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What's The Revenue Potential For Apple's Proposed Credit Card With Goldman? | The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Apple and Goldman Sachs were working together to offer a new credit card. The card will apparently be tightly integrated with a native iPhone app and could lead to a broader partnership between the two companies to offer a range of financial services to iPhone users, as their core businesses slow down. In this note, we estimate the potential revenues that Apple could garner from the new service. We have created an interactive dashboard analysis on the revenue potential of the Apple-Goldman Credit Card. You can modify our key drivers to arrive at your own revenue estimates for the partnership, and see more data for Technology Companies here. Why Apple And Goldman Are Partnering To Offer A Credit Card Apple has been focusing on its services business to drive growth as shipments of its flagship iPhone have been on the decline. The financial services space appears attractive to the company, as it could leverage its base of affluent iPhone users, its tech expertise and massive software and device ecosystem to deliver financial services. As the financial industry is highly regulated, partnering with an experienced player like Goldman would be helpful. Goldman also stands to benefit from the partnership; while the investment banking behemoth launched its own online consumer bank in 2016, it doesnt have a branch network or an established brand in the retail market, and this is where Apples vast base of iPhone users could be helpful. The credit card market is highly competitive, with major banks spending heavily on advertising while offering record levels of sign-up bonuses and promotions on new cards to hook customers. However, Apple and Goldman are apparently not looking to participate in this model, focusing on tight integration between the card and the iPhone application, while offering cash back on spending (estimated at 2% for regular spending and potentially more on Apple products). Apple has a total of 900 million active iPhone users, with around 21% estimated to be in the U.S. This translates into about 190 million U.S. iPhone users. If 5% of these iPhone users sign up for the offering by 2020, it could translate into a card base of about 9.5 million. The metric could grow to about 15% of iPhone users by 2022, or about 30 million card accounts. For perspective, Loup Ventures estimated that 24% of U.S. iPhone users have used Apple Pay. Card companies make much of their money from two major sources namely interest on outstanding balances and credit card related fees such as the interchange fee charged to merchants and annual fees charged to cardholders. Estimating Fee Revenue: American Express which targets the highest-spending U.S. customers saw cardmembers spend an average of about $20,840 in 2018. However, we expect the Apple/Goldman card to start smaller, with spends starting at about $5000 per account in 2020, rising to about $10,000 by 2022. This could imply purchase volumes of $300 billion by 2020. If we assume that the average fee income as a percentage of purchase volume stands at 1% (interchange and other fees), this would translate into revenues of about $3 billion by 2022. Estimating Net Interest Revenue: While the average credit card debt for American households stands at $5,700 (across multiple cards), we assume that the average balance would be much lower for the new card, coming in at about $1,200 by 2022, considering the comparatively strong financial standing of many Apple customers. For a base of 30 million customers by 2022, this would translate into an outstanding balance of about $35 billion by 2022. Assuming a net interest margin of about 7% on this balance (roughly in line with Capital One) this would translate to net interest revenues of about $2.5 billion by 2022. Total Revenues and Apples Share: Adding up the fee and interest revenues, we estimate that total revenues of the card partnership could stand at about $1 billion in 2020, and over $5 billion by 2022. While its not clear what terms Apple have Goldman have worked out, it will likely be some kind of revenue-sharing agreement with Goldman, like Apple has with developers and digital service providers on the App Store. If we assume that Apple takes a 20% cut on these revenues, it could garner about $1.1 billion in revenues from the partnership by 2022. While this is a drop in the bucket in relation to Apples overall revenues of over $250 billion, the two companies could eventually expand into other lucrative areas, such as wealth management and potentially checking accounts operated via the iPhone. Further, it could make Apples device ecosystem even stickier, which is important given the heightened competition in the smartphone market. Explore example interactive dashboards and create your own. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/03/05/whats-the-revenue-potential-for-apples-proposed-credit-card-with-goldman/ |
Whos Afraid of The Prodigy? | In 1997, Keith Flint was very confused. After a long youth dancing in English rural barns (literallyhis local club in Essex was called The Barn), the band he sang for was breaking America. With its third album, The Fat of the Land, led by the massive singles Firestarter and Breathe, The Prodigy became the first of the 1990s British dance acts to cross the Atlantic. In a Spin magazine cover story, Flint, who died this week at the age of 49, described his bafflement at the way British rave culture was being translated for Americans. People seemed to think its about the internet, the future, technology, play stationsand it isnt! he said. The story of how The Prodigy came to symbolize a kind of techno-dystopian darkness says as much about the late 1990s as the band itself. The Prodigy had been famous in Britain since 1991, when their debut song Charly flooded dance floors across the nation. The song sampled an informational broadcast instructing listeners to always tell your mummy before you go off somewhere over a neat little breakbeat and some noises like lasers gone haywire, in between meows from a cartoon cat. Back then, The Prodigy was sometimes derided as kiddie-techno, because of their juvenile samples and because the teens loved them. Britains rave scene was an all-ages affair, with day-glo clothes everywhere, smiley faces, and pacifiers for the gurners. Flint started out as the bands dancer, la Bez from the Happy Mondays, but ended up as frontman. With the twin spears of his hairdo thrust forward, his wide boy vocals grated over Liam Howletts clean production, a bloody smear against glass. In videos he bared his teeth and banged his head, eyes rolling. He really was a sight. Flint had met Howlett at a rave in 1989. Flint asked him for a mixtape, which he returned along with a few of his own songs. The pair were also friends with Leeroy Thornhill, a dancer like Flint, adept at a beautifully old-school shuffle. They added MC Maxim and a singer named Sharky, and The Prodigy was born. (Members would leave and join as the years wore on.) The band got popular so quickly that Howlett had to prove he hadnt sold out by anonymously releasing two stonking records, the delicious Earthbound 1 and Earthbound 2. DJs sniffed when they found out that Howlett of Charly fame had cut the records, but they safeguarded his reputation. | https://newrepublic.com/article/153218/whos-afraid-prodigy |
Is Maple Leafs' Mitch Marner Now Worth More Than Auston Matthews? | There is a great hockey debate going on in Toronto these days. Boston Bruins winger Brad Marchand believes it's Marner if you go by his comment on Twitter on Tuesday morning after some Marner magic in Calgary the night before. It better be." And he added the hashtag #Marnerwatch. Matthews recently signed a five-year contract extension worth an average annual value of $11.6 million and Marner comes up for a contract extension at the end of the season. Matthews usually gets the edge in informal polls, even though Marner is the leading scorer on the club and was the leading scorer last season as well, although Matthews has missed 14 games this season due to injury and sat out 20 games last season. When you break it down to points per game, Matthews has a slight edge. The argument against Marner is that he is not the goal scorer that Matthews is, but there can be no disputing the fact that Marner is the better playmaker. Traditionally a premium is put on centers as opposed to a winger. Matthews, of course, is a center and Marner is a right winger. Marner continues to set standards of excellence not seen in Toronto for decades. When the team traveled to Calgary on Monday to play the Flames, Marner had a goal and two assists to spark the Leafs' 6-2 victory. And by collecting his 10th point in four games, he became the eighth player in franchise history to require 66 or fewer games to reach the 80-point mark in a season. Perhaps more indicative of his creative mastery, the 21-year-old Marner, in only his third season, leads the entire league in 5-on-5 primary assists, which are usually the passes that lead directory to goals, unlike the sometimes meaningless secondary assists. Marner is eligible to become a restricted free agent on July 1, and many believe Marner will ask for Matthews-type money, and there is a good argument that he deserves it, or perhaps more. Marner is currently on the final year of his entry-level contract with an AAV of $1,744,167, according to CapFriendly. But one agent cautions that winger Mark Stone's contract extension recently agreed to with the Las Vegas Golden Knights may have hurt Marner's cause. Stone, who is more of a goal scorer than Marner, agreed to an eight-year contract with an average annual value of $9.5 million after being traded from the Ottawa Senators. But the counterpoint to that argument is there is a big tax benefit because there is no state tax in Vegas, which would make Stone's contract value much higher, perhaps 10% to 15% higher. There is some ammunition to argue that a premium should not always be placed on centers. There are 19 teams in the 31-team NHL that pay their elite wingers higher than or equal to their highest-paid centers. Those teams and wingers include: The Washington Capitals (Alex Ovechkin) The Anaheim Ducks (Corey Perry) The Dallas Stars (Tyler Seguin next season) The St. Louis Blues (Vladimir Tarasenko equal with center Ryan O'Reilly) The San Jose Sharks (Evander Kane) The Calgary Flames (Johnny Gaudreau), The Tampa Bay Lightning (Nikita Kucherov, next season) The Minnesota Wild (Zach Parise) The Florida Panthers (Jonathan Huberdeau equal with Aleksander Barkov), The Chicago Blackhawks (Patrick Kane equal with center Jonathan Toews), The Winnipeg Jets (Blake Wheeler next season), The Columbus Blue Jackets (Artemi Panarin equal with center Matt Duchene), The Nashville Predators (Ryan Johansen), The Ottawa Senators (Mark Stone before he was traded) The Philadelphia Flyers (Jakob Voracek almost on par with center Claude Giroux) The Montreal Canadiens (Jonathan Drouin) The New York Islanders (Jordan Eberle) The Vancouver Canucks (Loui Eriksson) The New Jersey Devils (Taylor Hall) But an NHL agent told me that, if you are going to be paid like a center, the winger must be a prodigious goal-scorer such as Washington's Alex Ovechkin or Winnipeg's Patrik Laine, and Marner is not seen as a sniper. The agent also told me that the top-paid centers in the game, like Matthews, Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby, are often rewarded because they often have to muck it up in the dirty areas in front of the goal, unlike wingers. One Marner trait is indisputable: He is more durable than Matthews, who has missed great chunks of time due to injury. In three seasons, Marner has missed only five games, in his first season. The strongest argument against Marner is that, as a winger, he doesn't play the 200-foot game that centers do, although Marner is an exception because of his strong defensive game down low and by the fact that he is among the league leaders in takeaways. "Basically, playing center is a more difficult position because you have responsibility all over the ice," an NHL agent told me. "You have to play down low in the defensive zone to support the defensemen and defend at the net. You also have to be the driver for offense for your line and this means every shift you have to play 200 feet of the ice and be up ice with your linemates to support them offensively." Another factor is that centers takes faceoffs, which can be critical depending on where they are being taken. The argument also goes that while a center can also play wing, wingers have a harder time playing center. When looking for comparables, Marner and Matthews area often likened to Chicago's duo of Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. Kane and Toews are both the same age (30) as are Marner and Matthews (21). Kane and Toews were extended for the same average annual value of $10.5 million. The big difference, and it's a big one, is that they signed their extensions in 2014 after helping Chicago to win two Stanley Cups in 2010 and 2013, and then took the Blackhawks to a third championship in 2015. But this is a new era, when young superstars are asking for, and getting paid for, future performance. If the Leafs see Marner and Matthews as the two cornerstones of a Stanley Cup championship team, then Marner might have a case that he should be paid as much as Matthews. Or perhaps more. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtisrush/2019/03/05/is-maple-leafs-mitch-marner-worth-more-now-than-auston-matthews/ |
What would Sir Walter Scott think? | Image caption Tory MSP Donald Cameron pondered the judgement of "the country". Here's a fun game you can play at home - or in the pub. Perhaps as you while away the hours and days awaiting further Brexit developments. The game is this. Ask yourself how famous figures from Scotland's past would have voted in the referendum of 2014 on independence. Or the 2016 plebiscite on membership of the European Union. It's all nonsense, of course. One cannot translate long-distant perspectives into contemporary politics. But innocent merriment just the same. Or Sir Walter Scott, an outstanding literary genius who merits closer attention these days. Sir Walter wrote: "Breathes there the man with soul so dead who never to himself hath said, this is my own, my native land." Widely quoted. Scott was a confirmed Tory who played a key role in defending Scotland's ancient, distinct characteristics. You choose. Told you it was fun. Now, I am always happy to linger in Scott-land. Never more content than when wandering round Abbotsford. But there is a vague purpose to this reflective meandering. These thoughts were occasioned by a contribution from Donald Cameron of the Conservatives to the debate at Holyrood this afternoon anent Brexit and the potential terms of withdrawal. Mr Cameron - the son of Lochiel, chief of the Clan - argued repeatedly that to thwart Brexit would be to negate and frustrate the expressed opinion of "the country". It would be, he averred, to betray "the country" - while noting that he, himself, voted Remain. Image caption Nicola Sturgeon said the Scottish and Welsh governments were united in "dismay" about Brexit His perspective on the European Union plebiscite is entirely consistent with his support for the rather older Union between Scotland and England. His remarks were delivered casually, without particular emphasis, part of a thoughtful speech. But you could sense the SNP benches stirring, restlessly. Their country is Scotland. Their loyalty is to Scotland. Which reminds us, once again, of the fundamental fault line which zigzags across the Scottish political landscape. Nicola Sturgeon opened the debate by arguing that her government, despite loathing Brexit, had tried repeatedly to reach a compromise; for the UK, for Scotland. She said her initiatives had been utterly ignored by the UK government. It was a powerful contribution from the FM. She noted that the Scottish debate was matched by a similar event in Cardiff Bay, with an identical motion. Scotland and Wales - or, more precisely, their devolved governments - had been brought together, she argued, by "dismay, bordering on despair" at the Brexit negotiations. Ms Sturgeon made relatively little of the issue of independence, on this occasion. She focused on the three aspects of the motion - opposition to the PM's deal, opposition to leaving with no deal now and in the future, plus a demand for a delayed Brexit. Image caption Jackson Carlaw was the chief defender of the prime minister's deal in the Holyrood debate It was left to Jackson Carlaw to accuse the FM of stirring up trouble over Brexit in order to foment support for the independence cause. And Mr Carlaw went further. Even as the FM excoriated the UK government for lack of competence, Mr Carlaw tried to return the favour by arguing that Ms Sturgeon's stance on Brexit no longer met the interests of the Scottish people. To respect the Brexit outcome, given that Scotland remains part of the UK, and to seek an orderly departure from the EU. And there was more. Scotland, he said, now needed fresh governance. An administration free from the grievance which he attributed to the current team. And "clean leadership". An intriguing phrase, which he emphasised. The return of a devolved Conservative government in the Holyrood elections of 2021. Nationalists looked on with a mixture of amusement and anger. There was more of the latter when the deputy SNP leader, Keith Brown, arose to make his contribution. He said the Tories had lost all respect with their mishandling of Brexit - and he echoed the FM in suggesting that the Conservatives were now fundamentally and fatally divided. Second referendum Just as Ms Sturgeon made little, on this occasion, of independence, so she dealt relatively briefly - I emphasise, relatively - with the issue of a second referendum. Ms Sturgeon stressed that remained her aim, the primary purpose at present in the Brexit debate. But it does not form part of the joint motion with Wales. The Welsh first minister's office told me the aim of the conjoined approach was to focus on the immediate challenges - particularly ruling out no deal - although it was emphasised that the FM in Cardiff, Mark Drakeford, has supported the principle of a second plebiscite. A further exemplification of this subtlety came when Richard Leonard spoke at Holyrood as the leader of Scottish Labour. His was a well-structured contribution, drawing upon his experience as a trade union negotiator to lampoon the handling of the Brexit talks. Mr Leonard said he backed a second vote. Challenged by Willie Rennie of the Liberal Democrats to clarify further, the Labour leader said, yes, he backed what his Lib Dem counterpart called a "People's Vote" - but it was still Labour's objective to secure a revised Brexit deal or a UK general election instead. As ever, Brexit brings nuance in its wake. Perhaps we should heed Mark Twain who noted: "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-47459931 |
Should the government provide debt-free college? | Student loan debt has skyrocketed in the United States, with debt increasing by 102 percent since 2009. Young people are saddled with decades of debt, hindering their ability to purchase homesand actively participate in the economy. However, college degrees are considered a necessity for most new jobs, with nine out of 10 new jobs created in 2017 going to people with some form of higher education. Some say the government should start paying for this new necessity. Student loan debt is now one the largest financial burdens Americans carry. Per Forbes: The latest student loan debt statistics for 2019 show how serious the student loan debt crisis has become for borrowers across all demographics and age groups. There are more than 44 million borrowers who collectively owe $1.5 trillion in student loan debt in the U.S. alone. Student loan debt is now the second highest consumer debt category - behind only mortgage debt - and higher than both credit cards and auto loans. Borrowers in the Class of 2017, on average, owe $28,650, according to the Institute for College Access and Success. Student Loan Debt Statistics In 2019: A $1.5 Trillion Crisis Many argue simply turning financial aid over to state and federal governments will not solve the problem. Currently, financial aid comes from myriad sources, both public and private. Private funding is frequently more stable than its federal counterpart, as there is no requirement to balance budgets or fights over cutting taxes to change their bottom line. Per the Nation: The question of financial sustainability looms largest for legislators. Its easier to promise a free degree down the line when budgeting one fiscal year at a time. College Promise programs are typically funded by a hodgepodge of private and public sources, from technology and oil companies to liberal philanthropic trusts, or even state lottery funds. If state budgets are as unstable as poor students yearly incomes, a Promise could turn out to be just as precarious, subject to political whims, or the politicized agendas of large donors (like tech companies looking for STEM graduates), all of which could make it nearly impossible to guarantee funding for the duration of students long-term degree programs. (Besides, many could suffer from low job prospects even after graduation). Even if funding was subsidized by the government, the relationship between states and the federal government is frequently antagonistic. In July 2018, Democrats proposed a bill which they hoped would overhaul tuition funding. According to the Washington Post, it also pointed out some glaring issues with federal oversight of education. Democrats are proposing to give students the chance to earn a degree without debt, in part by creating a state-federal partnership that calls on states to provide two years of community college tuition-free. In exchange for federal funding, states would have to promise to invest more in higher education and maintain those investments. But such a requirement would probably face pushback even in some states with liberal-leaning politicians, said Robert Kelchen, assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. In many states, legislators shift money from higher education to other areas in which spending is mandated. Taking away that flexibility would be a nonstarter in many states, he said. House Democrats introduce higher education bill Even if states agree to work with the federal government, problems could quickly arise. States also have a history of micromanaging where and how educational money is spent. The Atlantic describes restrictions which could be put on state money. But the disadvantage of focusing on state programs is that states simply have less money. Doing it at the state level is uniquely challenging just because there are much more severe budgetary constraints, Dancy told me. That means there are limitations on the amount of money they canand are willing tospend on free-college programs. But it also means that states put restrictions on programs to keep costs down, including limiting the tuition-free program to coursework at community colleges; only allowing students to study certain subjects; or requiring students to live and work in the state for several years after the program is complete. And then there are sometimes eligibility requirements on the front end. Some states only offer free tuition to recent high-school graduates with a certain GPA; or they may mandate a drug test. The Free-College Movement in America Is Dying However, proponents of debt-free collegeunlike free college, which does not provide funding for outside costs such as housing and bookssay plans can be flexible and integrate many services already being used. Per the Atlantic: The United States has a long history of college-access and -affordability policiesthe first Morrill Act, the GI Bill, etc.that did not provide equitable access or universal affordability, particularly for minorities. Advocates hope that a similar mistake wont be made with a potential national free-college policy, and that debt-free college becomes the new gold standard. Thats the beauty of debt-free college programs: There is a lot of flexibility in there on policy design, Mark Huelsman, a policy director at Demos, a liberal think tank, told me. A candidate could, for example, propose massively expanding access to the Pell Grant program so that more working- and middle-class students were eligible, and then subsidize education at HBCUs or private institutions that serve large shares of low-income students. A policy could, as Senator Brian Schatzs Debt-Free College Act does, incentivize states to invest more in free-college programs by providing a one-to-one federal match on state spending. The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, wed love to hear what you have to say. | https://www.oregonlive.com/tylt/2019/03/should-the-government-provide-debt-free-college.html |
How much sleep do teenagers really need? | This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original site. Author: Wendy Hall, Professor, Associate Director Graduate Programs, UBC School of Nursing, University of British Columbia Parents worry about whether their teenagers are getting enough sleep. Research studies suggest that teenagers are suffering an epidemic of sleep deprivation globally one that will have long-term health impacts. The first thing to understand is that teenagers are still growing and their brains are still developing so they need more sleep than adults. They also have different sleep-wake rhythms and release melatonin (a natural hormone to prepare for sleep) later, which means evening sleepiness takes longer to occur and they have a tendency to go to bed later and to sleep later in the morning. Of course, they still have to rise early for school. Peers also influence teenagers more than they influence younger children. Increased social demands in the form of online chat, social networking and web browsing combine with greater academic pressures as children enter high school. At this age parents also tend to exert less control over teenagers bedtimes. Experts reviewed 864 papers examining relationships between childrens sleep duration and health. They suggested that those between 13 and 18 years of age should sleep eight to 10 hours per 24 hours on a regular basis to promote optimal health. Unfortunately, worldwide studies show that in 53 per cent of cases teenagers are getting less than eight hours of sleep per night on school days. A recent report indicated that only five per cent of adolescents in the United States meet recommendations for sleep, physical activity and screen time. Older adolescents were less likely than younger adolescents (14 years or less) to achieve the recommendations. Sex hormones and the stress response A lot of action takes place in teenage brains due to their developmental stage. During adolescence, there are major changes to thinking, emotions, behaviour and interpersonal relationships. Changes to brain connections contribute to improvements in thinking abilities and changes in brain signalling. Shifts in balance between brain systems create a period where teens may take increased risks or engage in more reward seeking. Teenagers react a lot to stress and their stress-response systems are maturing. Sex hormones affect the neurotransmitters in their brains and increase their reactivity to stress. When we add inadequate sleep time to the picture there can be many implications. A recent review identified increased risk for suicide, being overweight, high rates of injury, poor sustained attention and low school grades for teens sleeping less than eight hours. Sleeping nine or more hours has, on the other hand, been associated with better life satisfaction, fewer health complaints and better quality family relationships for teens. And a recent study in two high schools in the Seattle school district found that a later school start time led to an increase in teens average sleep duration, which was associated with an increase in average grades and an improvement in school attendance. Drugs, alcohol and high cholesterol Teen drivers sleeping six or less hours per night on weekdays and on weekends reported riskier driving, sensation seeking and greater drug and alcohol intake than those sleeping more than six hours. Less than six hours per night of sleep time increased the teenagers risk for multiple vehicle crashes, after taking into account exposure to driving. There is also evidence that teens who sleep for more hours and have better quality sleep have a decreased risk for high blood pressure and cholesterol, insulin resistance and larger waist circumference than teens with shorter sleep times and lower sleep quality. This is after taking into account other risk factors such as body fat, physical activity, television viewing and diet quality. Finally, a recent report has highlighted links between teens sleep time, screen time and poorer mental health. Park the electronic devices Parents can work with teens to set bedtimes. They should encourage the use of beds only for sleep and for relaxing before sleeping. Using electronic technology before bed and during the night increases the risk for shorter sleep time. Research shows that physical activity and avoiding screens before bed are both strategies to promote earlier bedtimes and protect your teenagers sleep. Parents can support screen downtime before bedtime and through the night by parking phones at a charging pad away from bedrooms. Parents can also help their teens achieve achieve the recommended eight hours or more of sleep by engaging in relaxing family activities with them in the evening. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Disclosure information is available on the original site. Read the original article: https://theconversation.com/how-much-sleep-do-teenagers-really-need- https: | https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/how-much-sleep-do-teenagers-really-need |
How can LSU lock up its 1st SEC title in 10 years? | Some coaches downplay the importance regular season conference titles, especially now that many conferences, including the SEC, arent balanced. LSUs Will Wade is not one of those coaches. One of his favorite things is consistency, and taking home a regular season crown displays that uniformity. I think the hardest thing to do is win your regular season conference championship. You can get lucky in a tournament or get bad luck in a tournament," Wade said Monday (Mar. 4). If you win your regular season conference championship, that means youre consistent. Thats how things should be judged is how consistent you are. Wade then shared memories of getting lucky, like how one of his VCU teams advanced to the Final Four as an 11 seed, and being not-so-lucky like how one of his teams at Chattanooga split the regular season conference title, but didnt make it to the NCAA Tournament because the Southern Conference is a one bid league. I think the consistency over the regular season, theres a lot to be said for that, Wade said to sum up. LSU hasnt won a regular season SEC title since 2009, but the Tigers are in position to win at least a share this season. So, how can No. As of Monday, LSU and Tennessee are tied atop the league standings with 14-2 records. Kentucky is just one game back at 13-3. Yes, its possible but its rather unlikely. If Tennessee loses to Mississippi State on Tuesday (Mar. 5) night, the Tigers are in position to clinch a share of the regular season title with a win on the road over Florida on Wednesday. The Tennessee-Mississippi State matchup is in Knoxville and KenPom gives the Bulldogs just a 22 percent chance to win. Yes, but that means the Tigers would no longer control their own destiny. KenPom still projects LSU to lose on Wednesday, giving the Tigers a 44 percent chance to top the Gators. Now, LSU has won several games this season where KenPom predicted it to lose, so this isnt the end all, be all, but it is something to keep in mind. Its rather unlikely that LSU drops its senior night game to Vanderbilt, as the Tigers are favored by 25 points with KenPoms formula and have a 92 percent chance to win. If LSU were to lose one of those last two games, LSU would need Tennessee to drop one of its games down the stretch too which is entirely in the realm of possibility. Tennessee finishes out its season on Saturday on the road at Auburn. The Volunteers are only projected by KenPom to win by one point and the probability that Tennessee walks out with a win is just 52 percent. LSU guard Tremont Waters named finalist for Bob Cousy Award The point guard is one of five finalists for the award. LSU is guaranteed a share of the regular season title if the Tigers win out. If LSU wins out, Kentucky is eliminated from title conversation, even if the Wildcats win out too. A few things can happen with Tennessee. If Tennessee wins out too, the Tigers and the Volunteers will share the title. If the Volunteers lose one game down the stretch while LSU wins out, then the Tigers will win the crown outright. Yes. Kentucky is only one game back in the standings. If the Wildcats win out, which is entirely probable, theyll finish with a 15-3 record in conference play. Kentucky goes on the road at Ole Miss on Tuesday, and KenPom gives the Wildcats a 66 percent chance to win that one. Kentucky closes out the regular season with Florida, and the Wildcats are projected to win that one by nine points in Rupp Arena. Both LSU and Tennessee would need to lose one game in the final week to end up with 15-3 records. A three-way tie for the title is unprecedented. Three teams have never shared the regular season conference title in the SEC before. But, there was been a four-team tie between LSU, Kentucky, Tennessee and Florida in 2000. LSUs Javonte Smart wins SEC freshman of the week award Smart averaged 18 points in LSU's two wins this week. Yes. First off, LSU would need to win both of its games this week against Florida and Vanderbilt. Secondly, Tennessee would need to lose one of its last two games. If those both happen, LSU would finish with a 16-2 conference record, while Tennessee would finish with a 15-3 record if the Vols lost just one game. Yes. If LSU drops a game and Tennessee wins out, then the Volunteers will be hoisting the trophy by themselves. If the Vols win out, theyd have a 16-2 conference record. If LSU loses one of its games, the best possible record for the Tigers would be 15-3. | https://www.nola.com/lsu/2019/03/how-can-lsu-lock-up-its-1st-sec-title-in-10-years.html |
Why Are TV Stations Up For Sale? | There have been a number of big media deals with national implications recently completed, these include AT&Ts acquisition of Time Warner and Disney acquiring assets from Fox. The same type of buying frenzy has also been occurring with local TV stations. According to BIA Advisory Services, U.S. TV stations announced M&A deals totaling $8.4 billion in 2018, nearly double the amount from both 2017 and 2016. Below are a few recent acquisitions or planned acquisitions of station groups. In February 2019, Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm, agreed to acquire a majority stake in the Cox Media Group, which included 13 television stations, for a reported $3 billion. The deal also included a newspaper and two radio stations. In December 2018, government regulators approved Gray Televisions acquisition of Raycom at $3.6 billion. The new company owns 150 TV stations and digital properties in 91 TV markets. In December 2018, Nexstar announced a pending agreement to acquire Tribune Medias 42 television stations in a reported $4.1 billion deal. If approved, the deal would give Nexstar over 200 television stations across the country covering 39% of U.S. TV households. The proposed deal also includes ownership of the Tribune-owned WGN America cable network and stakes in the Food Channel and Chicago Cubs. If ownership rules are relaxed more could be on the way. The FCCs National TV Ownership rule puts no cap on the number of stations a company can own nationwide provided it reaches no more than 39% of all U.S. TV households. For FCC coverage, TV stations on UHF channels (14 and above) count less than TV stations on the VHF dial (13 and below). Also, in a local market, owners need to meet special conditions to own a second station. Nexstars proposed deal occurred four months after Sinclair Broadcast Groups attempt to acquire Tribune was rejected by the FCC, since it would have exceeded the 39% ownership cap. These and other acquisitions are occurring at a time when the revenue of television stations has been growing. According to BIA Advisory Services, revenue for all local station segments reached $27.7 billion in 2018, an increase of 5.6% from the previous year. These local television station revenues come from a variety of sources including: Advertising Dollars: Despite fragmentation, ad revenue for local TV stations is holding strong. In 2019, BIA reports local stations will take in $20.3 billion in ad dollars, a slight dip from $20.8 billion in 2018 (mid-term election). BIA, however, forecasts revenue to reach $22.0 billion in 2020, a general election year. Kantar CMAG reported local TV stations earned $3 billion in political ad dollars in 2018, a substantial increase from the $2.1 billion spent in the 2014 midterm election. It was also double the ad dollars digital media received in 2018. Steve Passwaiter, the Vice President and General Manager of Kantar CMAG, says, Television remains popular since the electorate tends to be older than the general population particularly in mid-term elections and TV advertising is proven to work. Looking at the 2020 general election, Passwaiter says it has the potential to set records for political dollars on local TV with ads starting as early as second quarter 2019. Retransmission Fees: A growing revenue source for local broadcast stations is retransmission fees from Multichannel Video Programming Distributors and virtual MVPDs. Although local stations could receive retransmission fees from cable operators beginning with the 1992 Cable Act, it was not until the mid-2000s that stations started to collect fees. According to Kagan, by 2020 a local station will be receiving an average of $2.10 per month, per subscriber from MVPDs and vMVPDs. Only ESPN ($9.50), TNT ($2.71) and a number of regional sports networks will collect more per subscriber. Collectively, the retransmission fees for U.S. broadcasters reached $10 billion in 2018 and is expected hit $12.8 billion in 2023. Kagan also points out that although stations are making dollars from retransmission fees, a growing amount of the revenue is going toward affiliation renewal agreements to help defray rising programming costs. In 2019, an estimated 54% of all station retransmission fees will go to networks, a number expected to reach 59% by 2023. Digital Media: With more ad dollars being allocated to digital media, several local station groups have introduced their own national OTT service. These include Tegna (Premion), Sinclair (Compulse), Cox (Gamut) and Hearst (Anyscreen). These services use a Data Management Platform (DMP) for audience targeted inventory selling ads on over 100 TV networks and platforms. They provide advertisers (national and local) with advanced audience targeting and automated buying, offering stations a growing revenue opportunity. ATSC 3.0: ATSC 3.0 is the next generation of local TV services, placing broadcast stations on an internet protocol (IP) format. In 2017, the FCC gave the TV industry the go-ahead for implementation. ATSC 3.0 will offer picture and audio improvements. Other enhancements include the ability to watch broadcast content on phones, tablets and in cars. Stations will be able to geo-target viewers with addressable advertising. The success of ATSC 3.0 will require advertiser and consumer adoption. Similar to the transition to HDTV, consumers will need to purchase an ATSC 3.0 enabled TV set (or a converter box). They are expected to become available by Christmas 2020. Rick Ducey, Manager Director of BIA, says, Bigger makes them more competitive; MVPDs can be as large as they want. Local television ownership is constrained by regulation both nationally and locally. Ducey also notes getting bigger allows for better agreements when negotiating with MVPDs, their affiliate fees and advertisers. Getting bigger also allows for operational synergies to reduce expenses. Station groups also want ownership rules relaxed beyond 39%, so they can compete with broadcast networks for national advertising dollars. As mandated by Congress, all comments for the FCCs quadrennial Regulatory Review Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is set for April 29 with a reply comment deadline of May 29. The FCC looks at broadcast ownership rules to see if they remain necessary in the public interest as the result of competition, or if they can be modified or eliminated due to marketplace changes. As they say on TV, stay tuned! | https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2019/03/05/why-are-tv-stations-up-for-sale/ |
Are Stem Cell Transplants A Cure For HIV? | A second patient appears to have been cured of HIV following a stem cell transplant procedure, which replaces unhealthy, infected cells, with healthy blood cell precursors. The first successful stem cell transplant occurred in the Berlin patient, Timothy Ray Brown, in 2008 and, ten years later, he is still free of HIV. The current unidentified patient has been free of HIV for eighteen months now, a remarkable achievement, though too early to really claim as a cure. HIV treatment has been stymied because reservoirs of infected cells have remained latent, or in hiding, in the bone marrow of patients, and can later reactivate. Treatment with anti-virals can suppress the virus in a persons blood, but does not eradicate it in these reservoirs. This is why patients with HIV are thought to need life-long treatment. How susceptible an individual is to HIV infection is in part dependent on viral receptors on the surface of their own white blood cells. People with a specific mutation (called 32) on the CCR5 gene develop defective receptors, so the HIV virus cant enter the cell. The person is thus very unlikely to become infected with HIV. The latest transplant was led by Dr. Ravindra Gupta, of the University of Cambridge, UK. Both transplants relied on selecting donors who had this mutation in their genes, so were resistant to HIV. When the donors stem cells were successfully transplanted, it replaced the patients own cells, conferring this HIV-resistance. Some viruses enter by other receptors, so focusing only on CCR5 receptors may not work long-term. Stem cell transplants are typically used for patients with leukemia or specific cancers. They require extensive radiation and chemotherapy firstboth are expensive and dangerous treatments. Stem cell transplants are also curative for sickle cell disease, but are not widely used because of these issues. Both of these patients received the transplant as part of their cancer therapy, not specifically for their HIV. But donors were chosen, in part, to have this CCR5 mutation, which likely confers immunity. This new case of successful treatment of HIV with stem-cell replacement is exciting, but has the limitations of side effects, cost, and possible failure from other mechanisms. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2019/03/05/are-stem-cell-transplants-a-cure-for-hiv/ |
Would A Trump Executive Order On Campus Free Speech Be Constitutional? | This past weekend, President Trump told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference that he would soon be issuing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research dollars. The announcement was prompted by a viral video of a conservative activist, Hayden Williams, being physically assaulted on the UC Berkeley campus. Williams was punched while recruiting students to start a new chapter of the conservative advocacy group, Turning Point USA, but neither Williams nor his assailant are Berkeley students. It is reasonable to question whether such an order is really neededafter all assault is already illegal. Trump agrees with the NRA when they argue that we should do a better job enforcing the laws we already have rather than creating new laws, so that logic should hold here as well. Putting aside the need for the law, there is another pressing question. The answer is complicated. There are two ways to challenge the constitutionality of a new law or executive order. The first is a facial challenge. That means going to court before a new law is applied to any real-life situation. The plaintiffs would have to argue that there are no circumstances under which the order could be constitutional. Thats a tough standard. If the executive order is drafted competently and clearly and protects free speech broadly, rather than in overtly partisan terms, the courts will probably uphold it against a facial constitutional challenge. In Rust v. Sullivan, for example, the Supreme Court upheld a federal regulation that required federally funded family planning clinics to refrain from abortion counseling. In National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, the Supreme Court upheld a decency requirement for recipients of government arts funding. In short, the Supreme Court allows the government broad latitude to fund the activities it wants to fund and to defund those who engage in activities the government doesnt want to support, even if those activities are within the scope of the first amendment. As a result, the government has far broader room to withhold funding for activities than to directly punish those activities. Nonetheless, a court might well strike down an executive order, even in a facial challenge, on other grounds. As demonstrated by his recent declaration of a national emergency in order to procure funds for his border wall, Trump is famously unwilling to bow to the will of Congress. But, in this situation, Trump will be on stronger ground if he seeks legislation from Congress rather than just issuing an executive order. The President has no independent legislative power; that belongs to Congress alone. In the cases discussed above, the courts agreed that the executive branch was reasonably interpreting the laws that were providing the funding in the first place. So, the executive was merely implementing those laws in a new, but reasonable way, rather than adding new provisions to them. Because Trumps announcement was so vague, we dont know exactly what federal funding laws he will make use of for his executive order. But, when Trump has tried to impose his own ideological preferences in the guise of enforcing the law, courts have balked. For example, his executive order pulling federal funds from sanctuary cities was struck down by an appellate federal court. The court admonished Trump that: "By its plain terms, the executive order directs the agencies of the executive branch to withhold funds appropriated by Congress in order to further the administration's policy objective of punishing cities and counties that adopt so-called 'sanctuary' policies. Similarly, a federal judge blocked the Trump administrations attempt to limit womens access to contraceptives because the new rules were not in accordance with the Affordable Care Act. So Trump cant order federal agencies to, say, pull medical research funds from Berkeley for allowing student disruption of conservative speakers, unless he could show that this is a use of the money contemplated by Congress when it passed the funding bill or at least that it furthers the goals of the Congress that passed the funding bill. Returning to the constitutional issues, there is a second way to challenge any executive orderone that is more likely to succeed than a facial challenge. There are also as applied challenges, in which the plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of an executive order as applied to a particular situation. If Trump issues his executive order there are going to be a lot of these challenges, and universities will win a lot of them. Say a college wants to keep a conservative speaker off campus because the speaker has a record of abusive behavior towards students. (For example, the conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos once put a picture of a transgendered student up on screen during a talk and said hed like to bang the student.) If the federal government tries to pull funding for keeping such speakers off campus, it is doubtful that the courts will side with them. As applied challenges will be made, and will likely succeed when universities dont want to host holocaust deniers, creationists, and racial cranks whose claims dont meet academic standards of proof. There will be more suits when religious universities dont want to host speakers like Michael Moore who are hostile to religious beliefs. There will be more suits still if the federal agencies that enforce the executive order use vague standards or demonstrate a partisan bias in their enforcement. In sum, any executive that order Trump issues would quickly join the long queue of orders enjoined, limited, or struck down by the courts. These include his first two travel bans, the sanctuary city order mentioned above, and his executive order making it easier to fire federal employees. Campus free speech is a complex issue and, as Ive previously posted, support for free speech by college students ought to be a lot stronger than it is. But a Trump-issued executive order is unlikely to improve the situation, and it will likely result in more litigation rather than more freedom of speech. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2019/03/05/would-a-trump-executive-order-on-campus-free-speech-be-constitutional/ |
Why isn't Captain Marvel with Brie Larson more fun? | CLOSE Marvel Studios shows a few more details in the backstory of Captain Marvel. USA TODAY There is so much thats so cool about "Captain Marvel." The heroine is an Air Force fighter pilot who can shoot photon blasts out of her hands. It's like if Tom Cruise in Top Gun and Superman had a baby that grew up to wear Nine Inch Nails T-shirts. (Theres even a cat named Goose.) Brie Larson takes guff from no man. When a biker condescendingly tells her to give him a smile, she steals his motorcycle. Its mid-'90s setting gives the film retro flair, and its girl-power soundtrack, blasting Garbage and Hole, will win over any '90s girls heart. MORE: Hey 'Captain Marvel' trolls, knock it off! And at long last, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has introduced a female director, Anna Boden, into the boy's club (she directs with partner Ryan Fleck, with whom she also collaborated on Half Nelson, Its Kind of a Funny Story and others). Its all so refreshing. Brie Larson stars in "Captain Marvel." (Photo: Marvel Studios) For all its thematic and behind-the-scenes innovations, cinematically Captain Marvel feels like a step backward for the MCU. Fresh off the heels of the all-or-nothing bombast of Avengers: Infinity War, the righteous representation of Black Panther and the giddy lunacy of Thor: Ragnarok, Captain Marvel is a retreat into a bland formula. All problems start with the story, and Captain Marvel has a forgettable one. We meet our heroine (Larson) on Starforce, an elite military team of the alien race Kree (who, apart from strange eyes and blue blood, look quite human). Shehas the odd, fleeting memory of a life on Earth, where she was Air Force fighter pilot Carol Danvers before an explosion wiped out her memories and infused her with superpowers she hasnt yet learned to master. The Kree took her in, broken and lost, and shes been fighting for their cause ever since. The Kree are at war with the Skrulls, a decidedly ugly, green-skinned, pointy-eared race of shape-shifting invaders against whom the Kree are defending the universe from infiltration. Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) is leader of Starforce in "Captain Marvel." (Photo: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios) When a Starforce mission against the Skrulls goes wrong, Danvers gets separated from her team and ends up hurtling through Earth, where she crash lands through the roof of a Blockbuster Video in mid-'90s LA and runs into S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury, played by a digitally de-aged Samuel L. Jackson. (While such de-aging technology has improved significantly, it remains an insurmountable distraction for a human brain wired to find flaws when it knows its being tricked.) MORE: McSally asked Captain Marvel about flying, but Twitter was not amused Larson and Jackson have good chemistry, but its Ben Mendelsohn who steals the show as Talos, a Skrull whos infiltrated Earth on the hunt for technology that in the wrong hands (his, presumably) could upend the world. Thats no surprise; Mendelsohn is a reliably great actor whos often the best thing about any given movie. The problem is, he also ends up the films heart, not the flashy new heroine around whom a massive franchise is being built. Ben Mendelsohn stars in "Captain Marvel." (Photo: Marvel Studios) Thats no dig on Larson, who delivers quips with a cocky twinkle her in eye and clearly relishes her role as an intergalactic superhero. Its just that the script doesnt give her terribly much to do, trapping her character in an amnesic state for the bulk of the film and relegating all her meaningful development to flashback. Danvers is most interesting in those all-too-brief glimpses into the past: wiping out in her go-kart as a kid and brushing off the blood, fighting with her father, slipping from the rope in Air Force academy to jeers (You know why they call it a cockpit, dont you? one chauvinist colleague gloats). So many times she was told by men she couldnt succeed, that she shouldnt even try. Thats the Danvers we cheer for when a fully suited Captain Marvel finally embraces the enormity of her powers in a climactic fight scene and starts laying waste to No Doubts Just a Girl. Its a shame we get to spend so little time with her. Reach the reporter at [email protected]. Twitter.com/BabsVan. Captain Marvel, 3 stars Directors: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck. Cast: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn. Rating: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and brief suggestive language. Subscribe to azcentral.com for guides, reviews and expert advice. Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/movies/2019/03/05/captain-marvel-brie-larson-movie-review/3065387002/ | https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/movies/2019/03/05/captain-marvel-brie-larson-movie-review/3065387002/ |
Who Can Spurs Target From Free Agency After Pau Gasol Buyout? | In an eye-opening move as the March 1 waiver deadline arrived to free up players in playoff-eligible moves, the San Antonio Spurs bought out Pau Gasol. It ended a two-plus year tenure in the Alamo City, which began as LaMarcus Aldridge's frontcourt mate in 2016, only to sign a fresh three-year deal in 2017, but at an advanced age. Injuries, declining play and a transforming NBA limited the future Pro Basketball Hall of Famer's role in 2018-19. With that, the Spurs opened a roster spot for their playoff push, while sitting eighth in the Western Conference. They don't have to replace Gasol, but there are free agents to fill a role on the path to potentially face the Golden State Warriors or Denver Nuggets in the first round of the postseason. Carmelo Anthony Purely for due diligence, Carmelo Anthony remains a free agent after his disastrous 10-game run with the Houston Rockets earlier this season. There seemed to be a collision course with the Los Angeles Lakers, only for their playoff push to end and cancel that team-up between Anthony and LeBron James. The former Knicks star would add a scoring punch for San Antonio, but he's not the wing they need in the middle of the lineup that plays both ends of the court, which halts this idea. Malachi Richardson Not a flashy name but projectible, Malachi Richardson stands 6-foot-6, with a 7-foot wingspan. He failed to stick with the Sacramento Kings, Toronto Raptors and Philadelphia 76ers for performance or transaction reasons, but could make for an interesting look if the Spurs want to test what the Syracuse product can do defensively and from three-point range. This might be a better name to try out in the preseason. Marcin Gortat Taking Gasol's little-used spot might not make sense for Marcin Gortat, but if vying for any spot on a competitive team is his desire, this can make sense. It offers the Spurs a bigger veteran body to join Jakob Poeltl in the center rotation likely fighting for playing time through the season's end. Greg Monroe Similar to Gortat, Greg Monroe would fill a minimal backup role off the bench for San Antonio. However, as the NBA has involved, he's struggled to stick with four teams in two seasons. Part of that attributes to the Eric Bledsoe trade in 2017-18 and a subsequent buyout to join the playoff-ready Boston Celtics, but he only played sparingly for the Toronto Raptors this year and hit free agency in early February. Shabazz Muhammed The Chinese basketball season is over, leaving plenty of former NBA players able to return domestically for the postseason push. Shabazz Muhammed fell off with the Minnesota Timberwolves and Milwaukee Bucks in 2017-18, but returned for 30.2 points and 11.4 rebounds per game in the CBA. Eye-popping numbers that won't replicate in the NBA, but that should be enough to warrant interest. Muhammed can add a scoring punch for San Antonio off the bench fitting into the backcourt or smaller lineups at small forward. He's not a defensive threat, but if head coach Gregg Popovich desires more scoring off the ball, this is an unconventional but flier-worthy fit. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/robwolkenbrod/2019/03/05/who-can-spurs-target-from-free-agency-after-pau-gasol-buyout/ |
Is Louisa Smith S.F.s most radical restaurant wine director? | Most bars and restaurants that specialize in natural wine are very vocal about the fact that they specialize in natural wine. Being vocal is kind of the point. To be quiet about it would be something akin to a vegetarian restaurant failing to mention that its food is vegetarian. Yet quietness characterizes the natural wine program that Louisa Smith has been running at Lord Stanley for nearly four years. Under her guidance, Lord Stanley has become San Franciscos most avant-garde wine destination, and the only fine-dining restaurant in the city to serve natural wines exclusively. But you might not know it. Most diners come to taste the modern, vaguely British-style food, often avant-garde in its own right, of chefs Rupert and Carrie Blease. Diners are usually unaware theyre about to embark on a wholly unique wine experience, too. People come in all the time and say, Im a connoisseur of Burgundy. How have I never heard of these wines? Smith says. Instead of blue chips Meo-Camuzet and Georges de Vogue, its Julien Altaber and Vini Viti Vinci. But even if Smiths hard-line natural wine message has stayed subdued, it hasnt gone completely unnoticed. Brandon Jew, owner-chef of Mister Jius restaurant, became so enamored with Smiths wine selection over several dinners at Lord Stanley that he tapped her to design the wine list for his new drink-focused bar and restaurant, Moongate Lounge, which opened this week. Like the Moongate cocktail list, created by Mister Jius Alex Kulick and bar director Danny Louie, the wine list takes the Chinese lunar calendar as inspiration. That means, for Smith, an emphasis on wines grown according to biodynamic principles, which follows the lunar calendar. (It recommends planting crops only during certain moon phases, for example.) The initial Moongate wine list includes 11 by-the-glass selections ranging from $12 to $22, and spanning familiar flavor profiles (Laherte Freres brut nature Champagne; $20) to more challenging ones (Cantina Giardinos Paski, a skin-contact white from the Coda di Volpe grape in Campania; $16). Yes, there are name-brand varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir, but these arent like the versions youll find in Napa Valley tasting rooms: This is lighter, herbal Loire Cabernet and reductive, vegetal Burgundy. The opening of Moongate Lounge marks the second Louisa Smith-designed wine list in town, which means a greater platform for her style and sensibilities. And maybe, as a consequence, a greater platform for natural wine in the upper echelons of San Francisco dining. Natural wine and fine dining have not traditionally been seen as easy bedfellows. Funky, microbial flavors in a wine can easily overpower and alter food. But Smith finds plenty of harmony against Lord Stanleys subtle, bright flavors: She pours the rich, honeysuckle-laden Riffault Les Quarterons, a dry, botrytized Sancerre, to emphasize flecks of hazelnuts in a smoky steak tartare. And she lifts an entrees earthy harmony of seared duck breast and toasted seeds with a glass of the 109 Gamay from LEgrapille, whose tart fruit flavors recall a black cherry Warheads candy. To be clear: Smith is by no means the only wine director in town serving natural wines. A handful of other spots, like Del Popolo, Tartine Manufactory and Fig & Thistle, give natural wine lovers plenty to love. Ruby Wine, a small shop in Potrero Hill, is about as hard core as natural wine gets to say nothing of the Oakland natural wine bar contingent but when it comes to restaurants, as far as I can tell, no one else in San Francisco adheres to standards as strict as Smiths. Im adamant about a few things, she says. In order to buy a wine, Smith must be sure that it came from organically or biodynamically farmed grapes; that it was made with no additives, including yeast; and that it has minimal added sulfur, or preferably none. Whereas some sommeliers might try to counter a majority-natural wine selection with a few crowd-pleasers dont alienate the buttery Chardonnay drinker, the conventional wisdom goes Smith makes no such concessions. I knew at the beginning I didnt want to make any exceptions, she says. Surely few diners especially those who seek out a restaurant like Lord Stanley that serves pristine, local produce (heirloom spinach) and whose menu names the farm where its duck breast originated would object to the idea of wines grown and made under the conditions Smith describes. But thats the thing about natural wine: To a palate that was reared on California Chardonnay or Argentina Malbec, many of these wines can taste, well, weird dirty, cloudy, not cleaned up. How we describe these wines at the table really makes a big difference, Smith says. If a customer orders a Merlot, shell preface the pour with a warning that the wine might have some residual carbon dioxide, resulting in a little fizziness, or an explanation as to why the wine is cold. Some unsulfured reds just need a chill. Wines without added sulfur, which is a preservative, are liable to take on a life of their own, behaving unpredictably. That can prove difficult for a restaurant that might otherwise keep a bottle of wine open for a day or two, to serve by the glass. We never know, Smith says. Weve always been willing to take that risk because its so important to us to stick to this ethos. This ethos took hold of Smith over a number of years. She moved to California in 2009, after a few years of working in New York as a sommelier at the fancy London Hotel and then in a European-focused wine bar and shop. Landing in Sonoma County, Smith worked as a harvest intern at Salinia Wine Co. whose owner Kevin Kelley was stirring a small, nascent movement toward natural wines in California. (She and Kelley are now a couple and have an 11-month-old baby.) Winemaking ignited a passion in her. I was working for something exciting, she says. It completely changed my outlook on what I wanted to do. In 2010, Smith took a harvest job at a winery in Australias Yarra Valley. And thats where I really learned the difference between natural and conventional. Shed been expecting a similar experience to Salinia walking through vineyards, feet treading grapes but the Yarra winery was like a construction zone. She describes her role as a lot of waiting around with a clipboard. Of course, Salinia had been far from a typical winery job. I didnt know most people didnt jump in the bins! Smith says. But that first Australian harvest was a turning point. If those two experiences represented two extreme poles of modern winemaking, foot treading versus clipboards, she knew which one she wanted to pursue. For a few more years, Smith traveled back and forth between California and Australia, continuing to work harvests at Salinia. From 2011 to 2016, she made her own wine from Mendocinos Sun Hawk Vineyard. She briefly oversaw a wine program at a restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, called Mr. Hive, where she installed an intro to natural wines page on the wine list capitalizing on energy generated by a group of Australian natural winemakers called Natural Selection Theory. By the time Rupert and Carrie Blease, Smiths longtime friends, approached her about helping them open Lord Stanley, she was ready to fully commit to natural wine. The Bleases loved the idea. Theyve put it in my hands in a really nice and generous way, Smith says. In the few years the restaurant has been open, many of Smiths favorite wines have risen rapidly in popularity. Wines like Vini Viti Vinci, a young Burgundy producer, are suddenly hard for her to get; her distributor runs out. Shes thrilled that these wines are gaining a broader audience. But she says the natural wine conversation has a long way to go. Natural wines are held to a weird standard, she says. When people bring up a bad natural wine theyve tasted, Smith wants to respond: OK, is every conventional wine good? She wishes that criticism of natural wine could move beyond a fixation with flaws which often leads drinkers to reject outright a wine that shows symptoms of volatile acidity, brettanomyces or mouse (a phenomenon that can arise in unsulfured wines, described by some as the sensation of having swallowed a dead rodent). Id rather drink a wine that had a little bit of mouse than a processed wine, Smith says. Thats an extreme viewpoint, to be sure, and shes unafraid to put provocative wines in front of her customers. And some visitors, it seems, are opting out: On a recent visit to Lord Stanley, I noticed a nearby table had brought a bottle of Silver Oak. (Corkage is $30.) Thorny issues are tangled up in these questions. Does wine have to present a stark choice between intellectual pleasure (additive-free wine!) If Smith has her way, this conversation will grow more nuanced and new projects like Moongate Lounge will, she hopes, help advance that cause. In the meantime, she knows where she stands. Esther Mobley is The Chronicles wine critic. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob | https://www.sfchronicle.com/wine/article/Is-Louisa-Smith-S-F-s-most-radical-restaurant-13664798.php |
Will Cloud Software Drive Salesforce's Growth In 2018? | Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) published its Quarter 4 and fiscal year 2018 (ended January 2019) results on March 4, 2019 and had an investor call on the same day. The company beat consensus for both revenues and earnings. Total revenues were $13.3 billion, up by 26.8% year on year. The Non-GAAP earnings were reported as $2.75, up by more than 40% YOY. The company has more than doubled their revenue from $5.4 billion to $13.3 billion in the last 5 years. We currently have a $174 price estimate for the company. View our interactive dashboard Our Outlook for Salesforce.com for FY 2019 and modify the key assumptions to arrive at a price estimate of your own. In addition, here is more Information Technology Data. Operating cash flow for the company increased 24% YOY and was reported as $3.4 billion. Unearned revenue and remaining performance obligation were also up by 22% and 25%, respectively, which shows the future revenue generation capacity of the company. The operating margin decreased slightly by 28 basis points. The highest growth came from Salesforce Platform (Cloud Software) as it increased by 49% YOY to record $2.9 billion in revenues. The companys Einstein AI is now delivering more than 6 billion predictions every day. The company has created Trailhead, a personal learning cloud that will help empower a person without regard to their background so that they can learn and demand skills for free. The company currently has 1.2 million learners on Trailhead and are expecting to add many more soon. The acquisition of Mulesoft one year back has been quite successful as it has propelled Salesforce to be the number one integration platform in the world. The company has set forth a long-term revenue goal of $26 billion to $28 billion in Fiscal year 2022. For the next fiscal year, the company raised its guidance by $50 million to $15.95 to $16.05 billion in revenue with earnings around $2.74-$2.76, in line with the previous year. Salesforce.com has extended its strategic alliance with Google to deepen the integration between the companys Marketing Cloud and Google Analytics 360. The initiative has been witnessing positive feedback from customers. Further, Salesforce Commerce Cloud continues to be the fastest growing enterprise commerce solution and is delivering solid results. In the fiscal year 2018 (ended January 2019) the company acquired CloudCraze, the leader in B2B commerce, to offer a single platform that can be used for both B2B and B2C experiences by Salesforces clients. All these initiatives are likely to boost the companys top-line as well as valuation in the near term. Explore example interactive dashboards and create your own. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/03/05/will-cloud-software-drive-salesforces-growth-in-2018/ |
Should Brands Be Forced By Law To Make The World A Better Place? | I read an article recently on Shots by columnist and Head of Strategic Innovation at Starcom, Amy Kean, entitled, "What if all advertising was good?" I recommend CMOs read it because it's thought-provoking, well written and provides a new way to look at the role of advertising in culture. But I also think you should read it so we, as marketers, don't go overboard shaping the world while forgetting the true purpose of advertising in the first place. To make a space look prettier, or give back to a community, or donate to charity, or teach its customers something. The concept of challenging brands to improve the world in some tangible way is attractive on a human level and even on a business level. In fact, fantastic books have been written about this singular topic (e.g. "The Belief Economy: How to Give a Damn, Stop Selling, and Create Buy-In," by David Baldwin). And there's plenty of evidence that brands can profoundly connect with their audiences via good-will marketing. Look no further than Tom's Shoes, Patagonia and Starbucks for brands that make improving the world part of their business plan. These brands do well because the good they do is strategic, on brand and happens by choice. Brand benevolence by way of market forces vs. government forces. But to, as Kean suggests, force brands by law to improve the world in some tangible way is an indirect tax on companies. With this kind of regulation, some brands with limited resources and whose most efficient strategy might be to simply communicate the benefit of their products to people will be forced into less effective marketing that may, in fact, make the world a better place, but does not help the brand sell more product. In that sense the money spent on less effective advertising vs. the same money spent on more effective advertising becomes a "ROI tax" on those brands. Who knows, many brands may surprise themselves and discover doing good actually delivers a higher ROI. I asked David Baldwin, the author of the book mentioned above ("The Belief Economy"), for a comment on this one. Here's what he said: The government should stay the hell out of it and instead let the market correct itself. I agree with the central premise that there is so much advertising assaulting us every day and brands should do their part to make things better in a real, authentic way. If they don't come from an honest place they'll be sniffed out and pay a price pretty quickly. But if they can do it, everyone wins, they'll get more awareness, they'll make a difference, and people will enjoy the engagement. Personally, I am more of a "market forces" guy than a "government forces" guy, in general, so I couldn't agree more with David. The behaviors of brands who are forced to be good will no longer be perceived as authentically good. As with most marketing decisions, I think brands should focus on their brand idea and allow it to be "involved." Then cross-tab the results of this discussion with your marketing plan to see if there are any possible intersections between a real marketing objective and a brand behavior that would make the world a better place in some way. Only when these two dynamics intersect--the brand idea and a marketing objective--can any behavior, including but not limited to "doing good," be considered a smart business decision. Even if that decision is inaction. Then, if the decision is to activate an idea, when you do so and the idea actually does some good in the world, the attention the idea gets will further cement your brand idea in people's minds, accomplish a real business goal and provide some authentic good-will to the world. In that order. And without court order. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/willburns/2019/03/05/should-brands-be-forced-by-law-to-make-the-world-a-better-place/ |
Where were the moms of Michael Jackson's accusers? | "Leaving Neverland," HBO's gut-punch of a documentary about two men who allege Michael Jackson molested them for years, is as much about James Safechuck's and Wade Robson's relationship with the pop superstar as it is about their mothers, who feature prominently in the two-part, four-hour film. In it, the moms are still grappling with their fondness for Jackson and how his star power clouded their judgment as parents. The documentary presents a complicated explanation for how Stephanie Safechuck and Joy Robson would come to allow their young sons to share a bed with Jackson for so many years. Early on, the women describe how Jackson forged relationships with them through long phone calls that made them feel like Jackson was a member of their family -- even like a son. The women paint a picture of a man who was unbearably lonely, childlike, kind, incredibly generous and thrilled to spend time with their ordinary families in spite of his megastar status. Recounting their time with him, the women still seem awestruck. "You go from your normal lifestyle day after day -- everything is the same -- to this big star calling your house, wanting to come to your home and have dinner in your home, wanting to spend the night in your little house," Stephanie Safechuck said in the documentary. "He could be anywhere with anybody in the world and Michael wanted to be with our family. This was all so overwhelming and like a fairytale and I got lost in it." Her son, James Safechuck, first met Jackson while shooting a Pepsi commercial around his ninth birthday. Stephanie recalled setting boundaries early on, forbidding James to stay in Jackson's room on a trip to Hawaii, but couldn't remember exactly how those boundaries fell away. "It seems like it was a natural thing that happened. My husband and I had to have said, 'Yes you can go sleep with Michael,'" she said, referring to a tour stop in Paris where James claims the sexual abuse began. Stephanie also said she noticed her hotel room was getting further away from where Jackson and James were staying. She said that when she asked why, she was told by someone from Jackson's team that it was the closest suite available to his. Stephanie also claims to have eavesdropped on their room from time to time to see what they were doing during all that time alone. Nothing she heard alarmed her, she said. With Wade, Joy Robson's son, the alone time came more quickly. Jackson invited the Robson family to his famed Neverland Ranch about two years after a 5-year-old Wade won a Michael Jackson dance contest in his native Australia. Wade and his sister, who was 10 years old at the time, said they stayed in Michael's room together for the first couple of nights but said that no abuse took place. The Robsons planned to go the Grand Canyon after that, but Wade begged to stay behind and said Jackson sobbed about his leaving. His parents agreed to let him stay. Wade spent the next week alone with Jackson and alleges the abuse began the first night his family was gone. "I somewhat regretted it as we were traveling," Joy said in the documentary. "I became a little anxious at times about it and I remember calling once and I couldn't get through. I remember being absolutely hysterical on the phone at one point because I couldn't get through and I couldn't find them." Michael Jackson's accusers detail alleged abuse by the late pop icon "For me to look back on this scenario now, what you think would be standard kind of instincts and judgment seemed to go out the window," Wade said of his parents' decision to let him and his sister sleep in Jackson's room. "We'd known him for, I don't know what, four hours maybe. That's the trippy part because it felt like we knew him. Like he had been in my living room every day, in my ears via his music and my posters, like I'd known him, I thought, and for some reason it didn't feel strange to let me, a 7-year-old, and my sister a 10-year-old, sleep in this man's bedroom." After that first trip to Neverland Ranch, contact with Jackson quickly became constant, Wade and his mother said. "He would talk to Wade for sometimes six, seven hours at a time," Joy said. "I would say, 'What on Earth do you talk about for all that time?' I would try to listen, but they seemed to be very innocent phone calls." Joy also said she felt like she and Jackson had their own relationship. "I felt like we had something quite separate," she said. "I guess like a brother or a really close friend. He'd get really lonely and we'd talk about it." In an interview with "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King last week, James and Wade described how they believe Jackson was grooming their mothers, too. "The parents are groomed as well. So it's -- Michael spends a lot of time talking to your parents, and connecting with them, and building relationships with them," James told King. "He pays attention to them. And they're groomed over the time. So it is their job to protect us and they didn't. But I try to look at it from their point of view without letting them off the hook, 'cause obviously that's their job. But they were groomed as well." Wade said his relationship with his mother has "grown immensely over the last six years or so." "It was really challenging for a while," Wade said. "And I've gone through many phases just in this healing process in relation to her. I've gone through lots of anger towards her, lots of confusion. Thankfully, we've been able to go through a lot of healing through this process." James' and Wade's fathers weren't in the documentary. Wade's father, Dennis Robson, died by suicide in 2002 just after his last child left Australia to join Wade, his sister and Joy in the United States. According to his family, he suffered from bipolar disorder. Part 2 of "Leaving Neverland" aired Monday night following the Sunday night release of Part 1. The second half picks up in 1993 just before Jackson is accused of molesting 13-year-old Jordan "Jordie" Chandler, who Wade said had become the closest to Jackson. Wade said that during mass sleepovers with Chandler and actor Macaulay Culkin, Jackson and Chandler would frequently disappear. In the documentary, Joy still seemed shocked by how convincing Wade was when she asked him whether Jackson had done anything inappropriate with him. "Obviously, as a mother, when these allegations were brought to us the first thing when I get Wade by himself I said to him, 'OK, so as your mother I need to ask you, you know, has Michael done anything inappropriate with you?' And he was so convincing. 'Absolutely not. He has never ever done anything. Never,'" Joy said. She said Jackson was similarly convincing, even crying when she questioned him about it. "I can hear him saying to me, 'I would never hurt a child.' He would cry. 'I could never hurt a child.' And he would break into tears. Very convincing," Joy said. Both mothers described how they would respond to people who cast doubt on Jackson's innocence, like those who have pointed to a $23 million out-of-court settlement Jackson reached with Chandler's family in early 1994 as an admission of his guilt. "People said to me that just proves he's guilty. And I would say, 'No, that to me proves that all it was about all along was money,'" Joy said. Michael Jackson's family defends pop icon as "kid at heart" amid abuse claims Stephanie said she believed Jackson when he told her the settlement he reached with the Chandlers would cost him less than fighting it in court, according to his lawyers. She said she also asked her son, James, whether anything inappropriate had happened between him and Jackson. He denied it. The Robsons publicly defended Jackson, and both boys told police he never molested them. The documentary does not delve deeply into any possible financial arrangements between the families and Jackson, but Stephanie did address the suspicious timing of a house the superstar purchased for her around the time Jordan Chandler accused him of sexual abuse. "So he did buy us a house. It's just coincidental, he wasn't buying us off. But the timing's right there. Just sounds bad," Stephanie said. James said Jackson also bought him a car for his 16th birthday and funded his student films through high school. James and Wade said Jackson, who had allegedly come to show much less interest in them as they got older, would re-enter their lives whenever he was accused of abusing children. They said contact that had waned to a few times per year would immediately ramp up to daily phone calls -- calls they said they later realized were coaching sessions. Jackson openly admitted to sharing beds with numerous boys over the years, and so far, five of them have accused him of molestation: Chandler, Jason Francia, Gavin Arvizo, Wade and James. In 2005, Jackson was acquitted on charges of molestation brought by Arvizo, a child cancer survivor. Wade testified on Jackson's behalf in that trial and withstood a blistering cross-examination. He was called a star witness and is often credited with helping Jackson win in court. The Jackson family has denounced James and Wade as "opportunists" and "admitted liars." They told CBS News they believe the men's allegations are motivated by money -- something they both deny. James and Wade said they were not compensated for participating in the documentary and have no stake in its success. Robson and Safechuck have both sued the Jackson estate, but their lawsuits were dismissed because of the statute of limitations. They are appealing. "Leaving Neverland" has faced criticism for not seeking comment from the musician's family or estate, which sued HBO for $100 million. The Jackson estate called the film a "one-sided marathon of unvetted propaganda to shamelessly exploit an innocent man no longer here to defend himself." The estate's lawsuit against HBO hinges on a non-disparagement clause that was part of a 1992 contract with the cable company. "Leaving Neverland" director Dan Reed defends explosive Michael Jackson documentary Asked to address that criticism, director Dan Reed told "CBS This Morning" last week, "We know that the family and the estate[s] and Jackson during his lifetime and his lawyers all deny that any sexual abuse took place and those views are strongly represented in the film. We give those views a lot of time in the film on screen and we have people casting doubt on Wade's change of heart." Much of the second part of the documentary focuses on what Wade and James believe was the emotional fallout of Jackson's alleged abuse. It includes interviews with their wives, who recall how each of them opened up about their childhood relationships with the megastar. Wade and James told "CBS This Morning" how becoming fathers themselves contributed to their decisions and ability to come forward. "I started having visions or images of what happened to me happening to my son," Wade said. "And I saw images of Michael doing it to my son. It was -- once I could see, really understand this is what a little boy looks like, and feels like, and thinks like, and behaves like. This is what innocence feels like. That was me." "You disconnect from yourself as a kid," James said. "So I didn't have any sympathy or empathy for me as a kid. And so it takes having a kid somebody to give empathy to and love to ... it's almost like a surrogate you in a way 'cause you can't give yourself any love. You still think it's your fault. So when you have a kid, it makes that bridge I think or starts the bridge." | https://www.cbsnews.com/news/leaving-neverland-where-were-the-moms-of-michael-jacksons-accusers/ |
How will Oregon Ducks defensive coordinator Andy Avalos use Kayvon Thibodeaux? | Oregon defensive coordinator Andy Avalos joined me for a discussion about family, football and the advantages of being in the coaching box vs. on the sideline during games. Listen to the full discussion here. On how he might use five-star freshman defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux: This defensive is going to have an opportunity for guys like him -- edge guys -- to thrive. Not to let the offense single out where hes going to line up... KT and all the guys are working really hard to prepare themselves for spring ball, physically, mentally. What its like having two children age five and under at home: Oh, its like walking into coach (Aaron Felds) office. Its high energy. Its focused. Youve got to get ready to roll... when you come home youve got to be ready to rock... its a fun deal for us... Im not going to lie. Theres been a couple of times Ive had to sit in the driveway and get my mind right before I come in the door." Listen to the full interview here: | https://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/2019/03/how-will-oregon-ducks-defensive-coordinator-andy-avalos-use-kayvon-thibodeaux.html |
Is the MAGA dustup at Perry High School about free speech or cheap grandstanding? | CLOSE Protesters gather on Queen Creek Road March 4, 2019, across from Perry High School in Gilbert. We should not yield the high ground to a publicity seeking parent who once hosted a party for junior high school kids where the assembled revelers took the opportunity to film themselves yelling a songs racial epitaph F*** All N***az. Thats what we have in the dust-up at Perry High School over a students display of a Trump banner. The kids who brought their MAGA gear to school apparently got into a not-too-surprising argument with kids of a different political persuasion. Officials told them to put the banner away (but not to strip off their T-shirts or hats) and supposedly all went well until the school day ended, whey they brought out the flag again. Asked to leave, then ... The story goes that a school resource officer told them to leave campus or be sent to the principal. It was the end of the day. Id guess that anyone for any reason could be told to leave campus once the day is ended. Still, there was trouble. One female student involved called her mother from the principal's office, and she came to the school and got into an argument with the principal. CLOSE Watch this confrontation between Perry High School Principal Dan Serrano and the mother of a student, Jennifer Farris. Courtesy of Jennifer Farris, Arizona Republic A representative of the school district said multiple witnesses heard and saw the girl's mother walk into the office, where she "screamed, yelled and used profanity, including the 'F' word in the presence of students and staff." Ever since then weve been framing the discussion about what happened at the school on the high principles of free speech instead of the very low notions of grandstanding tinged with racist overtones, which is perhaps where the discussion should have begun. Hosting kids shouting the N-word And ended. The nice folks at 12 News have posted a video showing a bit of a January 2018 party at the home of the woman who argued with the school principal. (If it's okay with you I'd rather not give the woman the publicity she so desperately seeks by naming her) The video features San Tan Junior High School students yelling a racial slur from a song, "F*** All N***az." The Arizona Republic wrote about the incident when it occurred. Probably Im guessing the mouthy little tykes in the video wouldnt be so brave or so loud about such sentiments in many other environs in the Valley. The fact that this particular household afforded them a safe haven for their ignorant vocal display suggests a measure of agreement with or a tolerance for such expressions. The fact that a thinking adult would tolerate kids chanting the n-word troubles me. NEWSLETTERS Get the Opinions Newsletter newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Our best and latest in commentary in daily digest form. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Mon-Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Opinions Newsletter Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. Yes. Yes. And yes. Reach Montini at [email protected]. MORE BY MONTINI: Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2019/03/05/perry-high-school-free-speech-grandstanding/3070023002/ | https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2019/03/05/perry-high-school-free-speech-grandstanding/3070023002/ |
Should the term 'racist' be redefined? | Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption African Americans in New Orleans reflect on race relations February was Black History Month in the US, a time typically set aside to recognise African Americans and their contributions to the country. This year's commemoration ended with insults and accusations of racism on the floor of Congress, at a televised hearing broadcast into millions of homes. But that exchange, between a Democrat and Republican, was hardly an isolated incident. The month began with calls for Virginia's governor to resign after a photo emerged of him in blackface. And it ended with President Donald Trump - who himself has been accused of racism - saying Academy Award winner Spike Lee was being racist after the film director urged Americans to "do the right thing" and choose love over hate by helping to thwart Mr Trump's re-election hopes. The flood of racially-charged headlines underlined a feeling shared by many - that 400 years after the first slaves were brought to the US, Americans still struggle to have meaningful conversations about race. "We can't even have a productive conversation if people aren't open to looking in the mirror," said Ibram Kendi, director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. "Denial is essentially the heartbeat of racism in this country and every time you are not open to what you could be doing in the moment, you are living and breathing racism itself." He says the first step to dismantling racism in the US is recognising that we can all shift between being racist and anti-racist. "When someone is charged with doing something that's racist, instead of getting upset and lashing out, they should consider the evidence." Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Spike Lee never mentioned President Trump by name in his speech but it was interpreted as a message to vote him out Conversations about race typically devolve into arguments because Americans have come to view the word "racist" a permanent label and not a description of an action, says Mr Kendi. He now advocates for redefining the word "racist" as a reflection of both our beliefs and behaviours and not merely as an insult. "A racist supports, by their action or inaction, policies that reproduce racial inequality. An anti-racist supports, with their actions, policies that reduce or eliminate racial inequality," says Mr Kendi. "What you're doing and what you're saying is an expression of who you are in that moment." Much of this discussion was sparked by the argument on the floor of the House of Representatives, which began when after Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic freshman, accused the Republican veteran congressman Mark Meadows of racism and using a black woman as a "prop". Mr Meadows had asked Lynne Patton, a long-time employee of the Trump Organization, to attend the Michael Cohen hearing to refute accusations that President Trump was racist. Speaking for Ms Patton, Mr Meadows said "as the daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Alabama, there is no way she would work for a man who is racist". When Ms Tlaib said that simply having a friend or employee who's a minority does not prohibit someone from being racist, the hearing quickly dissolved into a very heated row. Social psychologist Daniel Effron, who studies morality and race, said there's a reason people often resort to the "black friend" defence when charged with racism. Mr Effron said his research shows that whenever a person is accused of racism or their moral identity is challenged, they instinctively search for any example to bolster their "non-racist credentials", which can be a low bar. "When people are motivated to find evidence that they're not prejudiced, they're more likely to think having a black friend is really strong evidence," he said. "We make a mountain of morality out of a molehill of virtue." But even people with good intentions can face criticism when it comes to discussing race in America, as the director of the Oscar-winning movie Green Book discovered. Set against the backdrop of the segregated South in the 1960s, the film follows the unlikely friendship between a black classical and jazz musician and his white chauffeur. Critics accused the film of whitewashing history and furthering the "white saviour" trope in Hollywood. Author and anti-racism activist Tim Wise said he thinks we need to reframe the way we teach race in America, shifting the emphasis away from an individual's actions and looking at the system as a whole. "When we think about the way Americans teach racism historically, it is a story about individuals who did or did not own slaves, individuals who did or did not own segregated businesses. It's a lot harder to see systems of inequality," he said, adding that this can absolve people from reflecting on their own actions. Mr Wise explores his own struggles with reconciling white privilege and racism in his autobiography White Like Me and has made a career out of navigating difficult conversations about racism. He said he thinks Americans have been conditioned to believe certain racial stereotypes and unlearning those prejudices begins with recognising they exist in the first place. Until then, he said, we will continue to have circular arguments about race without making progress toward dismantling racism. "It would be ridiculous to say, 'I don't have a racist bone in my body'... you grew up in America," he says. "It's about saying, 'Look, I'm going to be humble enough to admit my weaknesses. Not because I want you to beat me up and not because I want to beat myself up, but because I know that I'm capable of better.'" | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47446913 |
Did GE Let SEC In On Larry Culp's Negative Industrial Cash Flow Comment To JPMorgan Chase? | As a GE shareholder, I have been underwhelmed by the lack of disclosure from the company. And I've been curious about why its shares have risen from their recent floor. But CEO Larry Culp's latest utterance at a JPMorgan Chase investor conference has me concerned about whether GE disclosed to the SEC market-moving information he shares with attendees. This afternoon, GE shares plunged 4.7% when it was reported that he told conference attendees "that GEs industrial free cash flow, which excludes troubled GE Capital, would be negative this year," according to the Wall Street Journal. Barron's offered a more robust description of Culp's comment. When speaking, Culp said industrial cash flow would be negative in 2019 and that free cash losses in the power unit this year would be greater than the $2.7 billion lost last year, which reflects the continuing trouble in the companys power business. JP Morgan analyst Steven Tusa made waves earlier Tuesday, when he suggested that earnings at GEs aircraft leasing (GECAS) business couldn't be sustained. When questioned at the conference, Culp said GECAS is making money. GE has failed to provide investors with financial guidance which might have shed light on just how negative it thinks that cash flow will be -- though it plans to do so on March 14, according to the Journal. Up until now, GE's opacity has been greatest with GE Capital, noted the Journal. But investors thought they knew how bad things were going to be with GE Power -- the reason for Culp's warning today of negative industrial cash flow. But now it looks like GE Power and GE Capital are both known unknowns -- we just don't know how bad they are. GE has plenty of lawyers -- but I wonder why I could not find an 8K filing with a press release filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding Culp's disclosure about the negative cash flow. After all, according to the SEC, Regulation FD provides that when an issuer discloses material nonpublic information to certain individuals or entitiesgenerally, securities market professionals, such as stock analysts, or holders of the issuer's securities who may well trade on the basis of the informationthe issuer must make public disclosure of that information. In this way, Regulation FD aims to promote the full and fair disclosure. I could not see one on the SEC's website. On March 5 I contacted Steven Winoker, GE's VP Investor Communications, and will update this post if he responds. Charles Elson, Edgar S. Woolard Jr. Chair in Corporate Governance, Professor of Finance at University of Delaware, was not worried about this. As he said in a March 5 interview, "Eventually the information he said becomes public. Given how counseled GE is, I would doubt that there was a Regulation FD violation. And that is the last of their worries given everything else they have going on. The question is did anyone trade on the news?" Somebody dumped the stock at about 1:15 today -- I just don't know who. If GE has not previously disclosed what Culp said, another prominent law professor thinks it should have. As John Coffee, Columbia University's Adolf A. Berle Professor of Law, said in a March 5 interview, That is a fair question. GE was speaking to analysts and shareholders likely to trade and Regulation FD covers both. I do not know if this was previously disclosed in substance, but (although GE will disagree predictably) I think it is material to investors if it had not been previously disclosed. If the 4.7% fall was net of the market [the Dow fell 0.5% today], it would suggest some market surprise. As for laxity, I do not know what happened. Sometimes, the lawyers are surprised as to what the [CEO] says. That seems to be true of Elon Musk. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2019/03/05/did-ge-let-sec-in-on-larry-culps-negative-industrial-cash-flow-comment-to-jpmorgan-chase/ |
What's Next For The Giants After Saying Goodbye To Landon Collins? | Thats the question on the minds of countless Giants fans who on Tuesday, the final day for NFL teams to use the franchise or transition tag on a key pending free agent, the Giants were planning to do neither for safety Landon Collins. The decision, which general manager Dave Gettleman hinted was coming at the combine last week, has seemingly rocked the fan base and, perhaps to an extent, the Giants locker room, as people attempt to make sense over why Gettleman would let a 25-year-old three-time Pro Bowl safetya player he tried to move in a trade last year only to fail to get the desired compensationwalk away for nothing in return this year. Gettleman, in trying to set up an explanation while the decision was still being evaluated last week, explained it was about tying up the $11+ million that the franchise tag would cost and how there was a potential for that money to be tied up long enough to keep the team from potentially pursuing other players who could help them. Couple that with the growing reports that the 25-year-old Collins was prepared to sit out the spring and summer until he got a long-term deal, and in the end, the cost, the potential for distraction, and, according to ESPN, an internal opinion that Collins wasnt worth the big bucks largely due to his pass coverage deficiencies led to a lot of broken blue hearts and questions about what the Giants plans are moving forward. On the surface, it appears that Gettleman is determined to removed all remaining traces of his predecessors personnel moves. With Collins expected to move on in free agency, that means the none of the 2015 draft class members will be on the roster next year, making that five out of six draft classes between 2010-2015 in which the Giants have no one remaining. (Receiver Odell Beckham Jr.s roster presence salvages the 2014 class.) The dilemma Gettleman faced with Collins, as with every free agent, came down to value, as in the player overvaluing his worth to the team (very common) while the decision maker (Gettleman) looking at things differently. With limited cap fundsand yes the Giants can find ways to create more room through cuts and restructuresa glaring need for a legitimate free safety, and a defensive draft class that is rich in linebackers and box safeties, Gettleman, in planning for the future, probably took all those factors into consideration when arriving at the decision to not pay Collins like a top-shelf safety. The decision to let Collins walk also suggests that the Giants are likely planning to pursue a free safety in free agency, a position into which they will probably pour significant financial resources. I want to thank the Giants organization for believing in me and allowing me to have 4 great years in NY. I cant express how great it was to play with my teammates and in one of the greatest cities in the world. I will forever cherish my time in the blue and white and the LANDON COLLINS (@TheHumble_21) March 5, 2019 relationships I have built in the building and in my community. Now on to the next chapter.... pic.twitter.com/nc9rhcqLKm LANDON COLLINS (@TheHumble_21) March 5, 2019 According to Spotrac, last year, the Giants spent $2 million on the free safety position, the bulk of that on Curtis Riley, a converted cornerback. The results of that bandage showedthe Giants pass defense finished 23th in the league, and Riley, who to be fair had to learn how to take new angles to the ball, ended up leading the Giants defense in missed tackles with 23. With some intriguing names on the market at free safety27-year-old Tyrann Mathieu is a name to watch for (and a player who has a prior connection with Giants defensive coordinator James Bettcher)it would not be surprising if Gettleman, in reviewing his options, concuded that there was no way he could spend big money on both Collins and a free safety, while also addressing trying to address right tackle and edge rusher via free agency. There are those who believe that Gettleman sent a very bad message to the Giants locker room over his treatment of a young homegrown player voted a captain who did everything asked of him, who played through a shoulder injury until he just couldnt anymore, and who was well-liked and well-respected by the fans, the media and his teammates. Certainly, this is a valid concern, especially with the Giants having receiver Sterling Shepard up for renewal next year among others. And it was hard to miss the words of support tweeted by Collins soon-to-be ex-teammates like running back Saquon Barkley and fellow safety Michael Thomas. But lets go back to the distraction factor for a moment that Gettleman spoke about at the combine. Yes, its a business decision and players, for the most part, get that. But that scenario was one Gettleman wanted to avoid at all costs. And think back to how well this team has handled distractions the last few years. When Odell Beckham Jrs explosive ESPN interview hit the airwaves leading up to a game last year, that interview became bigger than the task at hand, which was winning the game (which the Giants did not). While it would be easy for the players to empathize with Collins had he been tagged and decided to hold out, the on-going questions about updates, about who heard from Collins, etc. had the potential to become a disruptive force in a locker room that both Shurmur and Gettleman is trying to keep from turning into a three-ring circus. It's easy to understand where this argument is coming from, but go back to what Gettleman and Shurmur both said about their hopes to replicate the Kansas City Plan. The hope is that they find their next franchise quarterback and let him learn behind Eli Manning, a two-time super Bowl MVP. Several reasons. First, dumping Mannings deal will put another $6 million of dead money into a pot that is already the fourth-highest in the NFL. Second, of those veteran quarterbacks that are projected to hit the marketRyan Tannehill, Case Keenum, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and Blake Bortles to name a fewmost werent good enough to hang on to the starting job with their current teams, which is why theyre moving on from them to begin with. Then there is a matter of continuity. Yes, Mannings best days are behind him. Yes, eventually the Giants need to move on from him and yes, that has to happen sooner than later. However, Gettleman has said it before and will probably say it again before the team goes on the clock next month: A team cannot go into the draft saying you need a player at a set position because if it does, it is likely to pass up a player with a better grade or value and end up making a mistake that will haunt the franchise for years to come. The truth is that last year Manning and the Giants offense started to click in the second half of the season once the offensive line played better and the team started getting Barkley into space a little more often. No, they didnt have the wins to show for it, but the Giants offense finished averaging 23.1 points per game, just a hair under the league average of 23.3 points per game. And in the second half of the season, the Giants average points per game took a massive jump, going from 18.8 points per game to 27.4. With a team already full of holes needing repair, the last thing Gettleman probably wants to do is create another hole, especially if theres no better options out there than what he has. While Gettleman could kick Manning to the curb and plug in a rookie at that spot, everyone whose opinion matters in the franchise has made it clear thats the preference is to have Manning tutor the next franchise quarterback. The only logical answer to that question is that the Giants didnt get the value they were looking for. There were reports claiming the Giants wanted a second-round pick for Collins, which of course never materialized, so they decided to hang on to him after reportedly receiving an offer for a third-round pick from the Bucs. As it turns out, the Giants could be in line to get that third round pick they passed up on last year when they hung on to Collins. The bad news is that the pick wont help them this year and its also not guaranteed only because the Giants could end up signing another free agent who ends up cancelling out the potential third-round pick. Based on what is known about Bettchers scheme and the draft, besides pouring what limited financial resources they have into a legitimate free safety, the most likely scenario is to expect the Giants draft to have a heavy defensive flavor to it that will include at least one edge rusher, perhaps one linebacker, and an interior pass rusher. The Giants will also probably look to use the cap savings theyre expected to recoup once they move edge rusher Olivier Vernons contract off the books toward adding at least one veteran edge rusher to go along with second-year man Lorenzo Carter. A couple of names to potentially keep an eye on in that spot include ZaDarius Smith (Ravens) and Markus Golden (Arizona) . As for replacing Collins, who was at his best when playing in the box, the Giants could look at a lower cost option (Andrew Adams anyone?) or pluck a prospect from a safety class that is widely regarded as having some good prospects. But it still hurts. Of course it does, especially when it looks as though there doesnt appear to be a plan in place to replace one of the play makers the general manager claimed the defense doesnt have enough of. Collins was a wildly popular player with the fans and a genuinely good soul who was professional and, at times, wise beyond his years. He gave everything he could to the franchise, even during those times when the coaching staff put more on him than they probably should have. Eventually though, all players leave the team for one reason or another. Collins time to go elsewhere just happened to come sooner than anyone thought it would. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/patriciatraina/2019/03/05/whats-next-for-the-giants-after-saying-goodbye-to-landon-collins/ |
Should Gillette's stand against 'toxic' men start with Bob Kraft's stadium? | CLOSE A Gillette ad for men invoking the #MeToo movement is sparking intense online backlash, Since it debuted Monday, the Internet-only ad has garnered nearly 19 million views on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter a level of buzz that any brand would covet. That's what more than 13,000 signers of an online petition are urging the Cincinnati-based consumer products giant to do. The appeal is circulating on Change2, a petition-oriented social media site. Kraft was charged in February with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution following a police investigation of a Jupiter, Florida spa. The team has denied its owner did anything illegal. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft celebrates Jan. 21, 2018, after the AFC Championship Game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA. (Photo: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports) Kraft's charges came weeks after P&G's latest venture into "woke" advertising that urged men to stand up against "toxic masculinity." The polarizing ad calls out sexual harassment and bullying by men and twists Gillette's classic slogan "The Best A Man Can Get" into urging them to be "the best they can be." The new campaign, called 'We Believe,' is P&G's latest foray into brand messaging that incorporates a social message to reach consumers in a more meaningful way. New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (12) gets off a pass under pressure from New York Jets defensive tackle Mike Pennel (98) during the second half at Gillette Stadium. (Photo: Winslow Townson, USA TODAY Sports) P&G has a contract through the 2031 season to keep the Gillette name on the Boston stadium. Company officials did not immediately comment on the petition. Read or Share this story: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/money/2019/03/05/should-gillette-take-its-name-off-bob-krafts-stadium/3070723002/ | https://www.cincinnati.com/story/money/2019/03/05/should-gillette-take-its-name-off-bob-krafts-stadium/3070723002/ |
Who Is Marc Rissmann in the New Game of Thrones Trailer? | Warning: This post contains potential spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8. The new Game of Thrones trailer that dropped Tuesday is stirring up major fan speculation over whats to come in the shows final six episodes with theories about one man in particular flying. After confirming, at long last, that Jon Snow is the trueborn son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, the season 7 finale of Game of Thrones also revealed that Jons real name is Aegon Targaryen. There has been a long history of Aegons on the Targaryen family tree, with the names origin stretching back 300 years to Aegon I Targaryen. Also known as Aegon the Conqueror, Aegon I was the first king to sit on the Iron Throne after conquering Westeros and unifying the Seven Kingdoms under his rule. But based on a scene in the new Game of Thrones season 8 trailer, some fans are speculating that were about to meet yet another Aegon. The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now As we know, Aegon Targaryen was also the name of Rhaegars only son with his first wife, Elia Martell. Shortly before Jons birth, that Aegon was murdered alongside his mother and sister by Gregor The Mountain Clegane during the Sack of Kings Landing. This happened near the end of Roberts Rebellion after Rhaeger himself had been killed at the Battle of the Trident. But in George R. R. Martins A Song of Ice and Fire series the books the show is based on there is a character named Young Griff who claims to be the surviving son of Rhaegar and Elia. Varys even tells Tyrion that he swapped that Aegon with a peasant baby before the capital was sacked. In the books, Young Griff was raised by a man named Jon Connington and plans to marry Daenerys so that they can rule the Seven Kingdoms together. He has also managed to recruit the mercenary company known as the Golden Company to his cause, which is the detail that has led some fans to believe that hes finally going to make an appearance in the show. At the end of season 7, Euron Greyjoy was en route to Essos to retrieve the Golden Company for Cersei. And in the season 8 trailer, we see a large fleet of Greyjoy ships carrying a group of soldiers that appears to be the Golden Company. However, the detail that caught some viewers eye was the blond man with his back facing the camera standing at the head of the army. It has been theorized that a German actor named Marc Rissmann who just so happens to be blond was cast to play the book character Harry Strickland, a commander in the Golden Company, in season 8. However, considering how much the Game of Thrones showrunners love a bait-and-switch, its not outside the realm of possibility that he may really be playing Young Griff. Whether Griff is actually Aegon Targaryen is still up for debate. Watch the full Game of Thrones season 8 trailer above. Game of Thrones returns for its eighth and final season on April 14. Write to Megan McCluskey at [email protected]. | http://time.com/5545412/marc-rissmann-game-of-thrones/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29 |
Why does Trudeau seem to be always caught off guard? | His newest surprise this week was the departure of another cabinet minister, Jane Philpott, who resigned on Monday in solidarity with Jody Wilson-Raybould, whose explosive exit also caught Trudeau off guard a few weeks ago. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau participates in an armchair discussion at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada Convention in Toronto on March 5, 2019. The only other recent cabinet departure that doesnt seem to have come as a surprise to Trudeau was the now-infamous exit of Scott Brison, which triggered other shuffles, Susan Delacourt writes. ( Christopher Katsarov / THE CANADIAN PRESS ) Heres the thing: both departures came after Trudeau had spoken personally to the now ex-ministers about their grievances. The prime minister even told a Toronto rally on Monday night that Philpott had served fair warning of her disaffection with how the Wilson-Raybould affair has been playing out. I know Ms. Philpott has felt this way for some time, and while I am disappointed, I understand, he said. When I asked the PMO on background on Tuesday for clarification of some time, I was told that Philpott had been indicating her displeasure ever since Wilson-Raybould did her remarkable, public condemnation of the government last Wednesday at the Commons justice committee. Article Continued Below Yet clearly Philpott didnt warn Trudeau that she was on the brink of leaving cabinet or if she did, the prime minister didnt quite catch the warning. Had Trudeau known that he was about to have another vacancy in cabinet, after all, its unlikely he would have gone ahead with a mini-shuffle of his cabinet last Friday. Now its back to Rideau Hall at some time in the very near future to put a new minister in the Treasury Board position that Philpott vacated. Trudeau may well develop an allergy to shuffles by the time this winter is over they seem to be nothing but harbingers of future trouble. The only other recent cabinet departure that doesnt seem to have come as a surprise was the now-infamous exit of Scott Brison, which set all these shuffles in motion, as Trudeau keeps saying. If Scott Brison had not stepped down from cabinet, Jody Wilson-Raybould would still be minister of justice and attorney general, Trudeau said a number of times after she quit. As I heard it, Brison told Trudeaus team before Christmas of his intention to step down from his job at Treasury Board and leave elected politics. They were reportedly hoping Brison would change his mind over the holidays, but he returned in January with resolve intact. Being prime minister is a busy job and Trudeau cant realistically be expected to have intimate knowledge of every grievance and problem within a large, Liberal caucus. But as Trudeau and his advisers are sifting through the wreckage of these bruising, past couple of months, one would think that some reflection is going on about the surprise factor. When it comes to Donald Trump or China, sure, the PMO cant be expected to predict the unpredictable. Article Continued Below Closer to home, however, Trudeau may be wondering what is getting lost in translation when he holds personal conversations with key members of his team. Its not quite in the same league as the cabinet exits of late, but well recall that the former ambassador to China, John McCallum, also was forced to resign this year directly after he got a talking-to from the PM about speaking too freely. No sooner had the PM told McCallum to watch what he was saying when the now-former ambassador failed to watch what he was saying to a StarMetro reporter in Vancouver about the extradition case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. Again, its not a direct parallel, but the connecting thread here is something that goes awry after the PM gets on the phone. Trudeau talked repeatedly to Wilson-Raybould in the days leading up to her quitting cabinet and clearly didnt see that development coming telling reporters her presence in cabinet speaks for itself, until hours later, it didnt. Trudeau knew of Philpotts discomfort after Wilson-Raybould testified last week, but went ahead and shuffled his cabinet, unaware hed soon have another vacancy to fill. We likely wont know what was said in either of these conversations until one of the participants writes memoirs, but we do know in both cases that either a warning wasnt sent or that it wasnt received by the PM. So as Trudeau maps out a plan to get past these past terrible weeks for him and his government, one modest goal may stand at the top of the list: stop being surprised. Susan Delacourt is the Stars Ottawa bureau chief and a columnist covering national politics. Reach her via email: [email protected] or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt Read more about: | https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2019/03/05/why-does-trudeau-seem-to-be-always-caught-off-guard.html |
Where Do The Major North American Sports Leagues Stand On Cannabis? | One-time NFL golden boy Joe Montana was as much an icon for the league as you could get in the 1980s. Four Super Bowl wins, three Super Bowl MVPs, comebacks he was Tom Brady when Tom Brady was a toddler. Seemingly out of place with Montanas throwback, straight-laced image, hes now the latest former NFL player promoting cannabis. California marijuana company Caliva announced last month that Montana is part of a group that invested $75 million in the company. Scroll to continue with content Ad In addition to a handful actually in the business, dozens of former players have said their old league should let players try marijuana for pain relief as an alternative to addictive opioids. But despite more and more veterans even legendary good guy players like Montana accepting the idea of cannabis as medicine, and growing public acceptance, the league isnt quite ready. While cannabis is legal in an increasing number of states with NFL teams, its use remains officially off-limits to players. But slowly, more executives in the big professional sports leagues, including some in the NFL, are starting to contemplate a time when some form of cannabis is as much a part of the medical room inventory as tape and smelling salts. The Cannabis Capital Conference is coming back to Toronto! Click here to learn how you can join Tim Seymour, Jon Najarian, Danny Moses, Alan Brochstein and many others. Some are ahead of the curve, particularly the National Hockey League, where cannabis isnt technically banned. The NHL Alumni Association even announced this week it will work with major Canadian cannabis company Canopy Growth Corp. (NYSE: CGC) on studying the potential effects of cannabinioids on players with head injuries. Story continues And while its not a major league, the 3-on-3 basketball league made up of former NBA players known as The BIG3, said last summer its players can use cannabidiol, or CBD. The following is a look at where the big U.S. sports leagues stand on cannabis. NFL Not A Fan Of Legalization Ending the ban on marijuana use may be an issue in talks over the next collective bargaining agreement between owners and the players union, if a NBC sports blog is correct. The current agreement ends in 2020. NBCs PFT blog by Jim Florio speculated that the NFL is hoping to offer to make changes to the current policy, which prohibits players from using cannabis, as part of its negotiations, though the suggestion wasnt sourced to anyone in NFL ownership. The league policy is that use of marijuana and synthetic cannabinoids is banned, with players subject to suspension after two positive tests. Earlier this year, former player Martellus Bennett said he believed nearly 90 percent of NFL players use marijuana, including many who use it to deal with injuries. One former player, Mike James, last year applied for a medical exemption to the rules, essentially challenging the ban, saying that he needed pot for medical reasons to be able to play. The league turned him down. NHL Takes Relaxed Approach With the NHL being the national obsession of Canada, where marijuana is now legal, perhaps its not surprising it is the most laissez-faire league on cannabis. The NHL doesnt punish players who test positive for marijuana, which it technically doesnt classify as a banned substance. Commissioner Gary Bettman told the Associated Press late last year that the league was comfortable with its current policy, as was the NHL Players Association. And, as mentioned, while several leagues say they want to know more about the effects of cannabis, the NHL is actually partnering in research. NBA Assessing The Issue Players in the NBA, like in the NFL, have estimated that huge numbers of their colleagues on the court are using marijuana off it. While the NBA prohibits its use now, commissioner Adam Silver says it's being evaluated. Silver said on Bleacher Reports Full 48 podcast in December that the league doesnt treat its players that harshly when they test positive. Theres no public disclosure of it, the first time a player tests for cannabis use, he said. The team in the first instance isnt even informed. Its a confidential program where the player talks to a drug counselor, and often thats a trigger for a player to talk to a counselor about issues theyre having in their life. The league policy: After that, however, players can face fines for second and subsequent violations. And there are random spot drug tests, including some in the off-season. MLB: More Lenient Baseball Use of marijuana and cannabinoids by Major League baseball players is prohibited. But the league only tests for it on a for-cause basis, not randomly. In a statement to Bleacher Report last year, the league said that players who test positive are provided the necessary professional resources to help them abstain, and are only subject to discipline if they continue to use it. Minor leaguers, who are not covered by MLBs collective bargaining agreement, are subject to suspensions. MLS: More Lenient Still Major League Soccer has a vague policy. It prohibits the use of illegal substances, but if players voluntarily get treatment, they may avoid any sanctions. The league prohibits use of controlled substances, but doesnt address whether marijuana is included, considering it is illegal some places and legal in others. Related Links: Football And Weed: Former NFL Players Weigh In On Why Many Are Getting Involved With CBD Companies 70 Athletes, Hedge Fund Manager Join Cannabis Not-For-Profit, Tout CBD's Benefits See more from Benzinga 2019 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. | https://sports.yahoo.com/where-major-north-american-sports-124627319.html?src=rss |
When is Denvers 2019 election for mayor and council? When does voting start? | Denvers next Election Day is Tuesday, May 7, 2019. Heres everything you need to know about the timing of the upcoming election. The city will distribute ballots during the week of April 15. Ballots can be mailed or dropped at ballot boxes. You can also vote in person at voting centers. Either way, ballots must be received by 7 p.m. on May 7. There is likely to be a second round of voting in some races. If nobody gets 50 percent or more of the vote, a runoff election for that race is scheduled and new ballots are distributed. This can happen in every race except the at-large council races. Denvers runoff election would be Tuesday, June 4, 2019. Each resident of Denver can vote in the following races: Mayor Auditor Clerk Council seat for their district Citywide, or at large, council seats. Unlike the other categories, voters may choose two candidates in this race. The candidate lists will be finalized March 13. To vote in Denver, you must be a resident of the city and 18 years or older, although you can register at age 16. You can register online until April 29 through Go Vote Colorado, at a drivers license facility or by mail. You can also register through Election Day at voter service and polling centers in Denver. There are numerous acceptable forms of ID, including student ID, passports, drivers licenses, employee identification cards and more. | https://www.denverpost.com/2019/03/05/denver-2019-election-mayor-council/ |
What do the people of the world die from? | Image copyright Getty Images Around the world, people are living longer. In 1950, global average life expectancy at birth was only 46. By 2015, it had shot up to over 71. In some countries, progress has not always been smooth. Disease, epidemics and unexpected events are a reminder that ever-longer lives are not a given. Meanwhile, the deaths that may preoccupy us - from terrorism, war and natural disasters - make up less than 0.5% of all deaths combined. But across the world, many are still dying too young and from preventable causes. The story of when people die is really a story of how they die, and how this has changed over time. Causes of death around the world About 56 million people in the world died in 2017. This is 10 million more than in 1990, as the global population has increased and people live longer on average. More than 70% die from non-communicable, chronic diseases. These are not passed from person to person and typically progress slowly. The biggest single killer is cardiovascular disease, which affects the heart and arteries and is responsible for every third death. This is twice the rate of cancers - the second leading cause - which account for about one in six of all deaths. Other non-contagious diseases such as diabetes, certain respiratory diseases and dementia are also near the top of the list. Preventable deaths What may be more shocking is the number of people who still die from preventable causes. About 1.6 million died from diseases related to diarrhoea in 2017, putting it in the top 10 causes of death. In some countries, it's one of the largest killers. Neonatal disorders - the death of a baby within the first 28 days - claimed 1.8 million newborns in 2017. The frequency of these deaths varies greatly from country to country. In Japan, fewer than one in 1,000 babies die in the first 28 days of life, compared with just under one in 20 in some of the world's poorest countries. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Japan has one of the highest life expectancies in the world Other preventable deaths are high up the list. Road accidents incur a high death toll in the richest and poorest countries alike, claiming 1.2 million lives in 2017. While many high-income countries have seen significant falls in road deaths in recent decades, globally the number dying on the roads has almost stayed the same. Meanwhile, almost twice as many people around the world died from suicide as from homicide - the killing of one person by another. In the UK, suicide deaths were 16 times higher; it is the leading cause of death for men aged 20-40. What types of death tell us What people die from changes over time and as their country develops. In the past, infectious diseases played a bigger part than they do today. In 1990, one in three deaths resulted from communicable and infectious diseases; by 2017 this had fallen to one in five. Children are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases. As recently as the 19th Century, every third child in the world died before the age of five. Child mortality rates have fallen significantly since then thanks to vaccines and improvements in hygiene, nutrition, healthcare and clean water access. Child deaths in rich countries are now relatively rare, while the poorest regions today have child mortality rates similar to the UK and Sweden in the first half of the 20th Century, and are continuing to catch up. The decline in global child deaths is one of the greatest success stories of modern healthcare. The number of children dying each year has more than halved in recent decades, as we have got better at fighting contagious and infectious diseases. This has shifted death rates towards non-contagious diseases in elderly people. Many countries have growing concerns about the increasing burden on relatives and healthcare systems as people get older and have longer-term illnesses. More stories like this Unexpected events can throw this steady improvement off course. The 1980s HIV/Aids crisis is a striking example of this. The epidemic was felt across all regions of the world, but the most notable impact on life expectancy was in sub-Saharan Africa. After decades of steady improvement, life expectancy fell substantially across many countries in the region. A combination of anti-retroviral therapy, treatment and education on prevention means global deaths from Aids-related illness have halved in the last decade alone - from 2 million per year down to 1 million. Life expectancy has since began to recover in these countries, but is only now returning to pre-crisis levels. Even in the richest countries, continued progress is not a given. Life expectancy in the US has fallen slightly over the past few years, largely as a result of the opioid drug crisis. Life expectancy for new mothers has also not consistently increased. There are about 10 countries where a young woman today would be more likely to die during or shortly after childbirth than her mother was, including the US. Further to go Today's overall picture is positive: we are living longer lives while fewer people - especially children - are dying from preventable causes. But it's also true that we still have a long way to go. Further improvements in sanitation, hygiene, nutrition, vaccination and basic healthcare are all crucial to this. So too are increased safety measures and mental health provision. Understanding what people die from is crucial if we want this recent progress to continue. About this piece This analysis piece was commissioned by the BBC from an expert working for an outside organisation. Hannah Ritchie is an Oxford Martin fellow, and is currently working as a researcher at OurWorldinData.org. This is a joint project between Oxford Martin and non-profit organisation Global Change Data Lab, which aims to present research on how the world is changing through interactive visualisations. You can follow her on Twitter here. Edited by Eleanor Lawrie | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47371078 |
How does a museum remember a defeat? | The battle of Agincourt in 1415 was immortalised in Shakespeare's Henry V as a miraculous underdog English victory over the French. The new centre will tell the story of the battle, the weaponry deployed and life in medieval France - and the museum's director, Christophe Milliot, says it will be a big improvement on the existing exhibition. Perhaps the most striking change is to the statistics used by the centre about the number of troops at the battle. Image caption The site of the battle is near the village now known as Azincourt, in the Pas-de-Calais region When the old museum opened on the site in 2001, its exhibition boards said 9,000 English soldiers fought 30,000 French at Agincourt. The new centre, expected to open in the autumn, will reduce these figures to 8,500 English and 12,500 French. It's still an upset, but a long way from Shakespeare's underdog story of Englishmen outnumbered five to one. Professional armies Before diehard fans of Henry V cry foul, Mr Milliot says the numbers were agreed in consultation with historians from England and France. They are based on research by Professor Anne Curry of the University of Southampton, who studied financial records at the National Archives in London. Image caption A monument with flags marking the site of the battle fought between French and English armies in 1415 "Both armies were essentially professional, paid troops so we have a lot of financial records on them - we can find out the size of the armies and even the names of a lot of the soldiers," said Prof Curry. Records show that Henry V took 12,000 men with him when he set out from Southampton and left many of them behind to man the garrison after an earlier victory at the port of Harfleur. Prof Curry says her findings are respected by medieval historians, but unpopular with some English fans of the Agincourt story. Chain mail to hate mail "I've had hate mail and trolling and I've been astonished how seriously people take these things," she said. Prof Curry thinks this can partly be explained by how Agincourt is seen in England in patriotic terms. When she attended the 600th anniversary of the battle in 2015, people came draped in St George's flags. There is a sense of "how we have fended off France in the past", she said. Image caption An illustration of the museum which from the autumn will tell the story of Agincourt Prof Curry believes Agincourt's myths persist in part because so many people claim to be descended from soldiers who fought there. Unsurprisingly, her research on the size of the armies has not faced resistance in France. But regardless of the troop tallies, it still seems surprising that the French national and regional governments are investing so heavily in a lost battle. 'Just history' But Mr Milliot says patriotism in France is "different". "We had the revolution in 1789, and since this period we don't really care whether a battle was lost or won by what we call the 'ancien regime'," he said. "It is just history." Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Henry V's helmet was on display at Westminster Abbey in events marking the 600th anniversary of Agincourt Prof Curry says the French have done a "clever thing" by focusing on the fact that the first member of France's Gendarmerie - which still exists today as a branch of the French armed forces - died at Agincourt. "At the 600th anniversary, the Gendarmerie were there and people talked about the battle being the origin of their story," she said. Prof Curry says the revamp of the museum, the "Centre Historique Medieval", is also an attempt to improve the struggling economy of the region of Pas-de-Calais. "It's very economically deprived, most people just drive through this area on the way to somewhere warmer," she said. Prof Curry said it was an area where there had been support for the right-wing National Front party, with disquiet about immigration. Tourist economy Mr Milliot says the museum has produced a "parallel economy" for local bed and breakfasts and restaurants, becoming a destination in an area with few tourist attractions. It seems to be paying off - the English make up the majority of the museum's visitors. Image caption School groups go to the current museum marking the medieval battle Mr Milliot says the level of knowledge of this historical period differs between French and English visitors. "We are very surprised that a lot of English people know their national history very well and sometimes we have visitors who are descended from a nobleman who participated in the battle," he said. "English people want to know where the castle was that Shakespeare describes in his play, or to visit the battlefield." "For the French visitors, the questions are very different, they often ask who won the Hundred Years War. "We are seeing that the Medieval period is not really covered in schools in France." 'No boasting' But he has never met English visitors boasting about the result. "Our English visitors are very respectful, interested and well-educated, and they sometimes help us by pointing out problems in our translations," he said. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Henry V became an icon of victory against the odds: Sam Marks of the Royal Shakespeare Company portrays the king With Brexit looming, Mr Milliot says the new centre could play a positive role in future Anglo-French relations when it opens in the autumn. "In this period of Brexit, the museum in Azincourt is very important to understand why our two countries are friends," he said. "There is a link between the Agincourt and Somme battlefields, because it helps us understand how we came from enemies to friends," said the museum director. "The centre will be a good place to understand where national identities come from and to understand that it is important to have an identity. "But it also reminds us that sometimes, when the feeling of identity is too strong in different countries, it leads to war." More from Global education The editor of Global education is Sean Coughlan ([email protected]). | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47427608 |
How does reclusive President Bouteflika run Algeria? | Image copyright AFP Image caption President Bouteflika's last known public address to Algerians was in 2014 For many Algerians it is difficult to understand how their 82-year-old president, who suffered a stroke six years ago and can hardly walk or talk, can run the country. This turned to disbelief when it was announced that Abdelaziz Bouteflika was running for a fifth term in April - he did not even turn up in person on Sunday to register his candidacy. A wave of anger has moved students, teachers, lawyers and even journalists onto the streets in protest - they seem determined not to accept the continued status quo of rule by a virtually invisible leader. Many worry that a failure to find a successor to President Bouteflika, who came to power in 1999, could lead to instability should he die in office. The TV leader His last known public address was in 2014 - a victory speech to thank Algerians for their renewed confidence in his leadership after he won the last presidential election. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption University students and their teachers have rallied in Algiers to demand President Bouteflika step down He mentioned plans to "reinforce separation of powers, strengthen the role of the opposition and guarantee rights and liberties". Some viewed this as a sign of policy changes to come to ensure a smooth transition of power, yet there has been no evidence of this and his appearances since have been few and far between. Algerians may have been lucky enough to catch brief glimpses of him on state television greeting visiting foreign dignitaries. Or catch him at the opening of a new conference hall in 2016 - the footage shows him in a wheelchair, looking weak and tired, but alert. But it was not until 2018 that it was clear that his party was pushing him forward as a contender for this year's elections. He was at the opening of a restored mosque and two metro stations in the capital, Algiers. A few weeks later he was given a tour to see the construction of the Grand Mosque of Algiers, a $2bn (1.52bn) project billed to make it the third biggest mosque in the world. Divisions run deep Yet again, however, the president, who won elections in 2014 despite doing no personal campaigning, does not have any strong challengers. The opposition has historically been too divided - and as the president grew older and frailer the bickering within the ruling elite, including the army, has paralysed any political change. The ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) has ruled the North African nation since gaining independence from France in 1962 after a bloody seven-year war. The power, or "le pouvoir" as many Algerians have come to describe those who run the country, has been centred around the party, some powerful generals and prominent businessmen. You may also be interested in: That political class has included some of the opposition, who have either ruled in coalition or towed the government line over the years, which has largely discredited them. It is a club that has been accused of corruption and nepotism. In recent comments to the French media about the protests, prominent Algerian writer Kamel Daoud said the country's youth were being robbed of power by their elders. He said by offering a candidate "who was almost dead", "le pouvoir" was showing its contempt for the young people in Algeria where more than 30% of people aged under 30 are unemployed. Pervasive paranoia But it is the legacy of Algeria's recent civil war which seems to have stagnated attempts at reform. The brutal conflict ended in 2002 and weighs heavily on those who fought in it and have grown up in the wake of it - to the extent that some have seemed to be willing to trade some of their freedoms for stability. Image copyright AFP Image caption Demonstrators defaced a sign taken to represent President Bouteflika, who uses a wheelchair The violence left an estimated 150,000 Algerians dead, some of whom were "forcibly disappeared" by the security forces. Even liberal opponents of the government are believed to have collaborated with the security agencies in the 1990s during the civil war against Islamist insurgents. This has all led to a deep distrust at all levels of society - and has left little room for any genuine compromises or meaningful national dialogue to instigate change. A Tunisian human rights defender, who spent many years visiting Algeria, told me she was always struck by this paranoia - to the extent that local rights groups were unwilling to even trust human rights organisations with information. Other countries in North Africa have shown that decades of one-man rule leave deep roots. In Libya, neighbours, siblings and friends distrusted each other under Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule. He was deposed in 2011, the same year as Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia's long-time ruler. He had ruled Tunisia through "landslide victories" at the polls and a system that cornered the opposition, weakened it and ultimately reduced them to a side show. On Sunday, President Bouteflika again offered dialogue - and constitutional reform in the event of his re-election as a way forward. What is new this time is that he has promised that this will lead to early elections in which he will not contest. While this could be an opportunity to ensure a peaceful transition of power, he will have to move quickly given his ailing health. Yet Algeria's problems are, in the words of some regional observers, bigger than an ailing president. It is a system that has kept running thanks to the many people who oil it. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-47456114 |
Can Marquette shake off the pesky problems of fouls and turnovers? | Theo John (from left), Joey Hauser, Sam Hauser, Sacar Anim and the rest of the Golden Eagles saw a chance to clinch the No. 1 seed in the Big East go by the wayside against Villanova on Wednesday night. (Photo: Getty Images) Marquette has preached a next-game mentality all season. Head coach Steve Wojciechowski likes to say that his team is only focused on the 200 feet ahead of it. The Golden Eagles (23-6, 12-4 Big East) have turned their focus to their final road game of the regular season at Seton Hall (16-12, 7-9) on Wednesday. MU would probably like to erase the previous two games from their collective memory. The Golden Eagles, who are ranked No. 15 in the USA Today coaches poll and 16th by the Associated Press, have suffered back-to-back defeats for the first time this season, and the same issues kept cropping up. MU got off to slow starts in both the 67-61 loss to Villanova on Wednesday and the 66-60 defeat to Creighton on Sunday at Fiserv Forum. Foul trouble affected MU big men Theo John and Ed Morrow Jr.; both picked up two fouls in the first halves of each game. Wojciechowski was forced to juggle his rotation, including using senior center Matt Heldt, who hadnt played against Providence on Feb. 23 and Butler on Feb. 20. Foul trouble is part of the game, Wojciechowski said. Whether its hard or not, in order to win in March, you have to do hard things. So I have to prepare our team to do hard things. John played only a combined 33 minutes in the two losses. The sophomore has been plagued by early foul issues in games several times this season. I think he just has to play without his hands, junior guard Markus Howard said. Just use his frame. Theos an aggressive player and that suits him well. I wouldnt really change anything with what Theo does in terms of his aggressiveness because thats what makes him such an unbelievable player. John is the Big Easts leader in blocks with 65. The MU defense is at its best when John is deterring shots around the rim. Wojciechowski doesnt mind John being physical in the post. But sometimes the center picks up fouls setting screens on offense or away from the basket on defense. A lot of times fouls come down to decisions, Wojciechowski said. You want Theo to be aggressive in terms of protecting our basket and blocking shots and being vertical and being a physical presence. Its those decisions where he doesnt really need to foul. Like youre reaching in and try to get a steal. Thats not really the play that needs to be made or what the game is calling for at that moment. I have to continue to work with him. MUs offense was also heavily reliant on Howard the past two games. Howard had 25 points against Villanova, with fellow junior Sam Hauser (13 points) the only other Golden Eagles player to score in double figures. Howard had 33 points against Creighton, but no other MU player had more than seven. NEWSLETTERS Get the Packers Update newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Daily updates on the Packers during the season Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-844-900-7103. Delivery: Daily Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Packers Update Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters MUs offense was especially disjointed against Creighton, turning the ball over 22 times. The Golden Eagles were flummoxed by the Bluejays trapping defense. Our activity to get the ball out of the post when Joey and Sam (Hauser) caught it in there, our rotations and our activity with our hands, knocking those balls lose and forcing turnovers was a big part of the game, Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. Creighton took control with a 10-0 lead late in the second half, with MU coughing up the ball on four straight possessions during that stretch. The Golden Eagles had 18 turnovers against Villanova. Live-ball turnovers, when you cant set your defense against a powerful offensive team like Creighton, are deadly, Wojciechowski said. If you would have told me that we would have held Creighton to 66 points, I would have thought wed have a great chance to win. But self-inflicted wounds. MU can earn a share of the Big East title by beating Seton Hall and then defeating Georgetown in the regular-season finale on Saturday at Fiserv Forum. In order to win the outright league title, the Golden Eagles need to win both games and have Villanova (22-8, 13-4) lose at Seton Hall on Saturday. | https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/college/marquette/2019/03/05/foul-trouble-turnovers-among-marquette-issues-losses/3059700002/?src=rss |
Is Zac Efron Dating Olympic Swimmer Sarah Bro? | Some fans are beginning to speculate that The Greatest Showman star may be dating Olympic swimmer Sarah Bro. Efron and the Danish athlete have not made any public posts about each other just yet, but there have been a few sightings and instances that feel like more than mere coincidences. Bro swam for Denmark in the 4x100 meter relay during the 2016 Olympics. On March 1, both the actor and Bro shared photos on Instagram of a night out at a Los Angeles Kings hockey game. Bro even wore a custom jersey. "Thank you @lakings for making my first hockey game something very special," she captioned a photo of herself in the locker room repping her customized gear. She noted that after just one game, she's "already a fan!" That same day, Efron posted a selfie from the game where he's covering his eyes with his team hat. The Kings played the Dallas Stars on Thursday, Feb. 28 (and lost). | https://www.eonline.com/news/1021004/is-zac-efron-dating-olympic-swimmer-sarah-bro |
How much are NC teacher pay raises in Roy Cooper budget? | Public school teachers should get a 9.1 percent raise over the next two years, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said Tuesday when he unveiled highlights of the education portion of his budget proposals. Cooper said his plan would put North Carolina on pace to become the highest-paying state for teachers in the Southeast. North Carolina ranks 37th in teacher pay, and thats not good enough, Cooper said in a press release. We need to put our schools first, and that starts with paying teachers and principals better and treating them like the professionals they are. The governor does not get to make budget decisions in North Carolina, but Cooper can advise the state legislature on how to spend and he can veto the budgets they pass. Coopers announcement Tuesday comes as the legislature is in the early stages of its own budget discussions, with a plan of passing budgets for the next two fiscal years by this summer. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The News & Observer On the same day Cooper unveiled his education proposals, Republican Senate leader Phil Berger issued a statement outlining past Republican efforts to raise teacher salaries. Republicans took control of the state legislature in 2011, and teacher salaries fell until 2014, when they began rising again. The average base salary for a teacher in North Carolina increased by $8,700, or nearly 20 percent, since the 2014 school year, Berger said, adding that legislative staff believe the average teacher in the 2018-19 school year is making about $53,700 including supplements from local districts. Thats after a 6.5 percent raise last year. So far, Cooper has only released the education part of his budget proposals. More details on other parts of state government will be announced Wednesday. Cooper, a Democrat, said that teachers should once more be paid extra for having a masters degree or other advanced degree which the Republican-led legislature phased out several years ago and that teachers should no longer have to pay to hire their substitute for when they take a day off work. He also called for creating new support jobs like school resource officers or nurses, which a recent report found North Carolina schools are lacking. But the biggest part of his plan is the 9.1 percent raise, which Cooper said would be spread over the next two years and wouldnt leave any teacher with less than a 3 percent raise. Thats a boost to veteran teachers, who have complained of being left out of recent raises that largely went to those with less experience. After years of declining teacher pay after the Great Recession, under first Democratic and then Republican control of the state legislature, Republican lawmakers gave North Carolina teachers a raise in the 2014-15 school year that was the largest in the country. More raises have followed since then, especially on the lower end of the pay scale for newer teachers. In an interview earlier this year about the upcoming budget debates, a Wake County teacher told the News & Observer that many of her colleagues with more experience than her have felt left out of the recent raises. I think that some of our most experienced educators feel like they have been disrespected by the more recent salary structures, Jasmine Lauer, a Pine Hollow Middle School teacher, told the N&O. Am I being valued for the knowledge that I have amassed over all these years of teaching? Other education proposals Raises werent the only topic Cooper raised in his budget proposal Tuesday. He reiterated support for a bond referendum, which would let voters in 2020 choose whether to approve $3.1 billion in construction funds for new K-12, community college and university buildings. The bond would total $3.9 billion, including $800 million for non-school expenses like water and sewer upgrades for cities around the state. A smaller, $1.9 billion education-only bond plan has backing from Republican House Speaker Tim Moore. Last week Moore took the rare step of personally sponsoring the bill, HB 241, that would put the referendum on the ballot. And in December, the News & Observer reported, Moore said the bond was needed to help the state build on historic commitments to our schools with another long-term investment in capital construction for our rapidly growing student population. On Tuesday, Cooper also called for spending: $40 million to hire more nurses, psychologists and other support staff at schools. $29 million for textbooks, supplies and more. $15 million for safety improvements. $4 million to expand the Teaching Fellows program. | https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article227148259.html |
Will Giants workloads be more scrutinized under Zaidi? | SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. Giants fans, here comes the Dodger Way. Life in China Basin will be different this year with a former Dodgers executive in charge. If the Giants roster is used anything like last years Dodgers roster, prepare for more player moves, lineup shuffling and rests for front-line players. Obviously, its going to be up to Boch how he wants to use his bench and rotate guys in and out, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said of manager Bruce Bochy. I do feel, in general, the game is moving toward trying to keep guys at a 140-150-game workload as opposed to 150-162. I think using your bench gives your starters a chance to stay fresh, but also keeps the whole roster involved in a way that if you have an injury and a guy has to play every day, hes better equipped to do that. Take shortstop Brandon Crawford, for example. The three-time Gold Glove winner makes himself available as much as he can, even when hes not close to 100 percent. He played a team-high 151 games last year and started a team-high 141 despite a left knee that barked throughout the second half and helped cause his numbers to plummet. Many times, Bochy didnt have a choice but to play Crawford considering the shortstops spectacular defense and the teams lack of depth at the position. Crawford appreciated Bochy had enough faith to continue batting him in the middle of the lineup. Ive always been a guy with the mind-set that its my job to go out there and play shortstop every day, Crawford said. Thats always been my mentality. That may change. Yeah. It probably wouldve been a better idea. Im open to it. I havent talked to anyone about it. My mentality isnt going to change. Im going to come to the park every day expecting to play that day. Whatever helps the team the most. I would hope that would be me being on the field, but last year in the second half, it probably wasnt the right move, me going out there not feeling close to 100 percent. I wasnt helping the team as much. When Crawford didnt start, Bochy turned to Alen Hanson (12 starts), Kelby Tomlinson (seven) and Abiatal Avelino (two), none of whom is considered an everyday shortstop. In fact, theyve combined for 33 career big-league starts at the position. Now along comes Yangervis Solarte, who averaged more than 500 plate appearances the past four years in San Diego and Toronto. He was signed to a minor-league contract Feb. 18 as a utility infielder and presumably would be available to spell Crawford and also man second base and third base, his primary positions. If everybodys healthy, we do want to keep these guys fresh, keep everybody involved, said Bochy, who regularly rested catcher Buster Posey, though a nagging hip issue led to his August surgery. Thats why the bench plays such a big role in your season. Everybodys hopefully going to stay fresher and, of course, have less risk of injury. Crawford hit a spectacular .412 in May and followed with a .326 June. But shortly before the All-Star break, he began having knee issues, and it reflected in his numbers. He slipped to .200 in July, .151 in August. Stuffs bothered me in the past, Crawford said. You treat it, you get in the training room and knock it out, and it goes away after a few days or a week. This was something that stuck with me for a while. Even defensively, I wasnt getting to as many balls as I thought I should because it was kind of hurting going left to right. In late August and early September, Crawford rested the knee, playing just twice in nine days, and it paid dividends. He felt stronger in the final month. That little bit of rest, even if it was a few days here and there, seemed to help out a little bit, Crawford said. Thats why I think if I did take days off earlier, it mightve benefited me down the stretch. The Dodgers won the pennant by utilizing their entire roster and not wearing out their regulars. They used more position players (28) than any other National League team and registered the fewest complete games by position players (910). They also pinch hit more times (362) than any team. They had different lineups against righties than against lefties, and it helped that they were good enough to pull it off. It was a similar story with their pitchers. Their starters made just 56 starts on normal four-day rest, and no one threw as many as 162 innings. The Giants arent as deep, of course, but still could practice similar principles, especially with the core players another year into their 30s. I think every manager likes to have a functional bench, Zaidi said, one he can go to not just for a pinch-hit at-bat, but you like a guy you can plug in for a starting player and youre not giving up much if anything on that day. John Shea is The San Francisco Chronicles national baseball writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @JohnSheaHey | https://www.sfchronicle.com/giants/article/Will-Giants-workloads-be-more-scrutinized-13665918.php |
What Would Actually Happen If Anti-Vaxxing Became More Widespread? | On Tuesday, the Senate Health Committee heard testimony regarding the outbreak of measles and the importance of vaccines in preventing widespread infections. It also featured the compelling account of Ethan Lindenberger, a teenager who got vaccinated at 18 against his parents wishes, as well as some, questionable remarks from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a doctor, who said that parents should not be required to vaccinate their children and that it is wrong to say that there are no risks to vaccines. Some parents believe that there is a connection between vaccinations and autism; but as has been repeatedly shown, this connection simply does not exist. Unfortunately, this sentiment is still fairly rampant on social media, where anti-vaxx propaganda is continuing to spread, despite platforms like Facebook insisting they are cracking down on inaccurate or misleading information. The end result has been an increase in parents opting out of vaccines for non-medical reasons in 12 states where it is legal to do so, according to a 2018 study in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine. Related stories A Man In London Has Reportedly Been 'Cured' of HIV Measles Outbreak Causes State of Emergency in Washington World Health Organization Names Anti-Vaxxers Among Global Health Threats Further, the World Health Organization (WHO) has listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the most pressing public health threats of 2019, citing a 30-percent global increase in the worldwide measles rate as partial evidence of the frightening trend. The United States has seen a 559-percent increase in measles outbreaks, and there have been reports of measles outbreaks in states like Washington, California and Oregon. The fact that celebrities like Kat Von D have reportedly jumped on the anti-vaxxing bandwagon doesnt really help matters, either. Per the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, when a large number of people in a given community get vaccinated against a specific disease, the vaccines provide herd immunity, or community immunity. Essentially, this is the theory that because germs spread by jumping from host to host, if a large percentage of a community is vaccinated against a specific disease, that significantly slows down the spread of the disease. But the effectiveness of herd immunity is contingent on at least 95 percent of the community receiving vaccines. In fact, communities with low vaccination rates (such as Orthodox Jewish communities in Rockland County, NY, which were recently rocked by measles outbreaks) are shown to have much higher rates of infectious diseases. Further, one need only look at infectious disease outbreaks throughout history to see what a future without vaccines would look like. Take, for instance, the outbreak of pertussis (whooping cough), a vaccine-preventable disease, in the United Kingdom in the 1970s: following media reports that the DTP (diptheria-tetanus-percussis) vaccine was linked to brain damage, the vaccination rate plummeted from 80 percent to 33 percent between 1974 and 1977. As a result, 102,500 cases of whooping cough were reported in the region in 1979, as well as 36 deaths, mostly of children. (No definitive connection was ever found between the vaccine and brain damage.) Its also not unconceivable that massively declining vaccination rates could lead to a resurgence of infectious disease. Per the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 15,000 Americans died of diphtheria before a vaccine was invented in 1921 and since then, there have been only a handful of cases of the disease, with two cases reported to the CDC between 2004 and 2014. TLDR: it is in the interest of your childs individual health and public health at large to get your child vaccinated. Sign up for Rolling Stones Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. | https://news.yahoo.com/actually-happen-anti-vaxxing-became-231728402.html |
What is Makaton? | To enjoy the CBBC Newsround website at its best you will need to have JavaScript turned on. Watch: Meet the 16-year-old DJ with a difference - the UK's first Makaton-friendly DJ Makaton is a language programme that uses signs and symbols to help people to communicate. It is designed to support spoken language and the signs and symbols are used with speech, in spoken order. In the UK, the signs used in Makaton are from British Sign Language (BSL), which is the language of the deaf community in Britain. The symbols are simple black and white drawings that show what words mean. They make it easier to communicate a message and can be used by people who prefer not to sign. Speech is also used alongside the signs and symbols. If someone is communicating using Makaton, you may hear them speaking out loud and see them signing at the same time. Makaton is used by CBeebies star Justin Fletcher in his show Something Special with Mr Tumble. Makaton is used by different people for different reasons, and can be used by both adults and children. Copyright is owned by The Makaton Charity Makaton also uses symbols that show what words mean - for example, this symbol meaning magician More and more young people are now using Makaton to communicate before they have learnt to speak. Research shows that young children actually want to communicate before they're able to talk, so Makaton allows young toddlers to say what they want through signs and/or symbols before they've learnt how to speak the words for what they want. It helps them to develop their communication skills by encouraging them to put words together. CBeebies - Something Special Makaton is used by CBeebies star Justin Fletcher in his show Something Special with Mr Tumble It can also be used by people who have difficulties communicating verbally or by those whose speech is perhaps unclear. This includes those with long-term speech difficulties, who may use Makaton for their whole lives. The Makaton Charity explains: "Today, over 100,000 children and adults use Makaton symbols and signs. It enables individuals to connect with other people and the world around them." The charity says: "Makaton is designed to help hearing people with learning or communication difficulties." It is different to BSL because it uses speech alongside the signs, and it also uses symbols. CBeebies - Something Special Makaton is a language programme that uses signs and symbols to help people to communicate Meanwhile, BSL is the language of the deaf community in Britain. Like with many languages, it is constantly changing and evolving, and it also has its own grammar rules and word order. It can also change depending on where in the country you are from. The order of words used in Makaton is the same word order of spoken speech, and it is the same all across the country. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/47440277 |
What Was It Like When Planet Earth Took Shape? | A little over 4.5 billion years ago, our Solar System began to form. Somewhere in the Milky Way, a large cloud of gas collapsed, giving rise to thousands of new stars and star systems, each one unique from all the others. Some stars were much more massive than our Sun; most were much smaller. Some came with multiple stars in their systems; about half the stars formed all by their lonesome, like ours did. But around practically all of them, a large amount of matter coalesced into a disk. Known as protoplanetary disks, these would be the starting points for all the planets that formed around these stars. With the advances in telescope technology that's accompanied the past few decades, we've started to image these disks and their details firsthand. For the first time, we're learning how planetary systems like our own came into existence. In theory, the process of forming planets is incredibly straightforward. Whenever you have a large mass, like a gas cloud, you can expect the following steps to happen: the mass gets drawn into a central region, where one or more large clumps will grow, while the surrounding gas collapses, with one dimension collapsing first (creating a disk), and then imperfections in the disk grow, preferentially attracting matter and forming the seeds of planets. We can now look directly at these protoplanetary disks, and find evidence that these planetary seeds are present from a very early time. But these disks won't last very long. We're looking at timescales that are typically only tens of millions of years long to form planets, and that's due to not only gravitation, but to the fact that we've got at least one central star shining as well. The cloud of gas that will form our planets is made out of a mix of elements: hydrogen, helium, and all the heavier ones, going way up the periodic table. When you're close to the star, the lightest elements are easy to blow off and evaporate. In short order, a young solar system will develop three different regions: a central region, where only metals and minerals can condense into planets, an intermediate region, where rocky and giant worlds with carbon compounds can form, and an outer region, where volatile molecules such as water, ammonia, and methane can persist. The border between the inner two regions is known as the Soot Line, where being interior to it will destroy the complex carbon compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Similarly, the border between the outer two regions is known as the Frost Line, where being interior to it will prevent you from forming stable, solid ices. Both lines are driven by the heat of the star, and will migrate outward over time. Meanwhile, these protoplanetary clumps will grow, accrete additional matter, and will have opportunities to gravitationally perturb one another. Over time, they can merge together, gravitationally interact, eject each other, or even hurl one another into the Sun. When we run simulations that allow planets to grow and evolve, we discover an extraordinarily chaotic history that's unique for each and every solar system. When it comes to our own Solar System, the cosmic story that unfolded was not only spectacular, it was in many ways unexpected. In the internal region, it's very likely that we had a relatively large world present early on, which was possibly swallowed by our Sun in our cosmic youth. There is nothing preventing a giant world from forming in the inner Solar System; the fact that we have only the rocky worlds close to our Sun tells us that something else was likely present early on. The largest planets probably formed from seeds early on, and there may have been more than four of them. In order to get the present configuration of gas giants, the simulations we run seem to show that there was at least a fifth giant planet that was ejected at some point long ago. The asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter, is very likely the remnants of our initial Frost Line. The border between where you can have stable ices should have led to a large number of bodies that were a mix of ice and rock, where the ices mostly sublimated away over the billions of years that have passed. Meanwhile, out beyond our last gas giant, the leftover planetesimals from the Solar System's earliest stages persist. Although they may merge together, collide, interact, and occasionally get hurled into the inner Solar System from gravitational slingshots, they largely remain out beyond Neptune, as a relic from the youngest stages of our Solar System. In many ways, these are the pristine remnants from the birth of our cosmic backyard. But the most interesting place of all, for our purposes, is the inner Solar System. There may have once been a large, interior planet that was swallowed, or perhaps the gas giants once occupied the inner regions and migrated outwards. Either way, something delayed the formation of planets in the inner Solar System, allowing for the four worlds that did form Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars to be much smaller than all the others. From whatever elements were left, and we know they were mostly heavy ones from the planetary density measurements we have today, these rocky worlds formed. Each one has a core made of heavy metals, accompanied by a less-dense mantle made out of material that fell onto the core later, from beyond the Frost Line. After only a few million years of this type of evolution and formation, the planets were similar in size and orbit to how they are today. But there was a huge difference: in these early stages, Earth didn't have our Moon. In fact, Mars didn't have any of its moons, either. In order for this to occur, something needed to create them. That would require a giant impact of some type, where a large mass struck one of these early worlds, kicking up debris that eventually coalesced into one or more moons. For Earth, this was an idea that wasn't taken particularly seriously until we went to the Moon and investigated the rocks we found on the lunar surface. Quite surprisingly, the Moon has the same stable isotope ratios that the Earth does, while they're different between all the other planets of the Solar System. Additionally, the Earth's spin and the Moon's orbit around Earth have similar orientations, and the Moon has an iron core, all facts which point to a mutual common origin for the Earth and the Moon. Originally, the theory was called the Giant Impact Hypothesis, and was theorized to have involved an early collision between proto-Earth and a Mars-sized world, called Theia. The Plutonian system, with its five moons, and the Martian system, with its two moons (that likely used to be three), all show similar evidence of having been created by giant impacts long ago. But now, scientists are noticing problems with the Giant Impact Hypothesis as originally formulated for creating Earth's Moon. Instead, it looks like a smaller (but still very large) impact, from an object originating much farther out in our Solar System, may have been responsible for the creation of our Moon. Instead of what we call a giant impact, a high-energy collision with proto-Earth could have formed a debris disk around our world, creating a new type of structure known as a synestia. There are four big properties of our Moon that any successful theory for its origin must explain: why there is only one large moon rather than multiple moons, why the isotope ratios for elements are so similar between the Earth and Moon, why the moderately volatile elements are depleted in the Moon, and why the Moon is inclined as it is with respect to the Earth-Sun plane. The isotope ratios are particularly interesting for the Giant Impact Hypothesis. The similar isotopic properties between the Earth and Moon suggest that the impactor (Theia) and Earth, if they were both large, had to be formed at the same radius from the Sun. This is possible, but models that form a Moon via that mechanism don't give the right angular momentum properties. Similarly, grazing collisions with the right angular momentum give rise to different isotopic abundances than what we see. That's why the alternative a synestia is so appealing. If you have a fast, energetic collision between a smaller body that's less massive and our proto-Earth, you'd form a large torus-shaped structure around the Earth. This structure, called a synestia, is made of vaporized material that originated from a mix of proto-Earth and the impacting object. Over time, these materials will mix, forming many mini-moons (called moonlets) in short order, which can stick together and gravitate, leading to the Moon we observe today. Meanwhile, the majority of the material in the synestia, particularly the inner part, will fall back to Earth. Rather than a single, contrived giant impact, we can now speak in terms of generalized structures and scenarios that give rise to large moons like our own. There was almost certainly a high-energy collision with a foreign, out-of-orbit object that struck our young Earth in the early stages of the Solar System, and that collision was required to give rise to our Moon. But it was very likely much smaller than Mars-sized, and it was almost certainly a sturdy strike, rather than a glancing collision. Instead of a cloud of rock fragments, the structure that formed was a new type of extended, vaporized disk known as a synestia. And over time, it settled down to form our Earth and Moon as we know them today. At the end of the early stages of our Solar System, it was as promising as it could be for life. With a central star, three atmosphere-rich rocky worlds, the raw ingredients for life, and with gas giants only existing much further beyond, all the pieces were in place. We know we got lucky for humans to arise. But with this new understanding, we also think the possibility for life like us has happened millions of times before all throughout the Milky Way. Further reading on what the Universe was like when: | https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/03/06/what-was-it-like-when-planet-earth-took-shape/ |
Are Married at First Sights Jessika and Daniel Dating? | Move over Ines and Sam. Married at First Sight Australia season 5 has been hit with another partner swapping scandal involving administration officer Jessika and intruder Daniel. Exclusive photos published by New Idea show Jessika (who is married' to Mick on the show) kissing and embracing Dan (who is paired with Tamara) last month on a Gold Coast beach. Jessika appeared on Fitzy and Wippa on Monday to discuss the photos of her hooking up with the former rugby playerbut did not confirm if they were still dating. When asked if Dan was a good kisser, the 26-year-old replied, "Dan is a good kisser, yeah," and added, "[There's no point] trying to keep the secrecy up now considering there's photographs everywhere." As to whether they're still together, Jessika teased: "You'll have to just wait and see it play out." | https://www.eonline.com/au/news/1021085/are-married-at-first-sight-s-jessika-and-daniel-dating |
Would Pierrefonds Community High School pass the name sniff test? | A lot, apparently, when it comes your local school. The debate about renaming Pierrefonds Comprehensive High School in the wake of an impending merger with Riverdale High School next fall has become a hot-button issue for students, teachers and alumni from both schools. One suggestion put forward by a parent at the PCHS town hall meeting last week was Pierrefonds Community High School. Even some of the PC students in the auditorium seemed open to the idea of a revised name. If compromise is the way forward through this merger, Pierrefonds Community HS might address the desire by some to rename the school in an effort to help create a newish identity and more welcoming atmosphere for Riverdale transfers. The name Pierrefonds Community High School would allow Pierrefonds Comprehensive diehards to retain their call letters: PCHS, thus providing a measure of residual pride for the host school. It would also allow for students currently attending PC to keep their PCHS apparel, hoodies and t-shirts emblazoned with the PCHS logo. PCHS also had its gym floor recently redone with the school logo. Pierrefonds Community HS also reflects the geography and reality of the situation. Both Riverdale and PCHS are located in Pierrefonds, but going forward, PCHS will be the only English high school left north of Highway 40 in the West Island. I know my community could live with it, PCHS principal Colleen Galley said after the meeting. While shed back it 100 per cent, Riverdale principal Mat Canavan was not ready to commit to it on the spot. That (suggestion) wasnt new. Its come up before, Canavan said. Again, it has to be part of the conversation. Well sit down and talk. Im sure its going to come up again, he added. A lot of speakers used the word community in respect to their respective high schools. Many PCHS students and parents who spoke at the meeting stressed the importance of retaining the name and traditions of their school, which opened in 1971. Another name being floated out there is Pierrefonds Collegiate High School, another altered version of PCHS. Galley said a similar situation arose when LaSalle Catholic Community High School altered its name years ago to become LaSalle Community Comprehensive High School. The change slightly altered the schools identity, while also keeping the call letters LCCHS. Another person suggested that, as a gesture to the incoming Riverdale community, possibly renaming a gym at PCHS after Dave Reid, the popular Riverdale physical education instructor who retired in 2017 after 50 years of teaching. Riverdale named a gym after Reid following his retirement. Riverdale has green and black school colours and their sports teams are known as the Spartans. PCHS has black and gold colours and their teams are known as the Trojans. At one point during the town hall meeting, Lester B. Pearson School Board chairman Noel Burke suggested putting aside the touchy renaming/rebranding topic issue for now, so that other issues pertinent to the transfer of some 250 students and dozens of teachers could be more fully addressed. Burke also suggested students from both schools have a voice in the merger discussion. He also made it clear that the school board would not interfere on the merger process work done by the schools respective governing boards, facilitated by the transition/merger committee. As one parent said afterward, no matter what the future holds for the school on Pierrefonds Blvd,, many will continue calling it PC. It will always be PC, no matter what they call it. [email protected] | https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/west-island-gazette/would-pierrefonds-community-high-school-pass-the-name-sniff-test |
Should World Cup champions USA panic after a disappointing SheBelieves Cup? | The Americans looked disjointed as England stole the show over the last week. But USWNT coach Jill Ellis is still working out her best starting XI Well, that wasnt exactly what US womens national team wanted from their last tournament before the Womens World Cup. With a string of uneven performances marked by tinkering from manager Jill Ellis, the Americans finished the 2019 SheBelieves Cup behind the mighty Lionesses and with plenty of work before heading to France this summer. Its not that the Americans played badly they notched two draws and a win in the four-team friendly tournament for a second-place finish. But three months out from the World Cup, the defending champions looked disjointed and at times sputtering defensively, as if they havent quite figured out how they want to play, despite a squad brimming with world-class talent. The Americans now have just five matches left to sort things out before the Womens World Cup, and the SheBelieves Cup has left as many questions as answers. Through 2019 thus far, the Americans have won just twice, drawn twice and lost once a rough record for the No1-ranked team in the world. Of course, they dont have to be ready right now. The US finished 2018 on a 28-game unbeaten streak and would surely prefer to get some losses out of their system now rather than over the summer. Ellis and the players have emphasized that they need to peak at the right time, which is approximately three months from now. But the SheBelieves Cup demonstrated that there are no guarantees of winning, even if the US have what may be the best squad in the world. England outclass Japan to lift SheBelieves Cup for first time Read more The American attack looked strong as usual although they will surely lament some chances missed. Megan Rapinoe and Tobin Heath in particular were sensational on the wings, and Alex Morgan provided valuable off-the-ball movement up top to clear the way. The talented attack was buoyed by sophisticated combination play and a quick tempo, which has been an ongoing emphasis under Ellis. But defensively the US looked shaky, especially during the 2-2 draws with England and Japan. Thats a worry given that the US defense went 540 minutes without conceding a goal in the 2015 World Cup, which seems almost inconceivable this summer at least at the moment. In this tournament, the US conceded multiple goals in back-to-back games for the first time since 2011. Its a different backline now only veteran centerback Becky Sauerbrunn remains from the group that led the US to their 2015 World Cup but the USAs SheBelieves Cup was rife with problems. Both miscommunication and individual lapses led to England and Japan scoring. The absence of Sauerbrunn to start the first two games left a noticeable leadership vacuum and raises concerns about whether the depth on the backline is good enough. The US continues to play an attack-first style designed to score a lot of goals. The question is whether they will still be able to score more than they concede. At a time when many US fans would like to see the US focus on consistency, Ellis has been keen to try new tactical wrinkles and put players into new roles. Through much of this tournament, that meant asking creative winger Mallory Pugh to play in the central midfield with the flashy playmaking Rose Lavelle and defensive midfielder Julie Ertz. That attack-oriented midfield didnt offer enough steel or ball-winning ability, and Japan and England were able to dictate play in the center of the pitch too easily, particularly in transition. As games went along, the personnel experiments continued. Throughout the tournament, Ellis used substitutions to push Tobin Heath arguably one of the best wingers in the world into the central midfield triangle. That forced the US into losing an effective winger and adding an inferior central midfielder. Its not that Heath and Pugh arent capable of playing in different positions. Both are versatile. But their best positions are the ones they already play for the US and, this close to the World Cup, its a bit late to start grooming players into new roles. Rather, it seems reps would be better spent allowing the players to work in the position they are likely to play in France and build chemistry. Tactically, Ellis tried some different formations throughout the tournament as well, ostensibly in preparation for different game states the US may face in France. But when the US switched from a four-back to a five-back of three centerbacks with two wingbacks, the players looked unsure of their positioning and lacked structure. For all the effort, the US only ever looked comfortable in the usual 4-3-3. These experiments from Ellis may explain why the US havent always looked cohesive. In that sense, the worry about too much experimentation can be dismissed as something that will resolve itself once Ellis stops tinkering. Ultimately, Ellis has to prepare the team as she sees fit and, if she thinks more experimentation is needed right up until the World Cup starts in France, thats what will happen. The players will need to cope and adapt or else. There are some negatives to take away from the SheBelieves Cup, to be sure. But for Ellis and the US players, those negatives may be better framed as data points for things they can improve before arriving in France. With just five friendlies left before the World Cup, theres not a lot of time. But Ellis was quick to remind reporters at the SheBelieves Cup that it wasnt until this time in 2015 that Julie Ertz earned a starting spot with the US backline, and she eventually went onto play every minute of the World Cup that summer. Ive got smart players Im not worried about them being in different positions, she said. Now its about, can we fine-tune the chemistry? She is confident the Americans will be fine by the time June arrives. Injuries have forced her hand at times, but Ellis is focused on getting the squad reps together. In terms of where this team is, theyre not 15 games played in, theyre not 10 games played in, Ellis said. Some of them didnt play in the January game, so they are three games played in. That sharpness you want is going to come. | https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/mar/06/uswnt-shebelieves-cup-womens-world-cup-soccer |
How Can We Continue Innovating On Restaurant Technologies In 2019? | Everything in the restaurant industry seems to be in a flurry of change customer tastes, dietary needs and preferences, and convenience-first lifestyles, not to mention the shift to digital everything. Thats much of the driving reason behind all the innovation were seeing in this industry today. In fact, I believe restaurant tech has become a major innovation leader after lagging behind other industries for years. Consider, for example, delivery. The Wall Street Journal reported (paywall) on PitchBook data showing that venture capitalists had invested $3.5 billion in food and grocery delivery services (such as Uber Eats and GrubHub) in 2018, and that was in October -- with two months still left in the year. Tiger Global recently invested $18 million in Olo, an ordering platform for more than 50,000 restaurants. And delivery is just one narrow segment of restaurant industry technology. Many say that restaurant survival rates are extremely low, and being slow to innovate may put a restaurant on its last gasp. Theres always a fast-moving competitor waiting to welcome customers. With so much at stake, and so much changing so fast, restaurateurs and the tech companies that power them are constantly asking Whats next? Having gone from operating restaurants and hotels to leading a company that invests in technology research and innovation to help restaurant brands solve challenges through the technologies below, I have an insiders perspective on the intersection of hospitality and innovation. I wanted to share a few of my predictions for the remainder of 2019 on where these technologies are heading and include some points of advice for additional, or continued, innovation by other tech innovators in the food-service space. Delivery Improvement As mentioned earlier, delivery is big. This, despite the high delivery fees reportedly charged by many third-party delivery providers. But theres more than margins on the table. Restaurants are also wrestling with food holding times and quality. Lets face it. Soggy fries just arent the same. Enter the opportunity: 2019 is an opportune year for both restaurants that manage their own deliveries, and third parties (whether tech vendors involved in the delivery ecosystem or food deliverers such as GrubHub), to refine and improve both food quality and customer experience. Fortunately, innovation abounds. One way for restaurants to innovate is to test new food products and packaging. For example, to deal with the soggy fry issue, Lamb Weston released a french fry that has a coating to help it survive the trip to your door. To help optimize delivery times, restaurants who have their own delivery system, the technology companies that help them, and third party delivery services can develop AI-powered delivery management technology that optimizes delivery routes and keeps everyone informed. Self-Serve Options Taking a cue from self-service in travel, banking, retail, and other industries, we are already seeing restaurants offer a lot more options in terms of ordering and service. Examples include self-serve kiosks in-store and in the drive-thru, and tablet-based ordering, whether its an employee busting through a line or customers ordering for themselves, table-side. Think about your experiences shopping on your favorite retail website. You can take your time and compare options. Its like that with self-order restaurant technology as well. Tech providers should look to empower guests to browse menu options, study the pictures, look up ingredients and nutritional value, rather than make a decision under pressure from a server or the lineup of customers. For the restaurant, giving guests these ordering options becomes a matter of managing change and training employees. Tech providers should take their cue from consumer technologies and insist on putting user experience design first. Simply copying what they have done for a different type of interface likely won't translate well to a new form factor. Now, it seems, were ready for interfaces that use cameras to recognize us by face. In 2018, Delta Airlines reportedly launched customer service kiosks that use facial recognition to identify passengers. Caliburger is one chain that has pushed the envelope on innovation, including by implementing facial recognition ordering kiosks. When you order at BurgerFi or Wow Bao using a self-order kiosk, youll have the option to opt-in to have the technology remember your order and associate it with your facial geometry. (Full disclosure: BurgerFi and Wow Bao kiosks are powered by technology developed by a company now owned by Xenial's parent company.) In an age of rampant identity theft and credit card fraud, consumers might be hesitant. Therefore, technology providers working on these solutions need to consider (and inform customers) how they handle personal information. An optimal approach from a security perspective is first, to capture facial geometry only (rather than an actual photo); and, second, to avoid tying the customers payment card to other personally identifying information. Tech providers should also account for ADA considerations in their kiosk development efforts, including implementing controls to help people with all kinds of disabilities interact with the ordering technology. Voice Ordering Fewer orders are being placed at the fast food counter as more are being placed through other ordering channels, such as online, mobile app, third-party delivery, and kiosks. The latest ordering option is the voice/personal assistant. Not only can Google Home or Alexa give you the weather forecast or tell you a knock-knock joke; they can also help you order your favorite dish from a nearby restaurant. Any POS or restaurant tech provider could use or build upon the Google and Amazon application programming interfaces (APIs) to implement voice ordering in kiosks, drive-thrus, and phone ordering, and these -- to my knowledge -- are all completely new concepts in the industry. Theres an opportunity for innovative restaurant tech providers and creators to incorporate these voice assistant technologies into various ordering channels. So, tech companies could work toward innovations like: The ability to place an order conversationally at a self-order kiosk Voice assistant tech helping quick-service restaurant (QSR) staff the drive-thru Using the same tech to automate phone orders You could power these, behind the scenes, by technologies like those used in Alexa or Google. The important thing, of course, is that any point of sale (POS) system developed must be able to handle voice/personal assistant-based ordering along with all the other ordering channels -- seamlessly. Every restaurant owner, manager, and brand is driven to deliver a great experience, be a loved brand, serve good food, and ensure positive economics. Fortunately, restaurant-tech innovators can continue to touch each of these areas. Clearly, we all have a lot to look forward to in 2019. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/03/06/how-can-we-continue-innovating-on-restaurant-technologies-in-2019/ |
Are viruses the best weapon for fighting superbugs? | (The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) David Pride, University of California San Diego (THE CONVERSATION) Antibiotics won the battle against resistant bacteria, but they may not win the war. You probably know that antibiotic-resistant bacteria, also known as superbugs, have hampered physicians ability to treat infections. You may also be aware that there has been a steep decline in the number of new antibiotics coming to market. Some headlines suggest humanity is doomed by antimicrobial resistance; even politicians and governments have weighed in, comparing rising antimicrobial resistance to other popular crises such as climate change. Although I believe these assertions are exaggerated, antimicrobial resistance is a serious problem. I am a physician scientist with a specialty in infectious diseases. I have been fascinated by the role that bacteria play in human health, and the potential for using viruses to treat bacterial infections. One significant factor contributing to antimicrobial resistance is the excessive use of antibiotics. In the U.S., where antibiotics are widely available, some patients demand these drugs for many different illnesses. Many physicians appease their patients because they dont understand when and when not to use them and because there is no regulatory structure to limit their use. Anyone with a prescription pad can prescribe any antibiotic to treat any condition and rarely, if ever, face any consequences. There are some efforts to reduce antibiotic use, but the scope of the problem in the U.S. remains large. Some countries, such as Sweden, use incentives to encourage doctors to improve antibiotic uses. But there is no counterpart for this system in U.S. hospitals and clinics. The problem goes beyond humans; 70 percent of all antibiotics are actually used on animals. This means that humans can be exposed to antibiotics by just handling animal products. The drumstick you are preparing for dinner might also have antibiotic-resistant bacteriatagging along. Once antimicrobial resistance develops in a bacterium, it doesnt always go away. For example, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) evolved resistance to multiple different antibiotics; yet, despite efforts to reduce its spread by limiting the use of antibiotics that led to its emergence, MRSA still persists in hospitals and the community. An alternative to antibiotics Another reason for finding alternatives to antibiotics is that we share our microbes with the people and pets who live around us; thus, others can acquire one of these superbugs without ever taking an antibiotic. A not-so-obvious reason for developing new therapies is that our bodies are home to a large community of microorganisms, including bacteria, called our microbiome. These microorganisms are necessary to maintain our health. Those same antibiotics that kill harmful bacteria also kill the good ones. There is an alternative to antibiotics, but it was dismissed by medicine years ago. The original phage therapy story That alternative was something called phage therapy, which uses viruses that infect bacteria, called bacteriophages, to kill disease-causing bacteria. Bacteriophages, or phages, were used frequently in the early- and pre- antibiotic eras between the 1920s and 40s to treat life-threatening infections. But phage therapy had many disadvantages. The first was that phages were unpredictable. One type of phage might wipe out the bad bacteria in one individual but not anothers. So hospitals had to keep a broad collection of phages to kill disease-causing bacteria from all their patients. An antibiotic such as vancomycin, by comparison, predictably kills entire groups of bacteria. Another downside is that phage collections require maintenance. So not only did hospitals have to keep a large variety of phages on hand, but they had to keep them in shape. So medicine chose antibiotics for convenience, and hadnt looked back in any meaningful way, until recently. Antibiotic resistance is an obvious answer, but doesnt explain the full story. As a specialist in infectious diseases, I have been interested in phage therapy as long as I can remember, but only recently have I felt comfortable saying this out loud. A physician might be considered a quack just for mentioning phage therapy because the early attempts were neither a rousing success or a colossal failure. Like any therapeutic, it had its strengths and weaknesses. However, now scientific advances can guide us toward which phage is best for destroying a particular microbe. With the rising antimicrobial resistance crisis, physicians and scientists have a well-timed opportunity to work together to develop effective phage therapies. The proof of this comes from recent landmark phage therapy cases. The successful treatment of a physician with a life-threatening infection and a grave prognosis caused by a multi-drug resistant bacterium at my institution serves as a great example. Another pivotal case circulating in popular media has kept this trend going. We physicians may be able to treat just about any disease-causing bacterium; it is just a matter of finding a suitable phage. A big part of phage therapy research is devoted to phage hunting, where we microbiologists scour the soil, the oceans and the human body to identify phages with the potential to kill the bacteria that ail us. While the pace of these studies has been slow, the new research is revealing the therapeutic potential of phages in medicine. You might think that with all the phage hunting and landmark cases that we would start using phage therapy all the time, but we dont. The case for using phages One advantage of antibiotics is that since they have been used for decades, we know a lot about their safety. Physicians make simple calculations every day about the risk-benefit ratio of using antibiotics, but arent equipped to make the same calculations about phages. I doubt that would be anyones choice when the question is posed that way. But, remember that phages are natural. Theyre on every surface of your body. They are in the ocean and soil, and in your toilet and sink. They are literally everywhere. Thus, putting a phage into your body to kill a bacterium quite frankly is something that nature does to us every single day, and as far as we know, we are no worse for the wear. Phages are estimated to kill half the worlds bacteria every 48 hours and are probably the most potent antibacterial agents out there. Only time will tell. Unfortunately, as antimicrobial resistance continues to rise, time may not be on our side. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/are-viruses-the-best-weapon-for-fighting-superbugs-111908. | https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Are-viruses-the-best-weapon-for-fighting-13666587.php |
Why hasn't the San Francisco mansion once owned by Nicolas Cage sold? | 1 / 57 Back to Gallery A San Francisco mansion with an arresting Tudor Revival facade continues to sit on the market without selling, despite a price reduction, a prime location with drop-dead views, and celebrity cache. Hollywood actor and house collector Nicolas Cage famously owned the home on the corner of Francisco and Hyde streets for a brief spell in the 2000s. Originally listed in 2017 for $12 million and briefly taken off the market before returning in 2018 the six-bedroom, six-and-a-half-bathroom home on Russian Hill's so-called Gold Coast at 898 Francisco St. is now on the market for $10.95 million. ALSO: $6 million slashed off price of Northern California ranch, nearly the size of San Francisco Listing agent Mark Levinson of Pacific Union says interest has grown in recent days as real estate activity picks up in March, but he admits the property, which has been largely left untouched since it was built in 1914 (except a slap-dash 1990s kitchen update), will require a special buyer who has both money and time. "People look at it as a fixer," said Levinson. "There are only a certain amount of people who have that kind of money and that kind of bandwidth. People in this price range are so busy and don't have time for a renovation. Homes that do sell tend to be renovated and gorgeous. I think if the house were done, it would sell overnight." Unlike updated high-end homes with open floor-plans and modern amenities, this house has smaller, compartmentalized rooms featuring original details such as beamed ceilings, leaded glass windows, wood moldings, and fireplaces with ornate mantels. "It has a formal living room, formal dining room, a great entryway for art," said Levinson. "I think it's a great house." While Levinson thinks $1 million in renovations, including a revamp of the kitchen, is all this house really needs, he says a more extreme makeover would boost its value exponentially. "Any money you put into this house, you will get back," he said. "I think Francisco is a huge opportunity for someone because whatever they put in, they're going to get back. This is the Gold Coast in Russian Hill, it's the best of the best. You'll see one $20 million house after another." Homes don't turn-over here often, and the only recent sale indicates yes. Last spring, Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell Jobs purchased a home of a similar size six bedrooms spread across 6,000-square-feet for $16.5 million in an all-cash deal. But unlike 898 only a few houses away, Jobs' home had been remodeled over the years, most recently in a contemporary manner by S.F.-based decorator Steven Volpe, who was described by the Wall Street Journal as the "decorator to Silicon Valley's elite." After that, the most recent sale of a somewhat comparable home seems to be 828 Francisco. The 7,723-square-foot behemoth is larger than 898 Francisco and sold for $17.5 million in 2005; now Zillow estimates its value at $23 million while Redfin values at it between $29.5 million and $32.61 million. | https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/898-Francisco-Nicolas-Cage-Russian-Hill-home-SF-13662281.php |
Can Target Continue Its Growth Momentum After Strong Q4? | Target's fiscal fourth quarter earnings per share and revenues beat market expectations this week. In Q4, Targets revenue came in flat at $23 billion, but the company saw a strong 5.3% increase in comparable sales. Among the components of the reported comparable sales, traffic grew a strong 4.5% year-over-year (y-o-y) and the average transaction amount increased 0.8% y-o-y. In addition, the companys digital comparable sales grew 2.4% y-o-y, while store comparable sales grew a robust 2.9% y-o-y. The fact that the company has been able to grow its store comparable sales, despite significant competitive pressure, suggests that its initiatives are resonating well with customers. In terms of the bottom line, the companys adjusted EPS grew more than 10% y-o-y during this period. The company is looking to overhaul its business model with the expansion of small-format stores, in addition to revamping its existing stores and improving supply chain management, since the beginning of 2017. Our $83 price estimate for Targets stock is almost 10% ahead of the current market price. which outlines our 2019 forecasts for the company. You can modify our forecasts to see the impact any changes would have on the companys earnings and valuation and see all Trefis Consumer Discretionary company data here. Q1 Expectations The results of Targets business transformation have started to show in the companys financials from Q1 2018 on. However, the retailers aggressive push to keep up with Amazon and Walmart, both online and in grocery, is leading to shrinking margins. In fiscal 2018, Targets gross margin was down 40 basis points, largely due to increased fulfillment costs resulting from growth in digital sales. On the cost side, selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses grew 4% y-o-y, due to an increase in compensation expenses, reflecting investments in store hours, wage rates and team member incentives. Going forward, we expect this margin pressure to continue in 2019 as well. We expect Target to continue to post an increase in its revenue growth rate in Q1. In terms of comparable sales, the retailer expects first quarter growth in the low- to mid-single digits. In addition, Target guided for Adjusted EPS of $1.32 to $1.52 in Q1, compared to a consensus estimate of $1.43. Target also expects to see a low single-digit increase in operating income. Fiscal 2019 Outlook | https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/03/06/can-target-continue-its-growth-momentum-after-strong-q4/ |
What Is Neuromarketing? | It's a question many marketers still don't know the answer to. Maybe it's because the question has several answers. Appropriately so, as it involves our ever-expanding understanding of how the brain works. In short, neuromarketing is a field that applies brain-based research to everyday advertisements and marketing messages. As the owner of an agency focused on applying marketing research and brain science to digital marketing campaigns, my goal today is to explain how the field of neuromarketing is organized, how it works and how it relates to ethical business. The Three Circles Imagine three overlapping circles in a Venn diagram. Those three circles represent the industries that make up the neuromarketing discipline: traditional marketing, brain research and medical technology. Circle #1: Traditional Marketing Inside the first circle in our Venn diagram lies the world of traditional marketing. This is the realm of David Ogilvy, Madison Avenue and (more recently) Seth Godin. This is the circle most people think of when the word "marketing" is mentioned. It's well-researched; it works, and it has become well-entrenched. Just take a quick glance at the Forbes Global 2,000. The biggest companies in the world use traditional marketing to reach more people with unique and valuable messages. Circle #2: Brain Research Our second circle contains the fields of study focusing on the brain. This primarily includes behavioral economics, social psychology and neuroscience. The names to look out for in this world are Dan Ariely, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. More recently, researchers such as Robert Cialdini and Daniel Pink have helped these fields step into the limelight. When an institution such as Duke or Cornell initiates a research study on the brain, it publishes its research somewhere like The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science. Those studies are used by the medical profession and other researchers. From a marketer's point of view, however, those findings stay hidden from any form of practical application. Circle #3: Medical Technology Over the past several years, medical imaging technology has enabled us to generate detailed pictures of what goes on inside our brains. More specifically, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) have gotten so detailed that we can generate time-lapse photography of the brain's inner workings. Despite the obvious primary use of this technology in diagnosing illness and disease, a byproduct of having this visualization of our minds has given researchers a goldmine of data. Researchers are beginning to understand exactly how our minds work. With one fMRI scan, we can see blood flow to various regions of the brain responsible for things such as excitement, fear, fight or flight response, and desire. At The Center: Neuromarketing The field of neuromarketing cannot exist without all three of these circles. Traditional marketing provides the field-tested methods and much-needed intuition that drives some of the most compelling marketing we come across today. And yet, with an increasing level of institutional research and detailed brain imaging, those methods have now been put to the test. Some have been debunked, and others have been supercharged. This field has flown under the radar for years, primarily due to the lack of significant research and accurate data. Now that the third circle has begun to tell us if someone will indeed buy something when they say they will, top agencies (and by extension, top companies) have been using neuromarketing to garner more sales. As early as 2008, Campbell's Soup conducted a neuromarketing study to determine whether to update its labels. In 2014, the Shelter Pet Project conducted a study (registration required) to decide what commercial would have the deepest emotional impact on viewers. These studies are all being fueled by an arms race by large marketing conglomerates to build a war chest of neuromarketing tools that will help give clients a leg up on the competition. The Shelter Pet Project study was one of the first case studies released by Nielson's Consumer Neuroscience division, and market research powerhouse Kantar Millward Brown conducts thousands of facial coding studies every single year. And that's just the beginning. The top criticism I can offer is that neuromarketing turns statistically significant brain research into diluted applications of that same research. The short answer is this: The world is not a laboratory, and it never will be. Humanity is ever-changing and ever-evolving. There will never be a static, unmoving definition of what motivates us, what makes us happy or what makes us want to buy something. It's as pointless a venture to prove that one particular neuromarketing campaign was caused by one well-documented mental pattern as it is to debunk the neuromarketing field as pseudoscience. Following the data will only overwhelm and confuse us. Fortunately, there's an easier method of determining whether a neuromarketing campaign works: sales. If you have a profitable campaign, you have what you need. Period. In 6,000 B.C., farmers realized that if they grew one crop in a field for too long, it would stop growing well. So, they tried replacing it with a different crop, and all of a sudden, things started growing again. This was the birth of crop rotation, which evolved into what's now the fertilizer industry. What was once an intuitive, little-understood practice turned into a well-documented scientific discipline. Neuromarketing is yet another example of science following intuition. For years, marketers have developed intuitive and methodized ways to make emotional connections with people they want to sell to. It's simply taken this long to understand the science behind that intuition. With this in mind, you can decide on the ethics of using neuromarketing in business. On one hand, we are planting seeds in the same soil we've always planted in, and we now simply have a better understanding of how to grow the biggest crops. On the other hand, the stakes are higher when we move from matters of dirt to matters of the human mind. Simply put, it's now our responsibility to plant the right seeds. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/03/06/what-is-neuromarketing/ |
How Has Natural Selection Changed In The Modern Era? | originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Answer by Israel Ramirez, Biopsychologist, on Quora: Theres no way to stop natural selection. Its is going on right now in people. This chart shows the results of a study looking at lifetime reproductive success for people in the UK, a measure of the effects of natural selection. [1] Stars show traits showing statistically reliable effects. The abbreviations are: age at first birth (AFB) educational attainment (EA) fluid intelligence score (FIS) age at menopause (AMP) height (HT) waist circumference (WC) basal metabolic rate (BMR) weight (WT) hip circumference (HC) body-mass index (BMI) waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) body-fat percentage (BFP) age at menarche (AAM), Natural selection is working in different ways for women and men. Natural selection is causing women to have a longer reproductive period: having menarche at a younger age, bearing children at a younger age, and reaching menopause later. Natural selection is causing men to become heavier/fatter. Theres a trend for that in women but it wasnt statistically reliable. Those trends have been confirmed in a study of Americans which predicts that the next generation will be on average slightly shorter and stouter, to have lower total cholesterol levels and systolic blood pressure, to have their first child earlier, and to reach menopause later [2] In this study, natural selection is leading women to become shorter but is not affecting men. Among Dutch people, it is leading to taller men but favoring average women. [3] Natural selection also causing women and men to score lower in intelligence tests and spend fewer years in school. Whats happening now might not have been true in the past and might not continue into the future. We dont have good data on natural selection in previous centuries, so its hard to be sure whether current trends also occurred in the past. Compared to people in the 19th Century, modern people are taller, heavier, and experience menarche at an earlier age but we cant say whether that has anything to do with natural selection. And we know nothing about whether current trends might continue into the future. I suspect not but theres no way to be sure. This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions: | https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/03/06/how-has-natural-selection-changed-in-the-modern-era/ |
How Has Machine Learning And AI Influenced Game Design? | originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Answer by Travis Addair, Software Engineer, on Quora: Games are more addictive today than ever, and we have machine learning to thank for a lot of that. When most people put AI and games together they tend to think bots or some other form of computer-controlled character (NPC). But the reality is that machine learning is virtually unused for such AIs. As Ive discussed in other answers [1], its just too expensive and doesnt allow for the degree of control required by the design team. However, thats not to say that machine learning is entirely absent from the game development process. In fact, its used quite extensively, just not in the game itself, but in the way we design gameplay systems. Lets call it data-driven game design. See, game companies particularly the big ones like Activision and EA employ many data scientists. They dont directly make games, rather their role is to inform the game design by understanding player behavior. Today, more and more games are moving their systems to the backend the server side where all the information about what the player does in the game and when they choose to play or not player the game can be tracked, recorded, and analyzed. That analysis can be simple like a linear model used to correlate variables but increasingly its becoming very complex. As more data is tracked in greater quantities, more data science teams are turning to machine learning models like gradient boosted trees and deep neural networks. Keeping players engaged with the games, keeping them coming back for more. This can be done at a macro level (looking at averages, or segmentations of users) or at a micro level (individuals). You could entice them to come back with custom bonus offer or in-game reward. You could customize loot drops to suit the preferences of specific users. For better or worse, thats the direction the industry is going, and we have machine learning to thank for it. This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions: | https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/03/06/how-has-machine-learning-and-ai-influenced-game-design/ |
How Can Non-Tech Companies Compete In The Digital Age? | originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Answer by Dennis Zdonov, Head of Studio at Glu Mobile, on Quora: Pizza Hut is deploying robotic waiters in its restaurants in Asia. Johnson & Johnson is using AI to help parents customize their childs sleepcare. Unilever is trying to use blockchain to improve its ad buying. The list of traditional companies experimenting with buzzwordy tech goes on and on. But heres the thing: adopting and then successfully implementing innovative technologies requires more than just investing in robots, AI, and blockchain. It requires a fundamental understanding of the concepts and processes that have enabled tech companies to thrive and dominate the corporate landscape of today. For most old-school companies that were founded many decades ago, this often means reworking many of their core processes and fundamental beliefs. Here are a few tech-pioneered concepts and processes which could prove particularly transformative for more traditional, less tech companies. 1: Transparent pricing In many traditional industries whether its restaurant supplies, TV advertising, or supplement manufacturing it can take potential customers weeks to get a simple price quote for their order. You have to speak to multiple different reps (often telling them the same information), navigate opaque monopolistic supply chains, get multiple quotes to understand if you are being scammed or not, among other painful, mind-numbingly tedious tasks. To say the process is inefficient would be an understatement. Compare that with how easy it is to buy an ad on Google or Facebook, in which pricing options are transparent and accessible. Its night and day. But the thing is, now that we as consumers know that a seamless process is possible, our expectations have changed. This type of seamless process is not just nice-to-have at this point. It has now become, If you dont have it, Ill find somebody else who does. Consumers want simple processes where they can get their answers easily and quickly. Companies who meet that demand will have a clear cut advantage; and those that dont well, I dont see them being around much longer, unless the government forces you to use them or subsidizes them completely (yes, Im talking about you, U.S. Postal Service). 2: Dynamic pricing This is something we all learned back in Econ 101. If the demand for your product or service is high and customers are willing to pay more for it, it doesnt make sense for you to keep your prices static. Its a matter of uncapping your customers max spend potential. Ubers surge pricing is a great example of a company optimized to do exactly that. Surge pricing has allowed Uber to redefine the scarcity economics of the personal transportation market. E-Commerce is another space that has leveraged dynamic pricing very well. Here is a 3-year price chart of a Waterpik Water Flosser on Amazon. As you can see, the prices have fluctuated constantly, and have varied as much as 250% between the minimum and maximum amounts. Some traditional players do use dynamic pricing, too, like airlines, hotels, and the MLB, but many dont, offering only one flat rate. In the end, having a static pricing model is just leaving money on the table. 3: Pay-per-use business models A great pioneer of this has been Amazon Web Services, the most successful cloud infrastructure service on the planet. As of last year, this single Amazon department had made roughly $10 billion in profit. Theres a lot that accounts for AWSs success and removing customers capex concerns entirely is one major factor. There are some companies trying this now in more traditional industries, too. For example, Travis Kalanicks new CloudKitchens is trying to do this with restaurant real estate. Metromile is doing this with car insurance (charging customers for car insurance by the mile). ZipCar, Getaround, and Turo have been doing this successfully with urban car usage, too. What these companies show is that no matter your industry, with enough thought (and tech under the hood), it is possible to ditch the middleman and revamp your bulk pricing structures for something more efficient. 4: Testing product features and demand before doing development Tuft & Needle a company now doing more than $100M in yearly revenue didnt just create a great product and start selling it on a whim. Rather, they only launched after running different product concepts to different landing pages and testing, purposefully, which concepts resulted in conversions. There is a great podcast with Tuft & Needles co-founder JT Marino that talks about this part of their pre-launch journey. Testing a bunch of fake products which look legitimate but are not actually ready for sale is a common practice for e-commerce startups. Justin Mares talks about how he validated the idea for his new bone broth startup, Kettle & Fire, in about two weeks and for under $100 in a great Sumo blog post. Its easy to run Facebook ads to a lot of different concepts and see what resonates and with whom. $500 of Facebook ads and 30 minutes of setup could literally save your company millions of dollars. However, even with all this easy pre-development testing available, many companies today still commit major R&D dollars into a product before theyre confident it will sell. 5: A/B testing branding Similarly to testing product features and demand, many tech companies also test a lot of branding and design changes at a small scale before committing to them at large. We did this a lot at Glu Mobile and Dairy Free Games when working on new game concepts. Since the timeline for developing a AAA game is often multiple years, developers will frequently test many variations of their theming, art style, icons, branding, etc. These tests are done with just mockup graphics and simulated videos. Gaming studios will then run those assets through specialized testing tools, like Splitmetrics and StoreMaven, that take the ad clicker to a simulated app store. But even outside of just gaming, this is a common practice in the tech industry to test everything before sending it out to customers. Email subject lines is the most obvious example. A more extreme example is Marissa Meyer testing 41 different shades of blue in the design process at Google. If youre just starting out with this, the Optimizely blog has a lot of ideas on design and branding elements that you can A/B test. 6: Personalization If you can promise customers a more personalized or customizable experience, theyll either pay more for your product, convert faster, or use your product longer. Over the long run, all of this leads to more revenue. A good example of personalization, again, comes from mobile gaming. If you look at the top-performing games like Clash Royale, Game of War, or Contest of Champions, many of the deals that they offer in their stores are highly personalized, and are aimed to solve an immediate need for the specific player who sees the offer. There are also countless mainstream examples of successful personalization spearheaded by consumer tech companies. Amazon, Netflix, Pandora, and Spotify have all built sophisticated personalization and recommendation algorithms to give each user just the right product, show, or song at just the right time. Where personalization is often overlooked by the non-tech crowd is in marketing and SEO. Zapier, a company that helps people automate mundane cross-app interactions, personalized thousands of landing pages to be hyper-targeted to their users search queries. As their CEO, Wade Foster, explains: We set up landing pages for every combination of app-to-app that you could possibly connect. So if youre searching for Groove and JIRA, ideally Zapier is in the results. 7: Deep analytics on everything to quantify whats working and what isnt In order to do any of the this, however to A/B test, personalize products, or offer dynamic pricing your company must run sound analytics. You have to understand what affects your users behavior. You have to be able to discern why certain products sell well, or why certain campaigns perform well, and others dont. And in order to do this effectively, you need to invest in your analytics infrastructure. Unfortunately, most companies even tech companies overlook their analytics tooling because it doesnt qualify as something that is core product. Zynga disproves that. They were, in fact, one of the companies that spearheaded effective big data analytics. Some have even said that Zynga is really a Big Data Company Disguised as a Gaming Company. Mark Pincus, Zyngas founder, bet big on data. As he explains on the Masters of Scale podcast: We were pushing it more than anybody because we went to tracking every click and analyzing it at a time that they were using Google Analytics. And we were investing so much and we had so many people on it that we kept getting called stupid, that people said, Zynga has 50 people and this company is doing the same thing with 10. Zynga has 300 people and this company is doing the same with 20 or 50 because we wanted to over-invest in knowing the data. 8: Gamification If youve bought anything on Wish recently which is on track to do over $2 billion in revenue this year youve probably seen many gamified elements in their store. You can spin the wheel for a once-a-day Deal Dash discount. You can earn reward points with each purchase. And almost everything, from an Instant Offer to your checkout process, has some countdown timer attached to it. While Wish has perhaps taken gamification elements to an extreme, many marketplaces and review platforms, like eBay, Yelp, and Airbnb, offer gamified elements to their users, too. These platforms use gamification to incentivize the types of user behaviors they want to see on their platforms. 9: Developing Compulsion Loops Up until recently, compulsion loops have been a sort of hidden concept, one that tech companies exploited stealthily. This changed when EA became a hot subject of a loot box controversy. While the full psychology of compulsion is too long for this article, one of the most popularized examples of compulsion loops are loot boxes. At their core, theyre what psychologists call skinner boxes: things that give users variable rewards for the same repeated action. While it may seem counter-intuitive, simply rewarding someone every time (and with the same reward) when they do an action is NOT the best way to have them continue doing that action. Instead, its a lot more addicting and motivating to vary up both the reward itself and the likelihood of getting that reward. This is the reason that gambling (and gaming) is more addicting and stimulating than a predictable, fixed-reward task, like a job that pays a fixed steady wage. Subscription commerce startups, like Birchbox and LootCrate, are good examples of companies built around the simple compulsion loop of variable rewards. They deliver a novel set of goods to the subscriber each month. A more old-school example of this is Pokemon cards, which effectively were a physical loot box, and a highly addicting one at that. If youre interested in exploring how to apply compulsion loops (and other gaming concepts) to real-world scenarios, I recommend taking a read through Jane McGonigals book, Reality is Broken. Final Thoughts Over time, a lot of the tech-pioneered fundamentals that Ive covered above will become the new standard across a lot of traditional industries, be it manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, or real estate. As consumers expectations shift toward easier, faster, and more personalized experiences, the companies that are able to deliver on those pillars will be the ones that survive. So, when it comes to adopting new tech, its critical that companies think through their processes, supply chains, and strategies at a more fundamental level instead of just building buzzwords on top of a rotting foundation. This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions: | https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/03/06/how-can-non-tech-companies-compete-in-the-digital-age/ |
What if we took Lent as seriously as we do Mardi Gras? | I wonder how different things would be in New Orleans if more people took Lent and Easter as seriously as they do Carnival season and Mardi Gras. For starters, people already would have Wednesday, Feb. 26, marked on their calendars as the first day of Lent with a big circle on next April 12 for Easter 2020. For those 40 days in between, they would enthusiastically focus not only on abstinence and fasting but also prayers and charitable works. They would not, however, become too obsessed in the penitence itself, but realize that the penitence is in preparation for celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians seek a change of heart during Lent in their relationship with God, not just good works to boast of. Sen. John Kennedy really goes for laughs this time "My name is John Kennedy," he said, "I'm a United States senator and I represent the people of Louisiana on cable news stations across this nation." For almost six weeks, they would live in wonderful anticipation of celebrating the day that changed everything. They would have friends and work colleagues constantly reminding them of the season and how much joy they would get out of participating more. The invitations would be impossible to avoid and hard to resist. They would arrange things so they could take time off from work to do some service in their community, spend time with their families and neighbors or contemplate Gods grace and mercy. They would wonder how many friends and relatives were coming from out of town to help them celebrate. They would go out in neighborhoods a day or two early to stake out the places where they and their friends would be picking up trash and pulling Mardi Gras beads from the catch basins. The mayor would have to issue a warning about people bringing their ladders ahead of time to paint and fix up houses owned by the poor and elderly. Police would shut down streets and even portions of the Pontchartrain Expressway to make sure that volunteers could get where they were needed as efficiently as possible. Sometimes the cops would get off their motorcycles and dance to entertain those waiting for the caravan to pass. Local TV stations would offer smartphone apps to help us find the best time to volunteer at homeless shelters or donate to food pantries and blood banks. NOLA.com would have reporters all over the place for Holy Week events and would go on Facebook Live to share the Good Friday and Easter sermons. People would ponder what it means to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and then what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. They might bookmark some Bible verses on Ash Wednesday, like Joel 2:12: Yet even now, declares the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning." Or maybe a good reminder in Matthew 6:1, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. They would focus during the time of abstinence on how Jesus has spent 40 days fasting and battling Satan in the desert to prepare for a ministry that would eventually take him to the cross to defeat sin and death. Cold and rainy weather would not keep them from participating in church gatherings, especially during Holy Week. Traffic jams would be endured just to get close enough to walk to crowds. They would do everything they could to be a part of the worship, even if the church had moved the services an hour or two earlier to escape severe weather. Think big in filling New Orleans most visible vacancy For the second year in a row, Mardi Gras parades are rolling past an empty pedestal at the Circle formerly known as Lee And on Easter, they might read from Mark 16: "And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, 'Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here.'" They might repeat, "He is risen! He is risen, indeed!" They would already be thinking about, planning for and anticipating the next Lenten season. Tim Morris is a columnist on the Latitude team at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Latitude is a place to share opinions about the challenges facing Louisiana. Follow @LatitudeNOLA on Facebook and Twitter. Write to Tim at [email protected]. | https://www.nola.com/opinions/2019/03/what-if-we-took-lent-as-seriously-as-we-do-mardi-gras.html |
Why can't Midwest and East Coast travelers find Southwest Airlines return flights from Hawaii? | CLOSE Southwest Airlines has started selling tickets to Hawaii with service beginning March 17. USA TODAY The questions started the second Southwest Airlines put tickets to Hawaii on sale Monday. Travelers trying to snag cheap tickets to Honolulu or Maui from cities including Baltimore, Chicago and St. Louis turned to social media and the airline's reservations center in droves to find out why they could book a flight to Hawaii but weren't finding any flights home. The problem wasn't that the flights were sold out, though many of Southwest's new nonstop flights between California and Hawaii sold out quickly thanks to fares as low as $49 each way. One traveler fired off a post on Southwest's Facebook page: "Is there a point to fly to Hawaii from St. Louis when there are NO available return flights?'' A passenger from Austin, Texas, told Southwest via Twitter that he couldn't complete his booking because there were no flights coming back. Hi, Josh. I'm sorry for that. We currently have limited return service for connecting flights from Hawaii. You can book a flight on https://t.co/qJUDbsTE7y from Hawaii to Oak or SJC, and then a flight from those places to Austin. -Katie Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) March 4, 2019 The issue is Southwest's initial, limited flight schedule from Hawaii to California doesn't get passengers into California in time to catch Southwest flights to most cities east of California. So the airline isn't selling many round-trip itineraries with connections. The exceptions are nearby cities, including Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, Portland and Seattle. The two new daily Southwest flights from Honolulu to Oakland, for example, arrive in Oakland at 5:50 p.m. and 9 p.m. local time. The last flight from Oakland to Chicago Midway: 4:50 p.m. The last nonstop between Oakland and Chicago is even earlier: around 2:30 p.m. The last flight from Oakland to Baltimore: 2:35 p.m. The story is similar from Maui to Oakland, where the daily flights arrive at 5:20 and 8:50 p.m. Travelers trying to book a round trip Southwest flight between Baltimore and Maui on the airline's website will find daily flights to Maui for sale and a blank calendar on the way back. Travelers trying to book a flight from Honolulu to Chicago Midway run into the same issue. More:Southwest Hawaii flights: 12 things travelers need to know More: These are all of the routes U.S. airlines fly to Hawaii Southwest competitors, including Hawaiian, American and United airlines, get around this problem by including red-eye flights from Hawaii to the West Coast. The flights leave Hawaii late at night and arrive early the next morning. That leaves passengers groggy but allows connections around the country. Southwest doesn't have any red-eye flights from Hawaii or any city but hasn't ruled them out. Travelers are also likely to see increased connections to and from Hawaii as Southwest grows its Hawaii operation, which is starting slow but is expected to account for half of the airline's growth this year, according to CEO Gary Kelly. Southwest plans to offer nonstop flights between two more California cities, San Diego and Sacramento, and Hawaii. It will also beef up its schedule to and from Oakland and San Jose. And it plans to add flights to Kauai, too. "When developing these schedules, our primary focus was to offer the best possible timings for local customers (in Hawaii and California),'' Southwest said in response to questions posed on its Southwest Airlines Community message boards. "As we continue to add service to Hawaii and increase some of our technical capabilities, we will only see more cities gain connections to the state.'' Until then, travelers outside the West Coast bent on flying Southwest to and from Hawaii have to buy (or cash in frequent-flier points for) separate tickets: a one-way ticket to Hawaii, a return ticket from Hawaii to California and a ticket the next day from California back home. Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2019/03/06/southwest-hawaii-flights-why-some-travelers-cant-find-return-flights/3064099002/ | https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2019/03/06/southwest-hawaii-flights-why-some-travelers-cant-find-return-flights/3064099002/ |
Where Is The Ice That Should Be In The Bering Strait Right Now? | The only waterway connecting the Pacific Ocean to the Arctic Ocean is called the Bering Strait. It has actually been called the gateway to the Arctic. It is a remote passageway that at one point only extends 55 miles wide. The Bering Strait also separates the United States (Alaska) from Russia. In recent years, an increasingly warming Arctic has created concerns in the Bering Strait. With reduction of sea ice, the Strait has become something more than a region teaming with wildlife. It has become a transportation vein for shipping. According to OceanConservancy.org, ...a luxury cruise ship was able to sail from the North Pacific to the Atlantic via the fabled Northwest Passagea route that once defeated even the most intrepid explorers. The Crystal Serenity sailed from the Alaskan port of Seward through the Northwest Passage to New York City. While other cruise ships have made the transit, this is the first time a ship of this sizealmost the length of three football fieldshas made the passage. Such shipping activity poses a threat to marine life in the region and is somewhat risky since there are limited Coast Guard or rescue services in that area. However, what caught my eye is the extremely low the sea ice in the Bering Strait this week. The Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite is part of a fleet of Earth-observing satellites in orbit to measure important features of the land and ocean. Launched in February 2016 and joined by Sentinel-3B in April 2018, this mission is revealing a multitude of changes to the Earth system. The image above tweeted by Zack Labe reveals very little sea ice in the Bering Strait as of early March 2019. As startling as this looks, it apparently happened last year too according to Yereth Rosen in ArcticToday.com. The winter ice extent maximum last march the lowest in over 150 years of record keeping. Rosen goes on to write about this year's situation, since late January, the Bering Sea has lost two-thirds of its ice area, according to statistics from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Waters are open across the entire sea, including in the Bering Strait that separates Alaska and Russia. In the middle of that narrow strait, ice that normally links Alaskas Little Diomede Island to Russias Big Diomede Island through May was gone by the end of February. Tribal leaders and scientists are baffled and concerned. Rick Thoman is an climate expert with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He tweeted the image below with the following ominous statement: Bering Sea ice extent from @NSIDC data for March 04 is lower than the previously unprecedented Feb 2018 minimum & is only 24% of average. Current extent (but not distribution) of 178,000 km is typical for May 30th. #akwx #Arctic #seaice @Climatologist49 @IARC_Alaska @KNOMnews Thoman and other experts believe that a combination of above-normal air temperatures, warming waters and potent weather systems are to blame. Indigenous people of the region also are concerned about something else. They typically use available shorefast ice for ice fishing. The famous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race even had to adjust is route because ice typically available on Norton Sound is not available. Climate scientist Lars Kaleschke sums it up in his tweet on March 3rd, "There is something significant going on in the Bering Sea: a very low ice extent for the second year in a row." He also pointed out with the tweet below that for that day, a record for low sea ice extent was set. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2019/03/06/where-is-the-ice-that-should-be-in-the-bering-strait-right-now/ |
Did Halle Berry get a massive tattoo on her back? | CLOSE Halle Berry, Gigi Hadid, Misty Copeland and others attend launch of 2019 Pirelli calendar. The Oscar-winning actress, 52, showed off some major ink in a shirtless photo posted to the social media site Tuesday. It is still unclear, however, if the tattoo is permanent or not. "Who says I'm not a mermaid," she captioned the photo of her back, wearing nothing but sparkly bottoms. The design is comprised of a vine with leaves that go up both sides of her spine. Berry isn't the only star to show off a back tattoo recently. Lady Gaga also inked her spine with an "A Star Is Born"-inspired design in February. More: Ariana Grande isn't the only one: Celebrity tattoos gone wrong Photos: Fabulous at 52: Happy Birthday Halle Berry! More: Will Smith and Halle Berry share hilarious mash-up photos of their faces Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2019/03/06/halle-berry-huge-back-tattoo-shirtless-pic-real-or-fake/3078442002/ | https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2019/03/06/halle-berry-huge-back-tattoo-shirtless-pic-real-or-fake/3078442002/ |
Can drag queens become pop stars? | A new wave of media-savvy drag artists are trying to move beyond a queer subculture and into the charts but the mainstream may not be ready to accept them One small step for woman; one giant leap for womankind. This prologue opens NASA, the second track on Ariana Grandes latest album Thank U, Next, and its mysterious, sandpapery delivery belongs to Shangela Laquifa Wadley. If you dont recognise her voice, perhaps her face will ring a bell she played the drag club MC when Jackson Maine discovers Ally in A Star Is Born. Shangela is a drag queen, an alumnus of popular reality show RuPauls Drag Race; her co-star in that A Star is Born scene is another fellow Racer, Willam. Drag queens and popstars are becoming increasingly intimate bedfellows. In Pepsis Superbowl commercial this January, Cardi B exchanged playful tongue trills with Mont X Change, joint winner of Drag Race All Stars Season 3; its since been rumoured that Mont is set to star in a Madonna video. In 2015, Miley Cyrus marched out a host of RuPauls queens for her VMA performance; in 2011, Rihannas S&M video featured Willam and Detox Icunt, though blink and youd have missed the bondaged pair. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Shangela Laquifa Wadley at the 2019 Oscars. Photograph: Andrew H Walker/BEI/REX/Shutterstock But queens arent merely on the arms of the worlds biggest pop stars theyre making pop themselves. Not only does Drag Race host chart behemoths as its guest judges on a weekly basis (everyone from Lady Gaga to Kacey Musgraves), but competing queens have been releasing their own original tracks for years. Its become customary for contestants to drop a single the day after their elimination from the show for a lucky few, the accompanying videos can rack up impressive numbers. Go Fish by Manila Luzon was released upon her dismissal from All Stars 3 scarcely a fortnight ago at time of writing it stands at more than one million views. That drag artists are becoming pop stars in their own right is both surprising and inevitable. The art of drag has historically been bound up with the ritualistic practice of lip-syncing, where queens mouth the words to songs by well-known female artists on stage. The simulation aspect the fact that the songs were not original, but copies of those sung by cisgender women was essential. Lip-syncing was a way to parody gender, explains Dr Michael Bronski, professor of gender and sexuality studies at Harvard University. Performers would choose women singers Garland, Streisand, Aretha because they were already exaggerations of emotional states of femininity. Butler argues that gender is a simulacrum a copy of a copy that has no original. The lip-syncing was a key prism through which the drag queen, the figurehead of gay male oppositional culture, was able to refract gender and highlight its absurdities the simulation was itself the radical act. The idea of drag queen as a conventional pop star, then, immediately jars original music is divorced from drags historic function. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trailblazer ... Sylvester. Photograph: Anthony Barboza/Getty Images In the 70s, however, someone came along who moved the goalposts. Sylvester was one of a kind, a pioneer of the musician-stroke-drag queen business model, and the first to score a crossover hit with Mighty Real, which flew into the UK Top 10 in 1978. He performed with outrageous drag troupes in the early years, but consistently, consciously bid for mainstream success. His rise through the glass ceiling inspired drag artists such as Divine to release albums through the 80s her You Think Youre a Man peaked at number 16 in the UK singles chart, with the help of wunderkind producers Stock Aitken Waterman. Then came the force that has shaped the future of drag-pop ever since: RuPaul. Facebook Twitter Pinterest RuPaul holds the baby with with Dave Grohl, left, and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. Photograph: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc With Supermodel in 1992, RuPaul was the third queen to take a serious swipe at pop. Its No 45 US chart position might have been so-so, but MTV couldnt get enough of the draggy video. The song was not esoteric or buried in queer vernacular the lyrics referenced Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell and Kurt Cobain cited the song as one of his favourites of 1993, leading to that iconic photo of Ru holding Frances Bean Cobain backstage at the 1993 VMA awards (Shangela and Ariana, eat your heart out). Its impossible to overstate the influence that RuPaul has had on drag-pop since then. When he created the format for RuPauls Drag Race, a show that debuted in the late 00s, he built the weekly challenges around the obstacles in his own career; creating original music and appearing in videos became essential skills for the candidates to master. Hes also used the show as a vehicle to plug his own continuing music career the recent festive episode released on Netflix was panned for being an extended advert for his Christmas album. RuPauls emphasis on original songs (though an anomaly in the long tradition of drag) suddenly became par for the course in the career of a drag artist the show spawned a new generation of world-famous queens who could tour the globe and sell thousands of live tickets. As drag becomes more and more commercial, it moves further from its roots in gender parody, but as Bronski points out, this doesnt necessarily mean it is no longer a critique of gender. It uses drag in a different way, he says of original music. They are no longer hiding behind the drag a copy of a copy but rather embracing the idea of [fluid] gender. It is neither better nor worse, but profoundly different. Unlike Sylvester and RuPaul, who lunged at broad appeal, Drag Race alumni target themselves at the reality-show fandom. For many queens, the music is little more than sonic merchandise. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Monique Heart. Photograph: John Lamparski/Getty Images When contestants leave the show, they must forge their own careers by tapping into as many simultaneous revenue streams as possible live tickets, T-shirts, books and, naturally, music. Song lyrics allude to dramas that played out between personalities on Drag Race, and are built around references that only fans will recognise. The songs largely shoot for laughs and in-jokes over universalism. / Nah, I got this from Groupon is written not so much for the pop charts as the comedy charts. Indeed, thats where many of the queens original music has found success. Billboard compiled a helpful listicle of queens performance on US charts, and the comedy chart is the most common denominator. The Billboard list indicates that the bulk of queens activity is on small, niche charts where a few hundred copies is enough to get you on to the chart, says Chris Molanphy, a US chart analyst and presenter of the podcast Hit Parade. The flagship charts, ie the Hot 100 or the Billboard 200, are the ones that indicate penetration with wider audiences. Adore Delanos Till Death Do Us Party seems to be one of the only drag albums that made it on the flagship charts and still it fell off the very next week, he explains. Drag Race fans are impassioned enough to consume a queens output heavily when it first debuts typically in the first week, if it is promoted right but penetration beyond that fanbase is very limited. The queens share a small, closed network of producers and songwriters who crop up again and again on Racers albums: Mitch Ferrino produced Purse First, as well as songs for Aja and Monique Heart; Ashley Levy writes for Manila Luzon, Alaska, Adore Delano and Violet Chachki; Tomas Costanza is another name thats littered throughout queens credits. Sonically, the songs are usually straight-to-dancefloor, bass-heavy bangers that dont closely follow pops fickle trends (though they do borrow influences from EDM and trap). Queens know that the Drag Race formula get on the show, release a single, go on tour is an unfailing one-way ticket to gay stardom, and its understandable why so many queens are more than satisfied with this pathway. The burning need for daring independence that must have driven Sylvester is absent today, when just performing to the RuPaul fandom can make you a millionaire and, in the case of Bianca Del Rio, get your crowdfunded movie on Netflix. Eventually, though, Drag Race will collapse. Despite getting an upcoming fillip in the UK from new presenters Graham Norton and Alan Carr, fatigue will inevitably set in the show is already on its 11th season, not including All Stars seasons. Soon, queens may come to rely on music, not as bonus income, but as a serious vehicle for their artistry. As much as we think weve progressed, there is a lingering homophobic aversion to the sort of genderfuck that queens represent, and a significant percentage of pop consumers may not benignly embrace a drag persona the same way they did Beyoncs Sasha Fierce or Katy Perrys Kathy Beth Terry. The only moderate success of relatively unthreatening stars such as Troye Sivan and Olly Alexander suggests their image is still discomfiting to many; Ariana Grandes upcoming Manchester Pride appearance suggests we dont have enough major LGBT stars to fill headline slots. Fully fledged drag queens are likely too much of a shock to the system. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pabllo Vittar. Photograph: PR But like Sylvester in the 70s, some of todays queens are already not content with making drag music they want to make pop. Pabllo Vittar, an independent Brazilian drag queen completely unaffiliated with the Race, has achieved a platinum-selling album in his home country, as well as collaborations with Charli XCX and Major Lazer. Aja, one former DR contestant, has stated publicly that theyre not interested in being seen as a drag musician, because they dont make the sort of music that is specifically marketed to one fanbase. I dont do parodies Im not rapping about lipgloss and lace fronts, they told Billboard. Their lyrics and references are more diverse, dealing in video games and ethnic identity potential, perhaps, for broad appeal. To doubt the potential of drag queens as legitimate forces in music would be naive. Some queens are already able to pull in big-name collaborators: Violet Chachkis Bettie was co-written by Mtley Cres Tommy Lee and Mont X Change enlisted songwriter Eritza Laues (of Michael Jackson and Macklemore fame) for Soak It Up. And lets not forget the Eurovision and Australian Idol success of Conchita Wurst and Courtney Act, respectively, who won the hearts of the public in full drag. Music is a vehicle drag queens can use to insert themselves into mainstream culture as standalone artists with marketable personalities and unique voices it just remains for mainstream consumers to start listening. Shangelas innocuous voiceover on Arianas album may, in the not too distant future, be recognised as one small step for a drag queen, but one giant leap for dragkind. | https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/mar/06/can-drag-queens-become-pop-stars |
Does Laughter Have a Place in Medicine? | The saying laughter is the best medicine is touted in cheesy movies, cheesier Instagram posts, and maybe even by your well-intentioned friends. And while evidence-based medical options like, say, antibiotics, are obviously the best medicines, we wondered if laughter has any place at all in treating illness. Heres a serious answer. Patient laughing More Laughter has physical benefits Morton Tavel, MD, a retired physician of internal medicine and cardiology and now an author of books dispelling medical myths, says that laughter does have some measurable positives. We know that laughing has the intangible ability to make us feel better it reduces tension and helps us cope, he explains. But laughter has also shown measurable clinical effects in the body: It releases endorphins [endogenous opioids] from the brain, increasing tolerance to pain. In addition, it increases the activity of natural killer cells that strengthen the immune system, lowers levels of stress-provoking cortisol in blood, and is even known to improve vascular function. Humor can help doctors and patients connect in challenging circumstances One of the clearest benefits of laughter and humor in medicine, says Kelly Cawcutt, MD, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, is as a way for patients and doctors to talk about tough subjects. Laughter may help us engage in talking about more difficult concepts, provide a relatable conversation, and positively enhance communication if done with the perception of shared laughter as opposed to laughing at someone, which has clearly deleterious effects, she says. Dr. Cawcutt points to a study published in December 2018 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, in which researchers found that terminal cancer patients said they used humor to approach difficult topics with their doctors, and to counter challenges they faced as part of their illness. In addition, the study found that 97 percent of oncologists said they used humor in consultations with patients, and 83 percent found it beneficial. That said, the patients and doctors in the study acknowledged that using humor could be tricky, since it is subjective. So while lightening the mood with humor can be helpful in dark times, doctors tend to tread carefully. It turns out we arent the only ones who are wondering. Dr. Tavel highlights a few different studies that have found potential benefits from treatments based around humor and laughter. In 2015, the journal Parkinsonism & Related Disorders published a study in which researchers found that taking an improv class could cause a significant improvement in the symptoms of people with Parkinsons disease. He also identifies another study, published in the Journal of Aging Research in 2010, in which one group of care home residents participated in humor therapy, while one control group did not. Researchers found that at the end of the program, participants had significant reductions in pain scores and loneliness measures, as well as significant increases in happiness and life satisfaction scores, Dr. Tavel enthuses. Theres even evidence that a good giggle can protect your heart. Researchers in Japan have found that people who said they never or almost never laugh had 1.21 times higher prevalence of heart disease compared with people who reported laughing every day, even after adjustment for confounding risk factors, Dr. Tavel says, referring to a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology in 2016. That said, the researchers acknowledged that this could be because people who are dealing with heart disease find it harder to find things to laugh about. So there is potentially research-based evidence for the benefit of humor as part of medical treatment, but Brian Cassmassi, a psychiatrist based in LA, says that its not conclusive. The results are somewhat contradictory on the significance of evidence-based studies for laughter, though they skew toward positive effects, he says. Some studies from circa 2008 did not find statistical significance to the benefits of laughter when healing mental illness and/or physical health. He adds that its only more recently since 2015 that more studies have confirmed the potential benefits of laughter, humor, and even smiling. Which means well probably see more studies about humor and health in the future (at least it gives scientists a chance to have some fun!) | https://news.yahoo.com/does-laughter-place-medicine-132009419.html |
Why Spend a Bunch When These AirPod Alternatives Are Only $25? | From Popular Mechanics Getting a pair of AirPods is hard to justify due to the hefty price tag ($159 for the set, $70 apiece). That price only increases when you factor in the near certainty that you'll lose one of them at some point. The AiryBuds Bluetooth Wireless Earbuds are an alternative pair of true wireless earbuds that won't induce buyer's remorse. You can buy them right now for only $21.24 at the PopMech Shop by simply entering the code SEMIANNUAL at checkout. The sleek design and compact size aren't the only draws of these earbuds, though. On top of all that, they also deliver crisp audio, as well as a range of up to 32 feet, so you won't have to be tethered to your smartphone when you have these in your ears. They can be easily paired to up to two smartphones, eliminating the hassle of having to pair multiple devices repeatedly. And with the included charging case, you can listen on-the-go without worrying about running out of battery. They usually retail for $50, but you can score them for $21.24 when you enter the code SEMIANNUAL at checkout. ('You Might Also Like',) | https://news.yahoo.com/why-spend-bunch-airpod-alternatives-155600553.html |
Has Piers Morgan killed Alan Partridge? | The second episode of This Time has dipped in the ratings. A-ha! says his rival host Name: This Time With Alan Partridge. Age: A little over a week. Ah h ... No, dont do that: an impression, or quote your favourite lines. Its annoying; anyway he hasnt said that for ages. But yes, the return of Steve Coogans character, presenting a television programme that sharp-sighted viewers have noticed bears a certain resemblance to The One Show. Subtler than before, with a pathos to it. Hes, if not likable, then at least relatable. Writers Neil and Rob Gibbons have breathed new life into the character. Thats broadly what the critics have said. Glowing reviews, mostly five stars. Piers Morgan. Coogan has disappeared up his derriere, he fumed. Out of his own derriere. Hard to dispute. Plus, hes just having a go because new Partridge clearly borrows heavily and mockingly from Piers Morgan. As well as Alans co-host Jennie Gresham being pretty much cloned from Morgans own Good Morning co-host, Susanna Reid. And I heard she loved it! Thing is, there are others not just Piers who dont. Quite a lot of viewers, for example. It got 3.4 million! Thats not bad for a Monday night in an age when no one supposedly watches TV any more, and certainly not when its scheduled. That was the first episode. Two million. Just second-episode slump, a well-known phenomenon in television it will settle down. Thats one hell of a slump: 1.4 million lost in a week, or more than 40% down. Hmm, hard to dispute. Well, it could just be that the critics are wrong and the new show isnt very good. No! The second episode especially was joyous. Well, heres a theory: there are so many Partridge types in the news and the so-called real world, there simple isnt the appetite for the original, even if he is the best. Piers Morgan! Its his fault. By embodying the monster, hes effectively killed it. Dont say it like that. It makes him sound like some sort of hero. The Gibbons twins have said that a second new Partridge show is already in the works. Alan is thrown yet another lifeline! Well, quite a lot of people. Anyway, not dead yet. And do say: Ha! | https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2019/mar/06/has-piers-morgan-killed-alan-partridge |
Why Is Disney Releasing 'Avengers,' 'Star Wars,' 'Frozen' And 'Maleficent' Sequels In The Same Year? | Well, this is a huge surprise. Since Walt Disney dropped their Frozen II teaser earlier than intended (presumably to compensate for the poorly-received Aladdin TV spot from a few days before), we weren't expecting any big Disney teases to precede Captain Marvel's theatrical release. But, without any warning, we now have a new poster (which you can see at the end of this post), a new title and a new release date for their Maleficent sequel. Fresh off the presses: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil will now open October 18, 2019. So I guess this means Disney isn't taking the season off between Artemis Fowl in August and Frozen II in November. That'll be good news, eventually for Disney+. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, directed by Joachim Rnning (half of the directing duo that helmed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) and again starring Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning, is now yet another member of 2019's "five-years-later-sequel" club. It will join The LEGO Movie 2 (which will make around 40% of what the first film grossed in 2014), How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (which should be just over $400 million worldwide and going strong) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (opening May 31). It will hope to play more like How to Train Your Dragon 3 than Pacific Rim: Uprising ($267m in 2018). I'm not sure that Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is any safer of a sequel bet than Alice Through the Looking Glass, but I'd hope for less of a comedown (-71% from Alice in Wonderland's $1.025 billion gross six-years-prior). My own issues with Maleficent aside (the behind-the-scenes melodrama, which saw Robert Stromberg essentially replaced by John Lee Hancock, left the film barely resembling a narrative feature), it was an early example of "star+character." Folks wanted to see Angelina Jolie as the Sleepy Beauty villain, so they showed up to the tune of $249 million domestic and $758m worldwide that summer. How well this sequel performs will be a question of how much they want to see Jolie as Maleficent again. I have no idea what the plot of the second film will be, but the first Maleficent's climax (where the princess teamed with the villain to essentially murder the king and put herself on the throne) certainly leaves lots of room for exploration. It's not unlike the dilemma posed by Aquaman 2, which ended with an absolute stranger showing up with a magic staff and displacing the long-time king. Think Black Panther 2 if Killmonger had won. I'm glad to see Linda Wolverton is again writing. Even when I don't like a given movie, her screenplays tend to offer some harsh feminist subtexts (Maleficent was I Spit on Your Grave for kids) that strengthen the movies. What this means for the competition is that Warner Bros.' Joker is no longer the top banana of October, and the early November biggies (Terminator: Dark Fate and Charlie's Angels) will have even more female-centric competition to worry about. That's a good problem for society, even if the whole "fewer people go to the movies just to go to the movies than they did in 2014" factor means any competition is bad news. For that matter, Disney is now offering even more "girl power" for October, November and (thanks to Star Wars IX) December to close out the year. It also means that 2019 will be even more of a case of Disney clearing out their biggies this year. Maleficent 2 was supposed to be one of the Mouse House's big releases in 2020, alongside Mulan, Pixar's Onward, The Jungle Cruise and whatever Marvel has in store for Phase Four. Moving this film to mid-October, even when Frozen II and Star Wars IX are expected to dominate anyway, is a little odd. Without arguing that Maleficent II will hurt Frozen II (that's a big "maybe") or Star Wars IX (that's a "no. "), it does seem clear that Walt Disney is frontloading their biggest of big movies this year, and specifically this year, in anticipation of Disney+. The more huge movies in theaters this year, the more that will be on Disney+ next year. The must-succeed streaming service is currently Disney's top priority, and Captain Marvel will be the first theatrical flick to enter the world of streaming not on Netflix but rather on Disney+. It'll be followed by (deep breath) Dumbo, Avengers: Endgame, Aladdin, Dark Phoenix (which will technically be a Disney flick by the time it leaves theaters), Toy Story 4, The Lion King, Artemis Fowl, The New Mutants (which, whether it makes it to theaters or not, will be on a Disney-owned service within a year) Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Frozen II and Star Wars IX. So, by default, the (potentially) biggest theatrical slate in modern history will in-turn create the biggest streaming premiere slate in recent history as well. And that's not counting the various original shows (The Mandalorian, the various MCU originals, High School Musical, etc.) and movies (Magic Castle, Lady and the Tramp, Noelle, etc.) that will debut sometime within the service's first year. So, not only is the ridiculously-stacked (with potentially the biggest Disney Animation sequel, biggest Pixar sequel, biggest Star Wars movie, biggest MCU movie, and biggest live-action remake) theatrical slate in 2019 about overtly dominating in the realm of market share, it's also about making sure that Disney's biggest flicks are available for Disney+ sooner rather than later. That's arguably worth Disney potentially getting undercut in 2020 and 2021 in terms of theatrical releases. While 2020 and 2021 may be the years where the likes of Universal/Comcast and Warner Bros. start to catch up to Disney (or at least where Disney's biggest don't necessarily tower over their rivals), that may be mere trivia if a gazillion people subscribe to Disney+ in that first couple of years and put the service on equal ground with Netflix. With ESPN+, Hulu (which will air Disney and Fox's more adult content) and Disney+ all under the same roof, it'll be essentially a three-way streaming war between Disney, Netflix and Amazon. Everyone else (Warner Media, DC Universe, Universal, CBS All Access, YouTube, etc.) will be fighting for scraps. And even if the post-Endgame MCU comparatively falters, or if Star Wars never again reaches the heights of even Rogue One, Disney is banking on making sure that they get consumer money whether folks see their movies in theaters or if they see them at home. In 2019, Captain Marvel, Dumbo, Avengers: Endgame, Aladdin, Toy Story 4, The Lion King, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Frozen II and Star Wars IX will allow Walt Disney to rule theaters. That same slate, if all goes according to Bob Iger's plans, will help them potentially rule the streaming marketplace in 2020. And that's not even factoring Fox's Avatar sequels into the equation. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2019/03/06/disney-maleficent-star-wars-avengers-frozen-lion-king-aladdin-toy-story-captain-marvel/ |
Who Is Arya Running From in the New Game of Thrones Trailer? | Warning: This post contains potential spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8. If you somehow werent already anxious about whats to come in Game of Thrones final season, then the first few seconds of the new season 8 trailer will likely push you over the edge. The trailer opens with a clearly terrified Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) breathily heavily and gathering herself before sprinting down what looks like a corridor in Winterfell. We cant see who or what shes running from, but the preview then cuts to what seems to be an earlier shot of her holding up a dagger made of dragonglass, one of the two materials that can kill White Walkers and wights. I know death, hes got many faces, she says. I look forward to seeing this one. The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now If its safe to assume that Aryas running scenes take place during the final showdown between the living and the dead that is set to take place at Winterfell, then it seems likely that whatever enemy is chasing her is probably undead. MORE: Your Ultimate Guide to Binge-Watching Every Game of Thrones Episode However, it would be out of character for Arya, a hardened and seemingly fearless faceless assassin, to be scared of any old wight or even White Walker especially when she has a weapon that can effectively be used against them. Given that so much focus has been placed on the Winterfell crypts in Game of Thrones season 8 teasers, some fans are theorizing that the Night King will find a way to reanimate the bodies of Aryas dead family members and set them loose in Winterfell. Aryas father, Ned Stark (Sean Bean), and older brother, Robb Stark (Richard Madden), no longer have heads, so they may be kind of hard to recognize. But seeing the reanimated corpses of her mother, Catelyn Stark, (Michelle Fairley), or younger brother, Rickon Stark (Art Parkinson), seems like it could definitely put the fear of God in Arya. The reappearance of Catelyn seems like a particularly feasible option as a nod to the Lady Stoneheart storyline from George R.R. Martins A Song of Ice and Fire book series that never made it into the show. However, other fans are speculating that it may have nothing to do with the Starks at all, and that the enemy in question will actually be a reanimated or still living Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen), who Arya executed on her sister Sansas (Sophie Turner) orders at the end of season 7. Or maybe Arya is just putting on an act to lure her opponent to a more advantageous location just like she did with the Waif in season 6. For now, all we can say is, run, Arya, run! Watch the full Game of Thrones season 8 trailer above. Game of Thrones returns for its eighth and final season on April 14. Write to Megan McCluskey at [email protected]. | http://time.com/5545732/arya-stark-running/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29 |
Which free-agent safety should the Chiefs try to sign? | On Tuesday, NFL teams parted ways with two safeties who have appeared in a combined nine Pro Bowls, adding to a deep pool of talent on the free-agent market at the position. The Ravens released Eric Weddle and the Giants said they wouldnt use the franchise tag on Landon Collins. The Chiefs have been rumored to be interested in adding a safety during the offseason, and there are no fewer than nine strong candidates who could fit the bill. Here is a snippet of information on the nine and a poll follows, so please vote and/or leave a comment: Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Kansas City Star Landon Collins: Spent all four seasons with the Giants and made three Pro Bowls. He is 25 years old. Eric Weddle: Hes played 12 seasons (nine with Chargers, three with Ravens) and made six Pro Bowls. He is 34 years old. Earl Thomas: Thomas first nine seasons have been with the Seahawks and hes been selected for six Pro Bowls. He will turn 30 in May. Tyrann Mathieu: Was with the Texans last year after spending five seasons with Arizona. He will be 27 in May. He was in one Pro Bowl. Ha Ha Clinton-Dix: Traded to Washington at midseason last year from Green Bay where he played his first four seasons. He was in one Pro Bowl and will turn 27 in December. Adrian Amos: The 25-year-old spent his first four seasons with the Bears. Kenny Vaccaro: Spent last season with the Titans after playing his five seasons with the Saints. He is 28. Adrian Phillips: Selected for his first Pro Bowl last year, his fifth with the Chargers. He will turn 27 this month. Lamarcus Joyner: The 28-year-old has been with the Rams his entire five-season career. Here is the poll: | https://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/for-petes-sake/article227178699.html |
What Rockies are likely to make the 25-man roster? And whos turning lots of heads in spring training? | With the Rockies about a third of the way through their Cactus League schedule as of Wednesday and young prospects likely to see less and less playing time as the regular season nears heres the report on how Colorados top up-and-coming players are faring in Arizona. Likely to make 25-man. Three guys in the mix for the second base job Ryan McMahon, Garrett Hampson and Pat Valaika have all impressed with the bat. McMahons batting .476 (10-for-21) with a homer and three RBIs while looking fluid at multiple infield spots, while Hampson (.313, 5-for-16 with two homers) and Valaika (.350, 7-for-20 with three homers) are also making their impact felt. Plus, Raimel Tapia is looking like a lock to become the teams fourth outfielder, as hes batting .304 (7-for-23) while playing mostly solid defense at the corner spots. And on the mound, right-handed relievers DJ Johnson and Yency Almonte rookies who both made their big-league debuts last year will likely shore up Colorados bullpen. Johnson has allowed just one hit through three scoreless innings, while Almonte has allowed two runs over three innings. Turning lots of heads. These guys wont be with Colorado when camp breaks, but theyve elevated their big-league profiles over the past couple of weeks. Corner infielder Tyler Nevin has a couple of hits, drawing commentary from Bud Black that he picked up where he left off from his Arizona Fall League batting title. Fellow non-roster invitees Bret Boswell and Brian Mundell have also flashed promise; Boswell has several hits while playing second base and Mundell, a first baseman, has four hits and a couple of RBIs in 14 at-bats. And dont overlook third baseman Colton Welker, who has five hits, two homers and six RBIs in just eight at-bats. Pitching-wise, right-handers Justin Lawrence and Carlos Estevez also increased their status on the major league radar. Lawrence, a 24-year-old hard-throwing sidearmer, boasts a 98-mph heater that could eventually make him a dominant bullpen force in LoDo if he can improve his splits against lefties and continued to master his offspeed. And Estevez, who missed his chance at a call-up last year due to a prolonged elbow strain, has also demonstrated a high-90s fastball when healthy. The 26-year-old has allowed one earned run in two-plus innings. Still noise to make. A handful of players have shown glimpses of their full potential while still leaving some room to wonder about their ultimate roles with the club in 2019. Outfielder Michael Saunders, an all-star in 2016 with Toronto, has four hits and five walks in 20 plate appearances as the veteran aims to prove his .158 average in 38 games at the Triple-A level last season was a fluke. Fellow outfielder Noel Cuevas, who is attempting to make the 25-man as a reserve outfielder after making his MLB debut last season, is hitting .250 (5-for-20) and could potentially start the season in Triple-A Albuquerque. In terms of the young guns, Jeff Hoffman and Peter Lambert both came into Scottsdale with a huge opportunity in front of them with the No. 5 spot in the Rockies rotation up for grabs. It has been a mixed bag of results for both right-handers. Hoffman, 26, has yielded four runs on five hits and a couple walks through six innings, while Lambert, 21, has given up five runs on eight hits (two homers) and four walks in the same amount of pitching. Also keep an eye on. Spring training is a small sample size, and while these players havent exactly had any big-league eureka moments quite yet, their potential long-term contributions cant be overlooked through the first dozen Cactus League games. Outfielder Yonathan Daza, 25, is coming off an injury-marred season in Double-A Hartford but has given the coaching staff glimpses into the defensively sound, high-average hitter hes maturing into. And dont forget about a couple of other outfielders 28-year-old Mike Tauchman has five RBIs and must continue to try to prove himself as a major-league hitter, while 25-year-old Sam Hilliard has one home run. Plus, catcher Dom Nunez, who hit ..222 with nine homers in Double-A in 2018, is the organizations top catching prospect (not counting Tom Murphy, who is out of minor league options); starting right-hander Ryan Castellani is back for his third big-league camp after two consecutive seasons in Hartford; right-hander Jesus Tinoco has thrown two-plus scoreless innings as he continues to evolve into a power reliever; and third-base prospect Josh Fuentes, the 2018 Pacific Coast League MVP, is hungry to make early-season noise in Triple-A after a hand injury derailed his chance of making an impression at Salt River Fields. | https://www.denverpost.com/2019/03/06/rockies-prospect-update-spring-training/ |
Which Massachusetts college basketball teams have a shot at the NCAA Tournament? | It might not feel like it when you step outside, but a glance at the calendar tells us its March, when college basketball takes center stage in the sports world, with the NCAA tournament beginning in the latter half of the month. Selection Sunday, when the 68 teams for the mens field will be announced, is March 17. The 64-team womens field will be revealed on March 18. With the regular season winding down, and conference tournaments under way, it seemed like the right time to take a look at which Massachusetts Division 1 programs have a shot of reaching the tournament. Men Advertisement Northeastern (20-10, 2nd in CAA): The Huskies went 14-4 in the Colonial Athletic Conference to finish one game behind Hofstra, which finished 25-6 overall and had a 19-game winning streak snapped by Northeastern at Matthews Arena on Feb. 2. The Huskies closed out the regular season with four straight wins and will need to win the conference tournament, which begins Sunday at North Charleston, S.C., to reach the NCAA tournament. Get Sports Headlines in your inbox: The most recent sports headlines delivered to your inbox every morning. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here Harvard (16-9, tied for 1st in Ivy League): The Crimson have won three in a row to pull into a first-place tie with Yale (19-6 overall). Both teams are 9-3 heading into the final weekend of the regular season, with Harvard closing out at Cornell and Columbia. Only the top four teams qualify for the conference tournament, to be played March 16-17 in New Haven, Conn. The Crimson have already qualified and would need to win reach the NCAA tournament. Boston College (14-15, 10th in ACC): The Eagles have been competitive in the Atlantic Coast Conference, and came away with a 66-59 win over Louisville last week. But their 5-12 conference record likely means they would have to win five games in five days in the ACC tournament, which begins March 12 in Charlotte, N.C. Holy Cross (16-16, 10th in the Patriot League): A last place finish for the Crusaders, who went 6-12 in league play, meant they had to open the conference tournament at Lafayette. Holy Cross prevailed, and will now play at No. 2 Bucknell in the quarterfinals Thursday night. Boston University (15-17, tied for 7th in the Patriot League): After posting a conference record of 7-11 in league play, the Terriers defeated Loyola of Maryland in the first round of the Patriot League tournament. They will play at No. 1 seed Colgate in the quarterfinals Thursday night. Advertisement UMass (10-19, 13th in the A-10): The Minutemen are in the bottom of the pack in the Atlantic Conference and would have to win five games in five days to capture the A-10 tournament, which begins March 13 in Brooklyn. UMass Lowell (15-15, 5th in America East): The River Hawks find themselves in the middle of the pack and would need to win three in a row in the conference tournament, which begins Saturday. Women Robert Franklin/Associated Press Harvard head coach Kathy Delaney-Smith and senior guard Sydney Skinner close out the regular season with a pair of games at home. Northeastern (17-10, 6th in CAA): The Huskies went 7-9 in the Colonial Athletic Association, good for sixth place with two games remaining in the regular season. Should they maintain that position, they would earn a first-round bye in the conference tournament and begin play in the quarterfinals on March 14. Boston College (14-15, 12th in ACC): The Eagles went 3-13 in conference play to finish in 12th place. They ended the regular season having lost eight in a row, and open the ACC tournament in Greensboro, N.C. Wednesday against Virginia. Harvard (14-11, 3rd in Ivy League): With two games remaining, the Crimson are 7-5 in league play, and close out the season at home this weekend with games against Cornell and Columbia. If they maintain their position in the top four, they will play in the Ivy League tournament on March 16. Advertisement Boston University (15-12, tied for 3rd in Patriot League): The Terriers are 11-6 in conference play heading into Wednesdays season finale against Loyola MD. Theyve already clinched a quarterfinal home game for the conference tournament, which begins March 11. Holy Cross (17-11, 5th in the Patriot League): A 9-8 conference record has the Crusaders locked into the fifth spot heading into Wednesdays season finale against Lehigh. They will open the Patriot League tournament on the road in the quarterfinals on March 11. UMass (16-15, tied for 8th in A-10): The Minutewomen went 7-9 in the Atlantic 10, and won their conference tournament opener, 86-80, at George Mason Tuesday night. They will be at No. 2 seed Fordham on Friday in the quarterfinals. UMass Lowell (7-22, tied for last in America East): The River Hawks were 3-13 in conference play and lost a tiebreaker to not qualify for the conference tournament. Follow Andrew Mahoney on Twitter @GlobeMahoney | https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/colleges/2019/03/06/which-massachusetts-college-basketball-teams-have-shot-ncaa-tournament/0OQNXC0DfSYrYN2joeQX4J/story.html?src=rss |
Why Is Cersei Drinking Wine in the Game of Thrones Trailer? | Warning: This post contains potential spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8. When we last saw Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) in Game of Thrones season 7, she had finally managed to alienate her twin brother Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) the one person who had always been loyal to her by refusing to send the Lannister army north to fight in the war against the dead. She also announced that she was pregnant with Jaimes child, launching a good old Game of Thrones fan debate about whether or not this was true. However, in the new Game of Thrones season 8 trailer that dropped on Tuesday, Cersei is shown tearing up while drinking a glass of wine. Now, thats not to say that drinking is at all out of character for Cersei. But when Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) and Cersei were reunited in the season 7 finale, The Dragon and the Wolf, it seemed like part of the reason he was able to guess that she was pregnant was that she wouldnt drink the wine he poured her. If Cersei is off the wagon in season 8, it could mean that she either miscarries or was never actually pregnant at all. And if youre someone, like Cersei, who gives credence to the valonqar prophecy, it seems like that was the inevitable outcome all along. The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now In a flashback sequence in the season 5 premiere, we saw a young Cersei having her future told by a witch named Maggy the Frog (Jodhi May). Everyone wants to know their future, until they know their future, Maggy tells her. You will never wed the prince, you will wed the kingYoull be queen, for a time. Then comes another younger, more beautiful to cast you down and take all you hold dearThe king will have 20 children, and you will have threeGold will be their crowns, gold their shrouds. Almost all of these predictions have already come true. Cersei was promised to Prince Rhaegar Targaryen (Wilf Scolding) as a young girl, but ended up marrying King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) following Roberts Rebellion. He went on to father many illegitimate children while Cerseis three kids who are all dead were a product of her incestuous relationship with Jaime. The only ambiguity is the mention of the younger, more beautiful queen, who some think was Margaery (Natalie Dormer) and others believe will turn out to be Daenerys (Emilia Clarke). MORE: Your Ultimate Guide to Binge-Watching Every Game of Thrones Episode However, in A Feast For Crows the fourth novel in George R.R. Martins A Song of Ice and Fire series there is a final line of the prophecy that the show did not include: And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you. Since valonqar means little brother in High Valyrian, in the books, Cersei long assumes that Maggy the Frog was talking about Tyrion. However, as the second-born twin, Jaime is technically also her little brother. Weve hardly ever seen Cersei cry. So it seems significant that there will be a season 8 scene in which she openly weeps when her tears are supposedly a harbinger of her death. As Olenna Tyrell (Diana Rigg) warned Jaime about Cersei right before her death, Shes a disease. I regret my role in spreading it. You will too. Watch the full Game of Thrones season 8 trailer above. Game of Thrones returns for its eighth and final season on April 14. Write to Megan McCluskey at [email protected]. | http://time.com/5546222/cersei-drinking-wine/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29 |
Can Micro-Real-Estate Developers Help Solve the Homelessness Crisis? | Jesica Vasquez is a thirty-four-year-old caseworker at Housing Works, a homeless-services agency in Los Angeles. Her jobto help people, many of them struggling with mental illness and addiction, find and remain in housingputs her at the center of the countrys most extreme homelessness crisis. In Los Angeles, some forty thousand people live in cars, tents, sleeping bags, or boxesthe largest unsheltered population in the nationand thousands of others live marginally, on couches or in shelters. Even when the number drops, as it did this past year (after a surge the previous year), the lack of affordable housing guarantees that the problem will remain a persistent one. A recent study by the Luskin Center for History and Policy, at U.C.L.A., found that Los Angeles is unaffordable for almost half of middle-income renters and nearly all those who are poor. Insufficient and expensive housing are often the reasons behind new cases of homelessness. Vasquez earns forty-five thousand dollars a year. Her one-bedroom apartment, in a dilapidated, roach-infested building in brink-of-gentrifying MacArthur Park, where she moved after her landlord in Boyle Heights raised the rent thirty per cent, costs nearly twelve hundred dollars a month. Because she spends at least thirty per cent of her income on rent, she is what economists call rent burdened; the instability and poor condition of her housing also meets the definition of housing insecure. The month that she moved in, her neighbors began receiving rent-increase notices, of three to four hundred dollars a month. Eviction notices went up; undocumented families got spooked and moved on; some neighbors organized a rent strike. Every day, Vasquez is terrified that shell be next. Its very hard to come home and be stressed out about a lot of the problems that the population we work with are also dealing with, she told me. Im here advising my participants, Dont worry, youre not going to get a rent increase. When they are having anxiety, I try to keep them calm. Then I come home and Im, like, Oh, my God, Im getting three-day notices. Im one or two checks away from being homeless myself. The grim irony of Vasquezs predicamentshared by many front-line workers in homeless serviceshas, for the first time in a long time, some hope of resolution. Recognizing Californias housing shortage and its role in driving poverty, Governor Gavin Newsom has offered a Marshall Plan for housing: his first state budget proposed more than two billion dollars for the construction of low- and middle-income housing and for homeless services. The details of the spending, and how they relate to the 3.5 million new homes that Newsom intends to have built by 2025, are still being worked out in the legislature. But Newsoms focus on housing could help usher in a construction boom in Los Angeles similar to the postwar building spree of low-lying single-family tract homes that shaped the city as we know it. In the meantime, those aging homesproduced in the heyday of the car cultcould provide an unexpected reservoir of housing, in the form of the detached two-car garage. Thanks to a 2017 state law that lifted restrictions on accessory dwelling units, or A.D.U.s, old garages can now be converted into habitable spaces. In Los Angeles County, there are a quarter million detached two-car garages. Steven Dietz, an asset-allocation expert who teaches business at U.S.C., is the C.E.O. of United Dwelling, a new development company that proposes to lease some of those garages from homeowners, convert them into dwellings, and rent them out at below-market rates to the homeless and the housing insecure. (United Dwelling will accept Section 8 housing vouchers.) A portion of the rent will be shared with the homeowner. The average annual household income in the areas in which United Dwelling plans to build is fifty-eight thousand dollars; rent from an A.D.U. would bring the homeowner an additional six thousand dollars a year (and a property-tax increase of about four hundred dollars). United Dwelling will handle property management and maintenance. As for parking, the A.D.U. law doesnt require it, though the units need to be within a half mile of public transportation or within a block of a ride-share-pickup spot. Each United Dwelling garage-conversion unit features built-in appliancesdishwasher, gas range, and washer-dryerand French doors that open onto a tiny patio with a trellis for shade. Photograph Courtesy United Dwelling The biggest impediment is the stigma around the idea of homelessness. Proposals to erect housing for the homeless tend to incite panic in gentrified and gentrifying neighborhoods. With A.D.U.s, the structures are already there, in harmony with the character of their surroundings. Rhetoric about a neighborhoods changing character is often used by not-in-my-back-yarders to justify resistance to new housing, especially when its intended for poor and societally disadvantaged people. Dietz hopes to help homeowners see homeless as a label that applies not just to acute cases like those Vasquez manages but also to people, like Vasquez, who are struggling to find appropriate housingsocial workers, nursing aides, teachers. Overcoming prejudice and fear, or just the discomfort of sharing, may simply be a matter of appealing to homeowners needs: for income and for help. In the best cases, Dietz says, the match between homeowner and tenant could yield multiple advantages. He told me about a homeowner he found in Leimert Park, in South Los Angeles, who lives five doors down from a school. The future tenant he identified teaches there but currently commutes two hours each way from the Antelope Valley, the closest housing she can afford. The homeowner has a two-year-old. Dietz hopes that by years end hell be starting twenty conversions a week. Thatd be a thousand a year, which is a drop in a bucket compared to the six hundred thousand the city needs, he told me. United Dwelling hired a small-house architecture firm called Modative to design the units, which feature built-in appliancesgas range, dishwasher, washer-dryerand space for a large TV, a queen-size bed, a nightstand for keys and chargers, and a bin to store extra bedding. (The architects studied tiny houses, micro-apartments, and R.V.s to come up with the layout.) To create an indoor-outdoor feeling, they included French doors that open onto a tiny patio and a trellis to provide shade in the day and protection from the homeowners headlights at night. The other day, I met Christian Nvar, a general contractor and co-founder of Modative, and his wife, Krystal Nvar, who works with him as a construction manager, at a job site in West Los Angeles, where they are building a prototype of the United Dwelling design for a couple who own two Vietnamese restaurants. They intend to use it as a granny flat, a place for the wifes mother, who takes care of their two young children, to live. Outside of the housea nineteen-forties beige stucco box with a tile roofthe Nvars had set up a kiosk with flyers. Build a Home in Your Backyard, it said. Granny Flat, Crash Pad, Guest House, Rent A.D.U., Rent Main House. To the right of the house, a long cement driveway led to a gutted beige stucco garage. Inside was a big mound of dirtfoundation work was under wayand the beginnings of framing for the walls. Several workers in hard hats measured beams. Krystal brought celebratory Starbucks: that morning, theyd passed their first inspection with the building department. The workers, Christian explained, were first-timers, hired through Chrysalis, an employment agency for homeless and low-income people, many of whom were formerly incarcerated. Their participation would bring an additional meaning to United Dwellings work. These guys, who didnt get a lot of opportunities, can end up back where they grew up, helping to build housing for themselves in neighborhoods that are getting gentrified away from them, Christian said. For homeowners struggling with income, he said, A.D.U.s can be transformational, turning them into micro-real-estate developers. One of the workers, Eslie Taylortwenty-eight, with long dreads underneath his hard hatsaid that he grew up in Los Angeles, near U.S.C. Later, his family moved to the desert. He had been to prison, then found work as a janitor. This was his first construction job; before starting it, he had never picked up a power tool. I watch a lot of renovation TV, he said. HGTV and YouTube. They teach you. Its inspiring. I love to tell the story of how Californias changing and allowing people to build A.D.U.s. He looked around the site. This looks dirty, but its going to be a real nice place. I tell my wife, I want something like this. At the moment, he and his wife live in East L.A., in a house that his mother owns. His new plan is to persuade his mom to become a developer, starting with a little house for him and his wife in the back yard. | https://www.newyorker.com/news/california-chronicles/can-micro-real-estate-developers-help-solve-the-homelessness-crisis |
Will The Proposed Nevada Joint Venture With Barrick Gold Help Newmont Realize Better Value? | On March 4, 2019, Newmont Mining Corp. (NYSE: NEM), one of the largest gold mining companies, rejected the unsolicited, hostile takeover bid from Barrick Gold (NYSE: GOLD), and in turn proposed a joint-venture with Barrick for its Nevada operations. In February 2019, Barrick Gold had offered to buy out Newmont in an $18 billion deal, translating into a value of $33.50 per share for NEM, which was much lower compared to $36.48, the level at which NEMs share had closed a day prior to the offer. As a condition, Newmont would have had to shelve its deal with Goldcorp, which is likely to complete in Q2 2019. As expected, Newmonts management has declined the offer, as Barrick has offered no premium to NEMs shareholders in fact valuing them at a discount. Newmont would have also had to shell out a cancellation fee of $650 million to Goldcorp if it decided to call off their merger. Though the synergies from Barricks deal would outweigh the $650 million, the asset quality and diversification benefits, along with incremental cash flow per share and NAV accretion that the deal with Goldcorp offers, is much more. Additionally, the only benefit that the deal with Barrick would achieve is the synergy at Nevada, as Barrick wants to mainly take advantage of Newmonts superior processing techniques and infrastructure at Nevada, but a merger would expose NEM to Barricks risky African assets, following its acquisition of Randgold Resources in January 2019, and thus reduce the overall returns to NEMs shareholders. Thus, Newmont has proposed a joint venture with Barrick Gold for their Nevada operations. We believe that such a joint venture, if it materializes, would lead to higher earnings for the investors as well as would increase the potential upside to NEMs share price, as the company would be able to reap benefits from the Goldcorp deal as well as synergies at Nevada. In addition, here is more Materials data. Key Effects of the JV Strong Revenue Growth: We believe that total revenue for Newmont would increase sharply by about 35% to $9.8 billion in 2019, from $7.3 billion in 2018, mainly driven by an increase of 36% in gold revenues. Gold shipments would likely increase to ~7.4 million ounces in 2019 from 5.5 million ounces in 2018, which marks a growth of 34.2%, driven by incremental volume from Goldcorp in Canada, Mexico, and Ghana as well as higher shipments in Nevada. The Nevada mines contribute a little over one-third of Newmonts as well as Barricks total reserves and revenues. Thus, in case of the joint venture in which NEM is proposed to hold 45% interest, it would add to the total volume of gold attributable to Newmont. Gold prices have strengthened in the last three months and we expect prices to remain elevated during the year as institutional as well as retail investment in the yellow metal has been on an upswing with rising global economic uncertainty. Copper revenues would likely rise by 3.5% in 2019, driven by organic growth in volume as well as better price realization due to robust demand growth, especially with rising sales of electric vehicles. Expected Synergies: Barrick has significant mineral reserves and resources, while Newmont offers superior processing plant and infrastructure at Nevada. In case of a JV, which could certainly equal a Nevada gold mining powerhouse, the companies would be able to reduce cost per unit by taking advantage of Barricks tier-one gold assets and Newmonts 13 processing facilities in the region. Cost applicable to sales per ounce of gold is expected to decrease to $705 in 2019 from $708 in 2018 due to the expected synergies. This would be much lower than expected CAS of $711 per ounce in 2019 in the absence of a JV. Similarly, the all-in sustaining costs per ounce of gold, which was $909 in 2018, is expected to be $925 in 2019 after a JV, much lower than $945 in a no-deal scenario. Though copper production is minimal at Nevada for both the companies, a JV would likely have a positive effect on the CAS and AISC per pound. Along with the expected synergy, increasing volume would also contribute to lower cost per unit. Profitability: Net income margin increased significantly from -1.5% in 2017 to 4.7% in 2018, due to lower tax expense following the TCJ Act, with expectations of margins remaining almost flat in 2019. However, if both the companies go ahead with their joint venture, higher revenue growth along with synergy benefits would likely lead to margins increasing to about 5% in 2019. We expect margins to continue the upward trend going forward. Stock Valuation Presently, we have a price estimate of $39 for Newmont Minings share, which is higher than its current market price. NEMs share price has maintained its upward trend over the last couple of years, whereas Barricks share has seen immense volatility, with it losing about 24% of its value in 2018. The offer made in February 2019 was the second takeover attempt by Barrick, with the last one made in 2014. Since then, NEMs stock has returned 65% to its investors, as against Barricks return of -22%. Thus, we believe that Newmonts decision of not going ahead with Barricks offer is in the best interest of its shareholders, as such a deal would have eroded the companys value. On the other hand, if the proposed joint venture goes ahead along with the Goldcorp deal, Newmont is expected to benefit immensely in the form of higher volume and revenue, better asset profile, decreasing costs, and improving profitability. In such a scenario, we have a price estimate of $44 for Newmont Minings share, which reflects a potential upside of about 28% from its current market price. This is more than double the potential upside of about 13% available to Barricks share price. As per the latest information, Barrick has invited Newmont for discussion regarding the Nevada joint venture. If the two gold giants are able to seal a deal at Nevada, it would benefit both, with Newmont taking away a major chunk and ensuring hefty returns to its investors. Explore example interactive dashboards and create your own. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/03/06/will-the-proposed-nevada-joint-venture-with-barrick-gold-help-newmont-realize-better-value/ |
Did NH lawmakers wear pearl necklaces to mock activists testifying about gun violence? | CLOSE Exactly eight years after former Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot, she helped introduce a gun control bill expanding background checks. USA TODAY A few Republican members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives sparked an uproar after images circulated on social media showed them sporting pearls to a hearing on gun control. But the group that gave out the necklaces deny they were meant to mock concerns about gun violence. Volunteers from Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, who came to the statehouse in Concord on Tuesday to testify about gun violence, felt the lawmakers wore the necklaces to imply they were "clutching their pearls," a metaphor often aimed at women for someone who is demonstrating feigned or exaggerated shock or outrage. The angry responses to the pearls included statements from two Democratic presidential candidates: Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Sen. Kamala Harris of California. Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts tweeted the men wore "pearls to mock @MomsDemand volunteers." Of the 13 person ERPO hearing committee, 10 of the lawmakers are men; half of them are wearing pearls to mock @MomsDemand volunteers. Meanwhile, their constituents are in tears as they testify about gun suicides and domestic gun violence in their families. #NHPoliticspic.twitter.com/eVIS73yfoR Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 5, 2019 But the state Republican party called the uproar "fake news" and said the pearls were given to the state legislators by the Womens Defense League of New Hampshire as a sign of support for gun rights. The Women's Defense League opposes gun control measures and encourages women to "empower themselves by safely and accurately learning how to use firearms." "It's absolutely fake news to claim that the representatives were mocking anyone in the chamber," said Joe Sweeney, a spokesman for the New Hampshire Republican Party. Too many guns are falling into the hands of dangerous people, threatening kids' lives and making our communities less safe. These moms are fighting to confront gun violence and protect our children. They don't deserve to be mocked. We stand with you, @momsdemand. https://t.co/qizaz7a8vi Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) March 5, 2019 Moms who want to keep their kids safe from gun violence dont deserve this. https://t.co/oQnQatlx4x Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) March 5, 2019 To mock those who have lost so much to gun violence, and who are fighting for what they believe in, is the lowest of the low. https://t.co/ZOCh1GnkXD Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) March 5, 2019 Sweeney told USA TODAY that the Women's Defense League has been giving out the pearls since 2016 to "show solidarity with their groups' position on Second Amendment issues." Kimberly Morin, president of the New Hampshire Women's Defense League, tweeted, "The PEARLS are in support of the Women's Defense League. Women who ACTUALLY PROMOTE GUN SAFETY and WOMEN'S RIGHTS." The PEARLS are in support of the Women's Defense League. Women who ACTUALLY PROMOTE GUN SAFETY and WOMEN'S RIGHTS #nhpolitics#HB687pic.twitter.com/pd0Pjd8ZqT Kimberly Morin (@Conservativeind) March 5, 2019 The lawmakers wore the pearls during a meeting of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, which was discussing proposed "red flag" legislation. The gun control measure would allow a judge to restrict access to firearms by people who are considered a threat to themselves or the public. Family members and law enforcement would be able to petition the court to issue such an order. Gun control: Gabby Giffords' activism is symbolic of the Democratic Party's shift on guns More: Supreme Court's conservatives appear poised to expand Second Amendment gun rights A photo from NHJournal, a conservative-leaning news site, showed seven of the eight Republicans on the committee, all but one of them male, sporting the pearl necklaces. State Rep. Scott Wallace also wore a pin resembling a semi-automatic rifle. "We were given the pearls by the Womens Defense League," Wallace told NHJournal. "They ask us to wear them as a sign of support. And not just the guys. Women legislators were wearing them, too." "They gave them out to a whole bunch of us," state Rep. David Welch, one of the men in the photo, told the Union Leader. Welch told the paper he agreed to wear the necklace to symbolize his opposition to the bill. "These men are supporting women and supporting women who support actual women's rights. They are the farthest thing from sexist and there was a women (sic) lawmaker wearing them, too," Morin told CNN Wednesday. But Watts' opinion that the pearl necklaces were meant to mock gun control advocates went unchanged. "These lawmakers decided to wear symbols that essentially mocked the process," she told the Union Leader. "They showed they were not coming to this hearing with an open mind, and they were making light of survivors who were testifying on the suicide of a child, or women who were survivors of domestic abuse." She told The Washington Post that "when you are a male lawmaker and you come to a hearing wearing a pearl necklace and a semiautomatic rifle pin, you sort of lose control of the narrative." The website for the Women's Defense League organization decried the proposed red flag bill as "the most destructive piece of legislation to ever be introduced to the legislature in modern history." The group claims the bill would allow the "rights of law-abiding gun owners" to "be stripped away by an angry ex-husband or wife; a psychopathic ex-roommate; a pissed off Mother-in-Law; an abusive boyfriend" and warned, "the police can file a petition on ANYONE at ANY TIME." Advocates of red flag laws say they can help prevent acts of violence, including mass shootings and suicides. State Rep. John Burt told Talking Points Memo that Watts and other anti-gun activists "need to get over themselves." "This had nothing to do with them. It is to support the Womens Defense League and the good they do to train women to protect their children," Burt said. Gun control: House passes expanded background checks as GOP tries to shift focus to immigration More: For many Americans, the Second Amendment is a defense against their own government Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/03/06/new-hampshire-gun-control-pearl-necklaces/3078579002/ | https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/03/06/new-hampshire-gun-control-pearl-necklaces/3078579002/ |
Why is an Oklahoma City group spending big to get Daniel Valenzuela elected mayor of Phoenix? | Opinion: An Oklahoma group is mounting a last-minute ad blitz for Phoenix mayoral candidate Daniel Valenzuela. We're not entitled to know. (Photo: Laurie Roberts) An Oklahoma City group is mounting an 11th-hour blitz to get its chosen candidate elected mayor of Phoenix next week. Advancing Freedom Inc., took out a front-page ad in Tuesdays Arizona Republic and a full-page ad on Wednesday, extolling Valenzuelas virtues and listing his prominent local supporters. Phoenix deserves a leader who answers the call every time! the Oklahoma City non-profit tells us. Couldnt tell you. Gov. Doug Ducey and the Arizona Legislature have made sure of that, every time they have rejected proposals to require transparency in political campaigns. Advancing Freedom Inc., is a dark money group and thus doesnt have to tell us who is funding its last-minute independent campaign for Valenzuela, just a week before the March 12 election. Valenzuelas wife, Wendy, has worked as a lobbyist for APS since 2014, when she left her previous job as Valenzuelas chief of staff. APS CEO Don Brandt has donated $1,000 to Valenzuelas campaign, according to campaign finance reports on file with the city. APS is widely suspected of secretly funding an independent campaign for a pair of candidates it wanted on the Arizona Corporation Commission a few years ago. Of course, the advantage of an independent campaign is that there are no limits on the amount you can spend on a candidate. And no fingerprints to be made public if your preferred candidate gets into office. Suns CEO Robert Sarver gave Valenzuela $6,300 last year, according to campaign finance reports. He has long been pressing the city for a major upgrade to Talking Stick Resort Arena. Valenzuela supported the citys recently approved deal to spend $150 million to upgrade the city-owned arena. The city will take out a loan in order to put in $2 for every $1 kicked in by the Suns, a sports franchise that has exploded in value in recent years. Of course, it may not be either of those special interests. But it appears somebody is using Advancing Freedom to shield its support for Valenzuela. NEWSLETTERS Get the Opinions Newsletter newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Our best and latest in commentary in daily digest form. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Mon-Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Opinions Newsletter Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters According to Guidestar, which monitors non-profits, Advancing Freedom qualifies to file abbreviated IRS reports, which means it has had annual gross receipts of just $50,000 or less. Now, suddenly, it's got the dough to pay for pricey newspaper ads and other campaign materials. Ive tried calling and e-mailing Advancing Freedom Inc. The e-mail address listed on the non-profits website bounced back -- twice -- as undeliverable. Every time I tried to call the non-profit, an automated voice explained to me that all of our agents are busy at this time Well see if anybody calls me back when all their agents are less busy, to explain the non-profit's interest in who becomes the next mayor of Phoenix. Valenzuelas campaign didnt respond to a request for comment either. But then, independent campaigns cannot coordinate with the candidates they support so presumably Valenzuela doesnt know whos behind the secretly funded campaign. Yet, that is. Reach Roberts at [email protected]. Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2019/03/06/why-oklahoma-city-group-spending-big-phoenix-mayors-race/3084315002/ | https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2019/03/06/why-oklahoma-city-group-spending-big-phoenix-mayors-race/3084315002/ |
Who is Cognizant, the tech services company behind Facebook's latest scandal? | As an outsourcer of technology services for a range of big American companies, Cognizant has largely remained below the radar since launching more than two decades ago. But it is suddenly being thrust into the spotlight for its work for moderating some of Facebook's most graphic and controversial content. Cognizant and Accenture are two of the many tech services providers Facebook employs to do routine work. Three years ago, that included curating the social media giant's "trending topics" feed, which has since been scrapped. Today, it involves policing Facebook content to ensure it doesn't violate the company's terms service. Cognizant staffers are paid $15 per hour, according to The Verge -- or what some fast-food restaurants around the U.S. are offering. Though it's not well-known among consumers, Cognizant has been a player in the tech outsourcing and consulting space for 25 years. Their clients are everywhere, using Cognizant for everything from call centers to IT strategy. "They're a one-stop shop of IT consulting," said David Holt, an analyst with CFRA. New Jersey HQ, but most workers in India Cognizant is big -- it has a market value of $41 billion, and as of last year had roughly 280,000 employees. Most of those are in India, where it has about 195,000 workers. The company's headquarters are in Teaneck, New Jersey, a few minutes' drive from New York. It has 32 other locations across the country, where it employs about 50,000 people, along with offices in Europe. Although it's global, Cognizant makes most of its money in the U.S. It generated $16 billion in revenue last year, three-quarters of which was in the U.S. The company started in 1994 as the tech department of Dun & Bradstreet, and went public four years later. Moderating content is a small part of its business Facebook has gotten heat for subcontracting out the emotionally challenging work of moderating the content that runs on its site, but others have hired Cognizant for similar things. Cognizant workers in Ireland have done work for Google, according to the Sunday Times, performing tasks like verifying Google Maps listings for the equivalent of $13.50 per hour. The company declined to break out the number of employees it has in content moderation, but that line of work is a small part of its business overall. Most of its work is providing IT services to large companies, including developing software, maintaining and testing applications, and creating digital infrastructure. Its clients range from 3M and Prudential Insurance to the state of Ohio. Francisco D'Souza, one of Cognizant's founders, became the company's CEO in 2007. He is set to step down from the role in April. Don Emmert / AFP/Getty Images In its earlier days, the company specialized in helping large companies outsource their data operations, but it has recently shifted more of its work to consulting as clients' tech budgets have flattened. Cognizant's top revenue line is financial services, which accounts for just over a third of its business. (The company works with 16 out of the top 20 North American financial institutions, according to a client presentation.) It also develops and supports software for the health care industry, which makes up 28 percent of its revenue, according to securities filings. Moderation risks Cognizant recognized the challenges of moderating online content as far back as 2012, publishing a white paper called "How to De-Risk the Creation and Moderation of User-Generated Content." "The huge growth and pervasiveness of [user-generated content] within companies' core online user experience poses potentially complex challenges and heightens unnecessary exposure to risk," the paper said. It also proposed several methods of moderating content, including automated screening and human moderation, which, although effective, "can be highly inefficient," it wrote. Using people to moderate a thousand six-minute videos would cost $277, the paper estimated. In response to the Verge's story, Cognizant sent CBS News a statement that said, in part: "Our goal is to ensure that we provide a variety of support options including on-site counselors, a robust wellness program and resources and wellness classes covering a range of disciplines to support the needs of every employee involved in content moderation." "We have investigated the specific workplace issues raised in a recent report, previously taken action where necessary and have steps in place to continue to address these concerns and any others raised by our employees," the statement said. Top visa sponsor Cognizant is one of the largest employers of skilled foreign workers in the U.S, according to Citizenship and Immigration Services. In 2016, it received approval for 21,000 H1-B visasnearly double the number given to the next-highest petitioner, Infosys. The average salary for those jobs was $84,300. The U.S. government's recent crackdown on visa applications has hurt Cognizant's business, it said in its latest annual report. Three white workers sued Cognizant last year, accusing the company of discriminating in favor of South Asian workers. That lawsuit it pending. It recently settled bribery charges In mid-February, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged two Cognizant executives with bribing officials in India. Without admitting wrongdoing, Cognizant paid $25 million to settle those charges. The company itself was not charged. Cognizant's then-president, Gordon Cobur, and its chief legal officer, Steven Schwartz, were accused of paying and concealing nearly $4 million in bribes in connection with building the company campus in Chennai, India. The nearly three-year-long investigation hurt Cognizant's stock, but analysts say it's unlikely to affect business going forward. "Morally or ethically, it's not really a good look, but for the financial impact--they have around $4 billion in cash, so $25 million is more or less a drop in the pond," said CFRA's Holt. He added, "It's pretty common across a multitude of companies to have those kinds of fines." | https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-is-cognizant-meet-the-it-company-behind-facebooks-latest-scandal/ |
What should doctors like me do if a teen wants vaccines but his parents don't? | CLOSE When Ethan Lindenberger presented scientific evidence that vaccines dont cause autism to his anti-vaxx mom, she responded, Thats what they want you to think." As a physician who cared for critically ill children for more than 30 years at Phoenix Childrens Hospital, Ive taken care of several young children who were not vaccinated and who developed measles, leading to advanced medical care. Despite parents seeing their child stricken with the preventable disease, they all stood their ground and still refused to vaccinate. There was no recourse on our part to change their mind or intervene. Parental values and their best interest regarding their children trumped the evidence of the outcome of their decisions. In declining vaccinations for their child, many parents believe that vaccinations could cause ill effects that could compromise their child. They want to protect their child against all odds. It is that single interest in protecting the child from harm that comes into question. The parents have good intent. But their action or inaction could be construed based solely on their own bias, with little regard for the danger they are putting their child in. When parenting brings harm to a child such as abuse or neglect, society and the law intervene to protect the child. Not vaccinating a child and later having that child die of a preventable disease is harm. The law already allows adolescents to receive medical care without parental consent if it relates to the reproductive system. That means a patient younger than 18 can seek treatment for a sexually transmitted disease, can request testing for HIV and a prescription for birth control. How we should define a 'mature minor' NEWSLETTERS Get the Opinions Newsletter newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Our best and latest in commentary in daily digest form. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Mon-Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Opinions Newsletter Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters That's a grayer area. Teenagers who realize that vaccines had not been offered them as a child may become resilient to parental demands and beliefs. They may see firsthand the destruction of life by preventable disease and seek self-protection, ensuring that they will have a meaningful life. If so, they do so without parental consent and trust that physicians to whom they turn for help will support them when they ask for a vaccine. Physicians are duty and oath bound to serve those who come to them for help, to prevent harm from happening and to be virtuous in their care. Physicians engage in not only taking care of patients but engage in caring for and caring about them. A teen who understands the ramifications of illnesses, especially those that are preventable, can be considered a mature minor. In American law, the mature minor doctrine says that an unemancipated minor patient may have the maturity to choose or reject a health care treatment, sometimes without the knowledge or agreement of their parents, and should be allowed to do so. We entitle teenagers to self-worth and a right to be autonomous in their medical decisions as long as the decisions do not lead to personal harm. Teenagers can be mature minors if they understand the consequences, risks and benefits of their decisions. In my opinion, they need no parental consent. David Beyda, MD, is chair and professor of the Department of Bioethics and Medical Humanism at the University of Arizona College of Medicine Phoenix. He is the former division chief of Critical Care Medicine at Phoenix Childrens Hospital, where he also served as chairman of the hospitals Bioethics Committee. Click here to subscribe to azcentral.com. Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2019/03/06/vaccines-unvaccinated-teens-do-they-need-parental-consent/3078473002/ | https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2019/03/06/vaccines-unvaccinated-teens-do-they-need-parental-consent/3078473002/ |
Could daylight saving time 2019 be one of the final time changes for Oregon? | Daylight saving time starts at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 10 in 2019. Presumably, it will start at a similar time in 2020 and 2021. But if Oregon Senate Bill 320 becomes law, after we spring forward in March of 2021, we might never fall back. The bill, sponsored by several lawmakers including Senator Kim Thatcher (R), Representative Bill Post (R) and Representative John Lively (D), abolishes annual one-hour change in time from standard time to daylight saving time and maintains Oregon on daylight saving time. If the bill passes, Oregon voters will get the final say in November 2020. And if that passes, Oregonians will get a little less totally arbitrary sleep disruption twice a year. Puerto Rico, Arizona and Hawaii already dont change their clocks during the year and California, Florida and Washington all have legislation working their way through the system to create permanent daylight saving time. Stay tuned. But dont forget how you feel after losing an hour when you head to work Monday morning, if for no other reason than to have a story to tell your grandchildren about the olden days of daylight saving time. End daylight saving time now (commentary) Twice a year, for no real reason, we give ourselves what amounts to jet lag. It's time to stop this outrage. | https://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2019/03/could-sundays-daylight-saving-time-be-one-of-the-final-time-changes-for-oregon.html |
Is it time to ditch the suit and tie? | Image copyright Getty Images Increasingly firms are telling staff it's OK to loosen their collars and change into chinos, believing that is the way to attract and retain staff. This week, Goldman Sachs became the latest to issue new guidelines allowing more flexibility over work attire, but asking employees to "exercise good judgement" in deciding how to dress. Justin Urquhart-Stewart, founder of investment firm 7IM, with 300 staff Image copyright George-Brooks Image caption Justin Urquhart Stewart has worn his trademark red braces for the past 40 years "You're looking after people's money, so you should behave and dress respectfully. I would not expect to hand over my pension to someone in jeans, loafers and a football shirt. It may be old-fashioned but I think it would be dangerous for a business to do that. "The underlying element is, people will behave as they dress. If people dress in a smart respectable way, that's how they tend to behave. "If you let people dress sloppily, that is how your brand will be perceived. "We have been discussing recently whether to introduce dress-down Friday. We're slowly moving towards it. "I think dress codes have to change and mature with the times. Even something as eccentric as a tattoo will develop into an acceptable fashion accessory. "The tie will be got rid off in the next 30 years. My generation has to die out first, but in 20 years, the suit and tie will look very old-fashioned indeed. Suits will have evolved into something different, more practical, less of a uniform, but still what people perceive as respectful dressing. "I'm attached to my red braces, because they're attached to my trousers, they're buttoned on. I've always worn them. I am out of step, slightly old-fashioned, but it isn't as if I'm going around in frock coat and frilly shirt." Shanti Kelemen, 34, portfolio manager at Coutts Image copyright Shanti Keleman Image caption Shanti Keleman says she finds it hard to be on top of things in jeans and a T-shirt "It depends on the image you want to project. At Coutts, we still have policy that men should wear ties when they see clients. I don't think that will change in the short run. It's part of our brand and image. "Personally, I like dressing up. It puts me mentally in a better state of mind. I find it hard to be on top of things in jeans and a T-shirt. But I am sometimes jealous of my sister, who works from home and can wear pyjamas. "I cycle to work, so I need clothes I can stuff in my cycling bag and can pull out unwrinkled. I leave my suit jackets at work and I wear flat shoes a lot of the time. I spend a lot of time traipsing all over the City. Heels aren't that practical. "[I don't think there's a generational divide over dressing smartly, but if you have people from a different background, where maybe they haven't been taught what is suitable work attire, sometimes they need help in understanding jeans aren't appropriate. We have programmes at Coutts to teach those things. "For us, we never know what a given day will have in store for us. We will always dress business-appropriate. We may go to see an entrepreneur in the morning, then someone else will drop in unexpectedly in the afternoon, and you want to be prepared." Peter Tarrant, 77, retired chief executive of a precision engineering firm Image copyright Peter Tarrant Image caption Peter Tarrant's engineering company made parts for the Typhoon "I have very strong views on dress code and the image that is projected. I come from a generation that values discipline and respect for authority. "Teachers wore a suit and tie and were respected. Police would hand out on-the-spot reprimands to us youngsters and we would not dare tell our parents, as they would further reprimand us, never questioning the judgement of the police officer. "A builder of aircraft would, I'm sure, not feel comfortable if his supplier of safety-to-life parts turned up for a million-pound contract dressed in a Hard Rock T-shirt and slashed jeans. "In conclusion, dress should be appropriate for the occasion. A builder would dress differently to say a financial adviser with whom you may trust your life savings." | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47466819 |
Did Trump just butcher Apple CEO Tim Cook's very easy name? | President Donald Trump shakes hands with Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook during the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board's first meeting in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, March 6, 2019. 1 / 7 Back to Gallery After a Wednesday meeting of President Trump's American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, the president was called out for how he referred to the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, who was sitting right next to him. Instead of calling him Tim Cook, it was reported Trump called him "Tim Apple." This would have been far from Trump's first name blunder he called Sen. Kamala Harris "Kameela" and famously referred to the fire-decimated Butte County town of Paradise as "Pleasure." And despite the monosyllabic nature of Cook's moniker, it too appeared to trip up Trump. ALSO READ: Kamala Harris defends Ilhan Omar after backlash to Israel comments Twitter, ever eager for a White House gaffe to make memes out of, had a field day. "He just thinks everyone names their company after themselves like he did," joked one Twitter user. See more jokes in the gallery below: Twitter reacts to Trump saying "Tim Apple" when referring to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Twitter reacts to Trump saying "Tim Apple" when referring to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Watching a bit more of the president's remarks makes it less obvious. "We have so many companies coming in, people like Tim, you're expanding all over and doing things that I really wanted you to from the beginning. I used to say, 'Tim, you've gotta start doing it over here,' and you really have. I mean, you've really put a big investment in our country. We appreciate it very much, Tim Apple." POLITICAL NEWS: Democrats say no upcoming presidential debates on Fox News It's that last part people are making fun of. But if one punctuates the quote slightly differently "We appreciate it, Tim, Apple," it reads like he's thanking both the company and its CEO. Trump's signature rambling style of speaking can make it hard to tell what he means. Watch for yourself and see what you think: The American Workforce Policy Advisory Board is a 25-member group that advises the president on workforce and business issues. Other companies represented on the board include IBM, SAP and Siemens. Read Alix Martichoux's latest stories and send her news tips at [email protected]. Start receiving breaking news emails on wildfires, civil emergencies, riots, national breaking news, Amber Alerts, weather emergencies, and other critical events with the SFGATE breaking news email. Click here to make sure you get the news. | https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/tim-cook-apple-trump-video-said-name-wrong-13668497.php |
Why are humans so kind, yet so cruel? | Some scholars caution that this view lends too much credence to the notion that our species is predisposed to murder, which could lead to a pessimistic view that lethal violence is an inherent part of the human condition. For his part, Wrangham argues that it is important to acknowledge the role of violence in our species past. At the same time, he urges people to heed the words of Katharine Hepburns character in The African Queen, when she said, Nature is what we are put in this world to rise above. In his book The Goodness Paradox, Dr. Wrangham argues that in our evolutionary past, the most reactively aggressive, domineering males were executed by coalitions of subordinate males. In doing so, our species capacity for explosive interpersonal violence declined. But at the same time we evolved a propensity for cold-blooded aggression. The question has long been a mainstay of philosophers. But anthropologist Richard Wrangham has shifted that debate into the realm of evolutionary biology. Out of all the days humans have spent fighting wars, Dec. 24, 1914, stands out as particularly subversive. At scattered points along the Western Front in Belgium and France, fighting paused, and German and British forces soldiers began singing Christmas carols. Then, in defiance of the well-heeled generals at the rear, the mostly working-class combatants on both sides laid down their rifles and tentatively emerged from their trenches. Tales of soccer matches are probably exaggerated, but the soldiers did exchange cigarettes and other trinkets and posed for photos together. The so-called Christmas Truce is notable for juxtaposing our species extremes of kindness and aggression, and it illustrates an age-old question about human nature. The origins of war and its relationship to questions of human nature is an old debate that goes back to the Enlightenment, says Brian Ferguson, the director of the peace and conflict studies graduate program at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. The apparent contradiction in human nature has served as a mainstay in philosophy from ancient Confucian philosophy to the European Enlightenment up through today. A book by a prominent Harvard anthropologist offers a fresh approach to answering these questions. British primatologist Richard Wrangham offers a somewhat unsettling view that a certain kind of violence may have enabled the rise of human kindness. His hypothesis draws on findings in evolutionary biology, anthropology, primatology, moral psychology, and is sparking debate among those disciplines practitioners. Courtesy of Alexander Georgiev Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham has revived an age-old question about the roles of violence and kindness in the evolution of humanity. Our dual nature Humans are very extreme in the direction of the frequency of killing and intergroup aggression, Professor Wrangham, author of The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution, published in the United States in January. And at the same time, we are extremely an outlier in the fact that our interactions within groups are so extraordinarily docile. Even compared to bonobos, the peaceable cousins of chimpanzees, typical daily interactions between humans occur with very little physical violence, Professor Wrangham notes. He and his colleagues suggested in 2012 that, compared to chimps, bonobos show the same shortened skull, smaller teeth, and more gracile features that dogs do compared with wolves, guinea pigs with wild cavies, and domesticated foxes with wild foxes. Bonobos tranquility, Wrangham and his colleagues suggest, is the product of self-domestication. The idea that humans are a domesticated species is as old as Aristotle, and was also considered, but ultimately dismissed, by Charles Darwin. But the evidence today supports the idea more strongly than ever. If you compare the skulls of modern humans with those from the mid-Pleistocene epoch, youd see that our faces are smaller, flatter, and more juvenile, just like domestic animals compared with their wild counterparts. Whats more, humans have been found to share some of the same genes associated with domestication, ones that are absent in the genomes of our extinct relatives. The question that Ive been interested in is whether war has always been practiced by humans even before we were fully human as an expression of some sort of innate predisposition or drive, or has war developed later? says Ferguson. Did war have beginnings that reflect the changing nature of society? Wrangham argues that the roots of modern warfare lie in the distinction between reactive aggression and proactive aggression. An example of reactive aggression might occur when you surprise your cat with a pat on the belly. Proactive aggression is when your cat surprises you by quietly sneaking up and pouncing on your foot. Both involve you getting attacked, but the mechanisms producing the behavior are different. When you frame it like this, its clear that, compared with cats, chimpanzees, bonobos, and other mammals, humans score extremely low in levels of reactive aggression, and extremely high in levels of proactive aggression. Wrangham argues that the only plausible explanation is what he calls the execution hypothesis: Over several thousand generations of prehistoric human history, organized coalitions of males killed off reactively aggressive males, and, in doing so, shifted the course of human evolution. Part of how we've been able to become more peaceful is that we kill off the most violent of our leaders, says Rose McDermott, a professor of international relations at Brown University in Providence, R.I. Over long periods of time among large numbers of people, you end up with a more slightly more egalitarian system. We breed a kind of peacefulness, at least for the in-group. Professor McDermott says Wranghams book helps explain some of the emotional undergirding of principles such as deterrence, both in warfare and in politics. When you think about the relationship between leaders and followers, she says, in a democracy where we vote people out of office or much more finally with dictators where populations rise up and assassinate them, there exists a universal recognition that vengeance and the drive for vengeance exists. I think really, really good people are capable of really, really bad things under the right circumstances, says McDermott. But if you eliminate the capacity to be really bad, maybe you also eliminate the capacity to be really good. Wrangham cites examples of such aggression in hunter-gatherer societies. His examples vary in time and place, from Inuits to Aboriginal Australians, but they follow a similar pattern. A group of males identify a domineering or overly aggressive male and wait for the right opportunity to kill him, without injuring themselves. The emergence of language, particularly sophisticated language some 100,000 to 60,000 years ago, would have greatly aided such conspiracies. Once that happens, then everything changes, says Wrangham. Individual subordinate males can come together and get rid of a dominant. That seems to me to be the ultimate explanation for why human groups particularly clearly in small-scale societies do not have alpha males. Texas State anthropologist Jill Pruetz, the director of the Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project in Senegal, suggests that Wranghams perceptions of violence among chimpanzees may have been shaped by the particular West African subspecies that he observed, which are typically more violent than the East African chimps she works with. More broadly, shes skeptical about how much the social arrangements of chimpanzees can inform those of humans living today. Richard puts out very provocative and interesting ideas, she says. But we have to be careful about applying what we know about chimpanzees and bonobos to living humans. Rising above nature Societies have become, on balance, more tolerant and egalitarian in recent centuries. But the continued existence of war shows that our species never abandoned its propensity for proactive aggression. Proactive aggression probably first evolved with hunting behavior, then adapted itself to intergroup aggression, and then to the kinds of planned executions within groups Wrangham describes. Even though intergroup aggression absolutely seems to have been a very important part of our evolutionary past, it does not translate simply into complex warfare, he says, especially when the leaders are behaving with greater reactive aggression than the troops. The king can order his minions into battle, and his minions are very unhappy about doing it. And the fact that the minions are being ordered into battle is an evolutionary novelty. Professor Ferguson, the director of the peace and conflict studies program at Rutgers, argues that violence observed in so-called primitive societies needs to be viewed in the context of European expansionism and colonialism. Lethal violence among chimpanzees, he says, should also be viewed with similar caveats. To Ferguson, who has read passages from Wranghams book but not the whole thing, insisting that humans are innately warlike can undermine peace. Theres always going to be conflict, he says. But we can find ways of dealing with conflict that dont involve violent, destructive, killing conflict. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy Near the end of the book, Wrangham makes clear that he opposes capital punishment, and that he is hopeful that warfare will decline as the world moves toward an ever smaller number of independent nation-states. The past was very rough, he says. He then quotes Katharine Hepburns character in The African Queen: Nature is what we are put in this world to rise above. | https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2019/0306/Why-are-humans-so-kind-yet-so-cruel |
How Much Is Today's HIV Research Centered Around The Search For A Cure? | For the second time ever, a man's HIV infection has been sent into remission. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Rowena Johnston, director of research for the Foundation for AIDS Research. MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Today a big announcement about HIV/AIDS - a second man's HIV infection is in remission. This is being hailed as a milestone in the search for a cure, which prompts a question. We're going to put that question to Rowena Johnston. She is in Seattle for the conference where this news was announced today. She's the vice president and director of research for the Foundation for AIDS Research - amfAR. And she joined us from member station KUOW. Rowena Johnston, welcome. ROWENA JOHNSTON: Thank you very much. KELLY: So I want to mention that your group amfAR funded the research, which is published today in the journal "Nature." Talk to me about this specific case and why it's a breakthrough. This has to do with a man with HIV and cancer who got a stem cell transplant. JOHNSTON: That's right. We're referring to this man as the London patient. He was living in London and was living with HIV and developed cancer. And his cancer was not responding to normal treatments. And so he became a candidate for a stem cell transplant. And his physicians were really quite smart. And they decided to look for a donor who also had a CCR5-delta 32 mutation. KELLY: OK. JOHNSTON: And this mutation is quite rare, but people who have this mutation are highly resistant to HIV infection. And so by using cells from this donor, they were replacing the London patient's immune system with the immune system of a person who's highly resistant to HIV in a situation that was very closely similar to the Berlin patient, who we now do believe was cured. KELLY: Between these two patients was - I believe it's a dozen years. And doctors had, of course, tried to replicate the results in those intervening years. And the virus kept coming back. JOHNSTON: You're right that there had been attempts to recapitulate what had happened in the Berlin patient. In some cases, the transplant recipients were getting donor cells from a person who did not have that CCR5-delta 32 genetic mutation. So it's beginning to look like having donors that have that mutation is a key element to this successful outcome. So it's really having the similarities and the differences between these cases and being able to compare them is where we're going to learn the valuable lessons to move us forward. KELLY: Just to be clear, the London patient was dealing with a very specific health situation. In other words, the breakthrough that is being reported today does not mean that a widespread, universal cure is within immediate reach. JOHNSTON: That's right. Stem cell transplant is only appropriate for people who are living with a cancer of the immune system. So this intervention itself is not the way in which we are going to cure people living with HIV across the world. What this intervention is going to help us understand, though, is which are the critical components that we can learn from and put together so that we can develop some different type of cure that is appropriate everywhere that people are living with HIV. KELLY: So let me circle you back to the question I posed at the outset, which is we - now decades into this grappling with HIV and AIDS, there are drugs which help prevent infection, which help people who are living with HIV infection manage it and live successful, long lives at this point. JOHNSTON: A person living with HIV today needs to take their antiretroviral therapy every single day of their lives for the rest of their lives. And that becomes very burdensome both from an economic perspective and also, perhaps, from the perspective of their own health. And when you're taking antiretroviral therapy every day, you're reminded every day that you have this virus for which you are stigmatized. And so having a cure for HIV relieves a lot of these burdens. And if we can cure this infection, that's going to encourage people to get tested for HIV because there's going to be that sense of optimism that they don't have to live with this virus for the rest of their lives. KELLY: Rowena Johnston - she is research director for amfAR. That's the Foundation for AIDS Research. Thanks for your time. JOHNSTON: Thank you very much. Copyright 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. | https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05/700512059/how-much-is-todays-hiv-research-centered-around-the-search-for-a-cure?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=healthcare |
Will Imani Sacrifice Having a Baby to Fix Her Botched Bottom? | Flipping out! On Wednesday's all-new Botched, mother of one Imani turned to Dr. Terry Dubrow and Dr. Paul Nassif after a previous procedure left her with butt implants which had minds of their own. Specifically, if Imani sat down "the wrong way" her butt implant would flip. "I have a triple butt almost with these lumps you can see from the side profile," Imani explained in a confessional. "There's like an indentation and I want my butt to look nice." Despite being a plastic surgery enthusiast, Imani underestimated the toll butt implants would take on her body. When Imani reached out to her surgeon about her complications, she was shocked when the doctor advised her to just flip her right implant back into place. To make matters worse, Imani had been "flipping and flipping and flipping ever since." | https://www.eonline.com/news/1020130/will-imani-sacrifice-having-a-baby-to-fix-her-botched-bottom?cmpid=rss-000000-rssfeed-365-topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories |
How will the Bears approach a loaded safety free agent market? | originally appeared on nbcsportschicago.com 2019's crop of free agent safeties has both top-end talent and plenty of depth, creating what could be a favorable market in which the Bears can operate next week. Scroll to continue with content Ad Adrian Amos will be one of those players testing free agency when players can enter negotiations with other clubs on Monday, and can officially sign contracts with teams other than their own beginning Wednesday afternoon. But he's hardly alone in a group that includes: - The New York Giants' Landon Collins, a 25-year-old former All-Pro who remains one of the better safeties in the NFL; - Earl Thomas, formerly of the Seattle Seahawks, a three-time All-Pro and Super Bowl champion with 28 career interceptions and 11 forced fumbles; - Tyrann Mathieu, a 26-year-old 2015 All-Pro with the Arizona Cardinals who turned a one-year prove-it deal with the Houston Texans into what should be a multi-year contract; - LaMarcus Joyner, on whom the Los Angeles Rams used the franchise tag instead of wideout Sammy Watkins a year ago; - HaHa Clinton-Dix, whose play with the Green Bay Packers waned a bit before a midseason trade to Washington but is still only 26, has 14 career interceptions and hasn't missed a game in his five years in the NFL; - Eric Weddle, surprisingly released this week by the Baltimore Ravens, a 34-year-old with 12 years of experience but who has only missed three games since 2010 and made the Pro Bowl in all three years he was in Baltimore; - Kenny Vaccaro, a 2013 first-round pick of the New Orleans Saints (when Ryan Pace was part of that front office), who's recorded at least one sack every year of his career while totaling nine interceptions and 34 passes defended in 81 games; Story continues - Tre Boston, who took a cheap one-year deal with the Arizona Cardinals last year and could provide solid play for a similarly-inexpensive price tag; - Clayton Geathers, who had a solid season to help the Indianapolis Colts reach the playoffs in 2018; - Glover Quin, a durable 10-year veteran recently released by the Detroit Lions; - And George Iloka, who only started three games for the Minnesota Vikings last year but isn't far removed from being a full-time starter for the Cincinnati Bengals. All 11 of those players, plus Amos, are among Pro Football Talk's top 100 free agents. Collins (No. 8), Thomas (No. 10), Mathieu (No. 12), Amos (No. 14) and Joyner (No. 17) are all in the top 20. This, likely, will create a buyer's market for teams - like the Bears - needing a safety. The Bears will enter free agency pleased with not only Amos' play in 2018, but his development since being a fifth-round pick in 2015. "I thought he played well," Pace said. "He played solid and the ball production increased as the season went on and I think he was comfortable in the defense. you know he's an example of a player that we drafted and developed and he's gotten better. He's a great teammate and a good Bear." The Bears, though, have a difficult balance to strike in free agency. Eddie Jackson will be due a significant payday a year from now, unless the Bears go the route of using the franchise tag on the 2018 All-Pro (even then, OverTheCap projects the franchise tag for a safety to be a little over $13 million in 2020; if it continues to increase by nearly $2 million per year, it could be around $15 million in 2021, when Jackson would be a free agent). The Bears could theoretically design Amos' deal to front-load it and give them an out for when Jackson's salary would escalate, but Amos may also be able to command more long-term security in the open market. And going that route would, of course, take up more cap space that the team may need to fill out its depth chart. If the Bears do move on from Amos, consider what Pace said when generally talking about safeties as a blueprint for a target. "Really our safeties in a lot of ways are interchangeable," Pace said. "Sometimes the days of just playing a deep free safety and then a box safety all the time, that's not always realistic. So you kind of have to have a balanced skill set for both players." It's worth noting that Jackson actually had more tackles on running plays (16) than Amos (11) in 2018, though those low totals were more the function of the Bears' front seven being so good and rarely letting a running back into the second level. Amos is generally considered more of an in-the-box strong safety as opposed to the rangy, ballhawking Jackson. The Bears, certainly, have considered plenty about Amos long prior to the week before he hits free agency. His market among free agent safeties may actually be the most fascinating to watch among the group - he doesn't have the star power of Collins, Thomas or Mathieu, but those around the game know his value. Even then, perhaps big deals for Collins and Thomas could be enough to depress the market for Amos a bit. Or perhaps there are so many teams in need of a safety that Amos' market will remain strong even if, say, Collins/Thomas/Mathieu/Joyner all get larger deals than his. Whatever the answer, Amos is not the Bears' only option in free agency. But Amos did hint in the aftermath of the Bears' brutal playoff loss that he feels there's some unfinished business in Chicago. "Being that close and feeling like you're such a great team knowing that this was a great opportunity," Amos said, "It weighs on your mind a little bit." | https://sports.yahoo.com/bears-approach-loaded-safety-free-211820589.html?src=rss |
Where is the world's hardest-drinking city? | Drinking is seen as a sign of masculinity in Kiev, says Daria Meshcheryakova. People dont understand how a grown man could be sober in the evenings or on holiday they would wonder what was wrong with them. Last year the Ukraine capitals city council voted to ban shops from selling alcohol between 11pm and 10am in an attempt to curb excessive all-night drinking. Mescheryakova, a local journalist, says generational changes may work to reduce consumption in any case. The biggest drinkers are middle-aged men, she says: Young people in Kiev, who grew up with the internet, they arent as interested in getting drunk. The former Soviet states in eastern Europe are among the worlds heaviest-drinking countries, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), which mapped the total alcohol consumption of people over the age of 15 in litres per capita across the globe. Elsewhere, countries such as South Korea, Vietnam and Portugal are curious outliers and drink more than the regions that immediately surround them. Australia, Canada and Europe all also have significant levels of drinking. But although identifying heavy-drinking countries is relatively straightforward from the available data, it is a little trickier to single out individual cities. Facebook Twitter Pinterest According to WHO data, Lithuania is the heaviest-drinking country in the EU, with its capital Vilnius an increasingly popular tourist hotspot. Photograph: Ray Tang/REX/Shutterstock Lithuania is cited as the heaviest-drinking country in the European Union based on WHO data. On average its population consumes a staggering 15 litres of pure alcohol per person per year the equivalent of 167 bottles of 12% wine. Its capital, Vilnius, is increasingly popular as a weekend tourist hotspot, and could potentially be a contender for the one of worlds hardest-drinking cities but locals arent so sure. Problem drinking is not as much of an issue in the capital, says journalist Ziville Raskauskaite. It is more [of an issue] in rural areas where people are unemployed and dont have as much to do in their free time. That opinion appears to be backed up by a study commission by the Lithuanian Business Confederation, which found that the countryside contained almost twice as many people with a drinking problem as in cities. Religious, cultural, social and economic factors all make a difference within countries. In the US, New York and LA have a higher rate of drinking than other areas, as you might expect, says Max Griswold, lead author of a recent study on global alcohol consumption since the 1980s. Areas such as Utah are much lower, because of the large Mormon population. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Men and women drink in an illegal tavern in Gugulethu, about 15km from the centre of Cape Town. Photograph: Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty Images In Africa, a study from the University of Cape Town points to a widespread binge-drinking problem affecting one in seven adults in South Africa. The country is high up in the ranking for alcohol consumption in the continent possibly because it is home to some of its wealthiest cities. Youll find that drinking in Johannesburg or Cape Town isnt much different from in London or New York, says Munya Shumba, a Johannesburg resident who works in the financial sector. You get the same brands of whisky and beer, and the bars and pubs are full on a nice day after work. Alcohol consumption has also been a problem over the border in Namibia. In 2017 police in Windhoek, the capital, introduced breathalyser tests for pedestrians involved in motor accidents, as well as for drivers. A police spokesperson said most of the time, victims will be coming from bars and under the influence of alcohol, which makes it difficult for them to fully concentrate on the road. Ahead of the decision, a report found that between 1 January and 4 October 2016, 147 pedestrians were killed on Namibian roads and 832 were injured. In some cities, work culture has long revolved around drinking as a way of team bonding. In Seoul, home to half the population of South Korea, the preference is for shots of soju, a fermented rice spirit that is 20% alcohol. Research from Euromonitor has shown that South Koreans consume the equivalent of 13.7 shots of spirits per week twice as many as the stereotypically hard-drinking Russians, for example. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Russian man drinks beer during a ski race requiring participants to drink the total of half a litre of vodka and five litres of beer over a 5km distance. Photograph: Maxim Marmur/AP Seoul-based companies and the government have been trying to restrain the post-work drinking culture. An outbreak of hepatitis means sharing glasses is now forbidden, and a number of big businesses have been trying to operate a 1-1-9 rule meaning post-work drinks should be kept to one round, in one location, and end by 9pm. Fashion can also change drinking habits. Vodka-loving Russia has recently seen a dip in its alcohol consumption, perhaps dovetailing with a growing craft beer scene in Moscow and St Petersburg. However, a BBC factcheck of a government ministers claim that alcohol consumption in the country had fallen dramatically found that sales of vodka are still robust. Indias booming scotch whisky market has helped drive a rise in Scottish exports of the spirit. While average alcohol consumption isnt high in India nationally, Griswold says a trend towards whisky-drinking and tasting sessions in cities such as Mumbai and Delhi is showing up in the statistics. A popular new trend in Mumbai and other large cities has been whisky tasting, especially among women aged 55 and older, says Griswold. No other country has this in their data where women start to drink more as they age but it is the case in India because of this trend. Women have become quite fond of whisky there, it seems. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A child sleeps at a shop selling whisky in Hanoi, Vietnam. Photograph: Kham/Reuters Ultimately, though, it is difficult to say definitively which is the hardest-drinking city in the world. Drinking in the Ukrainian capital tends to be highly visible and Mescheryakova describes often seeing groups of men buying cheap alcohol from shops which they then drink sitting on chairs on the pavement outside but elsewhere it can be completely private. It will always be hard to tell. While nightlife can be an important part of a citys draw (Berlin has made a concerted effort to protect its nightclubs, for example) heavy drinking can be both a symptom and a cause of social problems, affecting a citys health, resources and economy. How Britain's post-industrial cities got hooked on booze Read more The WHO analysis of alcohol and health found that globally 3 million people die every year from the harmful use of alcohol, most of them men. For the heavy-drinking men of Kiev this certainly seems to be borne out by the facts: Ukrainian male life expectancy is just 64 years. An analysis of the heaviest-drinking cities in the US also correlated with a high percentage of car accidents involving alcohol in each place, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found excessive drinking to be costly for the US economy, to the tune of $250bn. In the UK, a 2017 police report argued that 24-hour licensing had led to an increase in crime in city centres. A city governments response to their populations drinking habits means trying to keep the balance between letting people drink while protecting their safety, and it can be a difficult line to walk. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, catch up on our best stories or sign up for our weekly newsletter | https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/07/where-is-the-worlds-hardest-drinking-city |
Has AI Ethics Got A Bad Name? | Amid all the talk of robots and artificial intelligence stealing our jobs, there is one industry that is benefiting mightily from the dramatic improvements in AI: the AI ethics industry. Members of the AI ethics community are very active on Twitter and the blogosphere, and they congregate in real life at conferences in places like Dubai and Puerto Rico. Their task is important: they want to make the world a better place, and there is a pretty good chance that they will succeed, at least in part. Artificial intelligence is a technology, and a very powerful one, like nuclear fission. It will become increasingly pervasive, like electricity. Some say that its arrival may even turn out to be as significant as the discovery of fire. Like nuclear fission, electricity and fire, AI can have positive impacts and negative impacts, and given how powerful it is and it will become, it is vital that we figure out how to promote the positive outcomes and avoid the negative ones. It's the bias that concerns people in the AI ethics community. They want to minimise the amount of bias in the data which informs the AI systems that help us to make decisions and ideally, to eliminate the bias altogether. They want to ensure that tech giants and governments respect our privacy at the same time as they develop and deliver compelling products and services. They want the people who deploy AI to make their systems as transparent as possible so that in advance or in retrospect, we can check for sources of bias and other forms of harm. There may be a terminological confusion here, and it could have negative consequences. One possible downside is that people outside the field may get the impression that some sort of moral agency is being attributed to the AI, rather than to the humans who develop AI systems. The AI we have today is narrow AI: superhuman in certain narrow domains, like playing chess and Go, but useless at anything else. It makes no more sense to attribute moral agency to these systems than it does to a car or a rock. It will probably be many years before we create an AI which can reasonably be described as a moral agent. It is ironic that people who regard themselves as AI ethicists are falling into this trap because many of them get very heated when robots are anthropomorphized, as when the humanoid Sophia was given citizenship by Saudi Arabia. There is a more serious potential downside to the nomenclature. People are going to disagree about the best way to obtain the benefits of AI and minimise or eliminate its harms. That is the way it should be: science and indeed most types of human endeavour advance by the robust exchange of views. People and groups will have different ideas about what promotes benefit and minimises harm. These ideas should be challenged and tested against each other. But if you think your field is about ethics rather than about what is most effective there is a danger that you start to see anyone who disagrees with you as not just mistaken, but actually morally bad. You are in danger of feeling righteous and unwilling or unable to listen to people who take a different view. You are likely to seek the company of like-minded people and to fear and despise the people who disagree with you. This is again ironic as AI ethicists are generally (and rightly) keen on diversity. The issues explored in the field of AI ethics are important but it would help to clarify them if some of the heat was taken out of the discussion. It might help if instead of talking about AI ethics, we talked about beneficial AI and AI safety. When an engineer designs a bridge she does not finish the design and then consider how to stop it from falling down. The ability to remain standing in all foreseeable circumstances is part of the design criteria, not a separate discipline called bridge ethics. Likewise, if an AI system has deleterious effects it is simply a badly designed AI system. Interestingly, this change has already happened in the field of AGI research, the study of whether and how to create artificial general intelligence, and how to avoid the potential downsides of that development, if and when it does happen. Here, researchers talk about AI safety. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/03/07/has-ai-ethics-got-a-bad-name/ |
Can Zuckerberg really make a privacy-friendly Facebook? | SAN FRANCISCO (AP) After building a social network that turned into a surveillance system, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he's shifting his company's focus to messaging services designed to serve as fortresses of privacy. Instead of just being the network that connects everyone, Facebook wants to encourage small numbers of individuals to carry on encrypted conversations that neither Facebook nor any other outsider can read. It also plans to let messages automatically disappear, a feature pioneered by its rival Snapchat that could limit the risks posed by a trail of social media posts that follow people throughout their lives. It's a major bet by Zuckerberg, who sees it as a way to push Facebook more firmly into a messaging market that's growing faster than its main social networking business. It might also help Facebook ward off government regulators, although the Facebook CEO made clear that he expects the company's messaging business to complement, not replace, its core businesses. But there are plenty of obstacles. Facebook has weathered more than two years of turbulence for repeated privacy lapses, spreading disinformation, allowing Russian agents to conduct targeted propaganda campaigns and a rising tide of hate speech and abuse. Zuckerberg submitted to two days of grilling on Capitol Hill last April. All that increases the challenge of convincing users that Facebook really means it about privacy this time. Encrypted conversations could alleviate some of those problems, but it could make others worse. Security is an "admirable goal," said Forrester Research analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo. "I'm just not sure it addresses the bigger issues Facebook is facing right now." Facebook grew into a colossus by vacuuming up peoples' information in every possible way and dissecting it to shoot targeted ads back at them. Anything that jeopardizes that machine could pose a major threat to the company's share price, which would also affect its ability to attract and retain talented engineers and other employees. In a Wednesday interview with The Associated Press, Zuckerberg predicted Facebook's emphasis on privacy will do more to help the company's business than hurt it. While most of the stock market slipped in Wednesday trading, Facebook's shares gained $1.25 to close at $172.51. The Facebook CEO has been telegraphing some of these changes to investors for the past six months, but his Wednesday blog post is the first time he has explained the idea to the more than two billion people that use Facebook's services and look at its ads. Those ads are expected to generate $67 billion in revenue this year, according to the research firm eMarketer. If everything falls into place, Facebook will also display similar advertising on the privacy-protected messaging services. Those services are also likely to offer other moneymaking features, such as a digital wallet, as Facebook attempts to build something similar to Tencent's popular WeChat service in Asia. "If you think about your life, you probably spend more time communicating privately than publicly," Zuckerberg said in his AP interview. "The overall opportunity here is a lot larger than what we have built in terms of Facebook and Instagram." That's far from proven. While Facebook has already tried to show ads in the Messenger app, it's seen only limited success, and hasn't even tested the concept in WhatsApp since it acquired that service for $22 billion in 2014. "There are some huge unknowns about how successful Facebook is going to be rolling advertising into a more private messaging environment," said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson. Some critics are convinced that Facebook has become so powerful even a threat to democracy as well as to people's privacy that it needs to be reined in by tougher regulations or even a corporate breakup. But unraveling Facebook could become more difficult if Zuckerberg can successfully stitch together the messaging services behind an encrypted wall. "I see that as the goal of this entire thing," said Blake Reid, a University of Colorado law professor who specializes in technology and policy. He said Facebook could tell antitrust authorities that WhatsApp, Instagram Direct and Facebook Messenger are tied so tightly together that it couldn't unwind them. Combining the three services also lets Facebook build more complete data profiles on all of its users. Already, businesses can already target Facebook and Instagram users with the same ads, and marketing campaigns are likely coming to WhatsApp eventually. Facebook's focus on messaging privacy raises other concerns. Messaging apps have in the past helped fake news and rumors spread fast, sometimes with deadly consequences. A report from University of Oxford researchers last year found evidence of widespread disinformation campaigns on chat applications like WhatsApp. In one particularly brutal example, the Indian government last year accused WhatsApp of fueling rumors that led to lynchings and mob violence that wounded dozens. Facebook responded by restricting the number of groups to which a message could be forwarded and labeling forwarded messages as such. On Wednesday, Zuckerberg said that Facebook needs to protect both privacy and safety as it encrypted messaging services, although he noted to an "inherent trade-off" between security and safety, simply because Facebook won't be able to read encrypted conversations. And in some cases, Facebook could allow some content to automatically disappear in a day or two, as if it were a fleeting mirage. "Some people want to store their messages forever and some people think having large collections of photos or messages is a liability as much as it is an asset," Zuckerberg told the AP. "Figuring out the balance is a really important one." ___ AP technology writers Anick Jesdanun, Tali Arbel and Mae Anderson contributed to this article from New York. | https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/technology/article/Can-Zuckerberg-really-make-a-privacy-friendly-13669430.php |
Is there a way to use Facebook without giving up my privacy? | I want to read announcements relating to friends and colleagues, and maybe post comments, without building a profile with photos, a timeline and so on. I have managed perfectly well without joining, but occasionally miss useful information that is not available elsewhere. Eira Whats known as lurking being a member without actively participating is very common. To quote Jakob Nielsen, In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. This is known as the 1% rule, and its obviously a gross generalisation. Facebooks participation levels appear to be much higher than that. We dont know the number of lapsed or (literally) dead accounts, but in September 2018, Facebook reported 2.27 billion monthly active users (up 9.6% over the previous year) and almost 1.5 billion daily active users (up 9.3%), despite losing about 1 million users in Europe. While theres no obligation to participate, there are much trickier questions about privacy and tracking. What distinguishes Facebook from Twitter, Reddit, Metafilter and so on is that it is based on real identities, which are fundamentally public. While you can choose how much information you post on Facebook, and how widely you share it, your friends may already have given Facebook your email address as part of the find friends procedure. Some of them may also have posted images of you, mentioned you in comments, or linked to things you posted on other services. As a result, when you sign up, Facebook may already know who most of your friends are. This information may be about you, but it isnt yours: it belongs to the people who shared it. Either way, any organisation that knows your real name can probably find out a lot about you. This was already obvious in 1999 when Suns Scott McNealy said: You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it. Minimal Facebooking Facebook Twitter Pinterest Facebooks many communication services make it a useful tool, but you dont have to give it every bit of information it asks for to use it. Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters To sign up for a Facebook account, you need a name and a working email address or mobile phone number. You can use any name you are known by. However, if you run into a problem, you may have to provide an acceptable form of ID to verify it later. You will also be asked for your date of birth because you have to be at least 13 years old to join and your choice of gender. Both may be used for advertising purposes. After that, everything is optional. Facebook will want you to complete your new profile by uploading a mug shot and a cover photo, entering the names of schools or colleges you attended, where you live and so on. You are not obliged to do any of this. Your profile photo could be a cartoon character. However, there could be from dozens to thousands of people who have the same name as you. The more details you enter, the easier it will be for friends to find you. Next, to make the system work for you, you have to friend people you know. Facebook encourages you to upload your contacts book (see above). Its much better to track people down one by one, though it is more work. And thats it. When your friends post things on Facebook, they will appear in the news feed. You will also have a timeline under your name, which used to be your wall. You cant get out of having these, but again, you dont have to post anything to them. Privacy settings Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joining Facebook is easy, working out your privacy settings is more difficult. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images When you do post something, you can control who sees it by using each posts settings menu (three dots), but its better to choose settings for your whole account. To do this, click the down-arrow on the far right of the blue heading bar, select Settings from the menu, and then Privacy. The main entry is Who can see your future posts? You probably wont want to use Public, which means anyone on or off Facebook. Instead, limit visibility to friends, perhaps, or customise it. You can exclude by name anyone you dont want to see something. You can also limit the range of people who can look you up using the email address and/or phone number you gave Facebook, though that can make it harder for friends to find you. Where it asks Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?, answer no. You should also visit the ad preferences page and click on Ad settings. This lets you turn off adverts based on data from partners (external websites, not Facebook), and adverts on external websites based on your activities on Facebook. This removes the advantages of tracking you. Otherwise, Facebook could use the information that you visit, for example, car websites to show you car ads. You can also change Ads that include your social actions to No one. This stops Facebook from using your actions (signing up for events, using apps, making recommendations and so on) to promote them to your friends. Finally, Facebook publicises birthdays. The setting is on your About page under Contact and basic info. Note that you can set different privacy levels for your date of birth and your year of birth. You could set both to Only me or just keep the year and therefore your age private. This description barely scratches the surface of the many ways you can manage your data. Facebook provides detailed control over your privacy, and how it can target you with the adverts that pay for its free service. The problem is that it would take many hours to find, understand and customise all the settings available. Understandably, most people just dont care enough to make the effort when the only visible benefit may be seeing less appropriate advertisements. Facebook disconnect Facebook Connect or Log in with Facebook is an identity system that, conveniently, lets you log into other websites, play games and so on with your Facebook ID. While this saves creating a lot of different login names and passwords, it also lets Facebook know what you are doing away from Facebook. This isnt a new idea, and Facebooks tracking network is much smaller than Googles, but its what drives the use of things like Ghostery, Privacy Badger, Disconnect.Me and Redmorph. You can opt out of using the whole platform. This stops Facebook Connect from working, and disables all the apps and games that have been used by third parties to harvest user data. To do this, go to the Settings page and select Apps and websites. Scroll down to the Apps, Websites and Games section, click Edit and then select Turn off. I got some dire warnings when I did this a few years ago, but as youre a new user, it shouldnt affect anything. You can also limit Facebook tracking by running Facebook in a container in the Firefox browser. Its not just Facebook Facebook explained in a blog post what sort of data it collects and how it does it. Obviously, it mentioned that other internet companies are doing exactly the same things. In fact, the main difference between Facebook and LinkedIn and some rivals is that most (but not all) of the personal information on Facebook and LinkedIn has been willingly contributed by users for their own purposes, rather than gathered by spying. Facebook has become the universal kicking boy partly because of its carelessness, and because its massive scale means its blunders can affect far more people, or even whole nations. Ultimately, however, the problem is not Facebook but surveillance capitalism: the business model whereby users trade personal information for services instead of paying for them. As security expert Bruce Schneier wrote last year in a blog post on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: for every article about Facebooks creepy stalker behaviour, thousands of other companies are breathing a collective sigh of relief that its Facebook and not them in the spotlight. Because while Facebook is one of the biggest players in this space, there are thousands of other companies that spy on and manipulate us for profit. For those of us with distant friends and family, Facebook is just too valuable to give up, and its replacement(s) might well be worse. Its the whole system that needs fixing. Email it to [email protected] | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2019/mar/07/is-there-a-way-to-use-facebook-without-giving-up-my-privacy |
How Much Of The Dark Matter Could Neutrinos Be? | All throughout the Universe, there's more than what we're capable of seeing. When we look out at the stars moving around within galaxies, the galaxies moving withing groups and clusters, or the largest structures of all that make up the cosmic web, everything tells the same disconcerting story: we don't see enough matter to explain the gravitational effects that occur. In addition to the stars, gas, plasma, dust, black holes and more, there must be something else in there causing an additional gravitational effect. Traditionally, we've called this dark matter, and we absolutely require it to explain the full suite of observations throughout the Universe. While it cannot be made up of normal matter things made of protons, neutrons, and electrons we do have a known particle that could have the right behavior: neutrinos. Let's find out how much of the dark matter neutrinos could possibly be. At first glance, neutrinos are the perfect dark matter candidate. They barely interact at all with normal matter, and neither absorb nor emit light, meaning that they won't generate an observable signal capable of being picked up by telescopes. At the same time, because they interact through the weak force, it's inevitable that the Universe created enormous numbers of them in the extremely early, hot stages of the Big Bang. We know that there are leftover photons from the Big Bang, and very recently we've also detected indirect evidence that there are leftover neutrinos as well. Unlike the photons, which are massless, it's possible that neutrinos have a non-zero mass. If they have the right value for their mass based on the total number of neutrinos (and antineutrinos) that exist, they could conceivably account for 100% of the dark matter. That depends on the number of types (or species) of neutrino. Although we can detect neutrinos directly using enormous tanks of material designed to capture their rare interactions with matter, this is both incredibly inefficient and is only going to capture a tiny fraction of them. We can see neutrinos that are the result of particle accelerators, nuclear reactors, fusion reactions in the Sun, and cosmic rays interacting with our planet and atmosphere. We can measure their properties, including how they transform into one another, but not the total number of types of neutrino. But there is a way to make the critical measurement from particle physics, and it comes from a rather unexpected place: the decay of the Z-boson. The Z-boson is the neutral boson that mediates the weak interaction, enabling certain types of weak decays. The Z couples to both quarks and leptons, and whenever you produce one in a collider experiment, there's a chance that it will simply decay into two neutrinos. Those neutrinos are going to be invisible! We cannot typically detect the neutrinos we create from particle decays in colliders, as it would take a detector with the density of a neutron star to capture them. But by measuring what percentage of the decays produce "invisible" signals, we can infer how many types of light neutrino (whose mass is less than half the Z-boson mass) there are. It's a spectacular and unambiguous result known for decades now: there are three. Coming back to dark matter, we can calculate, based on all the different signals we see, how much extra dark matter is necessary to give us the right amount of gravitation. In every way we know how to look, including: from colliding galaxy clusters, from galaxies moving within X-ray emitting clusters, from the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, from the patterns found in the large-scale structure of the Universe, and from the internal motions of stars and gas within individual galaxies, we find that we require about five times the abundance of normal matter to exist in the form of dark matter. It's a great success of dark matter for modern cosmology that just by adding one ingredient to solve one puzzle, a whole slew of other observational puzzles are also solved. If you have three species of light neutrino, it would only take a relatively small amount of mass to account for all the dark matter: a few electron-Volts (about 3 or 4 eV) per neutrino would do it. The lightest particle found in the Standard Model besides the neutrino is the electron, and that has a mass of about 511 keV, or hundreds of thousands of times the neutrino mass we want. Unfortunately, there are two big problems with having light neutrinos that are that massive. When we look in detail, the idea of massive neutrinos is insufficient to make up 100% of the dark matter. The first problem is that neutrinos, if they are the dark matter, would be a form of hot dark matter. You might have heard the phrase "cold dark matter" before, and what it means is that the dark matter must be moving slowly compared to the speed of light at early times. If dark matter were hot, and moving quickly, it would prevent the gravitational growth of small-scale structure by easily streaming out of it. The fact that we form stars, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies so early rules this out. The fact that we see the weak lensing signals we do rules this out. The fact that we see the pattern of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background rules this out. And direct measurements of clouds of gas in the early Universe, through a technique known as the Lyman- forest, definitively rule this out. Dark matter cannot be hot. A number of collaborations have measured the oscillations of one species of neutrinos to another, and this enables us to infer the mass differences between the different types. Since the 1990s, we've been able to infer that the mass difference between two of the species are on the order of about 0.05 eV, and the mass difference between a different two species is approximately 0.009 eV. Direct constraints on the mass of the electron neutrino come from tritium decay experiments, and show that the electron neutrino must be less massive than about 2 eV. Beyond that, the cosmic microwave background (from Planck) and the large-scale structure data (from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey) tells us that the sum of all the neutrino masses is at most approximately 0.1 eV, as too much hot dark matter would definitively affect these signals. From the best data we have, it appears that the mass values that the known neutrinos have are very close to the lowest values that the neutrino oscillation data implies. In other words, only a tiny fraction of the total amount of dark matter is allowed to be in the form of light neutrinos. Given the constraints we have today, we can conclude that approximately 0.5% to 1.5% of the dark matter is made up of neutrinos. This isn't insignificant; the light neutrinos in the Universe have about the same mass as all the stars in the Universe. But their gravitational effects are minimal, and they cannot make up the needed dark matter. There is an exotic possibility, however, that means we might still have a chance for neutrinos to make a big splash in the world of dark matter: it's possible that there's a new, extra type of neutrino. Sure, we have to fit in with all the constraints from particle physics and cosmology that we have already, but there's a way to make that happen: to demand that if there's a new, extra neutrino, it's sterile. A sterile neutrino has nothing to do with its gender or fertility; it merely means that it doesn't interact through the conventional weak interactions today, and that a Z-boson won't couple to it. But if neutrinos can oscillate between the conventional, active types and a heavier, sterile type, it could not only behave as though it were cold, but could make up 100% of the dark matter. There are experiments that are completed, like LSND and MiniBooNe, as well as experiments planned or in process, like MicroBooNe, PROSPECT, ICARUS and SBND, that are highly suggestive of sterile neutrinos being a real, important part of our Universe. If we restrict ourselves to the Standard Model alone, we simply cannot account for the dark matter that must be present in our Universe. None of the particles we know of have the right behavior to explain all of the observations. We can imagine a Universe where neutrinos have relatively large amounts of mass, and that would result in a Universe with significant quantities of dark matter. The only problem is that dark matter would be hot, and lead to an observably different Universe than the one we see today. Still, the neutrinos we know of do behave like dark matter, although it only makes up about 1% of the total dark matter out there. That's not totally insignificant; it equals the mass of all the stars in our Universe! And most excitingly, if there truly is a sterile neutrino species out there, a series of upcoming experiments ought to reveal it over the next few years. Dark matter might be one of the greatest mysteries out there, but thanks to neutrinos, we have a chance at understanding it at least a little bit. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/03/07/how-much-of-the-dark-matter-could-neutrinos-be/ |
Does AI Ethics Have A Bad Name? | Amid all the talk of robots and artificial intelligence stealing our jobs, there is one industry that is benefiting mightily from the dramatic improvements in AI: the AI ethics industry. Members of the AI ethics community are very active on Twitter and the blogosphere, and they congregate in real life at conferences in places like Dubai and Puerto Rico. Their task is important: they want to make the world a better place, and there is a pretty good chance that they will succeed, at least in part. Artificial intelligence is a technology, and a very powerful one, like nuclear fission. It will become increasingly pervasive, like electricity. Some say that its arrival may even turn out to be as significant as the discovery of fire. Like nuclear fission, electricity and fire, AI can have positive impacts and negative impacts, and given how powerful it is and it will become, it is vital that we figure out how to promote the positive outcomes and avoid the negative ones. It's the bias that concerns people in the AI ethics community. They want to minimise the amount of bias in the data which informs the AI systems that help us to make decisions and ideally, to eliminate the bias altogether. They want to ensure that tech giants and governments respect our privacy at the same time as they develop and deliver compelling products and services. They want the people who deploy AI to make their systems as transparent as possible so that in advance or in retrospect, we can check for sources of bias and other forms of harm. There may be a terminological confusion here, and it could have negative consequences. One possible downside is that people outside the field may get the impression that some sort of moral agency is being attributed to the AI, rather than to the humans who develop AI systems. The AI we have today is narrow AI: superhuman in certain narrow domains, like playing chess and Go, but useless at anything else. It makes no more sense to attribute moral agency to these systems than it does to a car or a rock. It will probably be many years before we create an AI which can reasonably be described as a moral agent. It is ironic that people who regard themselves as AI ethicists are falling into this trap because many of them get very heated when robots are anthropomorphized, as when the humanoid Sophia was given citizenship by Saudi Arabia. There is a more serious potential downside to the nomenclature. People are going to disagree about the best way to obtain the benefits of AI and minimise or eliminate its harms. That is the way it should be: science and indeed most types of human endeavour advance by the robust exchange of views. People and groups will have different ideas about what promotes benefit and minimises harm. These ideas should be challenged and tested against each other. But if you think your field is about ethics rather than about what is most effective there is a danger that you start to see anyone who disagrees with you as not just mistaken, but actually morally bad. You are in danger of feeling righteous and unwilling or unable to listen to people who take a different view. You are likely to seek the company of like-minded people and to fear and despise the people who disagree with you. This is again ironic as AI ethicists are generally (and rightly) keen on diversity. The issues explored in the field of AI ethics are important but it would help to clarify them if some of the heat was taken out of the discussion. It might help if instead of talking about AI ethics, we talked about beneficial AI and AI safety. When an engineer designs a bridge she does not finish the design and then consider how to stop it from falling down. The ability to remain standing in all foreseeable circumstances is part of the design criteria, not a separate discipline called bridge ethics. Likewise, if an AI system has deleterious effects it is simply a badly designed AI system. Interestingly, this change has already happened in the field of AGI research, the study of whether and how to create artificial general intelligence, and how to avoid the potential downsides of that development, if and when it does happen. Here, researchers talk about AI safety. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/03/07/does-ai-ethics-have-a-bad-name/ |
What's making life hard for John Lewis? | Image copyright Getty Images The John Lewis Partnership has announced a 45% drop in annual profit for 2018 and said its workers, who also own the firm, will only get a 3% bonus, down from 5% a year earlier. Its poor results come at a time of hardship for High Street stores in general and department stores in particular. While other chains come under real pressure - reporting losses large enough to imperil their ability to pay rent - or indeed face collapse, John Lewis's struggles must be seen in context, say retail experts. The company has some inbuilt advantages, they say. Employees - or partners as they are known at the company - will be hoping these can be used to turn around the firm's fortunes. In 2008, staff were awarded bonuses equivalent to 20% of their pay, sharing a 181.1m fund. Since then, the trend has been slowly downhill, and the 3% bonus is the lowest since 1954. Never knowingly undersold Under John Lewis's "never knowingly undersold" guarantee, the chain promises to match the price of a product with any of its High Street competitors. This means that they have been hit with "an unprecedented level of discounting in order to match rivals' prices which inevitably undermines profits," said Diane Wehrle of market research firm Springboard. This has been compounded by its competitors driving their own prices down as they try to tempt customers. ", asks retail consultant Richard Hyman. "It's retailers on the back foot, who don't really know what else to do, following the price down," he adds. "They feel they don't have any other lever to pull." The decline of the department store Department stores have a "relevance problem", says Natalie Berg, retail analyst and founder of NBK Retail. "This idea of under-one-roof shopping doesn't really exist any more," especially with the rise of online shopping. Last year, House of Fraser fell into administration before being bought by Mike Ashley, the billionaire Sports Direct founder, and earlier this week Debenhams issued another profit warning as its sales continued to fall. However, Ms Berg says John Lewis "has been more agile to adapt to these changes" because of its ownership structure. Employees own the company and so they are trusted to take on more consultative roles with shoppers, she says, offering the kind of service an online shop cannot. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The 1950s were the last time staff received such low bonuses And Richard Hyman does not think that it's a hard and fast rule that the department store must die. "Irrelevant, poor department stores are dead, but look at Selfridges," he says. Selfridges reported sales up 8% in the first 24 days of December. The department store said it helped draw customers through various entertainments including a Christmas cabaret, confetti cannons, visits from Father Christmas and choirs. Retail malaise "Clearly John Lewis is not immune to the trading challenges currently faced by retailers, which is a general reining-in of consumer spending," says Springboard's Diane Wehrle. For Mr Hyman, too much shopping space, too many stores and too many websites chasing demand is cutting profits on the High Street. While costs for businesses rise ever upward, demand does not. And the outlook isn't good. "For the last five or six years, the retail market has become progressively more difficult," he says. "Next year will be tougher still." Image copyright Getty Images But for John Lewis this isn't the existential threat it has proved for retailers as diverse as LK Bennett, Hardy Amies, Patisserie Valerie, Maplin or Toys 'R' Us. "You have to judge these companies against their peers," he says. "Customer service, provenance, value and trust" are what may improve its fortunes. Staying on top At the same time, John Lewis has had to invest in IT, as many other retailers have, to meet customer demand, says Ms Wehrle. This helped January sales rise 1%, "but the capital investment it requires means that profit has taken a significant hit". "This is a market like no other we have seen," says Mr Hyman, and despite the company's strengths, it does face challenges. But, he says "we won't see an end to department stores". "It will be less what you do and more how you do it." | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47470703 |
Should every cup of coffee cost 15? | News that Le Caf Alain Ducasse, at the Coal Drops Yard complex in Kings Cross in London, is now serving the perfect cup of coffee (their words) at 15 a pop has to be diplomatic divided opinion. While it may be tempting to see in that price-tag proof that some people have more money than sense, it still doesnt make Ducasse the Chanel of baristas. Even Starbucks can break the bank. (Remember when, back in 2013, a man paid $47.30 for a 48-shot quadriginoctuple frap 48 shots with a busload of extras.) Ducasses beans are from Yemen; the price reflects the challenges of growing coffee let alone harvesting, processing and exporting the beans in war-zone conditions, and paying fair wages for it. Were not there to try to negotiate the prices down, but to pay the farmers more, says AJ Kinnell, director of Monmouth Coffee Company, which has campaigned for ethical coffee since the late 1970s. As for what else goes into the price, beyond the raw ingredient: theres labour (which, already in 2013, made up nearly a quarter of the price), rent, utilities, cups, crockery, equipment such as grinders and espresso machines, milk and, of course, says Kinnell, the other milks that arent milk. All throw up ethical questions, and often increase expense. A central London roastery will charge more than a coffee shop in a Yorkshire village if only because of their rents. The price also depends on the kind of coffee, says the British Coffee Associations Chris Stemman, with high-end small-batch microlots selling for what he calls crazy sums: Eighty dollars a pound is not unusual. But someone, somewhere, will pay that like they do for wine or cheese because they find value in it. Most coffee is traded in US dollars, meaning the price paid by British importers is affected by any market volatility such as the Brexit vote, which caused a 20% drop in the value of sterling. With most of the UKs coffee imported from the EU, Brexit itself could be even worse. If we crash out with no deal, says Stemman, roast and ground beans will be hit with tariffs of more than 7%. And if you were thinking you would just stay home: the price of instant coffee comprising two-thirds of the 95m cups consumed daily in the UK is also expected to rise by 9%. | https://www.theguardian.com/food/shortcuts/2019/mar/07/should-every-cup-of-coffee-cost-15 |
Can Design Help Prevent Electronic Waste From Ending Up in a Landfill? | The research-driven approach of design duo Studio Formafantasma might typically result in beautiful, poetic objects ranging from lighting and vessels to furniture, but the studio has been recently applying its efforts towards tackling a very contemporary problem: the recycling of electronic waste. In this moment, electronic waste is the fastest stream of waste growing globally. Only 30% is being correctly recycled while the remaining 70% is being exported to developing countries or simply ends up in the landfill, said studio co-founder Simone Farresin on Wednesday at the Fortune and Wallpaper* Brainstorm Design conference in Singapore. The obvious question here is why. While it may seem like stating the obvious, the recycling of electronic products is actually highly complex. Not only is the issue worsening thanks to the increasing number of circuit boards present in electronic products, but the fact that most copper and metal elements are covered in black rubber for safety also means that they are harder to detect by recycling systems that use imaging to identify and isolate various components by color. Studio Formafantasma has drilled down into the problem by collaborating with experts in Europe, India and Kenya to conduct extensive research through analysis of different levels of the recycling chain. Their design-led process included speaking with legislators, activists (who use GPS to track electronic waste), recyclers, non-governmental agencies (which support responsible recycling workshops), and manufacturers. Design can be used to mediate conversation, Farresin said. One of the problems we had while speaking to recyclers was the need to gain the information from them to actually design. What we did was dismantle electronic products which we placed, almost as a taxonomy, into different elements so that we could speak with them about the problematics in recycling very specifically. One of Studio Formafantasmas solutions includes the implementation of a color-coding system that identifies recyclable metal elements and helps separate them from hazardous components. When an electronic device is opened, there is currently no universal design language to indicate which materials are harmful or not. Another idea calls for the introduction of a labeling system that would be enforced by legislature. This system would require manufacturers to outline the shelf life of each product, rather than concealing its obsolescence, thus allowing consumers to make an informed decision of whether it is worth purchasing or not. Yet another suggestion is the creation of a digital passport for different types of plastics in the form of a QR code that will enable recyclers to know the composition of the type of plastic they are recycling. A lot of recyclers struggle to understand exactly what they are recycling because plastics are being engineered daily, Farresin explained. Studio Formafantasmas measures may seem simplistic, but they offer tangible, conceivable solutions to a mounting problem of a mammoth scale. We needed to be very pragmatic, Farresin said about his firms strategies. Rather than to completely rethink the system of recycling, we chose to operate within it. For more coverage of Fortunes Brainstorm Design conference, click here. | http://fortune.com/2019/03/07/electronic-waste-formafantasma/ |
Does The Trump Administration Know What It's Doing On Trade? | More than two years into the presidential administration of Donald Trump, trade has come to the forefront of both economic and foreign policy. President Trump was uniquely confident that he understood the issue better than experts and that he could succeed with a path radically different from those of his predecessors. Perhaps anticipating some rough judgments to come, one of the Presidents top trade aides, Peter Navarro, offered a defense of the Trump record in the New York Post this week. Navarro is enthusiastic but very selective in his portrayal of the trade record. His only mention of trade deficits relates to NAFTA results from the 1990s; this is odd considering the central role his boss assigns to the measure. Navarro consistently treats the imposition of tariffs as a success in and of itself, which seems at odds with administration claims that those tariffs which hurt American companies and consumers are a means to an end. And he describes incredible progress in opening new export markets in instances in which negotiations are incomplete or have barely even begun. In fact, this week has been full of indications that the Trump administration is flailing on trade. The most salient headline concerned the trade deficit. Data released Wednesday morning showed that both the U.S. merchandise trade deficit and the bilateral deficit with China hit record highs in 2018. Any capable economist could explain why these deficits are not good measures of national well-being. But President Trumps core claim was that one should not listen to capable economists; one should listen to him. He prefers to treat deficits as a kind of profit and loss statement (theyre not). So he fails twice on this first in his economic misunderstanding, and then in his inability to deliver on his skewed promises. A second critical misreading concerned the efficacy of tariffs. Here Navarro seems to have had a hand in the error, when he advised a year ago that, should the U.S. impose tariffs, I dont believe any country is going to retaliate. Oops. U.S. tariffs have drawn painful retaliatory responses from countries around the globe, including China, Europe, Canada, and Mexico. A related misjudgment concerned how China would react to aggressive U.S. trade moves. President Trump seemed convinced that if he threatened very extensive tariffs, this would deter the Chinese from acting. After imposing tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports last summer, he promised tariffs on another $200 billion should the Chinese retaliate. They promptly did. This left the President to impose tariffs that were increasingly painful to Americans. When carrying out his $200 billion threat, he first applied tariffs at a lower, 10 percent level, promising 25 percent tariffs by January 1st if he did not get satisfaction. Then he deferred that January 1 deadline to March 2. Then he waived the deadline all together. This begins to look like a credibility problem. On a separate front, Navarro claims success in renegotiating NAFTA. But trade agreements only count once they pass through Congress, and it seems the administration misread the domestic politics. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer claimed in November that the new NAFTA was a bipartisan agreement and that a very high number of Democrats would support it. That support has not been evident. The new Democratic Chairman of the vital House Ways & Means Committee, Richard Neal (D-MA), just said that it would be very hard to get the deal through Congress. The major novelty of the new NAFTA is its attempt to force automotive work back to the United States by tightening NAFTAs rules of origin. If this were to have any target audience, one might imagine it would be the United Auto Workers union. Yet, despite a personal sales pitch this week from USTR Lighthizer, they declined to endorse the new agreement. Turning across the Atlantic, Navarro claims credit for an announced trade deal with Europe. There are indications that the initial understanding between President Trump and European Commission President Juncker last July was actually a misunderstanding. At issue is whether the deal will or will not include agriculture. The Europeans claim that agriculture was never up for negotiation and would kill any prospects of a quick deal. This conflict demonstrates a consistency in the Trump administration trade approach: their goals do not match their timetables. With both China and Europe, the Trump administration has said agreements must be deep and wide-ranging, but they insist they must also be accomplished in a very short period of time. In all likelihood, the impatience will undermine the trade goals. President Trump has made an extraordinary claim that he understood trade and could negotiate deals as no one else did. That has proven to be true, but not in a good way. After two years, there is little or no evidence of success. The unfortunate implication is that U.S. companies enduring high tariffs and farmers suffering from painful retaliation could find their sacrifices did not, in fact, deliver a better trading world, but were just the cost of misunderstanding. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/phillevy/2019/03/07/does-the-trump-administration-know-what-its-doing-on-trade/ |
Has WWF's mission to combat nature's enemy gone too far? | World Wide Fund for Nature, put down your weapons. You are not a mercenary. You are not a government. You are not a terrorist. Your mission: to save the planet. Saving the planet does not happen by shooting people, or even by threatening them. One might be forgiven for thinking that headlines this week revealing allegations that WWF was in bed with paramilitaries in different parts of the world must have been referring to the erstwhile World Wrestling Federation, not the fluffy panda charity that saves tigers. Remove all rose-coloured glasses now. This isnt the first time WWF has been caught up in a scandal, but it is possibly the most egregious. When I worked for WWF, albeit for a short time a decade ago, I had a nagging sense that things werent right. Conservation organisations do some great things WWF included. But if the allegations are found to be true, then it seems there is a perception within that environmental rights have to trump human rights, regardless of the platitudes expressed in corporate leaflets. Humans are the scourge that are killing rhinos, consuming too much stuff, burning down trees, polluting our rivers. All of this is true. We are natures enemy. And there is no doubt that trying to protect a large area of biodiverse rich land or rare species is complicated. But these claims allege that WWF has taken the solutions to combating natures enemy a tad too far. When the independent taskforce that WWF has commissioned gets started, I hope their remit goes beyond the Buzzfeed expos. Like other non-governmental organisations recently accused of wrongdoings, this is about more than safeguarding and a few rogue partners overstepping their boundaries. The first thing the inquiry should focus on is power. Specifically, the power that comes from being a wealthy charity that raises money in the north and spends it in the south; the power of a macho culture with delusions of grandeur about saving the planet. Such charities can come to believe that the cause is too important not to compromise on principles. This can lead to Faustian pacts with dictators, paramilitaries, corporations who themselves are probably a greater cause of climate change and environmental degradation than any of the poachers WWF is trying to stop. The structure, the leadership, money and organisational culture. Accountability is another area that demands scrutiny. Right now, its the donors in the north, from large governments to wealthy individuals. Yet accountability is possible: in some countries, WWF has worked hand in hand with local communities, actively participating in their mission. This practice needs to become more widespread, and the inquiry needs to ask some tough questions. Ultimately, if organisations like WWF cant be 360 degrees accountable, there is a question mark over whether they should even engage in a community or region at all. If I were writing the terms of reference, the inquiry would also look at the role of the international NGOs writ large. Many have prospered by effectively stepping in where governments have failed. WWF knows why wildlife and natural systems are under threat. The real reasons are that people on the ground are poor and desperate, that were all consuming too much stuff; that an unjust economic system has put pressure on the planets resources. The organisation has invested in trying to unpack some of these longer-term issues to see what can be done. WWF accused of funding guards who 'tortured and killed scores of people' Read more In the 21st century, the role of NGOS should be to hold governments to account for their actions, not to pick up the pieces of state failures. I suspect the majority of conservationists do not feel comfortable having to negotiate with militias to save the rhinos. The mission seems to have spiralled out of control. These organisations started off with good intentions, but their growth, power, culture and propensity to visions of grandeur are in danger of compromising the values and good intentions with which they started out. As the recent sexual abuse scandals revealed, Oxfam and others have compromised their values to save lives or solve poverty. Even Amnesty compromised its values to protect human rights drawing criticism for its images of a semi-clad model lying on a bed of lifejackets to raise awareness of the refugee crisis. Kudos to WWF for appointing an independent human rights investigation into these latest claims. But, if the allegations are true, please dont just slap a few wrists and add in some extra safeguarding measures. That will do little to stem the tide of discontent and malfeasance across the sector. Use this as an opportunity to revolutionise what such organisations can be, so that they become a better version of what they are now. | https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/mar/07/wwf-world-wide-fund-for-nature-mission-deborah-doane |
Is seven-time champion Johnson NASCAR's most disrespected great? | Kevin Harvick recently described fellow NASCAR Cup champion Jimmie Johnson as "one of the most disrespected great drivers". Seven-time title winner Johnson is currently on a winless streak in championship rounds stretching back to June 2017. Scroll to continue with content Ad But Harvick launched a vehement defence of Johnson's reputation after they appeared on a radio show together late last month. "Jimmie is one of the most disrespected great drivers that have ever come through this garage. Jimmie Johnson is just a good old fashioned great guy," Harvick said afterwards. "He helps people and has done great things in the garage and in a race car, out of a race car, and sometimes I feel like we forget that he has won seven championships and all the races that he has won and all the great things he has done. "It isn't like he came from a rich daddy or family that had a lot of money. "He came all the way up from the bottom to the top and worked hard and had a lot of success and has won as many championships as Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty. "I never feel like he is on that pedestal next to those guys appropriately." When told of Harvick's comments, Johnson said "I certainly appreciate those kind words" but played down his own feelings about how he is regarded. "I feel like every driver probably has something that they probably deserve and something they don't deserve along the way of progressing through this sport," he said. "I've had my good and my bad and it is what it is. Honestly, I quit paying attention to a lot of the public opinion stuff years ago. "It doesn't do me any good and I'm just going to keep my head down and keep working." Autosport says Dominik Wilde, special contruibutor Story continues NASCAR fans have short memories. After a winless 2018 and a somewhat calamitous start to 2019, many are blasting Jimmie Johnson as a serial crasher who needs to retire. That is utter nonsense. It's only been just over two years since Johnson won a record-tying seventh title - the same amount of time between his sixth and seventh triumphs - and that seventh puts him in a rather special club alongside Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt. Yet for some reason, Johnson is rarely regarded as being in the same league as the other seven-timers. Not only has he also outdone Earnhardt's Cup wins tally (in fewer races), but he's won all of his titles in less time that both Petty and Earnhardt. Comparing his numbers to his contemporaries, nobody comes close. Kyle Busch, a driver who many consider to be the best in NASCAR right now, not only took several years to finally achieve his so-far-only Cup title, but he's still a full 32 wins behind Johnson on the wins chart. Then there are other champions - Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr, and Joey Logano; add up every single one of the championships won by other drivers in the 2019 Cup field and it's still fewer than Johnson's overall tally, yet we're still glossing over Johnson's achievements. Johnson's titles of course stretch across the Gen 4, Car of Tomorrow, and Gen 6 regulations. There's no doubt that both of those factors are key, but at the end of the day a car needs to be driven, and driven well. Johnson has had top-level competition, not just from rivals, but from team-mates in the same equipment as well in the shape of Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Mark Martin, Kasey Kahne, and Chase Elliott to name a few, and save for Gordon - who enjoyed most of his success before Johnson arrived on the scene - nobody has matched his achievements in Hendrick equipment. Much like how in Formula 1 Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel aren't always held in as high a regard as the likes of Juan Manuel Fangio and Ayrton Senna, Johnson isn't looked upon as fondly as those who have already had their names etched into the history books for decades, and that's a crying shame. Jimmie Johnson is one of NASCAR's all-time greats, and always will be. It's about time he was celebrated like the living legend he is, because with NASCAR's constant drive to bunch up the field, who knows when or if we'll see success like it again. Get unlimited access to the worlds best motorsport journalism with Autosport Plus | https://sports.yahoo.com/harvick-seven-time-nascar-champion-105014930.html?src=rss |
Is Karen Bradley running out of road? | Image copyright AFP/Getty Image caption Downing Street may hope the storm over Ms Bradley's comments blows over Karen Bradley is not the first and probably will not be the last Northern Ireland Secretary to slip spectacularly on a political banana skin. There was Peter Brooke persuaded on an RTE TV chat show to give a rendition of "Oh My Darling, Clementine" on a day when seven Protestant workmen had been killed in an IRA bombing. There was Sir Patrick Mayhew - dressed in a dinner suit and bow tie on his way out after watching an opera - making light of a grenade attack which had injured 30 people by quipping that at least there was: "nobody dead. At the end of this opera, everybody's dead." After Peter Brooke's faux pas he offered to resign - Margaret Thatcher rejected his resignation, but he was dropped from the cabinet following an general election a few months later. Image copyright PA Image caption Sir Patrick Mayhew's lighthearted comment regarding a grenade attack was widely viewed as insensitive There is no sign at this point that Karen Bradley intends to offer her resignation, nor that her firm ally, Theresa May, would demand such a move. Those close to Mrs Bradley point out that she clarified her comment at the earliest possible opportunity, just three hours after pronouncing that security force killings were "not crimes". With the government obsessed by Brexit and Mrs May short of unconditionally loyal colleagues like Mrs Bradley, Downing Street may hope this blows over. 'Running out of road?' However, following her previous admission that, when appointed, she was not aware of voting patterns in Northern Ireland, the secretary of state seems to be running out of road. Not just nationalists but also the centrist Alliance Party believe she is compromised by the Conservatives' parliamentary alliance with the DUP and lacks the grasp of the many nuances of local politics and history required to navigate a way forward. Victims of state violence have proved reluctant to accept Mrs Bradley's clarification, perhaps because they believe her comments were part of a pattern. They have seen both the secretary of state and the prime minister keen to assuage the concerns of DUP MPs and Tory backbenchers lobbying on behalf of security force veterans, and view the Ministry of Defence's plans to potentially legislate to block supposedly spurious prosecutions against military veterans with acute suspicion. 'Laser-like focus' At their recent annual conference, the Alliance leader Naomi Long strongly criticised Mrs Bradley, lampooning her remark that she is directing a laser-like focus on the Stormont deadlock by quipping that all this meant was that lasers could be added to the list of things the Secretary of State does not know anything about. Alliance reiterated their long-standing demand that an independent chair - not Mrs Bradley - should be brought in to convene any future inter-party talks. The political dynamics at Westminster may mean this is not a resigning matter, but if she carries on regardless, Karen Bradley could risk becoming a lame duck secretary of state without the authority to deal with either Northern Ireland's troubled past or its politically paralysed present. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-47484069 |
Is Multi Unit, Multi Brand Ownership The Future Of Restaurant Franchising? | Restaurant franchising has undergone a fantastic evolution in the last few decades. The present-day franchised restaurant business now attracts a variety of investors for a variety of different reasons. Beginning in the early years of the 1960s owning a single unit franchised restaurant was an entry point for everyday individuals to get into the restaurant business. This "First Wave" in restaurant franchising was the growth tool of choice for many entrepreneurs and first-time business owners. With Success Comes Change Many of these successful individual franchisees seeking growth went on to open numerous location under the same franchised brand name. Using their experience in real estate, restaurant operations and developing staff as well as their ability to leverage cash flow from their profitable businesses, many went on to open additional units in the '80s and '90s. Whether it's a single individual owning three to five franchised restaurants or larger investors that opened scores of locations, multi-unit ownership proved to be a method for financial growth by giving franchisees and investors an established model with a predictable result. Using this Multi-Unit development method as a means to increase enterprise value for the business owner became what I call the "Second Wave" in franchising. Many of these now professionally managed "corporate" franchisees have taken numerous franchise systems to new heights by developing hundreds of units in their designated territories. Today's "Third Wave" of franchise development lies in the concept of not only owning multiple restaurants of the same brand but also owning multiple units of various brands. Multi-Brand restaurant franchising has exploded in recent years. Countless franchisees now operate two, three or more non-competing restaurant brands. These large franchisees can sometimes develop additional brands in their original territory while many others choose to run restaurants in several regions. These franchisees are driven by revenue growth, brand diversification, open territory, capitalizing on existing human resources, local real estate, consumer trends and demographics in a market. The concept of owning multiple units of one brand has been eclipsed by what is now known as Multi Brand ownership. That's where a franchisee develops the business enterprise as a franchisee of various non competing restaurant brands. Private Equity Investors Dig Deeper for Gold Today, not only are the franchisor/parent companies the target of private equity investment and acquisition but so are large franchisee organizations. As franchisees, private equity firms are creating millions of dollars in profit by scaling the number of restaurants in their portfolios utilizing a proven system with a predictable result. Phil Druce, Partner with Atlantic Street Capital says "We feel strongly about the sustainability of the franchising category as multi-unit franchisee investors into the future. While some equity investors might shy away from broadly defined retail thinking that the category over the medium to long-term will be compromised with the proliferation of technology or delivery-based solution, we continue to feel positive about the sector. Druce continued; "Amazon risk will continue to be a popular phrase used across the industry as an undefinable risk. We feel as though the best operators and investors will find ways to drive door swings, engage with the customer in a meaningful way, and deliver a customer experience that keeps people coming back. The most sustainable businesses will complement their core retail business with technology solutions of their own that enhance, without cannibalizing, their value proposition." The number of Multi Unit-Multi Brand franchisees has grown to the point that some franchisees operate more units in their collective Multi-Brands portfolios than some of the individual franchisors they represent. This month is the Multi Unit Franchise Conference in Las Vegas. I'll be attending and I'll have more to say on this topic in my next article. Whatever the ultimate future direction of this type of franchise growth happens to be, Multi Brand franchising is here to stay and will continue to create larger and larger franchisees. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/garyocchiogrosso/2019/03/07/is-multi-unit-multi-brand-ownership-the-future-of-restaurant-franchising/ |
Should Entrepreneurs Start Thinking More Like Angel Investors? | Starting your own company is hard. You can expect pain, frustration, setbacks and tears along the way and perhaps even failure. The wins make you feel unstoppable, and the downs like youll never figure out a way forward. Entrepreneurs often wax lyrical about their billion-dollar ideas. But since it's often reported that the majority of startups will fail, I started wondering if there was a better approach to building a successful company. Increasing Your Chances Of Entrepreneurial Success While focus is important, it can blind us to other opportunities and often, our own failures. When you become attached to a business you believe will change the world, youll probably fight tooth and nail to keep it afloat. But competition is fierce, and successful funding rounds dont always mean success in the market. You need to work out a plan to get you where you want to be, whether thats a $10-million exit, $100-million exit, an IPO or some other specific goal. An angel investor, for example, might invest around $25,000-$100,000 per startup to achieve positive returns on a small portion of them. One 2017 study, "The American Angel," cited average angel investments ranging from $32,000 to $44,000, depending on the U.S. region. Likewise, with $100,000 capital, you could potentially start 10 businesses with a budget of $10,000 each, build 10 minimum viable products (MVPs), and gather feedback on all of them to find the one that resonates with the market, which could take you one step closer to your goal. So, instead of piling lots of time, effort and money into one idea, you could spread your capital across several businesses and hedge as an angel investor would. Angel Investing Versus Traditional Entrepreneurship Like angel investing, the more companies you build, the greater the chance should be that one of them will become a life-changing return on your time and capital. Where an angel investor increases their portfolio to maximize returns, you, as an entrepreneur, could apply your talents to other business ideas to multiply your chances of success. Angel investors generally make small bets on startups and help them get through those tough early stages of growing a business. They make lots of these bets. "The American Angel" showed that angels with entrepreneurial experience have an average of 12 companies in their portfolio. Out of those small bets, only a handful a very small percentage of them are likely to become really successful. For example, the "American Angel" study found that angels studied had a positive return on about 11% of their investments. The odds of investing in a successful startup may be similarly low for both angel investors and traditional entrepreneurs. However, an angel investor diversifies to minimize losses and increase returns, while a traditional entrepreneur often chooses not to. Many of the entrepreneurs I meet spend years or even decades on one business. Not all of them will succeed. But if they adopt the same mindset as an angel investor, theres a good chance theyll achieve their goals. Multiply And Conquer: A New Model For Entrepreneurship In business, success can pay for failure many times over. If you build nine unsuccessful companies, for example, but your 10th one is a success, it's possible youll recover everything youve lost. Its important, therefore, not to get too attached to one idea at least until you have some traction, such as finding product-market fit with paying customers. In the meantime, I believe one of the most important steps in this approach is to get an MVP to market so you can gather feedback by speaking to customers and investors. It's much more powerful when you can share your vision with a working prototype. Becoming An Agile Entrepreneur An angel investor views each investment in terms of risk yes, it could be a multibillion-dollar company, but it probably wont be. So, they split their capital across several projects. In the same way, an agile entrepreneur splits their time and energy between several ideas. Remove your emotional attachment to one project, and youll start to see things objectively. If your business fails to impress mentors, investors and customers, close it down. Stick it on your resume, and move on to the next one. Time is your most valuable asset. To become an agile entrepreneur, you can think of your business ideas as an angel investor thinks of investment opportunities. Build a portfolio of startups, aiming for one of them to succeed. An angel investor could receive a small return on a few companies, so consider following that strategy by starting more companies over a shorter period of time. Sumner Redstone is credited with saying, "Great success is built on failure, frustration, even catastrophe." So dont be afraid of failure. Plan for it. Think more like an angel investor, and you can mitigate failure as you would any other risk. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/03/07/should-entrepreneurs-start-thinking-more-like-angel-investors/ |
Should the presidents family members receive high-level security clearances? | By Cait Bladt New reports show President Donald Trump went against the counsel of his security advisers and other White House staff when he moved to provide his daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with high-level security clearances. Jared and Ivanka have both claimed the pair did not receive any special treatment in getting the clearances. This new information directly contradicts these claims. The president is, however, allowed to provide security clearance to whomever he sees fit. According to CNN, the president has the legal right to grant clearances as he sees fit. If he believes a family member, especially family members with portfolios as extensive and varied as Jared and Ivankas, deserves a high security clearance, he can grant one. While Trump has the legal authority to grant clearances, most instances are left up to the White House personnel security office, which determines whether a staffer should be granted one after the FBI has conducted a background check. But after concerns were raised by the personnel office, Trump pushed Kelly and McGahn to make the decision on his daughter and son-in-law's clearances so it did not appear as if he was tainting the process to favor his family, sources told CNN. After both refused, Trump granted them their security clearances. Presidents typically defer to the judgment of their advisers when granting security clearances. Trump, however, has a well-documented history of disregarding this type of advice. The New York Times reports his advisers were in complete agreement that Kushner should not be provided security clearance and were upset by Trumps insistence. Mr. Trumps decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been ordered to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance. The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner including by the C.I.A. and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance. ...It is not known precisely what factors led to the problems with Mr. Kushners security clearance. Officials had raised questions about his own and his familys real estate businesss ties to foreign governments and investors, and about initially unreported contacts he had with foreigners. The issue also generated criticism of Mr. Trump for having two family members serve in official capacities in the West Wing. Rep. Elijah Cummings, chair of the House Oversight Committee, has requested documentation of the presidents security clearance requests for his family members. According to NBC News, Cummings believes Trump has crossed ethical lines with his security requests. The White House, however, has rebuffed these requests. "There is a key difference between a president who exercises his authority under the Constitution and a president who overrules career experts and his top advisers to benefit his family members and then conceals his actions from the American people," Cummings said in a statement. "The White Houses argument defies the Constitutional separation of powers, decades of precedent before this Committee, and just plain common-sense," Cummings wrote. "The White House security clearance system is broken, and it needs both congressional oversight and legislative reform. I will be consulting with Members of the Committee to determine our next steps. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone responded to Cummings, claiming the president was well within his rights to grant the security clearances. Per Politico: These actions suggest that the Committee is not interested in proper oversight, but rather seeks information that it knows cannot be provided consistent with applicable law, Cipollone wrote in a letter to Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings. We will not concede the Executive's constitutional prerogatives or allow the Committee to jeopardize the individual privacy rights of current and former Executive Branch employees. The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, wed love to hear what you have to say. | https://www.oregonlive.com/tylt/2019/03/should-the-presidents-family-members-receive-high-level-security-clearances.html |
Could Scotland's only state-run girls school admit boys? | Image copyright Thomas Nugent Image caption Notre Dame High School has only admitted girls since its inception in 1897 A consultation is to take place on the future of Scotland's last girls-only state school starting later this month. Glasgow City Council said one option for the future of Notre Dame High School will be to admit boys too. Some parents who live nearby have been campaigning for this. But many parents of current pupils want to maintain the status quo. Notre Dame has a catchment area in Glasgow's west end but also considers placing requests from elsewhere. Ethos and character It is the only remaining girls-only state school in Scotland, although there are still a number south of the border. Notre Dame is a Roman Catholic school but it admits pupils of other faiths, such as Islam, and no faiths at all. The three options are: Leave the Notre Dame High School entry criteria as is - no change from being a girls' school. Retain the all-girl status, but change the catchment area. Change to be a co-educational denominational secondary school and alter the catchment area The consultation will open on 18 March. Image caption Dame Elish Angiolini, former Lord Advocate of Scotland, attended the school Following the decision to hold a consultation, a council spokeswoman said: "The consultation is the ideal opportunity for all interested parties to make their views known as part of the consultation process. "Public meetings are being held during April and May and we would urge people to come along and hear about the proposals and from the various campaign groups before submitting responses by the 26 May." Some parents who live in the west end of Glasgow have argued that Notre Dame should start admitting boys. Their key argument is simply that an all girls' school has no place in the modern era. However, parents of pupils at the school are likely to fight any move to admit boys. Last year BBC Scotland spoke to some students at the school. Some of them argued that they were more likely to study science and technology because there was no risk of them being wrongly seen as "boys' subjects". Reaching potential Michelle Watt, chairwoman of Notre Dame High School, said: "Notre Dame High School is almost full, with a majority of families from diverse cultures and backgrounds actively choosing to send their girls there via placing requests. "Removing that choice will remove improved opportunity for those areas of our city who do not have top schools close by. The school should be held up as an exemplar in our community... "It offers Glasgow families additional choice, high academic performance and helps close the attainment gap." She added that the school "encourages, supports and develops young women to reach their full potential". Speaking to BBC Scotland a year ago, one of the campaigners who want boys admitted argued that it was unfair that boys and girls who had attended the same primary school could be split up when they started secondary. She also believed it was wrong in principle to still educate boys and girls separately. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-47485317 |
Are Rentals The Next Frontier For Retail? | You would think so based on the rapid growth of the rental and resale market, but the answer is a little more complicated. Coherent Market Insights estimates that the global online clothing rental market was valued at $1.5 billion in 2017 and will increase by 9.4 percent by 2026. Two influential factors account for the increased adoption of a rental/resale model in clothing: the demand created for constant wardrobe variety by social media and the growing consciousness around sustainability, particularly amongst younger generations. In response, a number of companies have sprung up to attack this new niche, including rental pioneer Rent the Runway and companies like Le Tote, Gwynnie Bee, Bag Borrow or Steal and Union Station. However, clothing can no longer claim a monopoly on the retail rental market. Today, Rent the Runway and West Elm announced a partnership to extend the rental concept to home design. The companies plan to offer two packages: bedroom bundles that mix quilt, coverlet, throw or blanket with shams and decorative pillows to dress a bed and living room bundles that pair decorative pillows with throws to accessorize a living space. Both offerings will be made available online by Rent the Runway as part of its RTR Unlimited package. To further captivate and convert target audiences, the two companies have various activations planned in their respective stores, starting with the West Elm in Austin. Rent the Runway and West Elm are not the first to apply the rental trend to the home category. Last year, Feather, the furniture rental service who has also partnered with West Elm, announced their foray into furniture subscriptions. Other multi-category companies like Joymode also offer rental subscriptions for everything from tents to video games to pasta makers. The West Elm and Rent the Runway partnership represents a natural extension of both businesses. West Elm President Alex Bellos, pointed out that his customers are already actively involved in the sharing economy on their own, as most people resell furniture over its lifetime. With this partnership, were excited to take a more active role in that conversation, he added. According to Maureen Sullivan, COO of Rent the Runway, home repeatedly came up when surveying customers about other services they wanted from the company. Adding to the appeal of the partnership and broadening their collective customer base, both companies also maintain a strong commitment to sustainability. West Elm actively focuses on growing its use of organic cotton and FSC certified wood [to ensure that products come from responsibly managed forests] and sustainability has always been a core pillar of Rent the Runways mission. This is a sustainable and smart way to access newness and variety in the home market, noted Sullivan, Rental at a macro level means youre not committed to owning it forever. Though this phase of the partnership is only focused on home design, Rent the Runway and West Elm didnt rule out adding furniture rental options in the future. We want to get some learnings in phase one, and then well grow from here, affirmed Sullivan. Home furnishing and home design are a natural evolution of the rental economy, but its unclear what percentage of home items will find rental demand. It is easy to envision a future where a consumer owns staples, such as a bed or sofa, but rents decorative items like accent chairs, art or even storage items more specific to the layout and architectural style of a home. The next key phase for companies exploring this undefined section of the retail industry will entail determining demand and establishing logistics infrastructure. Rent the Runway pioneered a logistics model for renting clothing, cleaning and mending rental garments all in a day. Through this partnership, West Elm and Rent the Runway have the opportunity to innovate an entirely new infrastructure for this relatively untapped retail rental realm. It will be interesting to see whats ahead for them and the broader rental industry overall. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/veronikasonsev/2019/03/07/are-rentals-the-next-frontier-for-retail/ |
Did John Kuhn throw the second-most famous block in Packers history? | John Kuhn (30, on right) lays out after blocking Julius Peppers on a play that allowed Aaron Rodgers time to scramble and unload for a 48-yard touchdown in the final moments of the 2013 season. (Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) John Kuhn, whose last name became a battle cry and who became a fan favorite during his nine seasons in Green Bay, announced he was retiring from the NFL as a Packer on Wednesday. He accounted for 28 total touchdowns in his career, used primarily in short-yardage situations, but perhaps his most famous play came on a chip block in 2013. RELATED: Former Green Bay fan favorite John Kuhn retires as a Packer RELATED:From 'absolute chaos' to a touchdown for the ages Let's revisit the Dec. 29, 2013 regular-season finale in Chicago, when Aaron Rodgers hit Randall Cobb for a 48-yard touchdown on fourth down with 38 seconds remaining. The block by Kuhn to slow down elite Bears pass rusher Julius Peppers became widely recognized as the play that helped make it all work. The Packers won the game 33-28 and clawed their way into the playoffs at 8-7-1 in the winner-take-all thriller for the NFC North title. Peppers joked later that the block "cost him his job," when the Bears released him and paved the way for him to sign with ... the Packers, in the subsequent offseason. It's not the most famous block in Packers history. That honor will forever belong to newly minted Hall of Famer Jerry Kramer, whose block of Cowboys defensive lineman Jethro Pugh created an opening for Bart Starr to plow through on the famous quarterback sneak that ended the Ice Bowl on New Year's Eve in 1967. Green Bay went on to beat Oakland in Super Bowl II. Admittedly, this is a tough thing to research. There's probably a memorable Brett Favre block that belongs in there, and it stands to reason that the Lombardi-era Packers had more than one famous block. Let us know what other big Packers blocks come to mind. JR Radcliffe can be reached at (262) 361-9141 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @JRRadcliffe. | https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/nfl/packers/2019/03/07/did-john-kuhn-deliver-second-most-famous-block-packers-history/3088456002/ |
Are Brie Bella & Daniel Bryan Moving Back to Phoenix? | The WWE stars are in a disagreement about moving again in this exclusive clip from Sunday's new Total Bellas. Brie wants to break their lease in San Diego to move back to Phoenix while Bryan worries about the costs. Do we want to start searching for a house to buy?' But a part of me just feels like we kinda just need to go back to Phoenix just 'cause of Birdie and Vivian," Brie tells her family. "Prolly the best thing to do is, I don't know, break this lease, get something in Phoenix." "Brie just can't make a decision," Bryan later confesses. "If it were up to me, we would just have one house. That house would be the place that we would live all year round. I mean, everybody does it, except us." | https://www.eonline.com/uk/news/1021303/are-brie-bella-daniel-bryan-moving-back-to-phoenix?cmpid=rss-000000-rssfeed-365-topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories |
Who are the Republicans senators planning to vote against Trump's border emergency? | CLOSE Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen insisted Wednesday the crisis at the southern border is not manufactured as she was grilled by Democrats for the first time since they took control of the House. (March 6) AP WASHINGTON President Donald Trump said in a tweet Wednesday that Senate Republicans are not voting on constitutionality or precedent when a resolution to block his emergency declaration at the U.S.-Mexico border comes to the Senate floor. But the Republican senators who plan to break ranks and vote with Democrats in favor of the resolution say precedent and constitutionality are precisely what they are voting on. Trump announced he was declaring a national emergency at the border after Congress refused to appropriate the $5.7 billion he wanted for construction of a border wall, even after a record 35-day government shutdown. Many congressional Republicans have joined Democrats in objecting to the move, which they saw as using emergency powers to bypass Congress constitutional authority over spending. : Donald Trump's emergency order hits wall with GOP senators Senate Republicans are not voting on constitutionality or precedent, they are voting on desperately needed Border Security & the Wall. Our Country is being invaded with Drugs, Human Traffickers, & Criminals of all shapes and sizes. Thats what this vote is all about. STAY UNITED! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 6, 2019 So far, four Republicans have gone further than warning against the move and have publicly expressed support for the resolution to block it, which passed the Democratically-controlled House last week in a 245-182 vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said it's likely the resolution would pass the Senate. Unless one of the senators changes their declared positions, Trump will be forced to issue such a veto to keep his emergency declaration in place. Only 13 Republicans joined with Democrats in the House vote. That number is significant because at least 45 more Republicans would have to flip in order to get the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto. 'I didn't need to do this': Critics say Trump quote undercuts national emergency for border wall Mitch McConnell: It's clear Senate will vote against President Trump's national emergency Here are the Republican senators who have said they plan to vote for the Democratic resolution: Susan Collins, Maine Sen. Susan Collins is one of two Republicans who plan to vote for the resolution who are also up for re-election in 2020. The New England moderate has bucked her party on other occasions, such as when she voted with Democrats to block Affordable Care Act repeal efforts in 2017. She said Trumps decision to declare a border emergency after Congress denied him funding for a wall, "strikes me as undermining the appropriations process, the will of Congress and of being of dubious constitutionality.'' Lisa Murkowski, Alaska The daughter of former Alaska governor and senator Frank Murkowski, Sen. Lisa Murkowski has not been afraid to work independently of her party, even winning a write-in campaign after losing her partys primary in 2010. She was also the lone Republican to oppose Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation. "When you use the National Emergencies Act to effectively expand executive powers by legislative acquiescence, I think that sets a dangerous precedent, and I don't think that it's a path that we should take," Murkowski told PBS "Newshour" on Wednesday. Rand Paul, Kentucky For the libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul, opposition to Trump's border emergency declaration is in large measure a matter of ideological principle. "I cant vote to give the president the power to spend money that hasnt been appropriated by Congress," Paul told a gathering of Kentucky Republicans, according to the Bowling Green Daily News. "We may want more money for border security, but Congress didnt authorize it. If we take away those checks and balances, its a dangerous thing." Thom Tillis, North Carolina Sen. Tom Tillis is the other senator up for re-election in 2020 who has said he will vote to block Trumps emergency declaration. "As a U.S. senator, I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress," Tillis wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post. "As a conservative, I cannot endorse a precedent that I know future left-wing presidents will exploit to advance radical policies that will erode economic and individual freedoms." More Republicans may join them Paul believes as many as 10 Republican senators could end up voting to block Trump's emergency declaration, The Washington Post reported. Ordered from least to most likely to vote for the resolution, The Post listed Sens. Ted Cruz, Texas; Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania; Mitt Romney, Utah; Mike Lee, Utah; Marco Rubio, Florida; Cory Gardner, Colorado; and Lamar Alexander, Tennessee. Contributing: Deborah Barfield Berry and Michael Collins Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/07/republican-senators-voting-to-block-border-emergency-declaration/3089784002/ | https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/07/republican-senators-voting-to-block-border-emergency-declaration/3089784002/ |
Could Vanderbilt fire basketball coach Bryce Drew after dreadful season? | Vanderbilt basketball coach Bryce Drew may be making a case to keep his job when this unparalleled poor season ends soon. He is only halfway through a reported six-year contract. Drew will meet with new athletics director Malcolm Turner, review the reasons for this seasons unprecedented collapse and present his plan to pull off what he calls the biggest turnaround in the history of college basketball" if he returns next season. That meeting is coming soon, as it always does between a coach and athletics director at season's end. And after Vanderbilts 84-48 loss to Arkansas Wednesday night a program-record 18th consecutive loss Drew gave perhaps a preview of his pitch to Turner. We were the first (Vanderbilt coaching) staff to go to the NCAA tournament in our first year, Drew said during his postgame news conference. We recruited the best player to ever come to this school (Darius Garland). We played the hardest schedule in the country in back-to-back years. So obviously there are a lot of things you take pride in. This (season) is obviously a big scar. Bryce Drews pros and cons All those high points are true. Drew led the Commodores to the 2017 NCAA tournament with former coach Kevin Stallings players. He coached against the nations toughest schedule for two seasons. And he brought Garland, a five-star point guard and projected NBA lottery pick, to Vanderbilt in the best recruiting class in program history. But all that came before Garland suffered a season-ending knee injury and Vanderbilt (9-21, 0-17 SEC) struggled through the worst losing streak in its history. The Commodores 21 losses are the most in program history. They finished with a losing record at home for the first time in 67 seasons since Memorial Gym opened. And if Vanderbilt loses at No. 10 LSU Saturday, it will be the first SEC team in 65 years to go winless in conference play. At the end of every season, obviously, you worry about it, said Drew, who has a 40-57 record and 16-37 SEC mark in three seasons. You could lose (your job) at any point. As a coach, you control what you can control. My job right now is to keep these guys fighting. In a letter to Vanderbilt fans Wednesday, Turner was vague about his plans. "While it has been a challenging year for our men's and women's basketball programs," he wrote, "I am firmly committed to supporting the return of 'Memorial Magic.' Garlands injury tossed the team into an early season tailspin from which it never recovered. Another five-star freshman, Simi Shittu, regressed as the season went along. And transfers haven't made the impact that was intended. But Vanderbilt is set to return the same roster, except for lone senior Joe Toye, and add another strong recruiting class. Four-star prospects Dylan Disu and Austin Crowley have already signed, and Scotty Pippen Jr. has committed to sign in April. Plus, freshman Aaron Nesmith, a bright spot this season, appears to be a future star and NBA prospect. We feel like the future is bright, Drew said. Im excited about our guys. Aaron Nesmith is going to be a great player, one of the best ever here by the time he leaves here. We are excited about the new guys coming in. We are excited about (center) Ejike Obinna, whos almost 250 pounds now after redshirting this year. This only motivates me to work harder, to get these guys better, to get the right pieces to go with them and make this the biggest turnaround in the history of college basketball. Bryce Drews dad, brother won big after slow starts Buy Photo Vanderbilt head coach Bryce Drew talks with forward Yanni Wetzell (1) as he takes the court during their 48 to 84 loss against Arkansas at Memorial Gym Wednesday, March 6, 2019 in Nashville, Tenn. (Photo: George Walker IV / The Tennessean) Drew comes from a family of coaches that each took a few years to hit their stride. His dad, Homer Drew, coached 370 wins in 22 seasons at Valparaiso despite a slow start. And Bryce's older brother, Scott Drew, has 317 wins in 16 seasons at Baylor after a lackluster start. In Homer Drews second, third and fourth seasons at Valparaiso, he posted a combined record of 14-68 overall and 5-39 in conference play. But he kept his job and reeled off eight 20-win seasons in nine years and made seven NCAA tournament appearances. Scott Drew went 21-53 in his first three seasons at Baylor, but he soon followed with seven NCAA tournament appearances. (My dad) went through three years when he won a combined (14) games. And if you fast forward 20 years, the court was named after him, Bryce Drew said. My brother went through a lot in his first (three) years at Baylor. So, obviously, you never want to do this. But its making me a better coach, its making our staff better coaches, and our goal is to make this the best turnaround in the country. DOWNLOAD THE APP: Get Vanderbilt basketball news from The Tennessean on your mobile device NEWSLETTERS Get the Sports newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Top and trending sports headlines you need to know for your busy day. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-342-8237. Delivery: Daily Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Sports Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters LETTER TO FANS: Vanderbilt AD Malcolm Turner addresses basketball programs, football stadium RECAP: Vanderbilt basketball drops 18th straight, first losing home record in Memorial Gym history Reach Adam Sparks at [email protected] and on Twitter @AdamSparks. | https://www.tennessean.com/story/sports/college/vanderbilt/2019/03/07/vanderbilt-basketball-fire-coach-bryce-drew/3049689002/ |
Should we still celebrate Michael Jackson? | By Keydra Manns Michael Jackson is regarded as the King of Pop, but his legacy is being threatened. The Leaving Neverland documentary was recently released, accusing the late singer of sexually abusing young boys. The King of Pop was first accused of molestation in 1993 and more alleged cases followed, and now a two-part HBO docuseries is shedding light on the allegations. Fans and those close to MJ claim his innocence and say the accusations are an attempt to ruin his legacy. The documentary offers accounts from alleged victims of the late singer and their families who claim their sons were abused by Jackson for years. Take a look at the trailer from the chilling documentary below. Michael Jackson built a ranch to lure little boys into his secret bedrooms where he admitted he slept with them. He stockpiled kiddy porn. Although he mounted a massive legal campaign & was acquitted, I believe Wade & Jimmy. MJ was a sick & suffering man who sexually abused kids. Morgan J. Freeman (@mjfree) March 4, 2019 Jacksons family is publicly speaking out against the documentary and say it is a ploy to get money from the singers estate. They say their brother is innocent and would never hurt a child and the documentary is simply trying to tarnish his name. My sweet Michael Jackson was a kind compassionate loving person never said an unkind thing about anyone. Leave him alone! This documentary is about nothing but money. The man is dead let him rest. I love Michael. Ms. Winfrey why, why, would you continue to defame Mr. Jackson name pic.twitter.com/vypKe73xbz Stephanie Mills (@PrettyMill1) March 4, 2019 The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, wed love to hear what you have to say. | https://www.oregonlive.com/tylt/2019/03/should-we-still-celebrate-michael-jackson.html |
Can Meghan Markle and the Royals Have Political Views? | Friday is International Womens Day, and even Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex is taking some time to mark the occasion by appearing on a panel alongside notable figures in England like Annie Lennox and Adwoa Aboah hosted by Kings College London. This is not the first time Markle has celebrated the annual event with a high-profile engagement; back in 2015, she delivered a speech at the U.N. Women conference about gender and equality. Women need a seat at the table. They need an invitation to be seated there, and in some cases, where this is not available, well then they need to create their own table, she said then. So Markles interest in womens causes is no surprise, as many royal watchers and longtime Markle fans will already know. And its not necessarily a huge departure from the humanitarian work that others in the family like Prince Charles and Prince Harry have long taken on themselves. It is still significant when royals get political, however, because of the Queens impartial relationship to party politics. Youve got to be very careful in terms of how anything reflects on the Queen, explains CNN royals commentator Victoria Arbiter to TIME. Shes a politically neutral head of state. And the family is very careful in terms of where they go, because they cant cause her any embarrassment. The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now This need for caution has been in place ever since the United Kingdom became a constitutional monarchy and reduced royal political powers in 1688. The reigning monarch is still technically responsible for a whole list of tasks, from appointing prime ministers to summoning and dissolving Parliament, and still holds the power to declare war and make peace. But the stability of the U.K. government is based on the fact that the monarch has remained politically neutral as head of state in the intervening centuries. Thats certainly the case for Queen Elizabeth II, who has now been the U.K.s longest-reigning monarch at 92. That doesnt mean other royals dont dabble, however as they are within their rights to do. The royals have long gone as close as they possibly can [to politics], says Arbiter, but they limit it to the humanitarian side instead of the political side. That means steering clear of taking a firm stance on a party issue like Brexit, for instance although in a roundabout way the Queen has talked about Brexit herself, Arbiter noted, as when she made what people perceived as veiled references in a speech this year. Its not as if Markle appears to be inserting herself where its something not appropriate for her to comment on, says author Leslie Carroll, who writes books of royal history and intrigue. The fact that shes an outspoken advocate for womens issues as she always has been isnt surprising. Markle has publicly declared herself a feminist and supported menstrual products for girls in India; she also made headlines as Duchess of Sussex when she was seemingly drawn into the Irish abortion debate. Her general work for women, it seems, has the stamp of approval of the Queen herself: Markle was recently made patron of Smart Works, a charity that supports unemployed women in their search for jobs, which demonstrates the Queens trust in Meghan, Carroll suggests. The other royals have all had their own causes, too. Prince William has long been focused on conservation and wildlife preservation. Prince Harry has been particularly engaged in mental health awareness programs and vocally concerned about climate change. Princess Diana, soon after her divorce, worked to de-stigmatize AIDS and draw attention to the landmine crisis in places like Angola, which got her called out by politicians for interfering in what they saw as a political issue. And Prince Charles, who was preaching the horrors of plastics for decades as an environmental supporter according to Arbiter, has courted controversy when he toed close to the political line by opting to write memos to make his case on policies. (The memos werent unearthed until years later.) William and Kate tread a finer line because theyre going to be king and queen eventually, so they have to be a little bit more beige, explains Carroll of Harrys brother and sister-in-law. Markle, meanwhile, is not part of the official royal line of succession, giving her a little more leeway. As for womens issues in particular, both Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and Sophie, Countess of Wessex have supported womens causes: Camilla has worked on providing support for victims of sexual abuse, while Sophie is chair of a womens business cause and supports anti-sexual violence initiatives. Meghan by extension is continuing that, says Arbiter. Markle will also have the full guidance of a royal team to make sure that her rhetoric stays within the bounds of palace protocol, Arbiter and Carroll agree. All eyes may be on Markle as she takes the stage this International Womens Day, but her support of women is actually nothing new or all that political for the crown. It is a fine line, but one shes traversed well so far, and one that shell be very prepared for come Friday, Arbiter says. Write to Raisa Bruner at [email protected]. | http://time.com/5544754/meghan-markle-political/ |
What will the Steelers get for Antonio Brown? | The Steelers reportedly want a first-round pick for receiver Antonio Brown. And theres a fairly easy way for them to be able to say they got one. Teams will commonly balance out trade terms by swapping picks in later rounds, flip-flopping selections in what looks like an inconsequential tail on the donkey but what turns out to be the key to finalizing the trade. Scroll to continue with content Ad If, for example, the Raiders send the last of their three first-round picks to the Steelers (hey, its still a first-round pick), Pittsburgh would have the 27th pick in the draft. Then, the Raiders could ask for something like the Steelers third-round selection (83rd overall) in exchange for Oaklands fourth-round pick (104th overall). The most equitable outcome also would entail a 2020 pick driven by Browns performance in 2019, because the better he plays this year, the more the Steelers should get. Unfortunately for the Raiders, however, this approach ties up multiple picks until its known which pick will head to Pittsburgh based on Browns production and/or the teams success. Thus, if theres a sliding scale that gives the Steelers anything from Oaklands fifth-round pick to its second-round pick (for example), the Raiders would be unable to do anything else with those picks if/when other trade opportunities arise between the time Brown is acquired through the 2019 trade deadline. Of course, the fact that the Steelers want a first-round pick doesnt mean theyll get one. But there are ways to make it look like the Steelers received a first-rounder when in reality the lesser-noticed terms will result in, as a practical matter, the Steelers getting less than that. | https://sports.yahoo.com/steelers-antonio-brown-113058576.html?src=rss |
Can The Bull Market Run For Another 10 Years? | The current stock bull market, already the longest in U.S. history, turns 10 years old this month. Its been a phenomenally profitable time to participate, especially if youve stuck to an investment strategy that favors dividend-paying stocks. As you can see in the chart below, the amount of cash that S&P 500 Index companies have returned to shareholders has grown each year since 2009. In the final three months of 2018 alone, S&P companies paid out $119.8 billion, a quarterly record. Total dividends for the full year stood at $456.3 billion, up 9 percent from the previous yearanother new record. Thanks to corporate tax reform, stock buybacks also shot up to an all-time high of more than $800 billion in 2018. For the first time since 2008, this amount topped what S&P companies spent to replace or upgrade offices and equipment. While Im on this topic, a lot of noise has been made lately about how much companies spent last year repurchasing shares of their own stock. Many critics of President Donald Trumps tax overhaul suggest that buybacks have been made at the expense of investing and giving workers raises. This is misleading to say the least. Capital expenditures grew substantially from 2017 to 2018at their fastest pace since 2011, in factand often, the same companies that were buying back their stock also increased their investments in their own business and workers. Buffett Says Hed Buy the S&P Today For a while now, some financial analysts and pundits have been predicting the end of the business cycle, and the bull markets 10-year anniversary is only likely to intensify those calls. The truth is that business cycles do not die from old age alone. In the past, theyve unraveled as a result of economic shocks, debt crises, wars, changes in monetary policybut never simply because investors believed they overstayed their welcome. In other words, I dont think theres any reason why this bull run cant last another 10 years. Legendary investor Warren Buffett told CNBC just last week that he thinks the aging bull still looks attractive, and if given the choice right now between investing in S&P 500 Index companies and a 10-year bond, hed go with the former. If I had a choice today for a 10-year purchase of a 10-year bond or buying the S&P 500 and holding it for 10 years, Id buy the S&P in a second, Buffett said. A couple of caveats here: One, you cant invest directly in an index. And two, Buffett is a billionaire many times over, and so his threshold for risk, even at 88 years old, is probably somewhere in the upper stratosphere. Be that as it may, theres research available to support Buffetts rosy 10-year outlook. Below is a brief excerpt from Oxford Club Chief Income Strategist Marc Lichtenfelds 2012 bestseller Get Rich With Dividends: Investing in the stock market works. Since 1937, if you invested in the broad market index, you made money in 69 out of 76 rolling 10-year periods, for a 91 percent win rate. That includes reinvesting dividends. Past performance does not guarantee future results. A 91 percent win rate. Put another way, its historically been very rare for a portfolio of S&P stocks not to have generated positive returns on a rolling 10-year basis. According to Marc, only two out of the past 20 years2008 and 2009were losers for the 10-year period with dividends reinvested, thanks to the financial crisis. And thats only if you had cashed out at the worst possible time. Even the tech bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s wasnt enough to prevent most investors from losing their principal investments made a decade earlier. It means investors have historically been rewarded when theyve taken a longer-term outlook and stayed disciplinedand, I might add, focused on companies that were raising their dividends and then reinvested those dividends. It Might Pay to Stay Invested If you believe that a recession or bear market will strike later this year or next, it still might not be time to get out of stocks altogether. Thats because returns have tended to be strongest 12 months or so before the start of a recession, as opposed to two or three years before. Take a look at the chart below. Based on Morningstar data compiled by Wells Fargo, average returns for large-cap stocks have been highest at almost 25 percent for investors who sold 12 months before an economic downturn. Small-cap stock returns have been even higher at 36.4 percent. In both cases, profits have been much smaller for investors who got out two or three years prior to a recession. As Ive noted already, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Also note the returns for intermediate-term government bonds. As you might expect, they were much smaller than those of large-cap or small-cap stocks, no matter when you cashed out. But dont let that deter you. Theres a place in most peoples portfolios for fixed income, as it can help counter potential equity volatility that has tended to arise late in the business cycle. Active Management Late in the Cycle Ten years is a long time, but again, I dont necessarily think investors should rotate completely out of stocks just yet. I do, however, believe that if youre going to stay invested, you might want to consider an actively managed fund. Passive ETFs are inexpensive and can give you broad exposure to the U.S. market, but theyre generally not as nimble as a fund managed by an investment professional. And nimbleness is what you should be seeking if youre worried about a downturn. Most ETFs rebalance on a quarterly or sometimes monthly basis. Thats perfectly fine for many investors, but if youre interested in a fund that can respond more quickly to unexpected market hiccups or rallies, an actively managed mutual fund might be a better fit. -- Stock markets can be volatile and share prices can fluctuate in response to sector-related and other risks as described in the fund prospectus. All opinions expressed and data provided are subject to change without notice. Some of these opinions may not be appropriate to every investor. The S&P 500 index is a basket of 500 of the largest U.S. stocks, weighted by market capitalization. The index is widely considered to be the best indicator of how large U.S. stocks are performing on a day-to-day basis. The Total Return Index calculates the results when cash payouts are automatically reinvested. The S&P Municipal Bond Intermediate Index consists of bonds in the S&P Municipal Bond Index with a minimum maturity of 3 years and a maximum maturity of 15 years. The Dow Jones U.S. Large-Cap Total Stock Market Index is a subset of the Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index, which measures all U.S. equity securities with readily available prices. The index represents the largest 750stocks and is float-adjusted market cap weighted. The Dow Jones U.S. Small-Cap Total Stock Market Index is a subset of the Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index, which measures all U.S. equity securities with readily available prices. The index represents the stocks ranked 751-2,500 by full market capitalization and is float-adjusted market cap weighted. There is no guarantee that the issuers of any securities will declare dividends in the future or that, if declared, will remain at current levels or increase over time. U.S. Global Investors, Inc. is an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). This does not mean that we are sponsored, recommended, or approved by the SEC, or that our abilities or qualifications in any respect have been passed upon by the SEC or any officer of the SEC. This commentary should not be considered a solicitation or offering of any investment product. Certain materials in this commentary may contain dated information. The information provided was current at the time of publication. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/03/07/can-the-bull-market-run-for-another-10-years/ |
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