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“A person like me, I am never scared of anybody”, Jayaben Desai told her manager before she downed her tools, beginning one of the seminal industrial disputes of the 1970s.
In the blistering summer of 1976, Desai led a 100 strong protest at the Grunwick film processing plant in northwest London. Tired of low pay and poor working conditions, Desai – who hailed from Gujarat, India – and her fellow workers – who were mostly from abroad – had enough. A year later they’d inspired 20,000 trade unionists, many of whom were white, to march on the factory in solidarity. They eventually conceded defeat but Desai’s achievements are not to be sneered at: she united workers previously polarised along race lines. Many shared fond memories of her indefatigable spirit when she died in 2010; realising people like Desai keep the international Labour movement alive.
Yet Desai’s story is one of few about minority ethnic women that the left properly remembers. Perhaps that’s because there is a shortage of stories where Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) take centre stage, but even if that is the case, we should ask why.
Women of colour, their contributions and the particular forms of discrimination they face are all too often sidelined by the left and by mainstream politics more broadly. Just two weeks before we all came together on International Women’s Day to embrace feminism, Labour MP Dawn Butler laid bare the ugly realities women of colour face on a daily basis. After stepping into the members’ only lift in Parliament, one of her fellow MPs turned to curtly reprimand her: “This lift really isn’t for cleaners”. The assumption: Butler as a black woman must be a cleaner. No way could she be an MP. Diane Abbott, the first black woman MP, has spoken of similar experiences.
When the malice of racism and sexism is exposed in this way, the magnitude of the response is often great. Social media exploded in outrage and disbelief. But the system that produced this discrimination is left unchecked. Women of colour are more likely to be poorer and less healthy than their white counterparts. That’s not just an accident or an unfortunate outcome of sexism; it’s bound up with the racism. Racism and sexism: that’s what minority ethnic women in Britain have to deal with every day.
When it’s recognised, this double prejudice often paves the way for a saviour complex to kick in. The problems these women face are reduced to simple stories where wider society is somehow blameless: women of colour need to be saved from “oppressive” cultures or “barbaric” men. This is a ludicrous leap to make when we all know men of any colour are capable of abusing women; ‘race’ and ethnicity have nothing to do with it. Institutional sexism and racism don’t get a mentioned.
We’re all entitled to our own version of feminism. There’s particular one that calls for equal pay, equal representation, and more broadly the right to one day move through life without sexism shaping the path. But too often it risks infantilising women of colour around the world by speaking for them and too often it ignores the racism British women of colour experience. At times, calls for equality seem to implicitly mean between white men and white women.
Jayaben Desai’s story is a powerful reminder that women of colour are not just passive victims, as politicians like David Cameron would have us believe, or abstract voters groups to be tapped into when an election rolls around. The thirteen minority ethnic women who are Labour MPs, countless councillors, Labour peers, and huge numbers of women of colour in the labour movement and the broader left wing movement who help to keep it alive. Yet they are rarely given attention for a substantial amount of time. Their experiences and views should be essential to the left-wing feminist movement because in the words of Flavia Dzodan: “My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.” |
Even before he added Mike Pence to his ticket, we already knew that the Donald Trump was unprincipled-to-wacky when it came to his stances on women’s sexual health. Now, thanks to a leaked administration wish list, we know a little more about Team Trump’s beliefs and archaic views on women’s reproductive health.
The list, obtained by Crooked Media, was meant to be circulated internally. Brian Beutler notes that the list highlights how much of the administration’s policy is driven by Islamophobia, even policy that doesn’t have anything to do with travel.
For our purposes, let’s focus on how the document treats women. The memo suggests the World Health Organization doesn’t actually promote health, and advises there should be cuts to the U.S. government’s “gender and ‘Let Girls Learn’ initiative.” “Instead,” the document reads, “start the Child Rape elimination initiative that we’re going to try to work up through an interagency process.”
The spectre of sexual abuse by Muslim men has long been used by those pushing an Islamophobic agenda to drum up fear of immigration. The administration’s sudden concern for women would feel less disingenuous if the Trump administration cared about sexual assaults committed by anybody who wasn’t brown (perhaps by somebody who was more, uh, orange, for starters), but as it stands, this concern trolling is very of-the-Breitbart-playbook.
The real show starts when they get into their kooky beliefs about birth control.
If the Trump administration got its way, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) budget for family planning would be slashed, with “no other family planning programming for girls except fertility awareness methods.” Lapsed Catholics should remember the phrase “fertility awareness” from confirmation class; it’s just a scienced-up term for “the rhythm method,” a form of birth control that doesn’t work for one-quarter of couples who use it.
Title X funding, which helps poor women afford contraception, would be slashed in half if Team Trump gets its way. Money would be diverted from sex education that emphasizes “risk reduction” and instead flow toward “sexual risk avoidance,” which is another term for “abstinence-only education.” Abstinence-only education doesn’t work. A report published this year declared the practice both “ineffective and unethical.”
The Title X money could also be diverted into childcare programs, or fertility awareness education. Women who want to be on birth control do not want childcare programs. They want to not be pregnant. That’s why they’re on birth control. They also would not like to learn about “fertility awareness,” a form of birth control that is much less effective than other, better forms of birth control the Trump administration would like us to pretend have not been invented.
For how stupid it is to promote “fertility awareness” over real contraception, let’s consider a theoretical model of car. Let’s say this car was, for 75 percent of the people who drove it, perfectly safe. But let’s say that for 25 percent of people who drove it for a year, the car would crash completely without warning and its driver would require hospitalization to recover. Promoting that car over an alternative car that crashed for, say, 0.01 percent of people (that’s the fail rate for a hormonal IUD) is fucking insane. So would telling people who didn’t want to drive the crashing car to perhaps, rather than getting a safer vehicle, simply not drive at all. That’s the Trump administration’s stance on birth control.
According to the document, a federal program designed to prevent teen pregnancy “needs to be defunded as it has not worked, there is no positive evidence and some negative evidence.” Teen pregnancy in the U.S. just reached its lowest point since records were initially kept. So have abortion rates. That means that teens are either having much less sex than they were before or are not getting pregnant in the first place. Experts believe that the drop in teen fertility and abortion rates is due to greater availability of long term birth control and comprehensive sex education. What the government has done to bring us to this point is absolutely effective.
Donald Trump lived a life of hedonism in the 1980s and 1990s. If tabloid reports at the time are to be believed, the future president plowed his way through a portfolio’s worth of models and starlets. He even managed to drive a weird mini-news cycle with reports that he made all of his sexual partners take an AIDS test before he’d bless them with his sexual company. Karen Pence’s first husband, before she married Vice President Mike, helped invent Cialis, a drug that helps men who have difficulty experiencing sexual arousal achieve erections.
That men should have medically-assisted access to consequence-free sex while women are misled into punishment for the same actions encapsulates this administration’s stunning hypocrisy on sexual health. (Also, hi, Ivanka! Where the fuck are you?)
Women can at least hope that this administration’s ineptitude when it comes to health care, tax reform, the border wall, every multilateral deal Trump threatened to pull out of, and every other major policy Trump has threatened to enact means that they’ll also have trouble creating the unplanned pregnancy hellscape of this wish list’s dreams. Trump being bad at his job might be the last thing that keeps American women safe from this pre-sexual revolution wish list. |
Thanks. Yeh its a nice little case if you need a small, good looking machine.
Yes it can fit a PCI card but it has to be half height or you have to remove the bracket (this is what i did as i added a 2 port intel nic. The issue is that the pci slot when filled will block the top fan. Depending on how big your card is, this will likely impact the air exhaust. My card is about 3 inches wide and 7 inches deep. After adding, my avg temps increased 2C so acceptable. If you were to put a GFX in there, probably worse.
My CPU fan is variable but regardless even at its max 1500 rpms, its very quiet. the Zalman is a nice SFF cooler. The included fans are very quiet as they max at 1000 rpms. Depending on your cooling needs, you may benefit a lot by replacing these (120mm) with fans that more more air (but are prob louder).
I have no issues with cooling now that i have "fixed" my 4790K. These had an issue with overheating and turns out it was the default settings in the BIOS (as was case with many other MB brands).
I think the biggest design decision is the CPU cooler vs PSU. If you want the SFF PSU like the Silverstone, you will need a cooler that is about 3-4mm smaller that the Zalman. If i ever have power issues i may look at this but so far, its been great. |
The Twithe World Wye or World Wye Two (Mean English: World War Two or Second World War) was a worldwide wye fought between the Gathered Ethels and the Axlemight, from 1939 until 1945. Spanning much of the world, the wye led to the death of over 62 micklered, making it the deadliest wye in the eretide of man. It was mainly spured up by pent up wrath from Theechland's loss at the end of The First World wye. The wye the end won by the Gathered Ethels.
Overlook Edit
On the first day of Holimonth, 1939, Theechland, under the steering of Adolf Hitler, overran Poland in line with a hidden runing with the Band of Soviet Fellowship Ledewealths.
On the third Holimonth, the Foroned Kingdom, Andland and New Sealand, followed six logs later by Frankric, answered by spelling wye on Theechland, beginning a widespread sea wye. South Highsun followed their lead on 6 Holimonth, and Settlingland four days later.
The BFSL also overran Poland from the east on the seventeenth day of the month, but the Western ethels did not likewise spell wye on the Folkwield Band.
Theechland swiftly overcame Poland, then Norway, the Netherlands, Belgy and Frankric in Erelith 1940, and Southslavland and Greekland in 1941. Italish and later Theedish heramen fought the British in North Highsunlandnland. By summer 1941, Theechland had overcome Frankland, and most of Western Europe, but it had swethered to overcome the Banded Kingdom thanks to the arful withstanding and stalworthness of the British Loftmight.
In 1941, Dawnland struck Seahurst Harbor in the Banded Folkdoms of Americksland. In little time, the BFA spelled wye on Dawnland, Italy, and Theedishland. Earlier in the year, Theedishland had began an onslaught against Russland, and they were nighing Leninborough, Stalinborough and even Moscow itself.
However, the tide of the wye soon shifted, and the Red Weremight held off the Theedish Weremight at Stalinborough, and then thrutched them back to wyes in Borderland. At the same time, British Wyemen fought the Afrika Korps of Theechland in North Highsunland, and began to halt them, starting at El Alamein, Egypt. In the Frithful Highsea, the BFA overcame the Dawnland lofthera on the iland of Midway.
From 1942 to 1944, Gathered ethels beat back or held off Samened strikes, with many more ethels such as Rudwood, Moonsnavel, Columbland, the Filip Ilands, and Joan Iland. However, inroads were slow, and they needed to help in on the western head, while the BFSL were on the east. So on the sixth day of Forelithe, 1944, better known as D-day, Western Gathered wyemen landed and struck the Norman shore, and overran the Theech harmen within.
Paris was freed, and soon Gathered thracks were nighing Theechland. However, in the Struggle of the Lump, wyemen fought and tolled dearly for the biding of both sides. Soon, Red Weremight thracks overtook Berlin, and meeting up with the Gathered Ethels on the Elb, Theechland yold and threw down her weapons, a day know as V-E Day, the Eighth of Blossommonth, 1945
In the Frithful Highsea, Dawnland fought boldly from iland to iland, never yielding until death. Bloody Struggles were fought, and the BFA in the end overtook the Eailands, Ellentown, the Westfrith Ilands, and a few of the Japan home ilands, such as the Searopes. Hilds such as the Hild of Brimstone Iland were later heavily ared. With the dropping of two uncleftish blasters upon Dawnland by the BFA, Japan at last yielded and V-J was bemarked on Weedmonth 15th, 1945, also the upheld end of The Twith World Wye. |
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. has touted its use of local ingredients and fresh produce to help differentiate it in a crowded fast-food market. Now a string of disease outbreaks is forcing the once-scrappy upstart to act more like the big chains it long has derided.
Chipotle expects to lower its use of locally sourced ingredients and is centralizing the preparation of some vegetables as it seeks to shore up food safety following an E. coli outbreak that sickened 52 people in nine states and a norovirus episode in Boston. The burrito chain hopes the steps can help it regain consumers who have shunned its outlets, eroding its sales.
Health officials haven't been able to identify the source of the E. coli outbreak but say produce was the probable cause.
At an investor conference in New York last week, Steve Ells, founder and co-chief executive of Chipotle, described the chain's new practice of dicing, sanitizing and hermetically sealing tomatoes, cilantro and lettuce in a central kitchen where they are tested for microbes and then shipped to restaurants. Mr. Ells said the extra steps don't change the quality of the ingredients and that whole avocados and jalapeños will continue to be brought into the restaurants. The new techniques minimize the number of people and surfaces coming into contact with the ingredients.
"You could bring fresh cilantro right out of the field into the restaurant and wash it there. I don't think that would be any better than washing the cilantro in the commissary," Mr. Ells told investors. "And if dried properly and then sealed in the bags, it's a delicious product."
Mr. Ells apologized for the outbreaks on NBC's "Today" show last week and said Chipotle is trying to make sure they don't happen again. "I'm sorry for the people who got sick. They are having a tough time, and I feel terrible about that," he said.
Chipotle had moved away from centralized produce preparation for taste reasons. For many years, the Denver company chopped and washed tomatoes in a Chicago kitchen and shipped them to restaurants in bags. In 2014, it began chopping them at its restaurants in dicing machines, because executives said they tasted better when prepared on-site.
"Produce is the leading vehicle of single-source food-borne outbreaks in the U.S. Even if the contaminant was something else, like a spice, they still need to get it right with produce," said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.
Chipotle has experienced five disease outbreaks since July, including a salmonella outbreak involving tomatoes that sickened 64 people in Minnesota.
The company has warned its fourth-quarter earnings would fall well below analyst forecasts and its same-store sales would drop 8% to 11% because of the incidents.
It isn't clear which restaurants may be benefiting as Chipotle loses customers. A spokeswoman for restaurant-consulting firm Technomic Inc. said direct Chipotle competitors such as Qdoba or Moe's Southwest Grill may benefit, but upscale burger chains like Smashburger that offer fresh, made-to-order foods also tend to attract similar customers and may get a sales lift.
Melissa Arnoff, a senior vice president at crisis management firm Levick, said Chipotle's safer practices might actually create a new problem for the company by turning off customers who like watching their food being prepared in front of them. "Hermetically sealed tomatoes are 180-degrees from the image they want to portray," she said.
Though there is no evidence that Chipotle's multistate E. coli outbreak originated with a local supplier--and it likely didn't, given that people from Oregon to New York got sick--some smaller farmers Chipotle has long praised may be unable to keep supplying the chain if they can't implement the kind of sophisticated pathogen testing it now is requiring.
Chipotle, which has nearly 2,000 restaurants, has talked up its local growers ever since it began the sourcing program in 2008. By 2010, the company said it was buying more than 50% of at least one ingredient locally throughout the country, although it initially referred to "local" ingredients as those sourced from within about 200 miles of its restaurants and now defines as local those grown within 350 miles.
Until last week, Chipotle hadn't disclosed the percentage of its produce that is locally grown, but Mr. Ells told investors that the total amount of locally grown produce Chipotle buys in a given year amounts to just about 10%--a figure that is likely to decrease, a spokesman said.
The spate of disease outbreaks marks something of a comeuppance for a company that has satirized so-called "factory" farms in its marketing, criticizing their mechanized growing practices, as well as fast-food chains for using preservatives. In October, Chipotle produced a fake commercial in which a customer walks into a fictitious restaurant chain named "Cheapotle," where she finds a slew of artificial ingredients going into her food.
Choosing how to communicate its food-safety changes poses a dilemma for a company that wants to assure customers that its food is safe without alienating those who share its "food with integrity" ideals. Executives recently told investors that they will wait until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declares an end to the E. coli outbreak before launching an ad campaign about Chipotle's food-safety steps.
Until that happens, once-loyal customer Sergio Pereira won't return.
"With all the food poisonings there, I haven't been to a Chipotle in the last three months and I won't let anyone in my family go, either," said Mr. Pereira, the 54-year-old president of Quill.com, a division of Staples Inc. He added that if Chipotle told customers they are sanitizing produce off-site, it would help give him the confidence to return, but that he still wants to know more.
"The company needs to rebuild trust and they need to tell people that they've made very concrete changes," he said.
Write to Julie Jargon at [email protected] |
The Ringer published an article today entitled “The NFL’s Analytics Revolution Has Arrived” by Kevin Clark. The first section of the article is a relatively interesting overview of the state of advanced analytics in the NFL. But then everything goes down hill. And where does it start to go down hill? Right here:
“It is amazing,” Warren Sharp said, “how many teams anonymously follow me on Twitter.” Sharp is an engineer with his own analytics site and has been playing around with football statistics for about 20 years. He is among the top minds in football not working full time for a team.
Ok. First of all, why does this read as a press release promoting Warren Sharp? Second, let’s talk for a second about who Warren Sharp is. You might remember him from this blog post (which was picked up by Slate, the Wall Street Journal, and Huffington Post) about how the “The New England Patriots Prevention of Fumbles is Nearly Impossible”. It turns out that the analysis was highly flawed, and myself and a colleague detailed the problems with the “analysis” over at Deadspin and Neil Paine over at FiveThirtyEight.com did a great job summarizing the whole kerfuffle.
Sharp then basically claimed that he had been redeemed by the Wells Report, but that was also not true either. In fact, in 2015 immediately after the league implemented stricter ball handling procedures to prevent potentially deflating footballs, the Patriots still had the lowest fumble rate in the league. As Mike Lopez explains in Sports Illustrated:
In any case, the 2015 season makes for an excellent out-of-sample test with respect to New England’s fumble tendencies. Although the Patriots have been accused of going crazy lengths to gain a winning edge, it seems safe to assume that any suspect ball routine could not have been a part of the game-day preparation process this season. (The NFL implemented new procedures for inspecting game balls.) As a result, if one initially made the link between the Patriots low fumble rates and deflated footballs, the natural follow-up would be to assume that New England’s fumble rates would revert toward the league average in 2015. So what happened in 2015? • The Patriots had the fewest fumbles of any NFL offense.
• The Patriots had the best fumble rate of any NFL offense.
• The Patriots had one of their best fumble rates of the past decade.
Based on only this, it is my opinion that Warren Sharp is really not that great of a statistical analyst. And look, I make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Its basically impossible to do statistics without ever making a mistake. Humans are human after all. But what bothers me so much about Sharp is that he just seems to ignore the legitimate criticisms and doubles down.
But wait, there is more! In addition to this, Warren Sharp is a tout. While The Ringer generously promotes his site, Sharp Football Stats, they don’t seem to mention his other site, Sharp Football Analysis, where Sharp sells football picks to gamblers. (You can buy a season long membership for the low, low price of $250….) According to Sharp, his record, shown below, is a 59% winning percentage over 12 years, with a whopping 77% win percentage in Overs (which is somehow different than “Over Leans”).
When something seems too good to be true, it usually is. There is absolutely no way he’s correctly picked 59% of games against the spread over the course of 12 years. And here’s how you can tell this isn’t real: If he was picking 59% correctly over the course of 12 years, he wouldn’t be selling the picks. He wouldn’t need to because he’s be extremely wealthy and wouldn’t need your $250 membership fee. There are a few very good professional gamblers, but you’ve probably never heard of them (Like Bill Benter, for example), and they certainly wouldn’t be selling their picks if their picks were any good because they could be making way more money betting on them (Benter made a BILLION dollars….with a “B”!). So his numbers are probably not the most truthful……
In fact, Game Advisers, which tracks handicappers plays, has Warren Sharp as 16-23-1 for a negative 23.41% ROI. Not quite the same as what Warren claims.
Also, apparently, he pissed someone off enough for them to start http://sharpfootballanalysistruth.blogspot.com. The blog has exactly one post:
One of the links in that blog post links to an entire thread about how Warren Sharp is a scam. A poster named Dr. H refers to him as a “sleazeball hack”……..his words, not mine.
And finally, a public service announcement from one of the covers.com forums:
So anyway, my point is that Sharp is a tout who does, at best, sloppy statistical analysis. And yet these major media outlets are touting (see what I did there…?) him as this genius. He’s not.
Anyway, back to that quote from The Ringer article. That paragraph continues:
In fact, when you talk to people inside the league, some think he might be the top mind, period. Though he’s been writing on the internet for many years, he said it wasn’t until 2018 that teams started reaching out to him to discuss analytics. He says he’s heard from at least five and has done work as a consultant.
While I haven’t personally asked anyone I know who works for an NFL team, I would bet everything I own that exactly 0% of the data scientists/statisticians working for NFL teams would consider this guy to be the “top mind, period“. And if I’m wrong about that, I can just take a page out of Warren Sharp’s playbook and lie about my record……..
Cheers.
P.S. They also mention my old friend Bill Barnwell (who is still blocking me on Twitter) in this article. I actually enjoy reading Barnwell’s stuff, but he also wrote this article once, which was a really poorly done statistical analysis for Grantland. You can read all about the shortcomings of that analysis here and here.
P.P.S. I’ve added this flowchart here in case you are thinking about getting involved with a tout (via @cluelessTroll): |
Last week we told you Columbus radio host Scott Torgerson was suspended for a controversial and offensive tweet criticizing ESPN college football analyst Desmond Howard. Today, the other shoe dropped for The Torg as he was let go by 97.1 The Fan in Columbus. The station "future endeavored" Torg, appropriately enough, on their Twitter page…
Scott Torgerson is no longer employed by our company as of today. We appreciate his contributions and wish him well in his future endeavors. — 97.1 The Fan (@971thefan) October 24, 2012
To be honest, this isn't a surprise. Once Kirk Herbstreit (still a very influential figure in Columbus, make no mistake) got involved publicly, it was always going to be difficult to see The Torg find a way back from his suspension. Not to mention there must have been some pressure from above for the ESPN Radio affiliate in Columbus to disassociate themselves with Torgerson after he jokingly wished firing or death upon Desmond Howard.
It's always tough when someone loses their job and I do believe there's a case to be made both for keeping Torgerson and letting him go. Torg made a mistake and apologized profusely for it, so some will say a suspension was enough and he learned his lesson. Others will say Torg had this coming as a sports shock jock who makes a living pushing the envelope and eventually there would come a day when he wouldn't be able to pull it back. I don't think there's a "right" answer in this case. Regardless, it's an unfortunate situation all the way around and hopefully Torgerson is able to learn from it and move on.
Given the nature of "The Common Man & The Torg" and outspokenness of Torgerson's ex co-host Mike Ricordati (who has taken on Herbstreit himself), I would expect fireworks when their show comes on the air at 3 PM ET today if you're in the Columbus area. |
Activist Fred Boenig challenges Republican Arkansas senator, himself a veteran and new father: ‘Now that you have a child, you will understand’
Air strikes against Isis continue day after US general defends bombing campaign Read more
The Republican senator Tom Cotton was confronted on Friday by a the father of an airman who died in Afghanistan, who told him: “Now that you have a child, you will understand” opposition to further American engagement in the Middle East.
Cotton, a first-term senator from Arkansas, military veteran and new father, is a prominent foreign policy hawk. In March, he was one of the driving forces behind a controversial open letter to Iran’s senior leadership that was signed by 47 Republican senators. The letter was seen by many as an attempt to derail the Obama administration’s pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions.
On Friday, Cotton sat next to activist Fred Boenig, whose son died in Afghanistan in 2010, at a foreign policy discussion held at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Their robust exchange of views covered Barack Obama’s foreign policy – which Cotton called “dangerous” – and the question of when US wars in the Middle East could be considered over, given that troops remain in Afghanistan and US-led airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria continue daily, with US advisers helping Iraqi forces against Isis.
Boenig told Cotton: “It’s very clear what your views are, sir. My views are keeping our kids safe, which include my children. Now that you have a child, you will understand.
“When you speak of sending our kids again, let’s make it worth it, not just to send them to politically help some Haliburton or somebody else.”
Cotton, 38, was formerly an infantry officer. According to his Senate website, he “served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne and in Afghanistan with a Provincial Reconstruction Team”.
The biography continues: “Between his two combat tours, Tom served with The Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery. Tom’s military decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, and Ranger Tab.”
At Johns Hopkins, Cotton said the “threat environment that we face here at home and throughout the west is more grave today than at anytime during our lifetimes”, and added: “I wish that weren’t that case.
“But for the time being it is. We have to remain vigilant and we have to continue to take the fight to the terrorist.”
I-ran and I-raq: what's in a letter? Read more
Boenig, who is a radio host in Pennsylvania, was wearing four lapel pins during his conversation with Cotton, to signify, he said, the service of four of his children in the US armed forces.
Boenig and Cotton parted on polite terms, but in an interview Boenig said: “He handled it the way I expected him to handle it. He’s a hawk.
“I’m a tree-hugging, peace-loving, gay wedding, you know, whatever. I was a conservative my whole life, but it all changed.” |
doesn't seem to care that fighting might cost lives, it actually made things more exciting in his "game". After he worked with Fili-Second to rescue Zap, he grew even closer to the pink speed mare and wishes to stay beside her to make his game more thrilling.
is a flawed prototype of the other Power Ponies arsenal with a self-destruct mechanism that could destroy an entire city if overused.
He is an additional member of the Power Ponies Megaforce and the partner of Fili-Second (Pinkie Pie); Troteye (Cheese Sandwich).Troteye is Fili-Second's secret admirer. He is an agent sent by the S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention - Equestrian Logistics Division), along with Captain Coltimate (Flash Sentry), Steellion (Soarin'), Pony Torch (Spitfire), etc. to support the Power Ponies and Humdrum (Spike) in fighting the army of Highbreed invading Equestria. When Zap (Rainbow Dash) was foalnapped by the Highbreed, Troteye was sent to rescue her, but Fili-Second immediately became jealous of his swift and good archery and they both competed on who will rescue Zap first. But the competition did not turn out well. When Zap was on the verge of her demise, Troteye and Fili-Second worked together to stop the Highbreed and free Zap and they prevailed. From then on, Troteye became Fili-Second's partner.As a cunning and skilled archer, despite being a heroic pony, he is always looking for excitement to feel great amusement. Trot-eyeTroteye is a skilled and agile archer. With his trusted bow Bowless, he can be able to fire countless arrows of different shapes and kinds (fire arrows, ice arrows, arrows that shoot nets, arrow bombs, etc.). But sometimes, when there is a huge horde of his enemies, he relies on Fili-Second to fire all of his arrows within only a few seconds. Afterwards, she would return all of Troteye's arrows to him within only a few seconds.Even if Trot-eye's weapon Bowless is of great use for any battle, unfortunately, itTrent Mercer/Fernandez (White Dino Ranger) and Power Rangers Dino Thunder belong to © Saban Productions and DisneyMikoto Nakadai (AbareKiller) and Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger belong to © Toei Ltd.Hawkeye belongs to © Cheese Sandwich and MLP:FiM belongs to © |
2017 Chart Diary
Things I wrote about things I made in 2017
The idea is cribbed from an Upshot piece. We got a little crunched for time and weren’t as fancy about customizing feedback for incorrectly drawn lines. Still, I think the core idea of making people put their assumptions down and overlaying reality over them works and increases memorability/engagement.
I’m a little surprised this form hasn’t been used more. The chart dragging code isn’t super complex - just 60 lines of d3 for an mpv.
One bit that we should have spent more time on before publishing: clearly labeling the years. We originally put the year labels directly below the tick, but there was a lot of confusion over Obama getting credit/blame for Bush’s last year in office. Moving the year labels to the left of the tick clarified that the data points were for values at the end of the year.
We’ve also been tracking the accuracy of people’s responses, but need to come up with a more understandable form than the log scaled small multiple violin plot.
First time publishing something with flexbox! It was nice to use, but I’ve just switched back to inline-block on deadline and I guess I’m supposed to be learning grid now?
The Senate Librarian maintains a word doc with each cabinet appointment. Just scrolling through the data, I was surprised at how recently confirmations hearings had become contentious during a president’s first year.
To show that, I tried a histogram with the percent of yes votes. Since so many nomineees were confirmed by unanimous consent it was hard to fit them all in, even when I switched to a beeswarm plot and expanded the vertical space. To show how unique the votes on Trump’s nominees were, I tried counting the cumulative number of votes against his nominees. Not showing each nominee lost some of the connection to the news though.
To highlight controversial nominees, I used the form and cutouts from Jasmine’s piece on cabinet demographics and colored the nominees by No votes. The color scale could have been better though, maybe fewer buckets?
Amazon tracks what & when you read on kindle but doesn’t share that information with you. I wrote a little script that extracts and visualizes your reading history.
The Refugee Processing Center published detailed daily demographics behind a form that requires downloading data one day at a time. I couldn’t figure out how to directly script the ASP.NET, so I used nightmarejs to simulate clicking the forms to fill them out and download data.
I tried some denser forms, looking at the number of refugees by country and religion arriving each year. Lots of interesting details, but not about the story we were telling. While I was flying off to my honeymoon, Rebecca removed data and simplified, sharpening the presentation.
My first attempt at showing annual admissions plotted daily data and made it difficult to see the rate of admissions over the course of the year. Rebecca’s switch to monthly data fixed that and removed the need for a “refugees admitted by this date in past years” marker.
Another look at the refugee admissions data, this time focusing on countries of origin over time. I was a little anxious when starting this project - we were trying to publish that day and setting up maps with d3 can be slow. To get going fast, I grabbed some code from a previous project and made a bubble chart.
Distorting geography to stop the bubbles from overlapping was too confusing with potentially unfamiliar locations: Iran starts out between Iraq and Bhutan, then moves south of Iraq. So we switched to overlapping circles on a map. With some last-second color assistance and some bug fixes, it got published on time.
Quick project done the day after the Trump administration published financial disclosure forms. The value of assets are listed as an estimated range, not an exact dollar amount. I tried overlapping circles and gradients to show the range, but a key explaining the different sizes was too clunky so we just showed the lower estimate on the web. It ended up pretty close to the original sketch.
With some additional time and space, Larry came up with some elegant labeling that showed the top and bottom of the range in the Tuesday paper.
The House doesn’t post live election results so we sent people into the chamber to count votes. Kevin nearly had a heart attack.
More congressional table journalism. I tried writing a tool to automatically pull in statements from twitter and facebook, but couldn’t put it together fast enough. Downloading the raw social media text isn’t too difficult (well, the twitter api is a headache), but putting them into an environment where they can be annotated in real-time is tricky. We’ll usually paste a spreadsheet into google sheets, but that’s not easy to update after six people have been marking it up for hours.
Jeremy got a hold of some interesting data this afternoon and we threw together a map.
I made the map with d3 and a couple of canvas tricks from an old Bloomberg piece. There are too many points (80,000+!) to animate with svg, so I used two canvas layers. The top one is cleared every frame and each moving point is redrawn. The bottom frame only has points drawn on it and is never cleared so it keeps a record of every location.
We briefly talked about showing time in different ways - a line chart or small multiple maps by hour - but there was a chunk of time missing. After publishing, I explored an alternative representation with d3-contour which clearly shows the higher rate of hacking in Eastern Europe and China. It’s easier to use a nonlinear scale when you’re programming at a higher level than drawing rectangles on top of each other.
Of course, number of hacked IPs per square mile is not the most meaningful thing in the world to show. Perhaps some kind of binning to compare the amount of hacking to the number of computers in different regions of the world would have been a better approach.
I was curious about how the rest of the group stage would play out, so I threw together a visualization looking at how the result of each game would affect each team’s chance of making it out of groups.
I started out thinking that I would follow the form of my previous crack at this problem. Since each team is only playing two games, you only get four groupings of points which ends up not being as interesting - all of the interesting action happens in -other- teams’ games. So I tried looking at the scenarios in a more structured way, shuffling the boxes to compare how the outcome of the game would change everyone’s standings. I felt like I was learning interesting things from the different arrangements, but it was hard to see which games had the biggest impact so I sorted each column individually instead of keeping each scenario in its own row. A little easier to read but loses some of the nice mathematical elegance of exploring a 6d hypercube.
Charts were still kinda weird so I stuck them inside of graph-scroll to make them more palatable. There’s way too much text in the piece, but I didn’t give myself a ton of time for editing.
Update: Darn it! I messed up the tie-breaking rules! I counted the total wins in games between the tied three teams instead of comparing the head-to-head records of each team. Sorry about the incorrect info everyone : (
If three or more teams are tied, the head-to-head record of all teams against each other team involved in the tiebreaker will be considered. If a single team owns a winning record (as defined as winning more than 50% of the games) against every other team in the tiebreaker, they are automatically granted the highest seed available in the tiebreaker, and a new tiebreaker is declared amongst the remaining teams.
I started out just trying to show how much LeBron scored in each playoff game. A table of circles did a nice job of showing wins and losses, but area isn’t easy to compare at such a small size. Using height instead helped, but I wasn’t thrilled about information density; the pieces I’m proudest of are rich with detail that rewards exploration and careful reading.
I tried squeezing the graphic to fit other players in, but since the y-position was used to encode both season and points scored, it wasn’t possible to get very small. So I moved season to the x-position, distinguishing it from series with white space, which opened up a lot of vertical room for other players. This came at the cost of not being able to compare LeBron’s record at different rounds of the playoffs across seasons — he hasn’t lost a first-round game for 5 years! — which I tried to alleviate by highlighting the result of the last series played in a season.
A little bit of polish made it prettier, but there were still significant problems with the form. The piece was about LeBron passing MJ’s record, but because so much emphasis was placed on individual games, it was hard to compare the area of players’ charts to see who had the most points. Tight on time, I fell back on the classic cumulative record chart. Updated with more transitions and scrolling!
After LeBron’s 11-point game gave me some extra time, I went back to the idea of trying to show each playoff game. Stacked bars eliminated the huge amount of vertical variation between games so players’ points were more perceivable. To distinguish series, I switched color from win/loss to playoff depth. This made me a little sad — you can’t trace your finger along and recall individual games like you could in the previous version — but it did a better job showing how players from different eras got their points. Finally, I used a small multiples layout instead of vertically sorting by time with a common x scale to fit more players in a smaller space.
Update to post-election climate piece done with Jasmine. The presentation is mostly the name, but every time it looked like there’d be news on the Paris agreement we’d dust this off and make some small tweaks.
One of my favorite things about writing code in response to the news cycle is getting to default on technical debt after publishing. This languished for so long that I started to worry it’d need a complete rewrite but thankfully it got out the door before then.
This came together quite a lot faster than the 2015 UK Election Results piece I did at Bloomberg. I think we only decided that we were going to purchase a live feed of election results from the Press Association about a week and a half ahead of the election night.
Not sure if we were actually going actually do anything, I played around trying to generate a hex cartogram. It was harder than I thought it would be (Greater London is quite dense); we used Ben Flanagan’s layout instead.
In retrospect, spending so much time exploring cartograms wasn’t a great idea. I think this arrow chart showing the shift in UKIP’s vote share along with the Labour/Conservative split had potential but there wasn’t enough time to finish it.
A remake of a blog post on GSW’s 16-0 start. No one else thought the linked hover was useful, so I stuck in the play-by-play on hover instead.
My original Kawhi annotation was edited down a little. I think the tape is pretty clear though.
Dial, but no jittery “Aisch’s deception” : (
Jeremy and Joe’s piece - I just coded up the charts.
The white stroke to separate the bars was aliasing badly on some monitors, so I tried dropping it and alternating the color of the bars. That was too noisy, so we just reduced the stroke width a bit instead.
I had trouble squeezing all the annotations in. Tom adjusted the text alignment on some of them, an effective tweak that I’ve never thought of doing before.
Nadja did almost all the work on this. The original animation had a single frame for each time period. I thought it’d be cool to transition between the time periods - not too hard if you know to use the mask element!
Possibly the most rewritten thing I’ve ever worked on. Kevin and Josh sketched out a version of the quiz where you clicked on the chart to place characters. To make the interaction more intuitive, Gregor tweaked their code to use the HTML Drag and Drop API. Kevin had some ideas for making the dragging feel like a native app that weren’t doable without finer control. Gregor had just left for vacation, so I hacked together a version with d3-drag… and left for vacation.
Tasked with putting together something publishable, Rich sensibly deleted our terrible code and rewrote the whole thing in svelte.
While working on an earlier subway article Rebecca and Ford heard that the MTA was contributing to overcrowding by not running as many trains as scheduled. We started looking into the MTA’s real-time feed of train arrival times to determine if that was true. It was harder than we anticipated.
The MTA doesn’t archive arrival time data (this page hasn’t been updated for years), so we only had data after we started scraping. The feed only listed trains’ projected arrival times; inferring trains’ actual position required comparing the feed at different timestamps and recording when each projected station arrival time was removed from the feed.
Without any documentation on how to do this from the MTA, the process wasn’t exact. I made a ton of Marey diagrams to diagnose different parsing errors: trains moving backwards through space/time, crossing over each other a single track line and splinting into two. It was hard to differentiate when stations disappearing from the feed indicated an arrival or a canceled trip.
Charting projected arrival time against the feed’s timestamp for each station on a train’s trip revealed the source of some of these problems. Sometimes the projected arrival time is after the timestamp! Apparently, projected arrival times don’t update when trains are stopped. When trains do start moving again, the original arrival times are briefly pushed through the feed.
Without a ground source of truth to compare different feed parsing algorithms to, there wasn’t any way to definitively count actual train throughput. We weren’t sure how to proceed until The Albany Visualization and Informatics Lab pointed us to a paper the MTA published on parsing their feed. Their approach wasn’t perfect-sometimes a single trip would get split into two segments-but it was good enough to count the number of trains going through Grand Central each hour.
I sketched out a dense visualization showing the scheduled and actual count of trains each hour during June. While I was on vacation Rebecca and Ford split my hard-to-understand chart into two bits, one showing the MTA was running behind schedule at all hours of the day and another showing that the MTA never met their rush hour schedule. I enjoy intricate forms, but the payoff of getting to see the occasional non-rush hour schedule adherence isn’t worth the risk that people will give up trying to understand the chart.
This started as a follow-up to reports that the DOJ was going to challenge affirmative action in college admissions. Historic demographic data on college admissions and young high school graduates wasn’t easy to pull together quickly though, so we started to put together a bigger piece not tied to the news cycle.
The design of the top charts went through several iterations. We started out with slope charts showing how the student population of different demographics had changed at different types of schools over the last 35 years. Fitting the white percentages on common scales was tricky, so we switched to showing the difference between percent admissions and population.
I really wanted the gap charts to work - they show so many different stories with just a few lines! - so I spent some time tweaking the layout to squeeze them in. Distinguishing between positive and negative gaps wasn’t intuitive though (even with particle animation), so we ended up using an even more slimmed down version of the slope charts.
If I had a little more time, I would have liked to try including more chart forms and alternative gap measurements (the ratio of percents isn’t the same as the difference of percents!) by transitioning between them in a scrollytelling piece. That would have required a big rewrite of copy/code which didn’t make sense to attempt while we were waiting for a break in the news to publish. Other things to explore: a wider selection of schools (we had a drop down that let you chart any of the ~4,000 colleges in the US, but weren’t 100% confident in the data so it was cut) and graduation rates.
Update: Some criticism from Kevin Drum:
So I dug into it. This turned out to be spectacularly difficult, so much so that I began to wonder if I was missing something obvious. I’ll spare you the details, but in the end, my rough estimate is that in 1980 about 2 percent of college-age Hispanics went to UC schools. Today, 5 percent do.
Collecting the data was difficult! I’ve assumed that explicitly open sourcing data isn’t worth the hassle since anyone interested in doing additional analysis would also know to open the dev tools and grab our CSV. That’s obviously not true, so perhaps linking to data and explaining our methodology in more detail would be worth it. Not sure how to do that without spending tons of time on it.
The trickiest part of this piece was finding the right data source. We wanted frequently updating, hourly data to show where the rain was falling the hardest and how much had fallen overall.
I started looking at the Global Precipitation Measurement Constellation which has data on rainfall around the world in 30-minute slices released on a 6-hour lag. After spending a few hours figuring out how to open up netCDF files, I realized the data wasn’t updated as regularly as I hoped. Coloring the data points by observation time showed the paths of satellites moving across the sky. Since not every point gets updated at the same time or on the same interval, calculating cumulative rainfall was trickier than just summing the hourly interval - too tricky to do on deadline.
After spending most of a Saturday wandering down a dead end, I was ready to give up. Until Anjali found a NOAA ftp server with exactly the data I was looking for! The format was a bit strange - a shapefile with a grid of points showing calculated rainfall. I threw together a rough script to download the last few days of observations, combine them into a csv and plot the values.
Since both the cumulative and the hourly rainfall were interesting, I tried a bivariate color scale to trace the hurricane’s path in red. You can see the eye of the hurricane as it lands! All the colors were a little too much to explain in a key though, so we switched to circles to show the current path of the hurricane. We also had to cut down on the spatial resolution to keep the file size under control - maybe a video would have been better, but I’m a big fan of tiny charts inside of tooltips.
For more on all the technical details that went into this, check out my tutorial.
We exported data from the hurricane rescue map and animated the messages to get a sense of where people needed help over time.
With thousands of messages, there was way too much text to print everything. We manually looked through the messages to pull out interesting, representative snippets that conveyed what each of dots popping up signified. Spacing them out semi-evenly during the animation wasn’t easy when scrolling through thousands of rows in a spreadsheet, so I made a little chart to help see the timing.
We had a brief moment of panic when we realized the basemaps (projected to Texas South in qgis) didn’t line up with with the dots (projected to Texas South in d3). Apparently, d3 assumes that the earth is a sphere while qgis uses a more accurate ellipsoid. Pre-projecting the dots with mapshaper and adding them to the basemap to line up the scaling & translating fixed the problem after a couple of hours of head scratching. I’m slowing learning how to do GIS things.
Archie suggested one nice touch on animating dots that I’ll be reusing. I’ve usually shown new data points entering by transitioning the size. Combined with all the text on the screen, this made lots of extra visual noise. Replacing the resizing with fading halos highlighted new points without nearly so much noise.
Trying to solve these problems on deadline and running low on sleep gives you tunnel vision. I downloaded an app. And suddenly, was part of the Cajun Navy tells the story from a more human perspective.
Philip Klotzbach has been keeping a running tally of different records broken by Irma.
To give his numbers a little bit of context, we started exploring different ways of representing Atlantic hurricanes. We tried a couple of different representations - scatterplots, maps, line charts. Since every chart had the same set of storms on it, I started playing around with ways of transitioning the charts into each other and we decided to do a scrolly piece (we’ve done a lot of stacks in the last few weeks).
All of the 500+ lines of javascript that create the charts were written in 25 hours. This was probably a little too ambitious. Including all of the hurricanes looked great, but after running into performance issues on mobile and retina displays we decided to only including category 3 hurricanes. Coming at it fresh, a canvas rewrite would only have taken an hour or two (d3.line is super flexible!) but by the time that I realized we needed one I was too worn out to do it.
I took a couple days the week after to rewrite in regl. Includes my right to left time scale (so the westward paths don’t invert) and line to scatter transition that were just a little too confusing to publish.
Nadja did most of the work on this piece. To distinguish the year lines I drew a slightly thicker black line behind each, a trick I picked up from a Bloomberg piece last year. To show the progression of time we used color to indicate year, which unfortunately made it quite similar to Bloomberg’s Arctic Sea Ice chart.
I tried a couple of other approaches to differentiate the design a little. A radial chart, an area chart showing the max/min ice extent over time, a variation on that also showing the 25%/median/75% extent and one with a gradient. I think the area charts do an effective job showing the trend, but a wiggling line chart is a more compelling form that doesn’t require as much explanation so we kept it.
For the second time in a row, my dream of a line to scatter plot transition was thwarted. The falling dots were a little too joyful for charts about the Arctic melting away. I couldn’t totally get rid of them though; click the year button five times and scroll down.
Update: I feel better about copying Bloomberg’s chart - Lisa points out that Derek used the same form in 2015.
I don’t think I’ve ever made anything as richly annotated as the desktop version of Derek’s chart. Even with swoopy-drag, incorporating text and leader lines is much easier in illustrator than in code (he uses five styles of lines!). And responsive design is an even bigger obstacle. The mobile charts are basically the same, but we didn’t add anything on wider screens.
Not spending a ton of time adding features that only a fraction of our readers will see seems rational. Quickly coding up charts that work on a variety of devices requires avoiding desktop-only designs. I’m worried I’ve focused too much on that; while making this I never considered adding richer annotations with the additional space on desktop.
/r/guns had a thread this morning about the type of weapon used in the Vegas shooting. I couldn’t find any concrete information about the weapons used, so we started to explore ways of helping a lay audience understand the noises made by different kinds of fire rates.
Jon picked apart sound files to identify when each gun shot occurred. We considered using the sound of each gunshot, but filtering out the background noise was too difficult.
Design based on one of my favorite graphics. I added the y encoding of cumulative shots so the slope would show the rate of fire; you can see the bump stock’s irregular rate.
After getting a couple of requests for an update to the 2016 version, I grabbed this year’s data and threw it into the charts. The code wasn’t quite as pretty as I remembered, but I think I’ve fixed the three-way tiebreaker bug that threw off the MSI chart—if not please let me know!
Hopefully next year I’ll have a chance to explore another representation of this data. I’d like something that you can read top to bottom as matches progress. With our World Cup coverage canceled there should be plenty of time!
We wanted to enumerate everything in the tax bill while also providing a higher level view of how the parts fit together than a table. Alicia sketched out stacked bars comparing the tax cuts and increases in the bill. We stuck to this form, just omitting the third column of unchanged tax breaks. We only had estimations of their current costs, not what they would cost with the standard deduction and tax brackets.
Some of the provisions in the bill had a comparatively small impact on revenue and weren’t tall enough to see as stacked boxes. Since we were also trying to show everything in the bill, I stole an idea from a Bloomberg piece and laid out a short description of each provision in a grid.
We also briefly explored ways of showing numbers to represent a ten year window, making a stacked area chart and putting a chart of revenue impact over time in a tooltip. I thought it would be fun to transition from boxes to an area chart, but there wasn’t much to say about the timing of different provisions. A treemap alternative I played with wasn’t quite ready.
One detail I’d explore if I was studying human perception: how people process 1.2 trillion v. 86 billion compared to how they understand 1,215 billion v. 86 billion . My intuition is that our brains don’t actually divide by a thousand to compare a trillion to billion . Consensus within the department was that the comma was pretty confusing, so I might be out thinking myself.
Finally published something with WebGL! I started working on this last month when Bui and Ben realized they could model the impact of the tax bill on thousands of households by running CPS data through an open source tax model. Thinking it’d be interesting to see how different demographics’ tax bills would change, I set up a crossfilterish interface to explore. With only 25,000 data points, filtering on multiple dimensions made the chart pretty sparse. So Bui used small multiples instead, which also don’t require interaction to compare.
While Bui’s piece provided a good overview of the tax bill, it still didn’t answer everyone’s biggest question: how will this affect my taxes? To get more data points with information about what people actually paid in taxes, Bui started talking to the IRS.
Canvas can’t animate hundreds of thousands of points, so we decided to rewrite in regl. Peter’s tutorial helped me start animating the points, but I ran into difficulties pretty fast. Rich Harris showed me how to draw opaque points, but they didn’t stack quite right; the areas with the highest densities weren’t the darkest. Totally stuck, we tried rewriting in canvas, but the lack of zoom was lame. I ended up asking for help in the regl chat and Ricky Reusser showed me how to fix it with a white background color.
There were a couple of similar problems that were hard to debug - no inspect element like SVG has! On some computers, the points with 0 gl_pointSize were still getting drawn. My hacky fix was to draw very small points off-screen.
We also had difficulties getting all the data to the browser. At first we tried loading 20% of the rows at a time. This caused the chart to flicker on load and the successive redraws made the page laggy. So instead we loaded the data incrementally by column. Initially, just the income and tax change columns needed to position the points are loaded. Then the columns with the categorical data for the filters are loaded in the the order that they appear on the page.
Getting this done before the bill passed was challenging. Some of the functions I’ve added to jetpack like tooltips and layers made it a little easier. And Blacki actually made finishing possible, jumping in right after starting at the Times and doing a ton of work while I was suffering from the flu.
For more on the collection of the data and the actual story, check out Ben’s writeup. |
When making an investment in anything—hunting gear, a new skiff, one of Ted Juracsik’s famed fly reels—it’s a great idea to commit to regular maintenance and upkeep. Clothes are no different. And, with the rainy months nearly behind us, now is the time to send that well-worn Barbour jacket out for a little TLC. The worst thing that can happen to a Barbour jacket is for it to dry out. Since it can’t be washed, the exterior cotton fabric is dependent upon wax to help keep its sturdiness and weather-fighting characteristics in tact. Bottom line: If it dries out, it rips, and if it rips, you’ve got a much bigger repair bill on your hands.
My Beaufort was getting very close to that danger zone. As you can see, the wax is wearing away from most of the seams and along the ‘moving’ parts (armpits and elbows). What you can’t experience is the smell. I wasn’t making any new friends wearing this in a crowd.
After some research, I contacted New England Reproofers, an outfit located in Nashua, New Hampshire, and asked them about their process. There is a mystique about sending anything back to the factory (and out of your sight) for repairs, but Art, the resident expert, assured me that my Beaufort would be in good hands. The cost for reproofing and odor removal is $75 – this includes return shipping, as well. Satisfied, I wrote my check and sent it, along with my Barbour, up North to the Granite State. This is what happens during its two-week (give or take) stay:
The jacket upon receipt at New England Reproofers
The odor-removal process. (This also strips away what was left of the old wax)
The Beaufort, dried out and ready for waxing.
Starting on the collar
Finishing the back and sleeves
Moving to the front – notice the color difference after a fresh coat of wax
Fully (re)waxed Beaufort
Two weeks later, the jacket, noticeably heavier with a new coat of wax, was back in Georgia at my front door. As the wax slowly wears away, the jacket gets lighter. That distinctive aged Barbour ‘smell’ is gone, too. It doesn’t smell like flowers, mind, but it doesn’t smell anything like a wet dog anymore. Much more crowd-friendly. And the color is a much richer green. To be honest, I think it looks better now than it did off the rack.
Special thanks to the folks at Garden & Gun for posting this on their blog. |
The government first set out its policy on the use of open source in 2004. This was restated in both 2009 and 2010. The Government ICT Strategy states that “Where appropriate, government will procure open source solutions”.
To support this, action 3 of the strategy says that “To create a level playing field for the use of innovative ICT solutions, the government will publish a toolkit for procurers on best practice for evaluating the use of open source solutions.”
The following set of documents make up that toolkit:
All About Open Source – including FAQs
ICT Advice Note - Procurement of Open Source
Procurement Policy Note on Open Source
OSS Options
CESG Guidance on Open Source - for Government users only
Publically accessible summary of the security guidance
Total Cost of Ownership
Total cost of ownership of open source software: a report for the UK Cabinet Office supported by OpenForum Europe
OSS SI Assessment Criteria
The purpose of this toolkit is to ensure that there is a level playing field for open source and proprietary software and that some of the myths associated with open source are dispelled.
It is intended for those who need to consider, evaluate or procure software as well as anyone just wanting to know more about open source.
Feedback on any of the toolkit documents is very welcome and should be sent to [email protected]. |
During Monday morning’s edition of SportsCenter, Dan Le Batard broke down while discussing the tragic death of Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez in a boating accident.
Le Batard, whose parents are both Cuban immigrants, became emotional as he discussed how his mother enjoyed watching the Cuban American Fernandez pitch.
“My mother, in her old age, wants to go to the ballpark on days that he pitched,” Le Batard said, before beginning to tear up.
Le Batard attempted to gather himself and continue, but he remained visably emotional discussing the passing of the 24-year-old, who perished along with two others when their boat crashed into a jetty in the waters of Miami Beach.
“And so you just get a lot of people who want to be close to that story,” he said. “Because he was so strong. And he was a symbol.”
At that point, he broke down fully, and the SportsCenter anchors attempted to console him via satellite.
Le Batard is based in Miami and has, in addition to his ESPN duties, written for the Miami Herald since 1990. Watch his full reaction to Fernandez’s tragic death above, via ESPN.
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Joe DePaolo (@joe_depaolo) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? [email protected] |
The deputy leader of the Green Party has proposed that every time a woman faces prosecution for an unlawful abortion, the man responsible for the pregnancy should also be prosecuted.
The proposal comes only days after a Northern Ireland woman was convicted of an unlawful abortion after procuring abortion pills via the internet in 2014, causing intense public debate.
Green Party deputy leader Claire Bailey pledged that if she is elected in May, she will bring forward a proposal for the legislation.
This would be, she says, “in the interests of equality”.
She proposes the law will apply exclusively to men and would create an offence of “reckless conception”.
She wrote to the News Letter: “This means that every time a woman faces prosecution or is prosecuted, the man can be charged and face the same penalty. This law would embed the notion that men are (1) also responsible for unwanted pregnancies and (2) will be [as] liable for their reproductive choices or lack of them – as women are.”
But Liam Gibson, Northern Ireland Development Officer with pro-life group SPUC, countered that men are already more likely to be prosecuted than women.
The evidence shows, he said, that in addition to 24-year-old Philip Griffiths from Fivemiletown – who was charged last week – four other men have been charged with procuring abortions between 1998 and 2014. There was one conviction.
The information was confirmed by Justice Minister David Ford in response to an Assembly Question by Green Party leader Steven Agnew.
Mr Gibson added: “Seeking to hold men accountable in this way [proposed by Ms Bailey] could, by extension, result in women needing the consent of a baby’s father in order to continue with the pregnancy. It would almost certainly result in men who seek to avoid responsibility for the welfare of their children being even more likely to coerce women into abortion.”
Young men need to be taught respect for women and young women should be encouraged to respect themselves, he said.
Alliance councillor Paula Bradshaw also rejected the proposal. “As someone who personally would wish to see reform of our laws, I fear that this proposal by the Green Party would merely trivialise a serious issue which requires thoughtful and considered engagement,” she said.
“It would in fact hinder the case for reform, and will not advance the cause of women’s rights or women’s health one iota.” |
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya said its forces had killed 57 Islamist al Shabaab militants in a battle in southern Somalia on Wednesday, but the group denied any of its fighters had died in the clash.
Kenyan troops under the African Union command used artillery and helicopter gunships against the Islamists in Afmadow, a town about 100 km (60 miles) inland from the port of Kismayu, Kenyan military spokesman Col. Joseph Owuoth said in a statement.
“In the onslaught, 57 al Shabaab militants were killed and unknown number injured,” Owuoth said, adding that five gun-mounted pickup trucks known as “technicals” were destroyed.
Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s spokesman for military operations, said the Islamists had ambushed Kenyan soldiers, prompting them to call in air support, and that al Shabaab lost no fighters.
“The planes fired some bombs and KDF (Kenya Defence Forces) returned to their places. There is no casualty from our side and we do not have exact casualty numbers of KDF,” he said.
Somalia has been torn apart by civil war since 1991 and now a drought threatens to tip the Horn of Africa nation into famine. Last month parliamentarians elected a new president who vowed to stamp out al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab.
The insurgency wants to topple the government and impose its own strict interpretation of Islam on Somalia. It ruled most of south-central Somalia until 2011, when it was driven out of Mogadishu by African Union troops.
Despite the loss of territory, al Shabaab still carries out major gun and bomb attacks.
In January, its fighters attacked a Kenyan military base in the southern Somali town of Kulbiyow, near the Kenyan border. Kenya said nine soldiers died, while al Shabaab said it killed at least 66.
In January 2016, al Shabaab said it had killed more than 100 Kenyan soldiers in El Adde, a Somali camp near the border with Kenya. The military did not release casualty figures from that attack, but media reports supported al Shabaab’s death toll. |
• Blatter carries out two-day visit to country • Meets Mugabe and pledges $1m over four years
Fifa's Sepp Blatter met the Zimbabwe president, Robert Mugabe, for talks on Monday after the head of world football arrived for a two-day visit to a country where the game is mired in a match-fixing controversy.
Blatter, who arrived in Harare on a private jet, inspected training facilities that urgently need funding amid Zimbabwe's troubled economy, and pledged $1m (£620,575) over four years for football schemes in the country. Another $500,000 (£310,300) will be provided to support training under Fifa's worldwide Goal project.
"Football is more than kicking a ball," Blatter said at a news conference. "I do not come to Africa to impose European football, I respect particularities and culture. Africa has more talent than Brazil but Africa's talent is not yet developed."
Blatter had been scheduled to accompany Mugabe to a women's international match against Malawi, but officials said later that Mugabe did not attend because of a scheduling conflict. |
Banned: It is now illegal for Master Gardeners to recommend that gardeners use beer and baking soda to get rid of garden pests. ( Sonia Day / Toronto Star )
Will baking soda and water control black spot on roses? Does neem oil get rid of the dreaded lily beetle on Asiatic lilies? Can dishes of beer attract slugs away from plants?
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Yes to all three. But don’t ask a Master Gardener for more information. It is illegal for them tell you. Truly. I’m not kidding. The heavy hand of Big Brother is now reaching right into our gardens. The following email recently went out to the 80 or so women and men who belong to the Master Gardeners of Toronto: “It is ILLEGAL TO RECOMMEND HOMEMADE REMEDIES FOR PEST CONTROL A MG in Ontario may not write, advise or recommend to anybody that they use Neem oil, soap, alcohol, baking soda, ketchup or any other concoction that worked for Grandma. Anything we recommend has to be approved by the government as a pesticide.”
The caps are theirs, not mine. Presumably, a similar edict has been sent to other Master Gardeners across the province. But c’mon. Are the pesticide police really going to prosecute me for giving people advice about such things?
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If the answer’s yes, then I say: bollocks. This government ruling (which appears to have its origins in the Ontario Pesticide Act) is just another example of bureaucracy gone mad. Many of these so-called “home remedies” (the sniffy term the Ministry of the Environment uses to describe simple gardening tips) have been been around for years. They were used by our grandparents. And they work. If — as the edict implies — there is something terribly dangerous about resorting to these measures in our gardens now, let’s hear what they are. Before taking this Draconian directive seriously, I want proof that they have actually caused harm to someone or something. The powers-that-be who dreamed up this absurd law should be aware, too, that Master Gardeners are thoughtful, intelligent, well-informed folks, who undergo extensive training before assuming their role of educating the public about gardening. To become an MG, you must first slog through two years of intensive horticulture correspondence courses from the University of Guelph (I know. I did it 20 years ago) then agree to keep learning more at monthly meetings. We acquire a wealth of useful knowledge — which we’re happy to pass on to others for free. (MGs are all volunteers). We are not a bunch of brainless ninnies who advocate taking damaging or dangerous steps to get rid of pests and diseases in the garden. Denying people access to what we know is ludicrous. Especially nowadays, when there’s a real thirst for information about practical alternatives to conventional pesticides. Must we — sigh — become fearful of absolutely everything in our lives? If you agree, please send a protest to [email protected] And while you’re at it, a copy Toronto Master Gardeners ([email protected] ) who — distressingly — seem content to seal their lips about the benefits of baking soda and whatnot — and simply bow to what the government wants. As for me, wanna know a “home remedy” for earwigs? Whoops. Can’t tell you. I see the pesticide police arriving . . . Read more The Real Dirt from Sonia Day END www.soniaday.com |
>>> Charmaine Yoest has been a vocal spokesperson for the conservative Christian fundamentalist movement, appearing on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and in print media to excoriate reproductive rights, the "homosexual agenda," transpeople, feminism... all the usual targets of the religious right. She served in the Reagan White House, and she was president and CEO of Americans United for Life from 2008 to early 2016. She and her husband also run a blog to promote her views: Reasoned Audacity a/k/a charmaineyoest.com.
In late April 2017 Trump appointed her to a high-level position in the Department of Health and Human Services: Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, which means she's in charge of the Department's communications with the press and the public. She oversees HHS's website and social media, press releases, media campaigns, speechwriting, Freedom of Information Act division, and promotion of public-health initiatives.
Immediately, the Yoests scrubbed charmaineyoest.com of certain posts. They were very selective. Everything about abortion stayed. Everything about LGBTQ matters was deleted. Most posts about Christianity were left in place, although a few were cut. And one posting about rape was taken down.
Some of the missing posts are in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, but many aren't. After Dave Maass raised the alarm that Yoest was covering her tracks, I tracked down a good number of the missing posts in Google's cache, as well as the Wayback Machine. A webpage in Google's cache usually disappears within days of the original webpage going offline, so they needed to be grabbed quickly. I'm presenting what I saved below.
Yoest's husband Jack apparently writes most of the posts, although Charmaine writes some. Jack also sometimes responds in the comments section of posts. He's a business consultant who, with Charmaine, runs Management Training of DC, LLC and refers to himself in posts as "Your Business Blogger (R)." |
Despite growing polarization between the left and the right, there are a few things that both sides agree on. The United States Constitution and the will of the people as expressed through their vote are pretty core to both sides of our divided nation and central to democratic principles. With Obamas approval rating below 45 percent and Congress's approval rating below 30 percent, it's fair to say that Americans from all sides of the political spectrum can also agree that D.C. is doing a poor job of acting in the interests of the American People. With confidence in our leaders at an all-time low it is a bit suspicious to see Obama and Mitch McConnell having a love-fest over the Trans Pacific Partnership. This supposed trade deal has far-reaching legal implications for our nation and beyond but it has been negotiated in secret without oversight from Congress or the American People.
No matter where you stand on environmental issues or GMOs, you should be alarmed at the idea of large corporate interests overturning the vote of citizens in a democratic society. That is exactly what is happening in Vermont where the Grocery Manufacturers Association is suing to overturn a ballot initiative approved by voters, and also in Maui where Monsanto is suing to overturn another. The issues in these separate cases are secondary to fact that these lawsuits are financial retribution to both liberal and conservative voters that will cost a whole lot of money for taxpayers. These lawsuits are also political retribution to leaders, whether they be Republican or Democratic, who support popular measures initiated by their constituents. This strikes at the heart of democratic principles.
The Trans Pacific Partnership paves the way for international law to overturn the voters' will in America and in the other countries who have signed on to the agreement. Luckily we still have time to make sure that this agreement is not signed into law by our leaders.
Obama has been pushing to pass this secret agreement without Congressional oversight, which is added shame to a president who campaigned on the notion of transparency. Wikileaks has spoiled this agenda with numerous leaks detailing just how bad this agreement is for Americans as well as the rest of the countries involved with it. Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, notes that Republicans have themselves in a bit of a bind over this issue as well stating, "it is kind of hard for the Republicans to voluntarily delegate more authority (to Fast Track TPP) to the guy (Obama) they've been attacking as the imperial president who grabs power that's not his."
Wallach describes fast track as, "a procedure that basically gives Congress's authority over trade to the president. Congress ends up handcuffed, and an agreement gets negotiated, signed before the Congress ever approves it, and then the president gets to write legislation. It's not subject to committee amendment, and it gets a guaranteed 90-day vote with no amendments."
The lawsuits we are seeing in Maui and Vermont would pale compared to the power that TPP would have to overturn the will of local, state, and national voters. Wallch goes on to state, "it would increase the duration of patents for Big Pharma and, as a result, give them windfall profits but increase our medicine prices. It could roll back financial regulation on big banks. It could limit Internet freedom, sort of sneak through the back door the Stop Online Piracy Act, SOPA. And -- they love this -- it would give special privileges and rights for foreign corporations to skirt around our courts and sue the U.S. government to raid our treasury over any environmental, consumer health law that they think undermine their expected future profits, the so-called "investor-state" enforcement system. Plus, it would have the NAFTA-style rules that make it easier to offshore jobs, making it easier to relocate to low-wage countries."
Others have noted that TPP could make GMO labeling illegal, and also make "buy American" initiatives illegal because they interfere with multi-national corporations desire to remain unchallenged regarding anything that stands in their way to make money. TPP would also suppress environmental and public health initiatives that voters might pass in order to protect themselves or their local resources.
As if that wasn't scary enough, Wallach continues, "unlike most of our international agreements, the TPP has two strong enforcement mechanisms. First, if the U.S., for instance, were to continue to buy American and give that preference to our domestic economy, or, for that matter, states with Buy Local or communities with Buy Local school food, all of those things would be a violation of that agreement. Then, what happens is, any other country can drag the U.S. into a TPP tribunal, and if we don't get rid of the law, the U.S. would face perpetual trade sanctions, fines. This is actually enforceable international corporate law. The TPP provisions on investment would make some of the TPP constraints on policy actually enforceable by private individual companies, when an individual company could privately enforce a public treaty by insisting the U.S. government compensate the private investor or company out of our taxpayer dollars for any violation of the agreement that undermines their expected future profits." If you thought that bailing out bankers with taxpayers money was bad, TPP is a whole lot worse.
But there is hope!
Between now and January is our window to act. Call your local representatives, share this article and others which expose the TPP for what it really is. By contacting your incoming representatives now before they arrive in Washington in January, you will be able to have your voice heard before they are inundated with lobbyists who are bent on pushing the TPP into law. As we know, endless favors and money often have the ability to sway the opinions of politicians. Now is your time to act before it is too late. You can find contact information for your local representative here. It only takes a few minutes to call and tell them that you do not support fast track and you do not support TPP.
You can listen to the whole interview with Lori Wallach here. For once, Americans on both sides of the aisle have something to agree on... TPP is bad for citizens, bad for the environment, bad for local initiatives, bad for public health, and bad for our future. Why else would they be trying to negotiate this deal in secret? Now is our moment to act. This will only get worse if you decide to look the other way. Take responsibility for your freedom as an American voter, and call your representatives now! |
An Iranian nuclear scientist who had defected to the US was executed in Iran, according to reports in the local press on Saturday.
Shahram Amiri was a nuclear researcher at Malek Ashtar University of Technology and worked for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization. He is said to have had in-depth knowledge of Iran’s rogue nuclear program.
His family said he was executed on August 3 and that they had been allowed to visit him the day before.
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Amiri disappeared briefly while on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in 2009 and resurfaced in Washington some time later.
While in the US, he recorded and posted a series of bizarre videos, first claiming he had been kidnapped by US and Saudi agents and forced to reveal sensitive information while “under intense psychological pressure,” and in a second video, saying he was living in Arizona and wanted to study there. In a later post, he said he wanted to go home.
According to some reports, his family was harassed and tortured in a bid to force him to return to Iran, which he did in 2010 to a hero’s welcome, before disappearing again.
It later became clear that he had been arrested and given a long prison sentence. He was reportedly held under very difficult conditions. |
Heavily spoiler-laden script rundown purports to reveal why Rey is so strong with the Force, and the return of Hayden Christensen as ghost of Anakin Skywalker
The full plot of the next Star Wars movie and the true identity of Daisy Ridley’s mysterious Rey have reportedly been revealed by a Reddit user who claims to have read the film’s script.
The heavily spoiler-laden script rundown, for the follow-up to JJ Abrams’s blockbuster The Force Awakens, explains why the staff-wielding space scavenger is strong with the Force, and features one major revelation that, if true, would be as shocking a plot twist as Darth Vader’s “I am your father” moment in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back.
UK fans annoyed by absence of extras from Star Wars: The Force Awakens DVD Read more
Among the more minor, less spoilery revelations are the return of Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and … yes, you read it right … Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker as Force ghosts, and the unveiling of Benicio del Toro as a political leader tasked with overseeing the crumbling Republic in the wake of the disastrous Starkiller Base planetary attacks in Abrams’s film. New cast member Kelly Marie Tran is revealed to be a contact of Carrie Fisher’s Leia, who engages in a flirty subplot with John Boyega’s Finn as the pair investigate the underbelly of a city on a key Republic planet.
Looper director Rian Johnson is currently shooting Star Wars: Episode VIII at Pinewood Studios in England, Dubrovnik, Croatia, and on location in Donegal and on the island of Skellig Michael, Ireland. There have also been reports the production has shot scenes near Las Vegas in the US.
The new movie, which the Reddit report claims has the working title of Star Wars: Echoes of the Dark Side, is due in cinemas on 15 December 2017. Ridley, Boyega and Fisher will be joined by Force Awakens returnees Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), Andy Serkis (Supreme Leader Snoke), Lupita Nyong’o (Maz Kanata) and Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), while Del Toro and Laura Dern are among newcomers to the cast.
To read the full Reddit thread on the rumoured plot leak (WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS) click here. |
Abstract
Considered an indicator of self-awareness, mirror self-recognition (MSR) has long seemed limited to humans and apes. In both phylogeny and human ontogeny, MSR is thought to correlate with higher forms of empathy and altruistic behavior. Apart from humans and apes, dolphins and elephants are also known for such capacities. After the recent discovery of MSR in dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), elephants thus were the next logical candidate species. We exposed three Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) to a large mirror to investigate their responses. Animals that possess MSR typically progress through four stages of behavior when facing a mirror: (i) social responses, (ii) physical inspection (e.g., looking behind the mirror), (iii) repetitive mirror-testing behavior, and (iv) realization of seeing themselves. Visible marks and invisible sham-marks were applied to the elephants' heads to test whether they would pass the litmus “mark test” for MSR in which an individual spontaneously uses a mirror to touch an otherwise imperceptible mark on its own body. Here, we report a successful MSR elephant study and report striking parallels in the progression of responses to mirrors among apes, dolphins, and elephants. These parallels suggest convergent cognitive evolution most likely related to complex sociality and cooperation. |
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All contents copyright 2006-2018 Evan Dahm. All contents copyright 2006-2018 Evan Dahm. Some rights reserved.
is an anthropological fantasy epic; a story following a member of a nomadic culture caught in the midst of a clash of cultures. It was started in July 2010 and is updated a few times a week. Winner of the 2014 Ignatz Award for Best Online Comic, and the 2013 Stumptown Comic Arts Award for best webcomic. Follow along via Tumblr Facebook , or RSS |
Between the usual Art Basel madness and the gala opening of Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Magic City enjoyed more than its fair share of fantastic exhibits in 2013. Only one, however, featured Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage dressed in drag portraying a 17th-century German dwarf. That honor goes to Eve Sussman's "Rufus Corporation," a blockbuster at the Bass Museum that not only reaffirmed Sussman as one of the most important contemporary artists working today but also marked the museum's growing profile on the local scene. The stellar exhibit boasted a series of films, photos, installations, and videos, including the star turn by Dinklage. Sussman cast him in her 89 Seconds at Alcázar, a 12-minute film that garnered international attention when it debuted at the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Dinklage took the part — as Mari Barbola, a German dwarf made famous in Diego Velázquez's enigmatic opus Las Meninas, a scene from the Spanish court of King Philip IV in 1656 — before he catapulted to Hollywood fame. The movie re-envisioned what transpired among the Spanish royal family, their servants, a dog, and the painter at their summer palace more than 350 years ago, transporting Bass visitors to an opulent age. But for all of Dinklage's star power, the show stealer was Sussman's feature-length video-musical The Rape of the Sabine Women, which reinterpreted the founding of Rome in an unforgettable way. Originally shot for the big screen, the 80-minute movie was transformed by Sussman into a five-part installation that turned spectators into actors in an epic production. Sussman presented the haunting imagery shot in the Mediterranean with modern actors on 30 screens, including sprawling wall projections; a stand-alone, house-like construction near the rear of the museum; several postcard-size video monitors; and a massive installation of TV sets piled randomly on the floor, reminiscent of a technological junkyard. |
While ‘realpolitik’ has often been understood negatively, associated primarily with Henry Kissinger and used to denote cynical approaches to foreign policy, this new book by John Bew, Realpolitik: A History, offers a more nuanced history of the term by tracing its development from its initial conception in mid-nineteenth-century Germany to the present day. Robert Ledger applauds this expertly written and fascinating text for showing the importance of considering ideas as embedded within particular, and changing, social contexts. Those who read this work will view ‘realpolitik’ in a new light.
Realpolitik: A History. John Bew. Oxford University Press. 2016.
Realpolitik: A History , the new book by John Bew, is a study of a much-used, and little understood, term that is deployed generically to denote a cynical foreign policy, and often linked with Henry Kissinger. The author describes the development of realpolitik from its original conception in mid-nineteenth-century Germany through to its association with US foreign policymakers from the 1970s up until the present day. Realpolitik is absorbing history as well as an important examination of political ideas and labels.
John Bew teaches history and foreign policy in the War Studies Department at King’s College, London. His previous books include Castlereagh, a biography of the arch-strategist of British foreign policy at the Congress of Vienna. Realpolitik starts a little later, in the wake of the European revolutions of 1848. German writer and liberal Ludwig von Rochau published The Foundations of Realpolitik in 1853, primarily with domestic politics in mind. The insights he described included that the ‘law of the strong is the determining factor in politics’; that ‘the most effective form of government is one that incorporates the most powerful social forces within the state’; that ideas matter depending on how they influence society; and finally that public opinion or the Zeitgeist (the ‘spirit of the age’) is crucial in determining a nation’s direction (32). For Rochau, utopianism was folly but liberal ideals were important. Originally realpolitik had an analytical element, whereby political realities had to be taken into consideration before longer term goals could be reached. Rochau believed that the pursuit of higher aims was compatible with short-term goals (54).
Realpolitik then explores how these initial principles developed, through German unification and the foreign policy of Bismarck, into the twentieth century. A consistent theme is that the nuances of Rochau’s Foundations were quickly lost, becoming synonymous with value-free pragmatism and a cynical, Machiavellian pursuit of power. A number of German thinkers adopted the term realpolitik, and all deviated from Rochau’s principles. Heinrich von Treitschke, for instance, popularised realpolitik and infected it with his anti-Semitism and nationalism. By the turn of the century there was also a linkage with German weltpolitik (overseas expansion) and machtpolitik (the politics of force).
How interpretations of realpolitik became absorbed into the lexicon of political discourse in the English-speaking world is discussed at length. The British came to see it as interchangeable with German skulduggery during the First World War years and later, in the 1930s, as a return to Castlereagh’s statecraft in pursuing fascist appeasement. Bew points out how hypocrisy was never far away, for instance in Britain and France’s 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, which carved up the Middle East.
Perhaps most important was the influence of German realpolitik on writers and politicians in the United States. Whereas in Britain the term had been viewed mainly in a negative fashion, Americans saw things differently. During the First World War, journalist Walter Lippmann set out how the US could deploy self-interest and ‘robust liberal internationalism’ to reshape the global order in its own favour (130). This line of thinking came to influence Cold Warriors such as George Kennan – who famously outlined a policy of containment towards the Soviet Union – and Dean Acheson, Secretary of State under Harry Truman. Concurrently, the new discipline of international relations, and in particular the ‘realist’ school, made an impact on US foreign policy. Realists such as Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr and Kenneth Waltz were all prominent during this period. Bew describes how these thinkers shared some lineage with German realpolitik as well as significant differences. For instance, Waltz’s scientific realism – sometimes called structural or neo-realism – puts little emphasis on historical and cultural factors.
Image Credit: US Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger uses the telephone in Deputy National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft’s office to get the latest information on the situation in South Vietnam, 29/04/1975. White House Photographic Office. (NARA)
This will be enlightening for those of us who have tended to use terms such as ‘realpolitik’, ‘geopolitics’ and ‘realism’ interchangeably. In addition, many readers will most readily identify the concept with the policies of Henry Kissinger, as National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Although Kissinger rarely used the term himself, his grand strategy as well as his academic career were obviously linked to the tradition. A number of policies under Kissinger’s watch seemed to favour political contingency over human rights: for instance, backing authoritarian allies from General Pinochet in Chile to the Shah of Iran, as well as bombing North Vietnam to the negotiation table. Jimmy Carter’s emphasis on human rights was a reaction to the dark arts of the Kissinger years. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that the third ‘basket’ of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act was signed while Kissinger (however sceptical he may have been) was still in office and made provisions for human rights protections, a factor some have identified as a precursor for the people power in the communist bloc a decade later. In this respect, it was pure Rochau: a short-term compromise with one eye on a long-term ideal.
As well as being a fascinating and unique historical work, Bew’s book is an important study of the development of political ideas and the terms they encapsulate. Ideas must be considered in the context of time, location and cultural factors. Realpolitik aptly demonstrates how ideas are manipulated and polarised, in this case into realpolitik and anti-realpolitik strands. The reality is one of graduation and interpretation. Neither ideals, self-interest nor political reality can be absent from domestic or foreign policy.
Bew concludes by returning to Rochau’s original realpolitik. As an analytical tool, it is highly relevant and hard not to escape the conclusion that these principles would have proven useful in a number of contemporary scenarios, the Arab Spring being just one example. Realpolitik: A History is an expertly researched and written book. It will appeal to academics and students interested in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and US history, foreign policy and the history of international relations. Having read it, you will never use the term in quite the same way again.
Robert Ledger has a PhD from Queen Mary University London in political science, his thesis examining the influence of liberal economic ideas on the Thatcher government, and an MA in International Relations from Brunel University. He has worked in Brussels and Berlin for the European Stability Initiative – a think tank – on EU enlargement and human rights issues. He has published widely on European and British politics, edited the Journal of International Relations Research and is also a regular contributor to Global Risk Insights, a political risk group. Read more reviews by Robert Ledger.
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics. |
SCP-2488
SCP-2488
Object Class: Neutralized Safe
Special Containment Procedures: Any recovered instances of SCP-2488-1 are to be stored in Site-23's Refrigerated Containment Unit 23-4. Individuals in possession of SCP-2488 instances, or possessing knowledge of SCP-2488 are to be amnesticized on a case-by-case basis.
Description: SCP-2488 refers to a series of anomalous phenomena that occurred between April 21, 1933 and 1939. During this period, an organization known as the Safety Harbor Milk Bottle Delivery Service operated within Safety Harbor, Florida. The parameters of its tasks were to intake empty milk bottles and deliver full bottles of milk bearing the brand label "Safety Harbor Milk" (hereafter known as SCP-2488-1).
No deliverymen or vehicles were sighted during delivery hours, and SCP-2488-1 materialized where no human observers could observe the event. On April 21, 1933, a full bottle of milk manifested on the threshold of every populated household within the city limits of Safety Harbor. Safety Harbor did not previously own a milk bottle service, due to economic hardship during the 1930s. The population of Safety Harbor is recorded to have shown misgivings towards SCP-2488 events upon initial manifestation. However, over time, SCP-2488 became an integral portion of Safety Harbor.
SCP-2488 events occurred every night, at 00:03. Any empty milk bottle labelled as a Safety Harbor Milk bottle demanifested, if placed upon any portion of its linked household that could be defined as a "threshold", "patio", or "porch". At 00:05, an instance of SCP-2488-1 manifested for every received milk bottle.
When consumed, SCP-2488 was known to give the consumer increased physical capability. Although this improvement did not significantly impact Safety Harbor, it allowed for an increased level of productivity that led Safety Harbor into a marginally improved economic and societal standing.
If, at any time, an active citizen of Safety Harbor consumed SCP-2488-1, they were subject to the effects of SCP-2488. Following death, citizens of Safety Harbor would become reanimated, with drastically increased physical strength and stamina and progressive but usually minor cognitive decay. It became a major source of manual labor, which allowed for the development of more diverse professions for living citizens. Subjects who consumed SCP-2488-1 did not report its effects to be distressing. According to witnesses affected by SCP-2488, there was some concern related to SCP-2488 when reanimated corpses were first encountered, but most subjects declared the reanimation events to be "a boon".
Reanimated subjects had an additional lifespan of 3-5 weeks, and only reanimated if the body was fully intact following death. Subjects were known to dig their own graves as they neared the end of their second lifespan, which became the subject of formal ceremonies similar to burials. However, these events were documented as more lively and upbeat. Reanimated subjects, although initially documented as startling, became a normal occurrence for citizens of Safety Harbor.
Addendum 2488-Alpha: Original Containment Procedures Hide Addendum CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES, 1933 TO 1939 At least ten Foundation personnel are to be planted within Safety Harbor, Florida, while SCP-2488 persists. Investigations into the Safety Harbor Milk Delivery Service are considered top priority during SCP-2488 containment. However, the Second Life Labor Service is also to be implemented, in order to attempt to normalize life in Safety Harbor, while accounting for SCP-2488's effects. Census information from Safety Harbor is to be supplied remotely by Foundation personnel during containment development. Anyone attempting to enter Safety Harbor or approach it will be deterred by Foundation personnel posing as National Guard. The official cover story during containment is to establish that the area is currently undergoing sensitive relations with Native American peoples. Similarly, those who attempt to leave Safety Harbor are to be deterred with the news that nearby areas are undergoing conflict with Native American peoples. If interest in the cover story is generated in public media outside of Safety Harbor, Foundation personnel are to immediately repress emphasis on the town. Interests are instead to be directed towards northern regions of Florida as much as possible. DISCOVERY: SCP-2488 was first noted by a local publication claiming an uprising of the undead in west central Florida. The article, once investigated, was covered a second time in the same publication, and explained as a hoax. Peoples attempting to investigate Safety Harbor for themselves were deterred as the Foundation initiated investigation. The initial questioning of the mayor of Safety Harbor, Jackson Burk, led to the knowledge of a recent act of vandalism. The town's local Native American burial mound had been disturbed and laced with various litter as a rebellious act, in consequence of a newly established curfew. All the litter from the surface and first ten centimeters of the mound was removed, but it was otherwise left undisturbed during the investigation.
Addendum 2488-Beta: Miscellaneous Recovered Documents Hide Addendum DOCUMENT 2488 15-C Source of Documentation: Summary of Town Hall Meeting, circa mid 1933 The meeting transcript implies that this was the first encounter with the anomaly related to SCP-2488. Several moments of hysteria among attendees broke out during the course of the meeting, calling for the mayor to sequester the newly reanimated subjects. It was, however, the sentiment of a small group of attendees that this was a newly raised opportunity from God. This group was later identified as members of the Safety Harbor Christian Chapel. Citizens of Safety Harbor agreed to isolate recently dead persons in a location that supposedly no longer exists. At the time, it was used as a general storage area for the town, near the western limit. Reanimated persons were to be held here until their second expiration. A rotating one-month cleanout process was established. DOCUMENT 2488 17-C Source of Documentation: Summary of Safety Harbor Chapel board meeting, circa mid 1933 The meeting's transcript implies some disagreement over the board's stance on the reanimated subjects. The discussed religious implications mostly resulted in dissent and disagreement among members, some of which opposed the confinement of reanimated persons. By the end of the meeting, no official verdict was established. DOCUMENT 2488 23-C Source of Documentation: Summary of Town Hall meeting, circa early 1934 This is the third documented meeting solely on the topic of SCP-2488 events. Citizens show less aversion to reanimated subjects than before, after discussion of recent events. According to the transcript, a group of citizens (mostly from two of the town's larger families) broke into the warehouse and freed their reanimated relatives. After most reanimated persons had left the premise, a large procession was held for the proper burial of those who had experienced their second expiration. A mob of other citizens gathered to re-contain reanimated persons. It was at this time that Foundation personnel stepped in, suggesting that reanimated persons may not be inherently violent or ill-willed, like many held as a preconceived notion. During this night, after a Foundation-facilitated agreement was made between a significant portion of the town, the first "grave parties" were held. Although the original intent was a small town gathering the following day, the expiration of several reanimated persons led to their burial during the festivities, which initiated a newly found notion of "grave parties". DOCUMENT 2488 34-C Source of Documentation: Summary of Mayor Burk's self-presented eulogy, circa late 1935 The eulogy delivered by Mayor Burk, apparently while standing on a podium over his self-dug grave, summarizes events since the beginning of SCP-2488 manifestation events. (This also marked the beginning of the tradition for reanimated subjects to dig their own graves, which was integrated as a part of "grave parties".) The presence of reanimated subjects at this time is considered a normal occurrence in Safety Harbor, and the original misgivings of citizens are restated. Despite the fear, and the destruction of the original town hall during the first reanimation event, Safety Harbor is summarized as showing immense growth, especially with the construction of a new town hall in early 1934, by reanimated subjects and living subjects alike. After delivering this eulogy, the "grave party" ensued until Mayor Burk stated a slowly approaching weakness coming over him, at which point he was lowered into his grave, and the celebration continued with a ceremonial filling of the grave and a second dessert course.
Notes from Investigation Member Taylor: This recovered documentation was discovered as investigation into SCP-2488 was initiated. An abandoned office space found near the center of Safety Harbor, roped off as "Heritage Restoration In Progress", was one of the first subjects for investigation. No one had ever heard of the place before, and it didn't show up on the town map. It was, as the mayor said, a storage space full of heritage documents that they didn't dare to go through, lest they damage or lose any of them. Prior to amnesticization, we inquired a little into the SCP-2488 events, to see if he knew anything. The mayor couldn't tell us much, other than that it was some old folklore rolling around the town.
Addendum 2488-Gamma: Investigative Documentation Hide Addendum INVESTIGATION RECORD 12-A Date of Investigation: March 11, 1994 to March 13, 1994 Subject of Investigation Subset 12-A: Philippe Park, Safety Harbor, FL Investigator: Ron Taylor Investigative Log: So, the first things on our list of locations to hit up were those of historical and community value. Of course, we combed through every "heritage" location in the town, and it turned up with a lot of written evidence, but nothing solid. Nothing directly implied that this was anything but a huge hoax put on by a generation of practical jokers. That was, until we went into Philippe Park.
It wasn't high on the list of priorities, but as a National Historical Landmark site, we had to check it out. With the initial readings, the metal detectors, the sonic detection membranes, radiation counters, we weren't getting anything more than old coins and a few rusty nails. There was only one thing left to go through, and that was the burial mound. The Tocobaga people supposedly resided here, some long time ago. Way before the town was officially established. We had to set up this blinded pavilion around it, to make sure no one was suspicious of it, and we roped off the area. After the local government was ensured we wouldn't meddle with things, and we established a cover story for the removal of invasive plant species, we were going through it. It wasn't potentially destructive root systems that we found down there, though. Along with the decomposed remains of a supposed Tocobaga native, we found a milk bottle. We can't make heads or tails of it. There's some further investigation going into it now. The brains over at 147 think they've found some sort of radiation coming off of it that's interfering with most of our investigation into it, but we're trying to see if we can glean much else. So far, everything has been negligible. We did a bit of research into the Tocobaga people. Records indicate that they were driven from the area by the Spanish around 1528, and left behind this burial mound. It was once a place of ceremony, where the native people could celebrate various events - among them was death, which, according to recovered artifacts, was seen as a passing on rather than a final ending for life. They had this belief of ancestral spirits - once their elders died, the elders' spirits would remain to assist the living in intangible ways, and watch over them. The Tocobaga people, those that survived, dispersed among the population. We couldn't find much on what the few survivors did as they moved on, but we did find one document. In one of the smaller heritage sites near the edge of town, there were some documents, journals, that implied that the resident had some native heritage in them. There were many indications that not only was this individual important in the preservation of this site, but also that they visited it, on a daily basis, early in the morning, following the vandalism. The individual's documents end abruptly in November of 1939, which correlates to some of the approximate ending dates for SCP-2488 events. We've initiated some more investigation into the individual, but, I don't think much will turn up.
Addendum 2488-Delta: On September 29, 2001, the discovery of an intact SCP-2488-1 instance occurred in Safety Harbor. The instance was confiscated by Foundation personnel, following the report in a local publication of a new heritage artifact, and subjected to chemical testing. No anomalous properties were discovered in the milk, and the instance was stored in Site 23's Refrigerated Storage Unit 23-4. Despite attempts to preserve the milk, it spoiled and curdled after one week of recovery.
Further investigation into SCP-2488 has been reopened, and instances have begun to manifest randomly in adjacent cities as well. Testing has shown that these instances of SCP-2488-1 show similar properties to documented events. Full investigation has been initiated, per request from Site 23 research personnel. |
Joe McKnight homicide
Residents in Ronald Gasser's Gretna neighborhood identified the man shown in this photo, taken by a witness, as Gasser. The photo was taken minutes after former NFL player Joe McKnight was gunned down at the corner of Behrman Highway and Holmes Blvd. in Terrytown on Thursday, December 1, 2016. (Handout Photo)
Ronald Gasser, the man authorities say shot and killed former NFL player Joe McKnight, was released from custody overnight without being charged, Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office authorities said Friday morning (Dec. 2).
Gasser, 54, has not been formally charged, said JPSO spokesman Col. John Fortunato. Investigators are consulting with the district attorney's office on the decision whether to formally charge Gasser, Fortunato said.
As the investigation into McKnight's death continues, Fortunato asked anyone with information about the shooting to contact department homicide detectives at 504-364-5393.
McKnight, 28, was shot about 3 p.m. Thursday (Dec. 1) at the intersection of Behrman Highway and Holmes Boulevard in Terrytown. A witness, who declined to give her name, said she saw a man at the intersection yelling at McKnight, who was trying to apologize. The man shot McKnight more than once, the witness said. She said he shot McKnight, stood over him and said, "I told you don't you f--- with me." Then the man fired again, she said.
Ronald Gasser did not stand over Joe McKnight when he shot him, JPSO, coroner say Evidence and autopsy results show Gasser, the man authorities say admitted to fatally shooting Joe McKnight, did not fire on the former NFL player while standing over him, Jefferson Parish authorities said.
Authorities named the shooter as Ronald Gasser, 54, and said he stayed at the scene and turned his gun in to officers. Gasser was in custody and was being questioned, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said. The sheriff said McKnight did not have a gun, and deputies did not find a gun outside McKnight's vehicle. |
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner Wikipedia
The director of a supposedly independent group of Israeli lawyers privately admitted to a US embassy official it acted as a proxy for the Israeli government, a leaked US embassy cable shows.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner confided in 2007 that her Shurat HaDin group in the past “took direction … on which cases to pursue” and still “receives evidence” from the Mossad and from Israel’s National Security Council.
This is in direct contradiction to public claims, such as on its website which states it is a “fully independent” organization “unaffiliated with any political party or governmental body.”
The group has fought several high-profile “lawfare” cases against Palestine solidarity activists around the world in recent years.
Mossad lead
The leaked cable was unearthed by lobbying transparency outfit SpinWatch in an article earlier this month. It was one of the US embassy cables leaked by former US soldier Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning in 2010 and published by WikiLeaks in 2011.
The cable’s author quotes Darshan-Leitner as explaining the government’s rationale for using a proxy rather than going to local courts directly: “The National Security Council (NSC) legal office saw the use of civil courts as a way to do things that they are not authorized to do.”
“Among her contacts, Leitner listed Udi Levy at the NSC and Uzi Beshaya at the Mossad, both key [US] Embassy contacts on anti-terrorist finance cooperation,” wrote the unnamed official who apparently authored the cable after meeting with Leitner in 2007.
The NSC is an Israeli military planning body led by generals and other senior military figures — including top Mossad figures.
At the time of the cable was written, the NSC’s head was Ilan Mizrahi, a former deputy chief of Mossad.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Shurat HaDin did not reply to an email sent yesterday seeking comment on the issues raised in this article.
Who are Shurat HaDin?
Shurat HaDin, also known as The Israel Law Center, paints itself as a “civil rights” group. It also claims to be a “world leader in combating the terrorist organizations and the regimes that support them through lawsuits litigated in courtrooms around the world.”
But more recently a primary focus has been lawsuits against Palestine solidarity activists.
A main section of its website is dedicated to regular “BDS Updates” on the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign — which it describes as “having a perilous impact on Israel’s security and diplomatic capabilities.”
Sensationally dubbed “The Ultimate Mission to Israel,” it also runs an annual tour of Israeli military bases, courts, prisons, settlements and “the controversial Security Fence.” This year’s “mission” happens to be taking place this week.
At a cost of about $3,000 per person, it promises the chance to meet Israeli soldiers and officers, undercover collaborators, cabinet ministers and to “observe a trial of Hamas terrorists in an IDF military court.”
Unsurprisingly this promised rogues gallery also includes “briefings by Mossad officials and commanders of the Shin Bet.”
In 2011, Max Blumenthal discovered that a major funder for Shurat HaDin was John Hagee, the anti-Semitic Christian Zionist mega-pastor.
Harassing activists
Palestine solidarity activists are not exactly flush with cash, so civil litigation against them can hardly be a profitable affair. Therefore, the revelation that Shurat HaDin is a proxy for Israeli government agencies fits perfectly with its mode of operation.
It has been involved in several high profile cases of legal harassment against activists around the world.
In Australia, Shurat HaDin is threatening to sue two academics at the University of Sydney’s Center for Peace and Conflict Studies who dared to support the academic boycott of Israel.
Shurat HaDin filed a complaint against Jake Lynch and Stuart Rees with the Human Rights Commission, but it was terminated in September. However, the Mossad-linked group is now threatening to take the case to federal court before a deadline on Monday.
Antony Loewenstein, Sydney-based independent journalist and author, told me in an email:
There is growing realization amongst hardline Zionist groups that critics of Israel and its brutal occupation are winning over the public across the world … [so] groups such as Shurat HaDin dare to pursue legitimate advocates of Palestinian justice. In Australia, with barely any public support … the tiny organization is attempting to shut down the few outspoken backers of BDS through tribunals and the courts. Public opinion polls now show in Australia that a majority of the population supports Palestine so Shurat HaDin are fighting a losing battle.
“No basis for any action”
In the US, Shurat HaDin tried to pursue a very similar case against a California State University, Northridge mathematics professor.
As reported by The Electronic Intifada last year, a Shurat HaDin front group asked California’s Attorney General to investigate and prosecute David Klein for the supposed crime of hosting a pro-boycott web page on university servers.
The Attorney General’s office found there was “no basis for any action,” but a second anti-Palestinian group renewed this harassment of Klein last month.
In 2011, activists planning a siege-busting flotilla to Gaza were foiled by anonymous legal harassment filed against the boats while docked in Greece. It was discovered that Shuarat HaDin had been behind this complaint.
“Israel needs to invade the Hague”
Director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, a winner of the 2012 Moskowitz Prize for Zionism, likes to portray herself as a “civil rights” activist, but this is a pretty thin veneer.
In 2009, Darshan-Leitner wrote an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post entitled “Israel needs to invade The Hague” — a headline intended quite literally.
The article lamented that Israeli officers are increasingly fearful of being arrested in war crimes cases while traveling the world. She argued for aggressive military action to be taken against the International Criminal Court should it ever hold any suspected Israeli war criminal.
She demanded a law allowing Israel “to utilize all necessary force to resist any effort to arrest IDF [sic - Israeli military] officers accused of war crimes anywhere in the world. Foreign countries should be made to understand we mean business.”
This hawkish attitude is no surprise considering her group’s strong links to Israeli spooks.
In a Washington, DC panel last year, she spoke about her group’s rationale in a very similar way as in the leaked cable. She explained Israel’s need for an arms-length approach: “The Israeli government has some constraints, has some problems: they have to be politically correct. They have foreign relationships, they have international treaties they are signed of [sic] and they cannot do what private lawyers can do.”
In her 2012 speech, she also boasted that thanks to what she claimed as one of Shurat HaDin’s successes that “there is no banking system in Gaza” now. She also denigrated the entire Gaza Strip, of more than 1.6 million people, as a “terror zone.”
Interestingly, she also boasted about “How we stopped the flotilla to Gaza.”
Killers
The Mossad is Israel’s secret international terrorism wing, notorious for car bombings, assassinations and kidnappings — especially of Palestinian and Arab activists and fighters.
In a 2011 interview, Mizrahi (who was head of the NSC at the same time Darshan-Leitner admitted to working closely with the body) all but admitted that Mossad had assassinated scientists in Iran: “the Mossad has a heritage of being ruthless, an ability to penetrate deep — yes. I think that the Mossad has it all over the Middle East and beyond.”
What kind of “civil rights” group takes its lead from a deadly state intelligence apparatus?
Shurat HaDin is quoted in the international press as if it were a civil rights group or just blandly as “an Israel law center,” as one Guardian article put it in May, stating that Stephen Hawking was “accused of hypocrisy” (by Shurat HaDin).
These revelations should make journalists such Harriet Sherwood far more sceptical about taking Shurat HaDin’s claims to be “independent” at face value. |
A remarkable international effort to map out the avian tree of life has revealed how birds evolved after the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs into more than 10,000 species alive today. More than 200 scientists in 20 countries joined forces to create the evolutionary tree, which reveals how birds gained their colourful feathers, lost their teeth, and learned to sing songs.
The project has thrown up extraordinary similarities between the brain circuits that allow humans to speak and those that give some birds song: a case of common biology being arrived at via different evolutionary routes.
Some birds are shown to have unexpectedly close relationships, with falcons more closely related to parrots than eagles or vultures, and flamingoes more closely related to pigeons than pelicans. The map also suggests that the earliest common ancestor of land birds was an apex predator, which gave way to the prehistoric giant terror birds that once roamed the Americas.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Some birds are shown to have unexpectedly close relationships, with falcons more closely related to parrots than eagles or vultures, and flamingoes more closely related to pigeons than pelicans. Photograph: Alamy
“This has not been done for any other organism before,” Per Ericson, an evolutionary biologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, told the journal Science. “It’s mind-blowing.”
The scientists began their task by analysing fingernail-sized pieces of frozen flesh taken from 45 bird species, including eagles, woodpeckers, ostriches and parakeets, gathered by museums around the world over the past 30 years. From the thawed-out tissue, they extracted and read the birds’ whole genomes. To these they added the genomes of three previously sequenced species. It took nine supercomputers the equivalent of 400 years of processor time to compare all the genomes and arrange them into a comprehensive family tree.
Members of the project, named the Avian Phylogenomics Consortium, published the family tree and their analysis on Thursday in eight main papers in the journal Science, and in more than 20 others in different scientific journals.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The loss of so many species in a mass extinction freed up vast ecological niches, giving feathered animals an unprecedented chance to diversify. Photograph: Alamy
The rise of the birds began about 65m years ago. A mass extinction – probably caused by an asteroid collision – wiped out most of the larger-bodied dinosaurs, but left a few feathered creatures. The loss of so many other species freed up vast ecological niches, giving these animals an unprecedented chance to diversify.
Comparisons of the birds’ genomes with those of other animals pointed researchers towards a host of genes involved with the emergence of coloured feathers. While feathers may first have emerged for warmth, colourful plumage may have played a part in mating success. Researchers at the University of South Carolina found that waterbirds had the lowest number of genes linked to feather coloration, while domesticated pets and agricultural birds had eight times as many.
Further analysis of the genomes revealed that the common ancestor of all living birds lost its teeth more than 100m years ago. Mutations in at least six key genes meant that the enamel coating of teeth failed to form around 116m years ago. Tooth loss probably began at the front of the jaw and moved to the rear as the beak developed more fully.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Despite sharing many of the same genes, parrots and songbirds gained the ability to learn and copy sounds independently from hummingbirds. Photograph: Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images
“Ever since the discovery of the fossil bird Archaeopteryx in 1861, it has been clear that living birds are descended from toothed dinosaurs. However, the history of tooth loss in the ancestry of modern birds has remained elusive for more than 150 years,” said Mark Springer at the University of California, Riverside.
Birdsong has evolved more than once. Despite sharing many of the same genes, parrots and songbirds gained the ability to learn and copy sounds independently from hummingbirds. More striking is that the group of 50 or so genes that allow some birds to sing is similar to those that give humans the ability to speak. “This means that vocal learning birds and humans are more similar to each other for these genes in song and speech areas in the brain than other birds and primates are to them,” said Erich Jarvis at Duke University in North Carolina.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The scientists began their task by analysing fingernail-sized pieces of frozen flesh taken from 45 bird species, including eagles, woodpeckers, ostriches and parakeets. Photograph: Martin Harvey/Getty Images/Gallo Images
The common genes are involved in making fresh connections between brain cells in the motor cortex and those that control muscles used to make sounds.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the scientists found differences in the vocal regions of the parrot brain. These birds had an area of brain for producing song that was surrounded by a secondary region, leading to what the researchers called “a song system within a song system”.
David Burt at Edinburgh University’s Roslin Institute said the results, the first to be released by the consortium, were only the beginning. “We hope that giving people the tools to explore this wealth of bird gene information in one place will stimulate further research,” he said. “Ultimately, we hope the research will bring important insights to help improve the health and welfare of wild and farmed birds.”
How penguins adapted to frigid conditions
Penguin DNA collected for the avian family tree project has cast light on how the flightless birds endure the Antarctic’s cold hostile environment.
Researchers led by Cai Li, at the Beijing Genomics Institute, analysed the genomes of Adélie and emperor penguins and found scores of genetic changes that help them adapt to the frigid conditions.
Both penguins were found to have a beefed-up gene set for making proteins for feathers, ensuring a densely packed covering of the short, stiff feathers, which keeps heat in and water out.
The scientists also spotted a gene, known as DSG1. In humans it causes thick skin on the hands and feet; in the penguins this adaptation, present all over the body, is beneficial.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Research suggests emperor penguins have been better able to handle the harsh environment than other penguin species. Photograph: Frans Lanting/Getty Images/Mint Images
Penguins must withstand the cold and go without food for months on end, making fat storage a crucial factor in survival. The Adélie penguin were seen to have eight genes involved with metabolism of fatty lipids, though the emperor had only three.
The birds lost their ability to fly but their wings became supremely adapted to underwater acrobatics. Writing in the journal GigaScience, Li’s team describes 17 genes that have driven the re-shaping of penguins’ forelimbs. Mutations in one of those genes, called EVC2, causes Ellis-van Creveld syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes short-limb dwarfism and short ribs in people.
The first penguins evolved about 60m years ago, but the emperors and Adélies have markedly different histories. The Adélie penguin population grew rapidly 150,000 years ago as the climate warmed, but crashed by 40% when a cold and dry glacial period arrived 60,000 years ago.
The emperor penguins fared better, their numbers hardly changing, pointing to a better ability to handle the harsh environment. |
A little later than expected but mistakes happen. It was a nice surprise to receive so much stuff form Canada. I'm in the UK so don't get these things.
I was sent:
some chocolate - looking forward to comparing to our own chocolate here,
ketchup chips - called crisps over here, we have loads of flavours but not ketchup,
aloo bhujia - we have bombay mix which I love, this looks similar so looking forward to opening it at the weekend,
blueberry cream covered sticks - never seen those before, looks good
hello panda - which I've eaten, those were good
yanyan - I forget what it was called but it was very tasty.
Also in the package were loads of warhead sour sweets. I've left a handful in the staff room at work to see what everyone else thinks. They are pretty powerful.
Thanks again for the gift, it's very tasty. |
[Photos by Will Femia from the opening of the "Making Room" exhibit.]
A developer will break ground before the end of the year on New York City's first building full of micro-apartments, an attempt to adapt NYC's housing stock to its growing number of small households. While those micro-apartments don't yet exist, the Museum of the City of New York is already considering all things micro-housing with "Making Room," an exhibition devoted to new housing models for the city. The exhibit's centerpiece is a 325-square-foot apartment designed by Pierluigi Colombo, and for the next 24 hours, starting right now, the Curbed editors will be liveblogging from that micro-apartment. We'll be chatting with museum visitors, talking to experts about small-space living, and dissecting what it's really like to live in an apartment of this size (which is actually larger than some of the planned units in the city's development). Want to check out the space? Come visit us during museum hours, until 6 p.m. today or between 10 a.m. and noon tomorrow. Find part 1 of our chronicles below, or skip ahead to part 2, and round it out with part 3 and our grand wrap-up.
Noon: We're here, and there's a small crowd of about five people in the micro-unit, including someone from Resource Furniture demonstrating how the furniture folds and unfolds.
12:06 p.m.: One of the museum-goers tells us he lived for a while in a hotel room in Times Square that was smaller than this micro-apartment.
12:21 p.m.: The actual micro-units being built by the city will be between 250 and 370 square feet, below the current city minimum of 400 square feet. The microunit in the museum is designed by Clei, an Italian company, with customized furniture.
12:34 p.m.: Our "blogger zone" desk is larger than some of our work spaces at home. The desk part folds up when not in use, creating more space in the already very spacious living room.
12:41 p.m. A couple from Charlotte, North Carolina tells us they could fit approximately three and a half of these micro-units in their condo.
12:46 p.m.: The museum is hosting a "cooking in small spaces demo" in the museum in a few minutes. This is the space they have to cook in:
12:51 p.m.: We have 12 people in the living room/kitchen, with the bed down. Feels a bit cramped near the desk. Everyone is most impressed by the bar behind the TV (pictured below), which is the only custom-built feature in the unit. The rest of the furniture and systems are commercially available from Resource Furniture.
1:01 p.m.: The apartment is packed for the cooking demo:
1:04 p.m.: Chef Terri Lee of Great Performances is ready to make gazpacho for the crowd:
1:15 p.m.: A view of the crowd. At one point, there were about 26 spectators:
Lee has one piece of advice for chefs cooking in small spaces: splitting the fridge and freezer into a half-fridge and half-freezer actually gives you more counter space.
1:31 p.m.: An Upper East Sider making a repeat visit to the exhibit tells us her space is 415 or 420 square feet, but the micro-unit feels more spacious. The only thing she would change would be to add more space for clothes?the micro-unit only has two small closets.
1:50 p.m.: The cost of the multi-functional furniture systems has come up repeatedly in conversations with guests. The sleek, compact furniture is why the unit feels as spacious as it does, but for many people, especially those who choose a smaller space because the rent is less, the cost is too much. Bed systems from Resource Furniture range from $7,000 to $15,000. As one New Yorker put it, "It's not for your normal working girl."
2:00 p.m.: If you aren't free to visit us during museum hours, we'd still love your contributions to our liveblog. Have you ever lived in a teeny NYC apartment? Tell us about it!. (Hand-drawn floorplans also highly encouraged.)
2:21 p.m.: Another visitor to the museum shares a nine-bedroom Victorian mansion in Ditmas Park?three floors, original wood, etc. She's one of the few people to come through so far who doesn't want to move out of her own house into the micro-unit.
2:34 p.m.: Several guests have noted that the bathroom feels oversized for the unit, but because of ADA compliance laws, it's the smallest size allowed for bathrooms in new developments. The bathroom is also the most expensive room in the unit because it's designed by Philippe Starck:
2:45 p.m.: The most frequent question is "how much does it cost?" Resource Furniture's products are made to order, but the kitchen in this unit runs about $16,000, including the appliances (half refrigerator, half freezer, convection oven, stovetop, and microwave). Fun fact: the actual appliances in the micro unit were made in Italy (along with the rest of the furniture) so they are configured for Italian voltage and power sockets and could never be hooked up here.
2:53 p.m.: "I wish I had invented this," sighs one visitor, watching the television slide over to reveal the bar.
3:04 p.m.: The imagined occupant of this apartment is this lady, whose portrait sits above our desk:
She's a 30-year-old teacher who doesn't cook but likes to host cocktail parties?that's why the TV hides a bar instead of a larger table that could seat 10.
3:34 p.m.: An interior designer who works for a Westchester developer that builds apartment complexes stopped by to get inspiration for her work, in particular, how to encourage her superiors to include modern updates within more traditional unit designs. Taking videos with her phone, she notes that she likes the garage door-style kitchen cabinets for space-saving. "My kitchen is smaller than this kitchen," she says. "But I don't know if I could live here."
3:44 p.m.: This mattress is biodegradable.
3:52 p.m.: A Resource Furniture rep demonstrates how to fold a kitchen island on wheels into a table for four, and how to take apart a stool/coffee table into four separate seats to go around it. Four other folding chairs hang flat, rather unobstrusively, against a wall by the door. One wide-eyed spectator exclaims: "You can just forget about chairs!" Later, another comments, "It's a lifestyle choice."
4:02 p.m.: Wesley from Untapped Cities stops by the micro-unit. Like everyone, he's impressed by the design, but isn't sure he could live here. Since everything folds into everything, any activity in the apartment requires planning and forethought. And constant cleanliness.
4:18 p.m.: Another design-centric journalist outlet passes through to share thoughts. Architizer's Steven Thomson says: "It's intense. You think most people who want to have this kind of lifestyle would be a DIY type, kind of scruffy. But this is super sleek, so that's an interesting angle. You can lead your yuppie life. It's just smaller."
4:20 p.m.: There was another cooking demonstration, and so many people packed into our temporary home that we had to step outside into the "Making Room" exhibition. Here's a trivia question: Which city in the U.S. has the largest number of single-person households? We'll post the answer in 10 minutes!
4:39 p.m.: Turns out Washington, D.C. has the most single-person households in the country, with 44 percent of all households containing only one person, followed by Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, and Baltimore. New York clocks in at No. 17 with 32 percent. The list was derived from the 2010 census and only included cities with more than 500,000 residents. Our theory? It's so expensive to live alone in New York that although there's an abundance of single young professionals, many live with roommates, significant others, or their families.
4:49 p.m.: A Brooklyn landlord stops by the unit and chats a bit with us and another visitor about what type of renter the apartment might appeal to. The consensus: a late-20s – mid-30s corporate professional making six figures "with an image to maintain." Our landlord knows some people who would kill to get into this place if they could pay under $2,000/month.
5:04 p.m.: Master appraiser Jonathan Miller is on the scene waiting for the unit to clear out a little bit so that he can do an appraisal. He's impressed by the amount of space (it's bigger than his parents' 300-square-foot studio on the west side), and even more impressed by the gazpacho.
5:24 p.m.: A family of three from New Rochelle, who used to live in a 700-square-foot apartment and recently upgraded to a 1,600-square-foot house, is mesmerized by the video of the furnishings unfolding and retracting. When asked if they would live here, David, 11, remarked, "it's relaxing." (Which means, his mother explained, not cluttered, simple, minimalist.) Then Sonia, 8, nodded vigorously, while her mother tactfully warned that whoever would live here "doesn't have that many belongings."
5:37 p.m.: This video has been playing on loop on the TV this entire time. The music is very soothing. Everybody who watches it comments on the chair that folds out into a step ladder. We all want one in our apartments.
Don't stop here, because this epic adventure continues. For hours 7 to 21 of the 24-hour liveblog, head this way. For the last chunk of time in the micro-unit, here's part 3.
· Liveblogging 24 Hours in a 325-Square-Foot Apartment: The Adventure Begins (Part 1) [Curbed]
· 24 Hours in a 325-Square-Foot Apartment: The Night Shift (Part 2) [Curbed]
· 24 Hours in a 325-Square-Foot Apartment: A New Day (Part 3) [Curbed]
· We Survived 24 Hours in a 325-Square-Foot Apartment (Part 4) [Curbed]
· All Microdwellings coverage [Curbed] |
Steve Albini Takes On 'Parasitic' Record Labels And Copyright's 'Outdated' Illusion Of Control
from the the-future's-here-if-you-want-it dept
Musician and producer Steve Albini has never been a fan of the recording industry. He posted the definitive essay on how labels screw artists over 20 years ago, and it's just as relevant today as it was then. The internet (read: file sharing) has been public enemy #1 for the recording industry (and now the motion picture industry), despite offering a host of benefits to artists and labels. Those at the top see its decentralized distribution as a threat, with any accompanying gains in marketing power and reach deemed a net loss after totalling up the "lost sales."
Albini -- similarly affected by these same "negatives" -- doesn't see it this way. While acknowledging the fact that infringement occurs in amounts previously unseen (but that it's not in any way a new thing -- just far more efficient and not necessarily a bad thing), he continues to point out that the problems the music industry suffers from are mostly self-inflicted.
Speaking to an audience in Barcelona, Albini elaborated on his "updated" rant against the industry. Now expanded to include the massive increase of internet usage, the points still remain largely the same. There's a problem in the recording industry -- one virtually identical to the one pointed out by Albini in 1993. And that problem is… the recording industry.
“I don’t feel like I’m part of the music industry, the music industry meaning the corporatised business structures where you have people who are in the lower level, people in the upper level, people in administration, and people making legal relationships between all those people. [...]
This administrative business structure that’s syphoning money out of that whole scene has always seemed artificial and unnecessary and I’ve spent my life trying to remove its influence.”
“The idea that you have to have contracts to do [business] agreements, that you have to have formal understanding between people in order to have a long relationship, is a complete fallacy.
If you enjoy working with someone and both feel the relationship is working out, you naturally carry on indefinitely.
That’s the way I’ve approached essentially all of my business, you don’t need contracts."
“The old copyright model – the person who creates something owns it and anyone else that wants to use it or see it has to pay them – has expired in the same way that around the world you’re seeing structures and social norms [lapse] that were standard for many years.
It’s going to take a lot for the business to catch up to where the audience is, in the same way it takes a while for the church and the laws to catch up to where the people are.
But there is no longer the possibility to exclusively control music through copyright.”
While the industry frets about "lost sales," it has done very little to evolve from the bloated form it took on during the 40+ year run where multiple format shifts resulted in unprecedented sales figures. It's not just the corporate structure that's a problem. And this isn't to say labels haven't shed personnel over the years. It's just that they've been forced to make cuts due to falling revenue, rather than actively working to streamline their operations to fit the expectations of the internet age. Frontline staff and low-level employees have lost jobs but there are still many layers of employees distancing artists from those who own them.Then there are the lawyers. Some are there to ensure every last bit of revenue can be wrung out of an artist before any royalty checks are cut. Some are there to explore every possible legal angle that might be used to combat piracy The first sort have always been present. The latter still exist only because industry heads still hold out hope that file sharing can somehow be defeated with court orders and legislation.Albini says the first set are roughly as useless as the last.But youneed a contract if the "relationship" is actually just exploitation. This is why contracts are of utmost importance to the recording industry. Artists may initially show enthusiasm when offered a recording contract, but a few years down the road, they often find they're cranking out recordings just to avoid going deeper in debt. An equitable agreement -- like those used by Albini (who prefers a flat-rate fee for his production work, rather than seeking a cut of every sale or stream in perpetuity) -- doesn't need a multi-page contract or a team of lawyers. Honesty and openness up front can trim a lot of pages from an agreement... as well as the jobs of lawyers whose entire purpose is to ensure "agreements" are as long and inscrutable as possible.Lastly, Albini goes after copyright -- itself a legacy business model.Those arguing that stronger copyright protections will somehow "control" social sharing aren't grasping the reality of the situation. As it stands now, any copyright holder can demand $150,000 per infringement in statutory damages, and yet, that has had no appreciable effect on infringement. Just ask Rightscorp , which offers $20/infringement "settlements" while waving threats of $150,000 "fines" over internet subscribers' heads. It's in the business of spending money to lose money.The idea that lifetime+ copyright terms will put creators' grandkids through college is likewise suspect. Grandkids are going to college thanks to these terms, but they're the descendants of label execs and studio heads.The "control" offered by copyright is an illusion. The continued belief in this misconception allows labels to take advantage of artists. An artist may feel (incorrectly) that an individual can never hope to fully exploit his or her creations without the assistance of the marketing and legal teams of major labels, but they almost invariably have to give up full control of their creations to make use of these services. What good is their copyright then? It's not even. And the assistance they're receiving is charged up front at full retail and paid off with royalties -- a tiny percentage of actual sales and profit.As Albini points out, the way people enjoy music continues to change, and attempts to offer iterations of existing platforms and services is missing the point. People, for the most part, don't care about the quality of streaming music. They only care about the convenience. Albini notes that people carried around transistor radios to enjoy music on the go, something that offered truly terrible sound quality, but was no less popular for doing so. The way people consume and distribute creations will continue to change, but trying to harness that potential using contracts, outdated business models and delusions of control will never work.
Filed Under: copyright, music industry, record labels, steve albini |
Share. Sean Cunningham says The CW is interested in the show. Sean Cunningham says The CW is interested in the show.
The latest reports suggest that the new Friday the 13th series will focus on the "real" city of Crystal Lake and that The CW has expressed interest in the concept.
Last year, news broke that Friday the 13th creator Sean S. Cunningham was executive producing the new series, entitled Friday the 13th: Crystal Lake Chronicles. Cunningham was at the Monster Mania convention this past weekend, and according to Friday the 13th The Franchise fansite, he dropped some new details about what to expect from the series.
The site reports that Cunningham has "confirmed interest from the CW in regards to pickup for the tv show." He reportedly said that the basic premise of the series will focus on the real city of Crystal Lake, looking at the effect that the serialized films had on the town. (NOTE: There is no such place as Crystal Lake, but it was inspired by Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco in Blairstown, NJ.)
Exit Theatre Mode
The serialized films would be based on the "real life" killings that took place at the camp, which allows the series to reimagine Jason in a more grounded reality. Reportedly, the hockey masked Jason and a more serious backwoods inspired killer will make appearances on the series.
Original reports for the series suggested it would be "sort of a Smallville," also claiming that the focus would be on the characters of Crystal Lake. There has also been previous talk of showing Jason in multiple time periods with the use of flashbacks.
The pilot script will be written by Bill Basso (Terminator) and Jordu Schell (Avatar), with Cunningham executive producing.
Rachel Paxton-Gillilan is a freelance writer. You can find her on Twitter @rachpax. |
I woke up to hear the faint, pounding screaming of the Phillidelphia neo-crust act Soothsayer, echoing from the Stable, all the way to our camp. Not too far from me, a guy named Walter had cooked up a makeshift stew out of everyone else’s leftovers, and was inviting everyone around to help themselves. It was a pleasant surprise to all the folks who had just made the unpleasant discovery that the state of Indiana doesn’t allow the sale of alcohol on Sundays. So much for the separation of church and state.
On my way to the Barn, I found that the pond had been closed in order to protect its fish inhabitants. Fortunately, even though cooling off wasn’t an option, the festival goers were still ready to unleash a reserve of tremendous energy. I walked into the stable to catch Slugging Percentage delivering their baseball and depression themed songs, not on the stage, but within a circle of pogoing fans.
That’s not to say, however, that the day was dominated solely by the hardcore acts. Later on, I had the pleasure of watching Ladycop preform, a six-piece group that delivered neo-pop tunes layered with funky bass and drum lines. At the front of stage, three vocalists stood dressed in white, with glitter on the corners of their eyes, delivering vocal harmonies that were downright angelic.
I think the two stand-out acts of the afternoon were Jesus and His Judgmental Father, and Michael Jordan Touch Down Pass. Jesus and His Judgmental Father (which definitely had the best band name of the fest) delivered impassioned queer-centered alternative rock tunes, including “Kings and Queens” which, to my mind, stands as one of the most powerful songs about transphobia that I’ve ever heard. Michael Jordan Touchdown Pass, meanwhile, delivered something much more hard to define, blurring the lines between acoustic punk and experimental rock, even mixing in touches of jazz. Part of the power of the performance was provided by an absolutely amazing white-haired trumpeter whom, I would later learn, was actually Charlie Schneeweis, the father of both Michael Scheeweis, the group’s creator, and Patrick Schneeweis (a.k.a. Pat The Bunny). However one would define their music, the audience was absolutely devouring it, with the mostly-shirtless spectators providing the largest and liveliest day-time turn out of I’d seen so far. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to grab a picture of their set. I did, however, have my camera handy when, immediately afterwards, a piñata shaped like the Plan-It-X logo was hung from the ceiling and set upon by the crowd.
After a much needed dinner break, I caught a performance from Loone, another queercore whose identity was almost entirely shaped by the sheer personality of its front-woman. Guitarist/vocalist Noel’le Longhaul preformed the group’s dreamy post-folk punk tunes in a hypnotically rigid style; where every time she hit a major node or struck a guitar chord, it seemed like she was breaking out of the sheer discomfort of her own skin. This actually added to the power of group’s songs, which all explored this very same notion of trying to find comfort with your sense of self. What really surprised me, however, was when, talking to Longhaul after the show, I found out that I’d pegged the performance entirely wrong, and what I saw wasn’t discomfort, but rather a minor moment of transcendence.
“I feel like, a long time ago, I went through feeling really anxious on stage, but I really love preforming,” she explained. “I feel there’s a particular space I can get into with the people in my band, that I think is really special, and I like sharing it with people. I think that our music comes from caring for each other, and so I feel like when I’m preforming about things, that’s what I’m preforming.”
Loone was followed by Tig Bitty, a rapper whose mix of hyper-sexual lyrics and experimental booty-shaking beats probably stood as the strangest act of the entire festival. After she was finished, the stage was taken by Whelmed, an East Bay style punk act that accompanied their bright pop-punk tunes by jumping and shaking across the stage, as if their instruments were electrified.
Later, while I was walking to the backstage area to charge my camera battery, I had a chance run in with Charlie Schneeweis who, in turn, introduced me to Nick Berger, who played dwith Loone, Paper Bee, and Ramshackle Glory. We had a short discussion about Plan-It-X as an inclusive space, and I was struck by the immense love that Berger had for the community they had found within it.
“People from Plan-It-X were some of the first musicians I saw that were queer musicians, and when I started playing in Ramshackle, I felt like one of my biggest goals was to create a space that felt like my teenage punk scene, where the people playing were weird, the people watching were weird, and you could just meet other strange outsiders, and maybe you get a zine or learn about feminism,” Berger recounted.
Interestingly, however, they were still willing to point out some of the shortcomings of the DIY community, particularly regarding the general whiteness of both its musicians and fans.
“I think there are things we could be doing better; things I could be doing better. Because of the level of whiteness that exists currently, it can be pretty alienating for people of color to just step into it, and to go ‘you guys should do this thing with us because we want more representation’ is pretty tokenizing… I dunno, it’s just really hard to walk the line between inviting a group of people into a space and being tokenizing. But even if there’s not a simple answer, I want to keep thinking about it, because it is a problem in every scene I’ve ever been in.”
As a consequence of this interesting talk, I missed the very beginning of Jeff Rosenstock’s set. When I walked in, he was halfway through “I’m Serious, I’m Sorry”, and looked like somethign genuinely inhuman. Absolutely drenched in sweat, he howled into the microphone while laying into his guitar, like it was a beast that needed to be tamed. At one point, somebody threw a shark-shaped life preserver at Rosenstock that managed to perfectly encase his shoulders and bind his arms to his side, yet he kept playing regardless.
The music then took a minor break in order for the fest to reveal its sadistic side. At the back of the barn, a table had been set up for the annual Eating Competition, in which all of the contestants had to tuck away an entire 16 oz jar of Veganaise. I was honestly a little too grossed out to stick around and see who won, but I think the photo below speaks for itself.
The penultimate act of the night was The Wild, a group I’d always seen as more of a folk-rock group than a punk act, but, boy, did their set make me realize my mistake. The songs that I’d always found soothing when listening on speakers and headphones, were suddenly loud and pounding, whipping the audience into an absolute frenzy. At one point, Jeff Rosenstock hopped back on the stage, seemingly out of nowhere, to join Witt on the mic, before diving into the crowd. Near the end of their show, they subtly revealed that this would, in fact, be their second to last show. Still, this little shock wasn’t enough to taper the audiences sheer adoration as they closed with “Set Ourselves Free”, giving everyone something very strong to remember them by.
The final show of the night was, in all likelihood, the the main reason quite a few people came. It was, after all, not only Ramshackle Glory’s final show, but also Pat the Bunny’s final performance before quitting punk entirely. Over the course of the day, the people around me had been speculating how the set might go down. At one point, someone joked “maybe his heart is actually going to explode,” a reference to a line in “From Here To Utopia” that made us laugh, albeit somewhat nervously.
On the second day of the festival, I had actually, by chance, run into Pat hanging out near the Barn. I asked if he would be interested in doing some kind of final interview, either before or after his final show, and he firmly declined. That’s not to say he was unfriendly- he was more than happy to chat with me for a while about music, spirituality, and Russian history; he even introduced me to his dad who, by a bizarre coincidence, grew up in the same small Minnesotan town as my mom- however he made it very clear that he didn’t want to give any on the record assessments about punk rock or anarchism. He honestly just seemed like he had moved on from thinking and talking about those two subjects.
With that in mind, I’d be lying if I didn’t enter the show with both a sense of disappointment, and high expectations. Would this be a climactic lamentation on recovery and anarchism, or would it feel like an obligatory farewell from someone who no longer felt a connection to his audience? It turned out to be something wonderfully different.
The set began with “We Are All Compost in Training”, and from the opening lines, seemingly every member of the audience was singing along word-for-word. The song started out slow and subtle, but on the two parts of the song where the singing stopped, the brass section of the act- two trumpets and a clarinet- kicked in, and you could honestly sense the shivers going through the spines of every member of the audience, as everyone on stage lay into their instruments with all the power that was humanly possible.
Of course, that intensity was just a tiny sample of what was to come; next, they played “From Here to Utopia”. This may be one of my favorite songs of all time, and I don’t know whether it was the faster tempo brought by the drum set, the mandolin-esque twang that the guitars seemed to pick up when they played the keyboard section, or the constant chirping of the brass section, but they managed to make it pulse with an energy that felt living and tangible. The trumpeters managed to breathe creative little flourishes into small moments of the song, bringing about the sensibilities of a Dixieland marching band. Meanwhile, every time the song reached a point where Pat screamed his lyrics, I swear the volume of his mic and the crowd were at equal levels. I found myself so caught up in the moment, I thought it would be a good idea to try and photograph the band while in the process of jumping off the stage and crowd surfing (hence the sweat covered photo at the top of the page).
From here, they went on to play an unnamed song from their upcoming album, followed by “No Shelter”. When they played “Never Coming Home” the audience swayed, arm in arm, and when they played “Your Heart Is A Muscle” the crowd turned into a rowdy, overjoyed mob, screaming along with the songs titular promise of hope.
Then they announced that the next song would be their last, and people started calling out desperate pleas for the song that mattered most to them. Someone shouted “play a Johnny Hobo song” and was promptly booed by seemingly the entire audience. The band proceeded to play “Time to Wake Up”, a song from one of Pat’s solo projects. At first, the song choice felt like an anti-climax, something subdued and a little more obscure. But as they played, something strange happened. People started crowd surfing, but not in the usual cannonball kind of way; instead, they would lean off the stage and float across the audience like a pilgrim across the dead sea. Even Charlie Schneeweis fell into the crowd, a huge grin across his face as he slowly glided across the barn. When the song reached its climax, everyone chanted the chorus with pat, singing “please wake up now, the world really needs you, desperately/ please cheer up now, we’ve been waiting for you, all your life,” before the entire band chimed in, creating a cacophony of pure serenity. I looked and, to the left of me, saw two lovers were hugging each other tightly. To my right, a man was breaking down into tears. Then, as one of the crowd surfers drifted close, and we all reached out to make their weight feel like nothing, I realized that past all the sweat stinging my eyes, I might have been crying too. But thank god that wasn’t actually the end.
The band proceeded to play a tribute to Erik Peterson, giving their rendition of Departure/Arrival. Then, after the brief “Club Hits of Today Will Be The Showtunes of Tomorrow”, they played “Last Song, Part 2”. The crowd surged forward one last time, to bask in what truly felt like the conclusion of a beautiful punk legacy. They savored every moment, until the show was ended with the same line that concluded the album I fell in love with almost three years ago, “so maybe god isn’t the right word but I believe in you.”
With the last song concluded, the audience started chanting “thank you Pat,” to which he bashfully approached the mike and replied “thank YOU.” It was at that precise moment that a thought struck me. Throughout the set, they had stuck to Pat’s most hopeful songs, avoiding the likes of “More About Alcoholism” and “Eulogy for an Adolescence”. The performance carried no bitterness, and hardly any real anger. Instead, all the musicians just had a constant peaceful smile, like someone reading the great ending to a good book. The final words of “Last Song” echoed through my head, and I no longer felt upset about not doing the exit interview. Over the course of half an hour, with just the hopeful words of his music, he had just given us all the explanation we needed.
And with that, he gave the audience a thumbs-up and disappeared behind the painted curtain. |
As part of a research team studying galaxies, two University of Maryland scientists recently helped find a wild one.
It doesn't fit into the two main galaxy shape categories and is even a bit too odd to belong with those astronomers call "irregulars," although loosely speaking it is. It appears in one respect a conventional spiral galaxy, but also in a class by itself, a cosmic eccentric dropping clues about galaxies and the mysterious objects believed to lie at the center of most of them: supermassive black holes.
University of Maryland astronomy professor Sylvain Veilleux and doctoral student Vicki Toy have been trailing this galaxy along with 11 researchers from other institutions, and — in a recent development in the field — help from amateur astronomers through such websites as Galaxy Zoo. Their research report appeared online last month and is scheduled to be in print next month in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Couched in the customary clusters of mathematical equations and graphs, the research report begins telling the story of a galaxy that — like nearly all of the 700,000 galaxies loosely classified so far, a fraction of the total in the universe — is identified only by catalog number: J1649+2635.
It's about 800 million light years from Earth, which in astronomical terms is in the neighborhood, and about the size of our own galaxy, the Milky Way: roughly 80,000 light years across. For some sense of scale, consider that one light year — the distance light travels in a vacuum in 365 days — is nearly 6 trillion miles. That's about 100 million trips from Baltimore to California and back again.
J1649+2635 is a "grand design spiral," meaning it shows well-defined spiral arms emanating in unbroken lengths from the center. In that respect it resembles the Milky Way, also a spiral, and conforms to one of the main established galaxy types.
Other features, however, set it apart, challenging some standing notions about galaxies. The anomalies are yet to be explained.
It has two elongated structures shooting out of it: jets or plumes of subatomic particles — mostly likely electrons and protons — that are emitting non-visible radio energy.
That's odd, as such jets are usually found in elliptical galaxies, which contain stars that are older than those found in spirals. This is only the fourth spiral galaxy found so far to emit these jets. It is also the first "grand design" galaxy to show a "halo" of visible light around it, probably the glow of a vast cloud of stars.
The researchers got onto J1649+2635 by following up information compiled on the Galaxy Zoo website, which allows anyone to look at images of galaxies and sort them into categories.
"Without Galaxy Zoo, this object wouldn't have made it in our preliminary sample and we wouldn't have observed it at all," Veilleux said. "I was a bit skeptical of the concept at first, but the Galaxy Zoo has shown time and time again that it is a valuable resource for professional astronomers."
The halo emerged as a clear structure in Toy's visual observations using the Discovery Channel Telescope in the Coconino National Forest, about 40 miles southeast of Flagstaff, Ariz. The halo that was considered a possibility from galaxy surveys came into sharp focus as Toy took repeated images in early June, the last of four trips she made to the telescope last year.
"I'm taking short images," Toy said, and she would "stack them until you see a nice complete object."
Confirmation of the halo and the spiral structure through visual observation were two key contributions by Veilleux and Toy to the effort that involved 12 universities and observatories, including the department of astronomy and the Joint Space-Science Institute at the University of Maryland, College Park.
They could be clues about the formation of galaxies and the behavior of supermassive black holes, with masses several hundred million times the sun. These behemoths are Veilleux's chief research interest.
Black holes are not exactly "holes" in the sense of empty space, but objects of great mass, with a gravitational force so powerful that they trap light and anything else in their proximity. As a result, they can't be detected through light, radio waves or other conventional means of astronomical observation, presenting a blank spot, a "hole" in the fabric of space. Astronomers usually find them by detecting the hot material in the vicinity of the hole.
Scientists are still figuring out the role these objects play in the life of galaxies, but they believe that supermassive black holes lie at the center of the largest ones, including the Milky Way. (Located on an outer arm of the galaxy, the Earth is in no danger of being sucked in.)
The jets are understood to be generated by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, so they "may say something about the spin of the black hole," said Philip F. Hopkins, an assistant professor of theoretical astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology.
Hopkins, who was not involved in the research, said the work is "particularly important for trying to understand how those jets came to exist" and how they affect other parts of the galaxy.
He wondered if the galaxy provides a snapshot of a relatively elusive transitional phase in the life of a galaxy, one that lasts only, say, a billion years or so.
Veilleux said the unusual halo around this galaxy could be explained by the merger of two galaxies.
"It's very unlikely that something like that could be created without a merger," Veilleux said. The spiral structure, he said, would have been formed after the merger.
Scientists believe elliptical galaxies — shaped like an ellipse with no spiral arms — and the largest galaxies of all kinds have been created by mergers.
This research points back to the heavens, Veilleux said, as scientists seek more galaxies with this mix of features, trying to understand just how odd J1649+2635 really is, and what it means.
[email protected] |
Kevin Connauton, the lanky powerplay specialist with both Major Junior and NCAA experience to his name, had a moderate offensive breakout in Manitoba last season as a rookie. With 11 goals and 12 assists to his name as well as a shorthanded tally late in a playoff game against Lake Erie, the former AJHL, CCHA and WHL player had a pretty successful campaign scoring-wise as both a rookie and a defenseman in the AHL.
The Canucks have seldom had success drafting defensemen in the middle rounds of the NHL draft (Brett Skinner, Daniel Rahimi, Kris Fredheim, Zenith Komarniski), but Connauton, taken in the 3rd round at 83rd overall after a pretty good year at Western Michigan University, looks more to settle into the upper tier of mid-round picks. At 6’1″ 195 and just 21 years old, the Edmonton has put on some weight over the last year and may have a little more filling out to do.
Christian Ehrhoff’s butler told me that the offensive defenseman was becoming a more valuable commodity in the National Hockey League, and at no point in his career was Connauton ever looked at as anything more than a potential even-strength puck mover and powerplay quarterback. The man wields an impressive shot and displays effective patience.
“He was voted as having the hardest shot in the Western Conference by 45 players, management and broadcasters from the 10 clubs in the Western Conference of the WHL” his Hockey’s Future profile brags. “His best assets are his ability to make plays from the blue line and his patience and poise while in possession of the puck. Connauton has a smooth stride and good foot speed.”
To eliminate all the buzz words and clichés, the important takeaway from the profile is that he has a good shot, can control the puck and is a good skater. Despite the fact that we won’t see him for any length of time with the Canucks anytime soon, here are his NHL equivalents over the last three seasons with Western Michigan, Vancouver Giants and Manitoba Moose:
Season GP G PTS G/82 – NHL P/82 NHL 2009 40 7 18 6 15 2010 69 24 72 9 26 2011 73 11 23 5 11
Not much of a sexy takeaway. His meteorotic spike in the 2010 season was helped along thanks to a terrific Vancouver Giants club under head coach Don Hay. That team has pumped out some impressive names of offensive defensemen, particularly Cody Franson, Andrej Meszaros and Jonathon Blum, all of whom are set to be regular NHLers this upcoming season.
Five goals is the benchmark for any competent offensively rearguard in the NHL, but, given Connauton’s age, he’ll likely improve. The eagle-eyed reader will note that Connauton’s point total is not too far ahead of his goal total which means that Connauton may have some difficulty moving the puck, but as we know, the key to many defensemen’s assist total is from the play of the forwards in front of him and their ability to create offense. There weren’t a wealth of forwards who could create offense on the Moose last season, so I’m willing to put some money that Connauton’s on-ice teammates had a pretty low shooting percentage.
Connauton will likely spend this season in Chicago with the Wolves. It will be his sixth city in six years of upper-level hockey, so the adjustment to a new system under a new coach may take a little more time. Hopefully Craig MacTavish can emphasize the right parts of his game to offer Mike Gillis as a bit of insurance in the unlikely case that six or seven of the Canucks top defensemen go down at some point during the season (like that will ever happen). His constant year-to-year movement is a likely reason why Connauton has turned to the online world to build friendships. His twitter account can be found @k_nauts and it appears as if the young defenseman has gotten off to a good start finding his place within the classy establishments within the city of Vancouver. |
The High Court has ruled that the Joint Labour Committee system of setting wages for lower paid workers is unconstitutional.
The case had been taken by John Grace Fried Chicken of Cork and the Quick Service Food Alliance, who represent a group of fast food outlets.
The restaurants argued that the JLC system was unconstitutional, unfair and breached their property rights.
However, the State defended the JLCs as legally sound and reasonable in protecting the rights of low paid workers.
Mr Justice Kevin Feeney found that there were insufficient principles and policies in the legislation governing JLCs to permit them to operate constitutionally.
This means that the legislation gave the Labour Court and JLCs too much power without adequate guidance and supervision by the Oireachtas.
Plaintiff John Grace of the Quick Service Food Alliance welcomed the ruling.
Mr Grace said his members had no plans to cut the wages of existing staff but that new recruits would be employed on lower terms. He said the move would be good for business and would create jobs.
'We are confident that many businesses will not only be more stable as a result of the decision but will be enabled to take on new staff,' Mr Grace added.
The ruling could have significant implications for the Government's plans to reform wage setting mechanisms governing pay and conditions for around 200,000 workers in sectors including contract cleaning, security, hotels, restaurants and hairdressing.
Reaction
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said that the Government will be studying the High Court judgment over the coming days and will decide on what is the best course of action to deal with it and its implications.
Mr Kenny said that the Attorney General and ministers are studying the 42-page judgment, which he said is quite detailed.
He said the court had made its decision based on the historic introduction of the Employment Regulation Orders (EROs) arising from the JLC legislation which is very old.
Meanwhile, Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton has pledged to introduce interim legislation to protect vulnerable workers.
He said the court decision underlined that the system needed reform.
While he could not give a timeframe for when the interim legislation would be introduced, he said that the intention would be to provide protection for the employment regulation orders governing sectoral wages while his reform package was being put in place.
He said that the interim legislation would cover both existing employees and new recruits.
Elsewhere, opponents of the reform proposals argue that they will result in widespread poverty for low paid workers, who will see cuts in their overtime and premium rates of pay.
SIPTU Vice-President Patricia King said that the ruling is 'devastating news' for low paid workers.
She said: 'It's the case of all their birthdays coming at once for the most unscrupulous employers in the State who are now free to plunder the wage packets of poorly paid workers.'
However, the ruling has been welcomed by Chambers Ireland, which said it should help create more jobs. |
16th October 2016
The world's first nation state in space
At a press conference in Paris this week, plans were announced for the creation of 'Asgardia' – the first nation state in outer space.
Credit: Asgardia
Named after the city of the skies in Norse mythology, Asgardia is a space-based nation proposed by Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, founder of the Aerospace International Research Centre (Vienna), and Chairman of UNESCO's Science of Space committee. The concept is aimed at creating a new framework for how space activities are regulated and owned, ensuring that "the future of space is peaceful and done for the benefit of humankind."
Dr Ashurbeyli, one of the Russian Federation's most distinguished scientists, has consulted globally renowned scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and legal experts on the development of the concept. The project's official website is currently requesting people to register for "citizenship" with the aim of applying to the United Nations for official recognition as a nation state. Already, hundreds of thousands have signed up.
As a first step, the organisation plans to crowd-source a satellite for launch in 2017, sixty years after Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite. This will mark a new era in the space age, the organisation claims, as the satellite will be independent of any current nation state on Earth: the satellite will comprise the nation itself – creating its own legal system, flag and other symbols of nationhood.
"The project's concept comprises three parts – philosophical, legal and scientific/technological," Dr Ashburbeyli explained. "Asgardia is a fully-fledged and independent nation, and a future member of the United Nations – with all the attributes this status entails. The essence of Asgardia is 'Peace in Space', and the prevention of Earth's conflicts being transferred into space.
"Asgardia is also unique from a philosophical aspect: to serve entire humanity and each and everyone, regardless of his or her personal welfare and the prosperity of the country where they happened to be born. The scientific and technological component of the project can be explained in just three words – peace, access and protection. The scientific and technological envelope of Asgardia is a space arena for the scientific creativity of its citizens and companies in developing a broad range of future space technologies, products and services for humanity on Earth and humanity in space."
In recent years, access to space has been opening up, but the process remains slow and is tightly controlled by states on Earth, restricting commerce and scientific developments by private enterprise. Of the 196 nation states, just thirteen (China, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia/former USSR, South Korea, UK, Ukraine, USA) and one regional organisation (the European Space Agency, ESA) have independently launched satellites on their own indigenously developed launch vehicles.
Professor David Alexander, Director of the Rice Space Institute at Rice University in Texas: "As low-Earth orbit becomes more accessible, what's often called the 'democratisation' of space, a pathway is opening up to new ideas and approaches from a rich diversity of participants. The mission of Asgardia to create opportunities for broader access to space, enabling non-traditional space nations to realise their scientific aspirations is exciting."
Under current international space law, including the widely adopted Outer Space Treaty, states are required to authorise and supervise national space activities, including the activities of commercial and not-for-profit organisations. Objects launched into space are subject to their nation of belonging and if a nation launches an object into space, that nation is responsible for any damage that occurs internationally and in outer space.
Asgardia aims to create a new framework for ownership and nationhood in space, adapting current laws governing responsibility, private ownership and enterprise so they are fit for purpose in the new era of space exploration. By creating a new "space nation", private enterprise, innovation and the further development of space technology to support humanity could flourish, free from the tight restrictions of state control that currently exist.
Professor Ram Jakhu, Director, Institute of Air and Space Law at McGill University, Montreal, Canada: "An appropriate and unique global space legal regime is indispensable for governing outer space in order to ensure it is explored on a sustainable basis, for exclusively peaceful purposes and to the benefit of all humanity – including future generations living on planet Earth and in outer space. The development of foundational principles of such a legal regime ought to take place at the same time as technological progress is being made."
One of the early developments planned by Asgardia's team will be the creation of a state-of-the-art protective shield for all humankind from cosmic manmade and natural threats to life on Earth such as space debris, coronal mass ejections and asteroid collisions.
There are estimated to be more than 20,000 traceable objects of man-made space debris (MSD) including non-active spacecraft, upper-stage rockets and final stage vehicles, as well as fragments of craft that potentially pose a danger in near-Earth orbits. The impact of the Chelyabinsk meteorite which crashed over a Russian town as recently as 2013, injuring 1,100 people and damaging 4,000 buildings, is a reminder of the threat that natural objects pose to life on our planet.
Whilst steps have already been taken by the UN and the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) to identify potentially hazardous scenarios, Asgardia will build on these developments to offer a more comprehensive mechanism.
Dr. Joseph N. Pelton, former Dean of the International Space University in Strasbourg, France: "The Asgardia project, among other things, may help prepare better answers to the future governance of outer space – a topic of major concern to the United Nations. The exciting aspect of this initiative is its three phase approach to providing broader access to space; promoting peace in outer space; and addressing cosmic hazards and planetary defence."
The Asgardia Project Team will comprise a collaborative, multi-disciplinary effort from leading experts around the globe which it is envisaged will grow over time as the project evolves. But as well as expert involvement in the project, Asgardia is looking to capture the wider public imagination by crowd-sourcing key aspects of the missions and involving members of the public in competitions – for example, to help design the nation's flag, insignia and other symbols of nationhood.
To coincide with the press conference, a website with further details was launched at www.asgardia.space. The project can also be followed on Twitter where updates will be provided, along with interaction between the Asgardia team and members of the public.
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Recently Football Outsiders (FO) ranked the Arizona Cardinals as having the best defense in the NFL. Yes, that is over the 9-0 Chiefs with their super stingy defense that has allowed only 12.3 points a game and over Houston's top ranked statistical defense that was allowing (before this weekend's game) only 273.5 yards per game. They even rank Arizona over the highly touted and media loved 49ers and Seahawks defenses.
When reading this my first thought was how? The Cardinals have allowed the 11th most points in the NFL and the eighth most yards-per-play (food for thought, the Browns lead the league at 4.5 yard per play). So why are the Cardinals the top ranked defense? Turnovers are the name of the game and are the biggest reason why the Cardinals lead FOs DVOA rankings for the best defense in the NFL. (Learn more about their DVOA rankings here)
Before this week the Cardinals averaged 2.3 turnovers per game and on the year have recovered eight of 11 fumbles and have 12 interceptions for a total of 20 turnovers. FO also states that Arizona has been excellent on second, third and fourth downs this season all while facing the leagues fourth hardest schedule of opposing offenses.
Some of this is surprising. Many fans haven't been happy with the play of the secondary past Patrick Peterson but according to FO the secondary has done a very good job despite the teams failure to cover TEs. FO dropped this little gem as support of their argument, the Cardinals rank fourth against team's number.one receivers and sixth against their number two. So while the Cardinals defense has some weaknesses and holes overall the unit has been performing at an elite level.
According to ESPN the Cardinals are tied for 13th in sacks, fifth in passes defended, tied for fifth in interceptions (10 teams have 12 or 13 INTs) and tied for fifth with seven other teams in eight forced fumbles recovered. Overall the defense is ranked 13th in average yards allowed per game, 19th against the pass and third against the run. These stats are not weighed like FOs but do give some perspective on the hard numbers of the Cardinals defense.
So while ESPN doesn't list the Cardinals as an elite defense it is good to read that using FOs statistical model the Cardinals defense is as good as they have looked during games. Considering the schedule the Cardinals have played and the negativity many fans (myself included) had towards the defense and Todd Bowles coming into the year the Cardinals have shown that not only are they better than last year, they are elite.
Now it's time to get FOs 29th ranked offense into gear and make a playoff push. |
Welcome to “Remote Controlled,” a podcast from Variety about the world of TV and talent behind the screen.
In this week’s episode Variety executive editor of TV Debra Birnbaum and editor at large Michael Schneider talk to Greg Berlanti, the mastermind behind TV’s biggest comic book shows including “Supergirl,” “Arrow” and “The Flash,” as well as “Blindspot” and the upcoming “Riverdale.”
Berlanti talks candidly about the process of moving “Supergirl” to a “new network and new city.” During Season 1 the show aired on CBS and was filmed in Los Angeles. For Season 2 the show moved to the CW and filmed in Vancouver. He also revealed plans for a crossover episode between the “Supergirl,” “Flash” and “Arrow” universes.
For more, listen to the full episode of “Remote Controlled” below.
“It is kind of over four nights,” Berlanti said of the three-show crossover. “[Supergirl is] in a whole other universe so they have to go retrieve her.”
He added, “It’s also ‘Supergirl’s’ winter finale because the show is premiering a week later. So a bulk of the story in that episode is still paying off things that’s happening in the fall, and then she kisses into the larger story and she’s very much an active part of the crossovers across the three shows.”
Related ICG Publicists Awards Honor Jamie Lee Curtis, Jon M. Chu and Greg Berlanti Broadcast Networks Brace for Big Decline in Pilot Orders
The producer and writer also talked about the process of juggling so many shows at once.
“There’s always at least one or two episodes across any of the shows — and a never really know what it’s going to be — that I’m more intimately involved with,” Berlanti said. “It helps me stay connected to the show and, no, I’m not that way on every episode of every show. I just couldn’t be. But it also allows me a different sort of vantage point.”
He admitted that, as someone who stops by to lend his perspective, his influence has the potential to be treacherous.
“It’s really easy in this job to be destructive,” he said. “I try and be helpful, and still help them interpret what it is they want to do.”
A new episode of “Remote Controlled” will be available every Friday. |
And to be the one to tell them to do it, even if not directly...
Enjoy your sub >u>
"Shiiinkii~♥ Look up, a mistletoe~ You know what that means, right~?""Mima, what in the word-""You know, as the tradition goes, if two people stand under a mistletoe, they should kiss.""What- wait M-Mima let go--!""It's tradition, Shinki~ As a goddess, you should respect traditions, right~♥? (that's actually a lie)""N-no, let go, LET GO-""You seem to have fun, don't you. Is it alright for a Miko to just let a goddess from another world and an evil spirit make out in front of the shrine?"It's fine, it's fine~ As long as I don't find my sheets all wet next morning, they can do whatever they want.""You sure take it easy, eh...""L-Lady Shinki...."---.....IDK. Something ridiculous I just thought up, lol. Dedicated to , because I can ♥ *shot* Early Merry Christmas, ILU, Mew-chan~Mima, Shinki, Hakurei Reimu, Kazami Yuka, Yumeko (Touhou Project) (c) ZUN |
Being a leader in both the firearms and ammunition industry Remington knows how important it is to have the highest quality ammunition available to make your firearm perform to its fullest potential. This starts with using the best components possible to manufacture ammunition. These are the same primers Remington uses in the production of their own ammunition and performs to their highest standards. If you want the best possible out of your firearm you have to start with the best that’s why reloaders choose Remington components for their loads.
Within every Remington primer is a group of subcomponents assembled to exceptionally tight tolerances. Primer cup dimensions are controlled to .0001", and the priming mix is specially formulated for consistent ignition with a wide variety of powder types. Primers are tested for reliability from -20 degrees F to +150 degrees F. The unique tripod anvil design creates a larger strike area with maximum sensitivity, even with off center firing pin strikes.
Warning:
Remington does not recommend this primer for use in the 17 Remington, 222 Remington, 223 Remington, 204 Ruger, 17 Remington Fireball. Use the 7-1/2 Small Rifle Bench Rest primer in these cartridges.
This 6-1/2 Small Rifle primer is primarily designed for use in the 22 Hornet. |
Typical of the left: “Antifa,” ironically enough, stands for anti-fascist. But their violence and thuggery define fascism. Now we find that these brownshirts are openly defending this racist and supremacist pro-rape Muslim leader. Where is the SPLC to declare them a “hate group”?
Previously at The Geller Report: ‘Australian women need Muslim men to fertilize them,’ says halal food chief in Facebook rant
“With friends like these … Left-wing extremist group DEFENDS halal boss’ claims Australian women need Muslim men to fertilise them – calling critics ‘racist,'” by Stephen Johnson, Daily Mail Australia, July 31, 2017 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
A violent, left-wing extremist group has defended a leading Islamic businessman’s claim Australian women need Muslim men to fertilise them, calling his critics ‘bigots’ and ‘racists’. Halal Certification Authority president Mohamed Elmouelhy told his Facebook followers Australia’s white race would die out within 40 years. He added that with Australian men a ‘dying breed’, local women needed Muslim men to ‘fertilise them’ and ‘keep them surrounded by Muslim babies’. Despite the outcry on social media last week, left-wing extremist group Antifa has described Mr Elmouelhy’s critics as ‘bigots’, even though he had called for ‘bigots’ to commit suicide. ‘Racists attacking Mohamed Elmouelhy – more Muslim babies is a good thing. Bigots,’ it said on Facebook. This is the same group which claimed responsibility in June for spraying conservative Sky News commentator Andrew Bolt with glitter at a book launch in Melbourne. Less than eight weeks later, they are weighing into more controversy by defending Mr Elmouelhy, who was commenting on Hebrew University in Jerusalem publishing research which showed sperm counts in men from Australia, New Zealand, North America and Europe had declined by more than 50 per cent in less than 40 years. ‘Your men are a dying breed, Australian women need us to fertilise them and keep them surrounded by Muslim babies while beer swilling, cigarette smoking, drug injecting can only dream of what Muslim men are capable of,’ he said. ‘Muslims have a duty to make your women happy.’ Mr Elmouelhy, who is the president of Halal Certification Authority, said Australia’s white race ‘will be extinct in another 40 years’ if the country is ‘left to bigots’. …
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A few weeks ago, I wrote an article talking about several smart garage door openers. In it, I ended up picking the Linear GoControl as my favorite. One of the smart openers that I didn’t really get into, though, was the Garadget.
Why didn’t I include this smart garage door opener? Honestly, I just didn’t find a lot about it at the time. It seemed to be a newcomer to the playing field and I wanted to focus on devices that had been around for a while. It only had 70 something odd reviews on Amazon, compared to hundreds for other garage door openers.
A few days ago, I got a message on DadInASmartHome’s Facebook page asking me to review it. I’m always open for review requests, so I started checking it out. Then I noticed that the person who messaged me was none other than the founder himself, Denis Grisak.
After talking with Denis for quite a while, it was evident that he was someone that stood behind his product. He had designed Garadget on his own to meet the same need that I had when I first got into smart homes: wanting to know whether or not I closed the damn garage door before I left.
I jumped into learning more about the Garadget itself. It started with a very successful kickstarter campaign. Denis then started posting updates as soon as the process started. At some point in the process, he even posted about how to create your own home-grown Garadget. On top of all of that, there’s a Github repo with the firmware. It was clear that the community around this device was actually thriving, primarily due to how committed Denis was to his users.
I then started looking at the technical specs of Garadget. Once connected through the app, the device talks over WiFi. Instead of having to run a door sensor like other garage door openers use, Garadget uses a laser pointed at your garage door to determine if it’s open or not. While integration with SmartThings isn’t as simple as some other devices, it is possible to get it integrated (we’ll step through this shortly). IFTTT works well and Amazon Echo support is coming soon. For the latest list of devices they support, check out this page on their website.
To power the device, you simply plug it into an outlet using the supplied plug and USB cord. Setup does get a little tricky, in that it requires you to wire it directly into your garage door opener. This is going to be the case with almost every smart garage door opener you purchase that isn’t already part of your dumb garage door opener (we’ll step through this too, shortly).
The device has an Android app, an iPhone app and an awesome webpage for you to control it. It also does not require a hub.
The more I read, the more I became interested. I reached out to Denis and asked him if I could have a review unit to test. He promptly sent it out to me and here I am now.
Note: I know I mentioned it above, but I wanted to make it clear that I was supplied a review unit for this article.
I’ve mentioned it before that my initial reasoning for wanting a smart home was so I could automate my garage door. I’m not sure why it took me so long to get to this point, but I’m excited to finally start this chapter of my smart home adventure.
Step 1 – Unboxing
Denis has mentioned before that he wanted to keep the packaging eco-friendly.
Our plan is to minimize the environmental impact by relying on the recycled materials and minimal ink. Garadget’s packaging is going to be a molded pulp tray (think egg carton) inside of corrugated brown box with black print. – source
Let’s look at what you get in the box.
The packaging is very clean. Along with the hardware, you also get a letter from Denis talking about the Garadget.
In the box is the Garadget itself, a usb cable and power plug, 2 double-sided adhesive pads, 2 reflective pads, some cable to connect to your current garage door opener, and a tiny little screwdriver for the wire insert.
The actual device itself is about the same size and weight as a laptop mouse. The material it’s made out of doesn’t seem very fancy, but it does feel solid. For something that is going to live in my garage, I’m not concerned about it being pretty. I want it to last a long time. No-frills plastic will do just that.
The laser and sensor are at the front of the device. The back has the micro-USB port for power and the plugs for the control wire.
The buttons on top let you reset the device and change the mode. There’s also an LED that lets you know the current status.
The bottom of the device doesn’t have any buttons or ports, but it does have the mounting surface.
Step 2 – App Install
Note: If you want to go through setup instructions directly from the source, check out this page on the Garadget website.
A big reason for having one of these is the ability to not only control it from my phone, but also to check on the garage door itself. The app will let me do that no matter where I am. To start things off, let’s download the app.
iPhone Download – Android Download
I’ll be going through the Android app. You’ll also want to make sure that your Garadget is plugged in at this point. There’s no need to have it in your garage since we’re just going to get it linked to the app. Keep it alongside you for now.
When you first download the app, you’ll have to create an account. After doing that, you’ll be greeted by the following screen:
Since we don’t have any garages added yet, it’s just blank. Let’s add our garage door opener. Click on the Add Door button at the bottom.
Follow those instructions and click on Ready.
Your Garadget is going to create its own Ad-hoc wifi network. We are going to want to connect to it directly so we can update the settings on the device. Select the network that starts with Photon here.
The app is now going to ask you what network your house internet connection is on. The reason Garadget needs this is so it knows where it should connect to for internet access. After selecting your house wifi and entering the proper credentials, the app goes off and does a bunch of setup stuff.
Once all is said and done, you’ll see the following screen:
Your phone will also switch back to your house wifi at this point.
Now that we are all set up, your screen should show a garage door on it.
One of the things I really like about the app is all the triggers and alerts you can set. You can be notified every time the door opens, or closes. You can be notified if the door is open between certain times. There’s a lot to play with here. I chose to be notified if the door is open between 10:00pm and 6:00am.
I did have some minor issues with the Android app. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the interface when trying to change the settings of the device. Every time I tried to change the name, it would show a loading circle and move my cursor over. It also seemed like the app would sometimes get out of sync with the actual device. Fortunately for us, there is a beta build of the Android app on the forums that I’ve heard solves a lot of quirks.
Step 3 – Device Install
Important Note and Warning: If you are not comfortable doing electrical work, please hire a professional to wire your Garadget into your garage door opener. The $60 it’d cost to have someone knowledgeable do this is much cheaper than the hospital costs of you potentially messing up and shocking yourself, or worse, you killing yourself. Please don’t start a fire.
This part involves you finding the proper terminals to plug the Garadget into, as well as getting it attached to your ceiling.
Note: If you have a Security+ 2.0 opener, follow this guide to get your Garadget set up.
You first need to find where your current remote attaches to. Here’s a picture of what my garage door opener looks like.
It’s hard to see, but my garage door opener plugs into Push Button and Com. You can now take the wires that came with Garadget and plug them into each one. You can then take those same wires and plug them into the Garadget itself.
An area of improvement for the Garadget team are the wires themselves. Since one end of the wire loom is guaranteed to plug into your Garadget and polarity doesn’t matter, they should add an easier connector so you don’t need to deal with the screwdriver and tiny wire ports.
I did find my wire ends to be a bit long, so I ended up snipping them a little bit until I didn’t have much exposed wire on either end. At this point, let’s plug everything in and test our connection. No need to mount it just yet.
I loaded up the app on my phone and clicked on my button. Much to my excitement, my garage door closed! Pressed it again and the garage door opened. Seems pretty straight forward.
Step 3 – Add the Laser Tag
I believe the proper term is reflective tag, but I really wanted to say Laser Tag. I recommend using some tape to add the reflective tag at first so you can make sure you have it lined up correctly before you permanently affix it to your garage door.
As soon as you plug your Garadget in, it will start pulsing its laser. You can use this to determine where you want to mount it. I ended up putting mine on the far left of my garage door opener.
I also put my reflective tape on the top of my garage door.
Please excuse my dirty car. You can see the circular reflective tape on the top of my garage door, about half-way across.
Step 4 – SmartThings
At this point, you are set up and good to go. You can now control and check the status of your garage door from the convenience of your phone. How awesome is that!
Once I had this set up, I wanted to go to the next step and get it integrated with my SmartThings hub. I’ve said it over and over again that I don’t want to have to use a whole bunch of different apps if I don’t have to. I was very excited to hear that Garadget does have SmartThings support, even if it means having to do a little extra work to get it set up.
Follow this guide to get the device imported into your SmartThings account. I didn’t take screenshots along the way, but here it is step-by-step.
Log into https://graph.api.smartthings.com/login/auth Click on My Device Handlers and add a new device handler. Click on From Code at the top and paste everything from this webpage. Literally, select everything on that page and paste it into the box. Click on My SmartApps and add a new SmartApp. Click on From Code at the top and paste everything from this webpage. Literally, select everything on that page and paste it into the box. Once it’s added, click on the title of your new app. You’ll be taken to a new page. On the right hand side, you’ll find a button labeled App Settings. Click on that. Scroll down to OAuth and enable that. Then click the Update button on the bottom. You then want to go back to that same webpage from Step 6 and click on the Publish button. Select For Me. If you’ve done all of this correctly, the status of your SmartApp will be Published and it will say true in the OAuth column. You’ll now want to go to My Device Handlers. Click on the title of your device and publish it the same way you published the SmartApp.
Once all that is done, we’re going to go into the SmartThings app on your phone. Click on Marketplace and scroll to the bottom to find + My Apps.
If you don’t see My Apps listed there, log out of the app and log back in. If you still don’t see it, you’re probably having the same issue I did at first. Fortunately, it’s easy to fix. Go back to the SmartThings website from earlier. Click on My Locations and click on your home. You’ll probably have to log in again. Once logged in, repeat the steps I mentioned above starting at Step 2. Done correctly, you’ll find My Apps listed at the bottom.
Once clicking on My Apps, you’ll see the following screen.
Click on the Garadget link there.
Put the same credentials you use to log into your Garadget account.
Click Next to go to the next screen. You’ll be walked through setup.
Click on Select Device to find your Garadget. If you have more than one, you’ll see them all listed on the following screen.
Once you’ve made it through everything, you’ll see Garadget listed in your SmartApps tab.
You’ll now see your Garadget listed in the device listing for your hub.
Click on that to see all your options.
As you can see, SmartThings exposes enough settings that you don’t necessarily need to go back to the official Garadget app. This is perfect for someone like me who only wants to deal with 1 app for everything. While using it, I also found it to be a bit more accurate as far as knowing when the door is up or down.
Step 4A – Website
If you don’t want to deal with apps on your phone, there’s also an awesome website that Denis has built to manage your garage door openers. You can find it at https://www.garadget.com/my/.
Clicking on the garage door icon allows you to open/close your door. The website functions exactly as the apps do. If you have multiple garage doors, they’ll all be listed along the bottom right of your screen.
Step 4B – Amazon Echo / Google Home
On the forums, one of the users is currently beta testing an Amazon Echo skill. This will allow you to control Garadget directly from your Echo or Echo Dot.
Since I’m going through SmartThings for everything, I already have control of the device. It’s not as clean as it can be, but it works and it works well. I simply say “Alexa, turn Left Garage On” to open the door. I then say “Alexa, turn Left Garage Off” to close the door. If the door is already open, on doesn’t do anything. If it’s already closed, off doesn’t do anything.
Essentially, Alexa treats it as a switch. I’ve also read that Google Home does the same thing.
What’s next?
The install was pretty easy for me. I will say that I’m not too thrilled with the Android app, but I love the website and SmartThings integration. I’ll probably access the device through those options before I go for the app.
I’m also a little concerned about the laser. I thought it was really cool at first, but as I was pulling into my garage I started wondering where the laser was pointed. Was it going to blind me as I opened the door? I’ve decided to point the laser above my garage door. When my door is closed and on the ground, my Garadget has full line of view of the reflective tape. This makes it think the door is down. When my garage door is up on its tracks, the beam is broken. This makes the Garadget think my door is up. Utilizing this setup, I don’t have to be concerned the laser getting into someone’s eye.
So if this thing goes as well as I’m expecting it to go, what’s next for me is to buy a 2nd one and get it installed on my other garage door. Having the ability to remotely operate these doors and check on them while I’m away is awesome. I also really enjoy and appreciate the open source nature of this device. When companies close-source their products, you are at their whim when it comes to updates. Have you ever wondered what would happen if Samsung decided to close up shop? Your SmartThings hub will no longer be as helpful to you. By opening up both the hardware and software to his device, Denis has ensured that his product can live on for a long time.
Read next: Best Smart Garage Door Opener Options |
Copyright by WDTN - All rights reserved FILE - This booking photo provided by the Hamilton County, Ohio Sheriff shows Deasia Watkins in Cincinnati. A Hamilton County judge on Tuesday, April 28, 2015, found Watkins incompetent for trial on an aggravated murder charge. Watkins, 20, is...
Copyright by WDTN - All rights reserved FILE - This booking photo provided by the Hamilton County, Ohio Sheriff shows Deasia Watkins in Cincinnati. A Hamilton County judge on Tuesday, April 28, 2015, found Watkins incompetent for trial on an aggravated murder charge. Watkins, 20, is...
CINCINATI, Ohio (WLWT) - A Cincinnati woman accused of decapitating her 3-month-old daughter pleaded guilty Thursday.
Twenty-one-year-old Deasia Watkins was sentenced to life in prison and will be eligible for parole after 15 years.
Watkins previously pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the March 2015 death of Jayniah Watkins.
WCPO-TV reported that if the court finds Watkins not guilty by reason of insanity, she'd be under the court's jurisdiction for life without parole.
Court records show Watkins was diagnosed with post-partum psychosis and had been prescribed anti-psychotic medicatio |
After 11 months of development, MATE 1.8 has been released, bringing various refinements and new features such as support for Metacity as window manager, side-by-side window tiling and more, as well as many bug fixes.
Initially, MATE 1.8 was supposed to be based on GTK3, but this was pushed back to MATE 1.10 "because there is still a good deal of work to be done to get it really stable". GTK3 applications still integrate nicely with MATE, just like in the previous 1.6 version, however MATE 1.8 continues to be based on GTK2.
For those not familiar with MATE, this is a GNOME2 fork which lets you use the old GNOME 2 desktop interface and applications but it also allows you to use new applications so for instance, you can use Nautilus 3 with it and so on. Also, MATE can be installed in parallel with GNOME 3, something that wasn't possible with the vanilla GNOME 2. "because there is still a good deal of work to be done to get it really stable". GTK3 applications still integrate nicely with MATE, just like in the previous 1.6 version, however MATE 1.8 continues to be based on GTK2.
What's new in MATE 1.8
Control Center: added support for Metacity as window manager;
Marco (window manager): added side-by-side tiling (windows snapping);
Caja (file manager):
added option to use IEC units instead of SI units;
added “Open parent location” option in context menu in search view;
Panel: Added support to run dialog and main menu opening with Metacity keybindings;
Screensaver: show date and time in lock dialog;
Applets:
added undo functionality to sticky note applet;
new “command” applet to show the output of a command;
rewritten “timer” applet in C;
mouse middle click on volume applet toggles mute state;
added MATE User Guide;
added mpaste tool for paste.mate-desktop.org;
Eye Of MATE (image viewer): added shuffle mode in slideshow;
more.
replaced mate-doc-utils with yelp-tools;
replaced libmatekeyring/mate-keyring with libsecret/gnome-keyring;
replaced libmatewnck with libwnck;
replaced mucharmap with gucharmap;
replaced mate-bluetooth with blueman.
Here are some MATE 1.8 screenshots (some of the screenshots are taken from mate-desktop.org ):
What to expect in MATE 1.10
Like I mentioned above, MATE 1.10 (the release date is not yet known) should switch to GTK3 but there are many other changes expected in MATE 1.10, such as: support for GStreamer 1.0, complete systemd-logind support, Wayland support, add support for AccountsService, as well as some minor but useful features:
atril: Support ePub format;
caja: Offer a preferences option to turn off generic icons in listview;
caja: Improve trash management of removable devices;
mate-panel: Allow rotation of mate-panel background;
mate-settings-daemon: Add the ability to disable volume/brightness osd.
Installing MATE 1.8
via MATE blog
Also, some core packages were replaced:For more information, see the MATE roadmap |
Bucky Brooks ranks all the college bowl teams based on the quality of their NFL prospects.
Ranking the bowl games Because college football apparently needs 35 bowl games, it's a lot easier to pick the best game than to pick the worst. Here's a ranking of each matchup from worst to best.
» Must-see bowls for scouts Because college football apparently needs 35 bowl games, it's a lot easier to pick the best game than to pick the worst. Here's a ranking of each matchup from worst to best. More ...
1. Alabama
Top prospects: AJ McCarron, QB; C.J. Mosley, LB; Amari Cooper, WR; T.J. Yeldon, RB; Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, S; Adrian Hubbard, DE.
Scout's take: Nick Saban has turned Alabama into an NFL farm team with 12 first-round selections in the past three seasons, including six drafted among the top 10. With several former five-star recruits dotting the roster, the Crimson Tide will continue to rate as the top pipeline to the pros.
2. Florida State
Top prospects: Jameis Winston, QB; Timmy Jernigan, DT; Lamarcus Joyner, S/CB; Cameron Erving, OT; Christian Jones, LB; Kelvin Benjamin, WR; Telvin Smith; Terrence Brooks, S; Tre' Jackson, OG.
Scout's take: The resurgence of the Seminoles is directly tied to the wealth of talent Jimbo Fisher has assembled over the past few seasons. Florida State boasts elite prospects at every position, which makes Tallahassee a must-stop on the scouting road map.
3. LSU
Top prospects: Zach Mettenberger, QB; Jeremy Hill, RB; Odell Beckham, Jr., WR; Jarvis Landry, WR; Anthony Johnson, DT; Ego Ferguson, DT.
Scout's take: The Tigers have routinely fed the NFL a host of defensive gems, but Les Miles has several offensive skill-position players set to make their mark in a few years. From the terrific receiving tandem of Beckham and Landry to an intriguing quarterback in Anthony Jennings, the Tigers have assembled a lineup that will provide a ton of talent on both sides of the ball.
4. Ohio State
Top prospects: Braxton Miller, QB; Ryan Shazier, LB; Carlos Hyde, RB; Bradley Roby, CB; Jack Mewhort, OT.
Scout's take: Urban Meyer inherited a talented Buckeyes' roster, but he deserves credit for developing his stars into premier NFL prospects. Roby and Shazier rank among the best at their respective positions, while Hyde and Miller could emerge as early-round candidates. Factor in some young players set to take on bigger roles down the road, and the Buckeyes will continue to rank among college football's top programs.
Oregon's uniforms SEE PHOTOS Check out how Oregon's uniforms have evolved through the years.
5. Oregon
Top prospects: Marcus Mariota, QB; De'Anthony Thomas, RB; Ifo Ekpre-Olomu, CB; Tony Washington, LB; Taylor Hart, DE.
Scout's take: Chip Kelly has moved on to the NFL, but he left behind a roster loaded with NFL talent. The Ducks have a future No. 1 overall pick in Mariota and potential difference maker in Thomas. With Ekpre-Olomu and Washington also held in high regard by NFL executives, it's no coincidence Oregon has been in the national championship race the past few seasons.
6. Clemson
Top prospects: Tajh Boyd, QB; Sammy Watkins, WR; Vic Beasley, DE; Corey Crawford, DE; Stephone Anthony, LB.
Scout's take: Boyd, Watkins and Beasley are viewed as early-round possibilities around the NFL, but Crawford and Anthony are also on the radar of scouts looking for difference makers. Throw in some of the young, athletic playmakers on the perimeter and the Tigers will certainly have a number of their players make their way to the NFL in the near future.
7. South Carolina
Top prospects: Jadeveon Clowney, DE; Mike Davis, RB; A.J. Cann, OG; Kelcy Quarles, DT; Shaq Roland, WR; Bruce Ellington, WR.
Scout's take: The front-runner for the top spot in the 2014 draft is Clowney, despite his so-so junior campaign. The 6-foot-6, 270-pound junior would join Melvin Ingram and Stephon Gilmore as recent first-round selections; he will set the stage for a mass exodus of Gamecocks to enter the NFL over the next few seasons.
8. Baylor
Top prospects: Cyril Richardson, OG; Bryce Petty, QB; Ahmad Dixon, S; Lache Seastrunk, RB; Tevin Reese, WR.
Scout's take: Robert Griffin III is the Bears' highest profile NFL standout, but the program has earned respect in pro circles with the emergence of Kendall Wright and Josh Gordon as potential stars. The program's burgeoning reputation will be enhanced with Richardson, Dixon and Seastrunk poised to set the league on fire when they arrive next season.
9. Stanford
Top prospects: Kevin Hogan, QB; Shayne Skov, LB; Trent Murphy, OLB; David Yankey, OG; Ed Reynolds, S; Ty Montgomery, WR
Scout's take: David Shaw has not only built the Cardinal program on toughness and physicality, he has upgraded the talent on the roster. Stanford has a lineup full of NFL-caliber players on both sides of the ball, which is why at least three Cardinal players have been selected in every draft since 2010.
10. Texas A&M
Top prospects: Johnny Manziel, QB; Jake Matthews, OT; Mike Evans, WR; Cedric Ogbuehi, OT
Scout's take: The Aggies could have three first-round picks in the 2014 draft, but the roster is loaded with potential difference makers at the skill positions. From Ricky Seals-Jones to De'Vante Harris, Texas A&M's young talent is impressive.
Follow Bucky Brooks on Twitter @BuckyBrooks. |
Anti-Islam blogs claim that photograph taken in Westminster is evidence for Muslims’ indifference to suffering
The photographer whose picture of a woman walking past a victim of the Westminster terrorist attack was claimed by anti-Islam blogs as evidence for the faith’s indifference to suffering has defended her and said the image was “misappropriated”.
The picture, showing a woman wearing a hijab and looking at her phone on Westminster Bridge as people gathered around an injured person, was held up by some on social media as evidence of her lack of concern. It was widely republished and commented on.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The image that was shared on social media showing the woman looking at her phone. Photograph: Jamie Lorriman
Jamie Lorriman, who took the photo and is based in London, told Australia’s ABC the series of images he took showed the woman’s distress. “The people who took on that picture are being rather selective,” he said. “In the other picture in the sequence she looks truly distraught ... personally I think she looks distressed in both pictures.
“It’s wrong it’s been misappropriated in that way.”
London attack: police investigate terrorist Khalid Masood as death toll rises – live Read more
Before Lorriman’s response, Tim Young, who calls himself a political comedian, tweeted from the US:
Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) pic.twitter.com/Xnq7ytJf93 This photo taken by UK parliament today after the London terrorist attack could end up being one of the most iconic of our time #westminster March 22, 2017
He also condemned a man for appearing to take a selfie at the scene.
tweet of the image by a Trump supporter with the comment, “Muslim woman pays no mind to the terror attack, casually walks by a dying man while checking phone” drew nearly 2,000 retweets.
He later tweeted it again alongside a photo of the Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood performing CPR on a victim with the caption “the main difference between Muslims and Christians”.
His tweets, and others making the same comparison, were met with a variety of responses, ranging from scathing to supportive. Defending the woman, some users shared images of the scene on Westminster Bridge that showed other passers-by appearing unconcerned.
Zane Asmiri (@ZaneTheSane) If anyone posts that pic of the Muslim woman walking by this scene in #London , reply with this pic showing a man doing the same. https://t.co/9sWFqSND8v March 22, 2017
Many people argued that she was likely to have been in shock and phoning family or friends.
Amy Ashenden (@AmyAshenden) Some disgusting hateful memes spreading re #Westminster of a young woman in hijab most likely in deep shock & calling family/friends. V sad March 22, 2017
Rajwinder (@Rajeh1980) #WeStandTogether People tweeting the photo of the lady in the hijab walking past share the same form of hate as the killer #Westminster March 23, 2017
Lorriman, who had been taking photographs of parliament at the time of the attack, told The Guardian he felt the pictures clearly showed the woman in distress.
“Looking back at the pictures now she looks visibly distraught in both pictures in my opinion,” he said. “She’s in the middle of an unfolding horrific scene... I think her expression to me says that she’s horrified by what she’s seen and she just needs to get out of the situation.
“We were all being told to clear the bridge at various stages, so it’s not unreasonable to think she’d been told to leave the bridge at some point just like everybody else.”
Lorriman said he felt the stronger reaction to the photograph had been from people coming to the woman’s defence.
“People going, ‘you weren’t there, you didn’t see it, you’ve no idea what that woman’s thinking, so how can you possibly assume that she’s just casually on her phone?’”
“It’s good to see that that seems to be the overwhelming response to the messages that are being put out there by certain people.”
He told the ABC it was “impossible to know” what was going through the woman’s mind. “The look on the woman’s face, she’s horrified, she’s in the middle of a traumatic situation. She probably just wanted to get off the bridge.
“I feel so sorry for the woman in the picture. If she’s seen this, she must feel awful.” |
Image copyright AFP Image caption Both sides accuse each other of breaching a ceasefire
Russia and Angola have opposed moves at the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on a South Sudan general and a rebel commander, diplomats say.
The US had proposed a travel ban and asset freeze on army chief Paul Malong and rebel general Johnson Olony for continuing to fuel conflict.
The Russian ambassador to the UN said sanctions might aggravate the situation, AP news agency reports.
Fighting has continued in South Sudan despite last month's peace deal.
Both sides signed the agreement to end the 20 months of conflict under intense regional and international pressure.
The fighting between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar has forced more than 2.2 million people from their homes in the world's youngest state, which broke away from Sudan in 2011.
At least seven ceasefires have been agreed and then shattered - and US diplomats want to maintain the pressure to ensure the most recent deal succeeds.
Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he felt sanctions were not the solution after his country's talks with the foreign ministers of South Sudan and Sudan.
"The United States, very often they just say: 'Sanctions, sanctions, sanctions', and in some cases it severely aggravates the situation," AP quotes him as saying.
Image copyright AFP Image caption More than 2.2 million people have been driven from their homes since December 2013
According to the Reuters news agency, Venezuela also requested that the sanctions proposal be put on hold.
A hold does not mean the proposal is dead, but it delays its consideration, the agency reports.
Angola wanted to give the parties more time to implement the peace deal, it said.
Fighting broke out in South Sudan in December 2013 after President Kiir accused former Vice-President Machar of plotting a coup.
Mr Machar denied the charges, but then mobilised a rebel force to fight the government.
On Tuesday, President Kiir reiterated his reservations about the deal in a televised national address as both sides accuse the other of breaching the ceasefire.
He again listed points such as the demilitarisation of the capital, Juba, and the appointment of a foreigner to monitor the agreement as "a violation of sovereignty".
However, he did express his commitment to the agreement. |
A King County Superior Court judge ruled on Monday that Initiative 27, which would prohibit funding and operation of safe injection sites, is invalid and cannot be on the ballot.
Judge Veronica Alicea Galvan cited Washington state law, which says local legislative bodies have the authority to determine budgets, and I-27 “impinges” on legislative authority of the county.
“I-27 in its entirety extends beyond the scope of the local initiative power,” Galvan wrote in the ruling.
Galvan also wrote that state law gives governing officials decision-making authority on public health measures, and I-27 interferes with the health board and County Council’s duties and obligations.
However, Galvan wrote that the court was not issuing an opinion on whether the injection site proposal should be implemented.
On the same day, Bellevue city council members voted unanimously to ban safe injection sites permanently after implementing a temporary ban in August.
Mayor John Stokes admitted it is unlikely a safe injection site will come to Bellevue, "but that's not good enough," he said.
Member Kevin Wallace even called for the state legislature to intervene "before the county does any more damage."
Other cities including Renton, Kent, Auburn and Federal Way have voted on similar bans.
The King County Board of Health approved a recommendation in January for two safe injection sites, which would allow people to consume drugs under medication supervision. Critics say the proposal would enable drug users.
Copyright 2017 KING |
These are crazy addicting once you start you can not stop eating them.
First you toast your nuts, caramelize them, then cover with milk chocolate and a layer of cocoa powder and confectioners sugar and that’s a hazelnut dragee. Delicious!
Recipe for Hazelnut Dragees
Ingredients:
190g hazelnuts, toasted
50g granulated sugar
20g unsalted butter
10g water
15g extra granulated sugar
225g milk chocolate
1/2 c.cocoa powder
1/2 c confectioners’ sugar
And let’s get cooking:
1.)Toast the nuts: Toast the hazelnuts in a 350F oven until lightly toasted. Keep warm in the oven. Combine the sugar, water, and corn syrup in a small saucepan. Cook the sugar syrup to 234F/115C.
2.)Add the toasted nuts and continue cooking until the sugar has crystallized then caramelized to a light golden color.
3.)Pour out onto a silpat or parchment. Sprinkle with granulated sugar and break apart into individual pieces. Cool completely.
4.)Put the nuts in a large bowl and place into the refrigerator.Add some milk chocolate and stir vigorously until the milk chocolate has set.
5.)Continue until the nuts have about 1/8″ coating of milk chocolate.Sprinkle with cocoa powder/confectioners’ sugar. Shake off the excess cocoa powder.
**You can do this almost with any kind of nut. For example when I use almonds I use dark chocolate and confectioners’ sugar**
You want more try watching this video on how I make Hazelnut Dragees |
Trust, but verify
Self-confident code does not ask questions about the data given to it. It enforces validity, asserts that its expectations are met, or ignores data which isn’t up to its standards. Previously we’ve looked at some methods for enforcement, using fetch() and Array(). Today I want to talk about the second tactic, assertions.
Assertions and contracts get comparatively little attention in the Ruby world. I’m not sure why that is. Some might say that pervasive unit-testing has rendered contract-checking redundant or less important than it is in less test-infected programming communities. Or even that TDD and assertions represent opposing philosophies of how to address correctness in software. I disagree; I think that the two techniques are complementary.
The pragmatic essence of code assertions is the idea of failing fast. Most violations of a contract will eventually result in an error; the question is, how far away from the original contract violation will the exception be raised? And will the expectation which wasn’t satisfied be clearly marked?
The advantages of assertions are more than theoretical. Studies of software projects have shown that projects which employ assertions tend to have fewer defects.
Assertions need not use an elaborate Design by Contract framework (although such libraries do exist for Ruby). They don’t even have to use the word “assert”. Here’s an idiom I like to use in methods which receive an “options” hash:
def initialize(options={}) @color = options.delete(:color) { "chartreuse" } @flavor = options.delete(:flavor) { "bacony" } @texture = options.delete(:texture) { "squamous"} raise "Unknown options #{options.keys.join(', ')}" if !options.empty? end 1 2 3 4 5 6 def initialize ( options = { } ) @color = options . delete ( : color ) { "chartreuse" } @flavor = options . delete ( : flavor ) { "bacony" } @texture = options . delete ( : texture ) { "squamous" } raise "Unknown options #{options.keys.join(', ')}" if ! options . empty ? end
The last line of the method guards against the not-uncommon scenario of a misspelled option key. It’s an assertion even though there’s no assert() in sight.
Ruby does not come with its own assert() method, but implementing one of your own is a trivial exercise:
def assert(condition, message = "Assertion failed") raise Exception, message unless condition end 1 2 3 def assert ( condition , message = "Assertion failed" ) raise Exception , message unless condition end
The only thing notable about this code is that we raise Exception explicitly, rather than some derivative of it such as RuntimeError . Assertion violations are by definition indicative of an error in the code, which means we should give the program little opportunity to rescue the exception and continue. By raising Exception, we ensure the error will bypass default rescue clauses.
begin assert("black" == "white", "Zebra attack!") rescue nil end # raises "Zebra attack!" despite the rescue 1 2 3 4 begin assert ( "black" == "white" , "Zebra attack!" ) rescue nil end # raises "Zebra attack!" despite the rescue
It’s possible to go overboard with assertions. Specifying every nitpicky detail about your inputs can lead to brittle, hard-to-test code and violates the spirit of dynamic typing. But used judiciously they can help to document expectations, keep yourself and your API consumers honest, and reduce time spent debugging errors.
Some guidelines for using assertions effectively:
Assert at module boundaries. Don’t pepper every internal method with assertions. Instead, use them as gatekeepers between modules. Especially use them where your code interacts with a third-party API to document and validate your beliefs about how that API works. This can greatly help your learning process as you get the hang of an unfamiliar library, as well as alerting you to changes introduced by new versions of the third-party code.
Only use assertions where coercion/enforcement is not an option. If it is possible to coerce a value into what you need, or to provide a sensible default for a missing value, prefer those approaches to making assertions.
Don’t assert exact types. Idiomatic Ruby doesn’t care about an object’s class; only that it supports the needed protocol (methods). Prefer value comparisons to respond_to?() checks, respond_to?() checks to kind_of?() , and kind_of?() to instance_of?() .
assert(s.instance_of?(String)) # bad assert(s.kind_of?(String)) # better assert(s.respond_to?(:downcase)) # better assert(s =~ /[[:alnum]]{6,20}/) # best 1 2 3 4 assert ( s . instance_of ? ( String ) ) # bad assert ( s . kind_of ? ( String ) ) # better assert ( s . respond_to ? ( : downcase ) ) # better assert ( s = ~ / [ [ : alnum ] ] { 6 , 20 } / ) # best
Finally, if you like the idea of using more assertions in your code, you might be interested in FailFast, a gem I wrote which provides a number convenience methods for concise assertion checking. |
A man was arrested Wednesday morning after openly masturbating in front of a Southeast Portland elementary school, police said.
Brandon Kwok Lee
Brandon Kwok Lee, 25, was arrested on suspicion of public indecency, Portland police said in a news release. Police said witnesses saw him masturbating in front of Parklane Elementary School and that when people confronted him, he turned toward them and kept fondling himself.
Officers responded to the school around 7 a.m. Children weren't around because classes start at 8:50 a.m. on Wednesdays.
Police said officers found an unloaded gun in Lee's car. They took the gun "as evidence pending further investigation," police said.
He was jailed and released on his own recognizance Wednesday, according to Multnomah County jail records. Police said he's set to be arraigned Thursday.
— Jim Ryan
[email protected]
503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 |
Syria polio (cVDPV2) outbreak rises to 27 cases
In a follow-up on the circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type-2 (cVDPV2) outbreak in Syria, UN health officials report four additional cases this week, bringing the total to 27.
Mayadeen district in Deir Ez-Zor governorate has seen 26 confirmed cases while 1 case has been confirmed from Tell Abyad district, Raqqa governorate.
Monovalent type-2 oral polio vaccine (mOPV2) reached Deir Ez-Zor on 12 July. Vaccines for Raqqa are scheduled for transport this week, by air to Qamishli, then by road to Tell Abyad and Tabqa (Thawra). Immunization rounds for both Deir Ez-Zor and Raqqa governorates are expected to commence 22 July.
Two immunization rounds are planned for July and August targeting children <5 years of age in Deir Ez-Zor and Raqqa governorates. The southern part of Shadadi district in Hasakah governorate is also included and will be covered by Deir Ez-Zor teams.
First round-Deir Ez-Zor
Vaccine: mOPV2, total target: 328,000 (196,000 resident children and 110,000 refugee and IDP children in Deir Ez-Zor governorate, and 22,000 children in Shadadi).
A total of 355 vaccination teams and 61 supervisors are on standby for this activity. Campaign strategy is house to house in the affected villages and fixed posts in other areas. There are 5 vaccine distribution centers with adequate cold chain in Boukamal, Hajien, Husienieh, Mayadeen, and Sor.
First round—Raqqa
Vaccine: shipping of mOPV2 from Damascus scheduled for this week, total target: 120,000 (109,500 resident children and 10,500 IDP children.
100 locally selected vaccination teams and 21 team supervisors will implement the campaign. There are 2 vaccine distribution centers with adequate cold chain in Tell Abyad hospital and Tabqa health center.
Related: |
As crowdfunding becomes more accepted, it’s moving into new areas. One with a lot of promise: commercial real estate, where deals under $10 million are not worth the efforts of big investors, says Dan Miller, co-founder of Fundrise. These large investors do not want to have a lot of “$1 million investments, they won’t be able to manage it.” That has left an opening for crowdfunding firms like his. In this Knowledge@Wharton interview, Miller explains how his firm has exploited it.
An edited of the conversation transcript follows:
Knowledge@Wharton: We’re joined today by Dan Miller, co-founder and president of Fundrise, a crowdsourcing company in the real estate sector. This is a fairly new idea. Tell us how it works and how you got involved?
Dan Miller: My brother and I launched Fundrise in 2010.… Initially, we built the platform to fund our own real estate transactions, so we were buying and developing properties in Washington, D.C., creating the platform to let anybody invest with us in a single deal for as little as $100. This is the first crowdfunded transaction, and now we fund other real estate companies — so we scaled from doing our own projects to now projects all over the country.
Knowledge@Wharton: When people hear that number, $100, they’re probably thinking a very small scale. But it’s not necessarily small scale. Tell us what size the projects are, and are they residential, commercial?
Miller: It’s mostly commercial projects in urban areas under $30 million — a little below institutional scale. We’re normally providing about $2 million to $5 million per deal. Three years ago, that was $300,000, last year it was … $600,000, $700,000. So it’s growing very quickly. Crowdfunding allows people to distribute investments online, take a lot of very small investors and pool those together into a larger check. So just because there’s small minimums doesn’t mean the sum doesn’t add up to a large amount.
Knowledge@Wharton: You have people, you put a project on your website and you say, “We want to buy and develop this building, would you like to invest?” And you can invest any amount you want? You get investors up to $1 million? What is the average?
Miller: About $10,000. We source deals, we underwrite deals. We have offices around the country. So that process is like traditional real estate sourcing and underwriting. You have people work the markets. They meet real estate developers. They discuss our platform and then we put the deals together. The innovative part is putting it on the site and allowing anybody to be part of the investment.
Knowledge@Wharton: And the investor, what is it that they get out of it? What kind of return? Why would they want to do that rather than some other kind of deal?
Miller: Well, the real value is that you have technology cutting out middlemen Twitter , that we’re direct between the investor and the real estate company, as opposed to having private equity funds or other groups in the middle. And so that way, you’ll be able to have double-digit returns for investors, which is still the cheaper cost of capital for real estate companies. Generally, we’re doing preferred equity investment, so junior to bank debt in the deal, but senior to equity in the deal. It’s a kind of high term or high fixed yield, relatively short term during the transition or development of the real estate asset.
Knowledge@Wharton: If someone didn’t know your company, how would they know that their money was secure?
Miller: They watch and see. That’s what we’ve seen on consumer behavior. People sign up for the site — they rarely invest in the first 120 days. They sign on regularly. They look at deals. They check them out. They see that we’re raising the funds, that they closed, and then they invest $5,000, and then they start getting distributions on that deal, and then they might invest $10,000 and $25,000.
“The real value is that you have technology cutting out middlemen, that we’re direct between investor and the real estate company, as opposed to having private equity funds or other groups in the middle.”
So we’ve really seen that type of consumer behavior happen, which I think is similar to what e-commerce was — the first time you bought something online, you weren’t sure if it was safe to put your credit card [number] in. You didn’t know when the box was going to arrive. And now it’s instantaneous — same-day delivery. I see similar consumer behavior patterns because you’re serving them a product they’ve never invested in before through a mechanism online that they haven’t [used] for that many different types of investments.
Knowledge@Wharton: Interestingly, you have a niche here when it comes to the size of projects. You’re not investing in or developing $200 million office towers. You’re investing in a certain size of project, which those with large amounts to invest tend to not be interested in so much. Explain how that dynamic works?
Miller: That’s where we begin. With institutional investors, they’ll rarely write a check of less than $10 million of equity, and that’s not because the deal doesn’t make sense if it’s smaller. It’s because they have a multibillion dollar fund. They can put it out in so many increments. If they have a lot of $1 million investments, they won’t be able to manage it. And so it creates this artificial barrier where the small enterprise, the mid-sized real estate operator, who’s established, who has a real track record, if they bring a deal that’s $15 million to $20 million of value, it’s very hard for them to get that financed. We plug [in] what technology tends to be efficient in the mid-market space for real estate operators, and provide them capital to deals that are often ignored by institutional investors.
Knowledge@Wharton: What kinds of projects have you completed so far?
Miller: We’ve done projects in 15 different markets. The highest profile was we raised $5 million for Three World Trade Center. We sold $5 million of the senior bond, the senior construction loan on that deal. We’ve done about half of our business between Washington, D.C. and New York, and just launched offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Most of our deals are between $5 million to $25 million in size. Again, we’re funding another real estate company. They come to us. We’re funding a portion of that deal. And most of them are urban areas in transition. So buying apartment buildings, upgrading the units, then selling or refinancing. There are lots of different types of projects, but always in some development or transition.
Knowledge@Wharton: In addition to finding investors through the use of technology … and finding people who wouldn’t have been able to invest this way before, you mentioned earlier cutting out the middleman — cutting costs quite a bit. Could you explain how that cost cutting works? How much of the costs do you cut out? I assume that’s a big part of the business model.
Miller: And that’s the real value that we’re able to deliver: cheaper capital to the real estate operator and better investments to the real estate investors. Ultimately, if that’s not the value proposition, then there is no business here. And our comparison is often to a private equity fund. We charge 0.5% per year to the investor for asset management and to service the investments. A private equity fund only charges a 2% a year management fee and 20% of the upside over a preferred return. We kind of use a mock sample deal, a three-year investment, 12% annual return. We charge 1.5% over those three years. A typical private equity fund will charge 8.4% over those three years. So there’s really a huge spread that then gets split between the real estate company and the investor.
Knowledge@Wharton: So we hear a lot about disruptive technologies. And you’re just talking about disrupting private equity in the real estate space. Do you think that that’s a scalable model, at least at the level of project that you’re talking about, which is under $30 million.
“The business model is called ‘marketplace lending….’ You have borrowers, you have investors. You connect the two. You also use your own capital to guarantee the funding so that … you make the two stick together.”
Miller: It’s going to change. What you’ve seen in other businesses, when you look at digital media, blogs, Twitter, Facebook — they started out relatively small and then became large and institutional. I think the most efficient place to start is the ignored portion of the market that institutions have difficulty serving because of their scale. But I think it really will shift. It’s about creating efficiency for private commercial real estate transactions.… It’s a huge market. But you have a deal, you make some phone calls, you try to raise some funding. There’s not an efficient way to put the deal together…. [Our] platform standardizes it. I think it’s going to bring efficiency to all parts of the market. It’s just going to take time to go to different sectors.
Knowledge@Wharton: So it’s a little bit like an Airbnb, or an Uber, where you’re the conduit that’s connecting the person with the need with the person who can fulfill that need.
Miller: Right.
Knowledge@Wharton: And that’s creating less overhead and that sort of thing. Is that the idea?
Miller: Right. The business model is called “marketplace lending” at this point. Lending clubs invest…. You have borrowers, you have investors. You connect the two. You also use your own capital to guarantee the funding so that you … make the two stick together. And by creating that standardization you have efficiency on both sides.
What we’ve seen is, with the decentralized model, it can operate much more efficiently at much cheaper cost. It doesn’t have all the centralized infrastructure that big [bank] branches have with big offices and corporate overhead. I think as you see crowdfunding get larger, and the sums of capital are bigger, I think you’re going to see it challenge the existing banking infrastructure, which is very centralized with a lot of overhead and additional costs.
Knowledge@Wharton: But it’s not just bank infrastructure. It’s not just bank buildings. It’s also the cost of going out and finding investors, which I guess is labor-intensive and involves a lot of meetings, and lunches and hand holding. You’re basically saying that is not necessarily anymore, at least in projects of this size.
Miller: Yes. We think of ourselves like an outsourced capital markets division for a lot of these firms. Mid-sized real estate operators don’t have a full-time person on the capital markets desk, and we’re arranging financing, we’re giving them a sense of what their quotes for different capital is going to be. We’re giving them a connection to the investors, but we’re handling the investor relations, the distributions and the tax documents. So it’s very much centralized in that role, letting the real estate developer focus on their job: sourcing deals, developing deals, while we manage the entire capital-raising infrastructure.
Knowledge@Wharton: You’re cutting out the middle man. What percentage of fees and costs are you cutting out?
Miller: Generally, somebody who syndicates equity will charge 3% to 5%, minimum, potentially higher for them to corral and raise the capital. Private equity funds will charge 2% to 20%. So you have, on the investor side at least, a 5% to 10% fee that the investor indirectly or directly pays. Private REITS [real estate investment trusts] are another market that’s similar for private real estate transactions. That’s a 15% up-front fee when you enter the investment. So you’re talking about pretty huge fees that we think technology is going to [help bring down].
Knowledge@Wharton: And your company’s fee would be what?
Miller: Just 0.5% per year. And then we charge — to borrow — 1.5% at closing. So, for the borrower, it’s cheaper capital, for the investors it’s more access to investments and it also opens up a new part of the market. Traditionally with a real estate syndication, you’re limiting it to people investing $100,000 or more, and so you’re talking about a huge unmet part of the market that hasn’t been able to invest in single real estate transactions [because of such high minimums].
Knowledge@Wharton: There’s something else about this also, about the kinds of projects that you do, where the people that invest often have some connection to it. Maybe it’s in their neighborhood, or maybe they know somebody that’s involved in that building somehow.
Miller: That’s where we began. We were developing urban projects leasing to chefs and restauranteurs that people knew locally, or converting old historic buildings that people were very excited about. We always had people come and talk to us about “what are you doing and why — what are these projects looking like and how are they coming out?”
“As you see crowdfunding get larger, and the sums of capital be bigger … you’re going to see it challenge the existing banking infrastructure, which is very centralized with a lot of overhead and additional costs.”
We thought, why don’t we go out to those investors, let them invest in it? They might own a home in the neighborhood. They’ve already understood the real estate. They have a lot of other data around it that makes them excited to invest [for reasons] that might not be purely financial, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. We just did our first project in Detroit. We’re going to raise capital for the old Tigers Stadium redevelopment. And in the same way, it’s an old baseball stadium, everyone in Detroit’s been to it, they want to be part of revitalizing that area and bringing it back. I think you’re seeing what we’re able to do is because you’re selling these investments to retail investors. They’re buying a product that has more texture as opposed to just a 16% ROI. There are other components that they’re able to evaluate.
Knowledge@Wharton: How big of a project is that and what percentage of that amount will you be able to help raise?
Miller: That project’s about $30 million. And it’s going to be about 20% equity. We’ll raise between one half million to $1 million. And we now fund with our own balance sheets, so we guarantee the funds at closing with our own cash and then put it up on the site. So for the real estate company, they’re not taking the risk of raising the money online. That’s been one of the big things that’s shifted, that we centralized the asset management, we centralize the investor reporting, and we make sure that the funds are there at the appropriate time.
Knowledge@Wharton: Is this the part of commercial real estate development that’s going to be changing big time in your estimation? What parts will remain the same?
Miller: Yes — deal sourcing, we’ve seen most of our deals come offline with our regional offices, people being in market, knowing the neighborhoods, meeting the developers in person. We’ve done very few deals where we haven’t met the developer or where they originated online.
We’re finding that putting the deals together is a very offline process. We’re finding underwriting due diligence. There’s certain information that needs to be collected, has to be ordered from these third-party groups, appraisals, environment surveys, and somebody has to centrally underwrite it. Two functions that we’re looking at there to use the people more efficiently is kind of crowdsourcing that aspect, where if a broker or somebody brings us a deal, they can upload it and share fees with us, or maybe start to have experts in certain markets who underwrite the deal until the crowd becomes a credible third party group. But right now, it’s us handling all those aspects. So I would say the sourcing, underwriting and closing is very old school. It’s the distributing, the investment, the marketing of it online — the investor reporting — that’s where we’ve had a fundamental shift. |
Bureau of Statistics finds one in five women have experienced sexual violence but overall rate of violence is dropping
Rate of sexual violence against women has risen dramatically since 2012, ABS says
The proportion of women suffering sexual violence in Australia has increased noticeably since 2012, despite the rate of violence declining overall.
The Bureau of Statistics has released new data on “personal safety” that focuses on partner violence, emotional abuse, sexual harassment, threats of physical assault and episodes of stalking in Australia.
The data is based on a survey of roughly 21,250 people aged 18 years and over, conducted between November 2016 to June 2017.
According to the data, the proportion of Australians who have experienced violence in the last 12 months has declined significantly over the last decade (with “violence” defined as any incident involving the occurrence, attempt or threat of either physical or sexual assault experienced by a person since the age of 15).
The proportion of Australians who experienced violence in the last 12 months has fallen from 8.3% in 2005 to just 5.4% in 2016, driven by a large drop in experiences of physical violence.
For men, the proportion who have experienced physical violence in the past 12 months has almost halved in the last decade, from 10% in 2005 to 5.4% in 2016, while for women that figure has fallen from 4.7% to 3.5%.
But the rate of sexual violence against women has increased noticeably in the last five years.
The ABS defines “sexual violence” as the occurrence, attempt or threat of sexual assault experienced by a person since the age of 15.
It defines “sexual assault” as an act of a sexual nature carried out against a person’s will through the use of physical force, intimidation or coercion, including any attempts to do so. It includes rape, attempted rape, aggravated sexual assault (assault with a weapon), indecent assault, penetration by objects, forced sexual activity that did not end in penetration and attempts to force a person into sexual activity. Incidents so defined would be an offence under state and territory criminal law.
The proportion of women who have experienced sexual violence in the last 12 months increased from 1.2% in 2012 to 1.8% in 2016.
It means one in five women (18% or 1.7 million) have now experienced sexual violence, with sexual assault experienced by 17% of women (1.5 million) and sexual threat experienced by 3.6% (339,900).
One in 20 men (4.7% or 428,800) have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15, with sexual assault experienced by 4.3% of men (384,000) and sexual threat experienced by 0.8% (73,500).
The survey also found women are far more like to be stalked.
One in six women (17% or 1.6 million) aged 18 or over and one in 15 men (6.5% or 587,000) have experienced an episode of stalking since the age of 15, with the vast majority of stalkers being men.
Roughly 94% of these women (1.5 million) were stalked by a male and approximately 10% (160,700) were stalked by a female (some women have been stalked by both men and women).
Of the women who experienced an episode of stalking by a male, the most common stalking behaviours experienced in the most recent episode were:
maintained unwanted contact by phone, postal mail, email, text messages or social media websites (50% or 747,500)
loitered or hung around outside their home (47% or 691,200)
followed or watched them in person (42% or 627,300).
Of the women who experienced an episode of stalking by a female (160,700), the most common stalking behaviour experienced in the most recent episode was:
maintained unwanted contact by phone, postal mail, email, text messages or social media websites (58% or 92,500).
Men who had experienced an episode of stalking (587,000) were as likely to have experienced stalking by a male stalker 54% (316,700) as by a female stalker 51% (300,100). |
'Leccy Tech Strange things can often be found off the beaten track at car exhibitions, and the dustier corners of the Pavillon Vert at this year's Geneva Motor Show proved no exception.
Courb's C-Zen: pour les enfants terrible
The C-Zen - 'C'est Zéro Emission Nocive', or 'No Harmful Emissions' – from French company Courb is a powered by a 12kW (16bhp) electric motor hooked up to a 96V lithium-ion battery pack weighing 100kg. Drive is sent to the back wheels through an automatic gearbox.
Being made of tubular aluminium, the whole thing only weighs 480kg, including the battery pack. So despite the tiny power output, the C-Zen will still apparently make it to a limited top speed of 95kph (59mph) and has a range of 160km (99 miles) at a steady 50kph (31mph).
Aimed mainly at French yoof – due to some strange loophole in French law, the C-Zen is classified as a “heavy quadracycle” and as such can be driven on the open road by a 16 year old – the C-Zen will soon be available for €10,500 (£9497/$13,342).
Look, ma mere, no licence!
In an effort to keep les enfants safe and well, in addition to being its own roll-cage, the C-Zen comes loaded with safety kit that includes a head-up display, night vision camera, biometric driver recognition, breathalyser starter inhibitor – so no joyriding if you have been on the bordeaux – and it will only move off if you have your seatbelt fastened.
Built in GPS allows the parents to keep tabs on what petit Pierre or Élise is up to, while a 'stop-by-SMS' function allow you to turn the thing off remotely if someone nicks it. Does this still work when the thing's going flat out on the freeway, we wonder? For the safety of other drivers, we hope not.
Send a text message to disable it
The C-Zen also comes with a full set of detachable glass panels to ward off those inclement Parisian winters when you're not zipping about the Côte d’Azur.
The are currently no plans for the C-Zen to cross La Manche. ® |
'Flaming Lips' Singer Shuts Down OKC Airport ... with a GRENADE
'Flaming Lips' Singer Wayne Coyne Shuts Down OKC Airport ... with a GRENADE
Breaking News
Sorry Sorry Sorry!! Everyone that was inconvenienced because of my grenade at OKC airport!!moby.to/gf33hv — Wayne Coyne (@waynecoyne) November 10, 2012
Question: What kind of dumbass packs a freaking grenade in his carry-on ... and accidentally tries to take it onto a plane? Answer:singer. And he shut down an Oklahoma City airport in the process.The grenade wasn't live -- thankfully -- but according to the police report, Coyne still accidentally packed it in his bag on November 10th and triggered an alarm at the TSA checkpoint at Will Rogers airport ... like a dumbass.Needless to say, TSA freaked ... and shut down the terminal while officers frantically tried to figure out how to handle the situation.And how's this for hilarious -- according to the police report, the TSA ran around like a chicken with its head cut off ... because it didn't have any "bomb guys" on duty. (Editor's note: isn't that the whole point of TSA?)According to reports, Coyne was flying to LAX to catch a preview of the new Flaming Lips musical "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" -- and told police he was given the dead grenade at a party as a joke.Shocker, the grenade reportedly resulted in several missed flights ... and lots of wasted money -- but once TSA determined it was harmless, they let Coyne go.Coyne tweeted following the incident to make up for the SNAFU, writing, "Sorry Sorry Sorry!! Everyone that was inconvenienced by my grenade at OKC airport."Thanks to thelostogle.com for the pic. |
Yorkville’s former deputy police chief pleaded not guilty today to charges that he stole addictive narcotic painkillers from the department’s drug collection program, Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis said.
Dave Delaney, 37, of Yorkville, was charged in May with illegal possession of a controlled substance and theft of government property.
The drug collection program was designed for residents to turn over to police expired and unused prescription drugs for safe and proper disposal. After Yorkville police officials became suspicious that some drugs that had been turned in were missing, they asked the Illinois State Police to do an investigation.
The investigation led to the discovery that some of the missing drugs were in Delaney’s possession, authorities said.
Yorkville police discontinued the drug collection program after announcing Delaney’s arrest.
Delaney was demoted from his administrative rank and is on unpaid leave of absence.
If convicted, Delaney, who has no previous criminal record and is out on $2,500 bond, faces up to three years in prison, Weis said Delaney’s next court appearance is set for Aug. 29.
[email protected] |
Danish-headquartered decentralized exchange (DEX) OpenLedger has received seed funding to the tune of Dkr11 million (c.$1.6m) from a group of Chinese, American and European investors after a recent tour of blockchain and cryptocurrency events in the U.S., China and South Korea designed partly to sound out and attract potential crypto investors.
The Pandrup-based exchange operator up in the north of Denmark plans to use these proceeds to “start immediate production” on four major projects, which will be split equally between the initiatives.
The names in the frame are eDEV.one (EDEV, JOYY), a blockchain-based freelancing platform, GetGame (REALITY), a platform for gaming, Apptrade (APPX), which creates portfolios of apps and has been dubbed the ‘Wall Street of Apps’, and OCASH, a new BitShares token representing an ‘all-in one crypto’ debit card solution.
The announced slug of seed capital comes following an Asian-U.S. Tour initiated by the exchange operator after it attended blockchain conferences in New York, Seoul and Shanghai.
Among other outcomes from this globetrotting led by the exchange’s CEO Ronny Boesing was the forging of a partnership with the first public blockchain in China, ViewFin, as well as an agreement to have OBITS, the official currency of OpenLedger, listed on two Chinese exchanges based in Shanghai - SZZC and Lhang.
Add to that Chinese ICOs and their tokens are to be added to the OpenLedger's DEX, which is designed for high-speed transactions. To date some twenty Initial Token Offerings (ITOs), Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and their tokens are supported by OpenLedger’s ecosystem.
Investing In The Projects
ITOs for the above mentioned projects will be announced over the coming months, with funds raised from these crowdfunds being invested into the development of each project individually, while simultaneously allowing investors to participate.
At the end this month, OpenLedger intends to announce three individual sharedrop snapshots for OBITS holders who hold tokens related to eDEV.one, Getgame and OCASH. A sharedrop snapshot is where a picture of all Blockchain balances is taken at one specific time. In essence by holding an amount at that time, you are joining the sharedrop with it.
GetGame is claiming to offer “many different facets for both game creators and investors.” Its platform is based on “game-related ideas” with a focus on Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and any blockchain-based creations that can demonstrate a chance of success.
Before being accepted by the GetGame platform, each game must be validated, and agree to share 10% of their future revenue with GetGame ApS, and all its ITO token (REALITY and JOYY) holders.
Like Kickstarter, it is explained that each game can create their own profile where investors can start investing in games that they believe in.
“Each game will be given their own unique token that investors will be receiving in proportion to the sum invested. These tokens can be traded within the platform,” said Boesing.
eDEV.one is currently preparing for its pre-ICO stage this August with the platform slated to launch during the first quarter of 2018. Its mission is to help clients hire freelancers that suit the skills and requirements that are needed, while freelancers browse available jobs. Freelancers and clients agree on the terms of engagement, including the amount that a certain job is worth.
The eDEV.one ‘Escrow Milestone Payment System’ serves as a neutral third-party between freelancers and clients and is created on the base of a Smart contract.
OCASH, a new BitShares token that is currently held by early backers, plans to present what is claiming is the “first all-in-one debit card” at the end of next month, with its own customized app and website for people to sign up for the debit card.
It brings a major cards’ payment system to the OpenLedger and BitShares networks, thereby allowing token holders to use the world's only Stablecoins (SmartCoins) - including bitUSD, bitEUR, bitGBP, and Rubles - plus other OpenLedger tokens such as OBITS, bitcoin (BTC), and ethereum (ETH), to enable users to purchase items anywhere that accepts debit cards.
OCASH will be offered to all future ITO investors, with tokens expected to be available from early September 2017. Holders of OCASH will receive a monthly dividend based on a distribution model using “50% of the future revenues generated” according to Boesing.
Apptrade
Powered by the digital token APPX, OpenLedger's Apptrade, a start-up based in Santa Monica, California, and domiciled with an address in Denmark, creates portfolios, or groups, of apps, where if one of those apps becomes the next Instagram or Angry Birds, then the value of the portfolio rises. Well, that’s the theory.
“Each app portfolio is designed to ensure that every app included within it is supporting all the others through regularly scheduled updates, highly visible cross promotion, and a high standard of quality,” Boesing said.
He added: “App creators can launch a portfolio of their own, or join an existing portfolio, raising awareness and revenue for their applications.”
It is understood that OCASH’s new website is expected to be launched shortly and will provide additional information about the project. |
The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay, by Jess Bravin, Yale University Press, 414 pages, $30.
I was considerably more pessimistic about the War on Terror's impact on American liberty before I read Jess Bravin's The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay. It's not that the author is an optimist—far from it. Bravin, The Wall Street Journal's Supreme Court reporter, describes with dismay how George W. Bush's administration attempted to create a shadow justice system for dealing with those the executive branch views as perpetrators and facilitators of terror. Wielding no partisan axe, Bravin also laments Barack Obama's failures to renounce many of the executive powers claimed, and often exercised, by Bush.
But Bravin also describes a civil war within the national security establishment. As Bush's most hardened hawks charged ahead in rounding up suspected terrorists, others within the government fought, both overtly and covertly, to protect constitutional procedures.
It is no secret that sectors of civil society—the civil liberties organizations, the organized bar, much of the news media—battled Bush and his henchmen (and now Obama and his henchmen) to prevent abuses of civil liberties by military tribunals. Bravin showed that they had an important set of allies in that fight. To the extent that liberty and due process have survived, they endure thanks in large measure to men and women on the inside, who rebelled against, and in subtle ways worked to undermine, what they deemed threats to the nation's fundamental institutions.
Those military commissions, established by presidential order, were assigned to try terror suspects on the basis of evidence and procedures that would never hold up in either a court martial or a federal court. The most frequent and dramatic problems arose when the president’s men determined to use the fruits of coercive interrogation techniques—torture, in the eyes of many within the military justice system—as evidence in a tribunal. Yet the commissions never did become kangaroo courts. You can give part of the credit for that to the unexpectedly assertive federal courts, and part to an occasionally assertive Congress. But Bravin shows, in fascinating and often dramatic detail, how members of the security agencies and the military pushed back against the changes, effectively thwarting the president's men. Officers on the ground turned out to have minds and principles of their own, and those principles frequently conformed more precisely to constitutional values than those of their superiors.
Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, for example, is an ROTC lawyer who repeatedly refused to prosecute terrorist suspects whom he concluded had been tortured by CIA agents. And Navy Lt. Commander Charles Swift, the lawyer appointed by the Pentagon to try to wrest a guilty plea from captive Salim Hamdan, ignored his marching orders and instead advised his client to fight rather than engage in a plea bargain. The ultimate result was the Supreme Court opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), which imposed legal constraints on the Bush administration’s program for trying alleged terrorists by military commission.
Thanks to Lt. Commander Swift and the Supreme Court, Hamdan, who had been Osama bin Laden's chauffeur, received a fair trial. The government charged him with terrorist conspiracy and with providing material support to terrorists, essentially attempting to hold Hamdan responsible for the actions of his employer. Because of the absence of evidence that Hamdan did much of anything other than drive the boss around, the prosecution tried to fill in the gaps by calling an expert witness, Evan Kohlmann. For the munificent sum of $25,000, Kohlmann lectured the military jury on the horrors of the Al Qaeda terror network. Both civilian and military prosecutors frequently call on Kohlmann, whose credentials are scant, to frighten jurors with his vivid narratives. (Disclosure: Kohlmann brought his dog-and-pony show to a trial in federal district court in which I served on the defense team.)
The military jury proved itself immune to these scare tactics and to the government's overwrought theories of culpability. It acquitted Hamdan on the conspiracy count. It convicted him on the charge of material assistance, but instead of the life sentence the prosecution hoped for it gave him five months and eight days after crediting timed-served awaiting trial. (This past October, after the cut-off date of Bravin's narrative, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington overturned even that conviction, holding that the international law of war did not deem "material support for terrorism" to be a war crime.)
Bravin gives a bit too much credit to the Supreme Court for standing up to the Bush administration's assault on the writ of habeas corpus. While the court dutifully held that Guantanamo prisoners were entitled to challenge their incarceration via the writ, its prescription for the content of habeas hearings was rather watered down. But this is a minor quibble in the face of a remarkable job by one of the news media's most persistent reporters on matters of law and national security. Bravin penetrated a system designed for railroading prisoners in near-total secrecy, and he demonstrated the persistence of many ordinary—and some extraordinary—Americans’ visceral devotion to such quaint notions as the presumption of innocence and the rule of law. |
TUCSON, Arizona (January 27, 2017) – The New York Red Bulls opened the 2017 preseason with a 2-0 win over the Portland Timbers on Friday night at the Kino Sports Complex in Tucson. The teams played three 30-minute sessions.
“For us, we have to accelerate our process here because we have a very important game in about 26 days,” said Red Bulls Head Coach Jesse Marsch. “The emphasis was to come down here and play MLS competition immediately. I think, overall, a really good performance from us. We were very organized. We’re missing a bunch of guys, but we’ve got a really good club here, and a bunch of good, young players that we really like and think have bright futures…. On a night like tonight I think you saw a lot of them have good nights and [they] fit into the way we play so, overall, thought it was pretty good.”
New York’s starting group largely consisted of MLS players from last season, but also featured second-round draft pick Ethan Kutler, NYRB II center back Aaron Long and trialist forward Robbie Findley.
New York got on the board with an own goal in the 3rd minute when a Kemar Lawrence cross deflected off of a Timbers player and into the net.
The rest of the first period passed uneventfully, with New York getting the better of the scoring chances.
The second stanza featured a lineup reminiscent of NYRB II’s USL Championship run from last season, with newly-signed Dan Metzger playing alongside Homegrown Players Brandon Allen, Tyler Adams and Derrick Etienne Jr. NYRB II’s Long also played the second period alongside Tim Schmoll, Florian Valot, Vincent Bezecourt, and David Najem.
Bezecourt converted a penalty in the second period to round out the scoring.
Sal Zizzo and Mike Grella both missed the match – Zizzo was ruled out due to illness, while Mike Grella picked up a knock in training.
New York is back in action on Tuesday, January 31 with a match against Real Salt Lake.
Scoring Summary
NY – (own goal) 4’
NY – Bezecourt (PK) 55’
New York Lineup: Ryan Meara (Rafael Diaz, 60’); Ethan Kutler (David Najem, 48’), Aurelien Collin (Jordan Scarlett, 30’, Tim Schmoll, 43’), Aaron Long (David Somma, 60’), Kemar Lawrence (Justin Bilyeu, 48’), Felipe (Tyler Adams, 30’, Zeiko Lewis, 70’), Sean Davis (Dan Metzger, 48’), Daniel Royer (Florian Valot, 30’), Alex Muyl (Vincent Bezecourt, 48’), Robbie Findley (Derrick Etienne, Jr. 30’, Arun Basuljevic, 70’), Gonzalo Veron (Brandon Allen, 48’) |
Between a block and a hard place?
While ethereum‘s latest hard fork went according to plan yesterday (so far without any drastic side effects), attacks on its blockchain quickly began anew.
In this case, ethereum executed a hard fork on Tuesday in a bid to stop denial of service (DoS) attacks that have been ongoing for about a month. Following weeks of transaction and block creation issues, the platform’s developers determined that the best way to fix the issue was to reprice certain network functions, and users and miners responded by quickly upgrading their software (a process known as a ‘hard fork’).
The stable transition to a new transaction record was what many in ethereum team arguably had expected, since the fork was a technical change (unlike the contentious move to rewrite the network’s ledger after the hack of The DAO).
However, the attacker appears to have switched gears, taking advantage of security holes that weren’t expected to be patched until later.
Developers are currently working on new fixes, according to Ethereum Foundation IT consultant Hudson Jameson, who told CoinDesk:
“We are working on client updates to help mitigate the issues somewhat until the second hard fork happens.”
Not yet thwarted
But this new wave of attacks has led to new problems, though they were (to an extent) forseen.
From the start, ethereum developers had planned two hard forks, as the attacker had been taking advantage of a variety of attack vectors. The first aimed to increase the price of certain opcodes that the attacker was successfully abusing to make it harder for him or her to slow down the network. The second hard fork was expected to remove empty accounts the attacker created to bloat the blockchain.
Still, with the second fork yet to be executed, short-term problems have emerged.
In response to the most recent attacks, the Ethereum Foundation issued a recommendation to miners, advising them to lower the gas limit (thus limiting how many transactions can be carried out) before a second fork. At the time of press, cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift has also paused the trading of ether (again).
Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin suggested he believes the two attacks can be thwarted with the second technical upgrade. “A successful hard fork round two would resolve this for the short and medium term as it would make the state possible to put in memory again,” he explained.
The problem, Jameson said, is that the blockchain state has grown too big, and the attacker is taking advantage of that.
“The [second] hard fork will shrink the size of the blockchain state and disallow a specific attack that is being utilized to activate the empty accounts over and over again,” he explained.
One less severe attack, which increases processing times to an estimated one to three seconds, takes advantage of another mispriced opcode.
Johnson and Buterin claimed that the plan is to raise the price in the second hard fork.
Conditions ahead
Even after the second hard fork, however, it’s unclear what will happen or whether it will prevent attackers from finding other vectors.
Around these attacks there have been wider conversations about how (and whether) ethereum can stop these sorts of attacks in the short term or long term.
Many argue that the attacks are an inevitable result of the way ethereum is designed. (More on-platform capabilities mean that ethereum has a larger attack surface than other blockchain networks).
The new attacks prompted BitGo engineer Jameson Lopp to wonder “how many hard forks it will take to plug all the holes”.
And some observers are questioning whether developers are taking enough care before making changes to the network.
“The real story behind this attack and the hardforks is that they are not really testing well,” said IBM blockchain leader of the Latin American division Martin Hagelstrom. “Even when the devs talk about these issues it does not sound like they are aware that their network has $1bn in it.”
But others remain optimistic about ethereum’s future, especially since there haven’t appeared to be any serious problems so far as a result of the fork.
Even if the attacker isn’t thwarted this time, to some this only furthers idea that hard forks are an option for combating them, and that each hurdle that ethereum jumps brings it closer to a working platform.
Marco Streng, CEO of hosted ethereum mining firm, Genesis Mining, indicated he remains impressed by the network’s response to the pressures it has faced in recent months.
Streng concluded:
“It sets a clear sign ethereum will go out of this stronger than before.”
Spinning top image via Shutterstock |
Michael Lumpkin, who joined the State Department after serving as DoD's special-ops leader, believes he’s got a model for future efforts to counter extremism online in real time.
As the Islamic State, ISIS or Daesh, continues to lose territory in Iraq and Syria, it’s their next act that most concerns Michael Lumpkin, the Obama administration’s new counter-propaganda czar.
“What I fear is that Daesh, once it’s constrained on the battlespace, it will rebrand itself as something else. And then we have to be ready for that,” Lumpkin, told Defense One in an interview at the State Department. “but not two years after.”
Lumpkin is referring to the State Department’s slow-to-launch campaign to fight ISIS’s robust online messaging campaign he was called in to turn into something, well better.
Lumpkin, director of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, or GEC, is a newcomer to State but no stranger to the Islamic State. Previously, as assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, or SOLIC, Lumpkin was the Defense Department’s policy lead on virtually everything involving special operations. The former Navy SEAL knows his way around Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq, having served as deputy commander of all special operations forces early in the Iraq War. After retiring, Lumpkin ran for California’s 52nd district against Republican Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, making his service a cornerstone of his campaign. He lost the election, joined the private sector, and went back into government and the Pentagon.
The GEC effectively replaces the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, or CSCC, which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood up as a means to combat al-Qaeda’s propaganda efforts.
Alberto Fernandez, vice-president of the Middle East Media Research Institute, and the coordinator CSCC from 2012 until 2015 says the change is mostly cosmetic. “It’s more of a matter of nuance…not that big. They’ve made it look big to bamboozle the media,” he said.
The mission of both the CSCC and the GEC is no less vital just because ISIS continues to lose on the battlefield. In fact, says Fernandez, as the group loses territory they could actually become more intent on staging dramatic attacks in the West, using media to do it.
“Before you had a functioning state. That shows your relevance. If you no-longer have the state, you have to do other things to show ‘Hey, we’re still around.’” Preferably, big things, he said. “In the West, that becomes even more of an imperative.”
But the GEC is much better funded than its predecessor. In fiscal 2015, the former program’s budget was $5.4 million. The new GEC budget will reach close to $16 million this year and the administration want $21.5 million next year.
The bigger budget represents, if nothing else, a growing sense of urgency. The State Department’s response to ISIS online launched an English language ad campaign called “Think Again, Turn Away.” To many observers, the campaign represented the equivalent of a “Just Say No” marketing effort—a lame and marmish admonishment to stay away from dangerous kids, stamped with the seal of approval of the United States government.
Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, described the campaign as an “embarrassment.” Lumpkin, too, has been frank about the campaign’s limitations. In testimony last October, he said the State Department had put just 20 people on the anti-ISIS propaganda mission, of which the Defense Department was providing five. “The fact that we have 25 percent of the CSCC detail to fill critical positions over there tells me that they don’t have the manpower to put against the mission like they would,” he said.
Someone, it seems, was listening. In March, President Barack Obama signed an executive order establishing the GEC, where Lumpkin is trying to build an entirely new model for countering extremist messaging: starting with prevention. Lumpkin wants the State Department to focus not on people who have already joined ISIS but people who may be vulnerable to recruitment. “Those on the battlefield, the coalition and DOD can take of it. What I’m focused on is people joining and trying to starve [ISIS] of recruits and to make sure that they understand the impacts on their families, the impacts on their livelihood and their life.”
Making that case requires more than just a Twitter or Facebook page but a detailed understanding of the target audience, people around the world who may be vulnerable to ISIS messaging. “Tip O’Neil said that all politics was local. All messaging is local, too. You have to look through the local lens,” Lumpkin said. “Daesh, in particular, they are not creating new audiences. They are going after highly vulnerable people who are susceptible to their messaging. What we have to do, whether it’s Daesh in Iraq and Syria, or someone desiring to be a foreign fighter, or it’s in Nigeria with Boko Haram is make sure that the message is tailored to the audience. That’s exactly what Daesh does. It tailors the message based on the audience.”
One of the key features that distinguishes ISIS from other extremist groups is the way its network of online followers and supporters around the world use social media in the way the platform was designed to work, to have two way conversations. Consider the case of “Alex” a 23-year old woman from rural Washington State, profiled by The New York Times in the summer of 2015, who was a target recruit for the Islamic State. Her story provides a chilling illustration of the group’s reach and the persistence of its messaging. For most in the West, ISIS is a menacing phantom, a headline, and news clip. For some like Alex, ISIS was a constant and familiar entity. She reports how one of the group’s supporters named Faisal, “became her nearly constant companion, spending hours each day with her on Twitter, Skype and email, painstakingly guiding her through the fundamentals of the faith.”
The State Department, of course, can’t do that with every potential vulnerable recruit. At the core of Lumpkin’s efforts is an understanding that the U.S. has limits in the way it tries to talk directly with people and populations. The strategy employs a network of partnerships with organizations and others beyond the State Department, including some organizations that can do the same sort of one-on-one connecting as ISIS.
“We have a wide range of partners. We have nation-states standing up messaging centers, working with the Global Engagement Center. We’re working with them to make sure that they have the technical skills to do effective messaging. We’re working with non-governmental organizations … who work with these different audiences of susceptible populations.”
The executive order establishing the GEC gives Lumpkin hiring authority to bring in people from outside of the government, quickly.
“I’m raiding, or poaching, industry for talent,” he says, by which he means social media companies in Silicon Valley. “We have a talented force already within the GEC, but we’re augmenting it with folks from the private sector who have got significant experience, whether it be with analytics that underpins what we’re doing, whether it’s with the reach, influencing vulnerable populations so that they don’t’ go down this path of radicalization and don’t become violent. So we’re able to leverage people that have significant marketing expertise or who have expertise in building partnership, we’re able to bring them in directly, which is a powerful, powerful tool.”
The GEC is emerging as a place where technologists in both the intelligence community and Facebook types, people who find themselves on opposite sides of several key issues, can find common ground and common mission.
But every tool comes at a cost. The U.S. intelligence community, for instance, is prohibited from undertaking any action to influence American domestic politics, policy, or media former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program director Rand Waltzman has said the law is “poorly conceived” and antiquated, and one of many reasons why the United States is “unable to effectively take advantage of social media.”
Poorly conceived or no, it’s one of many laws, like the 1974 Privacy Act, that shows up in daily discussions about what the center can and can’t do, sometimes to the chagrin and confusion of foreign partners. “It’s part of the conversations that we have with our partners around the globe so that they understand the challenges that we have.” After all, Facebook, Twitter, and even Telegram are global companies. Millions of people from around the world interact with one another. That’s the whole point. But that makes trying to influence some people but not others incredibly difficult. “We’ve been very transparent about the fact [that] this is hard,” says Lumpkin.
Other tools include polling and traditional marketing analysis, and some new ones, such as the Quantitative Crisis Response, or QCR, from DARPA, described in the agency’s budget as a big data analysis tool to find patterns to “understand the true nature of non-traditional threats, track the effectiveness of remedial measures and develop or optimize alternative strategies.”
How will Lumpkin know his efforts have been successful? The most important metric for success is watching recruitment numbers for ISIS continue to drop. “Again, we’re not a stand alone panacea that will solve it. This is in conjunction with every other aspect of national power, it’s affecting situations on the battlespace, it’s the building partner capacity, when we see the Daesh brand as an organization, if it’s in trouble… people clearly recognize that Daesh is not the thing they made themselves out to be.” |
Vancouver School Board trustees approved a controversial policy that allows students to use the washroom and the gender pronoun of their choice, after a rowdy meeting that saw parents who support the policy square off against those who oppose it.
The vote passed with seven votes. Only two trustees – Sophia Woo and Ken Denike – voted against it.
Roughly 100 residents packed the small room where the meeting was held. Many of them wore bright colours and carried rainbow flags. Others held signs bearing slogans such as "education not indoctrination" and "due process is needed from VSB."
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VSB chair Patti Bacchus threatened several times to have security remove disruptive audience members from the room.
Ms. Woo tabled a motion asking for a lengthier consultation process, but it was defeated seven votes to two.
Ms. Woo, along with fellow trustee Mr. Denike, were expelled from the Non-Partisan Association caucus on Friday after holding a press conference calling for the policy to be delayed.
Outside the meeting, families of transgendered youth expressed relief, saying the policy will provide support for students who are experiencing confusion about their gender identity.
Jane Duff, who has a transgender child, said the policy will help youth who are questioning their identity but may be afraid to voice their feelings.
"It's unbelievable that so much commotion has been created around this," said Ms. Duff.
"I'm relieved and I'm happy, not only for us but for the many voiceless kids at school who need to have that environment of support."
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Cormac O'Dwyer, a recent graduate of Lord Bing Secondary School, decided to come out as a boy when he was 13 years old.
"I didn't want to have to hide who I was and I wanted to continue at the school that I was in," Cormac said.
"The environment was really respectful of that and really accommodating of that but the teachers and staff just didn't know how to go about doing it. This policy writes down exactly what they needed to know seven years ago."
But Henry, a parent of who did not want to provide his last name, said the policy could allow young children to make decisions that they will later regret.
"For a five- or six-year-old, how do they judge whether they are a girl or a boy?" said Henry. "They cannot." |
What’s up with our weather? It has been the wettest December since records began for Scotland and Wales, the fourth-wettest for Northern Ireland and the second-wettest overall for the UK.
In the past four weeks there has been an almost complete lack of frost, with the UK average temperature during December hitting a record-breaking 8C, which according to the Met Office is about 4.1C above the long-term average – beating the previous record of 6.9C set in 1934.
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This 4.1C temperature anomaly was higher than for any calendar month since 1910, which means that temperatures in the last month of 2015 – now the officially the warmest year globally – were closer to what we usually expect for April or May.
But it was the extreme rainfall over Wales, Northern Ireland, North-west England and Scotland that really brought things home. Warm, humid air carried by strong south-westerly winds influenced by the Atlantic jet stream dumped huge volumes of rain over the hills of northern Britain.
It began in earnest with Desmond, a fierce Atlantic storm that dropped 13.44 inches of rain at Honister Pass in Cumbria between 6.30pm on 4 December and 6.30pm on 5 December – a new national record for rainfall accumulation in a 24-hour period.
Shape Created with Sketch. In Pictures: Floods hit the UK Show all 17 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. In Pictures: Floods hit the UK 1/17 Floods hit the UK Members of Cleveland Mountain Rescue and soldiers from 2 Battalion The Duke of Lancasters Regiment evacuating people from the Queens Hotel in York city centre as the River Ouse floods on December 27, 2015 2/17 Floods hit the UK Teams in Whalley evacuate villagers from their homes 3/17 Floods hit the UK A resident of Glenridding, which flooded for the third time this month, surveys the damage 4/17 Floods hit the UK The River Ouse, York, has burst its banks 5/17 Floods hit the UK A soldier from the 2nd Battalion, Duke of Lancaster’s regiment helps to sure up flood defences in Appleby, Cumbria, one of the areas worst affected by the floods 6/17 Floods hit the UK Experts believe the cost of clearing up the most recent flooding could exceed £50m (PA) 7/17 Floods hit the UK Hundreds of people have been evacuated from their homes in York 8/17 Floods hit the UK A police helicopter photographed the extent of the flooding in York on 27 December. 9/17 Floods hit the UK Flooding at Clifford's Tower in York on 27 December 10/17 Floods hit the UK Flooding along York's Inner Ring Road on 27 December 11/17 Floods hit the UK Water runs out of the Lowther pub in York on 27 December after the River Ouse bursts its banks in York city centre. 12/17 Floods hit the UK Flooded streets in Dumfries, Scotland on 30 December Getty 13/17 Floods hit the UK A car left submerged in floodwater in Newton Stewart, Scotland PA 14/17 Floods hit the UK Staff at the Worlds End bar in Dumfries Scotland desperately try to pump floodwater out of the building PA 15/17 Floods hit the UK A man stands in the doorway of his cottage in the flooded town of Straiton in Scotland PA 16/17 Floods hit the UK Flooding in the village of Aberfeldy, Perthshire, Scotland 17/17 Floods hit the UK Man wades through floodwater outside a fish and chip shop in Dumfries, Scotland PA 1/17 Floods hit the UK Members of Cleveland Mountain Rescue and soldiers from 2 Battalion The Duke of Lancasters Regiment evacuating people from the Queens Hotel in York city centre as the River Ouse floods on December 27, 2015 2/17 Floods hit the UK Teams in Whalley evacuate villagers from their homes 3/17 Floods hit the UK A resident of Glenridding, which flooded for the third time this month, surveys the damage 4/17 Floods hit the UK The River Ouse, York, has burst its banks 5/17 Floods hit the UK A soldier from the 2nd Battalion, Duke of Lancaster’s regiment helps to sure up flood defences in Appleby, Cumbria, one of the areas worst affected by the floods 6/17 Floods hit the UK Experts believe the cost of clearing up the most recent flooding could exceed £50m (PA) 7/17 Floods hit the UK Hundreds of people have been evacuated from their homes in York 8/17 Floods hit the UK A police helicopter photographed the extent of the flooding in York on 27 December. 9/17 Floods hit the UK Flooding at Clifford's Tower in York on 27 December 10/17 Floods hit the UK Flooding along York's Inner Ring Road on 27 December 11/17 Floods hit the UK Water runs out of the Lowther pub in York on 27 December after the River Ouse bursts its banks in York city centre. 12/17 Floods hit the UK Flooded streets in Dumfries, Scotland on 30 December Getty 13/17 Floods hit the UK A car left submerged in floodwater in Newton Stewart, Scotland PA 14/17 Floods hit the UK Staff at the Worlds End bar in Dumfries Scotland desperately try to pump floodwater out of the building PA 15/17 Floods hit the UK A man stands in the doorway of his cottage in the flooded town of Straiton in Scotland PA 16/17 Floods hit the UK Flooding in the village of Aberfeldy, Perthshire, Scotland 17/17 Floods hit the UK Man wades through floodwater outside a fish and chip shop in Dumfries, Scotland PA
Storms Eva and then Frank followed Desmond with further heavy rain falling on already saturated land. The widespread flooding directly affected thousands of homes and businesses, and many thousands more suffered lengthy power cuts due to flooded electricity sub-stations.
Scientists are normally cautious about attributing any single weather extreme to climate change and the rise in global average temperatures due to human emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning.
However, there is already clear evidence that what has happened over the past month or so in terms of temperature and rainfall has fallen outside the range of the natural variability of the notoriously fickle British weather, according to a growing number of climate experts.
“There is no doubt in my mind that climate change is partly responsible for the flooding across the North of England. This December is around 5C warmer than normal and physics tells us that 24-hour extreme rainfall increases by 7 per cent per degree,” said Piers Forster, professor of climate science at Leeds University.
Paul Williams, meteorologist at Reading University, explained: “Simple physics tells us that warmer air can hold more water vapour. The global warming that we have experienced so far has increased the atmosphere’s moisture storage capacity by about seven per cent. This is undisputed science and it clearly increases the potential for extreme rainfall and flooding.”
It is undeniably true that warmer air can hold more moisture, just as warmer oceans increase the moisture content of the atmosphere by about six per cent for every 1C warming. In simple terms, the more moisture there is in the atmosphere, the more additional energy it contains, said Dame Julia Sligo, the chief scientist at the Met Office.
“So from basic physical understanding of weather systems it is entirely plausible that climate change has exacerbated what has been a period of very wet and stormy weather arising from natural variability,” she said.
The Met Office predicted in 2014 that Britain is in line for more heavy rain as a result of the world getting warmer, and that this signal may already be showing up in long-term rainfall records.
“There is evidence that heavy rainfall events may have become more frequent over time: what in the 1960s and 1970s might have been a one-in-125-day event is now more likely a one-in-85-day event,” the Met Office said.
But predicting something is more likely is not the same as attributing direct cause and effect for any single storm – so can climate change have caused Desmond and the other storms last month?
Scientists are not able to categorically prove such cause and effect. However, a study already submitted to a peer-reviewed journal has suggested that climate change has increased the chances of Desmond-like storms by about 40 per cent – give or take a rather large margin of error.
The research, by scientists from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and the University of Oxford, found that three different ways of assessing the influence of climate change are all in “remarkable agreement” on its influence over Storm Desmond.
“We found that global warming increased the likelihood of the heavy precipitation associated with a storm like Desmond. An event like this is now roughly 40 per cent more likely due to climate change than it was in the past, with an uncertainty range of five to 80 per cent,” said Friederike Otto of Oxford, a co-author of the study.
There is of course another record being broken at present; El Niño in the Pacific Ocean is expected to surpass the one of 1997-98. Some scientists have suggested a possible link with the south-westerly “kink” in the jet stream over the Atlantic, which is sending warm, wet air to the UK. The Met Office said that a strong El Niño could be influencing our weather by increasing the probability of a “positive phase” of the North Atlantic Oscillation, which is associated with milder and wetter-than-average conditions over our part of Western Europe.
“However El Niño is just one of many drivers that affect the UK weather and there are many other factors which could override this signal,” said a Met Office spokesperson.
However, those who continue to deny the connection between extreme rainfall in the UK and climate change are looking increasingly undermined by the growing evidence, said Professor Myles Allen of Oxford University.
“The armchair meteorologists who continue to insist this is all just weather are starting to sound a little bit like Aunty Mabel expressing surprise at her remarkable luck in boardgames,” Professor Allen said.
“The weather has changed, and we have changed it: get used to it. Those with more open minds are asking, ‘Is this the new normal?’ Unfortunately, the answer is ‘No’ – ‘normal weather’, unchanged over generations apart from random fluctuations, is a thing of the past.” |
Sometimes when I post about the Sex Offender Registry, I get comments like, “Those scum don’t deserve to EVER live a normal life!”
This note below is to remind us that a study of 17,000 people on the registry by the The Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board found that about 5% were “clearly dangerous,” and 100 could be classified as sexual predators.
Not that the other thousands and thousands of registrants were all Romeo and Juliet cases, or teens who sexted. Just that most people who have been arrested for a sex crime don’t do it again. Some will. Most won’t. And the public registry has no effect either way.
So here is Shawna’s tale. She is on the Registry for life. Does this make any of us feel safer?
Dear Free-Range Kids: My name is Shawna and I am a required to register as a sex offender for having sex with a teen when I was a teen myself. Here is my story.
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When I was 12 my mom befriended a neighbor in the apartment complex we lived in at the time. She was around 21-22 at the time and I thought she was absolutely the coolest person I had ever met. I idolized her. She was more interested in being my friend than my mom’s friend, and was there for me through some very bad times while we were neighbors. We moved and lost contact. Then when I was 18 we reconnected.
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She was around 31 at this time and hung out with her friend’s 14 year old son. I had moved in with her and the 3 of us became close friends. She would always tell me how much he liked me and that him and I could have mixed-colored babies and they would be so pretty.Which got my mind thinking about him in a way that was more than friends.
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On my 19th birthday she said she wanted to have a party and the 3 of us got drunk and played truth or dare. She had us dance naked and kiss in front of her. Him and I had sex that night.
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The next morning she took him to his mom and she filed charges against me. I was sentenced to 6 months jail, lifetime probation and lifetime registry as a sex offender. I will be turning 34 in December and I’m still required to register and be on probation. I have to take polygraphs every 6 months and still attend sex offender group therapy. I have 3 children and this is starting to affect them.
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Two years ago they passed a law that says I cannot take my kids to the park anymore. This includes lakes, as they are State parks. Their friends can never stay over for a sleepover and where I can have their birthday parties are limited. My husband and I along with our 3 kids have had to move in with my mom on many different occasions, due to my restriction on where I can live and not being able to find a home.
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I have all the backing from my probation officer and therapist to try and get off probation and registry. However due to my felony it is hard to find any job where I would make the amount of money I need to go back to court.
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The system is failed and everyone is being painted with a broad brush. I want to become a voice for sex offenders and hopefully get connected with the right people and/organization to start changing some of these laws. Not everyone should be called a sex offender.
. |
Question: During cremation (or burial), undertakers often ask the surviving family to put their palms together while watching the deceased being pushed in (or buried). Is it better to Nianfo (chant Amitabha Buddha’s name – ‘Amituofo’)?
Answer: Yes, guiding the deceased’s consciousness (if still around) to Nianfo by setting the example is the best thing to do. If not, the survivors will usually entertain stray thoughts of grief, which if read by the deceased’s consciousness, might stir thoughts of attachment, that distract him or her from Nianfo for reaching Pure Land. Before chanting, these words can be said aloud near the body. (Only when it is not convenient should it be thought ‘aloud’, for the consciousness of the deceased to read one’s mind for the message.)
‘Dearest _____ [name of deceased], as you are now deceased, it is time to Nianfo with us sincerely now, so that you can reach Amituofo’s Pure Land – where there is no more suffering, where there is only bliss. Please do not be attached to your wealth and family, as you have to leave them behind. We assure you that all will be well. They too will Nianfo to reach Pure Land when it is time to meet you there. Please Nianfo with us as sincerely as you can because this is the only way to have the best rebirth before it is too late. This is the best thing you can do for yourself and your loved ones. Please do not be attached to your body. Please continue to Nianfo sincerely all the way, until you see Amituofo come to guide you to his Pure Land. Please follow only Amituofo and no one else. Let us Nianfo sincerely now. Amituofo, Amituofo, Amituofo…’
Question: As many services are very quiet, with no one chanting ‘Amituofo’, is it alright to chant aloud?
Answer: As above, it is the best thing to do, to lead all present to Nianfo in unison. Many services are quiet simply because the ones present did not have anyone who knew what best to do.
Question: If the funeral service is conducted in a Chinese dialect, can the Nianfo be in Chinese?
Answer: Yes, this is alright as most Chinese have heard of Amituofo’s name in Chinese in their lifetimes. However, if the deceased is used to the name in dialect, it is better to stick to the dialect version. |
Beats Music Raises Another $60 Million (at Least)…
Streaming services are in a constant war with each other, trying to get the most funding and the most listeners. Beats Music and Spotify have become particularly competitive with each other.
Beats Music acquired TopSpin and Spotify acquired The Echo Nest. Then news surfaced that Spotify secured a line of credit worth $200 million, probably for an upcoming IPO.
Beats Music has secured some new funding of their own, with figures between $60 million and $100 million being reported. The money came from co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, as well as Warner Music Group owner Access Industries.
The money will be used for product development, customer growth, and marketing.
The latest injection pushes the total funding pot past $120 million. Beats Music previously raised $60 million in March of last year from Access Industries and a few individual investors. |
We finally get to hear the full track that spawned the standout from DJ Khaled’s "Major Key" album.
This past summer, DJ Khaled dropped his highly anticipated Major Key album, and while it was teeming with heaters, there's no doubt that one of the major standouts was “Jermaine’s Interlude,” a three-minute treat from J. Cole, assisted by Atlanta natives and former DJBooth Top Prospects EarthGang.
As divulged to our own Yoh a few months back, the interlude was actually the product of a nine-minute posse cut from Atlanta collective Spillage Village, of which EarthGang is a member, along with J.I.D. (another Top Prospect), Hollywood JB and Jordxn Bryant.
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In that piece, EarthGang recounted the story of having the track all but completed during a visit from J. Cole, but Cole felt the beat so deeply that he had to jump on, and the record was eventually shortened to the three-minute incarnation that we’re all familiar with from Major Key.
EarthGang also revealed that they originally wanted Dreamville emcee Bas on the song and that the full version of the track may someday surface. Today (November 8) is that day, the result is “Can’t Call It,” and the wait was well worth it.
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While “Can’t Call It” clocks in at just over six minutes, a few minutes short of the nine we were teased with from EarthGang's interview, it’s a welcome expansion on “Jermaine’s Interlude.” Bas does indeed make a fantastic appearance, and the entire track is a showcase of everything that makes the Spillage Village collective a force to be reckoned with.
Listening to “Can’t Call It” and “Jermaine’s Interlude” back to back offers an amazing insight into the original vibe of the Hollywood JB-produced track, and the added three minutes do little to stifle the potency of the track—quite the contrary.
It’s a shame the full version wasn’t included on Major Key, but the fact that EarthGang got a placement on the Miami collaboration king’s seminal album in the first place was an unlikely treat for underground fans and a great look for Johnny Venus and Doctur Dot.
After hearing “Can’t Call It,” it’s easy to see how J. Cole was so captivated by the vibe of the track that he felt compelled to drop a verse—this track is incredible.
***
By Brent Bradley. Follow him on Twitter.
Photo Credit: EarthGang |
If anyone thought that Megyn Kelly’s move to NBC made her more progressive or was a sign of a change of heart on her politics, they need to get a load of this.
In an op-ed printed in Variety, Kelly was called out by TV critic, Sonia Saraiya. Although Kelly earned herself some points for taking on Trump in that infamous debate where Trump questioned whether she was menstruating or not and the fact that her complaints against Roger Ailes, former horn dog Fox News CEO, caused him to step down, some troubling facts still remain. Furthermore, after moving on from Fox News to NBC, things aren’t looking good for the former Fox News superstar.
Saraiya wrote:
‘By all measures, her “Sunday Night” effort been a disaster: Her interviews have been either ridiculed or loathed by the rest of the press, and the ratings reflect a distinct lack of interest.’
Saraiya commented that newsmagazine shows never do well, which is the format of Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly. Kelly is slated to take over a 9 a.m. morning show soon.
Saraiya also explained the psychology behind morning television personalities.
‘Daytime television is a notoriously difficult nut to crack — dozens of shows, built around former news anchors and other personalities, have failed to succeed, even when they are helmed by otherwise well-liked personalities.’
She added Kelly has never been a likable person on camera. Furthermore, she added Kelly faces tough 9 a.m. competition from Kelly Ripa, who she described as a “brash, bubbly personality.”
‘Ripa, a master of the form, was already, in all likelihood, going to eat Kelly for lunch (or is it breakfast?). Now that Kelly’s reputation on the rocks — and that Ripa has a new telegenic cohost in Ryan Seacrest — it’s hard to imagine Kelly making a dent in Ripa’s audience.’
Ouch.
Saraiya also delved into Kelly’s troubling past that is littered with plenty of racist statements regarding black people. She pointed to a Slate article that described Kelly as a racist demagogue. That piece referred back to this face-palm worthy comment Kelly made in response to Slate’s “Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore” piece.
‘Jesus was a white man, too … he’s a historical figure and that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa.’
Her racist statements are, and should be, a major problem for her viewing audience. Nielsen found that in the 2015-16 season, 23.1 percent of the total TV audience tuning in were African-American women making them the “largest component of the daytime viewership base.”
Saraiya went on to bring up the newest focus on Kelly, her Alex Jones interview.
‘The entire rigmarole with Alex Jones was a series of unforced errors: Amateur decision-making, lightweight investigation, and vaguely defined motives … after all of the hullabaloo defending her interview of Jones, she couldn’t manage to get the segment to coalesce around a news peg. So what is Megyn Kelly good at?’
She delivered a harsh criticism of Kelly that showed how disappointing her career at NBC is turning out to be.
‘On NBC, Kelly is didactic without being trustworthy; patronizing without being impressive. Her voiceover suggests doom without really proving it; there’s a scare-mongering side to her reportage. And, most importantly: She’s alienated everyone. At this point, Kelly’s most virulent critique comes from the right — the audience that she’s supposed to be helping deliver to NBC. The network is presumably hoping that centrist or center-right women will eventually tune in.’
Kelly’s NBC career may, of course, take off at some point. It’s possible she could somehow become more bubbly. However, the op-ed proves one thing: Kelly should keep in touch with her Fox News’ colleagues because she may need a soft place to land in the future.
Featured image by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Hollywood Reporter. |
Firefox for Maemo 1.1 RC 1 is ready to install. For this release, the focus was some UI features we didn’t have time to put in the initial release. We also used your feedback from previous releases and nightly builds to help improve the browsing experience.
Some of the bigger features include:
As always, we’ve provided unbranded Fennec desktop builds on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can use these if you don’t have a Maemo device or to aid in add-on development. This is the final call for Add-on developers to update their add-ons from Firefox 1.0.x for Maemo.
Note to Ovi Store Customers: If you installed Firefox 1.0.x from the Ovi Store, you will not be able to upgrade to Firefox 1.1 RC 1 (either from the N900 Application Manager or by downloading the software from Mozilla). We are working to solve this for future releases so that anyone can participate in our Beta programs. Don’t worry, though, if you got Firefox 1.0.x from either the Ovi store or directly from Mozilla, you will be updated to Firefox 1.1 (final) when it is released. |
While checking out some news sites this morning, I found a story that will make you very happy you have the ability to drive to the Wally World, buy all the rods, reels, stink bait, and plastic worms your heart desires, then jump on your boat and use them. These things are not easy to come by in Cuba, and the government heavily regulates who can operate and own a boat due to illegal immigration. But one thing you can buy at three for a penny in Cuba is condoms. Turns out the Cubans have found many uses for them that go far beyond the bedroom.
According to the story on GlobalPost.com, condoms are frequent substitutes for balloons at childrens' parties. At baseball games, people blow them up and bat them around like beach balls. If you see a bunch of broken condoms on the streets, don't be alarmed. It was probably a water balloon fight.
But condoms really come in handy when you can't find or afford a ten-foot rod and the fish are cruising past the outer bar. Anglers tie inflated condoms together and use them as kites to carry their baited handlines offshore. From the story:
"We use them a lot this time of year, during the snapper run," [angler Michel] Perez explained, letting out his line from a homemade wooden spool. With a good breeze, the floating condoms can carry the hook hundreds of meters out into deeper waters, far beyond casting distance, he said. Not that Perez has a fishing rod anyway. "When the fish takes the hook, the line pulls free," he explained, "and you start reeling in."
This only stands to prove that no matter where you are or what tackle you have at your disposal, the best fishermen out there are those that can improvise. If you need further proof that Cuban anglers are particularly innovative, I highly recommend reading Bill Heavey's story on largemouth fishing in Cuba. - JC |
Guitarist Richard Z. Kruspe has spent the past two decades as part of the metal machine that is Rammstein. In 2007 he briefly stepped outside the comfort zone to grab the microphone and release his first solo effort under the name Emigrate. Seven years later, he’s back with album number two, Silent So Long.
It only takes a moment for his enthusiasm for this record to come through. “It’s the first time in my life where I’ve done a record where I’ve felt I don’t want to change a damn thing. It’s a great feeling”, he declares straight away. It’s clearly a step forward for Kruspe, taking his songwriting in a direction he is more comfortable with. “It’s more like a grown up record compared to the first album,” he says. “After the first record I was quite surprised how rocky it sounded, I always felt I was much darker and I kind of didn’t deliver that on the first record”. He’s also enjoying the chance to be the one to call the shots. “I just love to have the last say, that’s so different to Rammstein where everything is so democratic,” he laughs. “And I realised that being in the position with Emigrate where I know at the end of the day I can say yes or no, makes me a better team player. Makes me choose more for the music rather than the Rammstein world where you sometimes choose because of the ego.”
A critical element of the Emigrate project is Kruspe’s decision to add vocal duties to his guitar, songwriting and production roles. With Silent So Long he finally fells comfortable with his singing. “That’s a big difference too,” he states. “With the first record I was really trying to be a singer, which is different to being a singer. In the beginning it was very frustrating for me, I was so advanced in my writing but my voice was still a baby so I couldn’t really deliver what I was expecting. On the new record I was accepting the fact that I was going to be the singer and that made it so much easier.”
As well as giving him a chance to sing, Emigrate is also an opportunity for Kruspe to work with new people, and in new ways. “I felt something was missing in my world, and Emigrate got created out of that longing or frustration,” he says. “I always felt that Emigrate should be an open door, for people to come in and go out as they like to collaborate, which is totally the opposite of the Rammstein world which is really controlled and closed in a way.” For the new album there is no better example of this collaborative approach than the decision to bring in a host of guest singers. Marilyn Manson, Frank Delle, Jonathan Davis, Peaches and Lemmy all contribute. “In the beginning I was a little bit nervous about it, as a producer I had to step away from the project and make a record that has these people, but still sounds like an Emigrate record. That was not an easy task, but somehow we managed it. For me it was important to really bring the artists into the Emigrate world.”
For Kruspe, the track ‘Rock City’ with Lemmy was a perfect example of this approach paying off. The track started as an acoustic demo track that changed direction totally once the band started jamming on it in the rehearsal studios. As the track took shape as a fast paced rock number the decision was made to approach Lemmy about a possible lead vocal. “There are certain moments I’ll never forget,” says Kruspe. “I had heard he was really sick and I thought forget it. Then a couple of days later I got an email with no explanation, no comment, just his voice on the track and I was just like a little child jumping up and down on the bed, feeling like the best thing ever has just come together. You can hear if you really listen closely his voice is a little weak and shaky and that really fits the song. I wrote this huge email thanking him and saying what an honour it was to work with him and he just came back to me with “Alright”, that was it!” he laughs.
Along with the cast of guests, the new album also continues the long time working partnership with Arnaud Giroux, a collaboration that Kruspe is very happy to see continue. “He’s the one that keeps me going,” he says. “Arnaud’s the one that actually never gave up on me. There were so many times when I was frustrated, and I wanted to bring in a different singer and he was ‘nope, you’re the one, you have to sing it’. My mentor when it came down to making me as a singer. And he’s French, so he has a very interesting way sometimes with melodies!”
The eleven tracks that make up Silent So Long were selected from a pool of 21 completed and mixed tracks. Kruspe sees all of the tracks as being worthy of release, and in fact is already planning to use some or all of the remaining tracks as the basis for a third album. In deciding which tracks to select for this release he was strongly influenced by his background and love of music on vinyl. “I come from the world of vinyl, so for all my childhood I was listening to new records four, five, six times over,“ he explains. “I needed to go through it until I got it, not jump from track to track. So for me, the idea of selecting for a record is still in the idea of vinyl and a track list that works together. I know that now people just listen to one song, but that’s not how I work. People should have to listen to the whole record, to understand it. That’s how I chose the tracks. I wanted to capture a mood.”
The pacing and diversity across the tracks is one of the strengths of Silent So Long. From the punching rock of the opening track ‘Eat You Alive’ to the brooding title track, Kruspe covers plenty of ground. At the mid point of the album is the song ‘Rainbow’, written about his daughter. “This song was the hardest to get the lyrics done,” he says. “I really had problems with it until the last minute. I could not get the lyrics right, there was just something missing. Then one day, and this is such a cliché, but my daughter was there in the studio and I did it first take and it worked!”
For Kruspe, Emigrate is an outlet for his own passion, made possible because he is already a part of a successful band. He’s more than aware of the current industry difficulties, summed up recently by Gene Simmons’ controversial ‘Rock is dead’ comment. But he has his own views on where things currently stand and a still-positive outlook on where things might go from here. “I don’t think Rock will ever be dead because it’s a life statement for a lot of people, “ he declares. “But what I do realise is that the quality of records is very poor. I understand why, there’s no time, there’s no money, everything becomes a promotion tool. I said it a few years ago, people only f*ck themselves by stealing music. But I think also there is another movement coming, streaming will maybe save something. People are spending money on music at the moment, but it just has to go in the right direction. We need to go through that generation that wants to own music to the next generation that says ‘I don’t care, I just want to have it’. Then we’ll have another way of paying the artist, for people to get money again to invest in music. I wouldn’t say Rock’s dead, it’s just going through a really poor quality stage!” he jokes.
For the time being, Kruspe is content to keep Emigrate as a studio project despite constant interest and offers being placed on the table. Live work with Rammstein meets his needs to perform. “Always in my life I do what I think is right for me,” he explains. “Everyone is playing live right now, everyone is out there. We don’t need another mediocre band that plays half assed. There was something missing that I have now created and I’m quite balanced and happy in my life. And honestly, there’s the pressure in Rammstein to be one of the biggest live shows. How do I try to come up with a band that can compete with that?”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnvCQ9si6S8?rel=0&w=560&h=315] |
JUNEAU -- Winning a game of budget-cutting one-upmanship, the Alaska Senate went last and Friday evening passed a state budget calling for deeper cuts than did the House of Representatives and than had been originally proposed by Gov. Bill Walker.
The Senate cut $100 million more from the operating budget than did the House, much of which came in a surprise $47 million cut to the per-student school funding called the "base student allocation" that was made Thursday by the Senate Finance Committee.
Including the cuts by the House and governor, next year's total operating budget has now been cut by $472 million, Senate leaders said.
The cuts were necessary, said Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks, the Senate's top budget writer.
"We've got a big problem," said Kelly, co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee.
Falling oil prices mean cuts and more cuts. "That's what this budget is all about," he said.
But the cuts had opponents, as Democrats spent hours trying unsuccessfully to persuade the Republican-led majority to shift cuts away from education and public services.
Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, criticized not just the cuts but the manner in which they were made on Thursday.
"I don't think anybody had any idea this was going to be sprung on people," he said.
The Senate introduced the proposed cuts in Kelly's Finance Committee, adopted them, and the full Senate was voting on them in under 24 hours and without public hearings, Wielechowski said.
Kelly's cuts to school districts came on top of Walker's rejection of an earlier negotiated budget increase, as well as cuts to the Department of Education and Early Development that were among the biggest facing any state department .
When Sen Mike Dunleavy, R-Wasilla, earlier proposed the departmental cuts included in the budget, he said they'd managed to make cuts without reducing the per-student funding for districts.
On the Senate floor Friday, Kelly said everyone in the Senate supported education and that the impact of the cuts was being overstated.
"I know it's going to have an impact on school districts, but we're not talking about ending funding," he said.
As word of the cuts spread among school districts, their representatives began speaking out against them and reaching out to their legislators.
"I'm very concerned that the Legislature is proposing these further reductions to education funding, particularly this late in our process of budgeting and staffing for next year," said Sean Dusek, Kenai Peninsula Borough School District superintendent.
The Peninsula's Rep. Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, said the Senate's cuts were probably too deep, and the House of Representatives might work to restore at least some of them as the budget process continues.
"We're not crazy about the education cuts -- some of the others we might be able to live with, but education is important to our caucus," he said.
Chenault pointed out that those cuts came in addition to Walker's earlier cuts.
"While we might not be able to go after the money the governor cut out, we're certainly concerned about taking more money out of the BSA," said Chenault, who is also House speaker.
Senate President Kevin Meyer, R-Anchorage, said that when word of the Senate Finance Committee's cuts yesterday got out, the public comments shifted from advocating for budget cuts to complaining about budget cuts.
"All the emails I'm getting today are certainly 'restore the education cuts,'" said Meyer, who nonetheless voted for the cuts.
Also controversial were cuts to public employee cost-of-living raises, but Sen. Anna MacKinnon, R-Anchorage, said cutting raises was better than layoffs.
"First and foremost I want to say thank you to the public servants who serve the people of Alaska," she said, but the raises were negotiated "subject to funding being available" and that it was better for an employee to take a pay cut than lose their job.
Democrats proposed several cuts of their own, including the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission, the Workers Compensation Appeals Commission, and to salaries of employees who make more than $200,000 per year at the Alaska Housing Finance Corp., but all were rejected. A single Democratic amendment, calling for a report on public employees who earn more than the governor, was approved.
Sen. Johnny Ellis, D-Anchorage, tried to eliminate budget language seeking to stop Medicaid expansion in Alaska by blocking acceptance of federal funds for expansion.
"When did we start rejecting federal funds?" he asked, reminding his colleagues that when former Gov. Sarah Palin rejected federal stimulus money, the Legislature called itself into special session to override her veto.
"People were shocked. We don't reject federal funds -- they're a third of our economy," he said.
Sen. Dennis Egan, D-Juneau, urged money be put back into the budget for the Alaska Marine Highway System, saying cuts the Legislature has proposed would mean thousands of already sold ferry tickets would have to be refunded, costing the state money and disrupting travel schedules.
That's not what he said he'd have done in his 40-plus years in private business before becoming a legislator..
"I know we have to cut the budget, but you don't spit on your customers," he said.
His proposed budget amendment failed but won support from Republican Sens. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, and Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak.
The differences between the House and Senate versions of the operating budget mean a conference committee will have to work out the differences, a process that's expected to start late next week. |
NFL teams set their 53-man rosters by Saturday's deadline and now look to fill their practice squads. Here are the latest additions to practice squads, which, for the first time, can have a maximum of 10 players.
Arizona Cardinals
LB Jonathan Brown, WR Brittan Golden, TE Andre Hardy, CB Jimmy Legree, T Kelvin Palmer, OL Anthony Steen, DT Christian Tupou, WR Kevin Cone, RB Dominique Williams
Atlanta Falcons
CB Ricardo Allen, S Sean Baker, G Harland Gunn, T Terren Jones, WR Freddie Martino, TE Kyle Miller, WR Bernard Reedy, DT Travian Robertson, LB Jacques Smith, RB Jerome Smith
Baltimore Ravens
CB Tramain Jacobs, OL Ryan Jensen, T Marcel Jones, DT Jamie Meder, CB Deji Olatoye, DT A.J. Pataiali'i, OLB John Simon, TE Phillip Supernaw, RB Fitzgerald Toussaint, QB Keith Wenning
Buffalo Bills
DB Deon Broomfield, LB Jimmy Gaines, WR Caleb Holley, DE Ikponmwosa Igbinosun, DE Bryan Johnson, DB Kenny Ladler, G D.J. Morrell, RB Lonnie Pryor, QB Jeff Tuel, TE D.J. Tialavea
Carolina Panthers
CB Carrington Byndom, LB Adarius Glanton, WR Tavarres King, S Robert Lester, WR Marcus Lucas, T Andrew McDonald, RB Darrin Reaves, DT Micanor Regis, DT Casey Walker, WR Stephen Hill
Chicago Bears
WR Josh Bellamy, C Taylor Boggs, DT Brandon Dunn, CB Isaiah Frey, G Ryan Groy, LB DeDe Lattimore, CB Al Louis-Jean, CB Terrance Mitchell, DT Roy Philon, WR Rashad Ross
Cincinnati Bengals
T Dan France, TE Kevin Greene, DT David King, WR Colin Lockett, CB Onterio McCalebb, DE Sam Montgomery, C Trevor Robinson, DT Devon Still, HB James Wilder Jr.
Cleveland Browns
OL Karim Barton, OL James Brown, WR Charles Johnson, DL Jacobbi McDaniel, TE Emmanuel Ogbuehi, LB Keith Pough, LB Justin Staples, QB Connor Shaw
Dallas Cowboys
WR Tim Benford, DE Kenneth Boatright, C Ronald Patrick, S Micah Pellerin, LB Keith Smith, LB Will Smith, RB Ryan Williams, FB Nikita Whitlock, T John Wetzel, DB Jemea Thomas
Denver Broncos
LB Shaquil Barrett, RB Kapri Bibbs, S John Boyett, QB Zac Dysert, WR Bennie Fowler, G Vinston Painter, WR Nathan Palmer, C Matt Paradis, TE Gerell Robinson, DE Zach Thompson
Detroit Lions
G Rodney Austin, TE Michael Egnew, FB Emil Igwenagu, S Nate Ness, WR Andrew Peacock, DT Xavier Proctor, CB Mohammed Seisay, LB Julian Stanford, T Michael Williams, RB George Winn
Green Bay Packers
S Chris Banjo, WR Kevin Dorsey, C Garth Gerhart, RB Michael Hill, LB Adrian Hubbard, TE Justin Perillo, DE Luther Robinson, CB Jumal Rolle, T Jeremy Vujnovich, WR Myles White
Houston Texans
DE Keith Browner, LB Max Bullough, TE Anthony Denham, T Matt Feiler, C James Ferentz, G Alex Kupper, WR Travis Labhart, WR EZ Nwachukwu, FB Toben Opurum, CB Marcus Williams
Indianapolis Colts
T Tyler Hoover, ILB Andrew Jackson, WR Ryan Lankford, WR Josh Lenz, QB Jeff Mathews, S Dewey McDonald, DT Nnamdi Obukwelu, CB Sheldon Price, TE Erik Swoope, G Josh Walker
Jacksonville Jaguars
T Cody Booth, DT Deandre Coleman, RB Henry Josey, S Craig Loston, QB Stephen Morris, WR Kerry Taylor, CB Peyton Thompson, WR Tony Washington, LB Marcus Whitfield, TE Marcel Johnson
Kansas City Chiefs
FB Jordan Campbell, C Ben Gottschalk, G Ricky Henry, LB Nico Johnson, DL Kona Schwenke, WR Darryl Surgent, RB Charcandrick West, WR Fred Williams, LB Jerry Franklin, DT Hebron Fangupo
Miami Dolphins
C Sam Brenner, WR Matt Hazel, T Tony Hills, LB David Hinds, QB Seth Lobato, TE Jacob Maxwell, DE D'Aundre Reed, CB Lowell Rose, DT Garrison Smith, WR Tommy Streeter
Minnesota Vikings
RB Joe Banyard, WR Kain Colter, DT Isame Faciane, TE Chase Ford, WR Donte Foster, CB Chris Greenwood, CB Kendall James, C Zac Kerin, T Mike Remmers, DE Justin Trattou
New England Patriots
DL Jake Bequette, QB McLeod Bethel-Thompson, WR Josh Boyce, LB Ja'Gared Davis, S Kanorris Davis, RB Jonas Gray, DL Charley Hughlett, OL Chris Martin, DL Deontae Skinner, DB Dax Swanson
New Orleans Saints
WR Brandon Coleman, LB Todd Davis, CB Terrence Frederick, TE Nic Jacobs, WR Seantavius Jones, G Antoine McClain, T Tavon Rooks, DT Lawrence Virgil, CB Trevin Wade, S Pierre Warren
New York Giants
T Nick Becton, RB Michael Cox, CB Bennett Jackson, CB Chandler Fenner, LB Dan Fox, DE Jordan Stanton, WR Julian Talley
New York Jets
DT Tevita Finau, DL Kerry Hyder, S Rontez Miles, TE Chris Pantale, T Brent Qvale, RB Daryl Richardson, QB Matt Simms, LB Jeremiah George, WR Quincy Enunwa
Oakland Raiders
RB George Atkinson, DE Denico Autry, CB Ras-I Dowling, LB Bojay Filimoeatu, LB Spencer Hadley, T Danny Kistler, DT Ricky Lumpkin, G Lamar Mady, WR Seth Roberts, TE Scott Simonson
Philadelphia Eagles
LB Emmanuel Acho, OL Josh Andrews, T Kevin Graf, DT Wade Keliikipi, QB G.J. Kinne, S Ed Reynolds, WR Will Murphy, WR Quron Pratt, RB Matthew Tucker
Pittsburgh Steelers
TE Rob Blanchflower, WR C.J. Goodwin, RB Josh Harris, LB Howard Jones, DL Josh Mauro, WR Derek Moye, DB Shaquille Richardson, DB Ross Ventrone, OL Alejandro Villanueva, DL Nick Williams
San Diego Chargers
DL Chas Alecxih, WR Torrence Allen, CB Greg Ducre, WR Javontee Herndon, OLB Cordarro Law, QB Ryan Lindley, S Adrian Phillips, T Jeremiah Sirles, G Craig Watts, RB Marion Grice
San Francisco 49ers
T Carter Bykowski, TE Asante Cleveland, RB Kendall Gaskins, WR Lance Lewis, DL Lawrence Okoye, NT Mike Purcell, LB, Shayne Skov, LB Chase Thomas, CB Chance Casey, T John Fullington
Seattle Seahawks
TE Rashaun Allen, DB Josh Aubrey, RB Demitrius Bronson, QB B.J. Daniels, T Nate Isles, WR Chris Matthews, S Terrance Parks, DT Jimmy Staten, S Steven Terrell, DE Julius Warmsley
St. Louis Rams
LB Denicos Allen, WR Emory Blake, S Christian Bryant, DT Matt Conrath, S Matt Daniels, QB Garrett Gilbert, T Sean Hooey, LB Kevin Reddick, WR Justin Veltung, G Brandon Washington
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
TE Cameron Brate, RB Jeff Demps, QB Mike Kafka, LB Brandon Magee, DT Matthew Masifilo, WR Solomon Patton, CB Derrius Brooks, CB Brandon Dixon, LB Carlos Fields, S Kimario McFadden
Tennessee Titans
OL Justin McCray, T William Poehls, DL Chigbo Anunoby, LB Brandon Copeland, RB Antonio Andrews, WR Rico Richardson, CB Ri'Shard Anderson, LB Dontay Moch, TE Orson Charles
Washington Redskins
TE Ted Bolser, CB Richard Crawford, CB Chase Minnifield, OL Tevita Stevens, S Phillip Thomas, NT Robert Thomas, RB Chris Thompson, WR Nick Williams, S Akeem Davis, LB Chaz Sutton |
One of a team of professional Neapolitan pizza makers throws dough to give away free pizza margheritas in Dante square in downtown Naples, on Aug. 27, 2008.
Photo by ROBERTO SALOMONE/AFP/Getty Images
The new hotness in the chain restaurant industry is “fast casual” dining—basically fast food places that are a bit more expensive and a bit better than the traditional offerings. Chipotle is the biggest recent business success in this area, but in some ways the most interesting success stories are places like 5 Guys, Shake Shack, Smashburger, and other participants in the so called “better burger” category. They show that you don’t really need to invent a whole new genre of restaurant to build a successful business.
So one natural question is what other cuisines are ripe for the kind of explosion of upscaling that we’ve seen in the burger industry? Sam Oches posits that the answer is pizza and profiles nine newish chains that are trying to dominate the emerging fast casual pizza space.
They all take advantage of one very significant and very salient fact—it’s in the very nature of some of the most traditional forms of pizza making that the pizza is supposed to be cooked very quickly. Not to restart the home-cooked pizza wars, but the basic shape of the story is that Neapolitan pizza cookery is a capital intensive business. You want good crust and good sauce, obviously, but you also need to cook it very fast in a very hot oven. So the whole situation is ideally set up for one in which a business owner places bulk orders of pizza ovens and then cooks personal-sized pizzas at a rapid pace. This is obviously somewhat different from the formats in which Americans have traditionally eaten pizza (delivery, slices) but it makes perfect sense. It’s also well-aligned with the fact that even though the best American pizza is still concentrated in the pizza belt where the Italian-American population is large, there’s been an enormous growth of interest in quality pizza all around the country over the past decade. People are ready for a pie that, while perhaps not ready to win any awards in New Haven, will be light-years ahead of what Dominoes and Papa Johns have to offer. |
Boehner begged for a one-on-one negotiation with Obama — a power play to show he, not his unruly conference, was running the show. He emerged from Mitt Romney’s loss as a strengthened leader: He’s the most powerful Republican in the country.
He even moved to strip trouble-making lawmakers of plum committee assignments in a bid to flex his internal muscle. Without consulting his membership, Boehner offered Obama $800 billion in revenue.
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“This is where I’m going,” Boehner personally told his fellow leaders when he made Obama the offer, a fresh blast of confidence.
That newfound political capital was quickly sanded-down by Boehner’s own crew.
What happened to the 63-year-old in just the last week is striking. On Saturday night, word leaked out that he had given into the White House’s demand that he allow tax rates on the rich to snap to 39.6 percent. Immediately, conservatives were grumbling but still gave Boehner room to maneuver.
On Monday night, Boehner called Obama to inform him he would devise a plan and pass it out of the House — Plan B, he called it — because negotiations with the White House weren’t moving quickly enough.
Boehner’s in-house power structure quickly sprung into action.
His leadership team spent the past few days gathering support for the legislation — as of late Wednesday, there were clear signs that Boehner’s bill did not have sufficient support. On Wednesday night and all day Thursday, Boehner worked the House floor, personally making the case for the bill to wavering members. By late Thursday, he was sitting on the floor with Reps. Patrick Tiberi (Ohio), Tom Latham (Iowa) and Mike Simpson (Idaho) — close allies and friends, who support the speaker unfailingly.
Top Republicans remained hopeful, until late Thursday when GOP lawmakers voiced a public protest. Twenty-one Republicans voted against a spending bill to send a signal to leadership that the tax-rate bill didn’t meet their muster. It was the rank and file screaming that Plan B would not pass.
One hour and 15 minutes later, Boehner was leading Republicans into a Capitol basement meeting room to wave the white flag.
Some of the same members kicked off committees and denied leadership spots — Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Rep. Tom Price of Georgia — led the resistance.
Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) put it plainly: “Nobody’s elected king in our conference.”
”And so I thought the speaker did a very good job of making the case for why this was a good proposal and at the end of the day though, it’s up to the conference’s will, is what happens,” Schock said. “Nobody can tell any duly elected representative who represents over 700,000 constituents how they have to vote. So you have to then respect the process and each individual’s vote.”
Last month, Boehner won unanimous support of the House Republican Conference to serve as speaker for the next two years. But for the first time, GOP lawmakers privately told POLITICO Thursday night that there are questions about Boehner’s grip on power.
With Congress out, potentially until 2013, he might not see some of those faces until he gets to the House floor to be officially voted in as speaker.
Seung Min Kim and Ginger Gibson contributed to this report. |
As far as the police were concerned, accused killer Gurpreet Ronald sealed her own fate — or, at least, licked it.
In some remarkable detective work, Ottawa police investigating the Jan. 29, 2014, slaying of Jagtar Gill surreptitiously got a DNA sample from her husband’s mistress, Gurpreet Ronald, in an elaborate ruse that had the murder suspect filling out a contest entry form and licking its envelope with the hopes of winning.
The jury at their first-degree murder trial on Wednesday heard that blood found at Gill’s Barrhaven home, on the knives and latex gloves, matched Ronald’s DNA. Forensic tests have concluded that the chances it is someone else’s DNA are one in one quadrillion, the jury heard.
Gill, 43, was at home recovering from surgery when her attacker slit her throat, slashed her arms and bludgeoned her to death with a weightlifting bar. There was blood spatter throughout the home and signs of deadly struggle in the family room, where Gill’s 15-year-old daughter found her dead on the floor.
The teen made the awful discovery after a trip to Sobeys with her dad — Bhupinderpal Gill — for flowers and cake to celebrate her parents’ wedding anniversary.
Gill and Ronald are on trial for first-degree murder in what prosecutors have branded as a plot to get rid of the woman they despised.
The ruse to get Ronald’s DNA was authorized by a warrant, as was the use of hidden video cameras in the basement, where Gill was caught on tape twice looking at a bloodstained weightlifting bar before he concealed it in his jacket, only to later dump it outside.
In opening remarks, the Crown claimed that the two accused, both OC Transpo drivers, would do anything to be together — even if it meant killing Gill’s wife.
In the 28 days leading to Jagtar’s death, Gill and Ronald spoke on the phone more than 250 times for a total of 48 hours.
The jury was told that, on the day of the killing, Gill convinced his daughter to run errands with him, leaving Jagtar behind.
The daughter had stayed home from school to look after her mother and to study for an exam, while her two siblings went to class.
The Crown has told the jury that while Gill and his daughter were out shopping, Ronald paid a deadly visit to their home, slashing Jagtar’s neck and left wrist, then stabbed her repeatedly in the stomach and bashed her about the head with the weightlifting bar.
And when the husband got home, he started washing the bloody knives used to kill his wife, the jury heard. He also hid the bloodied weightlifting bar.
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The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) has managed to blend the locally popular art of tattoo and the historically beautiful craftsmanship of Japanese art with the
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) has managed to blend the locally popular art of tattoo and the historically beautiful craftsmanship of Japanese art with the launch of its new exhibition, “Japanese Tattoo: Perseverance, Art, and Tradition.”
The collection centers around seven internationally acclaimed tattoo artists, curated by Kip Fulbeck and Takahiro Kitamura. Fulbeck photographed each intricate work which was “inspired by the Japanese tradition of tattooing and heavily influenced by the traditional Japanese arts of calligraphy and ukiyo-e woodblock printmaking.”
Each featured picture is matched with an artist’s name and a number corresponding to a streaming audio guide. Drawing an audio aspect to a conventionally visual experience, the guide uses recordings of the curators or even the artists themselves to tell the story behind the tattoo, explain the symbolism, or delve into the bond the artist and person being tattooed now shares. “Anytime you can hear directly from an artist, what they are thinking, I feel like that’s an excellent component to any exhibition,” said Chesterfield.
“The art world is fickle at times,” said Lee Anne Chesterfield, Interim Deputy Director for Art and Education at the VMFA. Defying this stereotype, Chesterfield aimed to bring in work, not necessarily accepted by the art world as ‘fine art.’ In “Japanese Tattoo,” she hopes to foster conversations on the topic of fine arts and how to bring the life-long body modifications into the fine arts fold.
“There’s a great connection with woodblock prints and tattoo and Japanese art,” said Chesterfield of the ancient printing technique where someone carves an image into a block, dips it in ink, and presses it against a surface to create an image using the negative space.
“Until really pretty recently, [either] weren’t considered fine art,” she laughed, illuminating on the museum’s ongoing, and equally controversial exhibition featuring woodblock prints.
Chesterfield continued to draw comparisons in order to explain a subject seldom discussed in the art world equating the tattoo masters featured in the museum’s exhibition to the principal contributors of the impressionist movement who now stand as legends in art history.
“By having it in our galleries and in our museum, I fully look at [tattoos] as fine art, as artworks and artists.”
While tattoo as artwork may be a relatively modern notion, criticism is not, and it is for this reason Chesterfield says she wasn’t surprised by some of the questionable feedback received for the contended exhibit.
“I think it’s a part of art history, it happens all the time,” she said. “It opens up the discussion, the dialogue, which in my mind is the perfect opportunity, it’s something we should be doing.”
Cultivating conversation and encouraging discussion by bringing in different forms of artwork is part of the mission of the VMFA according Chesterfield, saying she welcomes all comments, questions, and critiques.
The extensive mission of the VMFA is intrinsically difficult purely because of its nature as a museum — appealing to spanning age demographics is never easy. “We always want to be accessible, we always want to bring in and welcome new groups,” said Chesterfield. “Anytime we can bring in someone that hasn’t been here before, that’s been here ages ago and doesn’t remember and doesn’t really realize what we are now, I feel like that’s a win-win for everyone.”
Challenging what is conventional by bringing in what is considered beautiful by differing crowds harbors an environment that will appeal to diverse peoples across ethnic, age, and gender lines. Chesterfield spoke on behalf of museums around the world saying, “future generations are what we are building all of this for, and so we always have to be thinking about younger demographics, younger people, bringing them in, and what’s going to spark their interest.”
The wide-ranging aim of the VMFA is palpable through this exhibit. “Richmond being one of, if not the top tattoo city in the country,” made the museum a perfect host for the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles’ exhibition, said Chesterfield.
There’s a mess of events associated with the exhibit, check them out below:
Perseverance: Creating the First Exhibition Exploring Japanese Tattooing as Fine Art
Fri, May 29, 6 – 7 pm
Cost: $8 (VMFA members $5)
Gallery Walk with Kip Fulbeck SOLD OUT
Sat, May 30, 2 – 2:45 pm
Cost: Free, with purchase of a Japanese Tattoo exhibition ticket
Understanding the Art of Tattoo: The Perseverance of Traditions in Contemporary Japanese Art
Thursdays, Jun 4 & 11, 6:30 – 8 pm (2 sessions)
Cost: $50 (VMFA members $40) *Cost includes admission to the exhibition.
Tattoo Arts and Film Festival
Fri, Sep 4, 3 – 9:30 pm
Sat, Sep 5, 10:30 am – 5 pm; Reception: 5 – 7 pm
Cost: Two-day festival pass: $25 (VMFA members $18), individual films: $8 (VMFA members $5) |
The N.Y. tycoon is decimating the three legs of blanket Republican support for Israel: Evangelicals, Jews and interventionist hawks.
Chemi Shalev, Haaretz
In their Super Tuesday speeches, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio tried to use an Israel hammer to bash Donald Trump. Cruz sneeringly lambasted him for saying he would remain “neutral” while Rubio trounced Trump for trying to stay “impartial”, as his audience booed accordingly. And Trump? Trump was racking up victories, amassing delegates and laughing all the way to the top of the Republican presidential field.
In this way, the New York billionaire is decimating the conventional wisdom, one of many, that in 2016, total and unconditional support for Israel is a prerequisite for any aspiring GOP candidate wishing to run for president; that such a pledge of allegiance to Israel, in general, and to Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular, is a threshold requirement for gaining the support of Evangelicals, who set the tone during primary season; and that the flow of sympathy for Israel from liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans is inevitable, perhaps even desirable, and in any case unstoppable.
But exactly a year after Netanyahu took this logic to its extreme and stood on the podium of Congress as Leader of the Republican opposition to President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the conception is falling apart. The notion that the Republican Party is a monolithic bastion of support that will withstand the test of time is evaporating. The belief that any Republican president who will follow Obama will be better for Israel is eroding with each passing day. Faced with the Trump phenomenon, Netanyahu’s Fortress GOP strategy is collapsing like a house of cards.
And it doesn’t really make that much difference whether Trump is a “phony” who is pulling the wool over the GOP’s innocent eyes, as former presidential contender Mitt Romney asserted in his astonishingly harsh speech on Thursday, or whether Trump has simply exposed the dark subterranean streams of jingoism and prejudice and resentment of Jews that were there all along. If Trump is the Republican candidate, never mind if he’s elected president, Israel’s place in American politics and possibly around the world will be put in question. But if Romney’s scary portrayal of Trump is even half true, that should be the least of our worries.
In the outgoing dogmatic GOP, Trump’s equivocations would have earned him a place in the all-time rogues gallery of Enemies of the Jewish People, somewhere between Obama and Father Coughlin. Today, Evangelicals shrug them off and continue to vote for Trump, as they did this week in Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.
Every time Cruz and Rubio try to hit Trump over the head with an Israel club and nothing happens, it is Israel’s weakness that is exposed. Every time Trump wins a party primary without challenge from his supporters, another nail is driven into the coffin of the unshakeable alliance between Israel and America’s deep right.
And it’s not as if Trump is really anti-Israel; hardly. Like in most other complex policy issues on which he has spoken, Trump is mainly incoherent, improvising as he goes along, shooting from the lip, saying one thing one day and the opposite the next. He is “totally a friend” of Israel, Obama is “the most horrible president ever” for Israel, and the Iran deal is a joke. But Trump refuses to acknowledge United Jerusalem, wants to remain “neutral” so that he can broker a peace deal with the Palestinians, which is a challenge worthy of a master dealmaker like him. If he fails, he’s already made clear, Israel will be to blame.
Trump not only diverts the Republican leadership from uniform automatic support for Netanyahu, he is destroying the internal coalition that was the lynchpin of the party’s strong pro-Israel stance. Evangelical support for Trump has already sparked an internal rupture, which has some experts declaring the death of America’s Religious Right. Evangelical leaders and many of their supporters in the media are heartbroken that so many Believers are flocking after the thrice married, dirty-talking reality star. They are less perturbed by his deviation from the strict pro-Israel party line, however, and more by the sinful ways for which he has not asked forgiveness.
If Trump becomes their candidate, the GOP will lose its most hawkish, most neoconservative and most pro-Israel secular elements as well. They are repelled not only by his indecipherable positions on Israel but also by his harsh criticism of George Bush and the Iraq War, his undisguised adulation of dictators for Vladimir Putin to Bashar Assad, his all round belligerence and his neo-isolationist vision of making America great again within its hermetically sealed walls. “As president, he would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe, and which would diminish our standing in the world” according to public letter signed by 50 GOP national security stalwarts, many of them known for their pro-Israel positions. “We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office.”
The third leg of the GOP’s pro-Israel array that Trump is eviscerating are the Jews. Although Sheldon Adelson’s ongoing silence has caused some people to suspect he will end up supporting Trump, other big time Jewish donors, including hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, have placed their money on his currently losing rivals. And the Republican hope that 2016 will finally see the long awaited migration of Jews disappointed by Obama to the GOP is dashed once again. Trump hardly stands a chance of garnering 30% of the Jewish vote, as Romney did in 2012, never mind the 40% that Rubio might reasonably be expected to receive. He’s more likely to revert the GOP’s Jewish vote in the direction of the 11% that George Bush Sr. got in 1992, or the 10% that Barry Goldwater received in 1964.
But the Jews won’t be fleeing Trump because of his policies towards Israel or because he refuses to repeat Cruz and Rubio’s inane pledge to tear the Iranian nuclear deal apart on their first day in office. The Jews won’t abandon Trump because he’s married for the third time, or because he went bankrupt four times, or because he uses dirty words whenever he can. They certainly won’t desert Trump because of his positions on abortion, health care or separation of church and state, which are more aligned with theirs than Cruz’s, Rubio’s or Kasich’s.
The Jews will run away from Trump because he scares them. Because his demagoguery is ominous, his willingness to slash and burn anyone standing in his way is disturbing, his tendency to incite his supporters against other ethnic groups from rapist Mexicans to terrorist Muslims, is a source of deep anxiety. Beneath the great wave of popular support for Trump one can make out with increasing clarity the dark undercurrents of rage and resentment and xenophobia that is often seen morphing into White supremacism and abhorrence of African Americans and then, on the outskirts, bad old hatred of the Jews. The allusions to Germany in the 1930’s are absurd, no doubt, but nonetheless surfacing with ever-increasing frequency.
Trump’s dithering resistance to a clear and unequivocal condemnation of David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan set the alarm bells ringing. Add to that the disturbing incidents in which African Americans are brutally manhandled at Trump events, in some cases by American Nazis who laud Trump for “resisting Jewish money.” Grotesquely, that was the connection made this week between Duke, who hates Jews and blacks, and Louis Farrakhan, who loathes Jews and whites.
The Trump phenomenon reinforces the long held claim that part of the alliance of shared values between Israel and the American extreme right is based on a warped and racist view of Israel as a forward post of white civilization against the darker barbarians at the gate. Israelis who have cast themselves as Republicans have taken scant interest in the domestic side of the GOP, with which some of them might even agree. Many of them will continue to view Trump as a desirable heir to Muslim Obama and alternative to a radical Hillary Clinton. Others will console themselves with the thought that once elected, Trump will become another man. Still others will yearn for his victory, if only to confound Netanyahu and satisfy their own Schadenfreude.
But most people, possibly in Israel and definitely around the world, will prudently pray for the GOP to get rid of Trump, and failing that, for Clinton or Bernie Sanders to defeat him in November. At the same time, they would do well to undo Netanyahu’s frivolous decision to put all of Israel’s eggs in the GOP basket, which is unraveling in front of our very eyes. |
A Syrian rebel fighter walks down a street in Damascus that has been reduced to rubble. Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images
Click for an interactive below with before-and-after images of the destruction of neighborhoods.
While Western diplomats and Syrian rebel leaders squabble in Geneva, and the internationally backed Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons starts removing the Syrian government’s chemical stockpiles, the ground war for control of the country still rages on Syria's streets.
According to a new report, a low-tech weapon in that war has been discovered: the leveling of buildings and even entire neighborhoods with bombs and bulldozers.
The report, released by Human Rights Watch on Thursday, says that the Syrian government has destroyed no less than 350 acres of buildings in at least seven neighborhoods around Syria since July 2012 in an effort to wrest control from the rebels. The report says the tactic has caused widespread destruction and exacerbated Syria’s already critical refugee crisis. It also says President Bashar al-Assad’s government doesn’t plan to stop.
Human Rights Watch analyzed 15 commercial satellite images, conducted interviews with 16 witnesses and homeowners who had their homes destroyed in Syria, and relied on media reports, government officials and videos posted to YouTube to compile the report.
The organization found that in neighborhoods around Damascus and Hama, widespread demolition had taken place in the past year and a half. The Syrian government said these demolitions were necessary to clear the areas of poorly built houses and make way for urban-planning and public-works projects. But according to the HRW review, all the demolished areas were either rebel strongholds or considered high-value targets for the military. And HRW says each demolition was carried out by military forces, and often right after fights with rebels.
Because the destruction was done without proper military justification, HRW’s report concludes that the incidents should be considered war crimes.
“(The demolitions) violated the laws of war either because they served no necessary military purpose and appeared intended to punish the civilian population, or because they caused disproportionate harm to civilians,” HRW’s report said. “Those responsible for the wanton destruction of civilian property or for imposing collective punishment have committed war crimes and should be investigated and held to account.”
The two single biggest demolition campaigns appear to have been in the Hama suburb of Masha’a al-Arb’een, and near Mezzeh Air Base in Damascus.
The Hama demolition consisted of bulldozing about 100 acres of land in the fall of 2012, after rebels and government forces fought for control of the neighborhood for weeks.
“I begged the soldier to let me in to collect my belongings,” one Hama resident told HRW. “He let me, but I had only a few minutes. After I left, the bulldozer demolished my house. Nothing was left of it, not even the walls.”
The demolitions around the Damascus airport were of a similar scale and seemingly also carried out after fighting between government forces and rebels in 2012. Local Gov. Hussein Makhlouf insisted that the demolitions were part of a government program to rid the country of poorly constructed houses and said they were completely legal.
He said new demolitions in other areas are scheduled to take place soon. |
CTV.ca News Staff
Ontario's McMaster University says it can produce four times the amount of medical isotopes as the failing Chalk River reactor, in a possible solution to a severe worldwide shortage.
"Our physicists have done the calculations and verified them with the literature and . . . that equals, at the end of the day, 20 per cent of the North American market," Christopher Heysel, McMaster's director of nuclear operations and facilities, told a House of Commons committee on Tuesday.
But the school would need $30 million in government funding over the next five years. It has already received $22 million from both the federal and Ontario governments.
McMaster's 50-year-old reactor is the only other Canadian facility that can produce Technetium-99m (Tc-99m), the principal medical isotope used in cancer tests. It once filled in for the Chalk River reactor in the 1970s during a shutdown.
Meanwhile, the federal government announced $6 million to fund research into alternatives to Tc-99m, which is produced from molybdenum-99 (Moly-99).
With the reactor shutdown expected to last three months or longer, medical imaging experts have been struggling to meet the needs of patients requiring important diagnostic images.
Just this week, nuclear medicine leaders, meeting in Toronto, called for legislators to fund more research so they can shift dependence away from the commonly used Tc-99m.
"Through this funding, we hope to research into alternative, non-nuclear isotopes that could supplement or replace Tc-99m in certain medical imaging procedures," Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said.
"We will also support the production of these alternatives to reduce the time it takes to move to clinical trials."
The president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, Dr. Robert Atcher, is saying the long-term solution to the worldwide isotope shortages isn't necessarily in building new reactors.
"It turns out that our real problem isn't that there aren't enough reactors to make medical isotopes," Atcher told CTV on Tuesday.
"It's the production facilities that we use when we take those targets out of the reactor and process them to remove the medically useful isotopes -- that capacity around the world is very limited. So we don't need necessarily to build any more reactors; we need to build those processing facilities."
The nuclear medicine conference, usually a forum for celebrating new ways of diagnosing disease, is being dominated by the Chalk River shutdown, which Atcher says has caused two problems.
"One is that we've lost a third of our capacity. But the second point is that the Canadian reactor is also responsible for making up about 25 per cent of capacity if any of the other four reactors around the world go offline," he explained.
"So, for example, the reactor in the Netherlands is scheduled to go down in July, and with Chalk River offline, we won't be able to make up for that reactor not producing as well."
Facilities that are too old
There are only five countries with reactors that produce the raw materials for medical isotopes: Belgium, Canada, France, the Netherlands and South Africa. Each of those reactors has been operating for about five decades.
Atcher says it's clear that too many demands are being placed on too few facilities that are simply too old.
"It's really too bad that we had to face this, but on the other hand, the reactor at Chalk River is at the end of its useful life. So we anticipated that it would go offline in the next few years," he said.
Atcher added that the announcement last week from Prime Minister Stephen Harper that Canada will get out of the medical isotope business when the 52-year-old NRU reactor finally is mothballed (likely by 2016), helps nuclear medicine organizers to plan for the future.
"There's a silver lining in that now we know when Canada is planning to cease activity. So that gives us a deadline to develop more capacity and to potentially even build a new reactor that might take over," Atcher said.
Canada had been planning to have two reactors dedicated to producing medical isotopes by now. AECL was building two reactors at Chalk River -- the Maple project -- that were supposed to be operating by 2000. But after 12 years of development and cost overruns, the reactors never worked well enough to be put into commercial production. AECL concluded last year that the Maple project would have to be cancelled altogether.
Health Canada also has a stopgap, announcing late Monday a new source for Tc-99m.
It said it has authorized Lantheus Medical Imaging of Boston, Mass. to use Moly-99 produced by the Open Pool Australian Light-water (OPAL) reactor to make Tc-99m for Canadian health care facilities.
Health Canada's approval means that the Moly-99 produced by the OPAL reactor is safe and effective for use by Canadian health care providers.
"This is very good news for Canadian health care providers and patients," Aglukkaq said in a news release.
In the meantime, with diagnostic tests being delayed or cancelled, deaths are possible, warns Atcher, because there is little capability to use other imaging technologies in many kinds of diagnosis.
"For patients with lung cancer, prostate and breast cancer, we use nuclear medicine to assess whether the cancer has spread to their skeleton and there's really not other adequate way for us to do that," he said. |
Conceptual blending, also called conceptual integration or view application, is a theory of cognition developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. According to this theory, elements and vital relations from diverse scenarios are "blended" in a subconscious process, which is assumed to be ubiquitous to everyday thought and language. Conceptual blending is an emerging field of studies for computer scientists wishing to pursue researches in artificial intelligence.[citation needed]
History [ edit ]
The development of this theory began in 1993 and a representative early formulation is found in the online article Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression.[1] Turner and Fauconnier cite Arthur Koestler's 1964 book The Act of Creation as an early forerunner of conceptual blending: Koestler had identified a common pattern in creative achievements in the arts, sciences and humor that he had termed "bisociation of matrices."[2] A newer version of blending theory, with somewhat different terminology, was presented in Turner and Fauconnier's 2002 book, The Way We Think.[3] Conceptual blending, in the Fauconnier and Turner formulation, is one of the theoretical tools used in George Lakoff and Rafael Núñez's Where Mathematics Comes From, in which the authors assert that "understanding mathematics requires the mastering of extensive networks of metaphorical blends."[4]
Computational models [ edit ]
Conceptual blending is closely related to frame-based theories, but goes beyond these primarily in that it is a theory of how to combine frames (or frame-like objects). An early computational model of a process called "view application", which is closely related to conceptual blending (which did not exist at the time), was implemented in the 1980s by Shrager at CMU and PARC, and applied in the domains of causal reasoning about complex devices[5] and scientific reasoning.[6] More recent computational accounts of blending have been developed in areas such as mathematics.[7] Some later models are based upon Structure Mapping, which did not exist at the time of the earlier implementations.
The philosophical status of the theory [ edit ]
In his book The Literary Mind[8] (p. 93), conceptual blending theorist Mark Turner states that
Conceptual blending is a fundamental instrument of the every day mind, used in our basic construal of all our realities, from the social to the scientific.
Insights obtained from conceptual blends constitute the products of creative thinking, however conceptual blending theory is not itself a complete theory of creativity, inasmuch as it does not illuminate the issue of where the inputs to a blend originate. In other words, conceptual blending provides a terminology for describing creative products, but has little to say on the matter of inspiration.[citation needed]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ] |
The Reverend William Webb Ellis (24 November 1806 – 24 January 1872) was an English Anglican clergyman and the alleged inventor of rugby football while a pupil at Rugby School. According to legend, Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it during a school football match in 1823, thus creating the 'rugby' style of play. Although the story has become firmly entrenched in the sport's folklore, it is not supported by substantive evidence, and is discounted by most rugby historians as an origin myth.
The William Webb Ellis Cup is presented to the winners of the Rugby World Cup.[1][2]
Biography [ edit ]
William Webb Ellis was born in Salford, Lancashire, the younger of two surviving sons (the eldest, James, died aged three; the second son, Thomas, of Dunchurch, Warwickshire, was a surgeon) of James Ellis, a cornet in the 7th Dragoon Guards, in 1809 made a Lieutenant of the 3rd Dragoon Guards, joining them in Portugal,[3] and Ann, daughter of William Webb, a surgeon, of Alton, Hampshire, whom James married in Exeter in 1804. His paternal grandfather was from Pontyclun in South Wales, a descendant of the Ellis family of Kiddal Hall, just off the A64 near Potterton, West Riding of Yorkshire.[3]
After his father was killed during the Peninsular War in a cavalry action near Albuera on 1 July 1812,[4] Mrs Ellis, in receipt of an allowance of £30 from His Majesty's Royal Bounty in recognition of her husband's service,[5] decided to move to Rugby, Warwickshire, so that William and his elder brother, Thomas, would receive an education at Rugby School with no cost as a local foundationer (i.e. a pupil living within a radius of 10 miles of the Rugby Clock Tower). He attended the school in Town House from 1816 to 1825 and was recorded as being a good scholar and cricketer, although it was noted that he was "rather inclined to take unfair advantage at cricket". The incident in which William Webb Ellis supposedly caught the ball in his arms during a football match (which was allowed) and ran with it (which was not) is supposed to have happened in the latter half of 1823.
After leaving Rugby in 1826, he went to Brasenose College, Oxford, aged 20. He played cricket for his college, and for Oxford University against Cambridge University in a first-class match in 1827.[6][7] He graduated with a B.A. in 1829 and received his M.A. in 1831. He entered the Church and became chaplain of St George's Chapel, Albemarle Street, London (closed c.1909),[8] and then rector of St. Clement Danes in the Strand. He became well known as a low church evangelical clergyman. In 1855, he became rector of Magdalen Laver in Essex. A picture of him (the only known portrait) appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1854, after he gave a particularly stirring sermon on the subject of the Crimean War.
He never married and died in the south of France in 1872, leaving an estate of £9,000, mostly to various charities. His grave in "le cimetière du vieux château" at Menton in Alpes Maritimes was rediscovered by Ross McWhirter in 1958, was renovated by the Riviera Hash House Harriers in 2003 and is now maintained by the French Rugby Federation.[9]
The legend [ edit ]
Origin of the claim [ edit ]
Webb-Ellis carries the ball during a school association football match played in 1823. According to legend, this action would have created the rugby-style of play
The sole source of the story of Webb Ellis picking up the ball originates with one Matthew Bloxam, a local antiquarian and former pupil of Rugby.[2] On 10 October 1876,[10] he wrote to The Meteor, the Rugby School magazine, that he had learnt from an unnamed source that the change from a kicking game to a handling game had "...originated with a town boy or foundationer of the name of Ellis, Webb Ellis".
On 22 December 1880,[10] in another letter to the Meteor, Bloxam elaborates on the story:
"A boy of the name Ellis – William Webb Ellis – a town boy and a foundationer, ... whilst playing Bigside at football in that half-year [1823], caught the ball in his arms. This being so, according to the then rules, he ought to have retired back as far as he pleased, without parting with the ball, for the combatants on the opposite side could only advance to the spot where he had caught the ball, and were unable to rush forward till he had either punted it or had placed it for some one else to kick, for it was by means of these placed kicks that most of the goals were in those days kicked, but the moment the ball touched the ground the opposite side might rush on. Ellis, for the first time, disregarded this rule, and on catching the ball, instead of retiring backwards, rushed forwards with the ball in his hands towards the opposite goal, with what result as to the game I know not, neither do I know how this infringement of a well-known rule was followed up, or when it became, as it is now, a standing rule."
Bloxam's first account differed from his second one four years later. In his first letter, in 1876, Bloxham claimed that Webb Ellis committed the act in 1824, a time by which Webb Ellis had left Rugby.[10] In his second letter, in 1880, Bloxham put the year as 1823.[10]
1895 investigation [ edit ]
The claim that Webb Ellis invented the game did not surface until four years after his death, and doubts have been raised about the story since 1895, when the Old Rugbeian Society first investigated it. The sub-committee conducting the investigation was "unable to procure any first hand evidence of the occurrence".[11]
Among those giving evidence, Thomas Harris and his brother John, who had left Rugby in 1828 and 1832 respectively (i.e. after the alleged Webb Ellis incident) recalled that handling of the ball was strictly forbidden. Thomas Harris, who requested that he "not [be] quote[d] as an authority", testified that Webb Ellis had been known as someone to take an "unfair advantage at football".[11] John Harris, who would have been aged 10 years at the time of the alleged incident, did not claim to have been a witness to it. Additionally, he stated that he had not heard the story of Webb Ellis's creation of the game.[11]
Thomas Hughes (author of Tom Brown's Schooldays) was asked to comment on the game as played when he attended the school (1834–1842). He is quoted as saying "In my first year, 1834, running with the ball to get a try by touching down within goal was not absolutely forbidden, but a jury of Rugby boys of that day would almost certainly have found a verdict of 'justifiable homicide' if a boy had been killed in running in."
It has been suggested by Dunning and Sheard (2005) that it was no coincidence that this investigation was conducted in 1895, at a time when divisions within the sport led to the schism: the split into the sports of rugby league and rugby union.[2] Dunning and Sheard suggest that the endorsement of a "reductionist" origin myth by the Rugbeians was an attempt to assert their school's position and authority over a sport that they were losing control of.[2]
Jem Mackie [ edit ]
An article by Gordon Rayner in The Sunday Telegraph[12] about the origin of Rugby football, says that Thomas Hughes told the 1895 investigation that in 1838–1839 a Rugby School boy called Jem Mackie "was the first great runner-in", and that later (in or before 1842) Jem Mackie was expelled from Rugby School for an unspecified incident; in 1845 boys at the school first wrote down an agreed set of rules for the version of football played at Rugby School, which is now rugby football. Gordon Rayner says that the reason for Jem Mackie's expulsion may have damaged Mackie's reputation so much that Bloxam transferred Mackie's part in inventing Rugby football to Webb Ellis, and that a big donation by Bloxam to Rugby School's library may have influenced school official acceptance of this Webb Ellis version.[12] Another theory is that Mackie's role may have been disregarded because the committee was seeking to prove Rugby School had invented the game, and thus may have preferred the earliest possible date.[13] England Rugby says that William Webb Ellis's action (if it happened) did not lead to any immediate change in the rules but may well have inspired later imitators, though not Mackie, as Thomas Hughes said the Webb Ellis story had not survived into his own time (1834, which was before Mackie popularised running-in in 1838/39).[14]
The plaque [ edit ]
A plaque, erected in 1895, at Rugby School bears the inscription:[2]
THIS STONE
COMMEMORATES THE EXPLOIT OF
WILLIAM WEBB ELLIS
WHO WITH A FINE DISREGARD FOR THE RULES OF FOOTBALL
AS PLAYED IN HIS TIME
FIRST TOOK THE BALL IN HIS ARMS AND RAN WITH IT
THUS ORIGINATING THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURE OF
THE RUGBY GAME
A.D. 1823
Image of the plaque at Rugby School
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
You didn’t really think AT&T was going to sit around and watch Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile gobble up incredibly valuable spectrum on the 600MHz band, did you? Well, neither did the Federal Communications Commission, which earlier this week called AT&T’s bluff and essentially dared it to skip out on what might be the most important wireless spectrum auction we’ll see for years.
As Re/code reports, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler scoffed at AT&T’s supposed threat to boycott next year’s 600MHz auction and said that he had “a hard time envisioning this once in a lifetime opportunity for this kind of beachfront spectrum being something that people throw up their hands and walk away from.”
Earlier this month, AT&T said that it might stay away from the auction all together unless the FCC reversed its decision to reserve about 30MHz worth of licenses on the band for smaller carriers. AT&T argued that it shouldn’t face any such restrictions in the auction and said that it should basically be allowed to gobble up as much spectrum as it could afford.
The FCC, mindful of the fact that Verizon and AT&T dominated the last major auction for spectrum on the 700MHz band, didn’t want to see the same thing happen again, which is why it put rules in place to ensure that the nation’s two biggest carriers didn’t again come away with all of the best spectrum licenses on the band.
Now, as Re/code tells it, AT&T is now saying that “our desire to participate in this auction and our hope for a successful auction is unchanged,” which is basically the carrier’s way of admitting that it never had any intent of skipping the auction in the first place. Surprise, surprise. |
When it comes to who should feel in charge of their own money, Beyonce said it best: "All the single ladies, now put your hands up."
Nearly all single women — 97 percent — said it's important to be engaged in managing their finances, according to a new Fidelity Investments study, "Single Women & Money."
However, three things are holding them back, the report found: underestimating their know-how, neglecting to plan for the future and saving too heavily in cash.
"Women are gaining a ton of financial power, but, they are too often in the back seat," said Alexandra Taussig, a senior vice president of women investors at Fidelity. Just 25 percent consider themselves primary decision-makers when it comes to family finances, according to a separate study from Fidelity.
Single women were less likely to consider themselves knowledgeable than other demographic groups on topics such as investing, retirement saving and creating a financial plan, Fidelity found.
"We have this lack of confidence," Taussig said.
Overall, 1 in 3 single women said they are concerned about their finances, compared with 1 in 5 single men. |
America’s response to Russia is weak for a reason.
So far America’s response to Russia has been pathetically weak. The strongest thing we have done is transfer 12 aging F-16 fighter jets to Poland to make the Poles feel safer. There is a reason for such great weakness. If you understand that reason, you will understand why America will not stop Russia. And you will understand why America’s superpower days are a thing of the past.
“Today, I’m announcing a series of measures that will continue to increase the cost on Russia and on those responsible for what is happening in Ukraine,” President Barack Obama said in his much anticipated March 17 speech.
The world held its breath. Russian oligarchs trembled in fear. Russian President Vladimir Putin wondered if he had gone too far.
Then Mr. Obama continued.
First, as authorized by the executive order I signed two weeks ago, we are imposing sanctions on specific individuals responsible for undermining the sovereignty, territorial integrity and government of Ukraine. … Second, I have signed a new executive order that expands the scope of our sanctions. As an initial step, I’m authorizing sanctions on Russian officials—entities operating in the arms sector in Russia and individuals who provide material support to senior officials of the Russian government. And if Russia continues to interfere in Ukraine, we stand ready to impose further sanctions. Third, we’re continuing our close consultations with our European partners …. Fourth, we’ll continue to make clear to Russia that further provocations will achieve nothing except to further isolate Russia and diminish its place in the world. …
Cheers and vodka corks erupted in the Kremlin.
Consider. Points three and four (you can read them in their entirety here) are absolute drivel without substance—filler to make the speech last longer than two minutes. Enough said.
Points one and two seem stronger but are also incredibly weak. Beyond the speech, this is what we know: Economic sanctions have been levied on 11 people. Four of them are Ukrainians. And according to abc News, some of them don’t even have U.S. assets.
Perhaps more sanctions are coming, but so far, that’s it. Russia has been working a coup in Crimea since before the end of the Sochi Olympics, and so far all we have done is partially freeze some assets of Putin’s aides. Is that all we could come up with? Last time I checked there were around 140 million Russians, and hundreds of Russian businesses operating in the United States.
Then there is the possibility of denying Russia access to the dollar payment swift system in Belgium that processes payments in all currencies, not just dollars. Foreign banks that wish to do business in America could also be asked to freeze Russian assets.
How about an announcement that America is going to open up Alaska for oil drilling, that it is considering expanding the use of fracking, that it would fast-track natural gas exports, and that it would begin releasing more oil from the strategic oil reserve? Just the announcements would make the price of oil and natural gas plunge.
That is an immediate hit to Putin’s pocketbook.
If we were still friends with Saudi Arabia, the sheiks could probably have been convinced to join too.
Even so, there are plenty of ways to increase the pain on Russia—if America was really interested in doing something about Crimea.
Instead we put sanctions on 11 people—and Putin isn’t even one of them.
In contrast, how many Ukraine supporters in Crimea will lose everything? What about the Tatars who make up 15 percent of the population and refused to vote in the referendum because they remember what happened to them the last time Ukraine was part of Russia?
No mention of the possibility of helping arm Ukraine to defend itself. No mention of reinstituting the European missile defense shield that was canceled in order to hit the “reset button” with Russia. No mention of real consequences.
It would be tempting to think that President Obama was being tougher behind the scenes. And was just talking soft to de-escalate things.
But he isn’t.
Want to know why?
On March 4, Russian presidential adviser Sergei Glazyev made offhanded comments suggesting that if the U.S. took real action against Moscow, it would hurt America’s economy as much as Russia’s.
And he is probably right. With America’s debt-bloated economy barely keeping its head above water, a trade war including Russia and Europe could drag America and the global economy back into recession.
But it was Glazyev’s second remark that probably captured American policy makers’ attention the most. He said that if sanctions went too far, Russia “should dump U.S. government bonds”—all $200 billion worth.
$200 billion is a significant amount. No doubt it would hurt, but America would probably survive.
However, Russia isn’t alone.
America owes so much money to so many people that if Russia were to signal it was dumping its U.S. debt holdings, other smaller investors might decide that they want out first. The proverbial run on the bank becomes reality.
Still America might survive.
But then America still needs to consider how much money it owes China. As Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry highlighted in “Russia and China Unite (Crimea),” China has thrown its support behind Russia. And economically, America does have to consider very carefully what China might do.
The bbc recently released an interview with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. It describes the great extent he went to in order to convince China not to dump its $1.7 trillion in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds during the economic meltdown in 2009.
But here is where it becomes, as the bbc’s Robert Peston says, a “geopolitical thriller.” Secretary Paulson recounts: “Here I’m not going to name the senior person, but I was meeting with someone …. This person told me that the Chinese had received a message from the Russians which was, ‘Hey let’s join together and sell Fannie and Freddie securities on the market.’ The Chinese weren’t going to do that but again, it just, it just drove home to me how vulnerable I felt until we had put Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship [the rescue plan for them, that was eventually put in place].”
Here is the take-home message. China may have refrained from attacking the U.S. financial system at that time, but Russia and China have held discussions about it! This scenario is no longer in the realm of speculation.
Russia and China have actually discussed a joint pact to not only maximize the turmoil on Wall Street, but to directly attack America’s financial system. This is the reality facing America.
America’s reliance on foreign nations to lend us money is now so great that it is crippling our foreign policy and our ability to assert our interests in the world.
The Bible, which is perhaps the oldest book on geopolitics, warns about the dangers of debt—especially debt owed to foreigners. Deuteronomy 28:43-45:
The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail. Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee.
In its March report, the Bank for International Settlements noted that Americans owe 58 percent of total world debt—a whopping $58 trillion worth. Meanwhile, America’s gdp only makes up less than a quarter of the world’s total economy.
All that debt has allowed America to live like a king, but now it is making it a slave to the world. More importantly, because America has turned from the God that made it great, it is no longer receiving the blessings that naturally result from keeping God’s commandments. Blessings like lasting prosperity and geopolitical strength. We are not free from fear because our precarious debt load means our enemies can threaten to destroy the dollar and cripple our economy.
America’s superpower days are ending. Allies be aware. Ukraine, you are on your own. |
An aging ex-con who deliberately got caught robbing a bank so he could go back to prison should have his wish fulfilled, federal prosecutors say.
Walter Unbehaun, 73, spent most of his adult life behind bars, and was apparently so unhappy living as a free man that he stuck up the BMO Harris Bank at 7077 W. Dempster St. in north suburban Niles on Feb. 9 with the intention of being caught, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
He told FBI agents he “wanted to go back to the only life he knew — prison life,” according to court papers filed this week by the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Prosecutors want U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman to lock him up for six to eight years, a sentence they acknowledge “would seem to be rewarding him for precisely the behavior we seek to deter.”
Weird News Photos: Man Shoves Snake in Pants
But they say Unbehaun’s willingness to stick up a bank, even though he walks with a cane and has had hip-replacement surgery, shows just how determined he is to stay behind bars, making him a public danger at an age when most criminals have settled down.
“Did the system fail Mr. Unbehaun?,” prosecutor Sharon Fairley wrote in the filing. “We may never know. But, what we do know is, clearly, Unbehaun lacks the desire to lead a law-abiding life outside of prison walls.”
He was was arrested outside a North Chicago motel by FBI agents and Niples police the day after the robbery. Agents received tips from people who had seen media coverage of the robbery, the FBI said at the time.
A federal criminal complaint charging one count of bank robbery allegeds that during thge robbery, Unbehaun told the teller, “This is a hold up. I have nothing to lose. Give me the money in the drawer.” He then opened his jacket to show a handgun in the waistband of his pants.
He told the teller, “I only have six months to live and have nothing to lose. I don’t want to hurt you,” the complaint said.
Unbehaun, of Rock Hill, S.C. — who has multiple convictions for bank robbery, car theft, home invasion, unlawful restraint, armed robbery, theft, unauthorized use of a weapon and armed violence going back to 1963 — is due to be sentenced next month.
His attorney did not return calls seeking comment.
Copyright SunTimes |
Street flooding was reported throughout New Orleans on Monday as a storm dropped at least 3 inches of rain on some parts of the city.
A flash flood warning was in effect until 3:15 p.m., according to the National Weather Service.
The city has suspended prohibitions on parking on the neutral ground and advised residents to move vehicles from low-lying areas, according to a tweet from the city.
In an interview with WWL-TV, Paul Rainwater, a member of the interim management team running the Sewerage & Water Board, said that two of the five pumps at Station 3 went down during the storm. Station 3 serves parts of Gentilly and moves water from areas as far away as Broadmoor to Lake Pontchartrain.
The two pumps represent about 27 percent of the drainage capacity at that pump station.
S&WB officials said about 4:10 p.m. Monday that the pumps had been returned to service though the cause of the outage remained unknown.
Can't see video below? Click here.
The flooding is serious in some areas of the city. WWL-TV showed images of cars half-covered in water near an underpass at Gentilly Boulevard and Paris Avenue, and cars were stalled in floodwaters at Louisa Street and Chef Menteur Highway.
The city provides information on reports of street flooding at streetwise.nola.gov.
According to the S&WB's website, 109 of the drainage system's 120 pumps were operational Monday.
Broken pumps and a lack of power and staff have been blamed for exacerbating the Aug. 5 flooding in New Orleans.
New Orleans boil water advisory is lifted after no contamination found New Orleanians were told Thursday they could start drinking the water again.
Morris Jeff Community School announced Monday afternoon that it would be dismissing students at 2:30 p.m. due to flooding on nearby streets. |
Talia Jane was fired two hours after she publicly admitted she can't afford groceries.
This is Talia Jane. She's 25, and up until Friday afternoon she worked for Eat24, the food-ordering app owned by Yelp. Talia Jane
Jane told BuzzFeed News she moved to San Francisco to start working as a customer service representative at the company in August after finishing an English literature degree at California State University, Long Beach. Talia Jane
Jane said she wanted to work for the company's media team but was told the customer service rep position was a good way to break into the business, learn essential skills, and transition across departments. However, the reality of living and working in one of the most expensive cities in the country soon caught up with her. Even though she rented an apartment 30 miles away from the company's downtown offices, she struggled to afford her rent, making just $12.25 an hour — or $8.15 after tax. She also had to factor in more than $200 per month in transportation fees, since she was taking the train to work. She had also planned to find a co-worker to room with her, she said, but quickly discovered many of them were either living at home or otherwise unable to afford the rent.
"I thought to myself, Oh, I'm tremendously fucked, so I'm just going to try really hard on improving at this job so I can transfer and get a pay increase," she said, "but then I was told that wouldn't happen for at least a year." Talia Jane
Having cut back on buying groceries in order to afford her rent and bills, and juggling 40 hours of overnight shifts a week, Jane went to bed on Friday after drinking a liter of water to stop hunger pains. She said she awoke two hours later, starving, so she made herself some rice — the only food she could afford. "While cooking the rice, I suddenly became aware that this wasn't the first time this had happened," she said.
Hungry, tired, and struggling to make ends meet, she began tweeting at Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman. .@jeremys please let me earn a living wage. I promise I'll watch all your vlogs. just let me be able to pay my rent.
.@jeremys I didnt major in business or finance & I didnt take this job to get rich. I just cant turn my heater on & I'm tired of being cold.
.@jeremys anyway, fire me or ignore me. either way I'll keep on struggling all the same. ✌️
She then channeled her thoughts into a post on Medium , entitled "An Open Letter To My CEO." Medium / Via medium.com
The post, which has been shared across the tech world on Twitter and been viewed more than 85,000 people, goes into detail about Jane's struggles making ends meet. Here are some excerpts: So here I am, 25-years old, balancing all sorts of debt and trying to pave a life for myself that doesn't involve crying in the bathtub every week. Every single one of my coworkers is struggling. They're taking side jobs, they're living at home. One of them started a GoFundMe because she couldn't pay her rent. She ended up leaving the company and moving east, somewhere the minimum wage could double as a living wage. Another wrote on those neat whiteboards we've got on every floor begging for help because he was bound to be homeless in two weeks. Fortunately, someone helped him out. At least, I think they did. I actually haven't seen him in the past few months. Do you think he's okay? Another guy who got hired, and ultimately let go, was undoubtedly homeless. He brought a big bag with him and stocked up on all those snacks you make sure are on every floor... By and large, our floor pummels through those snacks the fastest and has to roam other floors to find something to eat. Is it because we're gluttons? Maybe. If you starve a pack of wolves and toss them a single steak, will they rip each other to shreds fighting over it? Definitely.
I haven't bought groceries since I started this job. Not because I'm lazy, but because I got this ten pound bag of rice before I moved here and my meals at home (including the one I'm having as I write this) consist, by and large, of that. Because I can't afford to buy groceries. Bread is a luxury to me, even though you've got a whole fridge full of it on the 8th floor. But we're not allowed to take any of that home because it's for at-work eating. Of which I do a lot. Because 80 percent of my income goes to paying my rent. Isn't that ironic? Your employee for your food delivery app that you spent $300 million to buy can't afford to buy food. That's gotta be a little ironic, right?
Let's talk about those benefits, though. They're great. I've got vision, dental, the normal health insurance stuff — and as far as I can tell, I don't have to pay for any of it! Except the copays. $20 to see a doctor or get an eye exam or see a therapist or get medication. Twenty bucks each is pretty neat, if spending twenty dollars didn't determine whether or not you could afford to get to work the next week.
"I wanted [Stoppelman] to understand that I wasn't some little, annoying fly buzzing around his head," she told BuzzFeed News. "I wanted him to understand that I'm not some obnoxious idiot who thinks it's funny to harass the CEO on Twitter. I'm someone who has concerns and is reaching out, hoping that he can do something. "I was sitting there and thinking, I hope he sees this and I hope my CEO listens and hears me, and then it started to dawn on me: I wonder if I'll get fired for saying this out loud?" After publishing the post at 3 p.m. on Friday, her company email account stopped working two hours later, she said. "My manager and HR told me the letter and what I wrote violated Yelp's terms of conduct," she said.
After he was contacted by BuzzFeed News on Saturday, Stoppelman began tweeting about Jane's dismissal. 1/5 Late last night I read Talia's medium contribution and want to acknowledge her point that the cost of living in SF is far too high.
2/5 I have been focused on this issue, backing anti-NIMBY group SFBARF and speaking out frequently about the need to lower cost of housing.
3/5 I've not been personally involved in Talia being let go and it was not because she posted a Medium letter directed at me.
4/5 Two sides to every HR story so Twitter army please put down the pitchforks. The reality of such a high Bay Area cost of living is...
5/5 entry level jobs migrate to where costs of living are lower. Have already announced we are growing EAT24 support in AZ for this reason.
Although Stoppelman said the post was not the reason for Jane's dismissal, a spokesperson for Yelp would not elaborate, telling BuzzFeed News the company would not comment on personnel matters. "We do not comment on personnel issues," the spokesperson said. "However, we did agree with many of the points in Ms. Jane's post and we viewed it as her real, personal narrative about what it's like to live in the Bay Area. Most importantly, it's an important example of freedom of speech." "We agree with her comments about the high costs of living in San Francisco, which is why we announced in December that we are expanding our Eat24 customer support team into our Phoenix office where will pay the same wage." |
Auburn Week 14 2013-Auburn vs. Alabama Game Day
ESPN analysts Lee Corso, left, and Kirk Herbstreit Saturday, Nov. 30, 2013, on the set of ESPN College Game Day outside Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn, Ala. (Julie Bennett/[email protected])
(JULIE BENNETT)
Kirk Herbstreit is going against the grain.
Despite Auburn coming off a disappointing 7-6 season, an uncertain quarterback picture and the dismissal of running back Jovon Robinson, the ESPN college football analyst picked Auburn as his sleeper in the SEC and No. 4 among his surprise teams this season.
UPDATED: Herbstreit clarified that he was not implying Auburn would actually win the SEC -- he picked Alabama to beat Tennessee -- but was picking the Tigers to be in a "sleeper" in a more general sense.
Herbstreit explained why he's optimistic about Auburn, which is unranked in both the preseason AP and coaches polls, compared to other media members, including those in the SEC media, which picked the Tigers to finish sixth in the SEC West during SEC Media Days.
"I think if you look at (Auburn being 6-10 in SEC play the last two years) and you look at the roster and you look who they have at quarterback, I can see why the media said that this team's not going to compete," Herbstreit said on a conference call Wednesday. "Even in the backfield with the tailback situation. For me it's more of I think the defense is going to be really, really good. I think they're going to play with a chip on their shoulder. I think they're going to be mad at the world when they play this year.
"I think defensively they're going to stay in almost every game that they play and then it's just a matter of the head coach, Gus Malzahn, and the offense finding ways to put enough points up on the board to win."
Auburn is 2-9 in its last 11 SEC games and has not beaten a conference foe at Jordan-Hare Stadium since defeating South Carolina, 42-35, on Oct. 25, 2014.
The Tigers open the 2016 season with five straight home games starting on Sept. 3 against No. 2 Clemson.
Malzahn and Auburn's defensive players are extremely optimistic about what that side of the ball will deliver this fall. Herbstreit is too.
"I would be careful just by looking at 8-5 two years ago, 7-6 last year, 6-10 in conference play over the last couple of years, I think it's easy to look at this and say that this thing's heading in the wrong direction," Herbstreit said. "I just think there's a little bit more backbone to the program than maybe all of us realize on the outside. I think it'll be led this year by the defense. I think the defense is going to be one of the best in the SEC." |
After it was previewed as a concept at the Geneva Motor Show in March, everything has been a blur for this 350 km/h car that is run by a very unusual powertrain.
Using flow cell battery technology that can store 20 times more energy than a lead-acid battery and 5 times more capacity than the lithium-ion battery used by today’s electric cars, it can travel up to 600 kilometers on one full charge, distance only combustion engines can cover.
The nanoFLOWCELL technology can undergo 100 times more charging cycles than lead-acid and lithium-ion and only self-discharges at 1% per day if unused; all without the memory effect conventional batteries suffer through.
Peak power of the 4-seater QUANT e-Sportlimousine 912 HP but it can remain constant at 644 HP. Peak torque for each wheel is at 2,900 Nm. It will hit 100 kph in just 2.8 seconds.
Last July 22, 2014 and after extensive testing by the District Government of Upper Palatinate Bavaria the QUANT e-Sportlimousine was issued an official registration plate and finally allowed to road the roads of Germany and Europe.
“This is a historic moment and a milestone not only for our company but perhaps even for the electro-mobility of the future. For the first time an automobile featuring flow-cell electric drive technology will appear on Germany's roads. Today we have put the product of 14 years’ hard development work on the road,” said Nunzio La Vecchia, chief technical officer at nanoFLOWCELL AG.
“Approval of the QUANT e-Sportlimousine with the nanoFLOWCELL® drivetrain concept is a vital step forward for nanoFLOWCELL AG. The fact that only four months after the car's world premiere in Geneva we have received approval for the use of the QUANT e-Sportlimousine with nanoFLOWCELL® drivetrain concept on the road in Germany and in Europe indicates the dynamism with which our entire team is working on this project. And we are very much looking forward to the next stages of this exciting and promising journey,” states Prof. Jens-Peter Ellermann, chairman of the board of directors at nanoFLOWCELL AG. |
Mormon Church Opens in Ozark as Mormon Faith Grows Video
OZARK, Mo. -- A new Mormon church has opened its doors in Ozark.
It's the new home for the Ozark and Nixa congregations of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints.
The growth of the Mormon faith has created a need for the new church in our area.
The LDS church in Ozark has had its doors open for about two weeks now.
Between the Nixa and Ozark wards, there are about 800 people who have already joined.
"It's a worldwide congregation of about 15 million people and growing," said Ozark Ward Bishop Robert Guison.
And the growth has been proven here in the Ozarks with a need for the brand new church.
"When i was young growing up in Monett, we had to come to Springfield," said Bishop Guison. "There are now seven stakes and each stake is approximately six to seven congregations-- so that's how much it's grown in my lifetime-- just in this area-- so there's been a tremendous amount of growth."
"It's been exciting to see the growth and people moving to the area," said Nixa Ward Bishop Michael Barker. "But also the natural growth from families -- and also those that choose to join the Mormon faith-- those that choose to investigate and join themselves to the church-- it's been fun."
Before, those of the Mormon faith in Nixa and Ozark had to drive to Springfield.
"Then, as the need grew, we were too crowded in that building," said Bishop Guison. "So the next choice was what would be the most benefit to members and the community? That's why this location was chosen."
"It gives a foundation to our faith, a sense of permanence," said Bishop Barker. "There's a lot of excitement to have our own building here in the Nixa-Ozark region."
The building includes classrooms, offices and a kitchen adjacent to the multi-purpose cultural hall that doubles as in indoor basketball court.
"There's a great sense of ownership and presence to have a building and a place we call home," said Bishop Barker. "Where we come together to worship and can invite people to come share our faith with us."
But, of course, for them-- it goes beyond that.
"The building is wonderful and represents progress and growth," said Bishop Barker. "But, more importantly, it represents our faith and the savior Jesus Christ and not only to serve him and our families, but to serve the community as Christians."
The chapel seats about 250 people.
The church serves both the Nixa and Ozark communities. |
Get to know Titanium
Building mobile and desktop applications with web technologies
The world of web application development has moved pretty quickly in the past five or so years. What used to be extremely rare — web developers who could deliver not only solid back-end code but also slick UIs — is becoming increasingly commonplace thanks to powerful development frameworks like Ruby on Rails and jQuery. Likewise, CSS and HTML — once extremely simple tools for determining the structure and layout of web pages — have solidified into flexible and powerful environments that allow developers to create extremely engaging experiences.
At some point, though, these same developers are sometimes asked to go farther than a "mere" web presence (word in quotes because everyone who develops web software knows it's harder than it looks to pull off, but there are always those who would give it short shrift). In this rapidly changing world, it's not enough to just have a web presence: You also need mobile and desktop applications.
The problem is, if you're coming from the world of interpreted scripting languages like Python, JavaScript, or PHP, making the transition to Java™ technology, C++, or Objective-C languages isn't quite as easy as it sounds. In fact, it can be downright difficult. Everything about the new world is difficult: You have to deal with compiled code; provision devices; and test on different platforms like Apple Macintosh, Windows®, or Linux®. You more than likely have to start working in a very different way.
So, even if you can learn a new language (say, Objective-C, if you want to code Apple iPhone or iPad applications), you still have to learn how to do things in ways that conform to the new environment. If you're coding an Android or iPhone application, you need to walk through certain steps to get developer certificates, run your builds, provision your devices, test the code running on the devices, and finally follow another process for submitting your applications for distribution.
For the average web developer, who is used to dropping code via SFTP onto a test server, running various browser checks, then pushing it live, all of this can be a bit overwhelming.
But what if you could use the skills you already have with the languages you already know? Use those languages to build native applications for desktop and mobile platforms, then package those applications for distribution and use? Well, you're reading the correct article because the answer to those "what ifs" is Titanium, a free and open source development kit published by Appcelerator (see Related topics).
What is Titanium?
In short, Titanium is a rapid application development platform that uses HTML, JavaScript, and CSS (for starters) to develop desktop and mobile applications. The framework also supports the use of Python, Ruby, and PHP, which, together with the front-end technologies, gives you access to a whole range of familiar technologies you can use to create applications.
Other platforms (like Adobe® AIR®) are similar, except that Titanium is licensed under a free/open source Apache license, and you don't need to learn Adobe Flash® or ActionScript to get started. Basically, what you'll be using is an independent WebKit client and an extensive API that includes an internal SQLite database and full file system access (among other features) that you combine with your own CSS, JavaScript, HTML, and back-end code. Furthermore, you get access to common wrappers for such things as desktop notifications, tray icons, window menus, and other widgets that allow your application to blend in naturally with most major operating systems.
Installing Titanium
To get started with Titanium, on the Appcelerator web site, click Download Titanium. When the package is downloaded, install it on your system. On Mac OS X, simply drag the Titanium icon onto the Applications folder icon.
When Titanium is installed, you'll probably need to run updates and download secondary libraries before you can get going. When everything is complete, start Titanium for the first time; you should see a welcome page. If you already have a username and password, use those credentials to log in. Otherwise, take a minute to create your credentials now. You'll use those credentials to access the wiki, the support portal, and other resources, like cloud-based analytics.
Once you've registered, you should see a page that lists your projects. You can also access API documentation and other helpful information from this same page (see Figure 1). You are free to explore these at your own leisure, but for now, start creating your first project.
Figure 1. Titanium Developer Dashboard
Creating your first Titanium application
To create your first application in Titanium, simply click New Project on the top toolbar to open the New Project window. Here, fill in a few data points about your new application (see Figure 2):
In Project type, choose desktop. Name your application. Give your application an App ID. Typically, the App ID follows the familiar com.companyname.applicationname format (such as com.example.sampleapp). Select a directory for your finished code. Enter your company's or a personal URL. Check the language modules you want to include in your new application (currently, there is support for Ruby, Python, and PHP). Click Create Project.
Figure 2. Create a new project
Titanium creates a folder for your new application in the designated folder. Your application folder will contain certain important files and directories:
The Resources folder will eventually contain all your images, HTML files, PHP files, etc. Think of it as your application's web root. Within your application, you can use app:// URLs to refer to files and assets within this folder.
URLs to refer to files and assets within this folder. The tiapp.xml file is your application's configuration file. You'll probably never edit this file outside of Titanium's UI, but if you do, make sure that you read the documentation (see Related topics) beforehand.
The LICENSE.txt file contains the license your users will have to agree to before using your application.
The manifest file describes some details about your application, such as the runtime version of the application. It's not a good idea to edit this file while Titanium is running.
The dist directory is where Titanium stages your application when you launch and package it.
For now, make sure that the initial application you've set up is valid and can actually be packaged. To test that, click the Test & Package tab, then click the Package tab.
Next, select which platforms you want to support (just pick the one you're working with now), select an installer type (choose Bundled for now). Keep the rest of the defaults shown in Figure 3 (for example, you want the application to be private, and you don't want to release to users).
Figure 3. Packaging your application
Click Package Project. After a few minutes, you should end up with a package that's ready to download from the Appcelerator Web site (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Your package ready for download
Click to download the package, then install it. What you'll see, of course, is just a blank screen with the words "Welcome to Titanium" along the top because that's pretty much what's inside the index.html file in the application's Resources directory. In fact, if you were to open that index.html file, you'd see something like the markup in Listing 1.
Listing 1. Basic markup in your first Titanium application
<html><head></head> <body style="background-color:#1c1c1c;margin:0"> <div style="border-top:1px solid #404040"> <div style="color:#fff;;padding:10px">Welcome to Titanium</div> </div></body></html>
You've built your first application, but it isn't very exciting. It isn't much to look at, for one thing, and it doesn't do anything useful. So, let's add a few elements to it so that it will start looking like an application.
Open the directory that contains your application, then open the Resources directory. Download a copy of your favorite JavaScript framework (for me, it's jQuery) and put the file right into the directory. Now open the index.html file in an editor and make changes.
Begin by using a <script> tag to wire up the framework file you just downloaded into the page. Then remove all that extra inline style stuff that came with Titanium. At this point, your HTML markup should look like Listing 2.
Listing 2. Adding jQuery
<html> <head> <script type="text/javascript" src="app://jquery.js"></script> </head> <body> </body> </html>
Now add some client-side code, such as a button that does something dynamic on the page. In the example in Listing 3, I create a simple button that, when clicked, prompts jQuery to fill a <div> with content.
Listing 3. Adding a dynamic button
<html> <head> <script type="text/javascript" src="app://jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> jQuery(document).ready(function() { $("#mybutton").click(function(){ var string = 'Hello there!'; $('#mymessage').html(string); }); }); </script> </head> <body> <button id="mybutton">click me!</button> <div id="mymessage"></div> </body> </html>
Although this is a simple example, you can see right away that the options are pretty much limitless (see Figure 5). Add other client-side frameworks, CSS layouts, and custom content to create the application you want to deliver to your clients.
Figure 5. HTML + jQuery in Titanium
Unlike a website, you'll need to do some planning because you need to package "builds" to see updates. For example, you can't easily refresh content changes once you've bundled up a distribution, so remember to budget in the time it will take to create a package, and then download it.
For example, if you were to go back and add CSS styling like that shown in Listing 4:
Listing 4. Simple CSS
body { margin:0; padding:0; background:#ccc; } #wrapper{ border:1px solid black; margin:10px auto; width:500px; background:#fff; padding:10px; }
Then a bit of markup, adding an HTML <div> with an ID of wrapper , as shown in Listing 5:
Listing 5. Applying the CSS
<html> <style> body { margin:0; padding:0; background:#ccc; } #wrapper{ border:1px solid black; margin:10px auto; width:500px; background:#fff; padding:10px; } </style> <head> <script type="text/javascript" src="app://jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> jQuery(document).ready(function() { $("#mybutton").click(function(){ var string = 'Hello there!'; $('#mymessage').html(string); }); }); </script> </head> <body> <div id="wrapper"> <button id="mybutton">click me!</button> <div id="mymessage"></div> </div> </body> </html>
Then you wouldn't be able to see your new look and feel until after you've run through the package process. That's a bit slower than you're used to when you develop websites, but just keep in mind what you're dealing with and you should be OK.
If client-side only gets you so far, then there's also support for server-side code. You could convert the HTML file here to PHP, and if you've got PHP support for the application your building (in other words, you selected the PHP checkbox when you created the project), you'd be able to insert PHP commands. Combining PHP with the built-in SQLite database included with Titanium allows you to build just about any kind of dynamic application you care to build. The next section takes this all a bit farther and adds PHP coding.
Adding PHP to the mix
Now that you have the basics down, you can do a few advanced things with your new application. Open the Resources directory, then open the index.html file in an editor. Before you get started with PHP, it's a good idea to throw in a link to a PHP file that will run phpinfo() so that you know what you're dealing with. I chose PHP, because that's what I'm most familiar with: You may want to use Ruby or Python, and both of those options are supported.
When you're in the HTML file, get rid of the button and put in a link to a new file — one you'll call phpinfo.php, as Listing 6 shows.
Listing 6. Linking to phpinfo.php
<div id="wrapper"> <a href="phpinfo.php">see PHP info</a> </div>
The phpinfo.php file will be basic, containing just one line of PHP — a call to phpinfo() , which dumps out every variable and setting in Titanium's PHP environment (see Listing 7). You can wrap that call with the <pre> tag to make it easier to digest the information.
Listing 7. Creating the phpinfo.php file
<?php echo phpinfo(); ?>
Once you're done with the source code, go back to Titanium and create an updated package. Wait for the process to finish, then download and install the package. Once installed, run it; you should see a simple page with a link to the phpinfo.php file. Click that link, and you should see the page shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6. Basic results of the phpinfo() command
As you can see, Titanium displays a page that shows you every PHP configuration setting it has. Notice that you have support for Sessions, SQLite, and SimpleXML (among other valuable tools) and that Titanium knows about your local environment (for example, where the WebKit libraries are located and what your _ENV['HOME'] setting is.
That's all well and good, but what if you want to actually do some work with PHP? You can certainly create separate PHP files that you call, but it's much easier to embed your PHP directly into your HTML files. The way you do that is to create <script> blocks (much like you would with JavaScript) that use the text/php type parameter and add your PHP that way.
For example, if you wanted to create a simple function that adds two numbers and place it in the previously created index.html file, you could run it via a JavaScript block, as Listing 8 shows.
Listing 8. Creating a basic PHP block
<script type="text/php"> function php_sum($a,$b){ return $a + $b; } </script> <script> alert(php_sum(3,4)); </script>
As you can see in Figure 7, you can run the PHP code from a basic JavaScript block, making the data available from one to the other in ways that you're probably not used to in the web development world.
Figure 7. A Basic PHP block
Another option, of course, is to bundle your PHP blocks into separate files and include those files via one of two ways: through the common <script> tag or by using an include command inside a <script> block, as shown in Listing 9.
Listing 9. Including PHP source files
//you can use the script tag //if you use this method, leave your PHP code bare, no <?php block <script type="text/php" src="my_file.php"/> //or you can use a PHP include command inside a script block //if you use this method, surround your code with <?php block <script type="text/php"> include("source.php"); </script>
Conclusion
At this point, you know more than enough to get started on your own Titanium application. You've learned how to install the tools, create basic interfaces with HTML, and even added a bit of PHP code and some CSS styling. From here, you should be able to add other features and make smart desktop and mobile applications, building on the skills you already have as a web developer.
Downloadable resources
Related topics
Check out Titanium Developer, the starting point for Titanium.
Follow developerWorks on Twitter. |
Playground Case Could Breach Barrier Between Tax Coffers, Religious Schools
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Alliance Defending Freedom Courtesy of Alliance Defending Freedom
The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments Wednesday in a Missouri case with the potential to open grant programs to parochial schools.
Wednesday's showdown pitting school choice and religious liberty advocates against taxpayer groups and civil libertarians has been long in coming. The Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case of Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley — Pauley being the director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources at the time — in January 2016.
A month later, Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly, leaving an eight-justice court that was deeply divided on questions concerning the separation of church and state. For nearly a year and a half, the justices punted, declining to hear oral arguments in the case until the court was back up to full strength.
Now that day has come — sort of. A funny thing happened on the way to the Supreme Court that's explained in detail below.
"Children should not be treated as second-class citizens"
First, the case: Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Mo., operates a preschool and day care learning center as part of its church ministry. Ninety children, ages 2 to 5, attend the school and play on its playground.
In 2012 the church applied for a grant from the state to essentially rubberize the playground surface, using old and discarded tires. Trinity Lutheran sought the funds despite regulations barring state grants to religious institutions.
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which administers the scrap tire program, had enough money to fund playground resurfacing for 14 of the 44 applicants. Although Trinity Lutheran would have qualified otherwise, the state turned it down, citing a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that bars giving state aid to a school that is owned or controlled by a church, sect or denomination and where the applicant's mission is spiritual in nature.
There is no doubt that the learning center's mission is spiritual in nature, even if the playground surface is not.
Trinity Lutheran went to court, claiming that the grant denial interfered with its free exercise of religion and amounted to unconstitutional discrimination, based on religion, against the school.
Gail Schuster, director of the Trinity Lutheran Child Learning Center, said in a YouTube video about the case that the school applied to the program to provide a safe playground for the preschoolers.
"The issue here is that children are children, and their safety is important to us, and the children should not be treated as second-class citizens," Schuster said.
The grant program was open to all nonprofit schools except religious ones, notes David Cortman of the Christian religious liberty group Alliance Defending Freedom. Excluding parochial schools takes the constitutional mandate of separation of church and state "too far," he says.
"Now you're treating a religious organization worse than everybody else," he says. "The government is not funding a religious activity; it's funding the playground where children play."
Not so, says the state of Missouri in its brief to the court. The "free exercise" clause of the U.S. Constitution, in its own words, forbids only government action that "prohibits" the free exercise of religion; it does not require the government to subsidize churches or provide equal funding opportunities for religious and nonreligious groups alike.
Trinity Lutheran's insistence that its playground resurfacing project is secular does not solve the problem, adds the state, because money is fungible, and because the church's religious intent is stated specifically in the Learning Center's mission.
Keeping the government out of churches
The ACLU, which filed a brief supporting the state's position, points to the Constitution's other religion clause, which bars any state establishment of religion. The Founding Fathers included that provision because they understood the problems that arise when government and religion become entangled, according to the ACLU's Daniel Mach.
"When you have the government providing direct cash to houses of worship, you threaten church autonomy and independence," he says. "You can pit denomination against denomination, sect against sect."
Even neutral criteria can functionally favor, for example, big churches or denominations over smaller ones, Mach says.
He argues that we as a society have given religious institutions many special benefits and exemptions from laws that apply to everyone else to prevent the government from interfering with religion. Religious institutions not only have tax-exempt status, but general civil rights laws do not apply to them.
Five years ago, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that teachers at a Lutheran school could not sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act, because the church said it considers teachers to be ministers of the church. The ACLU's Mach argues that now these religious schools are trying to "have their cake and eat it too."
"It wants to keep those benefits and also get handouts from the government," he says.
Making this case yet more interesting is a provision in the Missouri Constitution — and similar language in 36 other state constitutions — that bars direct or indirect aid to parochial schools.
In recent years, as the U.S. Supreme Court has become increasingly willing to lower the wall separating church and state, these state provisions have presented bigger and bigger obstacles to advocates of religious liberty and school choice.
Those activists have gone to court, rather than seeking to strike the state constitutional provisions through the democratic process.
"There is a movement to undermine public schools and to funnel taxpayer dollars to religious schools," Mach says. "Depending on how this case goes, this could greatly affect how that movement operates."
Bait-and-switch by the Missouri government
Well, maybe. To reiterate, a funny thing happened on the way to the Supreme Court.
Last week the newly elected Republican governor of Missouri, Eric Greitens, decided to change the state's long-standing policy on aid programs like this one — blaming "government bureaucrats" for the previous policy.
"You sent me here to fight for all Missourians, and that includes fighting for and defending people of faith who are too often under attack," he said in a Facebook video ordering the Department of Natural Resources to lift its ban on state grants for religious organizations.
Making such a grand stand may be good politics, but it is lousy legal strategy. Gov. Greitens' new position could moot the case before the Supreme Court Wednesday.
Upon seeing the governor's press release, the Supreme Court last Friday asked both sides to submit their views on whether there is still a live dispute, since the state of Missouri now agrees with the position taken by Trinity Lutheran.
Both sides said on Tuesday that the case should go forward. Trinity Lutheran, for instance, contends that another governor sometime in the future could change the policy back. And Missouri says there's a "reasonable possibility" that the state courts, relying on the state Constitution, could prevent Gov. Greitens' policy from going into effect.
In addition, the Missouri attorney general's office took itself out of the case, delegating the litigation to the former state solicitor general to defend the office's previous position.
In short, a case that a week ago looked like the showdown at the O.K. Corral on aid to parochial schools now looks considerably more uncertain.
Intern Lauren Russell contributed to this report. |
Building and infrastructure projects are fuelling economic growth
Increased exports and a boom in the construction industry helped the rapid expansion during 2007.
But officials warned that overheating remained a danger, despite a slight slow-down in the fourth quarter.
Inflation is also a serious concern, with many Chinese people hit by recent dramatic increases in food prices.
'Still developing'
Announcing the figures, National Statistics Bureau chief Xie Fuzhan said Beijing was paying "close attention" to the US credit crisis.
He said Beijing would respond by making "timely and proper adjustments" in exchange and interest rate policy, but gave no details.
Speculation has been mounting among analysts over whether China has overtaken Germany to become the world's third-largest economy.
But Mr Xie played down the comparison, saying: "It's not really important to know whether China is the fourth-largest or the third-largest.
"Even if the total surpasses Germany, China is still a developing country - in particular, the per capita GDP of China is really low."
Price controls
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville, in Shanghai, says economic growth is not a problem in China, but keeping the ever-expanding economy under control is proving tricky.
It took six interest rate rises by the government last year to slow the expansion. The last quarter of 2007 saw growth ease to 11.2%.
But while other governments around the world are cutting interest rates, China will likely have to raise them again if it is to keep its economy growing at a sustainable level, our correspondent says.
Another headache for Beijing last year was inflation.
Despite its growing wealth, China still has a large number of poor people struggling with dramatic increases in the price of daily essentials such as pork, which jumped by 50%.
Inflation hit an 11-year year high in November. Thursday's figures show that it fell back in December, although at 6.5% it remains a worry.
The government has introduced a range of price controls recently aimed at bring the cost of ordinary goods, particularly food, under control.
Dramatic price rises have led to social unrest in the past and Beijing cannot afford for its millions of poor to go hungry. |
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission on Monday said “yes” to a controversial proposal to divert water from the Gila River for use in southwestern New Mexico farms and cities – but with reservations.
The commission agreed to formally notify the U.S. Department of Interior that it wants to proceed with a project that would divert water from the Gila during times of high flow, building reservoir storage so that it can then be piped for as yet unidentified uses.
The vote allows the state to meet a Dec. 31 federal deadline to take the project’s next steps, a move that could free up $62 million in additional federal funding. But commissioners cautioned that more hurdles remain, chief among them the cost of a potential project and the ability of the state and local communities to pay for it, and that the state is not committed to build the project if it determines it is too costly.
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“New Mexico’s financial options will remain open for years to come,” acting Interstate Stream Commission Director Amy Haas said in a statement issued by the agency following the vote.
“If New Mexico determines down the road that our options are overly costly or no longer feasible, we have the option to change course.”
Opponents, who turned out in force at the hearing, said they believe the state knows enough to kill the project now. Bearing signs saying things like “No billion dollar boondoggle,” they say the cost – at least $575 million, according to a state consultant, and possibly $1 billion, according to an independent federal review – is too high, given the small amount of water the project will yield. They claim the project will cause environmental damage to the wild-flowing Gila with too little benefit.
More than 60 people attended the hearing, held in Albuquerque City Hall.
Project supporters say arid New Mexico cannot afford to pass up the water, an argument that carried the day with the commission, though the supply will be small. At Monday’s meeting, Interstate Stream Commission staff acknowledged that evaporation and reservoir seepage will eat up nearly half the water before it ever reaches any farms or cities.
The law under which the project would be built authorized 14,000 acre-feet per year on average from the Gila, but the actual yield will likely be between 6,000 and 8,000 acre-feet, ISC staff member Ali Effati told the commission. An acre-foot of water is enough for a typical family for two years.
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The opportunity to develop a new water supply is too important to pass up, said state Engineer Scott Verhines, who serves as the commission’s secretary. “Few of New Mexico’s regions have an opportunity to develop new water. This one does,” Verhines said.
Commissioner Blane Sanchez, the lone “no” vote, said he had reservations about the project because too little design work has been done to fully understand the costs. “It hasn’t been fully vetted,” Sanchez said.
Commissioners Jim Dunlap, Phelps Anderson, Randy Crowder, James Wilcox, Mark Sanchez, Buford Harris and Verhines all voted yes. Commissioner Topper Thorpe, who owns irrigation land in the area that might be served by the project, did not vote.
Verhines acknowledged the financial uncertainty, but said to vote “no” now, before the project is fleshed out, would close off the option of future development of the water.
The decision starts a complex set of next steps for the project, which has been a decade in the making. The federal government already has allocated $68 million for southwestern New Mexico water projects, some of which can be spent now on design work for the diversion project. By voting “yes,” the state could get access to an additional $62 million if the diversion project proceeds to construction.
In the meantime, New Mexico can continue studies in the project to flesh out details, including how much it will cost and how much water it will yield. The required federal studies, a necessity for the work to proceed, could take another five years to complete, staff told the commission.
Critics said the money spent in design work and environmental reviews in the coming years will be wasted, because it already is clear that the project makes no economic sense.
“I think they know enough now,” said Allyson Siwik of the Gila Conservation Coalition. The money spent on studies could better be devoted to conservation measures and other steps to help the region cope with water scarcity, she said in an interview following the decision. |
Gabrielle Jones is barely four years old and she’s already saved a life.
And, while that’s remarkable enough on its own, making it even more special is the fact that the life she saved was of her baby brother Avery.
Last year, Avery came down with a fever that wouldn’t go away. The Meadowvale boy’s parents, mother Michelle and father Stefan, took him to the hospital on several occasions and to a pediatric clinic. But, despite antibiotics being prescribed, the fever just wasn’t breaking.
They returned to Credit Valley Hospital and their then four-month-old son underwent a battery of tests, including blood work. Not liking what they saw in the results, the CVH doctors referred him to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
There, physicians diagnosed Avery with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH). According to the Johns Hopkins Medicine website, the life-threatening and rare condition has certain white blood cells of the immune system malfunctioning and that causes them to attack and damage the body’s other blood cells.
“I had never heard of it,” admitted Stefan. “Everyone knows about cancer or leukemia but HLH? Once we found out, we spent days doing research to try and learn as much as we could about something we had never heard of.”
It was a scary time for the family. Stefan and Michelle learned they both carried the gene that caused HLH and that meant their offspring had a one in four chance of being diagnosed with it. They had to take their other children — Gabrielle as well as Sienna, 8, and Aiden, 5 — for testing to see if they had the condition. Thankfully, they didn’t.
Steroids and chemotherapy would serve as a temporary treatment for Avery’s HLH, the family said. But, the only way to cure it was a bone-marrow transplant.
The parents were told that they should get tested, along with Avery’s siblings, to see if they were a match for donation. It’s highly unlikely that the extended family would be, which narrowed down the field of prospective donors, and they were informed that less than 25 per cent of the time a donor is found in the immediate family.
Last year in June, memorably enough on Michelle’s birthday, she received two phone calls that would prove to be the best gift she could have hoped for. |
President Donald Trump on Wednesday stood by his explosive claim that Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign.
In what were his first comments on the scandal since he made the accusations in a series of tweets on March 4, the president told Fox News he expected "some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks".
In excerpts of the interview, to be broadcast in full on Wednesday night, he also said that "wiretap covers a lot of different things".
Mr Trump has been under mounting pressure to provide evidence for the claims that his predecessor ordered a spying operation to be carried out on him in the run-up to November's election.
Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence committee directly contradicted the president on Wednesday, saying: "We don't have any evidence that that took place."
"I don't think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower," he said. If Mr Trump's s tweets were taken literally, then "clearly the president was wrong". |
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