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Note to the esteemed faculty at U-Va.: Writing things in ALL CAPS almost always makes you look a little CRAZY. Also, pushing that well-known fact aside, doesn’t this all seem terribly blasé? The way the faculty statement reads, you’d assume that gang rapes at fraternity events occur all the time—and if Jackie’s story is accurate, and gang rape is indeed a check-the-box fraternity pledge requirement, I guess that is indeed the case. Instead of “Taking Back the Party,” shouldn’t we be focusing on “Arresting the Rapists”? Anyone? Anyone? Jackie?
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When you think about it, it’s easy to see why Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the Rolling Stone writer who wanted to cover America’s allegedly rampant campus “rape culture,” was so taken by Jackie’s story. Jackie, to put it starkly, was the perfect victim. She didn’t drink a lot. She wore a conservative outfit. She didn’t do anything sexual. She was shoved in a room. Her story is black-and-white. If she is telling the truth, she is the inarguable victim of an utterly horrible crime.
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It’s been curious, then, to see the continued retreat of both media and activists into tired and incongruous feminist tropes: the passionate declarations against “slut-shaming” (Seriously, how is that even applicable here?); the “no means no” chants (Pro tip: gang rapists do not care about consent); and the faculty calls for fair and equal party “turf” (Really, an English professor declared this to be key).
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It’s almost as if modern feminists, earnestly schooled in a cloudy haze of relativism and “rape culture” and “entitlement,” don’t have the words for pure evil—or, more alarmingly, they don’t even understand the concept. It’s also worth noting that Jackie, repeatedly labeled as too “afraid” or “weak” or “fragile” to file a complaint—an action which would, if her accusations are true, protect other women from the same fate—is never called to push for justice. Among feminists, the university, together with the broader “system,” is blamed.
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Rolling Stone has gone silent, refusing to answer press questions on its explosive story, issuing a terse one-paragraph statement instead, applauding Jackie’s “courage.” Meanwhile, Ms. Erdely, the author of the piece, admitted the following when talking to Slate: “What exactly happened? I wasn’t in that room. I don’t know.”
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Well. If Jackie’s story is true, let’s hope her rapists will be brought to justice. If it’s not true, it might be fair to stop and wonder who the real purveyors of “rape culture” really are.<|endoftext|>How is a warming planet going to shape the life of a baby born in Toronto in December 2015? The Star asked 10 scientists from Canada and the U.S. to describe the ways climate change will redefine life in the 21st century. These stories are based on their educated guesses of best and worst case scenarios, based on the scientific consensus. BIRTH
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What will the future look like for this baby? Climate change means big changes coming to lifestyles. ( Lucas Oleniuk / Toronto Star )
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Average global temperatures are 1-degree C higher than pre-industrial times for the first time in 2015
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Scientists warn at least 2 degrees C of warming is unavoidable
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Article Continued Below
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The baby was born in December 2015 on a 7-degree C day. No snow yet on the ground, so parents are less nervous driving home from the hospital. They drive a fuel-efficient SUV. They’re waiting for an affordable model that runs on gas for long distances and on electricity for city driving. Options are limited, which explains why plug-in vehicles are only .05 per cent of car sales. The father grew concerned about climate change after he was bitten by a blacklegged tick on Toronto Island, unheard of a couple of years ago. He didn’t develop Lyme disease, but it was a wake-up call. The mother started worrying after the Toronto flood of 2013 left a foot of water in their basement and friends lost their home in Calgary’s record-breaking flood. Drought in California and unprecedented forest fires in western Canada left an impression. Something, she has felt, is “not quite right” with the seasons. A couple of friends think she’s being dramatic. They have been following the Paris climate summit and learn that 2015 is expected to be the hottest year ever recorded and that average global temperatures are now for the first time 1-degree C higher compared with pre-industrial times. Now, with their first child, the climate problem has taken on a sense of urgency. Yet they are optimistic even though they know that at least 2 degrees C of warming can’t be avoided. Ontario has phased out coal-fired electricity. Alberta is planning to do the same and newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to take the issue seriously. They hope any agreement that comes out of Paris will prevent the worst.
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Temperature changes could make algae a growing issue for the Great Lakes, as well as change the fish and other fauna in Ontario. ( Eric Albrecht )
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Age 20, 2035 Best case (2C increase) Sea levels have risen by 15 cm
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Article Continued Below
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Toronto’s summers and winters are 1-degree C warmer, a result of emissions from the 1990s “Using gasoline will be increasingly viewed as anti-social behaviour.” — Deborah de Lange, Associate Professor of Global Management Studies, Ryerson University Back in the T-Dot, it’s been a warm winter — again. Officials had been predicting for years that it would be an average of a degree warmer compared with 20 years ago. Global CO2 emissions began to fall in the early 2020s, and have continued to fall, but today’s warmer temperatures are the result of emissions from the 1990s. The good news is the climate beast is beginning to be tamed. Career paths have changed. Whether choosing med school or engineering, there is a greater focus on climate adaptation. Everyone wants to design a better electric-car battery, even though progress there has been impressive. You can buy an electric sedan from Tesla Motors for $25,000 that can drive from Toronto to Montreal on a single charge. Half of all cars sold in Ontario now are fully or hybrid-electric. Worst Case Formerly tropical diseases are endemic in Toronto
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Storms and high seas regularly batter costal cities “Even in 20 years, it will be a different world, one that we will have trouble recognizing.” — John Smol, Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change, Queen’s University Weather records are being broken every week. Halifax, where his favourite aunt lives, has been battered by hurricanes and fierce snowstorms every second year. His favourite vacations have been in the Florida Keys — the islands are still there — and the Maldives, where the president has started buying land so his people can be relocated when rising waters take over. He used to love to fish for trout, but with longer and more intense summers, the trout have all but disappeared. Algae blooms, on the other hand, are proliferating every summer, making swimming hard in the Great Lakes.
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Waterfront property will lose its value because of rising sea levels and more powerful storms and flooding. ( Mario Tama )
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40 years old, 2055 Best case (2C increase) Aggressive action over the past 20 years has warming under control
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Maximum summer highs hit 44C in Toronto, up from 37C in 2015 He has worked for 10 years as a family doctor. Cases of heat exhaustion, not to mention anxiety and depression, have risen notably. Aggressive climate action over the past 20 years has global emissions under control, but latent CO2 in the atmosphere still makes every season warmer. The maximum daily summer temperature hits 44C, and there are four times as many heat waves in a typical year; crops and livestock suffer. Average daily rainfall is twice what it was in 2015, but the city is mostly prepared for the occasional deluge. Home adaptation audits are mandatory and most properties have been retrofitted or built to flood-resistant standards. Over the past three decades, the city created green spaces to better absorb rainfall. Roads have been paved with a permeable asphalt made from recycled materials that allows water to seep into the ground more evenly. Emission-free vehicles, mostly powered by battery but increasingly with fuel cells, represent nearly all new models sold. Owners of noisy gas-guzzlers pay an extra emissions tax and gas is $3 a litre. Worst case Meat is a luxury too expensive for most Canadians
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U.S. summers are too hot for children to safely play outside He is a family physician in East York, lives in the neighbourhood, is married and has two daughters; the family owns one small electric car. But there are food scarcities — even brawls at grocery stores, where security guards are common. There are new careers: Ecologists to help slower-moving species escape a warming climate; social workers to help settle climate migrants — thousands from sinking island countries — adapt and integrate. Research into genetics and seed banks and vaults like the one in Svarlbard, in Norway, have become essential to preserve declining genetic variation. Island nations such as Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Maldives are closer to being submerged. In low-lying countries like Bangladesh, frequent stories about evacuations from rising sea levels and ever-more powerful typhoons don’t shock people any more. Selling what was once premium waterfront property in places like Vancouver is now nearly impossible. Resale values have plunged. A large part of California is desert, and in many parts of the U.S., summers are too hot for children to play outside or for people to work outdoors.
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What used to be thought of as hundred-year storms will occur with regularity in the future, making urban flooding a regular threat and driving up insurance costs.
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60 years, 2075 Best Case (2C increase) Gas-fuelled cars are gone from Toronto’s streets
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Global emissions fall to 80 per cent of peak levels He decided to retire early and purchased an electric SUV with power-collecting solar paint sprayed onto the body that charges the battery while parked. The car can also charge wirelessly at special stations. It has excellent range — can get to the cottage in Highlands East and back and still have a quarter charge left. Gas-fuelled vehicles haven’t been sold for years. Big trucks and planes still use “fuel,” but it’s synthetic, made from renewable hydrogen and CO2, captured and recycled from the air. Both his cottage and home are “net-zero”: they produce as much energy as they consume. Any extra energy produced is sold back into the grid or stored as hydrogen fuel. Net-zero construction has been mandatory for a decade. The province’s building code requires it, but most developers began embracing it during the 2050s. Homes are super-efficient, and home heating is electrified using air- and ground-source heat pumps, dramatically reducing use of natural gas. His granddaughter asked what Toronto was like “in the old days.” She was surprised that there were no backyard chickens or greenhouses on skyscrapers, and that downtown was filled with loud, pollution-spewing cars. Snow is now only something that “might” happen, so at least Toronto has saved on snow plowing and road repair. Global GHG emissions are at least 80 per cent below peak levels, and scientists say the climate is showing signs of stabilizing. That said, Toronto recently reported its 100th case of malaria. Worst case Food and water shortages spark riots, even in the developed world
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Property values plummet due to the heat island effect “There will be a lot of crime, gangsterism, and intergroup violence, and police forces will often be overwhelmed.” — Thomas Homer-Dixon, Global governance expert at Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo. He sometimes tells his grandchildren that hundred-year storms and heat waves occurred roughly once in a century when he was a boy. He likes to tell them that it wasn’t so hard getting insurance when he bought his first house in 2038. In the city, the power grid fails often in the summer and the extreme heat caused by the urban island effect has depressed city property values. The rich have fled to the country. Food availability is a constant concern, although his family never goes hungry, but they often see footage of other cities running out of water and food, resulting in riots and chaos. While urban air pollution is better because of the large-scale shift to electric vehicles, forest fires often cover urban areas with thick haze.
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Rising temperatures will render large parts of Africa, India, the Middle East and Australia uninhabitable, according to some scenarios.
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80 years, 2095 Canada shuts its doors to people fleeing wars of scarcity
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Tourists head to the North for its snowy scenery “There’s a reason the Pentagon is worried about climate change. Shifts in climate may not cause wars, but they can destabilize regions already under stress.” — Simon Donner, associate professor of climatology, University of British Columbia Best case Canadians knew there would be a growing refugee crisis and have been accommodating, for the most part. Since retiring, he has spent much time volunteering for aid agencies. Even with warming stabilized at 2 degrees C, resource wars continue in some countries. More developed countries, such as Canada, are shutting their doors over fears that stressed social systems will collapse if they take in too many. Canada has been forced to become more self-sufficient: it grows more of its food, makes more of its goods, supplies its own energy. The oil sands were shut down in 2040, and provinces have worked with Ottawa to build a trans-Canada electricity grid. Canada exports enough hydroelectricity to supply a quarter of U.S. power demand. Old pipelines are used as conduits for power transmission lines. The country has become a global hub for renewable hydrogen production, used to make synthetic fuels for trucks, planes and heavy machinery. Canada also perfected methods for capturing CO2 out of the air, and exports that know-how. With greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere stabilized, and technology available to remove and reuse CO2 in the air on a large scale, the 22nd century could prove a period of unusual global stability. The whole family decided this year to spend the holidays at Polar Bear Provincial Park on Hudson Bay. Northern tourism is big. More “old folks” are taking their grandchildren north to experience something they have never seen: snow. Worst case Rising temperatures render large parts of Africa, India, Middle East and Australia uninhabitable
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Canada’s borders strain to manage massive waves of refugees “I worry that social cohesion will begin to fail. It is possible to imagine that civilization is unravelling, literally … not a world I’d wish on anyone.” — Jeremy Kerr, Biologist, University of Ottawa He wants to take his grandchildren for a splendid vacation, but planning one isn’t straightforward. There are some places he just can’t go. Maldives and Kiribati are long gone — non-mythical versions of Atlantis, lost beneath the waves. The barrier reef in Australia? Many reefs will be permanently gone and what will remain will be a shadow of what it was. In other countries, there is instability because of intense weather fluctuations and lack of food and water, making trips dangerous. Average temperatures will often rise above what the human body can deal with, across the Persian Gulf, in the Indian subcontinent, huge parts of Australia. Substantial parts of the world will be confronted with unreliable agricultural outcomes, dangerous pressure on freshwater supplies, and direct impacts from seasonally hot weather. Raveena Aulakh is the Star’s Environment reporter. Tyler Hamilton’s reporting is produced in partnership by the Toronto Star and Tides Canada to address a range of pressing climate issues in Canada leading up to the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. Tides Canada is supporting this partnership to increase public awareness and dialogue around the impacts of climate change on Canada’s economy and communities. The Toronto Star has full editorial control and responsibility to ensure stories are rigorously edited in order to meet its editorial standards.
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Read more about:<|endoftext|>A common argument in the digital music era involves whether the Internet has empowered artists to control their own destiny. Now more than ever, there are incredible opportunities for artists to distribute their original work directly to their fans, with the goal of acquiring new fans and taking their act global. However, piracy has made it difficult for artists to sell their music, and the vast sea of young and buzzed-about artists has made it even harder to break through the noise so live performances are more important than ever for artists to make a living.
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So how do musicians reach audiences, and where are they? Long gone are the days when music fans would pick up a copy of Time Out or City Guide to see who is playing near them that weekend. We know fans are shifting to online services like Spotify and Pandora to stream and listen to music, but the main question is how to engage them and alert them when artists are on tour?
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To begin, it's essential to understand the two basic forms of music marketing: Push Marketing and Pull Marketing.
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Push marketing requires you to create demand by actively distributing your music and events. Push marketing helps musicians both new and established rise above the fray, whether for recorded music or for tour dates. Pull marketing effectively pulls fans to your website or band page who may already be looking for new music and hoping to "discover" you. Pull takes advantage of pre-existing market demand .
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Fortunately, musicians are beginning to control the means of distribution through the Web, mobile and social networks allowing them to market directly to fans relatively cheaply and easily. And concertgoers are responding, preferring direct communication from artists where information is "pushed" to them rather than searching it out themselves. Given that social media provides a layer of data and analytics about fans like location and musical preference, artists can target their fan base as they never have in the past. This solves a critical issue in music marketing -- your most dedicated customers need you to find them, not the other way around.
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It's important to note that what we call music "discovery" is actually a passive activity for consumers. Streaming music sites like iHeartRadio and Songza are great examples of this, since listeners simply click on a station and let the service do the rest -- providing hours of endless curated entertainment. The same way the discovery of recorded music is a passive activity, so too is the discovery of live events.
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In the fall of 2012, Bandsintown commissioned a study of American concertgoers to better understand what brings people out to shows and how to reach them. The results determined that music fans prefer to receive "push" notifications, such as Facebook posts and email blasts about upcoming shows, rather than "pull" notifications from artist or event websites. More than 80 percent of music fans surveyed said that Facebook posts and email blasts inspire them to purchase concert tickets, compared to more traditional outlets like magazines, newspapers, or even blogs. The survey also found that the majority of all fans buy concert tickets in advance when notified -- about 75 percent of the time -- because they don't want to risk missing the show. That's guaranteed revenue since artist's most dedicated fans have paid up front, and there are still countless artists in and out of the mainstream that are ignoring this tactic.
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Musicians typically believe that because push marketing requires an investment of their time it will get in the way of what they love most -- make great music. It's true that with today's virtually unlimited choice of music, interacting with fans is now a part of the job if you want to be successful. However, there are inexpensive online tools available -- from Mobile Roadie and Bandsintown to Sonic Notify -- that effectively utilize social networks and automate the push marketing process, freeing up valuable time for other important things.<|endoftext|>One of the residents of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house was nearly unconscious and trapped inside the burning main living area when
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, officials said. “He was somewhat conscious,” said Ann Arbor fire Battalion Chief Steve Lowe. “He took quite a bit of smoke. He couldn’t find the doorway to go out. They found him in a corner.” Ann Arbor fire Battalion Chief Kevin Cook said the resident was "dazed and confused." "(Firefighters) picked him up and walked him out," Cook said. Crews responding to the fire at 1408 Washtenaw Avenue in Ann Arbor at 5:37 a.m. helped the resident out, as well as three others suffering from smoke inhalation. The four residents were taken to the University of Michigan Hospital in stable condition and have since been released, according to Lowe. Firefighters assisted 20 remaining people out of the back of the house. “We went door to door and floor to floor and evacuated the building,” Cook said. The students were disoriented from being awakened and many of them were not dressed for the frigid temperatures. A U-M bus was brought to the scene and used as a warming center. The American Red Cross was also at the house Saturday morning helping those affected by the fire. All of the residents will be displaced for the time being, officials said. There were no residents at the house at 12:30 p.m. Saturday. Lowe said there was damage throughout the building and it is unknown when it will be habitable again. U-M spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said in an email that the university has offered temporary housing for all residents affected by the fire. There was still confusion Saturday afternoon about a dog that may or may not have been in the building at the time. Some of the residents asked crews to look for a dog, Cook said. Firefighters found an empty dog cage, but no dog and it is unknown if the dog was actually in the building at the time, Cook added. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. There were three Ann Arbor fire inspectors at the house trying to determine what sparked the blaze. Lowe said the inspectors got there at 9 a.m. and were expected to be there until 4 or 5 p.m. "They're looking at a couple different things," Cook said. The bricks on the front of the large, old building perched atop a hill at the corner of Washtenaw and South University Avenue was charred with smoke damage. The front windows were broken out and debris was scattered amid empty beer cans on the capacious front porch. A clean-up effort had already begun Saturday afternoon with garbage cans filled with the debris and a construction company going through the building alongside the fire inspectors. Significant damage to the front room was noticeable through the broken windows. Lowe said when crews arrived, there was heavy black smoke inside that room that didn't reach the rest of the building where the sleeping quarters are located, because of "fire doors" designed to prevent the spread of fire. Some smoke did make it through the doors and there was damage throughout the building, officials said. The blaze was officially under control by around 6 a.m., Lowe said. Crews cleared the scene around 8 a.m. Cook said the cold conditions hampered fire crews, with hydrants and hoses freezing up. The only close building to Sigma Alpha Epsilon, which stands mostly isolated on the hill at South University, is the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority next door. None of the students The Ann Arbor News spoke with Saturday afternoon heard or saw anything out of the ordinary before hearing fire crews arrived. "I didn't hear anything" said Morgan Bartelstein, whose bedroom is a stone's throw from where the front room next door where the fire broke out. Bartelstein said her cousin is a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilion. "I'm trying to get ahold of him," she said around 1 p.m. Saturday. Officials said 28 people occupied the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house. City records indicate the dwelling has a valid occupancy permit for 18 individual rooms and has a maximum occupancy of 18. The fraternity has not been officially recognized by the university since 2011, when the Interfraternity Council
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. Most recently, Sigma Alpha Epsilon was in the news when
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after trying to kick out a group of people. Davonte Northern, a 21-year-old Monroe man, was eventually
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. He is scheduled to appear in court for a pretrial hearing Tuesday before Judge Donald Shelton. A message left with Brandon Weghorst, Associate Executive Director of Communications at Sigma Alpha Epsilon's national headquarters in Evanston, Ill., was not immediately returned.
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John Counts covers crime and breaking news for The Ann Arbor News. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on Twitter. Find all Washtenaw County crime stories here.<|endoftext|>Thinking Outside the Blocks: A Guide to Advanced Redstone Components
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The following post discusses some of the more complex components that we have used to build our maps. These contraptions are all comprised of the basic components discussed in my first post. We highly recommend you make your familiar with these basic concepts before continuing.
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Logic Gates
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A logic gate is a component that performs a particular function based on two inputs. This function differs depending on the logic gate you choose to make. They come in three primary types:
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AND Gates
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AND gates will only output a positive signal if both of the inputs are on. This is great for map makers as it is a very simple tool to allow multiple objectives to be achieved before something occurs. Here is the design for a very simple AND gate, and one example.
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The example here is a button and pressure plate. Here, the player must stand on the pressure plate and press the button for the door to open. If only one of these actions is performed, the door remains closed. If you require more than two events to be triggered before the output is activated, see this set-up below:
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This system connects four inputs to one output. Only when all four inputs are on, will the output be activated. This can be extended to almost any number of inputs – just ensure that each current extends far enough that it still reaches your output redstone torch without interference from the other inputs.
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OR Gates
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OR gates will only output a signal when at least one of the inputs in on. In the following example, these two levers are connected to a door. They can both open the door; however, in order for the door to close, both levers must be turned off.
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