathrooms and glistening common areas are paramount to brand and image for these businesses … yes, assaphobe Shittopia, where they literally have people on patrol to maintain the facilities.
Does your office?
Maybe. But not nearly with the frequency or diligence of a hotel or resort staff. Not. Even. Close.
9 steps to Assaphobe liberation
You identify the need to “go” while you are sitting at your desk. (Recognize this feeling as early as possible – you do not want to do this in an emergency. It adds pressure and panic and can actually affect the outcome on a variety of different levels. Yes, that includes the quality of the bowl movement and resultant wiping factor.) Find a good moment when there is little attention on you. Stand up, grab your keys, and walk out of the building. Have the “I am working” look on your face. Do not tell anyone you are stepping out. I mean it. Speak to no one. Is that clear? (Unless you have an off-premise bathroom co-conspirator.) Get in your car and drive to your selected hotel (you should have them pre-ranked and hopefully already done some walk-throughs.) Park inconspicuously at your destination, particularly if it is a smaller business hotel. You don’t want the staff to really recognize you after your first few visits. Get out your phone as you walk in and either fake a conversation, or pretend you are texting. Make no eye contact with hotel employees, look business busy, and repeat the following sentence in your head, “fuck you I’m staying here” or “don’t bother me.” Keep saying these words in your head, until you become comfortable with the idea that you are bathroom crashing. (You may never. Dis-ease in the face of public pooping is the norm for the classically diagnosed assaphobe.) Go to the bathroom and remember: You are clean. You are safe. Smile. Isn’t your life better now? Oh yeah, if it is early morning or late afternoon and you are at one of those mid-tier places where they provide breakfast/snacks to guests, its okay to help yourself to the occasional muffin. That being said, I don’t recommend it at your top-rated place. No muffin is worth the peace of mind offered by a top-tier office bathroom substitute. No. Damn. Muffin.
That’s it. Now, if you work in a busy business area, I recommend a three-hotel rotation – at the very least. I mean, if you’re already an Assaphobe, you probably aren’t going to have to make more than one trip per week … in fact; most of us have this kind of thing timed out for home. So, a three-hotel rotation (I currently have a four, but I am a professional) sets you up so you probably are only in one facility once or twice per month.
The key to it all is a business-like approach. You go do your thing, and you get back to work. This is not a break; this is to go to the bathroom. You pray to the bathroom gods and you say “thank you” to the property and then thank the gods again, with each successful visit. You never ever take such an opportunity for granted.
For example – I have been going to the number one in my rotation for several months – like 8 or 9 months, at least. It probably rates a 7.5 in quality, but it is just 2-3 minutes away so it’s a favorite. It’s a perfect 3.5 star business-class hotel with an easy-to-approach lobby entrance, a separate, post-crap exit door where you don’t even have to walk past the front desk (these are a godsend), and an occasional muffin to boot (shhh) … this place is deservedly my number one.
Get this. A few weeks ago, I walked in and heard my name called. A lady I used to work with back when I was in resorts, runs the front desk. Un-fucking-believable. I was terror stricken … this couldn’t be happening. Surely, this is a curse summoned by the Dark Lord.
Hi, Yvonne. I called upon the deepest recesses of my imagination to summon some plausible story about how my work often puts clients up here from time to time. Yes, that’s it. I was waiting for someone. I come here up to two, three times a month … Yes! Now, I didn’t have to cross it off the list, not completely anyway. But, she freakin’ ruined it for me – at least, inasmuch as frequency and the delicious anonymity was concerned. Again, remember to pray to the gods and say thank you. You cannot be grateful enough. Trust me.
Okay assaphobes, I hope this lesson about off-premise bathroom crashing was helpful. Remember, you are important and there is nothing wrong with you. It is them (those who don’t have a problem with public shitting) that are not fully evolved human beings.
No go. Journey forth into a world renewed, my assaphobic comrades. Harken unto my word, and embrace this life-changing solution to the greatest problem of the Plumbing Age. And do so with NO GUILT. Your peace of mind – in this, the most compromising and vulnerable of all human moments – is at stake.
Update: Since I wrote this, Yvonne is gone. My number one for number two is back. Thank you, thank you, thank you! | {
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‘Growth levels of 7.5-8% unlikely in next 24 months’
Refusing to hazard a guess on GDP growth in the short-term given the “shocks” such as the Goods and Services Tax, demonetisation and the mountain of bad loans, former Reserve Bank Governor Y.V. Reddy said the economy needed two more years to “consolidate” and claw back to higher growth levels.
It was difficult to make a forecast on growth now or say when the economy would return to the potential growth levels of say, 7.5-8%, which is unlikely in the next 24 months, he said.
“In a shock, the negative element is front-loaded. There will be some moderation, and there can be some gains. The pain is there now, the gains will come later. How much gain and in what gap, are the issues,” Mr. Reddy told reporters.
Mr. Reddy said the economy was helped by a positive shock for almost three years following the massive drop in crude price, which he said was at a third of what it was during his governorship.
However, negative shocks such as the implementation of the GST, demonetisation of currency notes last November and also the high quantum of non-performing assets of banks have hurt the growth rate, Mr. Reddy said.
Reckless lending in the high-growth years during the previous government and certain developments in the telecom, power and coal sectors following graft charges created a lot of stress in the corporate world and left many of them over-leveraged. | {
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THE ATLANTIC
W-E! N-D! Y-apostophe-S!
We'd imagine that'd be the mantra of Ohio pride, were corporations truly to rule the country. And we do have a glimpse of that rather grim future, thanks to The Atlantic.
Ohio, it seems, is most well-known for square patties and fries that are perfect for dippin' in your Frosty. And that's totally fine (they're delicious). But what other options are out there for Ohio's corporate identity? Here's a look at the iconic companies that call the Buckeye State home:
Bob Evans: If Ohio's own Bob Evans (yes, that was the founder's name) doesn't scream breakfast, then you can just get the fuck out of here. Two years ago, Gov. John Kasich whipped out his tax incentive tool belt to keep the company from jumping across state lines. In between mouthfuls of syrup-laden pancakes, we have to admit it was a good idea.
Wilson: Likely known more for its ubiquitous tennis balls, its role in Cast Away, and, tangentially, as the title character of a really great Phish song, the sports manufacturer also boasts the country's only dedicated football factory, right here in Ohio. Note: Geographic proximity does not lend itself to any modicum of talent on the field.
Skyline Chili: Pass the cheese and oyster crackers, and I'll see you on the other side of a beautiful, Ohio-borne food coma. Skyline, however, may be among the most divisive topics in Ohio conversations. Is it delicious? Is it not delicious? It's kinda like how we approach LeBron, except for the part about deliciousness.
Progressive Insurance: There's nothing terribly exciting to say about an insurance company, except for OH MY GOD WE LOVE FLO. And outside of waiting for the next Flo commercial to show up amidst our "Dance Moms" marathon, that's about all we need to say.
Smucker's: With a name like... Yes, you know the line. You also know a top-tier commercial jelly when you smear it on your butt taste it. Also, while we're at it, here's one of the company's older slogans: "The only brand of jams that can make a piece of bread lively!" Oh, how far the marketing department has come...
American Greetings: Dishing up heartfelt holiday humor straight outta Brooklyn, AG has set the standard for stumbling awkwardly from print to digital media. For that, we and the city of Westlake couldn't be prouder.
Wendy's: We've kind of already covered this one, but here's a clip of a Wendy's employee going to nozzle-to-mouth with the Frosty machine. | {
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BJP MLA Suresh Tiwari has reportedly asked people in Deoria district not to purchase vegetables from Muslim vendors. BJP MLA Suresh Tiwari has reportedly asked people in Deoria district not to purchase vegetables from Muslim vendors.
BJP MLA Suresh Tiwari has reportedly asked people in Deoria district not to purchase vegetables from Muslim vendors.
The legislator from the district’s Barhaj constituency was heard making the remarks in a video doing the rounds on social media. “Keep one thing in mind, I am telling everyone openly, no one should purchase vegetables from Muslims,” he told some people, including government officials.
Read| Not right to fault a community over actions of some: Mohan Bhagwat
When contacted, Tiwari said he had made the statement last week during his visit to the office of the Barhaj Nagar Palika, where several government officials were present.
“After hearing complaints that people of a community were selling vegetables after contaminating them with saliva in an attempt to spread coronavirus disease, I advised them not to purchase vegetables from them… After the situation gets normal, then decide what they want,” said the MLA.
The legislator claimed he had only given his opinion, and it was up to people to decide if they wanted to follow it. “Everyone can see what Jamaat members have done in the country,” Tiwari said, referring to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi last month.
State BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi said the party does not endorse such statements. The party would take cognisance of the matter and question Tiwari about the circumstances in which he made the remarks, he added.
📣 The Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@indianexpress) and stay updated with the latest headlines
For all the latest India News, download Indian Express App. | {
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FuboTV, a startup that launched two years ago as a streaming subscription TV service for soccer, is gearing up to launch a “skinny bundle” of 70-plus broadcast and cable channels after securing deals with several programmers.
The company — continuing to emphasize live sports programming — will more than double its channel lineup following affiliate agreements it signed recently with Fox Networks Group, NBCUniversal, A+E Networks, Crown Media Family Networks, Fuse Media, NBA TV and the Weather Channel. The deals will bring to FuboTV a selection of games from the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball.
FuboTV in the next few weeks plans to launch a new service, at an introductory rate of $34.99 per month, with more than 70 channels, including national broadcast and cable networks, regional sports networks, and local broadcast stations owned and operated by the new partners.
The offering will put FuboTV more squarely in competition with other Internet pay-TV players, including DirecTV Now, Dish Network’s Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue—as well as traditional cable and satellite TV providers. Disney also has said it’s planning to roll out an ESPN-branded sports service, on the heels of its investment in Major League Baseball’s BAMTech streaming-video unit.
The programming agreements come after FuboTV landed $15 million in funding in February 2016 led by 21st Century Fox and Sky. The company has raised $20.6 million to date. Other investors include DCM Ventures, Luminari Capital, LionTree Partners, former Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr., ICM Partners founding partner Chris Silbermann and former NBA Commissioner David Stern.
With the expanded lineup, FuboTV’s users in the U.S. will have the ability to watch live events from all of the major American professional and college sports, as well as international leagues and tournaments – including live baseball, basketball, boxing, cricket, cycling, football, golf, hockey, horse racing, mixed martial arts, motorsports, professional wrestling, rugby and tennis. Additionally, an array of live and video on demand entertainment programming from the new networks will also be available to subscribers.
Channels with sports programming being added for FuboTV beta subscribers in the coming weeks will include local stations owned by Fox, NBC and Telemundo; RSNs from Fox Sports and NBC Sports; plus national networks Fox Soccer Plus, BTN, FS1, FS2, Fox College Sports, Fox Deportes, Golf Channel, NBA TV, NBCSN, NBC Universo and Universal HD.
In addition, FuboTV is adding a range of entertainment and news channels under the agreements. Those include networks from A+E Networks (A&E Network, FYI, History, Lifetime, LMN, Viceland); Crown Media Family Networks (Hallmark Channel, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries); Fox Networks Group (Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, FX, FXM, FXX, National Geographic, Nat Geo Mundo, Nat Geo Wild); Fuse Media (Fuse, FM); NBCU (Bravo, Chiller, Cloo, CNBC, CNBC World, E!, Esquire, MSNBC, Oxygen, Sprout, Syfy, USA Network); and the Weather Channel (Local Now, The Weather Channel).
The new FuboTV service will include features such as DVR, VOD, in-browser streaming and digital TV guide navigation. Additional features to be added in the future include a “catch up” function, personalization and user profiles, and access to more than 25 TV Everywhere authenticated apps.
FuboTV, which officially launched in January 2015, is available on the web at fubo.tv; on Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick; Android and iOS devices; Apple TV; Chromecast; Kindle Fire; and Roku. | {
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HERE'S a 'spy shot' from Thai website Motorival.com which purports to show a new Kawasaki Z125.
Small-capacity bikes revealed in Asia don't usually make it onto Visordown because they're often not UK bound - but there's a yawning gap in Kawasaki's range for a 125 roadster, so a learner-legal addition to the Z family looks like perfect sense. The only 125 in the line-up at the moment is the KLX125 trail bike.
Currently the Z1000 and Z800 are available to riders with an unrestricted licence while A2 licence holders can choose from the Z300 or a restricted Z800 e. A 125 model for learners would make a Z for every licence category.
It's not clear where the bike was photographed, and the pictures are too low-res to tell whether it actually says '125' on it. It does have a 'Z' though, along with a clear resemblance to the rest of the family, with upside-down forks and a stubby exhaust.
Motorival tells us it will officially debut on October 25 in Bangkok. | {
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Honda CRF1000L Africa Twin launch
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Africa Twin: Day two roundup – Off-road
Following a day of road riding yesterday (scroll down), today saw us taking the new Africa Twin onto the rough stuff to really put its off-road credentials to the test.
For the road test, we rode on Dunlop Trialsmart tyres, which are aimed at those who will predominantly stick to the tarmac, but who also may also occasionally venture onto dirt tracks. But today things were destined to get more serious, so our bikes were euipped with Continental TKC80’s. These would typically be the tyre that you would use for a genuine on and off-road adventure, and equip the true adventure rider with a tyre that will be unfazed by serious dirt and rougher trails.
The test route was a challenging loop that incorporated a mixture of fast trails, soft sand and rocky terrain, with a few tight turns to boot – and we had both manual and DCT bikes available to ride.
The narrow seat and your seated position – which was touched on in yesterday’s report (below) – makes so much sense when riding off-road. It is very roomy, giving lots of space to move about the machine and really get a feel for what’s happening at your feet. The Africa Twin is a very well balanced machine which makes the bike predictable and easy to control.
For off-road riding, the engine is absolutely beautiful and the power delivery is smooth and progressive. The electronics further compliment the delivery, being simple to use and understand.
We rode most of the route today with the traction control off and found I found the Africa Twin to be really manageable, responding well to my inputs. Even when the back wheel starts sliding there is still plenty of control and predictability just relying on throttle control and mechanical grip.
Honda have done an amazing job with the DCT gearbox. Its an incredible addition to the bike and takes a large element of the rider’s workload away, allowing you to focus on finding the best lines without having to worry about the clutch or stalling the bike.
It doesn’t take long at all to realise that this bike is very, very good. It absolutely sings off-road and it is immediately evident that this is its home territory – despite the fact that it performs brilliantly on-road too. Hats off to Honda, the Africa Twin is a genuinely impressive machine.
Check up the upcoming issue of MCN on Wednesday 09 December for the ful report.
Lap two of off-road course on DCT version. I am amazed how good it is! I never dreamed an 'automatic' bike could work so well off road. — MCN Sport (@MCNSport) December 5, 2015
And this is the playground for today.... pic.twitter.com/29whhb8ybK — MCN Sport (@MCNSport) December 5, 2015
First lap of demanding off road course complete. Seriously impressed. Great balance, grip and throttle connection. pic.twitter.com/Bcn1aqdD0y — MCN Sport (@MCNSport) December 5, 2015
Africa twin launch day 2. Time for off road. It wears the nobblies well... pic.twitter.com/u5loP7KgKg — MCN Sport (@MCNSport) December 5, 2015
Africa Twin: Day one roundup - Road
First up there are some amazing roads here in South Africa! They sweep through canyons and up mountains, with unpredictable road surfaces and an eclectic mix of second gear hairpins through to top gear sweepers and anything in between – making it an enviable place to ride and the perfect back drop to evaluate an adventure bike.
Having started the day on the manual version of the bike, which has adjustable levels of traction control and off-road ABS, this afternoon was spent riding the DCT machine.
The dual clutch system has evolved since Honda introduced it to their range approximately three years ago and its taken another step on the new Africa Twin due to the bikes off-road ability.
Gear changes are seamless to the extent where there is minimal weight transfer from front to rear which is a major bonus should you carry a pillion as it’s likely to negate and clashing of helmets.
Despite losing a large amount of rider input in terms of deciding when to change gear, it remains engaging to ride and back to back on fast, what would be A-roads, there was nothing to split the DCT and the Manual bike for speed and acceleration.
It’s definitely more relaxing to ride, ultimately giving the rider more time to concentrate on other things such as line, hazards (which include some wildlife here in South Africa ranging from baboons to tortoises!) and of course the often incredible view on offer.
Tomorrow is arguably the real test for the Africa Twin. A lot has been made about its off-road capabilities on day two we’re going to get to understand a lot more. As a passionate off-road rider I have to say that from the first contact with the dirt today, Honda’s claims are genuine and well founded. It feels well balanced, easy to ride and a lot less intimidating than anyone of the 1200cc adventure bikes currently on offer.
First Impressions
It’s been a long time coming and we’re already halfway through the first of two days riding the new Honda CRF1000L Africa Twin. Our first impression of the new machine is very positive.
Honda have been keen to promote the bikes off road credentials and so far it hasn’t disappointed although the proper dirt experience will be coming tomorrow when we'll get the chance to really put it through its paces.
Today is predominantly road orientated riding, having so far covered 130km on the bike, with about 30km of fast wide dirt track riding. The bike feels agile thanks in part to its narrow seat, which gives a lot of scope for transferring body weight. The 21-inch front and 18-inch rear wheels help give lots feedback and, on the road the machine handles well, is stable and also comfortable.
It’s a very easy bike to get along with. The electronics work well and are simple to use – a godsend in an age of endless menus and changeable setting on other machines.
On to the motor, which has been one of the biggest unknown factors with this bike after it was developed from the ground up specifically for the Africa Twin. It’s strong, with useable power everywhere in the rev range. The power is very linear and the engine is very smooth. While the Africa Twin isn’t slow, it also isn’t the fastest bike but it isn’t meant to be. You can still make good progress on this machine and so far it is living up to expectations.
We have only ridden the fully manual bike at the moment; this afternoon we will be testing the machine with the DCT fully automatic gearbox. Keep checking back to find updated reports on the machine and a full ride report following the test.
Time to ride the DCT Africa twin. pic.twitter.com/RSjXj7q1Zv — MCN Sport (@MCNSport) December 4, 2015
Getting some testing done on challenging roads in 40 degree heat. A stroll in the park for the Africa twin so far... pic.twitter.com/QL6KW50hqW — MCN Sport (@MCNSport) December 4, 2015
Still early days Capable on road Smooth & stable, linear power. More road focussed riding now. Will know more later. pic.twitter.com/RnegLgylpx — MCN Sport (@MCNSport) December 4, 2015
First taste of road and off road done. Quality, comfortable, easy to use electronics and sweet handling off road. pic.twitter.com/mlZIscOsaC — MCN Sport (@MCNSport) December 4, 2015
The time has come. Africa twin launch... pic.twitter.com/yqDO9m7mII — MCN Sport (@MCNSport) December 4, 2015
At the Presentation for the new Honda Africa Twin in Cape Town. Massive emphasis towards off road capabilities. pic.twitter.com/E6pr4RmyDy — MCN Sport (@MCNSport) December 3, 2015
Well it’s taken, months, years in fact it’s well over a decade, but today is the day we get to ride Honda’s long overdue Africa Twin.
The original bike, which arrived in the market back in 1988 was a popular choice for 15 years before being discontinued in 2003. Now nearly another 15 years has passed, but the new bike is finally here.
We’ve all seen the promotional videos, which got more and more dramatic, culminating in MotoGP man Marc Marquez and Dakar stage winner Joan Barreda thrashing the bikes off-road, so its fair to say expectation for the new bike is high.
In last night presentation by Honda’s engineers, designers and marketing staff the overwhelming message, was not only of new technology – the bike comes with 32 new registered patents, but also to its clear off-road capabilities.
Today’s riding takes place north of Cape Town and includes a 280km loop of mainly tarmac so we’re going to get to find out very shortly how well this talked about off-road capabilities and DNA transfers to the road.
Given that we are testing the bikes over two hours north of Cape Town, comms could be an issue but we’ll be doing our best to bring you an update to give first impressions with more information to follow this evening.
Read the latest stories causing a buzz this week in News… | {
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【12月15日 AFP】サウジアラビア政府は15日、イスラム世界において「テロリズム」と戦うために、ペルシャ湾岸諸国やエジプト、トルコなどを含む34か国による軍事連合の結成を発表した。
サウジ主導の軍事連合は、同国の首都リヤド（Riyadh）に拠点を置き、中東、アフリカ、アジア諸国が参加。「テロリズムと戦う軍事作戦を調整、支援する」と国営サウジ通信（SPA）が報じた。域内の対抗勢力であるイスラム教シーア派（Shiite）国のイラン、シリア、イラクは含まれていない。
同通信はさらに「テロリズムと戦い、世界の平和と安全を守る国際努力を支援するため、平和を愛する友好国や国際機関との連携により」協定を交わしていくとも伝えている。
リヤドで記者会見した、ムハンマド・ビン・サルマン（Mohammed bin Salman）国防相は、この軍事連合は「テロリズムに関するイスラム世界の問題に立ち向かい、この災禍に対する世界規模の戦いにおいて連携する」と語った。
参加34か国はすべてサウジのジッダ（Jeddah）に拠点があるイスラム協力機構（Organisation of Islamic Cooperation）の加盟国となっており、さらにインドネシアを含むその他の「イスラム教国」10か国以上が、同軍事連合への支持を表明しているという。(c)AFP/Ian Timberlake | {
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CHICAGO — Chance the Snapper is back in Chicago — or at least he is in a new coloring book.
Chance, the alligator who took the city by storm this summer, is the star of a coloring book created in part by Frank Robb, the man who caught the snapper. “The Adventures of Chicago Chance and Frank Robb” doubles as a coloring book and storybook.
Robb collaborated with illustrator Ben Clark on the book after Clark heard about Robb and tagged the gator catcher in a drawing on Instagram. They teamed up to make the book and got help writing the story from various people, including the director of the St. Augustine Alligator Farm and Zoo, where Chance now lives.
Chance the Snapper and Alligator Robb will appear in a new coloring book. Provided
“It’s amazing to have the opportunity to share the story of Chance with everyone in this coloring and storybook. This is a story of conservation of a species that I was raised around and truly love,” Robb said in a news release. “I look forward to y’all reading the story of Chicago Chance. This alligator and I are linked for life and the blessings of this story will continue to be shared.”
The coloring book is appropriate for people of all ages. It costs $16 and is available online and in various stores in Chicago and Florida, Robb’s home state.
A portion of the proceeds from the book will be spit between a charity for crocodilian conservation and a charity for first responders, Robb said in a news release.
Chance, who was first spotted in the Humboldt Park lagoon on July 9, had captivated the city for a week before Robb came: Hundreds of people came to the lagoon to get a glance at the gator, who only periodically came up to the surface. Chicagoans tried to catch him with chicken but otherwise danced, picnicked, had family time or met with neighbors along the water’s edge.
The city’s fascination with the gator, who was named Chance the Snapper through a Block Club poll, made national news.
But experts worried Chance wouldn’t survive a cold winter in the lagoon (and he might not be the friendliest to the area’s pets and people), so they called in Robb. He planned to “catch the gator incognito,” he said.
Robb arrived in the city Sunday, set up Monday and had already reeled in Chance by 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.
And just like that, Robb became a hero to people throughout Chicago. He spoke at a news conference, threw out the first pitch at a Cubs game, was made into a bobblehead figurine and even turned on Buckingham Fountain.
Do stories like this matter to you? Subscribe to Block Club Chicago. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods.
Want to support Block Club with a tax-deductible donation? Thanks to NewsMatch 2019, your donation will be doubled through Dec. 31. Donate here. | {
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"She didn't deserve that at all. You just have to know her. She was the sweetest person you'd ever want to meet," her mother Yolanda Dangerfield told us. | {
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These people may have lost a limb but they clearly haven't lost their sense of humor. | {
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JERSEY CITY -- Liquor stores in Jersey City may have a lucrative holiday season after all, with the City Council expected to approve a measure that would allow them to start selling booze three hours early on Christmas and New Year's Eves.
The two days are some of the busiest of the year for liquor sales, but this year they fall on Sunday, when stores are banned from selling alcohol before noon. The measure before the council would allow liquor stores' doors to open at 9 a.m. on Christmas and New Year's Eves, no matter what day they fall on.
Thomas McGarry, a manager at the Jersey City Super Buy-Rite, who supports the measure, said besides giving liquor stores a boost, it would also help liquor consumers plan their activities for those two days.
"Being able to get what you need earlier would benefit everyone," McGarry said.
The idea was proposed by ShopRite Liquors of Jersey City, an affiliate of Inserra ShopRite, which owns the Marin Boulevard location. Ira Weiner, an attorney representing the company, wrote a letter to Corporation Counsel Jeremy Farrell earlier this month suggesting the change and saying he was writing to them because his client had reached out to the city and had not heard back.
"These businesses depend on these days to carry them through the leaner months of the year," Weiner wrote. "While this circumstance only arises every six or seven years, the inability to open at a normal 9 a.m. hour this year would be a significant hardship on not only my client, but all other liquor establishments in Jersey City."
Inserra is a big backer of Mayor Steve Fulop. The mayor's campaign reports show Inserra Supermarkets gave his re-election bid $2,560, while its CEO, Lawrence R. Inserra Jr., gave $3,100 to Fulop and an additional $1,000 to Fulop's council slate.
Inserra Supermarkets also gave Coalition for Progress, a super PAC linked to Fulop's now-abandoned gubernatorial run, $20,000 while its owner, CEO, vice presidents and project manager gave an additional $15,000 combined.
Asked whether Inserra's support for the mayor holds any sway with the administration over this measure, city spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said, "The mayor doesn't have a strong opinion one way or another whether the council supports or rejects this ordinance, however, it does seem like a common sense, one-time change that benefits hundreds of business owners across the city and thousands of residents in Jersey City that do last-minute shopping on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve."
The council earlier this year changed the laws on liquor sales to let Liberty National sell cocktails before noon at the Presidents Cup.
The council meets on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 280 Grove St.
Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook. | {
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For 2012 election-related commentary, please see these recent posts :
After posting Climbing Mount NoVa in 2012 a few weeks ago, I had people ask to expand my scope outside of Virginia to the national level. Using county-level election data for the contiguous 48 states from 1980 to 2008, I now track the major vote centers and growth areas in the national electorate.
The electoral college system dictates that the only presidential election results that matter are at the state level. Yet, the growing urbanization of the country means that in order to win some states candidates must appeal more and more to constituencies in the cities and their sprawling suburbs. This phenomenon has been at play at least since the 1920s, when, for the first time, a majority of Americans lived in urban areas — due, in part, to the Great Migration of blacks moving from the mostly rural Jim Crow South to the cities of North. These demographic shifts changed the nature of the nation’s political parties. For instance, the growth of urban America was key in forming the New Deal coalition of blacks, laborers, and religious minorities that propelled Franklin Roosevelt to the Presidency.
Since the second half of the twentieth century to 2008, however, migration has shifted back toward the “Sunbelt” and to newly expanding cities of the South. Economic development, modernization, and advent of air conditioning played their parts in drawing people from the faltering “Rustbelt” economies of the North. As a result, the expanding metropolises of the Sunbelt have seen the greatest gains in electoral strength within their respective states.
The graphic below (no longer shows some of these changes since 1980. Each bubble represents the size of the electorate (people who vote) in each individual county and the color represents the two-party victor (no third parties). Remember, counties vary wildly by geographic area and population — some of largest by land area and population are in Southern California and some major metropolitan centers, like New York City, are split between county jurisdictions.
Growth in Southern California, Miami, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, and other areas of the Sunbelt has been the most dramatic. Many of the cities of the South have also grown more Democratic since 1980. As a result, the recent electoral college shifts and reapportionment of House seats to states in the South isn’t necessarily a boon for Republicans, as some have suggested. Much of the growth in the Sunbelt occurred in major, Democratic-leaning cities.
So what does the current political topography of the nation look like? Below are national heat maps displaying the county level results for the 2008 presidential election with elevation representing the number of voters.
Much like what we found in the Virginia example, the suburbs and rural areas of the county remain decidedly Republican. While Republicans can claim many high-peaks or large, high-density regions such as Phoenix or the Houston and Dallas metro areas, most of America’s high-density counties remain Democratic.
Demographers and futurists disagree on whether migration to sunbelt cities will continue well into the twenty-first century, especially after the most recent economic downturn. For instance, high growth areas such as Phoenix were especially hard hit by the housing crash and many families are fleeing Southern California. Some predict a resurgence of the heartland and suburbs with people moving into the Great Plains and Midwest due to low tax rates and costs of living. Others think that people will continue to move into the nation’s highest population density areas, or “mega-regions,” such as the Boston-New York-Washington corridor to take advantage of the social and creative capital that only high-density cities can offer.
It is impossible to predict what any of these scenarios might suggest politically. It is sometimes only well after the fact that we fully understand the role demography has played in the nation’s politics. What we do know is that it takes creative political leaders, like the Roosevelts, Johnsons or Reagans, to recognize and capitalize on trends that many may not be fully aware of.
—
Dustin Cable is a Policy Associate at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service where he conducts research on topics that lie at the intersection of demographics, politics, and public policy. | {
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india
Updated: Mar 16, 2019 21:00 IST
YSR Congress president Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy on Saturday met Andhra Pradesh and Telangana governor ESL Narasimhan in Hyderabad and sought a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the killing of his uncle Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy in Pulivendula in Andhra Pradesh’s Rayalaseema on Friday.
Talking to the media persons later, Jaganmohan accused Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu of trying to eliminate his family in a meticulous manner. “When the Chief Minister is behind the political killings involving our family, how can we get justice if our uncle’s murder case is investigated by the state police?” he asked.
Naidu who launched his party’s election campaign from Tirupati rubbished Jaganmohan’s allegations and said he was trying to get off the hook by seeking a CBI probe.
Also read: Jagan Reddy’s uncle Vivekananda Reddy found dead, case of unnatural death filed
“Jagan’s family initially said it was a natural death due to cardiac arrest. It later changed the version saying there are doubts over the death. Finally at 3pm the family said it was a murder suspecting our party’s role. When deep stab wounds on the body suggested it was a murder, why did Jagan and his family conceal the facts and keep changing versions. This points to a family angle in the murder,” Naidu said.
Jagan’s grandfather Y.S. Raja Reddy at 75 was killed in a bomb attack in 1998 in Vemula village close to his native Pulivendula. His father Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy who was chief minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh was killed in a helicopter crash in Kurnool district in 2009 while Jagan himself escaped a murder attempt by a canteen worker in the Visakhapatnam airport in October 2018. His uncle Vivekananda Reddy was hacked to death on Friday.
Jagan Reddy linked all these events relating to his family to the CM Naidu’s “sinister game of political murders”, saying the TDP chief is trying to eliminate opposition leaders physically. “When my grandfather was murdered, Naidu was the chief minister. Chandrababu as an opposition leader threatened my father in the state assembly two days before the copter crash. And, again, Chandrababu is chief minister when an attempt was made on me. In this backdrop my uncle was killed”, YSRC leader said.
Jaganmohan also accused TDP Lok Sabha candidate in Kadapa C. Adinarayana Reddy of being involved in Viveka’s murder and said the police wove a “fabricated” story revolving around a letter said to have been written by the victim at the time of his death. In the blood-stained letter Viveka is said to have written that his driver Prasada Reddy had attacked him after being asked to be punctual in his duties. “Can anyone write a letter when he is being killed and soaked in blood? Is it not a concocted story,” he asked.
The YSRC leader said he had also requested the governor to remove Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police R.P. Thakur and Additional Director General of Police (Intelligence) AB Venkateswar Rao from election duties to ensure free and fair polling , claiming that the two officers are biased in favour of the ruling party.
Amit Garg, heading the special investigation team (SIT) probing the case, said the team will unravel the mystery shrouding Viveka’s killing by Sunday. | {
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That this sort of sight has been more familiar in recent winters than what we're seeing Thursday is odd.
It's fair to say that winter hasn't been itself for a while, going almost two full seasons now.
Last winter was extraordinarily warm and un-snowy. And this winter has also been... underwhelming. As of February 8, this winter is almost 18 inches behind the normal pace for snow (though it should pick up some of that during Thursday's storm). And the January we just finished had an average temperature 8 degrees warmer than normal.
Winter, we're starting to worry about you, old man.
It's felt like winter has been acting strangely for years now. But memory can be a blurry thing, a picture where the unusual events stay sharp and the ordinary fades into the background.
So we thought it'd be interesting to look at more than a century's worth of winters in Albany to get a sense of whether things really have been weird lately.
Look up
This post is mostly some graphs. They're in large format at the top of the page -- click or scroll all the way up.
But, first, you probably want to read this...
What is this?
We decided to look at winters in Albany by two measures that we figured would give some overall sense of what a winter was like and how it felt to people living during that time:
+ Snowfall for the entire winter season (from the NWS Albany website)
+ The average temperature across December, January, and February (via NOAA's website)
Admittedly, those are blunt measures that will smooth over some extreme events. But they're an easy way of comparing across many years.
For each winter we calculated how much that winter's average temperature and snowfall total differed on percentage basis from the current 30-year normals (1981-2010) for each measure -- 26 degrees for temperature (as calculated in the NOAA's output) and 60.3 inches for snowfall. Then we plotted each winter on a graph according to how it compared to those normals.
One more thing about the graphs: They include blue shaded areas for temperature and snowfall. Those represent what you might consider the "usual" range for those measures. (To be more specific, they represent one standard deviation for each measure.) We added those ranges to have a sense of which winters really were unusual and not just a little high or low for some measure.
A few things
2015-2016
There's a reason it seemed weird -- because it really, really was. It's an outlier among outliers for both temperature (very warm) and snow (very little).
Weird winters
As mentioned above, the blue shaded areas indicate what you might consider the typical ranges for average temperature and snowfall for a winter. So winters that fall outside those ranges for a measure could be considered unusual. And winters that fall outside the range both measures could be considered... weird.
Figured that way, there have been 13 "weird" winters in the last 121 years. And three of those have come in the last 15 years -- 2015-2016 (not cold and not snowy), 2011-2012 (not cold and not snowy), and 2002-2013 (cold and snowy).
Weirdest winters?
This whole analysis is squishy, but let's make it even squishier by creating a "weirdness" score for each winter by adding together how much each winter was different from the normal in both temperature and snowfall. By doing that, we can rank the winters by overall weirdness (so very much not a technical term). And when we do that, 2015-2016 ranks as the #2 weirdest weather on record for Albany -- behind only 1970-1971 and it's crazy record-high snowfall total (112.5 inches) and unusually cold temps.
As it happens, the three "weird" winters of the last 15 years all rank in the top 5 all-time in this ranking.
Warming winter
There's a bonus graph above about how the average winter temperature has changed over time in Albany. It's been warming by 0.3 degrees per decade over the last 120some years, according to the NOAA data.
That's not surprising. The average annual temperature in New York State has been on a similar rise over the same period. It's up more than 1 degree Fahrenheit during that time.
Earlier
+ 2016 was hot
+ Adapting for a more extreme future
+ A peek at our possible future climate
+ A future of more extremes
+ An exit interview with winter
+ Dear Winter... | {
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If you experience literally zero discontent with your assigned gender (so no dysphoria), and you are identifying with a different one (so you're trans), basically it's just being trans for fun? I mean, isn't that a mockery of trans people and their struggles? ◥ Anonymous
Do you think people just one day decide to identify as a different gender for funsies? Do you not realize what “identify” means? It’s not picking out a pair of heels, it’s a fundamental understanding of yourself.
There is no trans person who doesn’t feel discontent toward identifying as their assigned gender… hence why they identify differently in the first place. You can take your strawman and go.
Because not everyone has to hate themselves, or their bodies, or their genitals, or even their assigned gender to be trans. Not everyone has to characterize their feelings about being trans as “dysphoria”. And their life experiences as being trans will never be a “mockery” to trans people and our struggles because their struggles are our struggles and our struggles are their struggles. Period.
Truscum, even as they continuously lose ground, keep clinging to dysphoria and nonconsensually assigning it to “tru trans people”. Truscum will keep redefining what dysphoria means in order to control what people they “allow” to be trans.
Because there are some trans and non-cis people who will never feel comfortable using such language, because truscum had made it unsafe for them. With one hand you preach about how dysphoria is the ultimate transness and you should be prioritized always in every way, while with the other you try to stamp out anything you arbitrarily deem as “mocking” your specific experience:
neopronouns, people making light of their gender confusion, people taking pride in their identities, people happy about being trans. Anything that you don’t like, is deemed “non-dysphoric” and shoved into the “transtrenders” pile.
So while your definition of trans being “discontent with assigned gender” is technically right, it is an act of aggression to forcibly characterize that as the loaded and contentious adjective “dysphoric”, and it is an act of aggression to presume that all trans people must “prove” their decision to identify as trans in a way that you deem worthy.
Not everyone has to feel the same way about being trans. Stop gatekeeping the trans community. | {
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Gary Meikle is a single dad and when his daughter got her first period he's the person she turned to.
Now he's a comedian and uses the story in his routine.
Watch more Life Stories.
Filmed by Sharon Meighan; produced and edited by Clare Spencer. | {
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Story highlights German officials say full-face veil "does not fit into our society"
Would follow similar bans in France, Belgium and Switzerland
(CNN) Germany could become the next European country to ban face veils under a proposal announced on Friday by officials in the ruling coalition.
The officials intend to have the face veils banned in public places where identification is required -- such as registry offices, schools, kindergartens and government offices -- saying that they did not fit in with Germany's society.
"Full-face veils, as mentioned, we reject this. Not just the burka, any full-face veils that only shows eyes of a person," said Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere at a press conference held by members of the Christian Democratic Union and their allied Christian Social Union, which govern in a coalition.
"It does not fit into our society for us, for our communication, for our cohesion in the society.... This is why we demand you show your face."
North region, Cameroon Xinjiang, China Lombardy, Italy Diffa, Niger Stavropol, Russia Reus, Spain Ticino, Switzerland Belgium Chad France Gabon Republic of Congo Azerbaijan Banned in schools Kosovo Banned in schools Malasyia Banned for public servants Syria Banned for university students Egypt Netherlands Tunisia Germany
The proposed partial ban is to promote security and national cohesion, de Maiziere said, denying that plans for the ban were to appease the increasingly popular right-wing AFD party.
Read More | {
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Materials
For this project, I bought the Amplify Shader Editor to be able to create my own shaders in Unity and this has since completely revolutionized my workflow. In this project, I’m using custom shaders for almost every model. For the water shader, I looked at Amplify sample water shader that’s included in the editor. They had controls for depth blending between two colors, a texture close to the edge of objects with a smoothness control which was the foam and also a very performance friendly way of handling the reflections by grabbing reflection data from a reflection probe.
The water still had this hard edge towards whatever it touched, and it was to calm, the only movement that was in it came from the panning of normal maps in the shader.
So set out to fix these issues in the shader. The first one was quite simple since Amplify has a node called “Depth Fade”, by putting that data into the opacity channel I made the water get transparent at low depth, and with a distance value I could control how much transparency I wanted. | {
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NZXT HQ 15736 E. Valley Blvd.
City of Industry, CA 91744-3927
Tel. +1-800-228-9395 Fax. +1-626-269-5276
With the release of their new Ryzen CPUs, AMD also introduced a new socket—the AM4. This new socket requires a change to the mounting system for our award-winning Kraken Series of AIO CPU coolers. We began including this new bracket in all Kraken coolers we are manufacturing and Krakens that include the AM4 bracket should start to show up in retail in late April.
If you already have a Kraken or are purchasing one that doesn’t already include the AM4 bracket, no need to worry. We will provide you with a free AM4 bracket kit. All you need to do is follow the directions below. We expect to begin shipping the AM4 bracket kits to customers who have ordered them beginning the week of April 3, 2017. They will be shipped out in the order they were received, so please be patient. If you have already placed an order, you will receive a notification when your AM4 bracket ships out.
How to get the AM4 Bracket (1) Visit https://www.nzxt.com/customer-support and submit a ticket. (2) Choose “AM4 Bracket Support” as your department. (3) Attach your Kraken series AIO liquid cooler proof of purchase. (4) Attach your motherboard with AM4 socket proof of purchase. Upon validation, the bracket will be shipped to you free of charge.
When you’re ready Submit your request Here!
To learn more about the AM4 bracket check our FAQ
U.S Customers: All AM4 Bracket request will be processed within 2 business days during our business hours (Mon. – Fri. from 9:00am – 6:00pm PST) from time of request validated. Your package will arrive within 5 business days, and we will update you with the shipping information as soon as your order is completed. Canada Customers:
All AM4 Bracket request will be processed within 2 business days during our business hours (Mon. – Fri. from 9:00am – 6:00pm PST) from time of request validated. Your package will arrive within 7 business days, and we will update you with the shipping information as soon as your order is completed.
*Please note* we will cover one-way shipping to you, unfortunately we will not be responsible for any VAT, Import tax & duties or any other landing fees applied in your region.
International Customers: (EMEA, APAC, LATM) All AM4 Bracket request will be processed within 2 business days of our business hours (Mon. – Fri. from 9:00am – 6:00pm PST) from time of request validated. Your package will arrive 2 weeks or less and we will also update you with the shipping information as soon as your order is completed. *Please note* we will cover one-way shipping to you, unfortunately we will not be responsible for any VAT, Import tax & duties or any other landing fees applied in your region.
Expedited Shipping: (US Only) Overnight (1day) /Priority (2day) delivery option is available upon request, however an additional fee using will be applied under your expense. To make a payment kindly update your ticket with your selected shipping method then you will be prompt with the payment request via (Paypal) only. Please note that there will be a 1 – 2 business day delay to process your order for payment approval before shipping. Fixed Rate: Overnight: $25.00 Priority: $15.00
U.S Customers: All AM4 Bracket request will be processed within 2 business days during our business hours (Mon. – Fri. from 9:00am – 6:00pm PST) from time of request validated. Your package will arrive within 5 business days, and we will update you with the shipping information as soon as your order is completed. Canada Customers:
All AM4 Bracket request will be processed within 2 business days during our business hours (Mon. – Fri. from 9:00am – 6:00pm PST) from time of request validated. Your package will arrive within 7 business days, and we will update you with the shipping information as soon as your order is completed.
*Please note* we will cover one-way shipping to you, unfortunately we will not be responsible for any VAT, Import tax & duties or any other landing fees applied in your region.
International Customers: (EMEA, APAC, LATM) All AM4 Bracket request will be processed within 2 business days of our business hours (Mon. – Fri. from 9:00am – 6:00pm PST) from time of request validated. Your package will arrive 2 weeks or less and we will also update you with the shipping information as soon as your order is completed. *Please note* we will cover one-way shipping to you, unfortunately we will not be responsible for any VAT, Import tax & duties or any other landing fees applied in your region.
Expedited Shipping: (US Only) Overnight (1day) /Priority (2day) delivery option is available upon request, however an additional fee using will be applied under your expense. To make a payment kindly update your ticket with your selected shipping method then you will be prompt with the payment request via (Paypal) only. Please note that there will be a 1 – 2 business day delay to process your order for payment approval before shipping. Fixed Rate: Overnight: $25.00 Priority: $15.00 | {
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Two years ago, I wrote a story about Nextdoor, a private social network that requires users to register with proof of both their identity and address. Once accepted, you belong to a neighborhood and can see and speak with any nearby users who have signed up. It's trying to build a local graph to complement the social graph, and it has quietly grown into one of the largest social networks in the US, with over ten million registered users spread across more than 100,000 neighborhoods.
Chris Lake, a software engineer who recently moved from New York to California, says the service has been great for getting into the flow of small-town news and politics. "Love it. Recent huge threads: local elections, whether to turn beloved local park into flood basin, if fluoride in water is bad, drama around $17m traffic mitigation plan, dog poop in people’s yards, stolen bikes, steel wool in someone's salad from local pizzeria."
Want some small-town drama?
Others took a less positive view of the subject matter that makes up the bulk of Nextdoor’s newsfeed. "I was excited to learn that people in my new neighborhood are on it," said Will Dearman, a data specialist at a bank in the Chicago area. "Disappointed to find the only people active are the crazies." In the end, it comes down to your tolerance for the sort of people who, in the past, might have run the neighborhood association or written in weekly to the local paper.
There is a lot of diversity, at least age-wise, on the platform. "[A] good mix of young families and older families that have been here a while," said Chris Turner, a structural engineer from San Diego. "Drama is mostly traffic, speeding, and dog waste related. Very good for local recommendations." Lake concurred, calling it a "great place to get recommendations about dentists, doctors, contractors, gardeners."
Nextdoor's business would take on Angie's List
This aspect of Nextdoor is a critical one. The service is now getting ready to try its hand at building a business around its highly engaged user base. Recommendations are a natural fit. A scan of my area in Brooklyn shows requests for recommendations, with users asking for advice on good nannies and pest control. According to Nextdoor founder and CEO Nirav Tolia, 26 percent of the activity on the site involves recommendations, which translated to about 4 million messages a day.
Nextdoor recently rolled out a change that aggregates all the advice neighbors have given one another about various local businesses under a tab called recommendations. In the near future, it will begin allowing local businesses to join the service and create their own profile pages, much the same way residents and local government agencies can join now. Merchants may then be allowed to pay to place sponsored posts in the newsfeed; in fact Nextdoor is currently testing this with a small group of advertisers. All the testimonials for a business will still have to come organically from members, and promoted posts will be clearly marked. It’s a simple tweak that fits naturally into the way members are already using the service.
"When someone loses a dog, they send out a mobile alert"
"You can reach more people on Nextdoor in the local context than you could reach people using Facebook or Twitter," argued Tolia. "I mean, even in your neighborhood, I don’t think there’s a way to reach 160 people using any one of these other platforms, because you can’t target people in that specific neighborhood." I actually set up advertising accounts on both Facebook and Twitter to test this, and he’s right. I can geo-target an ad within a one-mile radius of any particular address on Facebook, but that goes out to several neighborhoods and covers roughly 92,000 people. Twitter only got down to the zip code level, which includes multiple neighborhoods in my area. To be fair, both these services do offer mobile ads that can be triggered by much more specific locations, but those ads don’t differentiate between locals and visitors.
Christopher Griffin is the founder of the Huntington Woods neighborhood on Nextdoor. A suburb of Detroit, the area is roughly one square mile, with just over 3,300 members. Griffin says the group gets about 75 messages a day, and that it has brought the community together in positive ways. "When someone loses a dog, they send out a mobile alert, and everyone can pitch in and help." When I ask about advertising coming to the service, he said it would be a good thing, so long as it remained local. "If the pizza place in town can offer a deal to folks nearby, that’s great. I just don’t want to see ads from big brands getting placed about local business."
The service has been criticized over racial profiling
The flip side of this positive community building has bouts of paranoia or racial profiling. The service has a tab dedicated to reporting crime, and advocacy groups were concerned that it was being used to report people of color as suspicious simply for being in the area. The site has responded by rolling out several changes, including a crime reporting form, a warning screen prior to posting, a racial profiling flag, and updates to member guidelines. According to a spokeswoman, racial profiling has been reduced by 40 percent in the test markets where these changes have rolled out.
As it gets ready to try and launch its first money-making products, the company is also planning to roll out its first big international expansion. It has been testing the service in the Netherlands and will open in the United Kingdom sometime in the second half of 2016. If its traction in the US is any guide, the service will actually be more likely to succeed in smaller, more densely populated nations that don’t have the massive sprawl of the rural United States. The progress hasn’t gone unnoticed by investors. The company has raised over $200 million and notched a valuation north of $1 billion, all before earning a dime in revenue. "As an early investor in both LinkedIn and Facebook, I’m familiar with what it takes to build large graph-based networks," says David Sze, who backed Nextdoor and now sits on its board. "If you consider that LinkedIn is the "business graph," and Facebook is the "social graph," then Nextdoor is building the platform for the "local graph." I see a lot of similarities between how those networks evolved and how Nextdoor has grown."
Can the quiet giant build a big business?
Nextdoor is a sort of quiet giant. It won't say exactly how many users it has, only that it has "double digit millions" and that 38 percent of users are connected to more than 2000 nearby neighbors. "It’s not a big bang when you build community. It’s something that takes a long time," says Tolia. Before it had critical mass in communities, there wasn’t a ton of reason to experiment with generating revenue. Now it’s poised to tap the local ad market, which has continued to grow, even as the local media which once served that function has withered. "From an adoption standpoint, our penetration is larger than newspaper circulation," says Tolia. "We have 4 years of conversations that we can turn into these structured recommendations. So I think by the end of this year we will be the largest catalogue of neighbor recommendations for local businesses in the country." | {
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Taylor Swift woke up in her big comfortable bed with the warm morning light on her cheeks and the sound of bird chirps ringing softly... | {
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Hello there! I'm Curry! I love to draw and am an apsiring artist/writer. Welcome to my little corner of the internet; here I'll mostly try and post my craze about my friend's OCS or my own. As well as some of my interests and hopefully my progress in art and such! | {
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